Torn

I have had a lots going on in my life lately. It seems like stuff just keeps piling on. It is really starting to annoy me. It seems like I will never get ahead. No matter what I do or how hard I try things just keep getting worse and not better. Good thing I am not a quitter and I handle stress really well.

Right now the thing that has got me down the most is what is going on with soccer. I have just been able to start playing again after six weeks of being out injured. I tell you what, a torn MCL is not fun. It could have been worse though so I am grateful that it wasn't severe. But it was bad enough that even after almost two months it still hurts. The pain comes and goes but it is definitely there. Because of the injury I have gotten really out of shape. I also missed almost the entire soccer season. I don't mind standing on the sidelines being the coach. But when I should be out on the field playing it is really hard. It got frustrating standing there not being able to help my team. Once I was able to play again I was out of shape and couldn't keep up. That was really frustrating for me. I spent the whole winter making sure I was in good shape for the season only to have this happen in the first game. But I survived.

Now I have a real dilemma to deal with. I have been so flustered with things lately that I have seriously considered not doing the team any more. When I have practices like tonight where one person comes to practice it really makes me feel like I am the only one that really cares about the team. I know there are some people that can't come that would be there all the time and I understand that. But what gets me is people want to improve their game but they don't come to practice. I wonder if they think that the way I do my practices isn't going to improve their skills like running drills would. But I know from 25 years of playing and several years of coaching that drills will only gain you so much. Yes you need to do them. And we do. But most of the time we just scrimmage. I do this for several reasons. One, it is to get everyone in shape. By the end of the first half everyone is worn out. The second half is where you really need your energy so being in shape is very important. My game will definitely help with that. Second, I do it to practice the same things we would practice doing drills. Only in a game setting you learn faster. Passing drills are great but how often do you have a nice easy open pass option available to you? Often times you have someone running at you and you have to pass between two opponents. It is hard to practice that with just drills. Third, I use the small nets to help people improve their accuracy. Not only does it help improve shots on goal it helps you develop more ball control skills as well as passing skills. When you pass the ball to a teammate you have a smaller target to hit than those nets. Fourth, I do it so we can get a feel for how each other plays. That is probably one of the most important things to know in a team sport. You have to develop a trust in each other. You have to be willing to pass the ball to everyone on the team. Sure you can develop that team oneness by just playing in real games, but it takes a lot more time than the season allows. So splitting up into two teams and playing helps speed the process up. Fifth, I do it to make practice fun. Trust me. Doing nothing but drills for an hour and a half is not fun. Not fun at all. This league is about having fun. If the games are supposed to be fun then the practices should definitely be fun. So I do my best to make them fun. There are several more reasons that I do things the way I do but I won't list any more.

The thing that has me so torn is whether or not to continue the team. I really want to. I love the game. I hate not playing whenever I can. But it has been really hard keeping the team going. We lose at least half the team every year and we have to find new players. That makes it hard. It doesn't help that our winning record isn't all that great. I like the team we have right now. I think we have great team morale and that makes things fun for everyone. I would love to keep this team the way it is. But I don't think that will happen. It seems that people have been slowly dropping out. We used to have a good turnout at practices. Now we have pretty much no turnout. That breaks my heart. It makes me feel like I am not a good coach. Which in turn makes me feel like not running the team anymore. I could easily find a team to play on and then I wouldn't have to deal with all the manager stuff. It would certainly give me more free time and let me enjoy the game more. But at the same time I feel like it would be giving up my best friend.

So I have a short time to decide what I want to do. I just hope that everything works out so that I can still play the game and have fun doing it.

Life Sucks

Have I ever mentioned that life can realy suck sometimes? Right now my life is at a really sucky point. I won't go into details right now though. I just hope that things get better soon because I am getting tired of all this suckiness.

My new toy

I am writing this post with my new toy. My work bought me a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet. It is quite nice and I am enjoying it. Gotta love a company that spoils their employees every once in a while.

Summer Craziness

It has been a while since I posted anything on my blog. Things have been a bit crazy around my house lately. But then that is nothing new. My house always seems to be crazy. There is always a million things going on. So lets see. Where to begin...

The last post was about how I injured my knee. Well, there was good news and bad news with that. The results of the MRI showed that I didn't tear my meniscus. That was great news because that meant I didn't need surgery. The bad news was that I almost completely tore my MCL and completely tore some Osteo-something tendon that is in the middleish area of my knee. So that meant that I would be out from soccer for 6 weeks. Talk about bad news. What made it worse was it was the first game of the season. So I have been standing on the sidelines watching my team wishing I could be out there with them. But come Friday I will be back on the field. I am so excited. I have practiced a couple times with the team and haven't had much pain so I am good to go. The worst part of it all is that I am now really out of shape. So I will probably die during the game. Oh well. I am working on that. I am just happy that I can finally play again.

Next on my list would be Cub Scouts. I am the committee chairman and so far things have been tough getting started. We did have our fist pack meeting last month and it went well. We only had like 4 boys come though. I am hoping for double that this month. We are still trying to get all our leaders in place. That has proven to be quite a challenge. No one seems to want to do it. So I have been filling in as cub master since we don't have one. On top of all of that I need to start getting the scouting program started because I am the committee chairman of that as well. That might have to wait until the end of the summer before I can get that going. Right now my focus is cub scouts because the scouts have mutual to go to every week and the cubs don't have anything. The younger cubs have been having den meetings and now we have a two deep leadership in place for the older boys so now we can get their den meetings going. I just need to find some people for the middle boys. Hopefully soon that will be in place.

On top of all of this we have been trying to get Leona and the kids out to Cali for their summer trip to visit her family. Things have been rough this year because her dad hasn't been able to help out financially at all on the trip. Normally he buys his plane ticket out here and helps with the gas money for the drive back. He was injured at work last winter so he hasn't had the extra income he normally has so he hasn't been able to do that. So I have had to scrounge up every penny I had to get the wife and kids to Cali. But they made it there. So I am a bachelor for the next month. But trying to get them out there took a lot of effort and now I have to try to get everything in the house back in order. So I will be plenty busy even with the family gone.

So I have lots going on in my life right now. To top it all off, I am kinda looking for a part time evening job so I can pay off some debt. So far things haven't worked out because nothing seems to work with my other jobs schedule. I could always go back into retail but I would only do that as a last resort. I hate working retail. I did my time in retail and I was so glad the day I got out of it. I really don't want to go back. So I am hoping I will get lucky and find something that works for me.

I am going to call it good for this post. There is so much more to say but I don't feel like typing it all out right now. Maybe tomorrow I will get around to it...