Football lessons and anxiety

Well, it is 4:16 and I am back in the living room watching a television show and writing on this thing. I wish I could revive my situation quickly. I wish I could right myself. It is frustrating. I am writing my frustrations on this page. I am trying.

Opportunity comes at us. The difference is being capable of taking advantage of the opportunity. I see this. There are opportunities around us all the time. We are shuffling down the street. Grey shuffle down a grey street. Ashes around our feet.

From time to time, someone will have something they can share. Something which is good for both of us. Amongst the grey faces shuffling down the grey street, their eyes capture your face, light on your grey eyes.

And you must be ready. That is the trick.

I will say this: it is probably not easy when you are losing sleep, sitting in your living room in the early morning hours, worrying about it all. I acknowledge that.

Right now, the economic situation is bad. Even in a time like this, there are opportunities. The smart person keeps his eyes open and puts himself in a position to grab the possibility. When it happens.

When I was a junior in college, I was having a problem performing on the football field. I had developed a hitch where the play would start and the action would begin. As the action of the play would come toward me, I would freeze and try to think what I should do. I developed an infirmity where I was stuck with my feet frozen to the field, trying to figure out what to do. There was too much effort in the moment trying to analyze the situation and respond intelligently.

Between my junior and senior year, I learned something. In football, like most sports, you have to practice vigorously, so that when you play the game, you react to the action around you in conjunction with the lessons you learned in practice.

You don't have time to recreate what you need at the time of execution in order to respond to the action around you. If you try, you will miss the opportunity and the ballcarrier will be running past you down the field.

To complete the analogy, in football, the game is controlled by possession of the ball. When you are playing defense, you are trying to wrest control of that ball from the other team. When the opportunity arises, you have to be able to grasp control of the ball, or at least the ballcarrier. At that moment, you can't depend on your ability to react. You have to be aggressive and act, rather than react.

The difference is taking the offensive and being in charge, rather than reacting to what is happening. Being offensive allows you to grasp the opportunity when it presents itself. In that situation, your average will be higher, because you'll be taking the game to the other guy, rather than grasping at what comes your way.

All this to explain that you have to be ready to take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself. That, unfortunately, doesn't resolve the worry. It is still there. And so I am still up at 4:53. Being an adult can be so much fun.