3 Places I Find Myself
Google says to start blog titles with a number. So, I did. Let me know if that got you to click.
Anyway.
Winter mornings in Connecticut can test you. If you can dodge the punch of the darkness at 6am and dip past the cold of being the first awake in the house, then you have a chance. I don’t have anywhere to be early in the am. I just work best between the hours of 6am and 12pm. After that, my productivity level is a crapshoot.
This morning, I peeled the covers off my body, exposing myself to the air. My first thought was coffee, even though my first thought should have been bathroom. I always wonder how we as a human race can forget that we have to pee and then are surprised when we forget anything else.
After the bathroom, my habits take over. My habits are amazing in the beginning part of the day.
Feed the cats
Make the coffee
Bring my breakfast up to my room
Read or write in my journal or do my homework
Make my bed (or not)
Get ready for my workout
GO!
Some days getting to my workout is more difficult than others. I’ll park my car in The Edge Fitness parking lot and watch as others walk by my car, full of motivation and spunk. Women in their workout tights, men in their shorts when it’s 30 degrees outside, raring to go. Me in my car, wondering if a closer spot is going to open up. Figuring out if I need to make any other calls before I go in or checking Twitter for some big news.
Other days are awesome. I park, jump out of the car and judgingly glance at others in their cars doing what I had done just days earlier. Amazing how up and down life can be. Some days you’re ballin’ some days you’re in your car stallin’.
When I’m at my workout, in the gym, on the field, at physical therapy, I’m good. I’m gold. Once I start, my head is down, my mind is fixed on what I’m doing and the only thing that can stop me is watching people talk on the phone while they’re running full speed on the treadmill. I find myself with my head cocked to the side watching this circus act of a workout wondering when the hell they’re going to fall. Like how do they do this? Because, I, a professional (said in French accent – go back and reread if you didn’t say it in French accent first time) cannot do that.
Leaving my workout, I walk out of the gym like I’m Meryl Streep on a regular day or like I should be throwing my hat like MTM.
After I get home and shower, my first thought is that I have time get some stuff done. I can be creative, or work on Duktig Brand or do more homework, or pack orders or recently, work on my USSF C License work or take a nap (which is always the best option but rarely the one I take for one reason or another). Sitting at one of two desks set up in my room, I roll back and forth in my desk chair as if I’m taking calls under different names and voices for the same company:
High-pitched voice: “Hi, this is Sally speaking, how can we help you?”
Low-pitched voice: “Heyya, this is Janie in the New Yowk office, how ya doing?”
I think that by moving about my room I can find the perfect location and feeling so that I can start to be productive. It’s a process I tell myself. It will take some time to find what works I tell myself.
What about on the floor?
On the bed?
This desk?
That desk?
Hat on?
Hat off?
Iced coffee?
Hot coffee?
Music?
No music?
None of that matters usually. Some days I got it. Some days I don’t. Remember? Ballin’ or stallin’ I tell myself.
But something I have found recently is that there is a third state or head space that I need to be in that is neither stallin’ or ballin’. In fact, it doesn’t even rhyme or have a cool n’ ending. It’s the state of brainstorming. Or maybe that word is a bit outdated now. Let’s try something cooler. How about like active pondering. Or some millennial thing. Putting ideas down. Thinking. Planning.
It fits somewhere in the middle of wasting time and the act of doing, two areas that I find myself immersed in quite often. If I can find myself in three different states of mind throughout a day, I think I can be successful and productive. Being able to identify when I am stallin’ and gently push myself to some kind of active pondering is much easier than trying to get to ballin’ right away.
If you’re anything like me at all, which means you’re an overthinking SOB, then sometimes life can feel paralyzing. You don’t know what to do next, likely because there are so many things that you can do. But I have found that there can be smoother transitions into what needs to be done, instead of being so hard on myself every damn day.
Let me tell you a little something. Right now I’m in that in between phase in my life. At 35 years old, I am unsure if I’ll play another year of professional soccer. Tough to write, but at the same time, retiring from professional soccer doesn’t mean retiring from soccer. I just won’t get paid to be ballin’. Which was, to be honest, not all that much anyway. I am sure of the fact that I will play soccer every day for as long as my body can manage it. Though, it is difficult to think about not being a pro.
I wake up now and workout or train and am not sure if it’s for a preseason or for a team overseas or a team in the summer or maybe just for futsal with my friends at the Portuguese Cultural Center. I’m in that middle part where I have to think it all through.
I’ll be back with an update soon. But for now, I’ll just be over here, taking some notes, figuring out where my mind takes me when I’m not trying too hard, but not not trying too hard either.