Todd Jesdale showed me his files once.  Boxes of notebooks, programs and shirts occupied an entire room in his home.  As you can imagine if you know Todd, it wasn't very organized, but he seemed to know where everything was.  Workout results, records, seat racing notes, entire seasons of memories sat in that room.

I don't think I'm even as organized as Todd was, but I've been "saved" by modern technology.  As everyone knows, the internet forgets nothing, especially when nobody pressed the DELETE button.  Obviously, this blog is still here, preserving my insanity as a second-year coach from 2005.  My Youtube channel is also still up, with videos I took of my crews from 2009 all the way to this past weekend.  I've even managed to find a few notebooks.  There's a flash drive somewhere with workout results from 2004.

So I've been reading through this stuff for the last few days.  Call it introspection, personal or professional self-scouting, whatever.  And I've come to a few conclusions:

1) I've gotten old.   I know, I say that all the time, like everybody in their 30s.  However, there is a lot more grey in my hair.  I'm not nearly as intense nor do I lose my temper as easily as I used to.  I've even been polite to referees the past few years.  Shocking, I know.

2) I still LOVE coaching There is absolutely nothing in the world I would rather do than teach people how to row, how to train and how to love this sport.  I've had some challenges these past few years, times when I can't say I was happy with the direction of my life, but I've always loved coaching.

3)  I've finally learned patience  I had a brand-new, first time assistant coach sending her novices out at a regatta a few years ago.  She reminded me so much of how itchy, twitchy and nervous I used to get.  Her crew didn't have a very good day (they flipped--story later) but I hope my patient good humor and the humor of her crew helped get her through a tough first outing.  (That crew went on to become a great novice team.)  I've realized there are things I can't change immediately, and thus I'm a lot more relaxed when short-term setbacks come around.

4) I still care deeply about my teams, but I've learned to pull back Getting older will do such things, I know, but while I used to thoroughly enjoy being a close part of their lives, I now am more reserved.  Communication is still very, very important to me (2000+ texts/month), but I'm not all over their Facebook pages.  There has to be a happy medium that I'm still searching for.  Things still get a little dusty when they win a big event, though.

5) I plan better  This was never my strong suit.  Flying by the seat of my pants was the usual way I would run practices.  Seat racing?  How about......now?   These days, I've got most of the season planned out on a google doc my crew can access months ahead of time.

Getting old still sucks, though.