casual ultimate » Pre-Fools Post (read this before the last one)

Sorry, this didn’t get posted last week when I wrote it, so it’s a little out of order. Still worth a read. -Chuckles

I thought a post would be a good thing, so here goes. It’s a beautiful day in San Francisco. It’s been a little chilly and windy but sunny these past few days, and I just love it. Great weather to be out exercising. You barely sweat and the air feels great. There’s not too much to report.

This weekend is Fools Fest, and I’ll be playing with the Bruisers for our second campaign. Fools West seems to break along demographics for some reason. The teams that come to mind are Matza Balls (Jews), Downtown Brown (not white), and a couple of years ago it was Catholic School Girls and Public School Girls or something like that on the women’s side. In any event, McManus felt that our demographic (bruisers) was not being represented, and so the team was born last year. We talk a lot about our BMI’s (mine is around 28), never contest fouls, and never call fouls, and we wear black and blue. We do allow some purple and yellow as well, obviously. Oh, I left out another important demographic: Condors. While every other club team branches out and plays with new people and creates something interesting, the Condors simply show up and talk to just themselves. Nice job, guys.

What else is going on? Not a whole lot I guess. I am working 3 days a week, giving my time and energy to causes that seem worthwhile, and I’m really enjoying it. I haven’t been playing much music, but I do have a show this Friday with Erin Brazill who I played my sister’s wedding with. It should be good fun. She’s a fantastic performer and person. We’ll be at Dolores Park Cafe (18th St and Dolores) at 7:30 PM sharp if you’re in SF (nevermind, this already happened, and we’ll be back at DPC on June 5th).

In other news, Revolver is getting underway. We were supposed to have our first closed tryout/practice a couple of weekends ago, but it got rained out (thank you, rain). It looks to be a pretty exciting year for Revolver. Lots of good folks on board, great captains and debuting a coach. Our coach is actually just a cardboard cutout of Shooter McGavin saying “Choke on that one, baby!” Has it been too long to quote Happy Gilmore anymore?

I’ve been coming to grips with getting older lately, and it has not so much to do with the body slowing down as it has with the pop culture references sliding away. The kids today wonder why I talk about “laying by the bay and making things out of clay” and what a “32-belly option” is. Luckily there is an Arrested Development movie supposedly coming out which will put me back on top. Long live Arrested.

On a spiritual tip, I’m working towards acceptance of my defects of character. One of these defects is my propensity to numb out, not necessarily with the aid of any outside body (like drink or smoke or food or video game or music). It’s just a defense mechanism that kicks in sometimes without my choosing and occasionally one that I go to by choice. I can simply stop feeling anything. I can unplug and in doing so, I avoid being vulnerable. It looks like “I don’t care” about whatever is going on around me, but I do care. I just have chosen to bury it, and I feel dead inside as a result when I do that. In my experience, I can turn off one uncomfortable feeling, but in so doing, I turn off all the other feelings as well. In other words, if I ignore my sadness, I lose my happiness as well.

Why do I do it? You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle of the table. That goes for pride and my heart as well as poker chips. So the task is then to decide whether I want to continue to protect myself from heartache, loss, and ego hits and keep my world small - or - be vulnerable, be huge, put my heart into the things that I am doing and the relationships that I am pursuing - into my work, my romantic interests, my music, my family - and risk massive emotional pain, hurt, and sadness in the name of becoming who I really am. Self-actualization Maslow calls it, I think. I get to become fully expressed. I get to go anywhere and do anything and be myself while I’m doing it. It sounds pretty good. The pros outweigh the cons. Green light.