Fasillytation

I have finished a book!

It was an actual book- not an audio book. I mean, I know those count, but it was nice to sit in the quiet for a couple hours. I was about to donate that sucker. I recently rearranged my furniture again (shocking, I know) and shuffled some books around. I have bookmarks in books that I haven't picked up in years. I took most of those out and put them back on the (now 3) waiting-to-be-read shelves.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm doing with all my time. There are all these big projects that will admittedly take a while, but what progress am I making? There are things I want to do daily, and I try to set intentions, but I should remind myself that that's a relatively new thing, and I will just have to get better at it.

Last week I played tennis for the first time in what might be two months. It was fantastic. We started with our regular warm up, and I was hitting the ball mostly where I wanted it to go, using some control and some speed. We rallied a little bit, and then my coach added a loop to my swing.

I don't know if you know this, but tennis players have a loop in their swing. I have never had one. Every time I have tried, I couldn't get the timing down. I am really fortunate with my coach- he is giving me focused, one-on-one instruction that I've never had on anything. He broke it down into steps and we practiced those as we had slowed the film down to see it frame by frame. He had names for the steps and ways to think about them. He was patient when I had to stop, close my eyes, and think very hard about connecting and timing those movements.

Mom, I think you were just talking about all the different elements and techniques and trying to incorporate them all together. That IS the hard part. You extend your arm and forget to point your feet the right way. You put spin on the ball but forget to finish the swing over your shoulder. With this series of movements, all of them needed to come together right then, and I had to stop several times during the slo mo lessons to focus on sending an unmuddled directive from my brain to my body.

This was an exciting moment for me- an exciting lesson, but at first I was hitting balls all over the place. Some into the other courts, many into the net, almost sent a few over the fence, had mis-hits galore, I hit some into myself and some I missed entirely. That part felt very bad. I was embarrassed that I seemed relatively competent when I started, but had descended into a tennis version of Atari's Combat, with balls bouncing off all walls and spinning me in place.

But then I'd almost time one right. Then back to nonsense. Then another, and more nonsense. Then I'd catch one just right, but hit it into the net. "That's exactly right!" he'd yell. "Ignore that one- keep going!" Eventually I caught more like that- just solid- and Evan would show his approval with a fist pump. He was proud and so was I. I am delighted to have a loop!

This lesson has been buoying me for the last several days. I keep going back to it, thinking about how you have to be willing to look like a nut to improve. This applies in all areas, and I am so glad that I am willing to do that. Bring on the aerial yoga.