Journal notes - Thursday Jan 27 - basketball
I can’t write big pieces these days so I’m just doing short journal things but sometimes they get too long
Cold Basketball
Yesterday, in the 27 degree air of New London, CT, I found some time to go out to a local public court, Toby May Park, and play basketball. The wind was blowing hard. When I put up a shot from more than a dozen feet or so, I could see the arc of the ball curve sideways in mid-flight. Still, it wasn’t hard to make baskets if I drove or shot from close up. Even under calm conditions, I enjoy that part of the game more - driving, pivoting, releasing shots with different hands from different angles. My solo basketball practice usually involves going to a spot on the court, facing a certain direction, thinking about different ways I could score if I were guarded, and trying to execute five or six of them. Turnaround jumper, spin left into a right-hand running hook, spin right and drive for right-hand reverse layup, spin right and drive for left-hand standard layup, spin left into a left-hand floater, half-turn into a bank shot. It’s immensely satisfying, but I don’t know what I’m doing, except these are things that I’ve seen players do, and they make sense to my body. If I do them often enough in practice, I may find myself instinctively doing them in games, where they surprise other players, because people who look like me tend to be more pure shooters. But I never could sit back like that. I want to drive, attack, engage. It works well in the cold, too. The kind of shots I like to shoot, you can make in heavy gusts of wind. The quick movements get your blood pumping. I stayed out for 45 minutes, forgetting it was cold for the last half hour.
Yesterday I was able to play because I was dressed in warm winter gear, acquired over the years, long underwear, baselayers and midlayers, wool you can move in. That stuff isn’t cheap, but you can wear it often, for a long time, so over time it does become affordable. The Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness at work. Or you can work at a camping goods store and get them at a steep discount. But who can afford to work at a camping goods store? And I was also able to play because I am at a lull in my freelance work, and am neglecting my work of acquiring more. Or, not prioritizing it? Or thinking more holistically? In fact I waste time on worse things than basketball. In fact I do need to exercise, even though it requires eating more food, and eating more food costs more money and time.
What really boggles my mind about basketball is that I don’t play it more often, given that I can. I always am happy when I’m playing, and when I have played. It makes me happy consistently, and without much peripheral cost, it makes my body stronger and helps focus my mind, it complements my other goals. But I let years go by without playing, often because I can’t get all my ducks in a row - food, water, energy, time, gear, feeling not-anxious enough to step away from my home and all the things I always have to do - enough to play. Here’s something that, in a lot of cases, is free, and yet due to my disorganization, I am not able to get over some simple barrier to do it. So it goes with writing, too. And, I suspect, lots of other parts of life.
One big project over the last few years has been to stop getting in my own way. Part of this may be due to simple neurodivergence, which is one of those things that is real (people really have different chemistry and thought patterns), but also wishy-washy (people who are otherwise privileged and have fewer things in their way to accentuate their own neurodivergence because it’s the only thing they face). My therapist, who is relatively expensive, but not a psychiatrist and cannot subscribe medication, went over the patterns of ADD/ADHD yesterday and when I suggested possibly going to a psychiatrist and seeing if they’d prescribe something, she said that might be a good idea. If I can organize enough to do it, they might give me a low-dose amphetamine, and that may help me, or it may not be the way to go, but we’ll see. I also have high anxiety, and I don’t know how much of that is genetic, or epigenetic, or societally induced. Incidentally, look how long it’s taking for these kind of things to emerge, and this is having, in most areas of life, very few hard and fixed problems, a blank backdrop where these things can emerge.
Anyway, enough about all that. More and more, to the extent I have any insight into the world and its many problems, it’s to suggest that the deeper answers lie elsewhere, and other people know them better. That’s one reason I tend to write less. And yet, it never helps me, to write less. Being read less may help me; I often feel very bad after having written, after having proverbially shown my ass, and the shame and embarrassment hurts me. And yet I do learn some things in the process, both about my own flaws and about the forgiveness I can extend to others. This year I’m trying to do more ghostwriting, because it makes money, yes, but also because it helps me build writing skills without having myself too exposed. Professionalizing this practice is the main thing I’m avoiding, when I waste time on the internet, instead of doing something useful or playing basketball. But though my work patterns are often inconsistent and disperse, I do end up eventually getting things done fairly often, and at many jobs, including, I’m pretty sure, this one once I get going, I can be very reliable, even as I feel like a mess of a person.
One thing I love about basketball, which I’m getting ready to go play again, the sun is shining and the dog is walked, even though it’s 23 degrees, is that I don’t care about failing. And because of that, I’m good at basketball, or someone as casual as I am. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. I never thought I was good at sports. I was lanky and awkward, my frame took a long time to fill out, and I always overthought and often put too much pressure on myself. But I liked basketball enough that I didn’t care, and it was fun enough to practice that I got better, and now I can beat people who used to be able to beat me, though I can never go very far. My game is junky. I play more like a power forward, even though I’m 6’0”, the smaller size of a guard in competitive basketball. Because my arms are long and I jump slightly better than the average guy, I can play “big man” in an average group of guys, but I can’t dribble enough or shoot from the outside enough to ever play in a more organized league. I don’t think I’d want to. The pressure seems annoying. To want to do something is one thing. To have to do it is another. The nice thing about being an amateur is you don’t need to be any good, just good enough that you can find sporting competition, and with solo basketball, there always is that. I like being an amateur writer, too, even if I’m a professional in some narrow subsets of writing. You get far enough in anything and people start expecting things of you. This has gone on long enough that you might think I think there’s a point, but I’m just shooting around.
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