"Failure pile in a sadness bowl"

One of my favorite comedians is Patton Oswalt and he does a bit where he talks about an entree from KFC and dubs it a "failure pile in a sadness bowl". I feel like that is a pretty good summary of my practices for most of this week, culminating in a giant heap of suck last night.

Now before anyone starts feeling like I need a pep talk, I promise you I don't. Having a crap practice (or several) just makes me want to try harder. I don't know if everyone feels like this, in fact I hope no one does, but I feel like I am constantly running from failure. The thought of not succeeding at something important to me gives me intense anxiety, sometimes to the point of waking up in a panic.

I don't know when this anxiety and self pressure started, but I've felt it for a long time. Growing up I was the youngest of 5 kids and the only child from my mom and dad's marriage. All of my brothers and sisters are much older than me so for the most part I grew up an only child.

I was a smart kid and I suppose that set high expectations as I grew up. No one in my family really knew how to support me in academics or athletics because none of them had done it themselves, but they wanted me to succeed at everything. My whole life has been figuring things out on my own and it's been tough at times, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Having never had anything come easy, I never expect anything to come easy. Unfortunately that also leads to the mentality that when it does, I am always waiting for someone to pull the rug out, hence the constant running from failure.

So what does all this have to do with derby? Well, sometimes a "failure pile in a sadness bowl" is good for us. Too often I think we tend to rest on their laurels and never really try to get any better. Sometimes we need these moments of failure to remind us that if we love what we're doing, we have to get up and do it better. In roller derby you are literally picking yourself up off the floor time and time again, mentally you just have to keep doing the same thing. Don't dwell on the fall, thrive on the recovery.