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skating; burnout; history; fear
Jun. 19th, 2008 09:55 amOpen Skate last night. It was my first time back skating at the rink since the end of the season. I did skate last Tuesday with Albany. They were having fun, all working together, playing games, messing around-- this is their off-season, and they took the month of May off from skating, for the most part. It was a mix of veterans and new girls, skilled skaters and inexperienced, and I moved easily among them, neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad, and was welcomed and entertained. It was fun, and pleasant. Until at the end they were discussing their upcoming season, and someone asked me what Queen City's travel schedule looked like. I had to admit I didn't know. I had walked away, too burned-out to try out for the travel team. I don't know how that's going or who's in charge of it. But I gave the girl my contact info and told her I'd pass whatever she sent along to whoever wound up in charge of it.
I really don't know who it will be.
I might be involved. I don't know. I need to not be, for a little while.
But skating last night-- there were 8 of my teammates there, and 4 other league members, and a ref, and it was nice to see them, nice to talk with them, nice to skate with them. I went out afterward, to the usual bar; I got ID'd and laughed so hard, but then the bartender realized who we all were, and the owner bought us a round of drinks. I sat there much longer than I'd meant to, even though we were mostly just sitting quietly and talking. I wasn't feeling very socially ept (the opposite of inept, whatever that word's really supposed to be), but I still enjoyed the company of these women. They've meant so much to me for so long now. I was the only two-season vet there, but it's a minor distinction now: I've spent so much time with all of them, there's little to no difference. We weren't that close the first season; I loved them, but loved them the way one loves difficult relations: a sense of duty, a compelling feeling, a fierce territorialism. Now it has moved past that and I love them in a different and deeper way, still with the territorialism and duty, but also with genuine affection, spun out into a sparkling elastic strand shaped differently for each individual. On the plane to Georgia I was composing tiny adulations to each of them, these beautiful things like living gems on a necklace, these women I love in ways I have not loved people before.
But I do not have the words to make that not sound creepy, so I gave up on it. I can't even explain how some of them are people I wouldn't even like, except that I have given them so much of myself and received so much in return that such things have become unimportant. It's not something my prior life experience has prepared me for.
I am not burned-out on them. I am only a little burned-out on my skating, in that I don't feel I perform well in bouts and don't know why, cannot identify the areas of my weakness and so am plunged into despondency about the whole thing in general. I'm not good, but I can't identify where I'm bad. It taints all of it. But that's not burnout, that's just needing a new approach, and I find in myself more than adequate desire to address the issue if only I can identify it.
But I am all twisted up inside over the organizational stuff, the politics, the government, the administration. Of course I should not speak of it here, and in fact I understand it so imperfectly that I cannot. There are factions, of course, as in any group, and while normally I can identify what it is that each faction desires, I simply cannot puzzle out what the faction that is against my party in this case even hopes to achieve with their firm and determined course of action. I cannot see how it will not be a complete disaster if they win, cannot see how the vote they are forcing will create any meaningful growth. I am, by now, baffled, hurt, confused, furious, helpless to understand what on earth they even want.
So it has me quite literally sick, and the only way in which I can function is to not think about it. I am sewing, I am gardening, I am keeping house, I am writing thank God. But my life is strange and empty without the skating, without my girls. I am all twisted up and can't lie flat.
I have not been posting anything on Myspace because of this, which of course in retrospect has been brewing for months. I broke my silence over there, where I maintain a derby-only persona, simply to post excerpts of Federalist No. 10. It will probably be tl;dr, but it spoke to me so deeply as I reread it, that I could not help but recall its relevance.
National politics gives me the same sensation as these very-local politics, at times, which only deepens my anxiety and desire for avoidance.
Perhaps I am just being dramatic. Perhaps it is pretentious to invoke the struggles faced during our nation's inception. But it is in my nature and upbringing to turn to history whenever in doubt.
And it's probably cheesy, but while going through my father's re-enacting stuff to steal things for Pennsic, I got quite sentimental. The smell of mothballs is a nostalgic one for me, and I will always remember, as a child, watching their black-powder skirmishes and thinking that once, men had done this with real bullets so that I would have the right to vote for my government representatives. It wasn't just dry words on paper, it was hundreds of men, one of them my father, wearing wool jackets and blasting smoke at one another, running and falling and moving in waves across the green fields. Even as a child, I understood that this was pretend, but it had once been real. The dead here would rise again and join their wives and friends for lunch. But the dead then had not, and the women whose garb my mother now wore would go and strip their bodies to re-use their equipment and feed their wounded.
History is real to me.
And those men probably felt about their comrades something approaching what I feel for my teammates.
Living gems on a flexible chain.
To contemplate their loss undoes me.
I really don't know who it will be.
I might be involved. I don't know. I need to not be, for a little while.
But skating last night-- there were 8 of my teammates there, and 4 other league members, and a ref, and it was nice to see them, nice to talk with them, nice to skate with them. I went out afterward, to the usual bar; I got ID'd and laughed so hard, but then the bartender realized who we all were, and the owner bought us a round of drinks. I sat there much longer than I'd meant to, even though we were mostly just sitting quietly and talking. I wasn't feeling very socially ept (the opposite of inept, whatever that word's really supposed to be), but I still enjoyed the company of these women. They've meant so much to me for so long now. I was the only two-season vet there, but it's a minor distinction now: I've spent so much time with all of them, there's little to no difference. We weren't that close the first season; I loved them, but loved them the way one loves difficult relations: a sense of duty, a compelling feeling, a fierce territorialism. Now it has moved past that and I love them in a different and deeper way, still with the territorialism and duty, but also with genuine affection, spun out into a sparkling elastic strand shaped differently for each individual. On the plane to Georgia I was composing tiny adulations to each of them, these beautiful things like living gems on a necklace, these women I love in ways I have not loved people before.
But I do not have the words to make that not sound creepy, so I gave up on it. I can't even explain how some of them are people I wouldn't even like, except that I have given them so much of myself and received so much in return that such things have become unimportant. It's not something my prior life experience has prepared me for.
I am not burned-out on them. I am only a little burned-out on my skating, in that I don't feel I perform well in bouts and don't know why, cannot identify the areas of my weakness and so am plunged into despondency about the whole thing in general. I'm not good, but I can't identify where I'm bad. It taints all of it. But that's not burnout, that's just needing a new approach, and I find in myself more than adequate desire to address the issue if only I can identify it.
But I am all twisted up inside over the organizational stuff, the politics, the government, the administration. Of course I should not speak of it here, and in fact I understand it so imperfectly that I cannot. There are factions, of course, as in any group, and while normally I can identify what it is that each faction desires, I simply cannot puzzle out what the faction that is against my party in this case even hopes to achieve with their firm and determined course of action. I cannot see how it will not be a complete disaster if they win, cannot see how the vote they are forcing will create any meaningful growth. I am, by now, baffled, hurt, confused, furious, helpless to understand what on earth they even want.
So it has me quite literally sick, and the only way in which I can function is to not think about it. I am sewing, I am gardening, I am keeping house, I am writing thank God. But my life is strange and empty without the skating, without my girls. I am all twisted up and can't lie flat.
I have not been posting anything on Myspace because of this, which of course in retrospect has been brewing for months. I broke my silence over there, where I maintain a derby-only persona, simply to post excerpts of Federalist No. 10. It will probably be tl;dr, but it spoke to me so deeply as I reread it, that I could not help but recall its relevance.
National politics gives me the same sensation as these very-local politics, at times, which only deepens my anxiety and desire for avoidance.
Perhaps I am just being dramatic. Perhaps it is pretentious to invoke the struggles faced during our nation's inception. But it is in my nature and upbringing to turn to history whenever in doubt.
And it's probably cheesy, but while going through my father's re-enacting stuff to steal things for Pennsic, I got quite sentimental. The smell of mothballs is a nostalgic one for me, and I will always remember, as a child, watching their black-powder skirmishes and thinking that once, men had done this with real bullets so that I would have the right to vote for my government representatives. It wasn't just dry words on paper, it was hundreds of men, one of them my father, wearing wool jackets and blasting smoke at one another, running and falling and moving in waves across the green fields. Even as a child, I understood that this was pretend, but it had once been real. The dead here would rise again and join their wives and friends for lunch. But the dead then had not, and the women whose garb my mother now wore would go and strip their bodies to re-use their equipment and feed their wounded.
History is real to me.
And those men probably felt about their comrades something approaching what I feel for my teammates.
Living gems on a flexible chain.
To contemplate their loss undoes me.
