Day: August 13, 2019

I get these emails from Chris Barnard, a trainer and (owner?) of Overtime Atheletes. He has a lot to say about a lot, and occasionally his words hit me in a personal way. Today he wrote about a football player named Ronald Ollie who lost his job recently. He wrote, “…But him getting cut made me think about how all people (athletes, businessmen, moms) have a comfort zone. And when they get too far out of that comfort zone, they sometimes sabotage themselves. In Ronald Ollie’s case, he achieved a level of success that was uncomfortable for him… In turn, He stopped working, Let a small injury get in the way of him participating in training camp, And as a result, he got the boot.”

That right there defines my football career. In a more meaningful way, that defines my life. I have troubles with the spotlight, though it feels as though I actively seek it. Once I get to a level of discomfort with my success I stop working–be it football or writing or even relationships. It is in a sense a fear of doing well of having it all and having to watch it all be taken from me. As a result I tend to snatch it from myself. I’m my own soup nazi. I will not effort to go into the details of how to fix this malady, because I don’t have clear or precise instructions. What I will say is that awareness is part of the game. Knowing the problem helps to solve it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back on routine of writing in the morning. I’m getting better at sliding into a routine reflective of the work situation. In the summer I don’t have a lot I am responsible for on a day to day basis and that makes me incredibly lazy. When I have a lot going on it forces me to plan my time appropriately.
2. As I wait for power to be run to my Shed/writing lair I continue to plan and design the lair. It is going to be the highpoint of coolness, but in the meanwhile it is just hot. So, I am searching for a temporary solar solution to some of these issues. Perhaps a solar fan or some such thing to drop the temp down from the 111-120 I’ve been dealing with. Those are not indoor working conditions.

I’ve discovered that ambition–true lasting ambition–is rare. By that I mean that most people want a job and a life that is simple and routine. There is rarely a desire for more in the faces of my students. Even in terms of the rappers I hear out in the world that ‘ambition’ amounts to little more than copycat excursions towards a life that has a lot of stuff in it but no deeper purpose. I have yet to define what ambition is. Like grit it defies traditional definition but we all sense it when we see it and I, frankly, do not see it enough.

Why does any of this matter? Because I feel like we are continuing to slip into a hive mentality in our nation. We have far too many worker bees and far too few free thinkers and people designed to develop drastic change. We are, in my opinion, a country heading towards a decline and we are running out of ways to still go up intellectually.

How this happened hasn’t fully coalesced in my understanding. What I have discovered through working at a community college is that for most ambition is overrated. Most students have goals best associated with what I describe as low hanging fruit. I am surrounded by a horde of nurses and not one has announced an interest in being a doctor. They are all about short cuts and following orders and getting paid as fast as possible… but to what end? So you can take that vacation and snap photos of yourself on some foreign beach?

I feel this more and more on the days I play the cyclical Madden 20. I’m going nowhere in that game, and yet I enjoy it. I feel many model such lives. I feel that many more think that this is ordinary or at the least okay. Maybe it is okay for most, but without the drivers to lead us into a better tomorrow, we will always remain slaves of a system whose biproduct is the very lack of ambition I am railing against.

Still, I have no notion of what to do about it.