by Angela Cybulski
Nolan Ryan, Angels star pitcher and
baseball hall of famer, a master of the curveball.
I have a lifelong love affair with baseball. My grandfather and great-grandfather loved the game and I spent a lot of time with both of them as a child.
When I could barely walk I’d stand against the screen of my grandfather’s TV when he was watching the game and just stare at the players. I can still feel the heat of the screen against my hands and the bright light blurring in front of me. By the time I was three years old I was in love with Willie Mays. Too young to watch an entire game, I’d drop whatever I was playing with when my grandfather called me to say that “Willie is up to bat!” I’d run out and watch him hit and then go back to play until he came up again. I’d sit with my great-grandpa while he listened to the games on his radio, eating roasted peanuts and taking sips from his beer. As I got older, my grandfather took me to Angels games; I started playing softball; by the time I was in middle school I’d taken ownership of my passion for baseball apart from my grandfather and great-grandfather. Spring and summer was filled with the sounds of the transistor radio, listening to Saturday afternoon ball games outside or at the beach.
For me the phrase “Keep your eye on the ball” has resonance beyond the game. Baseball has taught me lessons that extend into other areas of my life away from my favorite team or my own time on the field. Like most sports, baseball is a good model for helping us strategize whatever situation, problem, or event we’re dealing with. By staying focused and concentrating on the “ball” (i.e. challenge) we can find ways to deal with it: control it, live with it, solve it, surrender to it, accept it, or perhaps even eliminate it by knocking it out of the park. It all has to do with our attitude and the way we approach the “game” of life.
But every once in awhile you get a curveball thrown at you. And any baseball player will tell you that the curveball is different. It comes along, initially just like any regular pitch, straight at you. You can see it, you think you can deal with it. But at the last minute, the good curve ball swerves and dips, unbalances you, leaving you looking at the air where it was and not at the ball itself, which sails across the plate and under your line of vision, making this particular pitch exceptionally hard to deal with and capable throwing your entire game seriously off.
Lately, my life has been like dealing with one curveball after another. As a result, I feel myself spread thinner and thinner and dangerously on the edge of burnout. My energy level and ability to focus is sorely depleted and I’m having a lot of trouble concentrating on all of these major issues, much less managing to find time or mental focus necessary to continue sustained work on the manuscripts I edit or, even more important, working on my own writing. (For those of you who may not know it, all of us editors at Wiseblood Books are also writers, which makes us uniquely attuned to the struggles of those whose manuscripts we have the privilege of editing and bringing to print).
Finding a way to keep writing during this challenging time of life while still attending to the tasks at hand continues to become more and more difficult, thus raising a crucial question: How do I stay in the game of writing without striking out due to the overwhelming presence of the curves?
Starting this week, and occasionally for five or six posts following, I’ll be publishing a series of helpful tips to the Wiseblood weblog that have helped me to ensure I’m writing through the curves in a healthy way. I share these in hopes of helping other writers, particularly those who aspire to publish with Wiseblood, navigate their own challenges to living a productive writing life. I hope you’ll follow along and share your town tips and strategies for maintaining a healthy creative life when the curves threaten to throw off your game at its core.
Cheers!
When I could barely walk I’d stand against the screen of my grandfather’s TV when he was watching the game and just stare at the players. I can still feel the heat of the screen against my hands and the bright light blurring in front of me. By the time I was three years old I was in love with Willie Mays. Too young to watch an entire game, I’d drop whatever I was playing with when my grandfather called me to say that “Willie is up to bat!” I’d run out and watch him hit and then go back to play until he came up again. I’d sit with my great-grandpa while he listened to the games on his radio, eating roasted peanuts and taking sips from his beer. As I got older, my grandfather took me to Angels games; I started playing softball; by the time I was in middle school I’d taken ownership of my passion for baseball apart from my grandfather and great-grandfather. Spring and summer was filled with the sounds of the transistor radio, listening to Saturday afternoon ball games outside or at the beach.
For me the phrase “Keep your eye on the ball” has resonance beyond the game. Baseball has taught me lessons that extend into other areas of my life away from my favorite team or my own time on the field. Like most sports, baseball is a good model for helping us strategize whatever situation, problem, or event we’re dealing with. By staying focused and concentrating on the “ball” (i.e. challenge) we can find ways to deal with it: control it, live with it, solve it, surrender to it, accept it, or perhaps even eliminate it by knocking it out of the park. It all has to do with our attitude and the way we approach the “game” of life.
But every once in awhile you get a curveball thrown at you. And any baseball player will tell you that the curveball is different. It comes along, initially just like any regular pitch, straight at you. You can see it, you think you can deal with it. But at the last minute, the good curve ball swerves and dips, unbalances you, leaving you looking at the air where it was and not at the ball itself, which sails across the plate and under your line of vision, making this particular pitch exceptionally hard to deal with and capable throwing your entire game seriously off.
Lately, my life has been like dealing with one curveball after another. As a result, I feel myself spread thinner and thinner and dangerously on the edge of burnout. My energy level and ability to focus is sorely depleted and I’m having a lot of trouble concentrating on all of these major issues, much less managing to find time or mental focus necessary to continue sustained work on the manuscripts I edit or, even more important, working on my own writing. (For those of you who may not know it, all of us editors at Wiseblood Books are also writers, which makes us uniquely attuned to the struggles of those whose manuscripts we have the privilege of editing and bringing to print).
Finding a way to keep writing during this challenging time of life while still attending to the tasks at hand continues to become more and more difficult, thus raising a crucial question: How do I stay in the game of writing without striking out due to the overwhelming presence of the curves?
Starting this week, and occasionally for five or six posts following, I’ll be publishing a series of helpful tips to the Wiseblood weblog that have helped me to ensure I’m writing through the curves in a healthy way. I share these in hopes of helping other writers, particularly those who aspire to publish with Wiseblood, navigate their own challenges to living a productive writing life. I hope you’ll follow along and share your town tips and strategies for maintaining a healthy creative life when the curves threaten to throw off your game at its core.
Cheers!