So we had a substitute (a super awesome one) for my first abnormal psychology class tonight which = no syllabus = no hwk.
My whole Wednesday was going to revolve around preparing for Thursday (hwk, reading ahead, etc.) and now since I don’t have any homework, I was offered the coveted position of doing Kristen’s homework…that is until I was told it was critically analyzing a ridiculous poem for AP English (Forge, by Seamus Heaney). Sidenote: I don’t do homework for my players, I just like trying to attempt their assignments to make myself feel dumb—-unless it’s science and editing college essays.
Anyway, it made me realize how much I hate poetry in the sense of trying to formulate a reason for why a poet wrote what he/she did. Why this is important, I have yet to learn…and maybe I’m just being ignorant about the beauty of poetry written by the same types of authors.
Anyway, to make myself love poetry again, I decided to read some Shel Silverstein.
Why can’t poems just be this awesome? Maybe I’ll try this strategy tomorrow. Silverstein’s genius.
The past 2 months I’ve given a lot of time & energy to something that I truly love, and people that I see so much potential in. I try hard not to get sucked in emotionally, but in all honesty, how can I not. I took the Myers-Briggs Personality test a few years ago and I was 99% Feeling. What a shock.
They’ve defeated me by accomplishing things in their life that I know that would have been hard for me to tackle even today at the slightly seasoned age of 24 (going on 25). They don’t see it now, but resiliency is what builds people to be who they are. At some point, all that pain (physical, emotional) turns into something bigger called, character. They argue with me now about the facets of life, and their words are accurate with their life experience so I don’t fault them one bit for disagreeing with me. I can’t help but try to slap some optimism into them, yet I know that they won’t fully absorb any of what I say until they experience it themselves…because gosh darn-it, I totally believe any of it when I was 17, but I know it now.
I’m emotionally invested in their success because I don’t know how to approach it otherwise, but come the next three months, I have to take some of the energy and invest in my own success towards the next step in my life which is a little scary. If you’re gonna talk the talk you gotta walk the walk, so when things get rough the next month or two, I know I have to set my priorities straight. Somedays coaching will get trumped by school, and some days school will be trumped by conversations with people late at night. It’s a balancing act, but I think I’m ready.
I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test a few times and I’ve always landed as an INFP..and the more I look at the description the more terrifyingly (good) accurate it is:
INFP
Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened.
My friend Lisa told me that the great thing about personality tests is not necessarily who you are, but who everyone else is. If you can understand other people’s personality types, the easier it will be to interact with others and not become frustrated or slighted by things that they say. Wise words indeed.
The 16 MBTI personality types
So, this year for Christmas, our family did a secret santa gift exchange instead of everyone having to buy presents for each person. All gifts had to be under $20 
Here is a pic of us with our goodies! Merry Xmas!
All in all, I think that I’m the happiest that I’ve been in a long time. My life has been flooded with basketball lately and I’m loving it. The coaching staff that I’m a part of share the same amount of love for our girls as people, not just as players, and that’s rare and wonderful to have. It’s not really the basketball that gets me going, it’s all the stuff that is associated with it — being part of a team, watching that team grow, having conversations with players about non-basketball related stuff, having them know that I’m always here for them if they need to talk about anything, and that tradition lives on in the spirit of Lynbrook basketball.
There are so many things that are still around 9 years after I’ve left the program. They still do a team huddle and stick their feet in the center and pull them out one at a time. I saw them do it the other day and had an “oh my gosh” moment. Funny thing is that we started that while I was there, and we were just messing around and then just kept doing it before games and now it’s a tradition?!? It’s quite funny how that all works out huh?
I love being around the girls, and while we started off kind of slow as a team, we’ve jelled a ton this past weekend and now it feels like things are rollin’, people are getting comfortable with each other and have each others’ backs on and off the court. It’s so rewarding to see them having fun, wanting to work hard, and just be around eachother. It’s winter break for them right now and we’re not having mandatory practices, but a boys’ coach opens up the gym from 10am-noon and today we had 9 out of 12 girls there, plus 2 alumni and 2 coaches. Pretty awesome I’d say. Tomorrow looks like we’ll have most of the girls and we’re planning to do some refining on plays, freethrows, 3-pt shooting, and then get some playing in.
I am so thankful to be a part of it all this year–more than the girls will know. They are such a good group and I really hope they get the friendships that I got out of it, the knowledge of how to build a team and sustain it, and just simply learn to love the game for what it is.
We took an impromptu trip up to Tahoe this past Saturday to take part in Northstar’s $25 Learn-how-to-snowboard promotion where you get a rental, lift ticket to beginner’s lifts and a lesson for $25. The four of us took off at 5:30am for the 4 hour drive and we made amazing time thanks to Jason’s speedy driving and excellent planning.
My goal this time was to be able to link my toeside and heelside turns together to start carving, and also not to take any huge spills down the mountain, because I don’t have health insurance right now until Jan 1st and I promised my mother that I actually wouldn’t go snowboarding until 2011. I like to think that I upheld my part of the deal by being in control down the mountain and only falling hard on my behind once. It was my first time at Northstar and I loved it. As Jason says, it was very controlled chaos, even the rental process went very smoothly despite the swarms of people and every single person that was working that I encountered was friendly beyond anything that I expected. When I was thinking of crowds, I was definitely imagining having to wade through swarms of people or wait in the lift lines for 15-20 minutes at a time, but getting on the lift took maybe 2-3 minutes of waiting each time.
I was so focused on picking up carving and not fall, that I definitely failed at taking pictures this trip 
I did take two UNPOSED pictures of the guys while they were talking to Alana as she was coming down. Haha, the picture of Pete totally looks posed, but I promise it wasn’t because he had no idea I even took a picture.
The best thing about my brother coming home is that HE LOVES THE WARRIORS TOO! I didn’t realize he was coming home this early, but I’m super happy that there was a home game this week and that I didn’t have a game to coach (finals week) so that we were able to go watch the Warriors play the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves (My brother was born in Minnesota, and we lived there for 7 years).
I fell in love with my season ticket seats again. I’ve gotta say, those corner seats in the lower level give you a great view, and sitting higher up rows-wise gives you a much better overall view of the court. The Warriors snapped their 7 game losing streak, and now I can only hope that Stephen Curry’s ankle gets better before the Warriors host the Trailblazers on Xmas day. I think I made a great choice getting seats further away from the aisle because then you dont have to keep getting up to let people out and you dont get blocked by people walking in the aisle. Our seats are also close to the bathroom and to FOOD My brother and I tried the chicken tenders & fries as well as the lemonade which is totally my drink of choice at games. A little pricey, but since I’m not able to make it to many games, splurging a little bit is justified.
So the Warriors have teamed up with Facebook to offer deals to fans who check-in at games. Basically, you log into facebook on your phone and check-in and you can redeem a coupon on your phone for a voucher for some special thing after the game. We picked up our vouchers and the meet-n-greet after the game with a player was Jeremy Lin!
Before he came out, we spotted Kevin Love on the other side of the court. Jim Barnett came out on the mic and started talking about the game saying “The team did a great job of negating Kevin Love this game….” and all of the fans were like “HE’S STANDING RIGHT THEREEEE!”
We got to sit 4 rows from the floor and listen to him answer some questions. Jim Barnett asked him if he had any last words for his fans, and he said “I guess Facebook is dominated by Asians”…poor Jim Barnett had no idea what to say and Jeremy looked at him and said “Oh, did you want me to say ‘thank you’?”
All in all, an awesome night.
Can you find me? Jeremy is blocking my brother with his head!!
That is, falling into one.
I’ve been away from work now for a little over a month and trying desperately not to fall into a rut, which I guess I already had expected would be rearing its ugly little head right about now.
Coaching basketball is great and all, but sometimes you need some momentum in your own life pushing you forward to feel satisfied and productive each day. Living at home is nice for saving rent, but in all honesty, if it made logical sense in my head financially, living close , but not at home would be ideal.
I’ve been trying to put all the pieces together for the next step in my life starting with figuring out pre-requisites that I need to finish up and where I can take them at. With the budget cuts these days, there definitely aren’t as many anatomy classes with cadaver labs which is one of the main classes that I need to take in order to apply in October for occupational therapy.
Navigating the community college registration system has turned me in circles, but I think that I’ve finally figured it out after incessant link-clicking on each school’s website. I tried to register a few days ago for human anatomy at West Valley, but the system wouldn’t clear me because I hadn’t had my pre-reqs from Pomona cleared in their system (GAH..novice). So, now instead of getting one of the last 7 open spots in the class, I’m pretty sure I’m #17 on the waiting list. I can only cross my fingers and wish at 11:11pm each day that a tremendous number of people drop the class or don’t show up the first day so that I can be let in. Good thing though is that De Anza’s registration isn’t until Dec 6th, and I made sure that I would be cleared of all pre-reqs so that I can at least get into abnormal psychology this quarter.
I’m kind of excited to start filling up my day with scheduled events, even if it is classes or volunteering. I need something to snap me out of being reliant on basketball for motivational juice and excitement–because honestly, it’s hogging most of my brain right now and it can’t be that way.
I finished a few projects including designing the t-shirts for our basketball team this year and finding a pretty rad new screenprinter who rushed our order and still kept the quality in the shirts. I made a few stickerbooks when moo.com had their sale and I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out.
I do miss living in Oakland, close to friends that I made up there and being able to eat all the various types of cuisines and easy access to SF. It’s all a little too hetero/suburbish here, which is comfortable, but frankly kind of unexciting at times. I also miss being able to zip up to Sacramento quickly.
I wonder if I was born to be a nomad. I really don’t think I can live in one place for more than a year or two at a time. I get real antsy, and want to get OUT! Moved to Berkeley, lived in a house for a year, moved to another house for another year and half, moved back home, contemplating moving to Sac for the summer, kind of hoping to live in the South for awhile ….it’s all real interesting if you could read my mind.
Goals for the next few weeks:
1) Schedule time to see friends
2) Send out coverletters/resumes for volunteering–and land one?
3) Start on Xmas presents/cards
I’ve had that quote on my phone for a long time now, and with some nudging from friends and support from coworkers, it was time to make it happen.
It takes a lot for me to move on from things because I am always hoping for the better, and hoping that things will change, but when things that directly affect you don’t change after 2 years, and you’ve tried your best to advocate for the change and done what you can to explain the circumstances, it’s time to get out.
So, I finally feel like I am living life again, being a person that I can be happy with. I’ve since moved back home to San Jose from Oakland, and started coaching basketball at Lynbrook as an assistant coach to a group of girls that are pretty gosh darn awesome and with a coaching staff that care about the girls’ well-being as much as they love winning, maybe even more, and that’s what basketball is all about in my eyes.
I’ve been dabbling in a few projects, new tshirt design, selling the old stuff, making some stickerbooks from moo.com , and trying to get my body healthy again from my work injury in June.
Figured out a tentative schedule for my future career plans, pre-req classes, deadlines to watch out for, and hopefully will land a volunteer stint or paid internship in the next few months. Also on the plate are GREs.
It does sure feel good to breathe again, and not let others dictate my emotions.
Hello blog, I’m back
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