Finally picked up a disc for some outdoor action 13 days
into the new year. Made it out to pickup on my lunch break to enjoy the
relatively warm weather that has followed the polar vortex. Did I wonder if two
weeks of little running, less sleep and lots of eating and drinking would have
a negative effect on my game? Hell no. I was brimming with the reckless
confidence of a maniac.
After a quick jog halfway back to work to find my
Guilderland jersey that I'd dropped on the way over, I dove right in to some 3
on 3 box. Never been a big fan of box, but it was nice to break in the ol lungs
in a game format where defense is incredibly easy.
A couple more dudes showed up so we got down to business: 4
on 4 mini with boots for cones. Sweet. It was great to be back on the field, and
showed me what to expect for winter league today and in the upcoming weeks:
pain. Somehow my lungs are wrecked again. Maybe its the cold air. I forgot to
breathe through my nose. Legs are okay, but a long warmup is necessary. Need to
sync the lungs and legs up. Throws are basically fine as long as I am active.
Fitness baseline is good, long road to Stonefish. Gotta get hyped for work.
Things I do not like about pickup: "I'm not straddling
the line if I landed on THIS PART of the shoe cone," closely followed by,
and this is a much more general and common occurrence, when there is a woman on
one team and no women on the other, and the dude that guards her keeps trying
to poach and help other defenders, and she scores on him over and over. That's
about the fourth worst kind of "ultimate sexism", and also really
annoying for said duder's teammates. Yikes. I'm just, no fun though.
You know what else is annoying? Playing as a conservative
handler in a pickup game. Maybe I am being punished for every turnover I
inflicted on David over the years. It’s tough trying to play as a reset handler
when everyone else will instantly jack it to the same third of the field. Haha.
No fun. I tried to be gregarious and friendly but for at least one dude I was
the pickup buzzkill.
Which is a good segue into the next thing I have on my mind:
I'm realizing more and more lately that my facial expressions and tone of voice
show a lot more of my inner monologue than I ever realized. Emily told me this,
and it was confirmed by how customers react to me at work. I'm learning to
control my facial expressions and tone more deliberately, but I don't really
know where to start. And its 10x as tough on the ultimate field, when the blood
is pumping.
The thing is, the negativity I project is not even directly
proportional to how I'm feeling. I'm just not great at even like, knowing what
my face is doing. And I have no idea how I sound. How I sound in my head is
apparently way less negative than I often come off, in general. How to fix
that? I barely have a clue. Anger issues don't help either. Lots of mental game
work to do, but my confidence is high right now.
I don't engage both my arms when I jump, leading to a kind
of awkward faux superman pose. I can probably jump higher while reducing
residual awkwardness.. With my highest approach jump indoors I can hang on the
rim with one hand. Goal for now is to get two up there. Maybe with enough
squats and squat jumps, I'll be able to dunk.
Zim zam zoom.
Seeya later blog friends.
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