Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

I don’t normally share this kind of thing, but I was zero-drafting about the experience of watching Manic Monday as it was happening, and then Nadal-Muller turned out to be the amazing match that it was, so what follows is more or less my notes on the experience. If/when I write more about Manic Monday (both what happened on-court, and my experience with watching), these notes will guide that writing.

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10:32am MDT, 5:32pm in London: Federer-Dimitrov 3-3 on Centre. Nadal down two sets but up a break, 5-3, in the third on Court 1. Zverev up a set and serving 5-6 on Court No.2. Thiem and Berdych on serve early in the fourth, Berdych up two sets to one. You tell me: what should I be watching?

11:00am MDT. I expected Zverev-Raonic to go to a tiebreak, but no, somehow Sasha got broken, so now we’re even at one set apiece. Federer won the first set in his match without facing a break, and we’re on serve early in the second. Nadal has just gone up a break in the fourth–are we going five? And Thiem has just gone into a fifth set, so I’m watching that one. And in his first service game of the set, Thiem gets broken. By 11:01am, Thiem has gotten broken. Now does Berdych fly the rest of the way, holding his serve easily game after game?

11:08am. Roger’s gotten the break, and is holding his service games with the momentum of a freight train. Zverev has gone up a break against Raonic and is serving up 4-3. Nadal is serving to consolidate. And by 11:10am, Berdych has held again, now up 4-1. Is this one over? Should I be watching Raonic-Zverev? (At the same time, Roger has just broken Dimitrov a second time and will be serving for the set on Centre.)

11:15am. Berdych up 4-2 30-0 and serving out of his mind. Thiem just can’t get a toe-hold in a Berdych service game right now.

11:17am. Game, Berdych. No sense watching Thiem’s service game. Let’s go over to Raonic-Zverev. Oops, Zverev about to serve for the set at 5-4, we’re on a changeover. Over to Nadal, just in time to see him hold serve at love to take things to the fifth set.

11:19am. Think about this. My favorite player in the world [Federer] is playing, and he’s cruising so comfortably that I’m watching three matches ahead of it.

11:21am. An ace at 40-30 gives Zverev the third set, 6-4. Over to Thiem-Berdych, where Thiem has held. I see him force an error to go to 15-15, then fail to return to make it 30-15. A serve-and-one forces an error from Thiem, and it’s match point. And Berdych finishes with an ace out wide. 6-3 6-7(1) 6-3 3-6 6-3.

11:29am. I predicted Rafa would win comfortably. ESPN just showed a graphic that showed that Rafa has three times in his career come back from two-sets-to-love down. The last time was at Wimbledon back in 2007. 1-1 here, Muller next to serve.

11:41am. Muller holds, 3-2 on serve. I switch over to Federer-Dimitrov for the first time in 45 minutes, and see Federer down 15-40. I was expecting to see this match basically over. Federer saves two break points but faces a third in the first deuce and Dimitrov breaks. 4-4 on serve in the third. I check the score for Raonic-Zverev: we’re on serve 3-3.

11:46am. A point on Dimitrov’s serve. Federer is running back and forth, Dimitrov totally in control of the point, but then puts a routine backhand into the net. 15-40.

11:47am. Dimitrov saves one break point with a serve-and-one, puts a forehand long in the second despite a good serve and a so-so return. 5-4 Federer, serving for the match.

11:49am. Still on serve in Nadal-Muller. Nadal up next serving at 3-4.

11:50am. Federer holds at 15. 6-4 6-2 6-4.

11:55am. Muller holds again. Nadal will be serving at 4-5. Both men have been holding comfortably. Meanwhile, something is happening at Raonic-Zverev, but I’m not leaving here.

11:58am. Muller takes advantage of a ball that bounces high off the net cord to rip a shot down the line to Nadal’s forehand. Nadal’s whip forehand lands in the net. 0-30.

12:00pm. Holy shit, Nadal double faults. Double match point.

12:00pm. Ace up the T. 30-40.

12:01pm. Wide serve to the forehand, Muller puts it into the net. Deuce.

12:02pm. Wide serve to the backhand, Muller goes crosscourt, wide. Ad-in.

12:02pm. Serve up the T, ace. The crowd erupts. 5-5 on serve.

12:03pm. The level on display here is just ridiculous.

12:04pm. Great serving by Muller. He holds at love, finishing the game with a serve and drop-half-volley.

12:10pm. After the changeover, Nadal holds at 30. 6-6. No tiebreak. Wheee!

12:11pm. I hope someone I know is somewhere watching this. I’d text everyone I know, but you know. Holy crap this is good.

12:14pm. At 40-30, Rafa returning from way back, Muller tries a first-ball dropshot–and plays it into the net. Deuce.

12:15pm. Muller second serve down the T, Nadal whips it long. Ad-in.

12:15pm. Wide serve, goes for the forehand and-one, into the net, deuce.

12:16pm. Serve down the T, return comes short, Muller pulls his reply wide. Ad-out.

12:16pm. Ace up the T. Deuce

12:17pm. Muller. Serve and volley, a couple of tough backhand volleys, the first behind Nadal, the second for a winner.

12:17pm. Another serve up the T, Nadal gets only his frame on it. 7-6.

12:19pm. Nadal puts an inside-out forehand from well inside the court into the net. 0-15.

12:21pm. Ace up the T. 30-15.

12:21pm. Because of the magic of the DVR, when this is over I’m going to go back in time and watch Zverev-Raonic, whatever is happening over there. Also, Muller pounces on a second serve, takes a weak response from Nadal and blasts a forehand down the line, 30-30.

12:22pm. Nadal serve-and-overhead, 40-30.

12:22pm. Serve up the T, return goes long. 7-7.

12:26pm. Muller, serving with new balls, holds at 30.

12:29pm. It strikes me as almost insane to say this, but I think Muller is holding more easily. Once again, Nadal lose the first point to go down love-15. But Muller can’t return the serve and it’s 15-all.

12:31pm. Game, Nadal. Relatively straightforward. 8-8.

12:31pm. Muller, unreturned serve. 15-0.

12:32pm. 2nd serve wide, Muller takes the return short and plays his crosscourt forehand back behind Nadal. 30-0.

12:32pm. Oof. Double-fault. 30-15.

12:33pm. Nadal takes a second serve, returns backhand to backhand, Muller goes long. 30-30.

12:34pm. Nice serve, Nadal’s backhand into net. 40-30.

12:34pm. Second serve. A Muller forehand, well wide. Legs getting tired? Deuce.

12:35pm. Serve and volley, then ace. 9-8 Muller.

12:37pm. Great point, Nadal wins with a dropshot from the service line.

12:38pm. Ace. 30-0.

12:39pm. Holy crap, I’ve got to stop writing down every point. It’s just too much.

12:39pm. Nadal holds at 15. 9-9.

12:40pm. Actually, I hope every single person I know is watching this.

12:43pm. From 40-15 up, Muller plays three tight points in a row, and it’s break point. Holy shit.

12:44pm. I think Nadal has it, taking a backhand well inside the court crosscourt, but Muller pushes his backhand down the line for a winner passing shot. Deuce.

12:44pm. Serve and volley, Nadal’s return pops up, Muller lets it go, it hits the line. Ad-out.

12:45pm. Serve out wide, then drop half-volley (sort of–too deep). I think Nadal has the backhand passing shot lined up, but it goes long. Deuce.

12:45pm. Serve up the T, Nadal returns short, easy forehand for Muller about halfway to the service line–and he hits the tape and it drops on his side. Ad-out.

12:46pm. Nadal hits a crosscourt forehand a little tight and long, deuce.

12:46pm. Absolutely ridiculous. Muller serves up the T with good spin, Nadal puts it high and not very strong, Muller volleys to the forehand side from the T, Nadal gets there and whips his shot down the line around Muller for the winner. Curved it in. Ad-out.

12:47pm. Second serve. Called long, then overruled. Holy shit. Nadal challenges. But on the line. Muller gets a first serve. Nadal’s final challenge, also, by the way.

12:47pm. Muller first serve up the T, hits the line, ace.

12:48pm. Muller kick serves to the backhand, gets the short ball, blasts his and-one crosscourt for a clean winner. Ad-in.

12:49pm. Another serve up the T, ace, game. 9-10. That’s four break-points saved, for those of you keeping score at home.

12:52pm. A great point by Muller, drop shot and then lob to the backhand, Nadal’s backhand overhead goes wide. Love-30.

12:53pm. Serve and one, 15-30.

12:54pm. Good defense from Muller, but Rafa is just too good. Inside out forehand for a clean winner. 30-30.

12:55pm. MATCH POINT MULLER.

12:56pm. Nadal saves, an incredible point.

12:56pm. Serve and inside-out forehand for a winner, ad-in.

12:57pm. Great reach by Muller to just get a forehand volley, hits the line, puts it away on his next shot. Deuce.

12:58pm. Too good. Match point #2.

12:59pm. Mishit return. Deuce.

12:59pm. Muller has the opening, goes for the forehand dropshot, hits the net. Ad-in.

1:00pm. Holy fucking shit. Serve-and-one from Nadal forehand, Muller slices a backhand down the line, Nadal reaches for it and plays the half-volley at an impossible angle. Muller wouldn’t have gotten there if he could teleport. 10-10.

1:02pm. Straightforward hold for Muller. 10-11.

1:07pm. Nadal hit forehands into the net on the first two points. They rally, Nadal looking a bit tired–but Muller pulls the trigger on a backhand dropper that goes well wide. 15-30. Then a serve up the T forces a long return. 30-30. Oops. Doubtless ruing the chance squandered with that attempted dropshot. Serve and i-o forehand gets Muller to hit into the net. 40-30. Serve and mishit return, game. 11-11.

1:10pm. Serve and volley, low backhand into the net. 0-15.

1:10pm. Serve and one, forehand down the line. 15-15.

1:11pm. Weird forehand slice from Muller goes wide. 15-30.

1:11pm. Rafa has shot at a second serve, into the net. 30-30.

1:12pm. Actually, I hope everyone in the country, plus everyone in Spain, Luxembourg, and England, is watching this.

1:12pm. Muller escapes at 30. New balls after the changeover.

1:16pm. For lunch, I just had: pretzels.

1:17pm. 12-12.

1:18pm. The crowd needs to blow off some steam, does the wave. Hooray!

1:20pm. Hold at love for Muller. 12-13.

1:24pm. Hold at love for Nadal. 13-13.

1:27pm. Muller holds at 15. 13-14. Seems that Muller is taking advantage of Nadal’s extreme depth on the service return to come to net again and again for easy putaways and short points.

1:30pm. Muller gets up to net, puts away a volley winner to go up love-30.

1:32pm. After a Muller unforced makes it 15-30, Muller gets to see a second serve, Rafa mishits, and it’s double match point.

1:32pm. Rafa serves up the T, but Muller appears to be looking for it, he’s moving before the ball is hit. Deep return down the middle to the forehand. Nadal plays it short-ish up the middle, Muller is stepping in and hits his forehand inside out, and now he’s on the attack. Nadal’s backhand is relatively short to the middle, Muller whips a forehand crosscourt, Nadal, deep, hits a forehand, and it sails a little long. Game, set, match, 6-3 6-4 3-6 4-6 15-13. HOLY SHIT WHAT A MATCH.

1:39pm. I try to go back in time to see what the hell happened with Zverev, who was up 40-15 in that last service game in the fourth set and somehow lost the game and the set. But I buffered with the DVR rather than recording, and the buffer is only–“only”–an hour-and-a-half long. I just barely missed seeing the critical points, and you know what? Fine. I watched enough tennis today.

Holy shit what a match that was.

It’s my goal to be at Wimbledon next year, and I look forward to having to figure out how to navigate what has come to be known as Manic Monday, when they play all 16 matches, eight each for the men and women, in the round of 16. Today I’ll be watching on TV with six channels of coverage, and it is almost impossible to figure out what to watch. I am enjoying imagining being there. What would I choose to watch? They’ve got matches on six different courts, and you can only be at one place at a time. And check out this list of matches for today:

The Women

• (1) Angelique Kerber vs. (14) Garbiñe Muguruza. Last year’s finalist versus 2015’s finalist.

• (7) Svetlana Kuznetsova vs. (9) Agnieszka Radwanska. A two-time Grand Slam winner versus the 2012 Wimbledon finalist.

• Magdalena Rybarikova vs. Petra Martic. (Two unseeded players about whom I know little. I don’t actually have anything to say about this match.)

• (5) Caroline Wozniacki vs. (24) Coco Vandeweghe. Former world number one and two-time U.S. Open finalist versus the rapidly improving American, who played her first Slam semi at the Australian earlier this year.

• (10) Venus Williams vs. (27) Ana Konjuh. The five-time Wimbledon champion versus a player who wasn’t even born when Venus first played here.

• (13) Jelena Ostapenko vs. (4) Elina Svitolina. This year’s French Open champion, who just turned 20, on a rocket trajectory to the sport’s highest levels, against a player who’s never been past the quarters of a Major, but who has been consistent enough to bring her ranking up to fifth in the world. Svitolina is only 22; expect to see this match-up many times over the course of their careers.

• (6) Johanna Konta vs. (21) Caroline Garcia. The British number-one, whose improvement over the past two years has been nothing short of astonishing, against the sometimes-controversial Frenchwoman, already having her best-ever Wimbledon, seeking her second-straight Slam quarterfinal.

• (2) Simona Halep vs. Victoria Azarenka. The player who really should have won the French Open this year, against a two-time Slam winner and former world number-one.

I have sometimes referred to the women’s game as “Serena Williams and a parade of also-rans, but it’s sure not that at Wimbledon this year. I know little about Rybarikova and Martic, but all the other matches are fascinating match-ups.

The Men

• (1) Andy Murray vs. Benoit Paire. The two-time Wimbledon champion against the insane short-shorts-wearing Frenchman.

• (24) Sam Querrey vs. Kevin Anderson. The American who knocked off Djokovic here last year against a former top-ten player trying to rise in the rankings again after struggles with injury.

• (4) Rafael Nadal vs. (16) Gilles Muller. Rafael Nadal has so far this year only been the runner-up at the Australian and the champion at Roland Garros. You could call that a pretty good year. Gilles Muller is playing at his career-high ranking.

• (7) Marin Cilic vs. (18) Roberto Bautista Agut. One of three players outside the Big Four to win a Slam title since 2006 and a definite dark-horse contender here, against the always-tough, just-dispatched-Nishikori Bautista Agut.

• (5) Milos Raonic vs. (10) Alexander Zverev. Last year’s finalist against the rapidly maturing, has-all-the-tools Sasha Zverev.

• (3) Roger Federer vs. (13) Grigor Dimitrov. The Greatest of All Time against a player with a very similar style of play, whose five-setter against Rafael Nadal in the semis of the Australian this year took enough out of Nadal’s legs that Federer was able to get that break back in the fifth set of the final.

• (8) Dominic Thiem vs. (11) Tomas Berdych. They say Thiem’s monster power game isn’t suited to grass, but he’s easily having his best Wimbledon ever. He’ll certainly be tested against the powerful, big-serving veteran Berdych.

• (2) Novak Djokovic vs. Adrian Mannarino. Is Novak back? This may not be the match in which the former number-one gets tested, but Mannarino was able to put Gael Monfils out of his head-case misery in the last round, so he can’t be disregarded here.

The men’s matches aren’t quite as juicy as the women’s, but still: holy crap. If we expect Murray, Djokovic and Nadal to all win easily, and if I’m going to let the Querrey-Anderson and Cilic-Bautista Agut matches go by unwatched (and I am), then that still leaves three terrific-looking matches.

If you need me today, you can find me in front of the TV.

It was right around 10am MDT, and I had the Bethanie Mattek-Sands vs. Sorana Cirstea match on my second screen, watching it in between points on whatever I had on the main screen. I glanced down to see Cirstea, looking deeply concerned, step over the net onto Mattek-Sands’ side of the court. “Oh no,” I thought. “She’s not injured?” Mattek-Sands lay on the court, clutching her right knee. I heard screams, and thought at first it was Cirstea in a panic. Had Mattek-Sands suffered some freak, horrific compound fracture? But it wasn’t Cirstea screaming. It was Bethanie Mattek-Sands screaming out again and again and again, “Help me!”

My heart broke for her.

They showed replays of the point. She had advanced to net, split-stepped, and then crumpled. She fell to the ground, clutching that knee. She screamed and screamed and screamed. The TV cameras showed people in the stands covering their mouths in horror. Her husband scrambled from the player’s box to the court to comfort her as best he could. Medical staff seemed terribly slow to arrive. She lay on the court for a long, long time. Her doubles partner, Lucie Safarova, showed up in tears. Safarova hugged members of Mattek-Sands’ family. Finally they stretchered Bethanie away.

As I write this, Friday afternoon my time and late Friday evening in London, there are no further reports on the injury. A report on the WTA website says only that she suffered an acute knee injury, and that she’s been to the hospital for scans. The level of pain did not seem consistent with what I’ve witnessed of knee ligament damage. A commentator on Twitter suggested that it could be a patellar tendon rupture, and that, if so, her career is likely over.

It is hard to overstate just how cruelly, tragically unfair this injury is. Team Bucie, as Mattek-Sands and Safarova call themselves, had won the last three Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles and were the heavy favorites to win Wimbledon–completing the Team Bucie Slam–and looked good for a run at the U.S. Open, and thus the calendar Slam, as well.

Bethanie–I’m mostly going to call her Bethanie from now on, because I care about her in the stupid, misguided way that fans care, where we think we know someone because we’ve invited their image into our living rooms–has been one of my favorite players since I first saw her play, back in the 3rd round of singles at the 2015 U.S. Open, when she played Serena Williams. I had just that summer began to find my way into an obsession with tennis, and so most of the players were still new to me, and I’d never heard of Bethanie Mattek-Sands, but I liked her right away. She had flair, something immediately evident in her appearance–the tattoos, the wild clothes (that day, a red spaghetti-strap tank loosely over a red jog-bra, and black knee socks) the orange highlights in her hair–as well as her play. She came out serving-and-volleying, and she took the first set from Serena, and I wondered why I’d never heard of her before. She was so much fun to watch.

And she has continued to be fun to watch. Her singles results were inconsistent, to say the least, and I never could quite figure out what kept her from more success on the singles court. But whatever it was, she played with an aggressive swagger that has kept me watching ever since. (I rarely was able to watch her play doubles. Doubles doesn’t get televised very frequently, and when it is, it’s not heavily promoted.)

So something else we have lost with her injury: a player of charisma, someone who steps outside the bounds of what reads as “normal” for a professional tennis player, in terms of appearance, attitude, and style of play.

I’ll say again: it breaks my heart.

Will she ever play again? I’m sure no one yet know. With an injury as severe as this one appears to be, you figure, best case, a year of rehab to play again and another year to return to top form. Bethanie is 32 right now. She’ll be 34 by then. At what point does the cost simply become too high, the struggle too great?

Even if she never plays again, her story hasn’t by any means ended. I find myself turning questions over in my mind, worrying on her behalf. Who will she be now? What will her life look like? The sport that has given so much to her over the course of her life has certainly taken from her as well. She must right now be feeling great uncertainty and great fear. You don’t become half of the top-ranked women’s doubles team without being one hell of a fighter, and surely she will fight as she moves forward in her life, whatever comes, but right now I imagine she must be wondering what exactly she’s going to be fighting for.

There are no easy morals to this, no simple feel-good sentiments to express. A terrible thing happened. All of us who love the sport lost something in that moment, but it is nothing compared to what she lost. By what she lost, I don’t mean simply or even mostly the wave of competitive success she’d been riding on. I imagine it has been far, far more terrible is to have lost the innocence that things are pretty much okay. I touch empathically on how she must have felt lying on that court screaming while hundreds of people looked on helplessly, and I skitter away from the feeling. It is far easier to contemplate my heartbreak as a fan than to allow myself to begin to feel what she was feeling.

Maybe it is trite to say that I send her love, but I don’t know what else to do.

All love to you, Bethanie Mattek-Sands. It has been an honor and a pleasure to get to watch you play.

Free refills is my resumé.

“But you can’t do that,” I said to myself, nixing whatever rising enthusiasm my idea-brain had just come up with. “It’s already after nine, and you still have to publish for today.”

I was driving west-ish on US6 away from Keystone back toward Silverthorne. The few-days-from-full waxing moon hovered high above the Ten Mile Range ahead-left. Wind whistled in through the open sunroof. In the cool mountain air, today’s blast-furnace Front Range felt so distant as to have become like a fading dream, rather than my lived reality of just a few hours ago.

What will I write about? I had no idea. Something will come before midnight. Something always does.

The air was heavy with firesmoke, and the moon illuminated the sky into a glowing blue-silver, and the mountains stood dark and distinct below. I came around a bend and Lake Dillon spread out in front of me, its planar expanse surrounded and contained within the bowl-like not-flat of the in-every-directions mountains. Under the moon the water shimmered silver like mercury.

What will I write about? Surely I can blow the dust off my fingertips and tap out on the keys some simulacrum of that shivery quiet sense of magic that even amongst the recent challenges of my life I could not help but feel.

Whispered promises from an estranged lover may not ring against your hardened heart, but still the gentle breath across your ear makes waves in your soul.

The third set of the Dominika Cibulkova-Andrea Petkovic match was the day-one highlight and, in some ways, lowlight for me.

Cibulkova and Petkovic are among my favorite players on the women’s tour. I like Cibulkova because she’s so damn feisty, bouncing around the court the way she does, and I’ve followed Petkovic ever since my first day at the U.S. Open last summer, when I walked by Court 6 on my way to elsewhere and saw Petkovic playing Kristina Kucova, the first professional match I’d seen up close, and just got engrossed. I’d never seen anything like it. They were just so damn fast and hit the ball so damn hard–and I realized that I was watching the approximately 40th-ranked player in the world play the approximately 70th, that what I was seeing was nothing compared to the quality of the really top players. But still, being able to sit two rows from the court made the experience too visceral to walk away from. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, Petkovic’s broad shoulders and glorious legs also helped hold my attention.)

So anyway. Cibulkova and Petkovic split the first two sets. The third set quickly became riveting though, by the standards of what normally constitutes good tennis, pretty goddamn dreadful: they played 16 games in the set and, between them, managed to hold serve three times. That’s … pretty horrible. Entertaining in that damn near every point started to the returner’s advantage, but horrible nonetheless.

There came a point when I began to wonder if we were watching some kind of weird negative-image replay of the hideous Isner-Mahut match from a few years ago that John Isner finally won 70-68. I mean, how long could this possibly go on? Usually in tennis the server has a major advantage. Given that serving requires such drive from the legs, it became easy to imagine that the serving here would get worse and worse and worse and that the returner’s advantage would grow and grow and grow.

But alas for poor Andrea, it wasn’t to be. Finally, in the sixteenth game of the set, Cibulkova figured out how to actually hold serve, and Petkovic went out.

Wimbledon started today. Over the past week, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. This morning I woke up before 6am–coverage started at 5am MDT–and, just like Christmas, there was no going back to sleep. I got up and turned on the TV. Wimbledon. Fuck yeah.

Wimbledon is my favorite. Wimbledon has always been my favorite. I like the Australian, I’ve come around on the French, the U.S. Open is great, but Wimbledon is the one that feels really special to me. The conservatism of British mores can be pretty stupid sometimes, but the way it manifests at Wimbledon feels pleasant and soothing and elegant. They take away as many things as possible that might distract from the tennis. There are no on-court ads. Everyone wears white. And then they put them on those beautiful grass courts. It’s wonderful.

(When I was a little kid and Wimbledon would roll around, I used to take tennis balls out onto the lawn and try to bounce them, and of course they didn’t bounce, the lawn around my house being quite a different thing from whatever magic it takes to create grass tennis courts. I remember being perplexed and mystified that it was even possible to create a grass playing surface hard enough and consistent enough that you could play tennis on it. I still feel that way.)

Good question, and yes it is.

Free Refills means at least seven things:

1. It all started with a great idea.

2. Nothing beats anice cold beverage. (Is the break there between “a” and “nice” or “an” and “ice?” Here at Free Refills, we’re pretty sure it’s both, so we do neither.)

3. This Is Not A Blog, and these are not blogposts. They’re not even pieces. They are Refills. Enjoy.

4. The idea of charging for content on a per-unit basis is deeply culturally ingrained, but in a world in which it’s possible to copy digital content infinitely with no loss of quality, charging per-unit is a little weird, don’t you think? There’s got to be a better way.

5. The better way is to support the writer directly, so that s/he can continue to create without fetter. If the creator can create without fetter or fear, then giving away the work in digital form is not just doable, it’s best. Then everyone can get a Free Refill for their Cup of Delight.

6. The dominant money-making model in the digital world is supporting your content with advertising. But here on Free Refills, you’ll won’t see any advertising, ever. Advertising is a poison, and I won’t be a part of it. (Should the opportunity ever arise, I’ll take sponsorship, which is different.)

7. In a delightful coincidence that I was unaware of when I first conceived of what I was going to do with my website, free refills describes the ultimate day-on-the-mountain experience in skiing and snowboarding. In mountain vernacular, free refills means the rare and joyous occasion when it is dumping snow so hard that your tracks from your previous run are filled in by your next run. When that happens, it is pretty much the best thing in the entire world.

Free refills of any and every sort make the world a better place.

Some of what I was saying last week about Fruition (see here and here) means that taking the time to complete an actual piece every day may not be the best use of my time. Nevertheless, I’m intending to keep the promise of “something goes up on Free Refills every weekday.” I’m still exploring what that means. I’m considering publishing excerpts direct from the zero drafts, excerpts that will ultimately point to finished longer-form pieces. I like the idea, but I’m not sure how edifying that would be for a reader, nor how useful a practice it would be for me. (I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be edifying/useful, just that I’m not sure.)

Good that you asked.

What you see here on Free Refills is the fruit of my own practice of moving through blocks. Like many writers, I have struggled with perfectionism–sometimes to a crippling degree–and so back in the spring of 2015, I made my main project the work you see here. For the Free Refills project, I promised I would publish something here every weekday. With that promise, perfectionism ceased to be an option. And I’ve kept that promise ever since.