Mornin', everyone. This is today's Your Call, where you can all chat about the matches taking place in ATP and WTA land. It's funny - yesterday, I wrote my Rafael Nadal Just Like Julien post fully conscious that my subject matter would be surprising to some, and perhaps disappointing or irritating to others who were hoping for something more "game" based, or grounded in the news of the day. But I was glad I plowed forward despite my reservations. It proved to me once again that it's worth following my instincts, even if little flags pop up and I ask myself, Do I really need to open this can of worms?
Well, my feeling is that if I'm not a worm-can opener, I'm not doing my job at the highest and best level.
For those of you puzzled by my choice of subject, or suspicious about my motives (He gets paid by the comment, so he tries to create controversy!) let me explain something about how and why I work. Each day when I have the privilege of firing up this laptop, I approach the blank page with this mandate: What can I write about that seems interesting to me at this moment, and will hopefully be interesting and entertaining for you? I think the writer's lodestar is the mandate to be interesting. And in my experience, the only true and real way to do that is to explore, discover and articulate feelings that can only be reached if you take a basic feeling or thought and follow it's trail, asking, why do I feel this way? It may surprise those of you who aren't writers that this process is one of shared discovery. I am sometimes as surprised by the posts I write as some of you are.
One of the things I realized after reading the comments (as well as writing the post) is that I often change my mind about people and things. I've been doing this work long enough now to see that alert, long-time readers often point out these changes of direction or opinion. I also notice that some comment posters don't share that habit. This touches on one of those little mental riddles with which I periodically torture myself: Which requires more integrity, sticking with a conviction (a belief, tastes or prejudice) ) or abandoning it as time goes on? Hey, there are people of my age out there who believe the Grateful Dead were the greatest band ever - a position they've maintained for about 40 years - and counting. The issue is particularly interesting to me as a person who came of age in the 1960s, and was exposed and shaped by the gestalt of that era.
That gets into way too complicated a discussion for right now, but it pops up in many contexts, including tennis-related ones. My feelings about Nadal, for example, have really changed ("evolved" is the word that comes to mind, although using that word always smacks of self-justification). At any rate, it was well worth writing that Just Like Julien post, and a comment touched on some of what I was feeling in very direct but emotionally pitch-perfect way. MJnanny wrote:
As someone who has loved many, many athletes, and watched them get old and never imagining another would come along...I thought this article touched on the joys and sadness of the passing of time. . .
Beautifully put, and thanks. And did y'all notice that NIkolay Davydenko is back, in full force?
-- Pete