Merry Christmas...and a quick 2 months!

First off I just want to start off by saying Merry Christmas to everyone out there. This is always my favorite time of the year because regardless of what I was doing or where I was at, I always was able to come back home to my wonderful family. We had a good Christmas at my house; my brother got a new bed, my sister got an iTouch, and I got a plane ticket down to Dallas to see one of my best friends Jordan get married. My mom asked me for about a week straight what I wanted and that was the only thing that I could come up with! So with that said I hope everyone out there got what they wanted and if you didn't then I'm sure that there was a very good explanation as to why you didn't!

Now back to some of my baseball talk:
Playing professional baseball has plenty of positives that greatly outweigh the negatives. But there is this one negative that I have to deal with that really gets to me...the fact that we don't play for a whole 6 months! Let's go back to my first year on pro ball. The year was over and everyone was packing up their things and getting ready to go back home. I was excited because everyone else was and I thought that was the right emotion, go with the crowd right? I, however, had no idea what I was about to face. I got home, spent some quality time with my family, ate at some of my favorite local restaurants, and then I was lost. It was the first time in my life where I hadn't been active in something and I had no idea what to do. I never was forced to get a job because I was always so busy doing other things where I never had any free time. Now I had all the free time that I had ever wanted and more. I'm already a very anxious person and having to wait 6 months to play again made things even worse. I quickly went into a downward spiral, not knowing how to attack the off season.

I finally got a job as a substitute teacher, but who wants to wake up at 5:15 in the morning in their off season?!?! So I only ended up working 1 or 2 days a week before that got old for me. Basically to sum up that first off season, it was an absolute learning experience that I didn't like.

At the end of this past season I knew that it was eventually was going to come to an end and I was going to have to face all of those factors once again. What made things even harder was how I began to play my best baseball of the year towards the end of it. I did everything I could to try and get a gig playing winter ball somewhere, but it was a no go. I was 24 playing in Low A and I guess that didn't really help me out too much. So I went back home this time knowing exactly what I had in store for me.

I've figured a few things out that have helped me along the way. I more look at it now as a different "season". A season that helps me get better and get to where I want to be. It might sound a little cliche but I look at what I do in the off season as an investment. I am only able to perform to a certain level and that level is determined by how much I invest into being the best player that I can be in the off season. So that's what I try and think about whenever I start to sulk and begin to count down the days until I'm back in Florida.

Now I'm approaching the start of the year. I've kind of used this time to gage the point where I finally begin to kick it into gear. I begin hitting and throwing more, I cut down my hours at work so that I can concentrate on my training, and I begin to condition even more. Baseball is such a game of routine, usually thought of as just a routine during the year, but as I've found out if I don't create some kind of routine during the off season I go absolutely crazy!

Thanks for checking back in. I decided not to write about Beyonce...maybe sometime down the road.

Once again, I hope everyone had a great holiday and that everyone has a great new year.

"You begin to believe in luck once you finally start to realize that the hard work you put in and the results aren't just a coincidence."