We talk often about the anticipation of leaving for vacation, but rarely about the strange, untethered vertigo of returning. You unlock the front door, drop your bags and instantly feel like a ghost in your own life.
As a creature of routine, it always amazed me how quickly I feel disconnected whenever my routine is disrupted. It makes me realize how much of my normal life seems to run on muscle memory and how much more difficult it is to regain it than it is to lose it.
My mind keeps drifting back to a basketball game in Winnemucca a couple of years ago. It was one of those classic, high-stakes matchups between the Fernley and Lowry girls. Fernley boys coach Cade Knutson joined Big Mike and me at the top row of the bleachers for a halftime radio interview during the girls game. When the buzzer sounded for the second half, the stands were so packed that Cade was literally trapped and had to wait until a timeout just to find a path to the floor.
While he was stranded up there with us, a technical foul was called against Lowry and a Fernley player who was a very good free throw shooter stepped up to the line.
Shooting technical free throws is a psychological anomaly in basketball. It is usually the only time a player is completely alone on the floor, in a game where everything revolves around navigating physical bodies.
On the air, I commented that for many players, shooting technical foul shots is much more difficult than normal free throws because it’s so far out of the natural flow of the game. Cade disagreed, arguing that he loved the feeling of going to the free throw line by himself on the road and shutting up the crowd by hitting two shots.
But sure enough, the shooter missed both shots.
Because a technical foul also means the shooting team gets possession, Fernley got the ball back and the same player was fouled on the next play. This time, with players lining the lane for the free throws, she sank both shots.
That’s a pretty long-winded way of describing how getting out of routine can affect concentration, confidence and performance.
I’m dealing with some sense of that after coming back from vacation last week, coupled with the fact that I’m not stepping back into the same routine, but working to create a new one.
The good thing is, the vacation served as a mental reset, not just an escape. I took my brother on a fishing charter, and the catching was actually as good as the fishing. Between us, we caught 10 trout and three bass, watched a bald eagle cut through the sky and spotted a doe and two fawns tracking us from the shore while our guide spun tales about the lake and the history of the area.
It was a great disconnection from the daily grind, and it happened just in time.
Believe it or not, we’re only two weeks away from the beginning of official practices for fall high school sports, and games begin only two weeks after that. I thought I was ready for all of that before. Now I know I am.
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