The Greatest Player Who Never Lived

Saturday, January 18, 2003 (2:21am)

Thursday night, I was covering the fiction side of the store and I passed by a book by J. Michael Veron called The Greatest Player Who Never Lived and I'm not sure what drew my attention to it. Perhaps I thought it was misshelved and belonged in the Golf section. Or maybe it was the brightness of the front cover. In any case, I read the back and was intrigued. But what I want to share is the beginning of the book.

"The funny thing is, I didn't even much like golf at the time. Oh, I had played often enough that I could keep up in a social game. I guess you could say that I played well enough not to embarrass myself but not so well as to embarrass anyone else, either.

What my game really lacked was not so much talent but passion. My good shots didn't inspire poetry, and my bad shots didn't cause the searing pain that appeared to inflict those who took the game more seriously. I never broke a club, for instance. It's not that breaking clubs is something I would have been proud of, but bad golf has to hurt you enough at some point or you won't care to get better. I clearly didn't care enough."

Oh and while I'm talking about work, I never cease to be amazed that parts of my job can drive me insane and make me miserable, and yet some of the people I work with are the sweetest, most wonderful people I've ever met. One of my managers always tells us that we're all beautiful. Lately, she's been saying, "Oh you get more beautiful every time I see you." Don't get me wrong, she's not hitting on me or any of us. She's just being the wonderful person she is. Tonight, at some point, she pulled me aside and asked if I realized how far I've come in the last year. And that I should be proud of myself. I told her I did know. I said that even if no one else seemed to realize it, I at least did. And so yes, I was proud of myself. And she asked if I knew that I was appreciated or something like that. I don't think that's the exact word she used, but it was something similar. In any case, I almost started tearing up in the elevator afterwards. Because I get so stressed out at work and so frustrated because the general manager drives me crazy. I feel so useless and yet overworked at the same time. I feel like she thinks she could just replace the leads with anyone and it wouldn't matter, because we don't serve a purpose in her eyes. So to get validation from the assistant manager tonight that I respect, when I didn't even realize that I needed to hear it... So thank you, Heather.

Last Entry

Archive

Next Entry