Mental F*ck

This past weekend I was playing in our local Fall League game with my long standing team, Tsunami. I have to say that it's the first game I came away completely mentally, f'ed over. Not like "oh I am mentally exhausted" but to quote Dylan's and I new favorite Order of the Stick Cartoon "My brain feels like a psion . . . did psiony stuff". To explain how mentally I am tilted by the game it has been over 2 days since the game and I am still wondering what happened.
I had 5 turn overs in a point, now that is not to say that I've never had that many in a single point, or had more, but for some reason I made the worst mental adjustments and choices during that point and I hit a wall. Anyone who knows me as an ultimate player/coach knows I am a cheer-leader and a talker. No matter where I am on the field or off my voice can be heard and it's one of my biggest assets. However, on Saturday I hit a mental wall. I couldn't cheer, I couldn't get enthused about what we were doing and I realized that often times I am alone in talking to teammates on and off the field. I was simply stunned how silent the game seemed when I wasn't talking, it amazed me. How do people play a team oriented sport without communication?
I think the more alarming fact of my mental shutdown was that I had been working specifically on my mental preparedness for Ultimate in general. I have begun observing more video footage of top players each day before practice and games, putting myself in a top player mindset. I have been striving to arrive at games 30mins or more in advance to make sure my body is fully warmed up prior to games. I have also been selecting pump up music to listen to on drives to practice/games to better set myself for the work and toil that a physical activity demands. That being said it was not enough this time around.
How do we combat the mental turmoil that we face in every day life? How do teams take themselves from a soul-crushing loss to win in the following game-to-go? I recently order a book by Travis Steffen called Peak Performance Poker which I am hoping can help me with life goals not just in my poker education, but Ultimate, and work too. Travis is a recent addition to the DeucesCracked Coaching Team. Tina Booth recently had an article in the USA Ultimate Magazine talking about the dynasty of the Amherst Program and the mental training she puts her players through. She talks of working with a sports psychologist Dr. Alan Goldberg on "mental toughness", through the visualization of top plays prior to games and practices. I am hoping I can use more of these tools to work on my mental toughness but I ask you, how do you cope with defeats and loss in games/life/ultimate/poker/what you are passionate about?

Vegas Day 2

So Friday comes and like all good degens we don't get up till like noon. Game plan is as people wake up text my cell and we'll figure things as the day unfolds. Today Charlie and Philbrook arrive in the afternoon evening then come late evening we are joined by Margo and our East Coast contingent of Tara and Ed. We have crepes at Paris Paris (a tradition) by this point and do some wandering. My ability to walk the strip is hampered by my knee and back so I can only make it to the Paris Paris before having to come back to the Trop. I spend the afternoon getting some work for Deuces done as I am the only one still state side for the company :)

That afternoon and evening we have dinner at . . . you know I don't remember. Bryan and Aaron are still hitting poker rooms hard. Laura and Charlie both have show tickets (Phantom of the Opera and O, respectively). Now I remember we all meet up for a late dinner at the Venetian. Dylan had dinner with his cousin but joined us later. Then he headed back to make sure the late comers could get into a room. Ah good friends. After dinner we caught a cab back to the Trop and met up with the others who had just landed. We played board/strategy card games till around 3am before finally crashing. Tara made the mistake of never adapting to West Coast vampire mode so she goes to bed early each night, sad I know.

Earlier that day I got confirmation from Skip that we are going with a truncated format. My team, Tsunami, plays 4 games beginning at 3pm and ending at 8pm with a bye in the second hour. Cool by us, we are here to play frisbee AND have fun. If we win our pool we go to bracket on Sunday, if we lose the pool we are done, 2-4 in the pool and we play 1 crossover game at 8pm on Sunday. Yeah Sunday night, 1 game. This later changes but you'll have to read the next post to find out how.

Vegas BABY!!!!

I leave for Vegas in two days. For those not aware I take an adult coed team down to have fun on and off the field (i.e. this is an excuse for my friends and I to hangout in Vegas every year). This year Cat won't be going, new position at work would make it hard for her to take time off and I will be sad she's not there. This will be a strange trip for me without Cat there, me not being able to play in the tournament, and having so many random pickups playing with us. I look forward to the trip but still skeptical how well it will work out with 4 girls and 8 guys playing a coed tournament, but I think all of us know it's not about the win/loss but about the fun and mischeive we can make while there. Almost everyone has at least 1 or 2 extra days with us and it should be fun. I am hoping to get in some good hours at the poker tables as I want to increase my bankroll before I return to learning/playing online poker next month. I will post more on that later, but for now I got to get back to work so I can get some rest before PT in the morning.
On a side note I have gone 3 straight days doing all my exercises and my knee/back are feeling better and stronger. Next benchmark is in May for sockeye/Voodoo/Downpour tryouts.

Hectic Life

So it's been over two weeks since I last posted and a lot has happened in that time. Cat's mother and father came into town for four days. They had a great time or so it seems. They went to the museum of flight and the Tacoma Glass Art Museum. I've never been to the Tacoma Glass Art Museum before so I joined them for the day. I was very cool, I've always been a fan of glass art, especially Chihuly. It's great when we are with them as they are so generous even when visiting us they pay for everything. We also had dinner with my folks and went and saw Body of Lies. I don't care for Leonardo DiCaprio don't think I ever will. His vote just grates on me.

Ultimate has been going well. My shoulder is still on the mend but it will get there. We just wrapped up winter league for both my hat team and Tsunami. Both teams had some success this year. It's fun to play with Margo, Rob, and Dylan and I look forward to Vegas in January. Tsunami might make a come back next year, we still need a couple more women and some more confidence but the wins we got this season were definite steps in the right directions. I don't have any more Ultimate scheduled till January so I am hoping to go run some track twice a week starting Thursday.

This Friday will mark my first day back as an Aquarium Volunteer. I haven't volunteered there in at least 6 years and I am looking forward to it. The backend operations have changed a bit since I was last there but I am sure I will get back into the groove easily enough. I made some new friends at training but unfortunately they don't work the same days/times as me. I hope to go visit them on occassion as now I get in free.

The DC holla crew was in town last week. I was crazy at times with video releases and lunch, not to mention the home game on friday. I walked away up but like with most of the moe game of Rob's it was purely a coin flip situation. Work is going really well. I was given a raise to start November off and we are running well with our final season of the year before we launch DCv2. Everyone is looking forward to the new release. I've had some major projects come my way that keep me busy, I was even working 9 hours the other night due to some technical issues beyond my control. I like the company and I think I am a good fit for them, once again just lucky and in the right place at the right time.

My own poker playing is not going so well. I am down 14 buy-ins at 25NL as I attempt to learn how to play NL. I was a decent winner at limit micro-stakes but I am attempting to learn NL as that is where most of the fish are nowadays. I'm watching videos and attempting to make my play better, but it is always a slow grind.

Home life is good. I realize that I don't get as much accomplished in my own personal life as I do in work or other things that take me outside the house. I really should have finished putting the office together by now, but I haven't even cleaned my desk once yet or got caught up on balancing the books. I've set the short term goal to clean my desk tonight when I am up. Little battles, little battles.

Fitness, Poker, and Fish

This is a little bit of everything. I am sitting here playing 25NL poker and I am not doing terribly well. I make some bad choices on the all-ins but I am still learning. I love the game of poker, wish I had some more approval from my folks, but my Dad is one of those who firmly believes that you cannot be a winner at poker over your lifetime. I finished the last couple episodes of the WSOP coverage before the final table airs next week. I still hope to buy-in to the WSOP main event by age 30 which means i have 4 more years. I don't want to win, I just want to compete. I watch and see people bust out with 500k in winnings and I would be estatic to win just that small amount which I think is more than I have made total in my life.

Ultimate Championships are coming up this Thursday through Sunday and I have tons of friends who are playing in the various devisions. Now I am delighted at all of their success but it makes me look back on my playing career and wonder what I could have done if I had trained harder. I wonder what I can possibly do from here on out as I am 26 and perhaps have a couple years where I can be in true prime condition, but I look at people like Britt Atack and he is in rediculous shape and definitely not in his early 20's anymore. I hope I can change my path and come May I want to be playing for a better team. I love the guys on Downpour but I want to acheive something greater in the world of frisbee. I want to go to the big dance in Florida.

Two weeks ago I began a training program at the Seattle Aquarium to be a volunteer. I am using it mainly to get my foot in the door as I want to be a biologist there but as of yet i cannot even get a job interview. Whenver a position opens up they have close to 1000 applicants and it's just so hard to stick out on resume' andd job experience alone. It's going well and it's something I have been through before but I go through it with trepidation sometimes. I like the people and the facility is great, I just don't know that I want to put in 100 hours in touch tanks before I am allowed to do anything else. I did get to see an old friend (Becky) who runs special events so it's nice to still see the same old faces around. We'll see how it goes.