Attempting Athletics

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As I mentioned before, I spent several days of my relaxing, if somewhat boring, spring break this year engrossed in Ken Burn's Baseball documentary, because history plus baseball plus documentaries equals awesome and this is what happens when I am bored, have time on my hands, and have Netflix. It was super interesting, because I am a history nerd and I love baseball, if a bit long, consisting of eleven episodes which are each two plus hours long. It really made me remember why I enjoy baseball so much (arguably: because I understand it better than other sports), and it also really made me miss playing softball. [SisterBot]'s first high school softball season just began, so I spent an inordinate amount of time over break talking about softball with both her and/or [PaternalUnit], because she has the same coach I had in high school, and really, softball and school are the two major topics of conversation between [PaternalUnit] and I these days.

All in all, I've really been missing playing it lately, but that could also be due to how I've been feeling fat and lazy recently. I can't say that I every really loved playing, and it's probably mostly just rosy recollection and nostalgia motivating my recent renewed interest, but I played fastpitch for seven years, and it was an important part of my life for awhile, even if it permanently messed up my elbow, gave me shin splints, and generally made me hate running.

I was never super athletic, even when I was young, mostly due my general lack of stamina and an inability to run at a any pace faster than a slow plod, but I tried really hard to be an athlete growing up, for reasons still unbeknownst to me. I played T-Ball, and soccer in the summers  and I ice skated a ton and played Bandy (a Nordic version of Hockey played with curved sticks and a ball) in the winters when I was little, and what I lacked in talent I made up for in spirit (or at least that's what they told me, and I realize now that was just a polite way of saying I sucked). I even made a brief foray into Basketball in middle school, and that went as well as could be expected. I wasn't actually the worst player on the team, but it was close, and I think I scored once during the two years I played.

I wanted to play baseball, but I knew I wouldn't go very far in little league before I was forced out because "baseball is for boys," or something, so I decided to do the next best thing and sign up for the local Fastpitch Softball team, much to my parents' amusement because by that time I was 10, and quickly losing any pretenses of being any sort of natural athlete (really, outside of persistance and decent hand-eye coordination, I didn't have much going for me in that department, I still don't). But I did it anyways, and I immediately loved softball. I became I decent catcher and I could hit fairly well, and the first several years were fun. My middle school team did pretty well in the local parochial school league and my summer team was perennially okay.

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Despite my enjoyment of playing, my problems socializing with the teams I played on arose rather quickly, because most of the girls I played with during the summer went to the same local public school and played on the same school team. I was only one of, at most, two girls who went to a different school, and I was always an odd man out on the team because of that, but that didn't bother me at first, until, after the better part of five years playing together, the core group of girls I played with attempted to form their own club team and asked everybody but the other Catholic school girl and I to be on it. They failed, and we played together again that year for the last time, but I really think that was the beginning of the end for me because for the first time I really realized, or was forced to admit, that I wasn't accepted as part of that team, even though we have been playing together since we were 10.

I played in high school as the back-up Varsity catcher, although I spent most of my time on JV, which I didn't mind because they were nicer anyways and I am not the most competitive person. I enjoyed playing, but I hated practicing every day and the endless running, so unnecessary to a game where at most you have to run 60 feet at a time (yes, 60 feet, because the base paths in fastpitch are 60 not 90 feet), gave me shin splints. My sophomore year things got worse, because, once again, the socialization aspect of team sports gave me problems. That year, I spent about a third of my time on Varsity, filling in whenever they needed a second catcher or a pinch hitter and playing with them when JV wasn't playing or they had a tournament. Despite this, only two people on the team would talk to me, the pitcher who I went to middle school with and was super nice, and the first baseman who I had played JV with the year before. I never felt like part of the team and that made it so that I never had any fun playing anymore.

I was going to play my junior year, and I was pretty much guaranteed the starting catcher spot, but the closer it got to the season starting, the less I wanted to play. Just the thought of playing was giving me anxiety, and it got so bad that I nearly burst into tears at an info meeting about the season. There wasn't any particular reason either, although at other times I have experienced something similar, where, for whatever reason, I just know that have to quit something I used to enjoy and I have a ton of anxiety about it until I do. Granted there were some other factors adding to my stress, like it being 11th grade which is stressful enough to begin with and I was thinking about coming out (which I didn't, but just thinking about it at the time was stressful) which was also giving me a lot of stress. I think maybe it had just run its course and I needed to be done, but quitting the softball team the week before the season started was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was for the best, and I felt a lot better because of it, but I really felt like I was letting people down. I had made a commitment to the team and I was quitting, which is something that is difficult for me. I take my commitments and responsibilities seriously, and I hate feeling like I let someone down. It stimulates my guilt response, which, granted, isn't difficult.

I haven't played since, and I haven't regretted quitting, partially because the teams both my junior and senior years were fraught with drama including, but not limited to, periods where half the team wasn't on speaking terms, seniors getting freshman to flash people, alleged underage drinking, and a captain getting suspended. I cannot express how glad I was not to have to deal with that, but I do still miss playing, especially now that [SisterBot] made Varsity and spring is in the air so early. [Keeper of All Knowledge] has talked about us finding a rec slowpitch team to play for this summer, which would be fun. For the first time since I stopped playing, I actually want to play again, but I don't know if that's a good thing or if I'm just nostalgic for something that I never really had in the first place...

On Television

I should have taken this advise...(via)

Spring Break is finally upon us, or at least me, I don't know about your particular schedules Imaginary Readers, but for me, this is my one week off from classes this semester, or rather, the only days off I get this semester. It couldn't come soon enough, in a way, because the week leading up to it, was my second set of midterms, and although I only had two this time around, they were far more stressful for me than midterms usually are. I'm not sure why, possibly because of the promise of a break afterwords, albeit a boring one of sitting at home, but a break nonetheless, but for whatever reason, this set of midterms was particularly stressful, leading to some stress induced insomnia and my acne edging ahead of my attempts to keep it at bay in the eternal war I am waging against it, which I seem to be losing, but don't tell it that.

This isn't to say that I wasn't partially at fault for my stress last week, because, as usual, television prevented me from getting as much sleep as I could have. That is to say, I got myself immersed in a television show during the week prior to midterms, which, of course, bled into midterms, and distracted me from studying/sleeping as much as I could have, but that seems to be par for the course with me and TV. The culprit this time was the British drama Downton Abbey, which caught my attention and imagination far more than I anticipated, because British period pieces centered around turn of the century property law do not normally interest me, but Downton Abbey is great, not because of the period specific costumes and the historical accuracy, but rather, because it feels genuine and all of the characters feel like real people. Even those who aren't likable at all have their good sides, however small they might be, and ones who don't seem interesting become the most interesting of all. It tells the story of the people it chronicles really well, which makes it really good, but it also doesn't take itself so seriously that it isn't fun to watch.

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Ultimately, that is what I really enjoy in TV shows, good stories about people. I much prefer character driven narratives to those that are plot heavy, because, while a good plot is always enjoyable to watch, it can often be far to easy to get lost in the details of a complex and convoluted plot, but with a good set of characters, it doesn't really matter what's happening, because the spirit rings true no matter what. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a television snob, or at least I try not to be, because I tend to watch whatever catches my fancy at a particular time, be that an animated kids show, a 20 hour Ken Burns documentary about the history of Baseball, or a campy sci-fi show. I've seen all of Xena multiple times, and quite a bit of various Star Treks, along with quite a few sub-par sitcoms, and unarguable good shows. There are plenty of "good" shows I haven't or won't watch (Lost, Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Wire, etc.), and others that I have watched and even enjoyed or thought were well made but not loved to the extent that everyone else (read: The Internet) seems to (Sherlock, Merlin), as well as plenty of shows that I have loved that even I won't argue are objectively good (Xena, Star Trek, Out of Practice). I can't always tell why I'll like one show and not another, it's all a matter of taste I guess, but it seems to come down to whether or not something about the show really grabs me right off the bat, and if it doesn't, it could be the best made show ever, and I won't really like it.

It probably seems like I watch a lot of television, which I guess I do, but I don't watch TV when it airs, because my attention span is too project oriented to be able to keep up with shows week to week, so I tend to find something to watch after it's either done airing or been on for a couple of seasons and then compulsively watch all of it over the course of what usually amounts to a couple of weeks depending on how busy I am. If I'm watching Downton Abbey, for instance, that is the only show I want to be watching, and I will watch as much of it as possible each day until I am finished with it, within reason because I still have to go to class, study, do homework, and get a reasonable amount of sleep, with sleep usually being what gets sacrificed in my single minded attempts to consume a series.

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I also watch a decent amount of TV because I don't really watch movies, at least not by myself, which I think most people do. There are a lot of reasons that I don't watch movies, to the point that I am nearly culturally illiterate when it comes to movies, ranging from my preference for a longer form of story telling to two hours being a little bit too long for my attention span at times, but I think the main reason is that my family rarely watches movies together. I went to the big releases with my dad, and we would go to, say, the Harry Potter movies when those were first coming out, but for the most part, if we were watching something together at home, it was TV. I have very early memories of watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with my dad, and of watching the first season of Grey's Anatomy with my parents and listening to [MaternalUnit] complain about how inaccurate a portrayal of working in a hospital it was. I never learned how to watch movies from my family because we never did it, and I never got a good basis in classic movies from them either. I got a very good education in classic television from [MaternalUnit] when we would watch the old shows that would air on a local channel in the afternoons, and I have seen a decent amount of classic shows like Green Acres, Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, and The Addam's Family because of that.

I guess you could saw that I never acquired a taste for classic movies, and as such, I don't seek them out. For instance, I haven't seen Casablanca all the way through, much to [Type A, Likes Baseball]'s chagrin, who keeps trying to get me to watch it by putting it on when I'm hanging out with my friends, but we only ever manage to get about twenty or thirty minutes in before whatever else we're doing, such as shelling peanuts, gets in the way, and no one is actually watching the movie anymore. This means that I've seen the beginning twice, but I haven't really seen the movie. This isn't to say that I don't like movies, because I do like most of the ones that I've seen, I just don't seek them out, and television tends to resonate with me more than movies do. For example, I don't think I've ever cried while watching a movie, wanted to punch somebody, yes, but that was less the movie and more the circumstances and also a story for another time, but I haven't actually been moved to tears by a film. Various TV shows have made me cry on several occasions, not many because I hate crying and generally don't have the best suspension of disbelief, but, for instance, Downton Abbey made me cry at least twice in its 15 episode run.

TV is the main way in which I consume culture, in the same way that movies are for a lot of people, and I love the medium of television, because of the way that it can tell continuing long form stories in short serialized chunks, but that isn't to say that I love all of it. I'm not a fan of reality TV because I come to TV for what is advertised as fiction and escapism or PBS documentaries and not voyeurism, but I don't necessarily think that all reality TV is bad. Fake yes, but bad, not necessarily. Genre isn't really all that important to me, but the spirit of it is. I'll give anything a change, but I make no promises that I will enjoy everything or even everything people say is good. Now, I'm going to get back to watching that Ken Burn's Baseball documentary, because I just hit the 1930s and history is fun.