Of Streaks and Slumps
In life, I am streaky. That’s a nice way of saying that I am inconsistent.
Photo from the National Baseball Hall of Fame
On March 29th, all 30 Major League Baseball teams will start their seasons on the same day. This will be the first Opening Day in 50 years that this has happened. When I met my husband, I converted from sports atheism to baseball (the New York Mets specifically), and every spring, the future looks bright.
Being married to a walking almanac, I hesitate to write about baseball. But lately I’ve been considering the streak/slump phenomenon, since it seems to be an apt metaphor for the way I live my life.
As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of hitters in baseball: those who are pretty consistent at the plate, and those who are streaky. Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio still holds the Major League record for the longest hitting streak, having had at least one hit in 56 consecutive games in the summer of 1941.
Baseball experts agree that a streak or a slump is rarely a matter of mechanics; much more frequently, whether a player’s bat is smokin’ hot or ice cold is largely in his mind. “He’s got to get his confidence back,” they’ll say when someone is defeated at the plate yet again.
In life, I am streaky. That’s a nice way of saying that I am inconsistent. I’ll be on a roll regarding any number of things, from exercising to baking bread to foot-callus-maintenance. Then something will happen to upset my schedule, and I slump.
And, as in the oft-caricatured commercial, I will feel that I have fallen, and I can’t get up.
Sometimes a slump can be disastrous. In the field of geology, a slump is a particular kind of landslide, one in which the surface of the moving mass of earth remains largely unchanged, but the interior matter is drastically deformed. The most famous slump of this kind occurred at Thistle, Utah in 1983. It dammed up a creek and the Spanish Fork River, eventually flooding the entire community. Thistle is now a ghost town; only roofs of some of the buildings remain visible.
Photo from the U.S. Geological Survey
My slumps are often like the geological kind. The surface of my life will look great; friends will even admire different facets of it. But internally, I’m a mess, and it’s a long time before I can sort everything out. Hopefully I do so before any dams I’ve created are too destructive.
Sometimes I’ll slump in one area while enjoying a streak in another: I’ll have a clutter-free house but a weed-filled yard. Or for weeks I’ll make my word-per-day novel-writing goal while ignoring personal correspondence. Or I’ll indulge in a genealogy binge while skimping on my language study.
Sometimes a slump can be a time of retreat and regrouping. Inevitably, I’ll find someone who seems like they have it all together to inspire me. Past guiding lights in one area or another have included Anne Lamott, Steven Pressfield, Tish Jett, Gabriel Wyner, Tim Ferriss, and Alison May.
But I wonder whether, as effective as their methods are, productivity experts can only address the symptoms and are not a cure for the root disease. For that, I’ve found a key elsewhere.
In his excellent book Pure Baseball, Keith Hernandez writes,
When I first came up to the big leagues, pitchers had all too much success worrying me inside. Lou Brock, who worked with me a lot, sat me down one day and asked, “Where do you like the ball?
“Inner half-away.” That’s the lingo for the outer three quarters of the plate.
“That’s right,” Lou agreed. “But worrying about your weakness — the inside corner — is taking away from your strength. Don’t let it do that. Look into your strength.”
Baseball really is profound. The key to overcoming the weakness is not to focus on it, but to look into your strength instead.
What are your strengths, and how do they keep you moving?