Volleyball - "Show Your Work" *

*Adapted from my basketball blog

All opinions expressed in the blog are solely mine. 

"If you happened to be wealthy and educated and alive in 16th- and 17th-century Europe, it was fashionable to have a Wunderkammern, a “wonder chamber,” or a “cabinet of curiosities” in your house—a room filled with rare and remarkable objects that served as a kind of external display of your thirst for knowledge of the world." - from Austin Kleon in Show Your Work

Once we called these "prized possessions" collected over a lifetime. Sport fuels our memory machines, the sum of our experiences. No two are alike. 

This is not Jason Selk's "highlight reel" in 10 Minute Toughness. What artifacts might we unearth along our wunderkammern memory lane? 

• Scrapbooks
• Books
• Trophies
• Videos and CDs
• Photographs 
• Cards and letters
• Awards and honors 

Imagine having an Olympic Gold Medal in volleyball as an indoor or outdoor player or a coach. Karch Kiraly has all three. 

Treasures like those make our collections seem small.

 

                              Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli

 

Our craft never springs full grown like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Our work emerges after painstaking practice and preparation over a lifetime. My first exposure to art history was Fine Arts 13 at Harvard. Learning about the craft of masters matters as much as hearing Newton's Laws. 

We never know the origin or our next athletic memories. 

"Show your work." Build connections with others. 

Lagniappe. "There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent." - from Austin Kleon, "Show Your Work"

Think about your 'ecology of talent' the factors encompassing your volleyball experience.