Golf Then Watching Johnnie Again
So today's golf game was at Roosevelt, and it's one more chance to learn how to play well and manifest a good golf game. This morning I went over mentally what I needed to do. (1) Clear the "inconsistent me", the one who whiffs shots a lot more than he should. (2) Focus on the ME that hits shots, makes his putts and wins holes. (3) Relax my wrists with my irons and focus on the point after the ball not at the ball (4) Slow down my swing and breathe (5) focus on the ball strike. And so after all that how did I do? I wanted to win the first 2 holes just like I did last week. And I started by snapping a 225 yard shot on my first shot. This after an irritating moment with the starter penalizing me because I had forgotten to cancel Chris's reservation. Second shot was decent on that first tee, landing right on the fringe of the green. 2 putts to a par. Instead I missed an 8 foot putt and missed out on a tie since Greg did hit a par. Still it wasn't a bad hole at all. On the 2nd, I miss-hit my tee shit but hit a line drive on the next shot. It would be my only good shot this hole and I ended with an 8. I followed that bad hole with a pretty good hole 3, getting a bogey 4 and finally tying to win the hole. And on the next hole I hit a beautiful line drive off the tee and a decent 5 iron shot 100 yards from the green. but i whiffed the next shot and then ended up with a 6. What a waste of a good first shot. 4 shots to make it when I missed the putt. On the next hole, I didn't hit it well off the tee, but it made it pretty far down. The 2nd shot went 100 yards and so did the 3rd off the fringe. And then... I made a miracle 40 foot putt from that fringe for a par. I won the hole outright, which broke Greg's streak. On the next funnel hole 6, I whiffed the tee shot but hit a line drive all the way down near the green. And then took 4 shots to make the hole. Couldn't have won that hole anyway, not with Scott's 2nd shot landing 10 feet from the hole. On Hole 7 I hit a nice 8 iron right on the green. But again took 3 shots to putt in, missing the last 2 foot putt and missing the tie for the hole. That's TWO holes I should have won by now. I had a crap Hole 8, but I did hit a nice iron from the fairway all the way to the green. Each hole I had at least one good shot. But I also had more bad shots than good. The last hole I hit a tree that ricocheted the ball right back on the fairway. Then my 2nd shot again was on the right edge of the green. I ended up with a 5 to tie for the win. So I won 3 holes. Should have been 5. Greg won 6 though so that was that. Hey at least it was a beautiful morning. And all in all, I really didn't play that badly. I had a decent game. On I go trying to improve and play better. I need practice practice practice.
I would like to say I spent the rest of the afternoon with my IN-N-Out Burger for lunch, taking a nap and doing my personal de-brief of the weekend and doing some more internal work. The IN-N-Out part was true enough and afterwards I tried to close my eyes to take a nap. But I had zillion things going through my mind and it was all I could do to simply settle my mind down and get to the some of these negative thoughts that were coming up. They were anxious thoughts. Fear thoughts and I didn't even know what triggered them. I did know what I had to do though which was to merely observe them and let them pass on through. The toughest part is to remind myself they aren't real and that they were simply programs. Mental bots if you will. But the physical effects were real enough and the mental one was a persistent thought that something bad was going to happen. THAT by itself was the program I need to quarantine and replace with a positive one. That, by itself, was the internal work I needed to do. I realized then that the bad golf was a program too and I didn't do enough to counter it with a different one. Or at least the effort wasn't sustained long enough. THAT is the work. By 5 PM a call from Lisa came thought. It was Johnnie asking me to come over and play soccer with him because his mommy wanted to practice piano. Hey I did tell her to do that didn't I? And as Johnnie himself said, "of course you will dad, because I'm Your Little Bug." How right he was. Wrapped me all around his finger like that tiny little octonaut in the picture Johnnie has. And so it was that I did spend Sunday evening at Lisa's. I played soccer with Johnnie in the garage just like he wanted. Which gave Lisa about 45 minutes of piano time. And then we all took a break for dinner. Lisa still had all these leftovers from Panini Cafe from yesterday's office day and I was plenty happy just having those chicken kabobs for dinner. I made Johnnie some noodle and heated up a hotdog and he was fine with that too. Afterwards? Johnnie and I played in the living room, Lisa played some more piano. Funny, I ended up watching Johnnie for 6 days this week because I'm counting today. He might not have gone to my house but I did spend 3 hours with him. And I was glad to do it too. Yes I still wanted some more alone time, but you know I was also still bugged that I didn't maximize my time with him yesterday because I basically got tired. And for his part, I think Johnnie was glad to hang out with me. He certainly had fun playing garage soccer. And ws with me whether I put out the garbage cans, ratered the plants, or anything else. He just wanted to be with me. It was close to 9 PM when I got home. The weekend was over. I let it drift away watching TV and still noticing I had still had anxious thoughts. While at Lisa's she and I talked about our circle of people. Apparently Bud thought he was having a stroke but turned out to be anxiety. Gee... I experienced that hen i as in my 30s! And then we had a conversation about Mel and Jacob coming for a dental appointment and hanging out afterwards at Lisa's. Mel is an anti-masker and I already told Lisa I was not comfortable about that. She can tell her too and make me be the bad guy. Going to be an interesting end of next week I guess...But for this week, for this weekend, for today, I had a pretty good day.
I would like to say I spent the rest of the afternoon with my IN-N-Out Burger for lunch, taking a nap and doing my personal de-brief of the weekend and doing some more internal work. The IN-N-Out part was true enough and afterwards I tried to close my eyes to take a nap. But I had zillion things going through my mind and it was all I could do to simply settle my mind down and get to the some of these negative thoughts that were coming up. They were anxious thoughts. Fear thoughts and I didn't even know what triggered them. I did know what I had to do though which was to merely observe them and let them pass on through. The toughest part is to remind myself they aren't real and that they were simply programs. Mental bots if you will. But the physical effects were real enough and the mental one was a persistent thought that something bad was going to happen. THAT by itself was the program I need to quarantine and replace with a positive one. That, by itself, was the internal work I needed to do. I realized then that the bad golf was a program too and I didn't do enough to counter it with a different one. Or at least the effort wasn't sustained long enough. THAT is the work. By 5 PM a call from Lisa came thought. It was Johnnie asking me to come over and play soccer with him because his mommy wanted to practice piano. Hey I did tell her to do that didn't I? And as Johnnie himself said, "of course you will dad, because I'm Your Little Bug." How right he was. Wrapped me all around his finger like that tiny little octonaut in the picture Johnnie has. And so it was that I did spend Sunday evening at Lisa's. I played soccer with Johnnie in the garage just like he wanted. Which gave Lisa about 45 minutes of piano time. And then we all took a break for dinner. Lisa still had all these leftovers from Panini Cafe from yesterday's office day and I was plenty happy just having those chicken kabobs for dinner. I made Johnnie some noodle and heated up a hotdog and he was fine with that too. Afterwards? Johnnie and I played in the living room, Lisa played some more piano. Funny, I ended up watching Johnnie for 6 days this week because I'm counting today. He might not have gone to my house but I did spend 3 hours with him. And I was glad to do it too. Yes I still wanted some more alone time, but you know I was also still bugged that I didn't maximize my time with him yesterday because I basically got tired. And for his part, I think Johnnie was glad to hang out with me. He certainly had fun playing garage soccer. And ws with me whether I put out the garbage cans, ratered the plants, or anything else. He just wanted to be with me. It was close to 9 PM when I got home. The weekend was over. I let it drift away watching TV and still noticing I had still had anxious thoughts. While at Lisa's she and I talked about our circle of people. Apparently Bud thought he was having a stroke but turned out to be anxiety. Gee... I experienced that hen i as in my 30s! And then we had a conversation about Mel and Jacob coming for a dental appointment and hanging out afterwards at Lisa's. Mel is an anti-masker and I already told Lisa I was not comfortable about that. She can tell her too and make me be the bad guy. Going to be an interesting end of next week I guess...But for this week, for this weekend, for today, I had a pretty good day.
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