COMPETITION AND I ARE STILL ON THE ROCKS

With the help of someone in the Gonzaga basketball “secret society,” I now have the ability to watch Gonzaga Basketball games online and this couldn’t come at a better time as the WCC tournament in Vegas begins this upcoming weekend.  Today, I figured it would be a good idea to “test drive” the site where I can watch these games and so after my volunteering, I went to the Spanish Cafe and watched the most recent Gonzaga vs. St. Mary’s matchup from last week.  With this being the first time I’ve been able to watch the boys in action since early January, I have to say I experienced emotion similar to how a person might feel when after thinking their family dog ran away, it reappeared on their doorstep two months later.  Even with these kind of emotions and the game going into overtime, you’ll be happy to know I kept my viewing behavior within a PG, “Ernest Goes to Camp” kind of level.  Knowing the Zags won beforehand had nothing to do with this either. 

Just to quickly give everyone an update on my volunteering, I am still serving in the same area as I have been.  As to why my blog of late hasn’t touched on this part of my day in too much detail has more to do with things settling down than it does with me trying to keep things confidential.  This decline in activity with respect to my area of volunteering is bitter sweet really.  Sweet, because no activity in a way is good a thing, but bitter because our team has a suspicion that someone might have taken all the starfish and just put them on another beach.  Dying starfish isn't good for the beach front property after all.  If in fact our suspicion is true on this, I can only hope that the new beach where all the starfish went has a little boy on it too.  

      

After watching the Gonzaga game, I headed back to the Salvation Army where I played a couple more rounds of badminton as it was a beautiful day to hit the shuttlecock around.  I didn’t just say a swear word there did I?  When it was all said and done, I wish I could say I walked away happy with the doubles 21 to 14 win we had against my “archrival,” but the matches instead, served as a reminder to me that competition and I don't have the relationship I'd like us to have.  Sure, we've  come a long way from when we first met and I'm happy to say I don't let a bogie in miniature golf ruin a night of fun as I used to when I was younger, but we still have a long ways to go.  It’s really not competition’s fault as to why our relationship has been on the rocks for so many years though and if we ever had to cut ties, I think for once the line of “it’s not you, it’s me” would be spot on, assuming I was the one saying it.  The reason why competition can’t take the blame is because it is everything you’d want out of someone as it accepts you for everything you are and everything you aren’t and if you perform for the better or worse, it will still love you the same.  Competition and I, really are complete opposites the two of us.  On the one hand you have competition that always puts the game first and then there’s me who tends to put it second to my performance.  Where you have competition expecting me to just play to the best of my ability, you have me expecting to play beyond it.  If I make a bad shot, competition attributes it to me just being human, but I treat it as if I'm almost less of a person.  Why I can treat anyone else like competition treats me, but I can’t offer the same love to myself at times is the big mystery.  I hope I can figure it out though because it would be a shame if competition and I couldn’t work it out and I say this not because I don't want to lose 50% of my assets upon our separation, but because I just think we could have made a great couple.