Moments Like This

It was a long, rather (naturally) stressful day again today.

But despite the hustle 

(confronted by my boss for coming in 50 minutes after my morning 1 hour practice, instead of the immediate ten minute shower I was supposed to take.  With hardly time for a snack, I worked all the way until 4pm before I had a shot at lunch),

and the bustle

(was on my feet 11 hours today, walking around, taking photos, helping to service the tournament desk, manning the restaurant gate during dinner, etc.)

I am thankful that I maintained a spirit of composure that only came from Above.  Any unpleasantness, if at all, slid like water off a duck's back.  And to boot, He gave me the present above towards the end of my day.  I captured it, and am keeping it forever on film :)

"Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; 'For YAH, the Lord, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.'"  -Isaiah 12:2

You are the God of my valleys, too.

With a palpable twinge in my lower back and a slight right wrist inflammation (blame my overzealous top-spin endeavors), Nacho the resident physiotherapist told me to take the morning off and to just hit for an hour this afternoon.  I was really looking forward to practice.

But things can always change, right?

15 minutes into the hour, in between balls and loosening, warm sinews, one of the staff from the office came up to me on court.  His lips were fixed, his voice soft but unyielding.

"Sarah, we need you to work now.  The tournament office needs help with players that are coming in and we're understaffed."

I stopped halfway through the rally.  Wha-?

For obvious reasons, I couldn't say no, screw you, I just started, let me finish my practice. 

The Academy's having another European Junior Tour Tournament this weekend, and its brilliant planning endeavors and logistical foresight saw that they needed one more person to help service tournament desk, 10 minutes before all the tournament players were due to arrive.  I suppose better later than never.  And as such, I was asked to hurry the office to help, pronto.  Even with sweat still oozing from my pits, and my cheeks flushed red from practice.  Yes.  Help.  No, work.  Now.

When I rushed to office, disappointingly, all I did was sit on green plastic chair.  Most of my time there was spent waiting around, with no instruction on any work to do.  As my body slowly cooled down, I tried to distract myself from my depressing state.  Come on, Sarah.  Ignore the adrenaline that is still pumping in your body from practice.  My eyes searched the courts through big glass panes.  It watched other, more fortune(ate) kids playing tennis.  Laughing, hitting balls.  My mind inevitably thought how tennis is so easily a rich man's sport.

That was at 3.15pm.  And my day at work just ended about an hour ago.

I am tired.  I have a 7.45am practice tomorrow, for an hour before I start work at 9.  It will be another whole day affair.  And while I will be taking photographs of other rich kids hitting lazy tennis balls, this will pay for my tennis fees. I suppose this is an opportunity to be grateful for.

Honestly, it is easy to feel off with injury and a lack of training opportunity.  To be snatched from practice in the name of work.  Damn work.  Still, I sense God is urging me to stand firm on His word.  I hear His still quiet voice telling me that His word is truth.  And that it is the only thing that will hold in this world that is so naturally unstable. 

Wait.  Again.  What will hold?

The grace of my Lord Jesus Christ.  That though He was rich, yet for my sake He became poor, that I through His poverty might become rich. (2 Cor 8:9)  I believe this richness 2 Corinthians mentions, includes a supernatural strength that out stands these temporal frustrations. 

When I quieten down and think about it, I am convinced that they are nothing compared to the joy that I find in Christ my Savior.  Nothing!

Practice Makes Perfect

Or at least the saying goes.

I played another practice set with the same girl today, and was astonished by how the same mistakes seemed to surface--albeit to a lesser degree.  The double faults were still there, the slow reaction after serving.  The lack of anticipation or any trace of that dexterous fighting spirit I know I have inside me.

In particular, after a 1-6 ordeal, the defeatist experience (and its seeming repetition) got me wary.  I was spending wayy too much time fighting myself instead of my opponent.  More disturbingly, I realised that the root of this self-sabotage came from something much deeper:

I've been suckered into that ominous mentality.  The one we more commonly know as the instant-noodle syndrome.

Fast.  Yes.  That's right.  I want to improve fast.  Fast, fast, FAST!

"Fast?"  I thought to myself.  "Shit."

More like frightening.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with meteoric improvement.  But improvement itself is never contrived.  On the contrary, it is entirely natural.  To expect it, is being plain twisted.

So no, Sarah.  No.  Do a quick side-step.  Pause.  Re-route the myelin of thought.  Overhaul that mentality.

Instead of frustration, I walked off court today thinking about my approach--the very thing that was leading to my frustration.  As my pastor preached once, there's no such thing as something or someone "making" you feel angry. Or disappointed.  Or sad.  Too often, we use the excuse "s/he made me really angry" or "s/he is making me lose my time" to blame circumstances. But think about it.  It doesn't make sense.

It's not like someone has a buttoned remote labelled "Angry."

INSTRUCTIONS:
Press once to make SP angry.  Press twice to make SP very very angry.

No.  It is we who let ourselves get angry.  Frustrated.  Disappointed.  And the letting, obviously stems from the perspectives we take to situations.

As my soles crunched against beads of soil, I wondered if the root of my exasperation--or poor play, for that matter--came because of my perspective: was I setting my standards too high?  Was it because I believed I could be a better player, that I let that very self-belief become debilitating pressure?

Ironically, that pursuit of perfection created an expectation that ironically embedded my frustrations further.

I know I can play better.  And at a faster rate.  I am hungry for improvement.  For change.  I believe I can concentrate stronger.  React faster.  Hit cleaner.  But therein hidden within that knowledge, is the equal paradox.  That controlling self-belief has to just stop at some point, and I have to learn how to let go.

Let go, let it flow.

Sometimes, that really is the hardest thing to do.

Chewed Up, Spat Out. 
Today marked the perfect case in point of court failure.  I played a set with one of my team mates and just when all started well, I started making the most ridiculous unforced errors after I had set up each point, almost perfectly.

She's running like a rabbit from left to right, getting pushed further and further back.
Then?

I miss an easy volley.

Almost perfectly, eh?

Initially the errors rolled off like water off a duck's back.  Until my coach started talking to me, and I started thinking about my strokes, and thinking and thinking and thinking.  Eventually emotion crawled in, my game wormed in and out in my mind, and everything just crumbled apart.  In other words, I fell like a worm to the chicken beak of anxiety.


Hahaha.  Bad analogy.  But true.

After practice, Toni my coach chewed me up and told me I threw away three full games because I was dwelling too much on what was wrong instead of what was right.  His words hit home, and while part of me fought them (I was trying)----a small voice told me I was getting screwed over because I was trying in the wrong way, with the wrong spirit and the wrong attitude.  I dwell too much on my mistakes in the pursuit of the illusion of instrumental perfection.

I walked off court with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.  Bitter because of the way I got chewed up, and the consequent frustration I felt with myself.  Sweet because beyond the negativities, I knew at least he cared to tell me what was wrong with my game.  I think too much.

Still, I think I need some time to process.  And think (ha) things through.

Relax, Sarah.  Relax.

Excerpt taken from Cheng Man-Ching, the great tai chi quan master, who was also a trained Chinese doctor, calligraphist, painter and poet.  The Chinese Leonardo Da Vinci.  Interestingly, in Hebrew, the word healing also comes from the root word, relax.  But not to digress, here's what Master Cheng has to say:

"I have been practicing Tai-Chi Chuan for over fifty years. Only two years ago that I started to understand the word “relax”. I remember my Tai-Chi Chuan teacher Yang Cheng-Fu who did not like to talk much and he used to sit all day without saying a word if no one asked him questions. However, in our T’ai-chi class he
would tell us to “relax” repeatedly. Sometimes it seemed like he would say the word hundreds of times during the practice so that the word could fill up my ears. Strangely enough he also said that if he did not tell me of this word that I would not be able to learn T’ai-chi in three life-times (meaning never). I doubted his words
then. Now that I think back, I truly believe that if he did not keep reminding me of the word “relax”, I doubt if I could have learned T’ai-chi Chuan in six life-times.

What is the meaning of “relax” in T’ai-chi? Here is an example to help you understand the word. When we go visit a Buddhist temple we usually see a statue of Me-Lo Buddha. The one who has a big rounded stomach with a big smile on his face. He carries a large bag on his shoulder. On top of this statue we see a motto: “Sit
with a bag. Walk with a bag. It would be such a relief to drop the bag.” What does all this mean? To me, a person himself or herself is a bag. Everything he or she owns is baggage, including one’s children, family, position and wealth. It is difficult to drop any of one’s baggage, especially the “self” bag.

T’ai-chi Chuan is difficult to learn. To relax in practicing T’ai-chi Chuan is the most difficult phase to go through. To relax a person’s mind is the most significant obstacle to overcome in practicing T’ai-Chi. It takes a great effort to train and exercise one’s mind to relax (or drop one’s “self” bag)."

-   Cheng Man-ch'ing

A Picture Pays a Thousand Dollars

What does former world #1 Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, lightweight boxing champion Ray Mancini and golfer Mark O’Meara have in common?  Their connection to Dr. Jim Loehr---world-renowned performance psychologist who helped fine-tune them to stay at the top of their games.

This weekend, Jim Loehr is coming to S-C to conduct a coaching course on mental toughness.  Needless to say, I am excited off my socks because I have been chosen to be official photographer for the event.  While some might see this as extra work---it's over the entire weekend---the bright side to this is I get to sit in, listen and learn from a course that's otherwise charging EUR 700 per head (I think) for this workshop!

The rest of the week starting from this Friday is going to be madness.  We're having a grade 5 ITF junior tournament here and I have been put in charge of photography and Facebook.  That means taking the pictures, processing them, picking out the best, resizing them, and then putting them all up on Facebook.  Read: Hard Work!

I've been given this job because they really liked what I did with the last tournament---the S-C Nations
Cup.  They needed a photographer for the last tournament then.  Shoved a camera into my hands, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here are a couple of images from the Nations' Cup.  Kids were sent from 8 national federations across Europe--specifically: Romania, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK, Spain, Turkey and Finland and it was great fun capturing the spirit of the whole tournament.  Albeit very tiring.

Still, optimistically and thankfully, because of a job well done I have this ticket into Jim's class tomorrow... : )

  

At the start, being still yet rather unsure with the camera---I focused on capturing natural facial expressions.  In colour.

Then I started moving onto capturing movement.

 

Played around with tones.

And discovered the joys of black and white (I love this shot).

Yet, still never quite lost that joy for colour.

You can catch more of my pictures here, across the days at the Official S-C Facebook fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=234471&id=120851087996&ref=mf)

In the Still of the Night

Fireworks that went off across the fields from the Bungalows.

(Almost) every before I go to sleep, I lie in bed thinking about a number of things.
Tennis for the next day
My family
Connecting back with my Maker
The latest reads I'm into (also read: stalling!)
and lastly, ---often with a twinge of guilt---

how i'm simply not blogging as frequently as I'd like to.

Sometimes it's difficult--with the wax and wane of the day.  Fatigue flows in like tidal waves and I often find myself swept away.  Bombarded together with thoughts for tomorrow (faulty processes, perhaps?), I am constantly pressed for time, forced to be selective with the things that will give me life and renew me for the day ahead. 

Needless to say, the silence on this space often doesn't reflect the multitude of things that I have been doing, thinking, engaging in.  They include kick-ass tournament experiences, working as official photographer for the Academy (so much for copywriting aspirations for now....), connecting with God and constantly being put in difficult circumstances that force either of two extremes: hole up and crumble under collegial pressure, or rise up, shrug it off and be the bigger person. 

Sometimes these circumstances suck so much life out of me I hardly have space to breathe---much less type.  I read emails from family back home, or facebook messages, and shy away from any reply that doesn't allow less than a sentence to revert.  I.e.  I don't reply much, because it feels like it takes too much time for which I don't have enough of.  To sit, compose myself, and really reply properly.

I suppose it's slightly ironic that I am the sort that tries to do my best for everything that I do.  So, extended, unless I can't type a good blog entry, I don't bother.  Probably explains the prevailing silence as well. 

But I'm trying to change that.  Somewhat.  The silence is not doing much good---so I'm trying to email back more.  Revert more.  Kick more.  And hopefully in this blog space, it translates to typing more, too.

To more, soon.

In the Still of the Night...I go chomp Chomp CHOMP! :P

11.30pm supper in my belly (now):

(In order of appearance, or maybe, disappearance!!)

• 2 cups of natural yoghurt with peach
• 1 medium-small carrot
• Half a bowl of cornflakes with milk
• Three plums

And I feel....nice.  Worked really hard on court today--slogged it out and lost marginally to girls I always thought  were able to beat me.  Margins were 6-7 (4-7) and 4-6.  It feels great especially on hard court because it's easier tension-wise on the legs  The friction from the ground to my soles somehow give me more balance. Anyway, it's good to get fuel in before bed.

Goodnight world.!