Tightropes

I long for the safe spotlight - holding an audience in the palm of my hand, anonymously. I would have killed for solos in college, for that brief moment when I got to step outside of the group and prove myself, but only for a second, a brief minute, before being absorbed back into the warm comfort of a larger group. 

Wind ensembles (and orchestras) hold both some of my best and worst memories. Competition is what kept me in music, and what drew me to sports, and what keeps you alive can also kill you. I'm seven years removed from my first All-State selection, and the pride I have in that accomplishment still sits hot in my chest some days, both warming me and warning me. 

I'm older now, obviously. I'm not "the best band director in the state of Texas," as a journal from my senior year of high school amusingly posits for my future. I've lived through mental breakdown, instrumental burnout, pain and sorrow and also joy. I graduated with a very expensive degree with a major that doesn't exist outside of that narrow world of music. I've played flute maybe ten time since I graduated. It doesn't mean that music doesn't still live inside me. 

These days, the most use I get out of my degree is putting together playlists and judging the hell out of anthem singers. 

I miss performing, especially on days when the mundane world is a little to close (and then I want to slap myself, because how artsy-pretentious is that, the "mundane world," if I were my own editor I'd cut that in a hot second.) I miss the way that music gets inside the bones, can create life from ink and paper. Most of all, I miss that precipice, being balanced on that point where you're both inside and outside, selfishly wringing the music for your own meaning while trying to let the audience have theirs. 

It's hard to get this back to sports, particularly now that I've stopped typing this to conduct music at my desk multiple times. Where does it connect? That competitiveness - everyone working both together and for themselves. You thought really great music came together through pure collaboration? No more than a good team is made of up truly selfless individuals. That's the dirty side of both music and sports - to be the best, you have to be a degree of selfish. 

It's that balancing point I was talking about - that's where the best happens. You walk the tightrope, multiple tightropes, and sometimes you fall off. Sometimes you get back on the same rope. Sometimes you find a new one. 

Sometimes you end up sitting ten stories up listening to yourself from seven years ago and wondering where this tightrope goes. 

Rambling on about shoes and the meaning thereof.

Got some new shoes today, technically for my birthday last week. 

I have to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about them, and that’s a problem. Not just because they were a very wonderful thoughtful gift, but because it’s a symptom. 

I’m constantly having to adjudicate myself, address myself, and consider the way I’m presenting myself when I’m at the park. We’re not just talking issues of professionalism. I work for a Fortune 500 company in real life. I know professional. But I have to be so careful that I’m not giving off an air of “I’m just here for the boys.” or that’s all I’ll be judged on. 

Heck, it’s all I’ve been judged on, sometimes. 

But that I’m sitting here thinking “I can’t wear my new baseball-themed flats to a game because of what it might say about me in the minds of outside observers…”

I’m not sure how I feel about that. 

No Words

I've got no words.

I'm three pieces behind, and yet all I have mental energy for is sitting on my bed watching hours and hours of hockey. I can't even begin to write this without feeling a kind of anxiety and frustration that is fairly nameless, my words eaten up in the blackness of my brain.

It's fucking baseball. (I don't normally curse on here.) It's not like I'm over here crafting the greatest speeches the world has ever seen. It's baseball. It's a piece on MLB and social media; a piece on the Texas Rangers minor leagues; a piece on Jurickson Profar. It's nothing earth-shattering, nothing mind boggling, nothing that should be causing me this much pain and heartache.

Writing is who I am, though, and if I cannot write, I am a failure.

I've beaten this particular drum before, attempted to exorcise my demons through written word, forcing myself to put fingers to keyboard despite my complete numbness towards creation.

It's extremely easy not to try, as I wrote earlier this week, plagiarizing myself in my utter lack of creativity. It's easy to curl up in a ball of non-being, losing myself in stupid tweets about hockey and an utter indifference towards my responsibilities.

Though, who would want me to write right now? My words are insipid and uninspired, my ideas flabby as my body, and I delete far more than I can. I've had so much coffee, and yet I still feel exhausted. Nothing works.

I've got no words.

On baseball, burnout, and the lure of giving up.

We all know the sporting cliches, the words and phrases supposed to pull from us the very last ounces of reserve. Give until you have no more, then find that last bit and give again, yes?

That sentiment is true other places than sports, as I’m sure everyone would agree. We see it in the workplace, we see it in school, we see it in life itself. The only problem with this is: When do you stop? When is okay to not juice the last few dregs of your soul, of your mind, of your heart into what you’re doing? When is it okay to look back and take a break?

Or can you ever?

Baseball is as big a part of my life as some people’s significant others surely are. Now, I don’t say that in a cheeky “baseball is my boyfriend!” kind of way, because that’s not who I am. For me, it’s just an immutable fact, like “my eyes are green” or “my wrists are screwed up.” Baseball is a part of my being, which is why being at a place where it’s hard to write about it, even harder to work up any real and true passion for it hurts.

I’ve been burned out before. In some ways, I still am: I played flute for eleven years, making it my major and my life, and walked away after I graduated. It’s now been almost a year and a half since I walked across that stage, and I’ve been able to play flute with a real sense of peace maybe four times in these last few months. It’s hard to have to be perfect.

I don’t mean that in some kind of self-indulgent way. I’m well aware that “perfection isn’t a destination, but a journey,” but that journey is what’s killing me. It’s nearly impossible to be good, much less great, at everything, but what else less is worth anything? If I’m not close to the best at this writing, at my “real job,” at everything but the parts of life that don’t leave physical evidence, then what am I?

Of course, it's really easy to contemplate the easy way out. If you can't be the best at anything, then why try? Just float along in a sea of mediocrity, never trying to be good, because failure only happens when you try. 

That's where I am right now, to be quite honest. At the intersection of doubt, exhaustion, and frustration, knowing what I don't know but not having time or energy to learn it. 

I may not write very much this year, and it kills me inside to realize that. Because what am I, if not a writer? 

writing exercise

Writer's block is deleting every sentence you start, because the words just aren't there and you aren't making any sense, and nothing you ever put to paper will ever be good enough ever again. 

It's writing the previous sentence, deciding you need coffee, getting distracted, and never actually getting back to either the piece, or the coffee (or the third thing.) 

It's being so utterly frustrated that you consider giving up this "writing thing" entirely, because who are you to want to write something good and interesting and fascinating (much less published)? 

It's having an idea, but not the brainpower to explore it. It's not having an idea. It's having an idea, only to find out that someone else wrote it far better than you ever could have, and again, you consider the various options for escape. 

It's spending hours dithering over what your perfect Spotify playlist to jar your brain out of its deadened mode is, and then giving up and actually doing your work. 

It's having to actually work, at a job, because no one pays writers anymore, and being so scared that the "grind" is going to exhaust you forever, is going to kill your creative soul, and render you bland and imitative. 

It's writing a list of one-to-two sentence complaints starting with "it" because there's something else you want to write but maybe if you can just make yourself put words onto paper and not let yourself delete anything but misspellings maybe just maybe you'll re-awaken that hibernating voice that lets you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and create. 

#BellLetsTalk

Depression is a multi-hued thing.

It's also something that is still impossible to talk about without fear of recrimination, retaliation, or misunderstanding from those in charge of your life and well-being.

I've struggled with depression my whole life. It was unnamed and destructive in high school, named and slightly more handled in college, and now it's something that's a part of my life, not in charge of it (most of the time.)

The hardest thing, every time, is to start the conversation. It's difficult to turn to someone and say "I'm drowning in my own mind," and not have it feel like an admission of weakness, an admission of failure, and those feelings can just contribute to the downward spiral (or at least they do for me).

So this is me, starting the conversation. If you struggle with depression, with bipolar, with anxiety, know that first, you aren't alone. Second, a single step is a still a huge leap, and I (we) am (are) here to listen.

-Kate

end of year

It’s the end of yet another calendar year, a time traditional for reflection and thought. I, of course, have never liked my reflection, and have been accused of little thinking.

This year’s been one of changes, one of learning to stand on my feet, one of learning to grade fastballs and curveballs both physical and metaphorical. It’s been a time of sadness and of hope, of joy and sorrow, of late nights in parking lots and early mornings for no pay. It’s hard to put these things in writing without looking the absolute fool, for everything that feels so strong inside my head looks dimmer in the light of day, but now I’m on this writing roll so you can stay (or you can go).

This isn’t your traditional piece, because I’ve never been your traditional writer. People do lists, they do tweets, they do jokes and lines of feats and I’d rather talk about my failures but failures can outline success.

Of course, at this time of year no one wants to hear about your failures. We’re all too busy pretending to be happy to be reminded of our mortality, and that’s fine! So this year was full of blessings and surprises, equal to the bleak reminders, and I swear some day I’ll stop trying to write in rhythms only I can hear.

To break from my structure: I wrote pieces I was proud of, pieces I could leave, and I learned a lot about myself from writing about other people. Baseball’s great to have, because its stories are our own, and we put them there, and getting the chance to write about it in its many forms was great. I’ve written locally and nationally now, something that not many people get to say, and now, I begin to get to my point.

All my life I’ve wanted to be famous. That’s a bit stupid to say, especially in this climate, especially as someone with a bachelors in music, applied flute, who writes about baseball. It’s not really fame I ever wanted in truth, just remembrance, just the thought that maybe someday someone will remember my existence. This year has been about un-learning that. Growing up, and learning that it’s a slow process. Writing isn’t defined by how many followers one has on Twitter, or who recognizes you at the ballpark, or who knows your sense of humor, or who comments on your pieces. Being isn’t about how many people know your name, or like your photo on Instagram. It’s about knowing that you, yourself, exist. That your writing, itself, is to the best of your current ability (not your past or your future) and that you can let it go out there and fend for itself in the wide world. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t change some of my pieces. There’s quite a few I look back on, things I wrote after Christmas 2013 about Wilmer Font or Luis Sardinas, things I would edit within an inch of their life, now. But that’s what growth’s about.

Sometimes I find myself wishing that one of my articles would show up in someone's end of year list, that something I wrote impressed someone else enough that they felt that other people needed to read it, but maybe next year, right? After all, though fame is stupid and fleeting, appreciation isn't, and goals, well, goals are great for setting.

I’m hesitating over even publishing this, as it’s slightly dumb and part-if-not-all-ramble, but hey, it’s Christmas. And that’s what we do at Christmas, isn’t it?

(End of year thanks, with all my heart: Erik Malinowski, for being the best mentor anyone could ask for; Jen Mac Ramos; Levi Weaver, for giving me music that kept me alive on the long drives back from Frisco; Or Moyal, for giving me a chance to find my words; Katy Clarke, for Corner Bakery dinners and press box jokes; Russell Carleton, for listening to my rambling even when I make no sense; Jason Wojciechowski, all of Baseball Prospectus but particularly Nick Faleris, Bret Sayre, Ryan Parker, and Sam Miller; the fine folks in the EDSBS commentariat; Scott Lucas and Tepid Participation, for answering my stupidest of questions; Nathaniel Stoltz; Melisa Oporto and Graham Jenkins, for hockey; and Holly Holl, for helping me out when I make stupid decisions.)