Kate Preston's Blog, page 3

What happens to professional athletes after they retire?

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A few years ago friends of our went to a University of Notre Dame football game. They told us what they saw was a group of very young men, the football players, being treated like kings by their fans. We wondered what life for most of these kids would be like after they’d graduated, since most of them wouldn’t be playing professional football after university. We wondered if they’d miss that time in their lives, if they’d constantly revisit it in their minds, or if they’d be able to move on and be content with what they’d had.

Then I started wondering about how professional athletes handle retirement since so many of them retire in the 30s for physical reasons. We see that some adjust really well and go on to rewarding second careers in commentating, but not all of them can or want to do that.

John McEnroe is a great example. He was never one of my favourite tennis players, but as a commentator (which he’s now been doing longer than he was a professional tennis player), he is fantastic. He knows how to relate his own experience to those of the players and brings us along with him as he describes how they are probably feeling in the middle of a match.

To transition from being in the lime light, competing for trophies, receiving cheers (and boos) from the crowd, to being a commentator, the person who reports about the person on centre court, must have been difficult at first. Your ego must take a real beating. You realize that time has passed and you are no longer the centre of the universe, that your time is over. If however, you get past that and accept it, then you can transition on to other rewarding careers or activities…assuming you know what you want to do.

In Harris’ case, he had basically been in denial that his time in the lime light was over. He had never thought about what to do after tennis because his entire existence right up until the day he retired was about making it to the next round. His decision to retire was abrupt, even he didn’t know it was coming, but his body gave out on him. So he never really accepted that it was over.

Because he was only 32 when he retired he was still young, vibrant with tons of energy but nowhere near the centre of the universe. Harris feeds off crowds so when they aren’t focused on him he isn’t sure how to behave or what to do. He ended up doing pretty much nothing until he’d successfully whittled his bank account down to almost nothing. At least, not enough to live in the style to which he has become accustomed for the rest of his life.

The reason I started the story eight years after retirement was because I wanted to see what he would do when he was financially forced into a corner. Until that time, there isn’t a story to tell since he wandered aimlessly from party to party because he knew how to win tennis games and celebrate and that was about it.

Having no money left forces him to evaluate his life and what he wants to do with it. That’s also when the unpleasant side of his personality comes out. It’s also the most fun to write about!

 

 

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Book Review: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very well-written, incredibly researched book. I’m not so sure I see the connection between the psychopathic serial killer and the building of the White City. In my mind they are two very distinct stories that happen to take place at the same time. My preference was for the building of the World’s Fair — I found the information fascinating and suspenseful — if building a world’s fair could be suspenseful. I’m an architecture buff and have visited Chicago’s beautiful city several times, but never the site of the fair. Now I want to go back and do a tour of this site now that I’ve read the book. There are so many interesting facets to the building of the fair that I didn’t think it needed to be interrupted with the incredibly disturbing details of the serial killer. Why I hadn’t heard of him before I’m not really sure. By rights, he should be more famous than Jack the Ripper.

I’ve read the endnotes and Mr. Larson’s explanation of why he chose to blend the two stories — the lightness of the fair vs. the darkness of the murders, but since one is about an individual and the other is about civic coming together, I’m still not convinced they needed to be in the same book — granted, that’s just me. However, it was a good read and kept my attention through the entire book. I did like the way he wrote; you really felt as if you were there, watching the action unfold. It read like a story and definitely not like a dry history book.

View all my reviews

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Jesse the blind dog

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As Harris passed Jesse, she faced the wall across from the goat and sheep pens, her nose about six inches away from it, wagging her tail. Harris just looked down at her, then followed Tom. “What’s with your dog?”

Tom looked at Jesse, wagging her tail, staring at the wall.

“Come on Jess! Over here!” Jesse looked in Tom’s direction and the bounded towards him, tongue flopping about. “Slow down girl!” He put his hands out to stop her, but she crashed into his legs anyway. He patted her and she whimpered, while he grunted, since she’d crashed straight into Tom’s shin. “She was born with congenital cataracts. She’s been blind since she was two.”

So then you would be her seeing-eye…family?”

“Pretty much. Generally she copes well on her own, it’s just she’s still not very good at judging distances, so she tends to crash into things. Like my legs.” Now Jesse was staying close to Tom’s side. “There’s not a lot of gray matter in there either.”

Excerpt from A Vintage Year

Why bother making things up when life can bring you interesting ideas? One of the minor characters in my book is a blind black labrador named Jesse. We humans don’t often come across handicapped animals, especially dogs all that often. In fact, normally it’s the other way around and they look after us.

One of my friends had a dog that was born with congenital cataracts and gradually lost her sight starting at the age of 2. The vet told the family that he could operate but that they would just grow back. The dog was happy and managed pretty darn well without sight for the rest of her life. It was funny watching her sometimes, wagging her tail, staring at a wall. If you didn’t know she was blind, you kind of looked at her like she maybe didn’t have all her marbles. She adjusted to her lack of sight very well, comfortable going for walks even in the city. You had to tell her where the sidewalk curbs were, but other than that, she coped just fine.

She was a great dog with a gentle temper who led a long and happy life. She died not too long ago of old age.

 

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The key to happiness

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I love this TED Talk by Shawn Achor. I watch it a few times a year and try to do as he says. If you have the 12 minutes, I highly recommend watching it. He’s entertaining and inspiring all the while helping you shift your mindset from thinking that success is based on what you’ll feel like once you get to a certain level (be it at work, social standing or economic standing, sports teams, etc.). Instead, he contends that happiness is about refocusing your brain’s lens on what you have now.

In a nutshell he says that in order to shift your brain’s focus, every day for a month you need to:

1. Meditate

2. Journaling (relive any positive events from the previous day)

3. Write down three things you are thankful for

3. Exercise

4. Perform one random act of kindness

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Mother’s Day My Way

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For the longest time I didn’t take the greeting card day (Mother’s Day) that seriously. It was a nice excuse for breakfast in bed and a little attention from the kids. We try to spend it with either my mother or my mother in-law, two mothers who did extraordinary jobs raising their families (if I do say so myself).

This year, however, I decided to grab the excuse of the “holiday” and use it to my advantage. I’ve noticed that over the past few months, well, for maybe as long as a year, our family has been going off in all different directions. It’s not a bad thing, children grow up and assert their independence and create their own lives. I’m glad they’re doing that, but it doesn’t stop me from missing spending time with them. If I even suggest a “family game night” they all roll their eyes at me and ask me what planet I’m from. Even if we do sit down to play a game, the boys will conspire against the rest of us and hijack the game. So, enough of that.

I decided that this year, I’d use Mother’s Day to get what I wanted: time with the kids doing something I wanted to do — which I knew they would gripe about for years to come. I told them a few weeks in advance that their gift to me was going to be spending the day with me and their dad on a hike.

Given their reactions you’d think I’d asked them trek across the Sahara Desert. “Are you kidding? A hike? How boring is that? Why do you want me to go?” But they did it — well at least two of them came along. The third had to work.

There was lots of griping about “how is this fun?” as we climbed the warm and dusty, leafless trail. I enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed listening to their complaining. Seeing as I would have been saying just about the exact same words when I was their age, I just tuned it out and kept going.

Listening to the bickering is becoming nostalgic in a way. It doesn’t happen as frequently as it used to. They have conversations with each other that don’t involve arguing more and more often (at least when I eavesdrop outside a room) and whether they realize it or not, one day they will be glad to have each other around….really, they will….I’m sure of it. So, I put up with the bickering and the complaining while forcing them to do something they don’t want to, knowing that one day, a very, very long time from now, they will turn around and thank me for forcing them to hike together. Right?

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Boredom is an Energy Killer

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I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.

— Joan Rivers

Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up exhausted after a solid night’s sleep (I know because I checked my Fitbit and apparently I slept just fine) and all you want to do is go back to bed? That was yesterday. I have no idea why, but it was the most boring day on earth. I had plenty of work to do, but my heart and mind just weren’t in the day. Nothing in particular triggered this feeling, it just happened. I hate these days, they are energy killers and work killers. I don’t have the enthusiasm to complete anything. There are no looming deadlines so no pressure to buckle down and focus, and cleaning the bathroom and doing laundry are just not how I want to spend my time. Blah. I think about all the projects I should or could be doing from cleaning the house to getting an article written for work…not going to happen.

I looked up “What to do when you’re bored” on Google and there are a lot of lists out there filled with ideas…mostly aimed at the younger set. I guess people who are older and have responsibilities aren’t supposed to get bored; we’re too busy. I think that not only is that wrong, but it’s the kind of thinking that can lead you to do really dumb things like sign up for skydiving classes, or reconnect with an ex- on Facebook, or figure out how to embezzle money so you can buy that island in the Caribbean you’ve always dreamed of having….

Now, I suppose the smart thing to do would be to take these ideas and instead of actually doing them turn them into short stories and see where they get you. Boredom can also lead to creative ideas.

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Favourite Writing Books

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Writing is a very personal thing and how it’s approached differs widely between writers — at least that’s been my experience. I have attended many courses over my writing career, some online, some through local continuing ed. programs.

But when I’m between courses, or starting a new story, I will refer to the writing books often. They remind me of how to put together a story so that it flows, how to achieve the right amount of tension, develop characters so that they are three dimensional. Below are my personal favourites (in no particular order):

 1. On Writing by Stephen King. One of the easiest reads and best books on writing from an overall “how it’s done” perspective. I found it thoroughly entertaining.

 

 

 

  2. Hooked: Write Fiction that Grabs Readers and Never Lets Them Go by Les Edgerton. I refer to this book every time I start a new story. It helps me remember the important factors in developing plot.

 

 

 3. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardiner. A classic writing tool. Almost should be mandatory for all beginning writers (I would say “emerging” writers is a better term than young).

 

 

 

4. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. An engaging book that helps you break down a story into its parts and not make it seem like the daunting project you might believe it to be.

 

 

 

 5. First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner. This is my bible. If you writer commercial fiction, this is a great book to help guide you through the process of constructing a story. I can’t write a first draft in 30 days, but I still follow her guidelines and find it extremely helpful.

 

 

6. The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman. Another good book on developing stories. Most notably, the author points out that the middle is the hardest part of writing a book because most authors have an idea of how it begins and where it will end. It’s the middle stuff that’s the hardest to write.

 

 

  7. The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. The same author discusses the important factors in pulling the reader into your story so that he or she can’t put it down.

 

 

 

  8. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. While not about writing per se, it is about the process of creativity. If you’re having writer’s block, this is a great book to begin using — it will help you get through the block and come out writing and creating like you never have before.

 

 

 9. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. A necessary and short read on creating effective writing.

 

 

 

 10. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print. If you’re on a budget and can’t afford or can’t find an editor to edit your novel (and even if you can), this book will help you learn how to edit your story.

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A Wintry Setting on Sunny Spring Day – A Writer’s Inspiration!

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I was invited up to a friend’s cottage this past weekend. It’s the last weekend in March, a full week into spring, but up here you’d never know it. We woke up to -14C (sigh), but by the time we went out for a brisk snow shoe the thermometer had already shot up to 0C. I suppose “shot” is rather extreme, but really, when the number in your memory for the winter of 2015 is -22C plus windchill, suddenly 0C becomes almost balmy.

The day was bright and just about as gorgeous as you would want a winter day in January to be. Too bad we’re three days away from April! The snowshoe through the woods was uplifting; the silence, the blue of the sky, the soft cornsnow, and most of all the fresh clean air that doesn’t hurt your lungs when you breathe. If it had been like this all winter, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I admit I’m a bit of baby.

For a writer, being outside and out of your usual surroundings, is one of the best ways to help dislodge writer’s block or start forming ideas for new characters in new settings. It can help with descriptions too. Seeing places for the first time, imagining writing about them, putting characters there, thinking about what they would do. You might not know right away how the scenery will fit into a story, but you’ve got it in your memory bank and on your camera for reference when you need it.

 

Whether or not I’ll ever use this beautiful scenery remains to be seen, but just having it in my mind and the photos up on my wall will help inspire me and let me drift back to the setting remembering sounds, smells, and most of all the beautiful colour of the sky and the contrast of the trees and snow.

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Beautiful Puerto Rico

by Entering Puerto Rico Harbour

In December we took our kids on a cruise through the Caribbean to celebrate our anniversary. Our first stop was Puerto Rico. This above photo is entering the harbour at 7am. You dock at the pier by Old San Juan. It is a charming city and reminds me of the colonial Mexican villages I’ve been through.

Fort San Cristobal

After touring the old forts, we stumbled on an old library that had a cafe with some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Great photo opportunity too!

Typical colonial street in Old San Juan

 

Puerto Rico has so much to offer, I want to go back. From all the beach and water activities to the history of Old San Juan, as well as hiking through the rain forests, there is tons to do.

 

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