Ambition

Pain... dull numbing pain.

My body aches. Shoulders, arm and left ankle. All the muscles below my waist are stiff. I feel tired but refreshed at the same time. I think it is the endorphins kicking in.
This pain is nothing new. I feel this way after every serious tournament. It is a good pain if I won and it adds to my misery if I lost. What do I feel today? Can't say it is bad or that it is overly good. Just a 2 hour training session. Yeah training... if you know me, you know how much I hate training.

I'm trying to change that. I've been to two training sessions and today was even better than the one last week. Two. That's not much. Anyone can do that much. To keep going week after week, now that's hard. It takes commitment and dedication. I guess time will tell how I hold up.

So why the sudden change of heart about training? Failure.
I've won and I've lost. I've never been one to hold my ranking however high or low it may be. When I say ranking, don't misunderstand me. I'm not a world class player. I mean it as a rough idea of who you can beat and who can beat you if you were to play in a competition against say club members.
Back to my ranking then. Well, I rank myself, as a player who can beat everyone currently playing badminton with me and also as a player who can get beaten by everyone of those players.
You have to work hard to win against a strong opponent. You don't have to work hard to lose to a weaker opponent and guess what? I don't like working hard.

I've been losing more than I won. My current competition record is a joke. Attribute it to my lack of will, skill, fitness or desire to win. No one wants to lose but some people desire the win more than others. I've never had the burning desire to excel in anything. Never coveted for the top position. Never put myself forward as a leader. Ambition is not something I have in vast quantities.

I lack ambition because I have it too easy. I'm gifted. Not gifted as in super genius, IQ in the hundreds gifted. I'm gifted as in I'm born with a natural ability. An ability to do “well enough”. Everything I do, I do well enough without trying. Other have to work consistently to be where they are at. I'm above average without even trying. So where do I find a desire to work harder? Like I said, through failure. I've failed at things. Lost many tournaments. Failure is nothing new to me. It takes a special catastrophic failure that will make me feel real small to knock me off my high horse.

Losing to a girl many years my junior at singles, in two straight sets with me not even coming close to winning a single set, in a badminton tournament with quite a number of people looking on. Yeah, that fits the description of catastrophic failure for me. Losing is not a bad thing at all, if it lights a fire in my heart. Make me want. Really want the win. So I lost and I waited to play her again. I did last week and won in two sets. How long is this motivation to win going to last? Who knows? Habits are hard to break and I'm a habitually lazy person. In the mean time, I have to do my best to stay in the best shape so that my last win wasn't a one off thing. Ergo the training.


Playing squash with friends in the morning and I still haven't finished watching the movie I was watching so that's it for today. Good night.