Charging the ball

 

Some of you may know that I've been training and playing lots of softball the last couple of months. For selfish reasons. The Ad League is putting together an All Stars team which is sent to the USA to play in an international advertising softball championship and I have my eyes set on making it to the team. There will be beer. There will be boys. There will be parties. You get my drift! But despite these superficial reasons, I have used this goal to see how far I can go with improving my game.

My game was pretty lame to start with. I grew up in Romania and not only that there is no tradition in American-style sports (well, we do have a Romanian game called 'oina' which sits nicely in between baseball and cricket, but no one really plays or knows the rules for) but there is hardly any encouragement for team sports. So I have never thought of myself as an athletic creature until fairly recently when I got into all sorts of physical activities and realised that I am quite strong and resilient overall. But to get good at a sport, now, that's something else I never thought I'd do.

 

I started playing softball three years ago with my work team and in between cans of beers and giggles I slowly but surely started to understand the rules and being less and less afraid of the ball, occasionally making it to the first base when accidentally hitting the ball with the bat. This year however, I started training, taking up a spot with the training team from the British Softball Federation. I also joined other teams to get more game time. Last Saturday I played in an all day softball tournament and played 6 games. On Monday I went to my first trials session for the team selection. Which is when one of the trainers shouted at me 'Go, charge the ball!' and I ran like crazy towards that ball not even knowing what 'charging the ball' meant.

 

'Charging the ball' means running forward to grab it when hit on the ground. Not waiting for the ball to bounce its way to where you are, but running towards it and relaying it to the relevant team mate. See, I've never been one to charge the ball in the past. And this is something that's been valid for everything else in my life. I would wait for the 'balls' (situations) to come to me. But training for softball as well as applying all the other self-improvement techniques I've been learning in the past six months or so have showed me that I am now the kind of person who is charging the ball. And yes, I do have lots of bruises on my legs and hands. But there's no better feeling than charging that wild ball, I tell you! I'm proud of my bruises, you see. Life's not about sitting comfy on the side and waiting for balls to land in your glove, it's about charging the ball!

 

Are you 'charging the ball'?

 

 

 

 



Why it's important to keep searching for what you want

Today I spent quite a lot of time browsing the Getty image library in search for a number of particular images. I had them in low res and no reference number, so it was pretty much a case of looking for the needle in the hay stack.

Source: jtsullivan.com

And so I started. I had a picture of a baby. I searched for baby and I got back about 254 pages of results. Hmm, I had to narrow it down. So half heartedly I started searching for baby against grey background.  I got less results and a few pages scanned later I found my baby! And then I felt like this!

Source: excelle.monster.com

But I had more pictures to find and more difficult briefs. Some searches came back with no results. Other came back with too many. I felt like the whole exercise was completely pointless especially as I had google searched it before and couldn't find the source in high res. But I kept doing it, I knew resistance was futile and those pictures had to have come from somewhere. Many search results pages later, I stumbled upon other two of my images. I felt positive. Maybe this wasn't such a pointless exercise after all.

I started looking for more specific key words, such as 'smiling large Hispanic family on balcony'. That came back with nothing. But I didn't give up, I searched and searched and searched and every time I found another image, I felt elated.

And then it dawned on me: what if it's the same in life, what if what we're looking for may not be on the first page of the catalogue and instead of going through the whole catalogue we stop searching after a few pages? What if we're so close to getting what we want but we don't even know it? What if we just need to reframe the problem, define the search terminology better? Our image may be one of a 'young Caucasian father and child at desk' but what if the particular 'young Caucasian father with child at desk' I'm looking for is also 'with turned back'?

Bingo! First result. It was there, the last image I was looking for...


I figured out life is simple: what you want is what you get. That's why is important to keep searching.

Source: greatnesshq.com

 

My week in words - EMPOWERMENT

I haven’t been able to write ‘My week in words’ in a while. Mainly because I am busy at accumulating words from all sources for my dating book, as if in a race against clock and I’m lacking the time and the headspace. It’s strange, but I finally feel I no longer have all the time in the world to sit around thinking about writing books and I’ve actually given myself deadlines. And time flies. So I’m lagging behind on ‘regular sections’, posts etc.

But this week I feel the need to talk about a word I’ve really been obsessing about lately. I want to talk about empowerment.

 

Source: lipstickandpolitics.com

 

My research about love is strangely bringing me down a path which awakens my solidarity with the women of the world and the still very much present need for our empowerment. It’s really interesting that, despite the fact that many of us don’t feel we should actively engage in feminist activities, we subconsciously recognise that the work is not yet done and there’s still need for a little action. And we’re not talking burning bras anymore (I’m perfectly happy to wear beautiful lacy lingerie, thank you very much!), but we’re talking women with ‘balls’ (hope you excuse my language) who are not afraid to talk about what’s still missing in the world, as far as women are concerned.

‘After Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman came out here in the UK in 2011, a younger crowd started talking about feminism and realising that our grandmothers didn’t quite manage to finish the job. But still, calling yourself one publicly can be frightening. It can get you into trouble. It opens you up to a world of criticism about how you are not feminist enough, or that you don’t really understand what you are talking about so should probably just stop.’ says Dawn Porter in her article for Stylist about the creator of Girls series, Lena Dunham.  ‘Personally’, she continues, ‘I like the way that Lena defines a feminist; it’s really just about whether you are looking out for other women or not. It’s inclusive and unthreatening. It’s how it should be. She has said [in an interview with Metro newspaper this month], <Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you’re a feminist.>’

 When asked by Stylist what she thinks is the key ingredient of female empowerment, Gwyneth Paltrow responded: ‘I think knowing yourself, but truly. As opposed to the self your parents gave you or your partner or the school bully, or whatever. I think so many people give us ideas of what we are. I think as women especially, because we’re sensitive by nature, we’re more vulnerable, we absorb other people’s ideas about what we’re supposed to think or who we're supposed to be and how we’re supposed to act. And I actually think it ends up killing us, and that’s why we (as women) have 5-to-1 autoimmune disorders, compared to men. I really do. We somaticize that suppression of self, it comes out in our bodies.

I think the most clear, direct way to empowerment is to really know yourself and to really use your voice and to not be afraid of other people’s reactions' she continued. 'And to be really, really true to yourself. That to me, has been key to me in understanding how I want to live the second half of my life. It’s only recently that I’ve really fully understood that.’

And this, my dear readers, takes us closer to what steps we need to take towards empowerment: the realisation that women and men are different, they are not superior/inferior to each other in terms of abilities, they are just made differently. And when everyone will understand and accept that, we’ll all be living in a better world. And steps are being taken. Suzie Shaw, the female CEO of a creative ad agency in Australia, notes in an article for B&T Magazine:

‘Seriously, men and women are equally capable. But that’s not to say they’re the same (…) In our mutual pursuit of ‘equality’ we have all failed (women and men alike) to recognise that women are different, so need a different management approach to ensure they thrive.’

So who knows, maybe this whole discussion about empowerment starts with recognising our female structure and instead of trying to act like men and to beat them at their own game, why not say things like ‘I need more support, so I can do my job better’, ‘I can be a better professional with the right mentorship’, ‘I do work better when my efforts are appreciated’, ‘Why, thank you for the compliment!’ and ‘Men are not the enemy, but our partners in this journey through life’. Perhaps such simple and honest statements may begin to turn things in our favour, once and for all.

This thread of thought actually makes me think of the iconic ‘Sex & The City’ HBO series, which, why not admitting, has shaped a generation of women (group to which I too belong) into thinking that women are perfectly entitled to flaunt their sexuality and to treat men like objects, particularly through the lovable yet caricaturised character of Samantha Jones. It’s the whole ‘Eye for an Eye’ all over again. But the new light shed on the ancient men and women at war conversation makes me think that we’ve been looking at this all wrong: we should not be trying to be ‘THE NEW MEN’ but instead we should be trying to be ‘THE NEW WOMEN’, the women who find empowerment through their own intrinsic sensitivity and delicacy, the women who care about other women and about every living soul on this planet equally, the women who are finally awake and are making themselves heard. The likes of Eve Ensler (the author of The Vagina Monologues), Lena Dunham, Dawn Porter, Gwyneth Paltrow, Suzie Shaw or Caitlin Moran are not alone. We are wide awake, we hear what you’re saying and we feel empowered.