Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Pool divination blues

I have played quite a bit of pool over the past two weeks. I have been shite almost every time. I've hardly won a single game. I feel as though my cueing action has got shaky. I can't see the shots I need to make. My confidence is at an all-time low.

I have a long-standing superstition that such lapses in my pool-playing 'mojo' are generally symptomatic - predictive, even - of a more thoroughgoing slump in mood and fortune (I have written about this before - better, and at more length - here). This certainly seems to be the case at the moment. Which comes first, the dip in pool form or the insidious soul-crash? Chicken & egg. It's impossible to say.

I actually managed to beat The Choirboy a few times last night, but I didn't play well enough to restore my self-belief. I fear I need to take a complete break from pool for a while - until I am in more buoyant spirits again. That may take quite some time.

Sometimes when I suffer a run of bad form or ill luck on the pool table, I try to console myself with the old superstition - "Lucky in games, unlucky in love. (And - by implication - vice versa!)" But when the slump runs so deep, I know this isn't going to be true. I fear most of my current depression - and my dismal pool playing - is bound up with my despair about my romantic life. And if that's the case...... I may never play pool again!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and perhaps you might discover some lonely soul mate playing an equally miserable game of pool? I mean....think about maximizing the odds.

Froog said...

That's it - I'm never turning to you for romantic advice again!

1) Women relatively seldom play pool (out here, at least).

2) I'm not into men.

3) Anybody - man or woman - in such a catastrophic karmic-slump as I have been recently would be an absolutely disastrous candidate for romantic involvement.