June 26th, 2012
playing to lose / playing to win
“Whether it’s 2 pennies, or more, whatever, I play to WIN.”
—Steve Mason, sometime in 2010 or 2011…paraphrasing, but close to that
It’s funny that my Short List of 2012 happens to include a few of the usual suspects from my Short List of 2000.
Hmmmmmmm.
Time time time.
Anyway. I had an interesting little exchange with Andrea yesterday about this ‘blog’/whatever, and here is the point: I know a lot of people in my real life read this and that we don’t discuss its contents (or even that you read it at all – joke’s on me, there, ha ha ha, see: Kelly’s admission last week) and that is AOK. This is a weird little narcissistic web dev/writing exercise that I can’t seem to quit, and I know it’s doubly weird that it’s, like, totally public etc., but either way, READERS, whoever you are, you are NOT (probably) (A) creepy stalkers (OK from experience at least a couple are…haha…but on the whole) or (B) bad friends for not discussing/mentioning/whatever THE BLOG/its contents. In fact…it’s probably easier if we don’t. BUT! THANK YOU for reading! Obviously…I wouldn’t continue to post this nonsense publicly if I didn’t think SOMEone (like, Jeff, and Jenny, and Christie and Michael) was reading it. So. THANK YOU!
And now, the point of this post: Another thing Agassi talks about in his book (yes I know) is that HOW he played was often the most determining (? is that the right way to say that?) factor in his performance on the court. When he was playing to not lose, he played badly, and usually ended up losing. When he was playing to win, though, the opposite (duh).
I’ve been playing to not lose for a little bit here. I’d like to start trying to play to win, or at least thinking that way—thinking I’m capable of it, anyway. I don’t know if I can, but at least a little part of me is willing to try. We’ll see.