Poolgrimage

Ok. I’ve been on fire. I have only racked a single eight ball rack in all of November. I’ve won all but one rack. On that rack I scratched on the eight and beat myself. I’m not sure why I’m playing so well but it feels great. The problem is, that I feel I keep making improvements but it’s hard to tell if I actually am. I always learn a lot more from failure and I haven’t failed a lot lately (knock on wood right? Ha) While it feels good, I know that I’m not facing difficult competition. I need to just get owned once and put in my place. One weird thing happened though. My last match I was up 3-0 in a race to four and the weirdest thing happened. I barely missed the eight, hanging it in the pocket and my opponent walked up frustrated. He took three practice swings and accidentally tapped the cueball on his last swing. I called foul and he flipped out. He looked at me and said, “Really dude?” And made me feel like crap. I said, “sorry, but it’s a team game and I have a bunch of other

I had a serious bout of failure after my new stick came in. I’m not sure how much of it was me learning the new equipment, and how much of it was me falling into a fear of failure. A slump is an interesting thing and it felt to me more mental than physical. I'd been losing league nights since my equipment came in, and it's scary. One league night, I won the first game and scratched on the eight on the second game and mentally fell apart. My opponent just beat me rack after rack after that. I know equipment doesn’t make the player but sometimes if you dress the part you start feeling like a better player. I think, honestly, I was falsely afraid after doing so well that I was going to fall. I had a true fear of losing all of the progress I’ve made. Today helped. It was eight ball and a race to three. I won the lag and all three racks. I broke and ran the last rack up to the eight ball. Almost a break and run, but I played a safety on the eight because I couldn’t break it out