The variety of sports that I play regularly (weekly, fortnightly, as opposed to the occasional outing on a weekend) has generally hovered around 2. Tennis has been the most common of them, but at various there has been basketball, golf, indoor soccer, cycling, and most recently beach and indoor volleyball. When I got back from New Zealand, I was invited to play tennis with Gav's team, meaning that my Monday (indoor volleyball), Tuesday (beach volleyball) and Wednesday (tennis) nights are all given over to sports (in the case of Monday and Wednesday, supplanting AoC).
When I was asked to play tennis regularly, something inside told me that either the number (3 nights a week) or the density (3 nights in a row) would probably be slightly too high for me, and that's proving to be true. I like my nights at home to myself, so long as they aren't too numerous (as they were for much of my time France, for example), and I'm finding that I miss that at the start of the week.
Something has to give. It won't be indoor volleyball at this point (much as having Monday nights free would suit my gaming). I'm enjoying the challenge of learning to play, and the guys I'm playing with (Chad, Brett, occasionally Lach) are great, because they are better than me, and play the "right way", which makes it easier to learn and improve. I also feel like I need to give tennis a proper go. Its without doubt the sport I'm best at (at this point; one day I'll be a better golfer than tennis player, but that day has not yet come). I haven't been playing well, and have been getting frustrated, but I feel like I need to give it some time so I can find some form, and work on being smarter and calmer (being smarter would help me not get frustrated, and I suspect not getting frustrated would help me play smarter) on court, in order to play better and enjoy it more.
The likely casualty is beach volleyball. I have enjoyed playing, and we've improved as a team, but I can't help but feel that I've stopped improving personally. We play an unstructured game, and I'm probably one of our better players, neither of which help me to learn and improve. Learning and improving are really important parts of the enjoyment I gain from playing a sport, so losing that really doesn't bode well for beach volleyball's spot in my weekly routine.
The spectre on the horizon is that I've become intrigued by the idea of playing rec footy, and the season for that starts on Tuesday. Which night depends on where I play. I had pegged Kedron, based partly on the idea of signing up friends (notably my Lions season ticket mates) to play with, although some of those are falling away, which could see me opt for the geographically more convenient alternative of Morningside. The likelihood is that I don't have a body which could withstand the rigors of "actual" football (assuming that training could overcome my lack of fitness), and rec footy would represent a nice surrogate.
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