I legitimately almost forgot that today is the last day of the month. This means that it is time for another introspection on the project. April is a sneaky month, only having 30 days and all. COVID-19 has warped our collective perception of the passage of time. I am not sure if it is related, and it would be an unusual response if it was, but April passed very fast for me.
I have picked up a few new readers along the way, so I think now is a good time to recap what I am doing with this project. On New Year’s Eve I set a goal for myself to write a page about tennis every single day in 2020. The fact that it has manifested itself as a blog is an accountability mechanism. The way I think about this project is as a very public tennis journal.
With everything else going on in the world, or more precisely with everything else not going on in the world, I consider it to be a stroke of luck that I have this project. It gives me something to think about other than all the tennis that is not being played right now.
I have always assumed that a stretch this long without stepping onto an actual tennis court would involve some sort of injury. The mental image of that involved me sitting on my couch immersing myself in all the televised professional matches. April was a real curve ball.
I continue to be fascinated at the way this project has influenced the way I think about tennis. The systemic march through the rules was a mechanism to have a ready made prompt for the daily writing commitment. I am surprised at how many adjacent topics have popped up along the way. I have plunged down some of those rabbit trails when it made sense to do so. Other ideas have been tabled for another day. I am blessed to be a tennis writer that has something to cover every day that isn’t COVID-19 related.
I sit here on the last day of April, a third of the commitment I made to myself completed. My horizon has started extending past the end of the year, and I feel like I am picking up steam. I have a lot of ideas on what this project will evolve to once the rules of tennis are completely dispensed with. I am excited at the possibilities.
The icing on the cake… my municipality is reopening the park tennis courts tomorrow morning. I will be there at the crack of dawn.
