I had a dream last night that found me as a professional tennis player. It was the first dream I have ever had that found me in the world of professional tennis, but to be honest, tennis has been on my mind lately. Tennis is a sport that I completely adored growing up. I wanted to be Michael Chang(look him up). Along with my brother and two friends, I took tennis lessons growing up. I loved it. I loved how responsible I was for every aspect of the game. I also craved the gamesmanship. Tennis was and is an athletic version of chess. More than getting to the ball, you have to anticipate your opponent's next move. I am not sure entirely sure why I stopped. It probably had something to do with getting caught up in the more exciting sports and just not having time for it, but my love for the game of tennis has never really gone away. I still love to watch it, and still think about my time playing it.
This August my girlfriend and I are moving into an apartment complex that has tennis courts attached to it. it is imperative that I go back to tennis. It stretches my body and my mind in ways that I desire, in ways that are downright lustful. We have not yet figured out if they have rackets, but this is a call to anyone who has tennis rackets and truly does not use them anymore. I would love to have 1 or 2 of them. This is possibly a very exciting development for me. Hopefully Martina is down. I have this feeling that once I get going, it will be difficult for me to stop. Just typing this has me full of giddy enthusiasm. One of my struggles in getting myself physically healthy, beyond the damaged knee, is finding something I love. I enjoy walking and I really love swimming, but I only love swimming when the weather calls for it. I need to find something that does not feel like work. I think I need the competition aspect as well. I need an opponent, not myself, someone tangible. Someone I can beat. If anyone reading this ever wants to play tennis, please let me know. I really do miss it.
The last few weeks have been incredibly up and down. I have been plagued by physical pain and mental pain. Summer is winding down and I have not had a single job interview for a teaching position. It is getting tougher and tougher to maintain a healthy attitude. The closer it gets to moving day, the more I worry about how I am going to make ends meet. is it time to start looking outside of the teaching profession to find a job? It might be. With all of this going on, I feel like my overall attitude has shifted. I have been feeling so much happier over the last few months, but a few weeks ago I could feel myself slipping and now, when I think about how i have been lately, I have fallen. I am not sure when it happened, but my entire attitude has become one of snark, frustration and apathy. It is shocking how much an attitude can effect everything else.
With an I-Do-not-care attitude, everything about my progress has suffered. My routines have not changed much, but nothing feels like it is working. I have never been firmly in the "think positively and good things will happen" camp, but I am beginning to see the merit in it. A small tweak in one's attitude can dramatically change an entire outlook. A positive attitude gets one through the bad days and right now, I need a serious adjustment. I am at the place right now where I assume little things are happening JUST TO ME!!! Gah! This website is slow just to spite me!! What kind of nonsense is that? So the question becomes, when things are truly not going your way in so many aspects, how do you keep your attitude in a positive place? I can count all of the things I have that so many do not. It is not just about focusing on the positive, it is finding a way to turn the negative into something useful. The journey is what is important and what journey would be complete without bumps? All of the best epic stories are about journeys where the heroes encountered seemingly endless trials and tribulations. That has to be my attitude. I have to be the hero in my own story because if I am not the hero in my own story, my story does not have a hero and what kind of story worth telling does not have a hero? No one else is going to come into my story and be my hero, because that is nonsense. Anyone who is waiting to be saved is going to die waiting.
Now comes my work for the next few days: How do I become my own hero? First, I need an awesome crime fighting costume and set of skills. Or maybe, I just need to remind myself that heroes come in all shapes and sizes and what do I need out of myself to consider myself a hero? I feel like I am rambling now. This blog post has gotten away from me a bit, but screw it, I am running with it. For me to be my own hero, I have to get off the ground first. I cannot change the fact that I have not had any job offers, but I can go about making sure I am ready when one comes. I can stop blaming my knee and get myself back out there for a walk or for swimming. Mostly though, I can remind myself that I truly am in a great place in my life. I get to see a majority of my family in two days, I love a beautiful woman in my life who loves me more than I thought anyone would ever love me and I am healthier today than I was four months ago. yes, that is a start, but a set of crime fighting skills would not hurt.
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