I grew up in a sports family. My mom cheers as loudly for the Giants as anyone I know. It is in my blood. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, football and tennis. Baseball is my favorite sport, but basketball was the sport at which I excelled. I loved playing basketball and even spent a summer at a basketball camp where the 9th grade basketball coach told me he regretted not putting me on the team the year before. In my sophomore year, the dream of playing sports for school went away. I was not good enough at baseball, did not want to be an offensive lineman in football and I was too fat and slow for basketball.
I found theater that year. Of course, theater has been my main outlet since then. Theater offers many of the same things I loved about sports. There is a sense of team work, camaraderie, and accomplishment in theater that I loved in sports. However, there is one big component missing in theater: competition. I can already hear theater people saying "Umm the audition." Sure, there is competition at the audition, but that is where it ends. Well, that is where it should end. Sadly, I have been a part of too many shows where actors continued to compete to the detriment of the show, but that is a whole other blog post on a whole different blog. That belongs on a blog where people contribute posts on how there is a lack of community in community theater.
Martina can attest that I do not like to lose. I loathe it in fact. I am insanely competitive and without sports in my life, I start going crazy over things like Scrabble. This is where the low self image comes into play and how it is relevant to this blog. I do not play sports anymore, not because I worry about not being good, I worry what I will look like to everyone else. I am not sure when I became so afraid of what other people think because this has not always been an affliction to which I am accustomed. I stopped playing basketball at a local church because I stopped knowing many of the people there and was afraid no one would want me to be on their team because of how out of shape I am. I started psyching myself out. I got so afraid of being just the fat guy trying to play basketball that it over-shadowed my abilities. And I had abilities. I was a pretty good basketball player. I could shoot, dribble and most of all, I could pass. I knew the game. Hell, I coached a youth team for 4 years, and we were good.
This week I played basketball for 30 minutes on two separate occasions and it was a total blast. I am unbelievably rusty, but I was starting to get my game back during the second day. I would love to feel comfortable enough to get back on a court with other people. I would love to play a pick up game with friends or even random people looking for a game. I just do not think I am there. These last few years have really been tough, and even though I am doing incredibly well in so many aspects of my life right now, I feel like I am not right in some aspect.
This post feels like it is lacking something. It has been a pretty negative week on this blog and I apologize. People have been telling me how motivating this blog has been or how much they are rooting for me, so I feel like I have not done a very good job over the last week. For anyone reading, know that this rough week will not defeat me. This week I ate much better portions of food than I would normally eat and I am still consuming water or iced tea as opposed to soda, so I am still fighting through it and maybe that is the motivating part. Those things I wanted to do are becoming habit. I still miss soda and I miss filling my diet with sugar and salt, but I am not reaching for the salt without even taking a bite anymore. It is the small victories we have to celebrate, right?
So, to the people who have told me I have motivated them to give up soda (and there have been at least half a dozen of those people) keep it up. We need to celebrate little victories, for they will eventually add up to something big, or at least keep us going to shoot for something big.
My big goal this week is to get in the pool 3 times. Also, find a summer job so I can afford new shoes. If you know of anything, let me know!
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