Getting Back In Gear

Getting Back In Gear


I have not been myself lately, especially shooting. For the past month or more work has been ridiculously stressful. I'm not a 9-5 worker, my phone starts ringing around 4:30 or 5 in the morning, and it can keep ringing until 8 or so at night. I had a customer tell me the reason he uses my company is because of me, he knows that if he has a problem, I make it go away. I care.

Sometimes when you really care, and you get the sense co-workers don't, or when you can't get any kind of help to solve customer issues it gets rough. In my line of work, I'm the face of the company, I'm usually the only one a customer will ever see or deal with, if something goes wrong, it's on me, even if I'm not remotely responsible. Unfair? Sure, but that's the name of the game. Add that to some VP's calling me, my managing a big project that I had 3 days to handle, which normally would be a multi-month project. Add in the upcoming interview, and potential move away from where I've lived my entire life, I've had a lot going on. I've drifted, and the stress had me physically sick, I was throwing up blood.

Family is the most important thing to me, so when the stress hit, I retreated to spending time with Linda and Lauren, and just trying to relax. What got lost was some "me" time, doing things that I love. No, I'm not saying I don't love spending time with Linda and Lauren, I do, but there is a little bit of loss of identity, and when I walk away from something I love doing, I am aware that something is missing. I could have caught shit from Kozy and Les, and rightly so, because I saw myself having some bad habits, getting worse, and not performing at my peak. It made me back away a little more, just because I did not want to disappoint them, or waste their time.

Work is still work, but I'm learning to leave the stress behind, and just function the best I can, it's all I can do. It may be hard to detach myself a little bit, but the bottom line is that it makes me a happier person. Getting ready for the Ohio Sectional and then Area 5 is a big deal. There is a lot to do, load ammo, clean guns, magazines, and practice. Tonight I went up to practice with Kozy, and it was all there again. I had FUN. With all the stress, my practice, even a match almost felt like a chore, but tonight, I was me again. I relaxed, I kicked back, and had fun, and I just shot.

Oh, and did I shoot. We set up Wednesday's classifier, and were going to run it 3 times. The classifier is CM 09-02 Diamond Cutter. My first run was okay, but my second run was a 3.31 second run, with 36 points, 6 Alpha and 2 Charlie. That's a 10.88 Hit Factor run, or, an above 100% run! I got a hundo! Okay, why is this a big deal? Even in practice, I have never run a classifier above 76% of a perfect score, and in a match, I have never run a 75% (A Class) run. Here I am, a little rusty, not on the top of my game, and I ran the best classifier I've ever run. On my 3rd run, I clipped a no-shoot, but did it again in 3.31. My time is there, my hits? Well, I know I can do it. Someone might say it's more luck than skill, and I'd be hard pressed to argue. I'm a "B" shooter right now, maybe not even because I need to brush the rest of my rust off, and I'm not a GM shooter at all. However, turn and draw, no reload, no movement? It's set-up to be run exceptionally well.

Here's the point, it's in me, somewhere. There is a better shooter, one that I'll find consistently as I work at it. I will never, ever find it though if I always treat this as a job, or don't take joy from it. I really believe that tonight I found something I did not know I had in me simply because I had fun, I went out and shot, no stress, no worries, no pressure.

I'm proud that I did it, I'm glad I found it, and even happier that I found the fun that I'd been missing, I needed tonight, it makes me a happier person. I suspect that carries over to work, friends, everything, and I like it, I'm not going to let work suck that out of me anymore.