I Like to Play Soccer

I’m about halfway through the third season back playing soccer. The last two weeks have been a bit rough because sone genius at the soccer office thought it’d be hi-fucking-larious to have us play two games a week for two weeks running. I was game all the way until the end of the third game. At that point I’d strained my left quad and was hiding it. Then came last night’s game and I knew it was hurting but I roughed it out. Then I bruised my right quad 30 minutes into the game. Now if you haven’t played soccer, quadriceps are incredibly important. It’s where most of the power for kicks come from. Also since I dive a lot it’s where my primary source of shot stopping comes from.

So at halftime I was lying down stretching and hoping my legs would stop hurting. No luck. Needless to say it’s at this point that the other team presses and bow I get to try and atop more shots and take more goal kicks. We held out well enough. My problem with goal kicks is that my technique is sketchy at the best of times. Factor in sore legs and fatigue and you can forget it. Sadly the forwards weren’t reacting to it like that. Instead they would insist that I try and boot 40 yards to them every time. Ugh. Finally someone got the message and started taking the kicks for me.

Also making body twisting kick saves…bad for quads. Just sayin’.

Bragging on myself/ Ragging on myself

Running gives me a lot of time to think of things. One of those things came to me while running, essentially, I’m gonna talk big about myself, and then talk crap about myself. I don’t know why I want to do this, it just feels like an exercise worth the time, at least on the introspective side.

I graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA, and college with a 3.0, and went on to grad school and got a 3.5 again. I started reading at the age of four, mostly because I wanted to be like my big brother (a recurring theme). I started playing the violin at nine. I’m reasonably proficient at it, in that I can play most pieces of music without causing people to wince given enough time. I taught myself to play the drums, have yet to capitalize on that and get a band together. I can read French, and make myself mostly understood in it (yay franglais!). I’m a reasonably well learned geologist with a good grasp of subsurface fluid movement and particle dispersion. People actually want to play soccer with me! I can cook well enough. It may make me the sixth best cook amongst all of my friends, but I won’t starve if you gave me raw meat and veggies…or have to live on raw veggies. I’ve lost 100 lbs in 3 years.

I rely too much on being able to remember things that I read or are told to me. If I think something is too hard, I won’t do it or I’ll change what it is so that I don’t have to do it. I allow personal and physical inertia to overtake any ambition I have. I can’t start a conversation with someone I just met. I allowed opportunities to slip by because I’m timid or didn’t think I was worth it. My attention span is either to short or too intense at the wrong times. I gained 150 pounds in 10 years because I was too full of my “freedom” to understand the real harm I was doing to myself. I tell jokes that aren’t funny mostly to get reactions out of people. I try to avoid offending people or getting into uncomfortable discussions because I want everyone to like me.