Following! ❤️

Time to bore you with an overly detailed account of my Tennis Elbow 4 career so far.   If you followed my previous challenge, you'll know that I had to restart my career in the game, because an update in the mods that I run had caused a conflict in my savegames - a conflict that arose from me modifying some files myself last year.   So,last weekend I started over from scratch. I'm playing as "young me", a 13-year-old tennis player who is starting as an unranked junior in 1995. Young TimovieMan is a counter-puncher that mainly plays from the baseline, loves to use the opponent's power to outpace him, and enjoys making his opponent run all over the court (mainly so he won't have to run so much himself). He's fast, has good stamina, and is well-balanced in his service, forehand and backhand. His biggest weaknesses are returning big servers, and net play because he has no net presence and poor volleying skills. That's why he prefers to remain at the baseline, but in turn, that makes him somewhat vulnerable to drop shots.   The game starts in 1995, so with the gift of foresight, young TimovieMan will work his way through the junior rankings in the first seasons, start making headway in the futures tournaments and then the challenger tour before going pro. At that point, he'll want to compete with Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, then Gustavo Kuerten, then Lleyton Hewitt, and then spend the rest of his career butting heads with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.   Of course, I play *full* matches, so this will take a VERY long time.   As a 13-year-old junior, I'm limited to 12 tournaments in the entire season, so I'll be playing 1 tournament per month in 1995.   I started January 1995 by joining the grade D junior tournament in Arlon, Belgium. For some reason, despite being in my home country, I didn't get a wildcard for the main event, so had to play qualifying matches. I comfortably won my first two, but the last qualifying match was against an opponent who was a couple of years older and who had FAR better stats. He mopped the floor with me 6-0 6-0, keeping me from the main event. With his stats, I had him pegged for the tournament win, but he lost in the quarter-finals to a player with similar stats and who did win the tournament. That quarter-final match was the only "even" match the winner played...   In early February, I joined the qualifiers for the grade D tournament in Bromma, Sweden. A similar scenario played out: I won my first two qualifiers before losing to Nicolas Tourte in the final qualifying match. It was a close 3-set slog, though. I won the first set 6-4, but lost the second in the tie-break, at which point my opponent started outplaying me tactically and won the final set 0-6. Nicolas Tourte would go on to play the final of the main event, where he lost to the other player who had gone through the qualifiers. A certain Swiss player called Roger Federer - also 13 years old at that time. 😇 Fun fact: Roger Federer is two weeks younger than me. 😁   In the beginning of March, I played the grade D tournament in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Got through the qualifiers easily this time around and didn't have all that much opposition in the main event either. My first grade D main event, and I won it immediately, only losing two games per match. This win propelled me to the 250th spot in the junior world ranking.   With this win in the bag and the jump in the ranking, it was time to tackle the grade C tournaments. I joined the grade C tournament in Chisinau, Moldova. Had to go through the qualifiers as well, as the second seed - just shy of a direct entry to the main event. Won my first two qualifiers but lost the final one against a fast and hard-hitting defender who could outpace and outhit me, and who won 6-1 6-1.   In May, I went to Antalya, Turkey, for the grade C junior tournament there. No qualifiers this time around, but direct entry to the main event. Won my first two matches comfortably, but then faced an aggressive serve-and-volley player in the semi-finals, Israeli player Andy Ram. It took me a while to come to grips with his play but could keep pace with my own service game. At 4-4 in the first set, I finally managed to break him and won the set 6-4. Won the second set 6-2 to advance to the finals. Faced a similar serve-and-volley player in the final but had a slightly easier time. I won the tournament with a 6-1 6-4 final match. This grade C win put me in the top 100 of the junior rankings.   So, now it's time for the bigger junior tournaments. I entered the qualifiers for the junior Roland Garros grand slam, a AA-grade tournament. Wish me luck!

The Universe loves you and wants you to be happy and so do we. Following, of course. ❤️ 

Hi Friends!   Thanks for all of the celebratory GIFs and such, I appreciate that we know how to party around here!! ❤️   This is some reflections on the self care Work. No need to read if you don’t have spoons or interest!   I just got off a call with a friend who guided me through a process called BreakThrough for dealing with cognitive dissonance and emotional trauma. It was fascinating and reminded me strongly of Byron Katie’s The Work, which constitutes four questions for releasing attachement to the stories we tell ourselves about trauma that keep us in a cycle of refreshing those ills against ourselves. I remember reading the book two years ago for one of my first NF challenges and it making me incredibly skeptical and even angry at the time. But I’ve still come back to the vibe of The Work a few times in the past two years. Breakthrough has more steps and felt more supported than The Work, but the more support could have been that I was working with a live practitioner and not trying to take myself through the process after reading a book. Either way, it was intensely powerful and I feel a lot more peace and clarity around this particular issue than I have ever felt. It was dealing with one specific memory about my mother’s weight loss that was the catalyst for the falling out between her and I and oh, wow, what a doozie. Breakthrough helps you take ownership of your contributions to the emotions and outcomes in a way that is similar to Katie’s method. It was hard for me to acknowledge that I had been feeling and thinking some of the things that came up, but ultimately it was very useful.   One of the new thoughts that has surfaced as a result of this exploration was what does a parent owe their (adult) children in terms of access to their lives, consistency, etc.? This came out of realizing that while my mother was in hindsight unhappy enough with her weight to risk her life and/or complications from a radical surgery to change her shape, she never acted like her weight was a problem in a self-loathing way at any time during my childhood. Whenever she would do Weight Watchers the whole family would just shift to healthier foods and it was treated as normal not strict or punitive. The biggest change was the skim milk, honestly, we ate pretty good normally even when we weren’t “on plan”. While I know now she had some binge eating issues, she kept that well away from me and I only found out about it after the surgery. I never would have known otherwise. When she decided to pursue exercise, either walking or the gym, she framed it as trying something new and exciting rather than as trying to lose weight. This resulted in me feeling her fat body was normal, natural, and beautiful and that my similarly fat body was also acceptable. Her decision to get the surgery felt like it came out of the blue to me and in hindsight has been a lingering betrayal of the normalcy and acceptance that I had for both our bodies. I was ~18 when she had the surgery, I was out on my own going to school. I am sure she was aware there could be risky complications, but all the ones she discussed with us were physical ones, not psychological ones. To be fair, her situation is unusual and I don’t think the Bipolar onset could have been predicted except through the case study of her mother and that was an instance of one sample. So *shrug*. We will say it couldn’t have been predicted.   Something Breakthrough brought out is that I selfishly wanted my mother to stay the same for me and my experience of her. I don’t mean that physically, although the feeling of her hugs did change dramatically after she lost 160 lbs, but emotionally. Her personality radically changed and she became a completely different person. Is it fair of me to have expected her to maintain a well-masked unhappiness just so I could have access to the emotional support and attention that I had had all my childhood? I am really wrestling with this right now. The friend who lead the session is a parent and she said afterwards that she gives up so much for her kids that when she is selfish about getting self care and such is the only time the pendulum swings the other way and she starts to heal from the constant depletion. My mother was an incredible advocate and caregiver for my brother and her mother who were both living with us and profoundly mentally ill throughout my childhood - self sacrifice was the name of the game, all day, every day. So it makes some kind of sense to me that once she decided to prioritize herself, the focus would be on her for an extended period of time in a dramatic way, just like a pendulum swing. I certainly had a period of intense selfishness and recovery coming out of my divorce, I am sure this has to be an analogous situation? The idea of it helps me consider things in a new way that has less emotional load to it.    I am not sure what I am going to do with this information, but I do have some more focused thoughts for a letter if I decide to write one. Whether I send it or not remains to be seen.    I am off to do housework now. If you got this far, thanks for listening. ❤️    Hope you are having a good day!!    

I'm entering the woods but I've never been here before.  I have no idea what I'm doing.   I'm in this photo and I do not like it.   Things that I'm not familiar with; giant work conference, divorce hearing coming up at the end of this challenge, how to be a single person in this current world- (not dating-wise, just being on my own without planning around another), and apparently getting older and needing to adjust fitness and such- some of these aches are new.  I'm sure there is more, but I'm sounding whiny.   I leave for the work conference on Monday.  Never been to one of these things but I'm told that if you want it to be, it can be kinda crazy fun.  I'm looking forward to being away and not being able to address anything divorce related while I'm there.  But also looking forward to meeting the people who are on the other end of the e-mail and to learning all the things.   I successfully sewed all the things i wanted to get done; pants, "2 piece jump suit," embroidered on a t-shirt, a fun jacket, and a gala dress.  Well, that is a lot more than I realized now that I see the list.    I'm edgy about what the next step is in the proceedings for freeing myself to move toward my new life.  Also, excited to be free to grow and enjoy the world that is out there.      I guess it's time to start my own path instead of looking for the trail others have laid down before me.  Things that I need to do in order to that are;   Just start that path, one foot in front of the other:.  goal 45min-hour walk 6 days.  After work walking is lovely, but early morning golden light is enlivening.   Have the strength and stamina to navigate the challenges that lie in the way:  do either GMB Elements or Integral strength at least 2 days.   Maintain the energy for the endeavor:  I'd been losing focus on my eating habits, lets get back to meal planning.  Can't do it if I don't have the fuel to use.   Don't get lost:  brain has been a bit foggy and distraction is .... oooh sparkles!  No shame, just stress doing what it does to a brain.  Just work with it and try to regroup.  Make time for healing by doing things I enjoy that reward quite focus ie; puzzles, reading, crochet or knitting.    Plan and organize for the journey:  keep making headway on cleaning up my room.  Bringing a life back down from a house to a room has not been the well thought out.  It wasn't going to be this long or this way, so I didn't set myself a good base to start from.  two days per week I will make some degree of headway cleaning this place up.    Ask for directions along the way:  continue to rely on the people around me and ask for assistance when needed.    oh, right, allow for the new aches of age:  be sure to have sufficient rest, hydrate well, warm-up and cool-down, and respect what my body or brain is telling me.   Maybe a fun thing I could do is take some picture along the way.  I've done a challenge in which I made sure to find a 'surprise' every day and it really helped me focus on little positives on tough days.  Some version of that to record my new path sounds good

I think maybe I might 😇

Dang, you're beating me on books read and my goal is higher than yours 😬

18 points from 3 days... wow.  Okay rolls   Chimera is still holding up and $10 for making progress on the board! Half way in 3 days.   

I’m definitely here for this! Do you get ALL the prizes for a grade A?  

Look who ran out the challenge again...  oops.  On to the next!