A Touch of the Niggles

I've gone down with a case of the fencing niggles at the moment. The last couple of weeks I have been dogged by really irritating little problems when I've been on the piste. The velcro on my mask keeps coming loose, all my electric foils have stopped working properly, my foil handle won't stay screwed tight, I keep getting ahead in fights then losing them, been getting irritated at my performance etc. All these things have served to make for a frustrating time and have somewhat detracted from my enjoyment. But life's like that and it is quite easy to let these little things take you away from the big view. Take today at work for instance. I was talking to a colleague about the most minute and IT specific issue that you can imagine as if it was the most important thing in the known universe whilst in reality it was the most insignificant subject in the grand scale of things. We were both deeply embroiled in the conversation, work jargon and intellectual importance of the whole thing when I suddenly thought to myself "Whatever are we talking about? Is this really that important?" I didn't share this thought at the time but it enabled me to ditch a lot of the emotional stuff that I was associating with it and the anxieties and tension this can reinforce. Then I was able to go out for a walk at lunch and actually enjoy the sunshine instead of churning stuff over in my head. I think that for some reasons human beings are hard wired to need something to think about and worry over and occasionally it's great to be able to clear your mind and forget about all that! Some individuals seem to be better at maintaining this than others but it's worth trying. I guess it's the same with the fencing. I've probably started attaching too much importance to certain elements of my performance (I can be a bit of a perfectionist) so maybe it's time just to stop expecting, thinking and just fence!