Coach

Here's why I'm not writing about coaching.  It's not because I'm not thinking about it, because I am -- the team and the individual sailors and the facility and what I want to do next is constantly on my mind.  It's not because it's not fascinating, because it is -- there's a chance to observe a lot about sailing and about human nature every day.  It's not because I don't like it, because I do -- I love it, in fact, and feel very lucky to be able to do it. 

I'm not writing about it because it doesn't seem to fit on this weblog.  This weblog is all about me.  Me, me, me.  But when I coach, it's all about them -- the sailors I'm trying to help get better at a sport they love.  It is the least ego-involved thing I've done.  I watch and listen and think and the things that happen in my mind are centered on the kind of experience the sailors are having: what they've figured out, where they're getting stuck.  I don't think about what I want to say, I try to think about what would be most helpful to them to hear.  For the time that I'm coaching, I'm the steward of other people's experiences, and those take priority over my own.  And of course, it's not my business or my right to write about other people's experiences on this weblog.  It's all I can do to unravel my own.

I don't withhold information about coaching here because I want to keep up some kind of Chinese wall between my identity as a coach and the rest of my life.  That doesn't make much sense to me.  I assume my team reads this from time to time (hi guys) although I don't presume it holds any special fascination for them.  I'm not censoring myself here for some kind of ideal of professionalism; the team knows I'm human.  I expect as the season winds down I'll mull over some of the lessons I've learned and may post those.  But there's a natural dichotomy between my focus as a coach: completely outward, a study of how the world impacts my student-athletes -- and my focus here as a writer: largely inward, an examination of how the world affects me, me, me.   

I guess that's it in a nutshell.  When I'm coaching, it's not about me.  When I'm writing, it is.  Mixing them doesn't feel natural right now. 

Comments

Fascinating, Fair, and Insightful.... you are brilliantly in tune with yourself.

[Sally]

I understand your feelings, now I'm working as sport psychologist and try to help my sport team. They are all as my kids.