Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

Leicester City are champions of England. Tottenham Hotspur’s ill-tempered 2-2 draw at Chelsea yesterday gave Leicester an insurmountable lead atop the Premier League table with two matches remaining. The 5000-to-1 Foxes have completed the greatest sports underdog story of all time. Congratulations to them.

It’s an amazing story, and I don’t want to diminish it, but as a fan of sports I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. The end was something of an anti-climax. The better story would have happened had Spurs won at Stamford Bridge. Then Leicester City would have needed a draw or better at home to Everton on Saturday to clinch the title. Imagine 32,000 fans at the King Power Stadium absolutely losing their minds, witnessing something they never would have dared believe were it not actually happening. It would have been insane.

Instead, Spurs blew a 0-2 lead and the title fell into Leicester’s lap.

I need to remember that Leicester controlled their own destiny this past Saturday. Had they beaten ManU at Old Trafford, the title would have been theirs. I shouldn’t lay all or even most of the blame at Spurs’ feet. But I’m struggling not to.

For Spurs, there was a lot more on the line than just the prospect of an emotionally thrilling Leicester City-Everton match on Saturday. With the draw, Spurs clinched no worse than fourth place in the league, guaranteeing themselves a spot in Champions League qualifying for next season, but no Spurs fan will be satisfied unless Spurs take second and finish ahead of their arch-rivals Arsenal for the first time in forever. Every year that I’ve been a Spurs fan, I’ve been forced to watch as Arsenal supporters celebrate St. Totteringham’s Day, the day Arsenal’s league finish ahead of Tottenham is assured. I don’t know if there’s a commensurate celebration for when the tables are turned, so I want to create one. We’ll call it St. Arsenhole’s Day, and I really want to celebrate it.

On paper, Spurs should be able to put this thing to bed. They have a three-point lead and a gigantic goal differential, with matches against mid-table Southampton (home) and fighting-against-relegation Newcastle (away) to finish the season. It seems reasonable to expect that Spurs could simply assert themselves as the superior side, beat Southampton on Sunday, and lock up second place.

But Spurs have had multiple opportunities to do so (or even grab first) this season already, and they’ve failed to take them. Back on March 5th, they were up 2-1 against 10-man Arsenal with 30 minutes remaining but only managed to hold on for the draw. (Had they won back then, they’d have 2nd place locked up now.) Last week, they were up 1-0 against a pretty sorry West Bromwich Albion side, but again let down and settled for a draw. Their collapse against Chelsea yesterday was particularly ugly. Not only could they not close out the match with a 0-2 lead, they couldn’t hold their discipline at all. Their players received nine yellow cards, the most ever in a Premier League match. They might still lose Mousa Dembele and Eric Dier to retrospective action. Last week Dele Alli lost his shit and got himself suspended for the rest of the season for a petulant punch to a West Brom player’s midsection. This week, it was like, instead of learning from his mistake, the team decided to follow his lead.

It’s clear that the energetic cost of the season–38 matches in the league, two domestic cup competitions, plus all the matches (and the travel) in Europe–has ultimately become too much to bear. The letdowns against West Brom and Chelsea show that Spurs couldn’t maintain competitive intensity. Their season isn’t over yet. I think of a 2016 St. Totteringham’s Day and I shudder. I won’t be comfortable until second place is officially in the bag.

But what if it wasn’t? What if it only seems that way?

(Before we go any further, you might enjoy reading this article by Rick Reilly about the twelfth hole at Augusta National, from the April 2, 1990, issue of Sports Illustrated. It’s a long piece, but gives a great sense of how challenging No. 12 historically has been. Money quote: “The best hole in the country is the 12th at Augusta National. … Jack Nicklaus calls it ‘the hardest tournament hole in golf.'”

One more thing: Keep in mind that, irrespective of the difficulty, everyone plays the same hole.)

The central idea and understanding of the TTW project is that the techniques that could help Tiger regain his dominance (or at least start playing golf with pleasure again) are the same techniques an amateur would use to improve her game, and vice versa. With that perspective in mind, today I’d like to explore what Jordan Spieth could have done differently on the first three holes of the back nine in the final round of the Masters.

Let’s review the situation one more time. Spieth finished the front-nine with four straight birdies, giving himself a five-shot lead going into the final nine holes of the tournament. Here’s an outline of all of his shots on ten, eleven and twelve:

• Ten (Par 4)

  • Tee shot: 3-wood. Off to the right, into the rough.
  • Second shot: Short and right, into the front-right bunker by the green.
  • Third shot: From the sand, well short.
  • Fourth shot: Medium-length putt, missed.
  • Fifth shot: Makes the putt.
  • Result: Bogey

• Eleven (Par 4)

  • Tee shot: Driver. Well right, into the trees.
  • Second shot: No shot at the green. Pitches out to center of fairway.
  • Third shot: From 122 yards, right at the pin. Lovely shot.
  • Fourth shot: Putt, about 6 feet, missed just below the hole.
  • Fifth shot: Makes the putt.
  • Result: Bogey

• Twelve (Par 3)

  • Tee shot: Short and to the right. Falls back into Rae’s Creek.
  • Second shot: (Penalty)
  • Third shot: Wedge from maybe 80 yards, hit fat, right into the creek.
  • Fourth shot: (Penalty)
  • Fifth shot: From same place as last shot, hits back of green, bounces into the sand.
  • Sixth shot: Out of sand, close to pin.
  • Seventh shot: Makes the putt.
  • Result: Quadruple bogey

(Also worth remembering: two years ago, in his first Masters, Spieth had come to twelve chasing the lead on the final day and had hit short and to the right and seen his ball bounce back into the water.)

Seeing it written out like that, the pattern is kind of hard to miss. With the exception of his second and third shots on eleven–the former a high-margin shot, the latter a beautifully hit wedge–every shot he hit on the back nine (excluding putts), up until the fifth shot on twelve, was short and to the right.

What do you think was going through his head as he stepped up to the tee on 12? How likely do you think it is that he was thinking, “Don’t hit it short and right?”

Pretty likely, I’d say.

One of Jerry’s teachings is “The body doesn’t know ‘not.'” That is, the abstraction of “not” has no energetic meaning to the body. When we say to ourselves, “Don’t hit it to the right,” the energy in the body is, “Hit it to the right.”

In last week’s piece, I noted that something changed substantially with that fifth shot at twelve. I bet Spieth was thinking something like, “I’ll hit it toward the back of the green. If it goes into the bunker, fine.” And by changing his conceptualization of the shot into something with a higher margin for error, and with a positive visualization without a corresponding negative one (i.e. no “don’t hit it right”), he changed his energy. Again, for proof, I offer that he made an comfortable up-and-down from the bunker, then birdied the par-5 13th and par-4 14th.

So from a TTW perspective, what might we offer to Jordan Spieth to keep this sort of thing from happening again, or to stave it off when it starts to happen?

A regular practice of centering might have helped. As I noted in my piece from two weeks ago, I noticed as he addressed the ball on ten that he collapsed his shoulders forward. Energetically, this is a way of protecting the heart center, and is usually a sign of trying to keep fear at bay. With practice, he might have noticed that in fighting his fear, he was pulling himself out of center, and then been able to re-center himself.

By the time he hit his second shot on ten, and certainly by his third, he should have been able to notice that he was establishing a pattern in his shots. Again, by this point, taking a few moments to re-center would likely have helped him.

Another possibility would have been to change the energy of the situation by changing the parameters for success. Narrow parameters for success, when not met, lead to feelings of failure and a diminishing of energy. Broader parameters for success make success much more likely, and success leads to positive changes in energy– literally, success helps beget more success.

Now, this approach is no panacea. Spieth said later that part of the problem was that he got conservative after the turn. Perhaps that’s why he grabbed 3-wood instead of driver on 10. A 3-wood is a higher margin club than driver, but nevertheless his tee shot on 10 went to the right, into the long grass. So something was different between his high-margin approach on the tee on 10 and his high-margin fifth shot on 12.

The point here isn’t to engage in endless counterfactuals. It’s to suggest that there are strategies to counteract a swing toward negative energy. Centering alone might be enough. Playful imagining might work. Changing the parameters of success and failure can help. Many of these tools involve using the thinking mind to generate a positive imagined outcome, which is unlikely to succeed without a means–like centering–to turn the process over to the body’s intuition.

Jordan Spieth has all the physical tools to be a great golf champion, but what we saw at Augusta during the final round this year tells us that he doesn’t yet fully have the energetic tools. (Jordan: call us. We can help.) He’ll need to develop them, or he’ll end up in exactly the same situation again and again.

And as for the rest of us? We, too, need to develop our energetic skills, or we too will end up playing out the same patterns again and again in our lives.

Regarding yesterday’s writing: I’m doing okay, thanks for asking. My head sure hurts at the temple, but I actually don’t think I ended up with a concussion–I’m not suffering through the fog that I associate with post-concussion symptoms. I did a little research today and learned that the real concern with blows to the temple is epidural hematoma. Fun! Given that I’m not dead, I think we can rule that out.

And regarding what I wrote on Tuesday: I’m doing much better, thanks for asking. I followed the breadcrumbs back to a place of stability.

The despair is gone, but the feeling of futility remains. On Monday I promised some pieces about Game of Thrones. I drafted a bunch of stuff, but didn’t (yet?) see it through to finished pieces. I found myself asking, “Does anyone care? Does this stuff matter?”

Lots of soul-searching this week. I mostly try to keep this stuff private, but sometimes it spills out. And rather than struggle to write something else, I’m choosing not to struggle. I’m keeping my promise to publish. This week, that has to be good enough.

I was thinking about it anyway. Running with the 25-year-olds was already starting to cost more energy than it’s worth. And then tonight, defending a corner kick, the ball went just past me and I turned to follow it and an opponent headed the living shit out of it, and from about two feet away the ball hit me in the temple and everything went dark for a moment. I dropped to a knee and among my many thoughts as I knelt there in the grass was, “It’s time.”

In my piece yesterday, I promised that today’s piece would be about how the “Game of Thrones” premiere drew my focus onto the way time-shifting and the related cry of “No spoilers!” has affected the greater cultural conversation.

And I drafted a bunch about that. And I think I might have had some interesting stuff to say. But when it came time to begin the revision process, I discovered, underlying the resistance I’d been fighting recently, something unexpected: a profound sense of soul-crushing futility, giving way to utter existential despair.

“Oh shit,” I said to myself. “I seem to have fallen into depression.”

Looking back over the past few days, I can identify a few things that were energy leaks, the sort of things that might have been contributing causes, but I’m not sure that in this case there’s anything as simple as a cause. Maybe the orbits of depressive events swing close to our own emotional orbits, and sometimes the merest impulse can deflect an event into our emotional gravity well. I don’t know. I mean, I put attention into possible causes because depression sucks and I obviously want to avoid it, but on the other hand, in the midst of it, “cause” doesn’t really matter that much. The important thing is to take care of myself.

I’m wondering and actually a bit worried that, to the good friends of mine who are the only for-sure regular readers of Free Refills, this piece is going to look like a desperate cry for help. It isn’t, actually. I’ve been in worse places than this and I learned a little while back how to leave myself breadcrumbs to find my way out. So I know the sorts of things I need to do to take care of myself. I’m actually feeling pretty good that, even in the face of this feeling of despair, I’m choosing to keep my promise to publish. It’s a good way of saying, “This too shall pass.”

So, yeah, I’m gonna pat myself on the back for doing my work, even in the face of the feeling of “None of this shit matters at all.” Furthermore, I’m going to own that this is what I’m going through–I refuse to be shamed into silence by the happy-archy and well-adjusto-normative social pressures!

(Happy-archy and well-adjusto-normative: the best I could do at parodying P.C., “I’m being oppressed” language, given the circumstances.)

But so yeah that’s what’s happening in my world, and now, my work done for the day, I’m going to shut off the computer and go take care of myself.

Last night the long wait finally ended, and season 6 of “Game of Thrones” finally premiered. In its honor, it’s “Game of Thrones” week here at Free Refills! “Game of Thrones” has become one of the big cultural touchstones of our time. It’s everywhere. Everyone is watching. Everyone is writing about it. We here at Free Refills are no different. We want in!

And just what can you expect from the great minds at Free Refills?

Tomorrow, we’ll be talking about the whole idea of “No spoilers!” and what meaning it carries in a time-shifted world with respect to a cultural force as ubiquitous as “Game of Thrones.”

On Wednesday, we’ll be talking about how, when you take a minute to think about it, “Game of Thrones” has actually become pretty shockingly stupid. In that space, we’ll talk about our relationship to storytelling and media, and we’ll discuss how, despite its now fairly grievous flaws, the show remains a force of nature.

On Thursday, I’ll write about something that will doubtless arise as I explore the ideas I just mentioned. You’ll forgive the vagueness. It didn’t occur to me until this morning, when I found myself thinking endlessly about last night’s episode, that the right thing to do this week was to write about “Game of Thrones.” I’m tired of struggling every goddamn day to get my pieces out, so this week I’m choosing not to struggle. Today’s piece exists to give me a little space to zero-draft the more complicated pieces to follow, and then have time and room to properly rewrite without making myself crazy. Hooray!

(Friday will be, as usual, my TTW piece.)

It’s been almost two weeks, but Jordan Spieth’s fifth shot at the 12th during the final round of the Masters is still on my mind. In the midst of everything bad that happened during the first three holes of the back nine, that shot stood out.

Let’s review the situation as he stepped up to the tee box on twelve. On 10, he’d been short and right on his tee shot, ending up in the rough. He was short and right on his second shot, landing in the front-right bunker. His sand shot fell short, and then he two-putted for bogey. On 11, his tee shot went right, into the trees. He had to chip into the fairway for his second. He pitched from the fairway to within six feet, but two-putted for another bogey. He walked onto twelve having seen his five-shot lead cut to one. Finally, he certainly remembered his tee shot on twelve two years ago when he was chasing for the lead. That day he hit short and right. It didn’t make the green and ended up in the water.

This year, his tee shot on 12 was an echo of the shot two years ago. It went short and right and bounced back into the water. After the stroke penalty, he took his third shot from about 80 yards and hit it so ridiculously fat that it barely made it to the water. Unfortunately for him, though, it did.

He took his fifth shot from the same place as the third. This time, he hit well long. The ball hit the very back of the green and rolled into the back bunker. It’s not a deep bunker, and from there, he made an easy up-and-down (well, as easy as an up-and-down as it can be when you’ve just blown up into a million pieces) for a quadruple-bogey 7.

So why does the fifth shot on 12 continue to so fascinate me? Because after so many bad shots in three holes, with his energy all in a whirl, he hit what appeared to be another bad shot–after all, Jordan Spieth is capable of pitching onto the green from 80 yards. But that shot appeared to settle him down. He calmly made his up-and-down. He went to 13 and hit a lovely drive, which led to a birdie. He made par on 14 and another birdie on 15.

Which suggests that with that fifth shot, he substantially cleared out the negative energy. So what was it about this shot–still apparently a bad shot–that allowed him to re-center?

I have no way to prove this, but I think he hit that “bad” shot intentionally. More specifically and accurately, I think he gave himself permission to widen his target and his definition of success. Had he hit short (within reason) of where the ball ended up landing, he’d have simply been on the green. Had he hit long, he’d have landed directly in the bunker. He knew it wasn’t a particularly hard bunker to play out of. By changing his approach to a broader notion of success, he found a way to make a successful shot. In doing so, he was able to re-center.

All of which leads me to suggest that he had that tool all along. Had he intentionally hit an “imperfect” tee shot on 12, perhaps even aiming to put the ball into the bunker, thereby giving himself permission for par (or even bogey), he would have been able to clear out the negative energy. My major point of evidence for this assertion is that he hit a shot that did exactly that. He just did it four strokes too late.

Stress hit last night like illness oncoming, and I awoke in the wee hours feeling bad, a gonna-vomit level of bad but manifesting differently, the feeling energetic rather than purely physical. The cause of the feeling was as invisible as a microbe that causes nausea. Just stressed. No visible reason.

I got up to write. What else is there to do? Thoughts like, “I’m unhappy,” came and demanded attention. I wrote them down, to see where they’d lead.

I wandered through places like this: “Who I am may be a sum of my choices, but choices never solidify into destiny. Meaning there is always a different choice. So choose it. Choose it again and again until it becomes a habit. This is the why and how of change.”

The thoughts, thus followed, led me finally to a welcome yawn, then a return to deep sleep and heavy morning dreams, and when I awoke, stress had gone and unhappy had gone. How much of their passing came from the final hours of sleep and how much from allowing them to have their dark-hours say?

Today is 4/20, St. Cannabis’s Day, and in its honor I’m going to not get high, because it’s a Wednesday and I have stuff to do.

What I did do today was go back and read my piece from a year ago, in which I talked about how marijuana helped me get through when I was struggling deeply with depression. What I remembered most about that piece, besides that it was the closest I’ve ever come to missing my deadline–I clicked “Publish” that day literally at 11:59pm–was that I’d spoken candidly about a very tough time in my life. One year on, I wanted to re-examine what I’d had to say and see if there was anything worth adding or commenting on.

In the piece, I speak about how, in the face of that depression, I had gone to a psychiatrist to consider going on an SSRI. Interestingly, until I reread the piece, I’d pretty much forgotten all about that meeting. In fact, until I got to the specific description of the psychiatrist herself, I was thinking the story was about a therapist I was working with suggesting I try marijuana for my chronic insomnia. That’s how far out of mind the visit to the psychiatrist had become.

If that isn’t a testament to just how far I’ve come since the depths of that depression, how much I’ve healed, I don’t know what is. The situation at the time had gotten to an any-port-in-a-storm level of desperation. Now, my story has changed so completely that a significant detail from that period is more or less forgotten: awesome.