It turns out, just taking a little pause and giving myself permission not to stress about work has made me feel a lot better. So here’s something I wrote. I may not be back on a regular schedule this week but you’ll get some work. I love you all in a platonic way xo
In keeping with my pledge to take some time to myself, I spend the weekend at home, relaxing, doing a jigsaw and listening to a podcast about murder. That last part is perhaps ill advised, but I’m already deep into The Teacher’s Trial. I can’t stop.
There are things I’m meant to be doing: brunch with a (potential) new friend; a first birthday party, a celebration of the daughter of another (potential) new friend. But I am too unwell. There is a pit in my stomach that feels like the emotions of a bereavement and a job interview and bad news I must deliver, all rolled in to one.
I make a roasted corn salad I saw being made by a YouTuber I follow but, of course, I don’t have the right ingredients and I am not going to the shop just for Cotija cheese. I make it without the cheese and it’s actually delicious but I can’t help but think, some cheese would make this next-level.
On Sunday afternoon, Brandin’s sister texts to say that her softball team is playing nearby (on a field? A pitch? A round? I don’t know) and asking if we’d like to come and watch.
I don’t know anything about softball – at least, anything that wasn’t made clear by Coyote Ugly* and that Madonna movie which, now that I Google it, appears to have been baseball, after all – but it’s sunny and the baby is awake and the field / pitch / round is a 10-minute drive away (and did I mention I haven’t left the house all weekend?) so I say yes, we’ll go.
I pack a bag with water for the baby and a hat for the baby and sunscreen for the baby and a change of clothes for the baby and I forget to bring water or a hat or sunscreen for myself, but it’s fine, I think, I’m sure I can sit in the shade.
“What’s the difference between softball and baseball?” I ask Brandin, a few minutes in to the game. I fail to mention that I know nothing about baseball except that they wear white trousers so that their little legs would show up on black and white TVs, back in the day.
I think it’s more to do with the fact that, back in the day, every baseball player had a wife or a mother or a housekeeper who kept his whites, white. As they are forced further and further towards the labour of washing their own whites, I suspect we’ll see a change. Anyway.
“Well,” says Brandin, who has never met a question he didn’t want to answer, “In softball, the ball is soft.” (I didn’t say his answers were always worthwhile.) “And the ball is thrown underhand.”
I watch as the ball is thrown by the pitcher (I know she is the pitcher because I have just asked, “what is that position called?”) to the batter (ditto) and I think, but do not say, sure, what other way would you throw a ball?
I will never fail to be impressed by someone who can hit a small ball – however soft it may be – with one of those vanishingly narrow bats. I have a thrilling flashback to playing rounders at school. Some players would use a hurl to hit their balls, while I would always, humiliatingly, be forced to pick up the tennis racquet. Even then, contact with the ball was never guaranteed.
“Do you not have softball in Ireland?” he asks me, and I am once again astonished by how little (some) Americans know about anything outside of America.
“No,” I say. “We don’t even have baseball. But we do have rounders, which is kind of the same thing.”
I am aware, for the record, that rounders is not the same thing, but for the purposes of comparison, there are certain similarities to be drawn.
“In rounders, someone throws the ball, and you hit the ball, and you try to run around all the bases before the ball gets there,” I tell him.
Then I remember another rule. “But you can also get hit by the ball itself, and if you do, you’re out,” I say, really finding my stride. “And if they catch the ball with two hands, you’re out – but if they catch the ball with one hand, you’re all out!” I’m not sure if any of this is true, and I am not invested enough in the sport of rounders to further investigate.
“Is it at least…” he asks, slightly horror-struck, “a soft ball?” What can I say, the man loves his soft balls.
“No,” I tell him, wide-eyed and stoic. “It’s a tennis ball.” (Again, not sure if this is true.)
Back to the game. The women of this softball… league? tournament? cup? come in all ages, heights, sizes. I admire one woman’s lava lamp tattoo; another has an enviably crisp bleach job. She must have had that done recently, I think, touching a hand to my own six-week roots.
One woman makes it almost around the whole, er, circle but is beaten to the home plate (#lingo) by what must be a fraction of a second. She makes a last-ditch effort to beat the ball by sliding in, both feet out before her, and still, she’s out. Someone shouts “OUT!” each time, to add insult to injury.
There’s always a moment, as I watch any sport – maybe with the exception of fighting, which always just seems terrifying – when I think, maybe I should take up [insert sport here]. It would be a good way to make friends, not to mention the fact that everyone on this softball team has a great tan.
Then that poor woman slides into home plate on her arse and still gets knocked out and I think, this is most certainly not for me. I imagine the humiliation I’d feel if I’d made that sort of A+++ effort and still been knocked out of the (literal) running.
No, sirree. Thanks all the same.
It all brings to mind a tweet I saw recently. So struck was I by its sentiment that I screenshot it. It now lives in a folder on my iPhone called “screenshots”, along with dodgy stills from people’s Instagram Stories and an ad I got served on my jigsaw puzzle app that says, “God needs you to have a Bible on your phone”.
I don’t think I have ever in my life thought of singing, dancing or making art without thinking about my own abilities. When, in college, I developed some sort of problem with my voice that limited my range, I stopped singing in the choir altogether. It was as though, if I couldn’t be good at it, I didn’t want to do it at all.
This happens to be a through line in a lot of my life’s endeavours. I find it really hard to think of a hobby that I would enjoy doing without having some sort of demonstrable skill level.
I used to love doing hip hop dance classes; when an ex-boyfriend pointed out that my dance skills are… questionable (that was not the word he used, but I am trying to give myself some grace here), it didn’t occur to me that I could just dance to enjoy it, or that he should fuck right off.
I simply stopped dancing.
When I took up weight lifting, I enjoyed it so much precisely because I was good at it. I was stronger than a lot of other women in the gym and I loved that feeling. (Conversely, now that I have been away from weight lifting for almost three years, I feel as though I can’t face starting from the bottom, being worse than a lot of other women in the gym.)
It’s a sort of competitive spirit I never would have credited myself with, and the truly heartbreaking thing about it is that I’m not actually competing against anyone. I am never going to want to enter dance, or singing, or art competitions (I did enter the Texaco Art Competition more than once, but I was younger then). I am never going to be a competitive weight lifter, or a champion hip hop dancer.
I know that I will never win prizes for gardening, or for yoga, or for boxing, or for hip hop dancing… or for any of the myriad things I have given up, thinking, I’m no good at this.
Repeat after me: you do not need to be good at your hobbies.
Dictionary.com defines “hobby” as: “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation”. Nowhere in the definition does it make any reference to how good you are at your hobbies; nowhere does it mention competition, or skill, or even plain old ability.
Despite this revelation, I do not think I will be joining the softball team. I probably won’t take up hip hop dancing. I’m unlikely to start pursuing art in any meaningful way (the hassle of having to have paper and sharpened pencils is a barrier in and of itself).
But I might go back to yoga. I may pick up a weight again (is this cheating, because I know it’s something I can be good at?). I’m going to keep gardening, even though I’m not seeing great results and none of the poppies I planted, having been promised they’d grow with little effort, ended up flowering.
The aim, I’m reminding myself, is either pleasure or relaxation or, if I’m very lucky, both.
*As it happens, Coyote Ugly is not an accurate depiction of softball. I don’t even want to know if it’s not an accurate depiction of bar work in New York. Stay ignorant, that’s my life motto.
I’ve shared this before but just in case it helps…
Throwing Softballs