So Let’s Start Here
I am an athlete. I am a tennis player. I play tennis—not professionally today, but one day, yes: that could be my reality. My body is strong, and I have been waiting a very long time to get to this point: the point where I can write about what I am facing, what I am working through—in the gym, on the tennis court, in the Core Energetics practitioner chair (as a student), and as a man, and where all of this intertwines. There is a center somewhere.
I have ten thousand projects that I’ve abandoned, and I have shame around that. These field notes—my work as a beginning practitioner—feel like another place to fail: to quit, to not make the grade, to psych myself out before trying. Patterns are a motherfucker. So are the stories I tell myself: about what a Core Energetics practitioner is supposed to say and not supposed to say; about whether it’s useful to share my athletic journey and my tennis plans; and whether I can hold space for others while still growing and changing so much—while still sorting out so much internally.
That voice, the inner critic: god, I know that voice. “Stop, Jordan—what are you doing? Who do you think you are, really? Watch—you’ll make a promise to yourself to write about your Core Energetics ‘practice’ for a couple of days, maybe a week, then, like everything else, life will get in the way, you’ll get scared, you’ll psych yourself out, and you’ll give up. This is who you are, Jordan. This is how it ALWAYS goes.” Those demons are real, and they’re coming for me this time—for real. Every word that I write, every time I take up space and share a hard truth—even with myself—they’re chomping at the bit, wanting to devour me, to eat me alive, to fuckin’ humiliate me.
Honestly, I don’t even know from what place within me I’ll draw the strength I’ll need to keep showing up and keep trying. Maybe this will fail. Maybe I’ll quit and no one will ever read this. If you are reading this, you probably don’t know me, and I probably don’t know you. You might not care that I want to be a top-300 pro tennis player, even though I played soccer in college rather than tennis. You definitely don’t know that I spent 90 minutes in the gym today, working on my core strength and speed and agility and flexibility with a strength and conditioning coach who I’m confiding in and trusting completely to get my body, heart, and mind ready for the storm that’s about to come: the tournaments I’ll play in this summer; this first serve that’s far from a weapon, and the second serve that I don’t even have a clue about yet.
A lot is going to have to change for me to get to where I want to go, but I’ve already come so far, really. Core Energetics is painful. The work hurts. I have my own practitioner and, although we don’t see each other as often as I want, this much is clear: almost the entire time, the work does not feel good. My shadows do not like being examined—they hate being looked at and questioned. That part of me, the one that begs for protection, zero friction, and being everyone’s best friend, likes my life just the way it is: mostly small, mostly hidden and unknown.
So what? Tonight the score is 0–0, and a fresh start is being offered. Fifteen minutes of writing these field notes, day 1... That has to count for something..
