Nasty

I wanted desperately to come up with a funny title for this post. I toyed around with something to do with the lyrics from Janet Jackson's song Nasty (No, my first name ain't baby /It's Janet - Miss Jackson if you're nasty) but alas I couldn't make it funny. So if you have suggestions I'll gladly rename the post, or we can just pretend I was humourous here.

To the meat of the issue. Turns out playing with Nasty was loads of fun. It's another situation where I'm confident that I'm in the top third to quarter of the team...right now. So on the one hand this wouldn't be the best place to really push myself and get tons better. On the other hand, I like these people and for the most part (some frustration not getting thrown to, etc notwithstanding) I had a great time. So the question becomes: Should I try and play for a team that has some guys I don't like and where I'll be in the middle to bottom third talent wise, but I'll learn a bunch and get fitter, etc. Or should I revert to playing with fun people where I won't have to really push myself. Right now I'm leaning towards playing with Nasty. I love ultimate, it's one of the three things I'm most passionate about in the world, but I don't know that I want it to become job like. I don't know that I want to play it just to prove that I'm good. Finally there is the consideration of the durability of my body. This was a concern at Oberlin, and I imagine could well reappear. I'm just not built to play as hard as I do. I tend to pull and strain and tweak things. Maybe the right training would counteract this, but I'm not sure.

I have HOV practice on Saturday and I'll see how I feel about it. I think I could make the team. I'm not too shabby as a long, and I read the disc well. The question will be do I want to make the team. I'm reserving judgement until I've done a few practices and figured out more of what my life is going to look like.

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In wholly unrelated news I've made two trips to temp agencies in the past two days. Each time I walked into a hyper corporate office (with paintings that could just as easily have been in a hotel) with well dressed, well tanned women who are cheerful to the point of terrorizing. I then am asked to fill out form after form. Then I'm interviewed. I, sadly, have to imagine that being a white, college educated, male, in a suit tends to make things go much easier than if any of those things were not true. Then I take a test on WORD and EXCEL. Having used both of these a lot, I do well. Then it's on to the typing test. I'm proud to report that I am, surprisingly enough, a good typist. I sorta figured I was mediocre, maybe just average.* I type 69 words per minute and had one error. According to the bubbly and copper colored women of City Staff that's very speedy. Incidently the woman who interviewed me asked about long term goals and I mentioned that I might want to be a professor. She said that she too wanted to teach. I asked, "what would you want to teach?" She said, "Well, I was a marketing major. So..... that. But really I've always wanted to teach about relations. Relations. Not like psychology or anything like that." "Sociology, maybe" I offered. "No not that formal, sort of like, well I have to deal with people all day here. Maybe like human relations. Like how people relate and communicate. Sort of how people relate one on one. Kind of like that." I'm not sure how seriously she wants to teach or if it's something she said to you know relate to me, but it was a strange moment to be certain. To bring this post full circle, while waiting for my scores to be recorded I leafed through a newsletter sitting out on the coffee table. Inside were listed temp employees who'd since transitioned to full employment with their respective companies. The final listing mentioned a Chris Neibling. Turns out the sketchy/nasty cage monster from Sophmore year 80s night is now the internal communications director for a firm in DC. Nasty indeed.


*(Side note, for some reason in the absence of independent confirmation, I often tend to assume I'm either bad or below average, then often enough find that that's not true, why is that? Why start with the assumption that you're below average. Fucked up, right?).