Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

As some of you may know, I’m passing fond of the game of pool. This does connect to writing, bear with me.

Since before the pandemic I had lost most of my pool playing mojo. I stopped playing in my last league in December of 2019, thinking I needed a break. Then 2020 happened.

I have my own table. I played a bit, but it just fell away in terms of priorities. I tried to get back into it in 2024, but did not keep it going.

I’m back at it in 2025.

My go to drill/solo game that forces me to play properly is the Hopkins Q Skill challenge.

Why? Because it is deceptively easy, but very hard to do consistently well. If you are into pool I recommend you check out the link and try it. That site in general has a TON of useful stuff for pool nerds, so go have a look around! Dr. Dave knows his stuff!

Anyway, anyone from beginner to pro can play the Hopkins, and get a score over 10 racks that shows their relative skill level. You score 20 points max per rack, 200 points over a 10 rack set. It makes you practice the break, making balls, play position, read the table to make clearances, solve problems like clusters and blocked pockets. It puts you under real pressure as you aim to beat your previous scores, or get a new high score or scoring average over a longer series of tests.

I’m still going to bring this back to writing, I promise.

So, I picked up my cue, and started earnestly playing again on 8/11/25. I sucked. My previous 10 rack record is well north of 160, (I was a reasonable player in the mid to late 2010s). I scored 92. Then 82. Then 86. Not good.

However – I was not disheartened. I saw in there bits of how I could play, and learned from all the things I was doing wrong from rustiness. Rather than give up, I persisted. I want to play well again, and the Hopkins was showing me how much work I had to put in.

Then I scored 127. That is more like it. Still couldn’t break for toffee. How can you forget to break properly? Somehow I had. Still scared of a bunch of shots too, needed more confidence. Hey ho. Back down to a 95 next set, then up to 111, and I began to get the break back. Then yesterday I hit 143. My highest score in 7 years. Even at my best I didn’t get over 140 that often. I’m not anywhere near as fluent as I was, still have a ton to improve upon, but I can put together a good set. There was joy in every one of those sets, even the low scoring ones, because I love the game, and I’ve remembered that. Today I scored a 122, and anything over 120 is a win as far as I am concerned. Practice is bringing me back, and these past two weeks have showed me that it is consistent effort that is the key. I will need to do shot specific drills to get certain touch shots back, to properly remember how to manage spin etc., but this one game drill has brought me back to a good standard pretty quickly.

Good against remotes is one thing…

What this teaches me in writing is two or more things.

1. Don’t stop writing – keeping the muscle working is easier than bringing back to life.
2. Don’t be bummed out if you do stop. If you lose the love for a while. Because…
3. If you start writing again, and stick with it in a formal, purposeful way, the joy, and the facility can come back surprisingly quickly. Even after years of dormancy.
4. Once you are back in the groove you can focus on specific techniques, ways to write better, but at first, just write, and enjoy the process once again.
5. You have to want it though. Only you can provide the motivation and discipline (M&D™) to keep at it. Just remember though, that the reward for that M&D™ is the joy. The joy of making something all of your own.
6. How cool is that?

This could have been and has been done as a bike riding metaphor, but today I wanted to talk about pool. So there. Maybe I’ll dust off my old pool player’s blog too. Steady. I have other writing to do, and joy to find.

Practice your way to Joy, my friends.