Looks like it’s been about 4 months since I last posted to this blog. Whoops. I apologize to the tiny handful of people that actually pay attention to this blog. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that I didn’t have a very clear direction for it, so after my first couple of ideas ran out, I didn’t really have anything to write about. But with some advice from an experienced blogging friend and some others, I think I’ve got some ideas. And heaven knows I could use the writing experience. So I’ve decided to review some life events – some old, some new. If you’re interested, you’re probably related to me (or procrastinating), but if it happens that you’re not, well, I guess that’s cool too.
Have you ever had one of those days? I realize “those” is pretty vague, but everyone seems to know what you mean when you say “one of those days”. But yeah. I’m sure you have. Anyways, I had one of those days not too long ago, when I got in my first car accident ever. Not exactly a milestone I was itching to reach, but I guess it was an eventuality.
It fit the bill for “one of those days” perfectly. It was a rainy day, dark and cold, and came at the end of a long string of events that really need not to have happened in the first place. Long story short, I slept in, decided to drive so I wouldn’t be late to work (which needless to say didn’t work this time around), missed my turn, and somehow didn’t see an oncoming car at the next available turn when I was turning left. Oops. It was probably the most expensive mistake of my life so far, and I remember having that surreal feeling of, “This is a dream or something, right? That didn’t just happen.”
Why am I telling this story? Well, I’ve noticed lately that I have a tendency to get in a funk after things like that happen. I guess being mopey and frustrated is completely understandable when you’ve destroyed your car (nobody was injured, fortunately, and there was minimal damage to the other vehicle, but my car is pretty much done), but the long and short of it is that getting down about things doesn’t do much to make them better. In fact it tends to make them worse.
Not to say that you can’t feel bad about it when crappy things happen, but as I’ve recently discovered, there is another option. I’m on an intramural volleyball team, and at our most recent match, we lost our first game.
Okay, so that’s a bit of an understatement. We got spanked. 25-8. It was ugly.
Suddenly, though, I decided that we were better than this. And I decided that I wanted to get out there and play volleyball the way I love to play volleyball, and all I had to do was get into it. We were all just kind of standing around, watching as we lost point after point. So for the second game, I got the team together in a huddle.
“New rule,” I said. “After every point, everyone has to run screaming to the middle of the court and high-five each other!”
I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was joking. At least until I did it on the first point, and they all realized that I was crazy. But after a handful of awkward, half-hearted jogs to the middle of the court to exchange poorly-aimed high-fives, we couldn’t help but laugh a little bit and get a little excited. We were here to play volleyball! And if we couldn’t win at it, we could at least be ridiculously spirited about it, right?
The credit goes to my team for what happened next. We started playing, and playing well. We got some hits in. We stole the momentum. We probably confused the daylights out of the other team with our spastic cheering between points. And we started winning! Slowly, our fake enthusiasm turned into real confidence and excitement over our success.
We won the second game, 25-10. The referee called us over for the coin toss to decide who would start the serve for the tiebreaker game, and told us he’d never seen anything like this in his life. We went from losing by a landslide to winning by a landslide, and he expected an exciting close third game to finish out the match.
We rocked the beginning of the game, and started to run away with it towards the end. We even got to match point, 14-9. Their best server then came on and served 7 straight points to win it, 16-14. But it didn’t really matter to me. We went out there and gave it our all, and came away with something to be proud of. It was an exciting match, and more importantly, an empowering experience.
I guess what I’m trying to say with all this is that attitude is everything. It’s one of those annoying things that people always say and I can’t stand it, but it’s true. Sometimes you just have to decide that you’re going to live the life you want to live, and go do it. I’d highly recommend it the next time you’re having a lame day. The results will surprise you; I know it sure surprised me.
You might even accidentally enjoy it.
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