I have to get over myself

What plagues me in life apparently also follows me onto the rink; namely, that everyone's thinking bad things about me all the time. That would require that people were thinking about me at all, and to assume that others are thinking about you constantly is a little narcissistic. This works great because I get to beat myself up on two counts; for performing badly, and for being narcissistic and thinking people care so much about my performing badly.

During my lesson today I had a bit less energy than last week, for whatever reason, and found myself exhausted and gasping quite easily. But because I wanted to show an earnest effort, I just pushed through it. My coach keeps a good eye on me and tells me to "take a few seconds" when he sees me getting overly winded, so I think he knows I'm doing my best. I am 33, and though I'm in pretty good shape, it's not like I've been involved in sports or belonged to a gym or run marathons all my life, so this is something new for my body to get used to. I've also never had instruction geared completely towards me, for a full hour. Practices with team-mates, or clinics all are just more intense examples of game situations; i.e. I'm not expending energy constantly for the entire 60 minutes. I've never skated out. So I have no idea what it's like to race up and down the ice at full throttle for a minute straight. But I bet it's somewhat comparable to a sustained attack on net, where I'm constantly flexed in my crouch, moving, dropping, getting up, kicking, moving, pushing, setting up. I think goalies probably expend the same amount of energy, just in shorter bursts, and in a different way.

Man, I got off track there.

But anyway, that was the logical side of my brain talking. No matter that my coach said I've been doing well, I still have this feeling that in the back of his mind he's kind of rolling his eyes and thinking "what do I even do with this one?". Or smirking at me. Most of the time I can just tell that part of my brain to just shut up. But there's another coach who's on the ice at the same time as us, and usually he's done before we are, so he'll help out at the end with drills. I'll call this guy... Johnson. I know Johnson from the league we play in; he shares rotating coaching duties, and runs some of the clinics. He's known as being somewhat of a hardass, as some of my team-mates have had less than positive experiences with him behind the bench. I personally have never had any problem with him, and whenever I play open hockey and he's there, he's always really cool with me, even gives me pointers now and then (he plays D). Johnson's kid never showed up today, so he worked with us a little more than usual. And at one point I was just struggling. Coach was taking shots on me rapid-fire, and he wanted me to go down to block each one, and then get back up, and go down for the next one, etc. It was really taxing and by the last few I was in complete slow-motion. Johnson was just standing there watching and I felt so inadequate. For some reason I really want him to think well of me. What I have to understand is that it doesn't matter what Johnson or anyone else thinks (except maybe my coach)- if they're even thinking anything at all. What matters is the effort I put in and what I get out of it. But I just can't help feeling really small and silly and somewhat ridiculous at times. For all I know, the people who I think are judging me are thinking about that chick they met last night, or that problem they've got at work, or how to get the dog to stop chewing their shoes.

But that's a goalie, right? Always thinking its all about them. ;)