Coach, I made a point!!

Hello friends. I know that I haven’t been around much lately. To tell the truth, I just haven’t been in a very good mental space for the past couple of weeks. This is something that I have definitely battled over the years. The paralyzation of fear, which always starts so small, and eventually becomes a mountain to overcome. Little things become large problems, and large things become overwhelming. I haven’t been my usual happy self, and I don’t generally like to put that down on e-paper, or saddle any of you with it. But it has been nearly overwhelming me for the past few days, and I need to do something to get it out of my system. I would simply lay the odds of my having a heart attack in the next month or so at about 3-1.

Baseball, ugh. That’s been my mantra for the past couple of weeks. Ugh. Wow, we’re bad. Those of you who don’t know baseball won’t understand the magnitude of this next little anecdote, and I apologize for that. Feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. But for those of you who do, let me just say that this truly sums up our entire season. We lost, yet again, by a large margin. All because we fell apart for one inning. Take out the third inning, and we win 3-1. Unfortunately, we lost that particular inning 11-0. So we lose the game 12-3. We’re at practice the next day, talking about the loss with the team, and one of my 10-year olds (we only have 5 of them, the rest of the team being 7-, 8-, and 9-year olds) and “team leaders” thinks that we lost 12-4. He says, “No coach, remember? I made a point.” Ugh. Not, “Coach, I scored a run” but “Coach, I made a point”. This is the reason that if I wasn’t bald before the season started, I would be now. I have one pitcher that can consistently throw strikes. Unfortunately he does it at slightly slower than batting practice speed, so he gets hammered. I have another pitcher who could be dominant, and occasionally throws strikes. But he mainly looks like he’d like to be absolutely ANYWHERE other than the pitchers mound. I have another kid who has, literally, a two-second attention span. Maybe less. No joke, he was pitching, and the batter hit a soft line drive back to the mound. This kid puts his glove up from pure reaction because the ball is coming at his head. But in-between the time that the ball leaves the bat, and when it reaches the mound, he forgets why he put his glove up, drops his glove, and gets hit in the face with the ball. Ugh. Last game, one of the only kids on the team that can field a ground ball comes up to the other coach and tells him that he really, really doesn’t want to play in the infield this game. I have a catcher who is a complete natural behind the plate. Hustles to get passed balls, makes shotgun throws down to second base to nail baserunners, bounces out on pop foul balls. Loves being back there, and is extremely focused. Oh, just one problem, he can’t catch the ball. At all. Every single pitch pops out of his glove. Yeah, there’s a reason that they call it “catcher”. Almost all of our outfielders are scared of the ball. Pop flies, they run right to it, get the glove up, and at the last second turn away because the ball might hit them. Most of our infield would make great matadors, they treat ground balls like a bull, “Toro!” as they spin out of the way. At least the outfielders also miss it while backing up. We went an entire 6-inning game without getting a put out at first base. Do you know how hard that is to do? But more than anything else, the season can be defined as: “Coach, I made a point”.

I’m a little overwhelmed on the job front, too. I get rejection after rejection, and it is starting to wear on me. Have a couple of interviews this week and one next week. Bombed the first one, but will hopefully do better on the next two. Now I am beginning to worry though, that I still won’t have work when unemployment runs out later this year. I can survive by cashing out some of my retirement money, but if I can avoid that I would certainly like to. I just want to find a job at a company that I can be with until I no longer need to work. I was at Exclusively for nearly 16 years, and it was a dead end. I don’t want to get a job with another small company that I will be stuck in the same situation that I had to leave before. I want something where if I’m stuck in the same job, at least I can make more money every year to compensate for cost of living and such. But I fear now that I’ll have to take something crappy just to keep the roof over my head. I have friends now that are struggling and/or failing to even do that much. If I could play poker full time and supplement with some cooking/baking, I would do it. But I truly don’t think that I have the mental toughness to play poker for a living. It takes too much of a grind when you’re worried about actually NEEDING the money as opposed to having it be a bonus when you win it. I’ve done very well since losing my job. Cashed again this week, which makes 14 out of 21 this year, and 25 out of 35 since losing my job in September. But I know that streaks run both ways, and could easily not cash for a couple of months too. I’m up a little over $6K since September, which is nice as an added income, but would be terrible if I had to live on it. I keep plodding along, and hope to have something come through soon. But the longer it drags out, the more stressed I am.

At least my blood pressure is only 143/108. That’s good right?

There is plenty more on my mind, but I have a hard time motivating myself to write right now, so I shall wrap up for now. I thank you all for bearing with me during this down phase. I’ll be back to my happy self soon enough, it never lasts for long.

Wish me luck on my interviews.