On Decisions

Some decisions are easy. Yes, I would like to try skydiving. No, I don't want to wear that prom dress to the club. Of course I'd like seconds on your delicious homemade pie.

Some decisions are hard. Should I go heavy on the eye makeup or sport some red lipstick? What do I wear to the gym? Thin Mints or Trefoils?

But the hardest decisions to make are the ones you know are right, but will have incredibly painful consequences. These past couple weeks I have been faced with such a decision. I know the right answer, but I feel great sadness when I think of what it means.

This August, I will likely be attending law school somewhere. In hearing some circulating rumors of club tryouts and whatnot, I realized I needed to decide if I was going to play ultimate this summer. Immediately I knew what was going to happen. I'm moving to the Bay Area, after all, land of the amazing ultimate opportunities. I don't know if I could make a team that would go to Nationals but I could definitely make one that was more competitive than the past two I have played on in San Diego. I would enjoy meeting new people and making friends through the sport I spend the majority of my free time playing, writing about or thinking about.

And yet, I will not be playing this summer. I can't in good conscience pay a ton of money to law school and then commit my weekends and some weekday evenings to a team. It's not fair to the team I would play on for me to be distracted by school and it's no way to guarantee I get the most out of my education. I know that's the right thing for me to do. Ultimate isn't going anywhere. If anything, the opportunities to play competitively are becoming more available. But 2013 isn't my summer. I won't be playing. I won't be writing. I won't be travelling to amazing tournaments.

I know there's great leagues in San Francisco, and I can always play in the coming years. I just can't help feeling a painful loss when I read on Facebook about the excitement building for the Triple Crown Tour, or hear my friends talking about the tournaments they can't wait to attend. There's a real fear that if I don't play for a summer I'll be "out of the loop" or will find it difficult to return. That fear might be completely baseless, but it's there.

The choice to not play this summer has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. And there's nothing much more to say about it than it totally sucks.