As I've mentioned, summer is a slow tennis time for me. Yesterday I was feeling a little down. (It turns out I was exhausted after a late night at The Police/Elvis Costello concert.)
I was thinking about my team tennis career and my experiences on adult tennis teams. When I play team tennis I want to win. When I know I have a match coming up I schedule games against better players, sometimes I'll take a lesson with a pro, I pull out my tennis books and I PREPARE for the upcoming match. With both my daughters going to school in the fall, I have to start thinking about getting some kind of job, which means I won't be able to play nearly as much as I did when I stayed home full time.
I came up with this equation:
getting a job + both daughters in after school activities= less practice time and not winning matches.
If I can't win, I don't think I want to play matches. Not very Buddhist of me.
About two hours later my phone rings. My summer team has a big match this Wednesday against a team we're tied with for first place. Do I want to play? DO I? I sure as hell DO! I haven't started a job yet...so I'm going for it.
Catherine was sick today, so there was no pre-match training, no tennis book reading, no scrambling to get a game going. Tomorrow I go in cold. Do I want to win? Heck yeah. But I can't act like I'm going to the US Open everytime I play a match.
I have to put it in perspective. The hard part is, I play against people who take lots of lessons, play lots of games and read lots of books. They too are matchaholics.
I'll say it before you do.."GET A LIFE JILL!" You're right. I have a problem. And admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I'm working on it...one day at a time.
In the meantime...I can't wait until tomorrow morning SO I CAN KICK SOME BUTT!!!!
God help me.
Footnote: I took this post down because I felt like I was going to jinx myself in today's match. (Sick huh?) Anyway, we had a rain delay so my match started at instead of 9. I woke up this morning with a fever and a burning sore throat. (I caught whatever Catherine had the past 2 days!) I felt really lousy-so I rested and drank lots of water.
Anyway at 2 we started the match...it was HOT out! The ladies we played were 20 years older than me. (As is my partner.) One of them had an arm brace and a knee brace and walked with a slight limp...but when she hit the court-WATCH OUT! She was amazing.
We lost the first set 5-7-kicked butt in the second set and won 6-2. In the third set we were tied at 5-5 and we blew it and lost 5-7. Damn. I actually played pretty well considering how crappy I felt, but I was SERIOUSLY losing my mojo in the third set, my head hurt so bad!!
I wish I could have pushed a little harder. Oh well. Part of my 12 step matchaholic recovery is letting it go when I lose, but I'm bummed. Oh well. No more team tennis until January.
(Oh yeah and did I mention we were tied for first with this team, and MY match was the deciding match? Oh well, at least our captain is a normal sane person. If this was USTA I my captain would be PISSED!)
Time to bring Meg to cheerleading, hit the showers and MOVE ON!!!