Thou shalt make also a veil of violet and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, wrought with embroidered work, and goodly variety: And thou shalt hang it up before four pillars of setim wood, which themselves also shall be overlaid with gold, and shall have heads of gold, but sockets of silver. And the veils shall be hanged on with rings, and within it thou shalt put the ark of the testimony, and the sanctuary, and the holy of holies shall be divided with it. —The Book of Exodus 26:31-33 The foundations thereof are in the holy mountains: The Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob. Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God. I will be mindful of Rahab and of Babylon knowing me. Behold the foreigners, and Tyre, and the people of the Ethiopians, these were there. Shall not Sion say, This man and that man is born in her? and the Highest himself hath founded her. The Lord shall tell in his writings of peoples and of princes, of them that
"I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it."
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I have so much trouble stalling. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't like being creamed in slow-mo. I can't make myself move slower than I normally do. I guess I'm just not used to thinking in terms of time, because I haven't been to many tournaments. Anyway, I hope you did great this weekend and had a lot of fun.
Plan D was my fallback, given to me by one of my best friends who was coaching me. I was totally losing it in Div III. Couldn't concentrate at all. All I had in my head was how well I had done the day before (in Div II)--which was useless. I was impatient, arrogant, not taking my opponents seriously, and they were clobbering me, and rightly so. I was throwing myself at them thinking I should get the touch, rather than watching them, knowing that they could hit me if I made a mistake (which I kept doing, over and over again). I said to my friend, "I just can't get my head in this today!" And she said, "But you had a whole minute left on the clock that time. What were you thinking?! Use the time." And then she gave me my goal for the day: "Use the whole three minutes."
ReplyDeleteIt worked. It got my head out of the past and back into the game and it gave me a way of forcing myself to be patient. I won two pool bouts, enough to make the cut. And then I won my first D-E 13-12 by stalling in the last 16 seconds so that my opponent would think I was trying to hit her, but in fact I was just running the clock down. Devious, but effective! It's all part of the game.