Football Counter-Programming 2019: Week 10

This season's Football Counter-Programming is almost up. Let's get right into it.

The industrial world is a world of convenience and specialization. But the mechanical and technical nature of the world that we live in creates a world of repetition.

In this repetitive world, how do we hold onto our motivations? How do we find that spark of inspiration to keep us doing our best every time? Is it rational to take every day and do it to the very best of your capabilities each and every time? Or should we shephard our resources--physical and mental--for when it really counts? (And--can we reliably accomplish this? And, without artificial and outside rules . . . when will we know when it really counts?) Unless you are being judged for something on an agreed-upon time schedule, you won't know when you need to do your best. So you must always be on guard as if someone is watching. 

But that can be exhausting. And so you have to find your internal motivation. Either become motivated to yourself or find outsiders or team-mates or job colleagues who can provide you with the motivation to live up to expectations.

Still . . . I know we can't always be perfect in all that we do all the time. We fall short. We make mistakes. And when we do, we can learn how to learn from those shortcomings and make adjustments and try to do better then next time. And I guess that is the most important lesson--for myself, for my children. We can't be perfect and no amount of wishing will make it so. We live in a world of shortcomings. But we cannot give up our pursuit for betterment with each performance--even though we know that sometimes we do poorly. Sometimes those mistakes are obvious to everyone. And sometimes they are known only to ourselves. The journey is valuable, even if there are peaks and valleys along the way.

(All of this made more impactful sense in my head when I thought about it. Predictably, it seems less useful now that I've put it down on the screen. It is less eloquent and more bone-crushingly obvious. But I'm keeping it here as a reminder to me and a way to process things from this week.)

So . . . stay the course. Keep trying. And remember . . . your alma mater's starting left guard has good weeks and bad weeks as well. He's just a kid still and maybe he didn't have enough breakfast this morning. Give him a break, just this once. Football doesn't matter any more than anything else.

Until next week.