It’s Sunday morning here in Chicago, and the Boy has just gone off to compete in a fencing tournament. He hasn’t competed in a long time and he needs to renew his rating this year (fencers are rated by letters to show how well they do in competition–if you compete well against good fencers, you’re rated well–it’s a bit complicated, but the rating you get only lasts a few years, and in that time you need to renew it or improve it, or it will drop a level. The Boy has been on and off with his fencing, so the renewal’s snuck up on him a bit). His big problem is that he gets up in his head and starts thinking about what’s next, and then he’s not mentally prepared for the match–or even point–at hand. Since he’s not living in the moment, he kind of sabotages himself a bit. The day he got his rating, his attitude and approach were surprisingly different, and that’s why he did so well.
Talking the Boy out of his head so he can fence is a good reminder for me to not do the same thing with my writing. I tried to get all Oprah on his ass, but unfortunately, the “live in the moment” issue didn’t have any advice that would apply to him at that moment. Argh.
Still, he gets stuck, I feel a bit stuck right now, so it’s a good time to pull out the “Getting Unstuck” issue (Sept. 2005) and see if it will help me with my LO dilemma.
Usually, Oprah’s “Here We Go” column has a little story or wisdom on the theme at hand, but this time it’s just a general letter from the editor. I wonder if the column’s evolved from including a personal story about the topic to just the basic “here’s what’s in this issue” column. Maybe this column is the exception to the rule, and she didn’t have much to say on it.
At any rate, we’ll see if O can help me get a bit unstuck over the next couple of days.
[note: I did look at "Confidence" (May 2004), but that turned out to be "Body Confidence," which won't help in this case.]
