Winning versus Getting Better, and the GOAT

I am playing on my summer pickle ball League. I am still a beginner, and, as many of you know, this is the first time I've ever played a competitive sport. I'm still wrapping my head around winning and losing. I get a decent amount of exercise, but I'm not racing my paddle board or bike. Maybe somewhere in the world there is competitive yoga, but I haven't seen it yet.

The pickle ball team I am on has two types of people: people who want to win, and people who want to have fun and socialize. 

At yesterday's game, the competitive people were there. Brian and I were the two chill people out of six.

I struggled.

I felt a silent pressure to win. No one said anything, but the vibe was there. 

I realized yesterday that when I play to win, I play worse, which in some ways is obvious. If I feel pressure to win, I might choke and not play as well. Some people thrive on that competitiveness, and it makes them sharper. I can see that.

This is different. When I play to win, I play it safe. I try to avoid making errors instead of taking risks to try new things. I stick with old skills. I play a safe game. For example: In pickle ball, the idea is to play close to the net and slap the ball so your opponent can't return it. I don't have a lot of confidence (yet) playing at the net. I kind of suck at playing at the net, but if I never play at the net, how will I get better? How will I gain confidence? I won't. Likewise, if I play at the net, I know there is a far greater chance that I will miss more shots and lose. I can practice outside of games to build my confidence--and I do--but using those skills in a game is different. 

With the Olympics on, I think of Simone Biles, the gymnastics GOAT. Is her focus or purpose to win, or is it to get better, to test her own limits? (Full disclosure: I know nothing about gymnastics. I am speculating.)

My guess is her focus is more on improving versus winning. Why do I think this? Because she is the GOAT: her main competitor is herself. It looks like she strives to be better than she was before. 

I suppose something similar could be said for Taylor Swift. Was her goal to have the biggest concert tour ever, or was it to push herself to do something she had never done before in scope and scale? When she has talked about how she came up with the idea for the Eras Tour, her goal was push the limits.

I find this fascinating, the whole idea of better versus winning. I'd rather try to play a whole game at the net and push myself to learn something new and get my clock cleaned than play it safe and come home with a trophy at the end of the season and still play as shitty as I did to start.

Which brings me to another point: I start a new job next week. Same company, lateral move, totally different skill set required. I could coast in my current role, stay there for ages and stagnate. My old job is safe and easy. The person who recommended me for the job was a friend who held the role for four months. 

His assessment: "It was like drinking from a firehose." 

I've drank from the firehose before. I ran for office. That was the steepest learning curve I've ever had. I lost the race but learned so much about myself. I also didn't sell my soul in the process.

I know there are times where we need to focus on winning, to play a strategy, to assess the competition. I am not saying never win. Winning is fun. Winning is cool.

And yet.

Next week, I embark on better.

J'arrive

I was driving past the University of Washington the other day coming back from my haircut and I saw a fraternity party picnic. Coming back from haircut is always a good thing -- I love my hairdresser and I look and feel fabulous. It was early evening, and the fraternity party seemed reasonably civilized. It wasn't a drunken melee (yet.) A woman at the party wearing a sundress with long straight hair was holding a red solo cup.

This young woman stuck in my mind. Would I want to be her? Would I want to go back to college and start over, clean slate and all? 

No. 

When I was in college, I imagined my future life: beautiful, sweet and settled. I'd meet other graduates  from my school, a few years out, and see their steady and stable lives. I looked forward to that day. My roommate Maggie had really cool parents who had met at NU. I admired them and I imagined my life would be like theirs. While I didn't want to fast-forward to being fifty, I imagined that my future would be content and easy and comfortable. I imagined having children who were kind and smart and loved their lives. I imagined that I'd have a caring and attentive husband. I looked forward to my future, and not look back at my past with regret, but with fondness, with kindness and admiration towards my younger self.

Even with the divorce, I am glad I am where I am. I don't want to be the beautiful young student with her life ahead of her. Most of the uncertainty about my life is gone, and that is brings me peace. I have those beautiful, intelligent, curious and kind children, except they are cooler and more fun and thoughtful than I had imagined. I am so grateful to have them in my life. When they were little, I wondered what they would be like, and now I know. There is more to unfold, but I am glad the mystery is mostly revealed. I know the plot and I know the characters. I am ready for the next installment.

Driving past the party, I wondered if that girl wanted to be me, sitting in my car, returning from the hairdresser. Does she want to know her future, to see how it all turns out? Does she know she will be stronger and more curious and more resilient than she could ever imagine? That life will throw her awful and unexpected curveballs, but she will carry those challenges with grace?

The interesting thing about Maggie's parents one of their children died, yet they showed up in full force for Maggie. They were happy, generous, and lived in the present. 

I am like Maggie's mom, more than I imagined. Maybe that is why I liked her, unknowingly. She was a role model for me, that life and love go on, even when life starts out with great promise and then has heart-breaking and tragic parts.

Da Bear

I can't watch it. 

I want to watch it, but I can't.

I was going to sit down tonight and watch it, but instead I took out the compost and recycling, and then I saw some weeds in the courtyard that needed to be yanked...

In other words, I am doing chores to avoid watching television. 

What will I do next, read book? Walk the dog?

I saw the star of the show, Jeremy Allen White, interviewed on Colbert, and I thought I need to check this show out. I got my Disney+/Hulu/ESPN subscription and started watching The Bear.

The show is too intense, but maybe it would be less intense if it wasn't that I could be related to these people. These characters could be in my family. I could be related to Carmen and Sugar Berzatto. They could be my cousins.

But the show is intense. It is rated MA for language and graphic violence. Fuck. I don't want to watch people getting stabbed or beat up! These people are working in a kitchen, which is like the most dangerous place in a home. I mean there is fire and sharp things. They say a woman's place is in the kitchen, but good god why? Is is because women are less likely to kill or main people with a pot of boiling water? Look at Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. The most horrifying scene in that movie was in the kitchen. (The second was in the bathroom.) "Look at mommy in the kitchen. Look at the big knife she has!" If people walked around outside of a kitchen with knives and fire, they'd be arrested. 

To summarize: Kitchens are dangerous and scary places. As such, this show is scary.

I have no idea how it got nominated as a comedy in the Emmy's unless someone really fucked up and checked the wrong box somewhere along the lines and everyone then was like "Yeah, we got roll with this comedy thing. Can't go back and admit somebody made a mistake."

So I spent the last half hour of my life googling the cast and watching them interviewed on late night television.

What else can I do so I don't watch this show I really want to watch?

Clutter

As I am divorced, I have a different financial situation and I need to recreate my relationship to money. One of my divorced friends recommended two books: You Need a Budget by Jesse Mecham, and Your Money or Your Life: Nine Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Freedom by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

I haven't finished the second book yet, but I want to. It is a lot to comprehend, but what I have read so far is powerful.

Both books have a very simple premise: Spend less than you earn, and when you do spend, make sure it aligns with your values and not simply your impulses.

Back when I was married, Jack and I lived well within our means and still had a comfortable lifestyle. We had enough cashflow that we could absorb a lot of big expenses within a month. We saved and invested his bonuses, and we had enough cash on hand to buy a new car or roof if needed.

Now, my life is different. I don't get large bonuses twice a year that I can use to stockpile savings. I get a modest bonus once a year. I still have savings, but I need to plan ahead for larger annual expenses, like property taxes, insurance premiums or college tuition. Per You Need a Budget, I have adjusted my monthly budget to set aside my larger expected annual expenses, so I am not surprised in April and October when I need to pay my property taxes. The money can be sitting there gathering interest until the due dates.

Your Money or Your Life talks more about how you spend your time and energy as much as how you spend money. Vicki still digs pretty deep into how money is spent. One of her topics is clutter: how much money do you spend buying more of the same?

When I heard this, I was like "I don't buy a lot of useless crap like some people. All of my stuff is perfectly curated and needed." I was listening to this book in my car as I was driving. Vicki kept talking and talking, reading from her book, and I was like "Not me."

Then it hit me: I do have clutter!

• Shoes: How many shoes do I own versus how many shoes do I wear? I have more shoes than I can count, but on a typical day, I wear an old school pair of white K-Swiss shoes that I bought at Big 5 for $40.
• Books: Fuuuuuck. Yeah. I have a lot of books. That I haven't read. Yet. I do read a lot, but my reading time has slowed down in the modern world with the internet and streaming television.
• Mugs: I started collecting mugs when I was in seventh grade when I went to Kings Island, a giant amusement park outside of Cincinnati. I think my dad still has that mug in his house. When I was in Idaho with Pedro, I bought a really cool my in Bonners Ferry that I like but probably don't need.
• Craft Crap: "They" say you need a stash of craft supplies (fabric, thread, project kits, etc) so when the mood hits, you can create. I have a lot of supplies for my quilting and embroidery projects. I almost like shopping for projects more than I like making them. Kind of.
• My jigsaw puzzle collection does not count. That is entertainment.

I am not sure what the plan is to do with my clutter. I think the goal for me isn't necessarily to get rid of it, but to either use it (like read the books I own before I buy more) and to stop buying additional clutter.  My mugs are in good condition. I don't need any more new ones for a while. 

Perhaps the goal is simply awareness of my habits, to make me conscious of them instead of mindlessly buying things I don't need or won't use.