Of Rain

The sound of "Sleeping Lessons" by The Shins again awoke me this morning, and with it came the sound of rain outside. Why on earth is it raining in February? The weather this winter has been very strange, and even though I am still yet to ever strap on skis or a snowboard, I'm disappointed in the lack of snow. Pretty much every single weekend forecast has shown snow Thursday - Sunday and almost every week it's either not snowed, snowed a few flakes, or rained like today. 

This weekend we should be in Tampa at our second ultimate tournament of the season. Last year at this time we were given the gauntlet of playing the 1st, 4th, 5th, 14th, 17th, 18th, and 20th ranked teams in a two-day span. This year I'm sitting in Harold writing a blog post and wishing my Vans didn't have a split in the seam on the left shoe that got the toes and ball of my foot wet. I'm wearing my Waffle House hoodie today instead of enjoying a peanut butter/choco chip waffle and a bacon hashbrown bowl. It is insane that Monday will mark an entire year since our last collegiate or club ultimate game. I don't think anyone anticipated COVID shutting down sports and life for so long, and it's still very unclear as to if or when we'll have competitive games again. 

A teammate expressed to me this week that he was having a hard time staying motivated with nothing really on the horizon. It made me to take a step back and think about how motivated I am. After thinking about it briefly I concluded that I've actually loved those early mornings. I love getting up and getting in hours of work with the boys before morning classes. I'm willing to wake up at 5:30 most mornings because I like playing competitive ultimate, and you cannot find that at Kiwanis park playing pickup with your fhe group. I love hitting the gym and translating that strength to more physicality, durability, and explosiveness on the field. I love the associations I've been blessed with in my years playing this sport.  

After further thought I realized that this motivation/interest principle totally applies to school, work, and other undesirable tasks. On Monday I'll spend several hours either downloading 4500 + xml files one by one or creating some tool that will automate those downloads. I'm excited about it because I'm very interested in this project for the BYU men's volleyball team. Other school assignments or other life tasks aren't nearly as exciting, so I need to be better at looking at the big picture and greater purpose and letting that provide me with motivation to get after things. 

Happy Valentine's Day from CHI from Tampa, 2020