The first pondering has some ponderance to me, but I doubt anyone else will really care. When I first started playing footbag almost five years ago, I quickly came to develop the only two goals I've ever seriously held in footbag. After learning of players like Haggett, Mulroney and Crook, I decided that the best way for me to appreciate footbag would be alone -- as a hermit! There's this class of player that's almost god-like for whatever reason. They never come to tournaments, and they don't care about the community... Yet they remain totally venerated. Maybe it has something to do with their footbag careers syncing up tidily to the progression of a cultural movement from its explosive, mythological youth to its dog days. I don't really know.
I'm not saying that I fit those qualifiers -- quite the contrary. People definitely don't venerate me, and I'm certainly not god-like. However, I have come to realize over the past year or so that I have, in my own way, come to reach this goal, and the benefits were not quite what I expected. Despite being out of the loop, I have played a fair amount of footbag over the past year, and not having the stylistic influence of a horde of people subtly pressing down upon my own natural aesthetic and approach has been a real boon. Logging onto modified every day or two and checking for new videos, reading about people's sick shit and all that can really be a downer if you've got a competitive nature. I always used to laugh when people said that footbag is a game you play competitively against yourself, because that is definitely(!) not the case for a lot of players I know! Myself included! Now I can say that I really do play footbag competitively against myself, because there's no one else around that I care to compete with (I don't mean that condescendingly).
Another nice thing about playing footbag quasi-hermetically is that I can approach the game in my own way. The only other person I talk to from the online footbag community every day is Dat, and while we don't really talk about footbag anymore, his adventures into the world of body mechanics inspire me to play more technically than I ever have. I also get to decide what tricks are cool -- I really like reverse-whirling ss toe and my legacy -- rev-up! ( I named that move, for the record ).
My other train of thought was "today's session's highlight." I have been playing poorly recently since I just started playing a week or two ago after about a three month absence. I was wondering about ways to frame footbag in your mind to make play seem easier -- seems like a good strategy to play better, right? The result was an idea to categorize runs before you hit them. This could probably be expanded into a meta-jobs system, but I don't think there would be any real benefit there -- it seems like it would serve you better if you applied it personally. After having my thought, I decided to try and hit runs that would follow a certain pre-defined format. "Okay, this run is going to be five shuffle>five original genuine>five dexless>handcatch." It's surprisingly easy to be productive when you maintain that sort of framing. I managed a 28 genuine which was okay, but I was pretty happy about coming from my crappy game lately. Another benefit reveals itself when you think about framing comparatively. Which run sounds harder: "a run of 15 genuine with 5's interspersed" or "five shuffle to five original genuine to five dexless, with some five add moves thrown in if you feel confident"? Considering that most people phrase their phat shit around here with the former style, I wouldn't be surprised if most people approached hitting hard stuff with that framing. "I'm going to hit 10 fearless!" I wonder why so few people have? Psyche-out, anyone? "I'm going to hit 20!" Ten begins to sound a little more reasonable.
Also bear in mind that framing like this isn't very limited, despite its "limiting" nature. Consider the following run:
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3 atomic > 3 shuffle > 3 dexless > 3 swirl-based > flare
Here are some thoughts for a basic system of notation, at least so I can describe it here where no one will bother reading about it.
An element will take the following format:
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(~)[number] [modifier1] [modifier2] ... [modifierN]
A list of ideas for modifiers:
- kickless
tiltless
guiltless
tripless
fearless
beastly
godly
genuine
unique
shuffle
dexless
zooming
ducking
spinning
original
crispy
muted
toe
clipper
crossbody
symposium
double
wonky
repetitive
momentum-shift
[component]
Tomorrow I'm going to experiment with this concept.