a rude awakening

I was excited to get back to work today now that I’m back in Portland, but once I got out there I realized that the 1,900 mile drive over the past four days took a bit more of a tole on me than I had thought.  Today ended up being what was probably the toughest practice to date.  I’ve played with three hours sleep, while fighting with Marijke, with a sore back, while having financial issues, with allergies and a cold, in the near-freezing rain, on 105 degree days, etc..  but, for some reason today was tougher than them all to focus and get anything accomplished.

I’m sure there were a few issues at play here making it tough to focus.  One of them being that I started drinking coffee regularly again during the past  few weeks and so had a big cup this morning and I think the type of energy it gives you is not conducive to keeping the quiet mind necessary to putt.  Another is probably the fact that I didn’t get more than five hours of sleep on any night of the trip, something that slowly built up and I guess I was more exhausted than I thought by the end of it.  There was also a bit of stress on the trip between people getting ill, Marijke and I talking about breaking up, flat tires and lost Ipods.  Still, it was a good trip and I’m very happy to have gone and for everything that happened along the way.  You got to take the bad with the good and enjoy it all!

All of that said, I went back out from 7-9 PM and had a much better time at it.  I think by tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest, I’ll be back to the swing of things (no pun intended..)!

My putting has been sub-par too.  While in Omaha I pulled off my first 85% of five-footers and felt pretty groovy about it, but today it was a struggle to sink anything more than 50%.  Everything is related in golf, so I can tell that the sad showing in my putting is really just me not being able to focus on the task at hand..

I try to keep as upbeat an approach as possible, but to tell you the truth, I’m a bit worn down right now.  I think it must be time to go to sleep, whenever I start feeling overwhelmed by things I know that it’s really it’s just that I’m tired…  I’m going to read a bit of Heart of Darkness and sleep a deep sleep, perhaps I’ll dream up a solution to the fact that I’ve been pulling all of my putts lately.