First, a Happy almost New Year to all! I’ve been feeling for a while a major energy shift, in small and big ways, and I am so looking forward to what 2020 will bring.
One thing I have gotten to do a lot of this holiday break that I didn’t expect to do is play tennis. I take a weekly class, so I knew I’d be playing on Monday, but then my husband and I did a Christmas Eve Drill and Play morning clinic from 9:30-noon and it was a blast, and then we met friends on Friday evening for a match of mixed doubles, which was also a blast! It was a really tight match, each point fought for and included many deuces and ad-ins and ad-outs, and in the end we lost in a tie break.
I absolutely love playing tennis and am so happy to do that as a good workout. Give me tennis over the treadmill every day of the week. I only started taking lessons again a few years ago after not playing for a few decades. Why did I ever let it go? I used to go hit against a wall multiple days a week when in my 20’s and occasionally I’d find friends to play with. And then somehow I just dropped it in favor of exercise classes and the elliptical machine. A mystery as to why when I really think about it. Aerobics classes are like torture to me.
Anyway, I found it again and I am so grateful. A fun no-pressure league, SuperTeam, starts up in a few weeks and will go through May. The team I was on won the championship last year. The big prize was a cardio tennis class, but it was still really fun to make it all the way to the end.
Tennis is a great teacher, and I’ve got great coaches and fellow players to make it a lot of fun to learn. What I mean by it being a great teacher is that it’s a process just like learning to make art is a process. When I learn a new building block in tennis it is another piece of the puzzle, but it’s usually a revelation and changes my whole game again and everything else adapts to this new thing. In this week’s case it’s top spin. Amazing what a difference some top spin can make. I love that! It just keeps changing and my game evolving and improving. Tennis, like art, is something I will never fully master, but I can get as good as I possibly can become, and that is really exciting.
Also, in tennis, like art, there is no skipping steps, faking it to get to a win, or willing myself to a level where I’m not until I do the work to get there. A few weeks ago one of the coaches, Mike, was talking about this and put it so well. He had his arm stretched out like he was holding something at a distance and said, “This is a WIN out here. Don’t focus on it. The only way you get to it is by learning, understanding and enjoying the process. The process is everything. Without that component the WIN over here is irrelevant and permanently out of reach.”
That is why I love it so much, I think. Tennis is a lot like art making. The process is everything, and you should love every step of the way. Embrace exactly where you are, learn the next thing, keep trying, keep experimenting, keep adapting to new skill sets, and don’t focus on outcome. If you don’t love the process the outcome doesn’t matter, does it? If I show, win an award for, or sell a painting I didn’t enjoy making what on earth would be the point? Also, the odds of that painting connecting to someone else would be greatly diminished if I labored over it and didn’t have love for it or making it.
My word for 2020 is ALIGNMENT. One decision at a time, choosing what aligns with who I am and what I want and what aligns with who I want to be. I know, you’d think that would be easy, right? Well, I have a history of people pleasing, overcommitting, and making simple decisions, like about dinner, for example, out of convenience or not really thinking about them much at all. So I am wanting to change my system of decision making and try it with a lot more intention and presence. This means a year full of tennis and art making and teaching, and volunteering at Misericordia for sure, and going along with this great shift in energy. Again, I am so looking forward to what 2020 has in store. I hope you are, too. Happy New Year!
To register for my weekly Tuesday afternoon class at the Oak Park Art League, go here. And here for Saturday morning workshops in gel plate printing, image transfer, working small and working big.
