Get on the Right Page

I have learned a lot about teamwork in the last 4 years in roller derby.  I have learned a lot about life too.  When I bring derby and life together and think about the community that derby provides for people I think about how it can be successful or not.

People pay to play derby for an outlet.  People, from all walks of life come together as they are, with all the broken pieces of their lives and with all their life battle scars.  Their scars could be an abusive relationship, grieving death, low self-worth, or a sexual identity crisis.  The list goes on and on. If the outlet becomes too stressful or too much work and not enough fun, it is no longer an outlet.  You have to find a way to balance it all.

I fight with my husband a lot among my other scars.  Bringing home grief to add to that fighting does nothing to help.  My husband knows I love roller derby but if I'm coming home to him bitching about it, he naturally wants to fix it for me.  However, he can't fix it so he just gets mad at the fact that I keep doing it even though I'm pissed off at some aspect of it.  We end up fighting about derby then too.  I need to learn to hang things up at the door at practice and at home.

For a community, marriage, or relationship to be successful, people have to work together toward common goals.  They need to edify each other.  Edify means to build up, uplift, construct, strengthen or establish.  People with broken pieces need to be built up to be successful.  Breaking down those pieces will take longer and longer each time to build them back up.  Your teammates will make mistakes, but tearing them down when they make mistakes does not edify them.  Mistakes should be an opportunity to strengthen a teammate. 

When people pay to play something, they are customers. Just like any other business, if you don't have good customer service, your customers won't continue to come back.  Roller derby is not a paid sport and should never be treated as such.  Therefore when dealing with the business end of derby, care should be taken when dealing with disagreements in the business.  You wouldn't fly off the handle to your boss or a customer and you can't do it in the business of derby either or it just won't be successful.

Success can be had if genuine care is taken and people cooperate.  Simply put, the whole team has to be on the same page.

Trouble with Motion Sensors

This is not one of those "about life" blogs that I usually try to hit on.  It's one of my newer pet peeves.  I have come to despise the motion sensors in bathrooms.  They either don't work correctly or are too sensitive.

Let me elaborate. 

The problem with the sink motion sensor is that you can stand there waving your hands in front of it for five minutes and it still won't turn on and then when it does you're so frantically waving your hand because it wasn't working that you miss the water entirely and it shuts off again before you get your hand under the faucet.

The problem with the paper towel motion sensor is that it either dispenses towel when no one is there or it doesn't dispense any at all.  Enough said about that.

The problem with the toilet motion sensor is that if it doesn't sense that you've gotten off the toilet you either have to flush it by hand anyway or the person in front of you didn't flush it by hand so you come to a gross stall that no one uses because it is too disgusting to flush someone else's waste.  If the toilet sensor is too sensitive, it flushes while you are still on it and sprays disgusting toilet water all over your backside.  GROSS!!

Let's just go back to the regular handle faucets and flushers as most of the time we end up having to do it ourselves, or worse, leave the bathroom without washing our hands because the water won't come out.  If people are germaphobes, then they can install foot pedals to operate the faucets/flushers.  You can use your elbows to turn on faucets and pump the paper towel lever if need be too.  Remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  This is one of those times.