I may not be awesome, but I'm not un-awesome!

I am not that awesome at kickball. I kick inconsistently, I can't throw as hard as I want, and sometimes I just feel like a total girl (in a bad way) when I'm playing.

What I can do is catch. I like combatting my girlyness (-iness?) by jumping right in front of a ball that's screaming right at me. If I have to let it bounce off my face to get it, I'm going to stop that ball, dammit. That mindset has worked well for me, and it's gotten me a fantastic spot as our third baselady.

It's an important base, and I don't like seeing people reach it.

I told you I don't like seeing people there.

I tell the people in my running group that the biggest challenge in running and cycling (in a lot of things, actually) is the mental part. I've seen people cry because the remaining distance of a race is more than they think they can handle ... and I've seen them so proud of themselves when they hit the point they know the actually can finish. It's awesome.

Last night, I realized I might have the same problem with kickball. When I go up to kick (my big weakness), I am thinking negatively: Great, I'm going to kick it up, and it's gonna get caught. Or if I somehow manage to get a good bunt, I'm not gonna get to first in time. A guaranteed out. 

Even if I do kick well, I manage to find some fault in it -- either I didn't get to score, or someone else got out (If I kicked it better, they defense wouldn't have gotten to the ball). This is just how I play.

So imagine my surprise when I saw our post-game write-up last night. My kick actually brought in my team's final point in the game. Somehow, I hadn't realized that.

I guess I need to take my own advice to my running group.

And even if I'm not awesome in every aspect of kickball, evidently if I stop looking for my errors, I'm making some pretty dang good contributions!