Krill + Bauer, my consulting boutique, is doing great.
New clients, exciting projects, and the feeling that a new professional chapter is taking shape.
That’s the good news.
The catch is that my tennis has started sending me passive-aggressive messages.
Or maybe, to be more precise, the real issue is this: I’m not organizing my training well enough anymore.
Things have changed. I’m no longer the king of my agenda, moving pieces around like a benevolent dictator with a racket.
Now I’m delivering projects, responding to clients, handling surprises… and the surprises seem to arrive with the discipline of Swiss trains.
Which brings me back to the doubt about tournaments.
Should I play or not?
it’s not that I don’t want to play tournaments.
It’s that I don’t want to arrive there asking luck to replace preparation.
When you know you are not prepared, entering a tournament is not really competing. It is hoping.
Hoping the serve saves you.
Hoping the big points fall your way.
Hoping the other player gives you space you did not earn.
Maybe in the past that was enough sometimes. But as the level rises, luck stops being a strategy. The game becomes faster, heavier, more demanding. The body gets exposed. The truth arrives earlier.
And that is the real discomfort: knowing you are not stepping on court with a game you have built, but with a handful of hopes and very little underneath them.
For someone with a real objective, that hurts more than defeat.
Because the feeling is not, “I lost.”
It is, “I came here asking luck to replace preparation.”
And for a serious dream, that is too fragile a foundation.
So...
"Fernando, go and organize your training seriously. Vamos."
Ok, ok… I still don’t know for sure if I’ll play tournment matches this weekend.
But this noon I’m going out with my ball machine to hit some balls and start again.
And maybe that’s enough for today.
