Today I am celebrating completion of the second consecutive month of maintaining my streak of writing a page a day about tennis. I have decided to mark the completion of each month with a day of self reflection about the exercise. There is nothing about tennis rules here today, so if that is all you are here for, please feel free to move along.
To pull back the curtain a little bit on the process, it is my intention to have drafts of posts queued up a few day ahead. This builds a little bit of a safety net in case writer’s block sets in or if I have minimal time for the project on a particular day due to life commitments. At times I have had up to a week of backlog. Currently I am writing day by day and have faced a few mornings this week with a completely blank slate. I am probably going to have to eventually completely phone in a post to maintain the streak. I think I am OK with that.
The biggest challenge to date involved playing in an out of town tennis tournament that was bracketed by two fairly demanding weeks at work. When you have early singles matches every morning, doubles in the afternoon, and husband wife mixed late into the evening, there really isn’t much time to write. Probably I should either not play three events (blasphemy!) or just know that tournaments require a few days of backlog that is probably actually a day or two longer than the actual tournament. On the other hand, playing a tournament and having a lot of matches deep into Sunday is a good problem to have if not a little bit of a humble brag.
Most definitely the habit of daily morning writing is firmly established and has become integrated with my morning routine. I am alert for signs that the daily blog is starting to feel like a slog or a chore. So far none have emerged. I firmly believe that I am going to be able to pull off the complete year streak. I also believe that the daily writing is something that will continue beyond the original project commitment.
It is natural for me to wonder exactly where all this is heading. At times I think that what is currently being written is a very, very, very rough draft of a quirky book about the rules of tennis. At other times I think the exercise is a very public exploration about what I think is truly important in tennis. The series of posts on new initiatives in alternate scoring are very much in that vein and is a little bit of a hint of an interest in tennis activism.
In tennis and in life I have always had a relentless drive for excellence and optimization. My engineer brain drives that to a very great extent. I look at the world through the lens of understanding how problems can be solved. In the absence of a problem to be solved I am equally happy to look for improvements or optimizations.
In tennis, and in life, I have always regarded myself at being particularly good at the “long” game, which I define to be the use strategy and tactics with benefits beyond the immediate time frame. As an example, on the court I have a really good drop shot. I am perfectly happy in a match to play that shot even if my opponent gets to it and even if those early shots are lost. The reason for that is because I know that establishing that shot forces my opponents to play a little closer to the baseline which makes other shots in my arsenal more effective. It also forces my opponent to burn a lot of energy such that conditioning might be a factor late into the match. I have found that a lot of players can’t see beyond the current point being played.
I have been thinking a lot about the long game angle for this project. There are a lot of possibilities. When I embarked on this journey I did so with the understanding that there were a multitude of potential destinations. For once, the ultimate destination or goal was not sharply defined. It is truly unconstrained exploration. I don’t know where I am going with this, which is unusual for me, but so far I am really enjoying the journey.
