Heading for a fall

Against my better judgment, I've signed up to try for my US Soccer D coaching license. I actually think I'm pretty well prepared, but it does involve committing my next two full weekends to dorking around with soccer drills. Most people only do this because their association (or employer) is leaning on them but I'm doing it for the pure love of the game. Well, and so that I don't have to do it later and really inconvenience myself. I did my "E" level last year, which is a certificate, and requires you to teach a lesson, but it's not graded and you can't really fail. The D is graded and you can fail and have to retake it. So, ummmm, the pressure is on.

I'm kind of very introverted by nature, though I've learned to move outside that barrier, and have taught adults in the classroom and on skis. I was actually a certified ski instructor upon a time, but my strength there was in my physical ability, rather than my pure teaching ability, which proved to be the yoke around my neck that prevented me for reaching the highest level of certification (despite three attempts.) You can kinda see why my anxiety level is rising.

So basically, I'm headed for a fall. I know I can do this but I'm expecting the worst. Which is as it should be.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

You know its sad, so sad. It's a sad, sad situation. And we could talk it over, but I have nothing to say. So, sorry about the lack of posts. I'm just not getting anywhere near completion on anything remotely resembling the kind of blog post I'd like to make. So, sorry blogger peeps. My wife and kids love me though. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

(Now if anyone would just start meeting my expectations, I'd not feel such a profound disappointment. Sorry about that as well.)

Managing Your Expectations of your Children

Oh dear, it's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I've been out there gathering up some more negative experiences to share with y'all.

So my daughter likes to play soccer, and she's pretty good at it, but mostly because she's so darned athletic and runs harder than the others. But she's not super polished, like those kids who do their homework of their own free will and will practice anything you tell them over and over again until they get it right. It'll take her maybe three tries to get any one thing right, and then she's off chasing butterflies--if, in fact, she ever stops chasing butterflies long enough to hear what you're telling her to do. But she's instinctual. She takes the ball away from the other team, runs with it, and shoots, and scores... a lot.

So naturally I figured the best thing for her would be to play with girls that are better than her and can show her how and why she needs to pay attention to what she's doing. So she's been playing Rec league soccer, which is swell but very egalitarian so everyone's playing there, including the numerous kids who don't want to be playing but whose parents require them to do a sport. And the next step up is Select, but that doesn't start until she's a year or two older. And the next step up beyond that is Premier, which is pretty hardcore, but does start at her age group, so I'm thinking to myself "Yeah, that's the ticket, we'll get her in with these girls, get her some really good fundamental training for a year, and then she'll be set to either continue on with them, or go back down to where ever she's comfortable." Sounds like a good plan, doesn't it?

I should have known when I got the promotional emails from Eastside FC that said things like "your child's character will be forged in the crucible of intense competition" that we was in over our heads. I mean, don't get me wrong, Eastside is truly a high character organization, that stays away from a lot of the really shitty things that elite youth sports organizations do, and they do have some really really great professional soccer coaches on staff, but they are pretty fucking intense.

So anyway, we decided to go to the tryouts, and they recommended preparing for tryouts by taking your kids out and letting them play a bit. So that's what we did. We'd go to the park and kick the ball around. We'd work on skills. A was really receptive, and eager to improve. We had a great father-daughter bonding experience. And I felt pretty good about her chances of making one of the teams.

So anyway, we come to time for the tryout, and it's quite a major affair. There are around 70 girls trying out for 25 places, which it pretty intense competition for a 9-year-old, but I told her to just do her best, and that's all I expected of her. So anyway, we got out there for the first day, and dang! there's a lot of really good 9-year-olds, but whatever, we'll shine because of our athleticism.

Wrong! Cue the awful spring we're having, and the skies open up with a hard, steady rain and a temperature in the mid forties. It was pretty awful, and my daughter just got slower and slower as she got colder. And she wasn't the only one, but man, her game fell apart. I had to yell to her to keep moving, not for the sake of the tryout, but just to keep warm. After the longest 90 minutes ever, the first day was over. We scurried back to the car to get on dry clothes and warm up. So many little girls were just bawling as they walked off the field, they were all so cold.

So the next day was much better. Almost sunny, but Ooops! we forgot our ADHD medication in the morning, and we were so very frequently not on task. I know a lot of people think that kids are over-medicated these days and that ADHD is just some made up thing, but here's what it looks like during a soccer scrimmage: Cartwheel. Cartwheel. Attempted front flip. Steal the ball on defense. Run up the field, run back down the field. Cartwheel. Front flip. cartwheel. run up the field, steal the ball, breakaway, score. Cartwheel. Cartwheel. Cartwheel. run back down the field, deny scoring opportunity. Cartwheel. Attempted front flip... etc. for 90 minutes. Impressed with her energy, they moved her up to the next higher group, but she was just out of place there. raw, unpolished, not knowing the protocol, or where to stand, or what to do.

The third day was spent in the remainders group. And the girls played, but I think they knew he score. A was able to stop with the gymnastics, and kind of continued her reign of terror, but got very surly and sat out for a time. She said one of the girls was mean to her. I told her that she was stronger and faster that a lot of other girls, and that she should expect people to try to get even in mean ways. That it meant she was winning (durr!) and that letting them get to her meant that they were winning. We'll see if that sunk in. It's a good lesson for life.

So anyway, she didn't make it. But that's alright. And I told her that it was alright, and that all I wanted he to do was to try, and she did, and I was proud of her for that, and that I would always love her. And she told me that she thought the reason that she didn't make the team was that she didn't run all the time and that she did too much gymnastics. And that made me very happy with my disappointment.

And you know what else? It's been a really, really difficult winter, behavior-wise with the daughter but now she is happier and more relaxed, and we have a great relationship. That fucking stupid tryout was the best $20 I ever spent.

And in case you're wondering, she still loves soccer. I found a Sunday program for her, where she has to play with up to 1 year older kids, both boys and girls. And she's holding her own.

Random Bits of Vomit

1) A neighbor, Milt, passed away last week. He was 92 and one of the most decent, kind, and well loved older guys around. We spent many hours talking about drainage and such. I'll miss him. There's not really anything instructive to take from this, except that if you are nice, people will speak well of you after you pass. Maybe that's enough.

2) So my boy's Physics teacher resigned a couple of weeks ago. Turns out he was caught by the police, buck naked, in his car, in a park, in flagrante delicto with a sixteen year old former student. Ooops. And the thing is I met the guy, talked with him quite a bit, owing to my son's academic waywardness, and he didn't seem like that kind of guy at all. A good Christian, but not in an obnoxious or clumsy way. (Some Christians strike me as the kind of people that weren't good at anything until they found religion. I suppose that applies to all religions, really, and there's nothing wrong with that really, but I judge people by their competence in the here and now, because I'm a pessimist and I'm constantly trying to calculate how long it will be before anyone does anything that will fuck up my day.) I generally just shake my head when these teacher-student stories come up in the news, but this one hits a little too close to home.

Anyway, dude didn't seem like the type. As if I know the type. I suppose they were "in love". Which happens. But not to me. I look at a woman under 30 and I'm thinking "jail time." Well actually no, I think of them as my kids. So I'm pretty much thinking "You dork!" because that's what I think of when I look at my kids. So guys, if your sixteen year old niece has filled out to be an awesome cherry tomato, just remember that, on the inside, she's still Napolean Dynamite, complete with funky ass moon boots, Gosh!

Oh Boy! A Misery Index!

Anything with "Misery" in the title is sure to draw me in like a moth to flame, so when I saw the Wall Street Journal has come up with a misery index, I was sure to read it: WSJ Misery Index.

As it turns out, we in the Seattle area are pretty miserable, which is reassuring, because I was pretty sure I had been singled out unfairly. So I read this article and, as you would expect, it's a big disappointment because it's all about economic measures of misery. Don't get me wrong, I find economics as dismal a read as anything. Every economic nugget I read just reinforces my notion that everything is going to hell even more irrevocably than before. But this Misery index brings the "meh." and this is why:

So it focuses on three things: cost of gas, home prices, and unemployment. While these are all miserable things, they aren't really that terrible, well unemployment is, but the other two are really a folly metric.

Let's start with gas prices. Driving your own car is inefficient as hell. Going all the places I have to go is inefficient as hell, and If I really looked at it, I wouldn't need to go to those places, I could just cut them out of the equation. Send the girl to the crappy afterschool care program instead of the nice one with the pool. Quit farting around with kid sports. Quit taking them to tutors and counseling. Tell them to rub some dirt on it if they're hurt. Those weekend trips up to the ski lodge? forget about it. The point is that the pain you feet from gas prices is self inflicted, based on folly, vanity, or whatever compels us to do these things we do.

Home prices? Cry me a river. It doesn't matter unless you are selling one. If you're looking to buy, then it's a happy circumstance. Looking to trade one for another? Well, you won't get as much for the one you sell, and you won't pay as much for the one you buy. Underwater? Overextended? Don't reach so far next time. See the thing about owning a house is this: the goal should be to own it, free and clear. It's not an investment. It's not a source of capital. It's securing a place for yourself to live. Ideally, a place you can't get kicked out of. If you're not interested in that, home ownership is not for you.

Rising home prices didn't really make me happy. Oh sure, it was nice to see the assessment at so much more than I owed, but it was hollow money. I couldn't get it. If I sold, I would have to move, and that's not something I'm interested in. If I borrowed against it, I would have to pay it back. The only real effect of rising home prices was on the taxes I pay. So yeah, let them fall. Let the people that value home ownership for what it is buy homes. Let the others do something more suited to their values. And please God, let it run up to crazy land just before I have to sell.

So about that unemployment. Yeah, it's pretty miserable to be unemployed, but reflecting back on own my time as a surplus person, it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was actually a personally productive time. I lost some weight, I read a lot of books, learned a lot of new things, built some furniture, and had some new experiences. I can't say the time was a complete loss. I'd actually be kind of happy to be out of work now. I mean I could be happier, particularly if I was better prepared for it. (Being a pessimist means that your notion of economic strain is having less that a years salary stashed away in some emergency fund)

But that's the thing: misery doesn't come about as a result of a poor economy. Misery comes from a lack of preparation. The economists should measure that.

So are we miserable in Seattle? Nah. Just spoiled.

The Bug or the Windshield?

So we were yakking in the locker room at the club, bitching about the unreasonable difficulty of our workout in the sports conditioning class, and one guy goes "Well, some days you're the bug and other days you're the windshield..."

So I pipe in with "You know, I'm not sure which of those I like least.."

And we all laughed. Cause sometimes crumpling into a splattered mess is more appealing than standing up and getting shit splattered all over you.

It's all gonna suck, folks, but that's how you get better.

Rational pessimism

Today's guest lecturer: Link

So inspirational, I went out and started a blog about pessimism