Six months ago I made some goals. Let’s see how I did.
Goal number One: Be the obvious best girl in my current group.
I’m not quite the number one girl, but I’m certainly in the running. My biggest problem is I’m not consistent enough. Some days I’m on fire, better than any other girl, but other days I’m mud. I’m hugely affected by my mood (and emotional energy) and once I can just get a consistent level, I’ll achieve this. I’m definitely one of the top girls now, just not the number one….yet.
I’m taking down the team, one girl at a time!
Goal Number Two: Be good enough to join a club.
This one is kinda achieved! The other night I was chatting with my teacher and I told him I wanted to join a team. He invited me to join his team! At first I demurred. His team is the number one team in Xiamen and even has pro players play for it. That would be a lotta pressure for me. But then he said not the team he is a member of, but the team he is a coach of. He has his own team! I had no idea. And he invited me to join it! We just talked about it this week, so I haven’t gone or started playing with them. I don’t even know when they practice. So I’ll consider this half accomplished.
Goal Number Three: Play in a competition.
Nope. Not even close. But I have something up my sleeve and will participate in my first competition in two months.
Goal Number Four: Find a doubles partner.
Yes! The one goal I have definitely achieved. The poor sucker lucky partner is my German friend Dennis. We didn’t decide to play together, and he’s not my closest friend in the group. We just noticed that when we played together we did pretty good. We beat players who are much better than us, and he picked up on my weaknesses and compensates for them better than any other player. So now we are the partners to beat.
We have a weird weakness though: we can’t win the first game of the night. We both tend to arrive early so we partner up for the first game and we lose. I don’t know why, we take time and warm up, but the first game of the evening is always a suckfest for us. So now we avoid each other until at least the second or third game of the night.
But aside from that we do great! We are on a four-week winning streak, and now I have an unshakable belief that when we play we will win. It’s magic. And yes, I know he does most of the work, but I’ll still take half the credit.
Clearly, he’s very happy to be my chosen mixed doubles partner.
See how much he likes me?!
One and a half out of four isn’t bad. I knew competing and joining a group within 6 months was a bit of a reach so I’m not devastated at not totally reaching them.
So what are my my goals for the next six months (October 2016)? Well, I like these goals that I haven’t accomplished yet so I’m keeping them and I think they are very realistic now.
Another goal is to improve my Chinese. I’m fluent, and my reading and writing is a good level, but my listening and speaking is lacking. I’m not confident in it and my introvert tendencies come out when I need to speak to people. If I overhear a conversation, I have no problem following it. But if I am expected to participate and answer back, I get nervous and everything turns to gibberish. If I want to get involved in the badminton world, and join a team, I’ll need to get better with my chit-chat. Which means better listening and speaking.
I’m not quite sure how to quantify this goal but this summer I’ll be taking an intensive Chinese course for four-weeks just to break me through to that next level. I guess after that I will consider this accomplished.
