Reflections

I have fallen back into a phase where I find myself constantly craving social interaction and wanting to be surrounded by friends. I can’t decide if this is fortunate or unfortunate but it is what it is, I suppose. The only thing that’s really problematic about is would be the fact that, in order to appease my restlessness, I have been going out drinking with friends a lot more. I have always been a people person and this is undeniably a byproduct of growing up on a resort and in a bar with my family back in Minnesota, but sometimes I need to look at where I am taking myself in order to interact with these people. However, a lot of people don't take one element of that statement seriously and that is the fact that I grew up in a bar. Look at that sentence. Take it literally. A bar, being a place where alcohol and food is served, was my home during the time of my life in which I grew. There. 

Every since I was a young kid I was surrounded by the bar atmosphere: the sometimes jolly, sometimes terrifying, often confusing environment of alcohol and bad choices; and it wasn’t until recently that I found myself wanting to join in on the “fun.” I think growing up around a strong drinking culture is the biggest thing that kept me away from the bottle. I started cooking in the kitchen at the bar in my mid-teens and was immediately swayed into bartending when I turned eighteen. At this time I hated everything to do with alcohol, I hated the way men treated women, the way women treated men, and the way everyone treated themselves. I didn’t appreciate the lewd, rude, and crude comments that were often directed my way and frankly I gave no fucks about what I could do to change myself to fit into that environment. I never felt the need to change who I was to make the Saturday night partiers appreciate me more. I just did my thing: I cooked in the kitchen, owned the pool table, and then went home to play my flute.

And yet my mom convinced me to start bartending when I turned eighteen despite the fact that she knew I was not fond of the environment. I think she knew that my dislike of the majority of the people was a brief stage and that I would get over it quickly. Perhaps she didn’t expect it to happen as quickly as it did. My first shift would have been hell for most other people: the woman that was supposed to train me in showed up three, count them, three hours late, the power went out, the bar was packed, and I was not only the bartender but also the cook. The only reason I made it through the shift was because I already had an intimate understanding of the bar set-up, the prices, and the majority of the people. How do you cook in a kitchen with no power, you may ask? A gas stove! Burgers, sandwiches, chicken, and everything like that was still available, and nobody had any qualms about ordering them. Some kind young gentlemen went into his truck to find a light contraption that hooked onto hats (because, imagine this, I wear hats; always have and always will, although lately I’m more of a trucker hat kind of gal), so I snapped that baby onto my baseball hat and went to town. I balanced the cooking, serving, and bartending quite well and managed to keep everyone happy until the “real” bartender arrived.

And I loved it.

You see, growing up in a bar and on a resort gives you the strange desire to see people happy. Cooking food for paying customers doesn’t just force you to do a good job because they are paying you and will have no worries about complaining; but it also instills a sense of pride that grows each time you step out of the kitchen and people applaud the meal you just served. There’s just something about making something yourself, with your own two hands, and seeing someone enjoy it.

That’s what bartending is to me. It is not a scene where I can be objectified and flirt with every man (or woman) in the hopes of getting more tips, it really is just a space where I can make something for someone and make sure they enjoy it. It's a socially acceptable position for me to talk to strangers about their lives, their days, and how they are doing. It's a place where I can turn on my sense of humor, my serious and contemplative side, and my happy-go-lucky nature in an attempt to interact with a wide variety of people. When you’re serving you want to make damn sure the people that you are helping have a good experience, you want to be prompt, you want to be kind, and you want them to leave happier than when they came in. I think this is a human instinct that everyone has, but that many are capable of ignoring. Even on the days when I have already worked six days in a row, where I’m nine hours into my thirteen hour shift because I picked up a double and my feet feel like they’re going to fall off, I find myself smiling when someone walks in that door.

But where did my drinking come in? Despite my love of people and my desire to see people happy I never partook in the after-hours shenanigans at bonfires where young men tried to pick up young women and feed them alcohol and good times. Instead I always went home to either finish up homework or go to bed. Why, I always asked myself (and still do, to be honest) would I want to join these drunk guys at their bonfire to drink with them when I’m stone cold sober and have no desire to become inebriated? This is what kept me away from drinking to begin with.

But like everybody I hit a phase in college, my junior year (what can I say, I’m a late bloomer), where I found myself in with the drinking crowd. And man did my genetics not fail me. I found myself out every weekend getting completely sloshed for about three months. But eventually I realized that the hangover just wasn’t worth it, why drink so hard on Saturday that you can’t function on Sunday and then are behind all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, just too speed through Thursday and Friday to do it again ghd next week? As a student of philosophy and logic I found that this train of thought was headed nowhere, so I stopped. Not to say that I went sober, I still drank occasionally, but not with such frequency as before.

Drinking is a family pastime for me. When I go home on breaks I often find myself shooting pool all night long with my mom, dad, and brothers (my sister does not live in the same town and rarely drives the three hours to come hang out at the bar with us, boxing is her passion). We play each game for a beer and if you’re shooting good you play for free and drink for free all night. So of course I get in on that action. Family, pool, and social drinking: boom, happiness. 

But over the last few weeks I have found myself going out on Friday with the desire to hang out with friends and meet new people, then waking up on Saturday morning and thinking that the previous night wasn’t as much fun as it should have been and trying again Saturday night. More often than not my short attention span kicks in while out at the bar or at the "club" where my friends want to dance, and I want to get out of that bar after a few hours of being there. But I have been sticking around simply because I think it might get more fun later on. I ignore the fact that if I was in a place with a pool table I would be way happier and having much more fun that was actually relatable to what I want to do with my life and just sit around with some buddies and get bored while they dance with random guys. 

What’s the point of that?

Sure, I have always felt more comfortable in the bar and in the pool hall than I have on the concert stage or in the classroom. But that doesn’t mean I should spend all of my money acquiring beverages that fuck with my body and leave me feeling sluggish and slow the next day. I would so much rather hit up the gym on a Friday night with friends and then go to someone’s house to listen to music and watch movies. This way I am getting out of the house, a place that, for me, is really just meant for baking, eating, and sleeping, and am also getting my gym time and friend time in.  But this blog post is not meant to be some sore of manifesto of sobriety, I just needed to write this down to remind myself of what it is that I do. 

Who it is that I am.

I am a musician and a pool player, an athlete and a scholar. I am a graduate student pursuing a Masters degree and also a member of team str8-shots. Being strong and healthy is just as important to me as being social and outgoing. Having the ability to let myself relax with a drink, a snack, or a lazy day is just as important as having the dedication to health, exercise, and meditation. My skills on the pool table and my skills on the concert stage are of the upmost importance to me, both equally so; and therefore my time needs to be spent focusing on the things that will enable me to progress in both of these fields.

If I go out every night of the week that is totally fine. If I only go out on weekends that is fine. If one night I decide to let it all loose and indulge a bit much, that is fine as long as I am conscious about it. And lately I haven’t been, I’ve just been mindlessly partaking in these adventures without really thinking about them. Sometimes sleep is more important than the possibility of meeting new friends and going new places. Sometimes it’s just not. Who knows.

But from now on I’m going to be more aware of my choices and more honest with myself about why I am making them. If I’m only going out because I’m hoping to see some boy that I have a crush on, that’s a stupid reason and I’m going to hit the gym or the practice room instead. If I’m going out because I haven’t seen my friends in a while and I want to spend time with them, then that is totally legitimate.

I'm not fond of the New Years Resolution tradition; instead, I think one should always work towards self improvement, not just once a year. This is one of those moments for me: a moment of honesty and self-criticism.

Come at me, world.

High Desert Shoot Out

“And they say don’t forget where you come from, don’t die holding onto your words. Cuz you know that you’ve got the whole world to change, but understand who you’ve gotta change first.”

So this last weekend I spent all of my time in Rawlins Wyoming shooting pool and hanging out with friends. As you may know my time in Saratoga last year at an extremely similar tournament was a turning point for me in terms of the role that billiards plays in my life, and Rawlins was a continuation of that. Shooting in the Sportsman bracket I was able to play some good, and some very bad, pool—with poor timing for each of these moments. That is, when playing the young man (who I give props to for participating in the adult tournament as well as the youth tournament this year), I was breaking and running and shooting extremely well. I needn’t have done that, I could have just coasted through there and been fine. But then when moving on to the next match against an older woman (older than me, not old as in elderly) I was making stupid errors and missing important shots—i.e. the eight ball… but in a race to three, down 0-2 I managed to pull my head out of my proverbial ass and start shooting, winning up to hill-hill. But, alas, I lost the match due to a poorly controlled cue ball scratching when my opponent only had two balls left on the table. Saddest of days.

Or maybe not. Pool is such a mental game that it is very common for you to get trapped inside of your own head, become to cerebral and nervous, and miss out on simple shots that you can usually do in your sleep. I once heard a pro say that pool is easy, all you have to do is make your shot. There are no hard shots, there are just shots to make. When you have the mentality, and the experience to back it up, that each shot is something you’ve made in the past and is easy enough, then you will start winning games, matches, and tournaments.

I experienced a similar mentality on Sunday morning when I was entered in the “Hard Luck 9 Ball” tournament for those players that had lost out of their original tourneys. This handicapped tournament (race to 4, 6, and 8 for the sportsman, classics, and experts, respectively) was much more to my liking. Barbox 9 ball is much easier than big table 9 ball, for me personally, and it’s something that I thoroughly enjoy playing. I got a fortunate draw for this tournament, set to play an expert who decided not to show up I got a bye for my first round. The second round I shot against a classic player in a match that I am by no means proud of. I should have ran those four games easily, but instead I made stupid errors and barely scratched by with a match score of 4-4 (the classic player needed to run 6 games). I was playing on tables outside of the main tourney area in the Eagles that were much slower, less reliable as far as table roll and rail responsiveness went, and that had a bright glare from the car outside the main door reflecting the sunlight into our eyes. Needless to say, that wasn’t a great match.

Immediately after that match though I had to go up against Shane, an expert player from the Fort Collins area. I lost this match 7-1 because, quite honestly, I am awful at the 9 ball “push” shot, which I avoided to my detriment, giving up ball in hand in two games on racks that were easy run-outs. That being said, when I walked up to the table with my three cues (one breaker, one shooter, and one jump cue) some of the guys were giving me shit about having a jump cue, so I told them it was just a present and that I just carry it around for funzies. Not quite the truth. I used that jump cue successively two or three times in that match, getting myself out of predicaments that were the result of poor cue control. My break was one point, I dropped two or three balls on every break, popping the cue ball up in the air on contact with the rack and dropping it down directly in the middle of the table. This is a break that I’ve learned from watching Shane van Boening shoot countless matches on youtube, and it’s something I’m quite proud of. That being said I had so many unfortunate rolls on the break that despite stopping the cue where it needs to be in the middle, often a wing ball would roll up right next to it and block my next shot on the one. Angst. So obviously I lost that match, taking 5-8^th place and leaving a mere $60 richer.

While in Rawlins I got to spend more time with my buddy Jim Calderon and all the other players I met in Saratoga last year. I was surprised at how many of them remembered me, many approached me within the first hour of being at the tournament to ask how I was doing and see what bracket I was shooting in. You meet so many awesome people in these pool tournaments and this year I had the awesome opportunity to meet Rodney “The Rocket” Morris. But, being the painfully shy person that I am, I didn’t spend too much time with him and Raj Hundal, instead I just focused on pool the whole weekend—which was, in fact, the only reason why I was there. Kimberly and Marc Griffiths from Str8 Shots were in attendance to run the youth tournament on Sunday, and they kindly treated Jim and me to a dinner on Saturday night. I love talking with these two as they are just as passionate about pool and as hopeful and dedicated to the future of the sport as I am. They are supportive of all levels, especially the youth and collegiate levels, of the game and are working hard to advance billiards into something more respectable and visible to the public eye, and I fully support all of their endeavors.

Billiards has gone from a passing fancy that I participated in at my home bar when drinking with my family and friends, to something serious that I am dedicated to on a serious level. Like music, where I spend three hours a day practicing my flute and piccolo on a variety of repertoire and technical passages, I can easily get to a table and play pool for hours on end. I lack a comprehensive knowledge of the game as far as cue control, English, and pattern play go, and in terms of this I seriously miss having a coach that I could meet consistently to work through these portions of my game. Unlike music where I have been studying with teachers for the past six years, pool is something that I just picked up on the way through my life. I have a good, long stroke and a great break (or so I am told) which means that I have a great foundation to go off of, but until I get a bit more cerebral about my cue control and position play I am afraid I will always be stuck at the level I am currently at. Which means that now is the time to start researching, reading, and studying DVD’s about the sport, and applying my intellectual rigor and fortitude to the game that I love.

Being a musician has taught me dedication, passion, and focus; being a billiards player has effected my personality, sense of humor, and physical abilities at the table; and being a bartender has transformed my self into an easy-going, talkative, and expressive individual. Combining all of these things together into who I am, Krystle Jane, means that I have the places to go, people to see, and the world to change.