The story of my life consists of an infinate, and I mean infinate collection of dispiriting moments. As a culmination of the first day of the week, I’m taking a moment to reflect on this series of unfortunate events, but first before delving into details, a definition. I would define a dispiriting moment as the following:

An exertion of as much effort as possible, and still obtaining nothing.

Sounds simple enough, at least by my standards. And what you may ask is so dispiriting, and of course it’s a fair question. When I sign up for an intramural team, in order to play a sport that I may, or may not enjoy, it’s a commitment on my part to show up on scheduled games. Having a schedule put forth at the beginning eleviates scheduling problems and no-shows.

How is it that a team can play six games, and never, not even once, have a full team to play on a footie field? I just comprehend it at all; and it’s so sad for us that we have to have people from the opposing team play for us. To further compound this, some of the people that show up have absolutely no desire, or exert no effort.

Taking a moment and thinking non-selfishly for everyone this moment. How is that fair to a team, especially when a team sport is based on team spirit and a comittment. I have no patience for people who show up and then opt out, especially when we are short players, and then some people need rest. Not everyone is athletic; totally understandable. But I can say that not only was I at every single game, rain or shine, even when someone defaulted on us, and after exerting the highest level of effort; I still get nothing out of it due to lack of team involvement.

Granted there are some decent players on the team, and I’m by no means the best, or even in the middle of the group; but I’m growing more and more dispirited in life, in general, at the age of twenty-one. How pathetic is that?

Logically you can think of it as the following: weigh the pros and cons for outcomes, and base judgement upon that. So let’s weigh the pros… exercise, team spirt, fresh air, possibility of fun. And now the cons… loosing, lack of effort, defaulting, no fun, lost work time, lost study time, general time comittment.

And thus just after halftime of our game tonight it really hit me, that why am I even doing this, or anything for that matter, when I can’t accomplish anything that I set forth of myself. I don’t set the bar too high, I don’t aim for things that are un-obtainable. And thus even still having low expectations of some things, I still can’t achieve that which I set forward to myself.

Does anyone understand how dispiriting this is? To constantly put one hundred percent effort into something and never make an achievement. It’s my tennis career in a nutshell; the investing of infinate hours, money, and time; and like everything after awhile of being discouraged from every possible angle, it’s just not worth it anymore. And that’s painful, mentally, and emotioanlly.There’s nothing “cool” or “fun” about having a cheer “gracious in defeat” when you loose 1-11, 0-8, 0-7, 1-5, 0-3, 1-5, 0-10 constantly. Granted team improves as they go, and I did as well, but no matter how much I try, in all aspects of my life it’s never quite enough.

Riddle me that; and piss off if you’re offended, because I’m sick of doing my part and having others fall short. Live my life, and if you think that you can do better than I’ve achieved (or not), then you’re completely deluded. I hope you feel just as dispirited as I do, in reading this.