Playing tennis and being at the beach for the last week reminded me of the reasons why I love tennis and surfing...so here's a random fun post about that...
Things I love about tennis
-the sound and smell of opening a fresh can of balls
-ball fuzz, and how it gets everywhere (in the soles of my shoes, between racket strings...etc)
-the squeaking sound of tennis shoes as they scurry to hit the ball
-drills and targets
-the personal and intense nature of the game. Just you against another person.
-that I feel like I can still be girly and be taken seriously
-that it is a sport equally valued among men and women
-the satisfying sound of smacking the ball right in the sweet spot
-spinning the racket in your hands as you wait for your opponent to serve
-the naturally polite and sportsmanship-focused nature of the game
-the perfect combination of strategy/skill and athletic ability. Both are absolutely necessary.
-while tennis can very much be a team sport, I like it for its individual quality. Probably because I like being in control (sigh). When something goes well, it is because of your skill. When you lose a point, it is also because of you. There is no blame shifting and full transparency in what kind of a player you are.
Things I like about surfing
-the smell, touch (and taste? no...just kidding) of surf wax
-the way water washes over the board for the first time in the day
-the science of waves (balls of energy that push water up as they crash into the sand. SO COOL)
-seeing the fish swimming below as you stand up on the board
-long rides and long boards (9 ft or longer only)
-getting as close to flying as humanly possible
-always knowing that it is never you controlling the waves. They are always more powerful, and surfing is like being allowed to enjoy their power. You're being moved by something much stronger then yourself, and you'll get to shore one way or another. If you let the wave do the work, you get there with speed and style. If you fight the natural motions of it, you end up in a tangled seaweed mess.
-feeling ridiculously small while sitting on the board in the vast ocean
-the feel of salt, sunscreen, and sand on your skin after a great surf session
Interesting. Tennis is all about perfecting your control over the ball, and surfing is all about realizing the lack of control you have over the ocean. Love them both.
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Friday, June 12, 2009
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Fling, Flung, Flang...Fun?
I got a fortune cookie once that said: "you need more fun in your life." Yeah. I know. What kind of fortune is that? I thought a lot about fun this weekend. One of my med school interview questions was: "what do you do for fun?" After a little internal chuckle, I replied: "Run, be active outside, read, play piano, talk with friends, hang out with my residents.." The guy gave me a look like "are you serious, wow, you have no life." I don't know...those seem like legit fun things to me.
It's hard to be an RA in the quad during fling and not switch into "high judgment" mode. After writing up dozens of people, coordinating medical transports, calling for barf clean-ups, and watching your relatively normal and responsible residents go totally nuts, and still having it be a part of my job to "punish" these kids, it's hard to remain judgement-free. Here I am being all good and clean and responsible and what do I get for it? hallways of barf. Not exactly the easiest moment to remmeber I've got my own internal hallways of barf...I just have the priviledge of being able to keep them relatively hidden. In that sense, there is an element of freedom, or at least honesty, in outward debachaury.
But back to the theme of fun. The lines between work and fun are not as defined for me as they are for some. There isn't much that I do that I would say is wholly devoid of fun [except pchem]. But on the flip side, I also don't do much that is wholly devoid of some kind of work. [hmm, this probably requires a definition for what exactly 'work' is] For example, I am having a great time writing my final research paper on Faulkner's representations of American cycles of poverty. That's a more nerdy example of what I mean by blending work and fun. But it does make me question: do I know how to have fun? really? Do I shirk away from fully non-work and all-fun situations because maybe I don't know how to interact in them? Do I not know how to let loose and have fun? What do these fun flingers have that I don't, in that respect? Where should the balance rest between interacting with the world around me, and drawing back to do my own thing? Is the "doing my own thing" a result of judgement/pride and even resentment that other people are having fun, and even though it's not the kind of fun I want to have, they're still having fun and I'm not? or am I really content with just having my kind of fun be a little different?
I find it somewhat problematic that at the mention of Spring Fling, my initial reaction is...ok, whose house can I go hang out at to get away from it. I can name tons of reasons for why I would more readily flee from Fling than from other situations of brokenness [and yeah, i think i can say Fling has got some brokennes to it when I find couples having sex in the public trash room...]. But at their cores, what makes one broken situation different from another? Why is it so much easier for me to love the homeless guy who refuses to accept food from me but will take my money to, theoretically, buy alcohol with? than to love drunk penn kids at fling? I mean, I do have some answers to that questions, but are they legit answers? Not really. These kids are my neighbors in the most literal sense of the word, and yet this weekend I would rather think of some obscure poverty-ridden country than about some of the more tangible problems that exist on campus. And that left me somewhat in a state of apathy this fling. I saw tons of stuff I could have written up, but didn't. I just didn't feel like putting the effort in to argue with another group of drunk people to get their Penncards and write them up and internally know that nothing was actually going to happen to them. So in that respect I'm kind of diappointed in myself that I wasn't consistent with the rules. Consistency is important when it comes to inforcing protocol. I guess it's just hard for me to see students who really do have opportunities that others will never have, simply by being here or by having grown up in the family/culture environment that they did, and then not using it. But then, I guess on the tiniest scale, that's what God feels. He gives us life and we still find ways of breaking it up. And at the end of the day, that's really why I'm not allowed any judgement on the residents I write up. Without mercy and grace, God would have written me up so many times the 'house dean' definitely would have kicked me out of the 'quad.'
It's hard to be an RA in the quad during fling and not switch into "high judgment" mode. After writing up dozens of people, coordinating medical transports, calling for barf clean-ups, and watching your relatively normal and responsible residents go totally nuts, and still having it be a part of my job to "punish" these kids, it's hard to remain judgement-free. Here I am being all good and clean and responsible and what do I get for it? hallways of barf. Not exactly the easiest moment to remmeber I've got my own internal hallways of barf...I just have the priviledge of being able to keep them relatively hidden. In that sense, there is an element of freedom, or at least honesty, in outward debachaury.
But back to the theme of fun. The lines between work and fun are not as defined for me as they are for some. There isn't much that I do that I would say is wholly devoid of fun [except pchem]. But on the flip side, I also don't do much that is wholly devoid of some kind of work. [hmm, this probably requires a definition for what exactly 'work' is] For example, I am having a great time writing my final research paper on Faulkner's representations of American cycles of poverty. That's a more nerdy example of what I mean by blending work and fun. But it does make me question: do I know how to have fun? really? Do I shirk away from fully non-work and all-fun situations because maybe I don't know how to interact in them? Do I not know how to let loose and have fun? What do these fun flingers have that I don't, in that respect? Where should the balance rest between interacting with the world around me, and drawing back to do my own thing? Is the "doing my own thing" a result of judgement/pride and even resentment that other people are having fun, and even though it's not the kind of fun I want to have, they're still having fun and I'm not? or am I really content with just having my kind of fun be a little different?
I find it somewhat problematic that at the mention of Spring Fling, my initial reaction is...ok, whose house can I go hang out at to get away from it. I can name tons of reasons for why I would more readily flee from Fling than from other situations of brokenness [and yeah, i think i can say Fling has got some brokennes to it when I find couples having sex in the public trash room...]. But at their cores, what makes one broken situation different from another? Why is it so much easier for me to love the homeless guy who refuses to accept food from me but will take my money to, theoretically, buy alcohol with? than to love drunk penn kids at fling? I mean, I do have some answers to that questions, but are they legit answers? Not really. These kids are my neighbors in the most literal sense of the word, and yet this weekend I would rather think of some obscure poverty-ridden country than about some of the more tangible problems that exist on campus. And that left me somewhat in a state of apathy this fling. I saw tons of stuff I could have written up, but didn't. I just didn't feel like putting the effort in to argue with another group of drunk people to get their Penncards and write them up and internally know that nothing was actually going to happen to them. So in that respect I'm kind of diappointed in myself that I wasn't consistent with the rules. Consistency is important when it comes to inforcing protocol. I guess it's just hard for me to see students who really do have opportunities that others will never have, simply by being here or by having grown up in the family/culture environment that they did, and then not using it. But then, I guess on the tiniest scale, that's what God feels. He gives us life and we still find ways of breaking it up. And at the end of the day, that's really why I'm not allowed any judgement on the residents I write up. Without mercy and grace, God would have written me up so many times the 'house dean' definitely would have kicked me out of the 'quad.'
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