Day: August 29, 2023

I’m sitting here in the classroom as my students work through a prompt. They have ten minutes left to figure it out, so I decided to keep time with the blog here. I find myself looking back in time to when I was first teaching this subject matter at another school–Estrella Mountain Community College. I was still in my (very late) twenties and thinking that life was endless. Here I am in my late forties and wondering where all of that time and energy and youth went. Was it wasted? What were the experiences I absorbed, appreciated, endured? Since then I have been divorced, moved one of three kids into college, gained three more kids, 50 more lbs, and developed a heart condition that if left unchecked is going to murder me in under a decade.

Things have changed quite a bit.

I don’t have a vision for what life will be like in 20 more years. This is the first moment I’ve thought about this as a real midpoint in that post collegiate journey or a stage in my life that will shift dramatically in short order. I don’t know that I can ever retire and live the lifestyle my partner and I want and have grown accustomed to. So it becomes a matter of deciding what life should — even could — look like.

I don’t know.

I am trying to figure it out everyday between working, playing games, living a couples life, raising kids, and living out my fantasy life of being a writer. Maybe the answer is somewhere in what I just wrote.

Football is a strange sport. You get these kids who are the physical build for a specific role at the higher level, but because of one thing or another they end up playing ‘out of position’ and never get recognized for how good they are at a particular thing. My boys are getting shifted around all over the field. Both are true corners–D1 build corners standing at six feet plus with blazing speed and a narrow frame. They aren’t safeties and Linebackers, but that is what coach needs, so that is what they are doing. That is the oddness and the particularly destructive nature of football. There are 11 positions on each side of the ball, and for my senior who has 1 offer at CB already and needs a better one (it in’t a full scholarship) if he is going to play college ball. He does not have a lot of time, but injuries across the secondary means that he is unlikely to get any more tape beyond that one truly fantastic game. Somehow the coaches at both levels feel these boys are wasted at corner. Yet, without their play the team would’ve given up more points.

Life does not always hand you the conditions you seek. Often you fight through what you are given and make it into a situation in which you can at least survive until you learn how to thrive.