It's Raining
And rain sucks
I went on that retreat last weekend. I got that AirBNB in the middle of nowhere, and I spent two days unplugged from everything. I would wake up, sit on the porch watching the sunrise, journal a bit, make some breakfast and some coffee, and spend the rest of the day meditating and writing. I ended up meditating for 75 minutes each day and wrote a total of 15,000 words. I wrote about everything. I think I got to the bottom of a lot. I have some great stories.
That was this weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t write the newsletters as their contents unfold. I write them on days like today.
I’ve been sitting inside since about 10:30 this morning. I had an early workout this morning, the last workout of the week, which means the toughest workout of the week. I had a great playlist queued up, and I was vibing my face off in the gym, and I crushed it, more or less. Then I stopped at the grocery store, got some food for breakfast, threw in some smoked salmon because I was hungry as hell and it sounded good. And I ate my usual four-eggs-one-avocado-kimchi-siracha breakfast and a whole pack of smoked salmon while watching the US Open.
That was as good as my day has gotten. It’s been pouring here. I’ve been sitting inside mad as hell. Looking at my schedule through the rest of the season and into Q School, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get as many reps as I wanted unless I played next week. So I am. And, after declaring an Official State of Emergency with regard to my putting at the end of last week, I had a lot of work to get done this week.
I drove back here on Monday. Tuesday, after workout, I spent the day looking through all 27 Q School sites for this year and ranking them according to my preferences, then finalizing my schedule leading up to it. By the time I was done, it was 4:30, and the summer rainstorms had hit. So I shut things down on the early side, turned on the footy, and thought about golf. Wednesday, I got another workout in, and then I spent five hours on the putting green. I think I figured some stuff out. I also decided that I would learn AimPoint. I think my green-reading sucks right now (which is odd, because growing up I’d say it was my #2 skill behind my distance), which impacts my confidence standing over putts — and if you don’t feel good standing over putts, you can ball strike the hell out of it and still score shitty, and that feeling sucks. So I’m going to learn AimPoint.
On Thursday, I got to the course at 10:30, at which point the Real Feel was 107°F. I have sweat stains on hosel of my putter from sweat dripping off my nose. I used up half a bottle of liquid chalk on my hands and it didn’t do jack shit. As for the putting, the greens are mostly recovered from being punched, but they can’t get them quick yet — and, with the heat, they were rolling at stimp 7, maybe. And so I tried my best to AimPoint calibrate based on a bunch of educated guesses, and then I couldn’t tell if I was really holding my fingers the same length from my face every time, and I couldn’t get the damn ball to the hole for the life of me, because into the grain they were running at like 5. And after two hours of putting like shit I shut it down and stopped my drill early and head to get lunch.
Well, it’s been raining for the last 28 hours or so now. I’ve been sitting inside, stewing over the fact that I cut that drill short, and now I only have one day before I have to get back on the road and put it all to the test.
Even today, I figured, I’ll get the newsletter done, and I’ll get my apartment cleaned up and my laundry done, and I’ll get the rest of my work done and clear my slate to go absolutely ape-shit in practice tomorrow. But I haven’t. I’m working through it all, sort of, but really I’ve just been sitting in my living room pissed the hell off.
On Wednesday, after practice and before dinner, I ran into a buddy who used to play and just got a job doing wealth management. We talked for a while about a bunch of stuff, including the fact that people say around his office, “this is a business; we compete around here.” They’re saying this in reference to things like taking advantage of German interest rates using a method someone else figured out. They pack things up at 5pm and go home.
The thing he said that’ll stick with me is, “man, people have no idea how hard it is.” Because he’s right. A lot of people have misconceptions about my job. They think it’s all super fun, because my job is what they do for fun on weekends; obviously what I do is different from what they do on weekends, and a lot of it isn’t all that fun. Other people think it’s glamorous — these are the people who ask, so “what’s the coolest place you’ve traveled to?” and don’t realize I’ve just come from Dothan, AL or Vass, NC.
Lots of people think that, because it’s challenging, it’s rewarding. This is largely true. But it’s not always true. There’s a lot of challenges that are menial and annoying and kafkaesque and bullshit (see: I can launch a ball 340yds down a fairway in the wind, but I can’t roll a ball along the ground ten feet into a fucking hole). I have no idea why I’m putting poorly. This is also the time of year when coaches are either booked out for three weeks or on vacation, and adding another event means I have to cancel lessons and reset the clock by a few weeks. And so I have to teach myself AimPoint and try to figure it out myself, knowing that I know more about putting than 99.99% of golfers anywhere, but that for whatever reason I can’t actually implement to the tune of losing four fucking strokes a round on the greens last week.
This is what I’ve been thinking about, all day, stuck inside, as it’s rained two whole inches outside and I’ve been helpless to do anything about it. I wouldn’t train it for a goddamn thing in the world — except, of course, a sunny day and being able to go to work. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but sometimes it kinda sucks. I hope that makes sense.
A lot of the lessons I learned on this week’s retreat are the things I need to implement right now. They’re hard, but I need to stay on top of them. I’d love to tell you more, but, to be totally honest, I need to focus all my energy on implementation right now.
I’ve got some fun stories to tell you later. Hopefully soon. Hopefully with a paycheck in my hand. It’s coming. Until then.