Day Fifty-One: The Wisdom of Rabbits.

Ask me a question about Bambi.

I know the answer!

Yeah, you're probably amazed (or concerned). It's true! You are unlikely to meet a twenty-something male with deeper appreciation for Bambi than me (unless you work with the mentally deranged). Apparently a lot of people were actually kind of traumatized by the movie and couldn't really stand to watch it as kids? Like, because his mom gets shot and he has to grow up to be a BADASS and such?

But anyway.

Thumper is the wisest sidekick anyone has ever had. We all know Thumperisms like, "Ya hafta watch both ends at the same time." Wow. Deep, profound, and far reaching beyond the realm of ungulate ice-skating.

(even the best advice is useless to those who do not follow it)

Doubtless, however, Thumper's best known quotation is,





Why bring it up?

Because somehow I am on a team that fails to comprehend this concept and while it's had little manifestations in during previous games, this past Tuesday was positively epic.

I'm sure that many of you have noticed this, but sports have this magical ability to turn seemingly well-adjusted dudes into total crazies in NO time at all. A few errors give birth to frustration, and frustration seemingly uncaps deep wells of self-righteous negativity.

If you missed it, my team hasn't won a game yet. We have some good players, but nobody is show-stoppingly good. Nevertheless, there a couple people who feel like they have a particular gift for correcting their teammates and telling them the nuances of how they ought to be playing.

Anyone who has played a sport/worked with people for more than an hour has encountered this variety of human. They believe that by translating their frustration into criticism they will somehow create positive change.

They are wrong. They will always be wrong. And in the meanwhile, they're really unpleasant to be around.

I remember talking like this when I was in highschool. I was definitely dickish to my teammates. But I'm twenty-five now. I've realized my frustrations are completely self-serving and I distrust them constantly.

But without fail- all it takes is a bunch of boys with a ball to bring out the most negative, pissy attitudes.

And in the end? We lost.

Not one second of criticism helped anyone or changed the outcome of the game.

I've decided to make that explicitly clear next game. Which is not typically my style. But I've decided it's not worth having the entire game polluted with negativity by a couple guys who don't know how to handle their frustration in a healthy way.

Part of strength is the ability to face frustration and hardship and not let it wear out your kindness or exhaust your joy.

An easy first step? LISTEN TO THE RABBIT.

Indefatigable. Let's go.

Day Forty-Eight: Crouching Embarrassment, Hidden Past!

Maaaannnn. How crazy have the last nineteen days been? Allow me to briefly recap!

I carved a pumpkin (it's already rotting)!

Co-adopted a dog/goblin/bat (henceforth, "Dogoblat" [or Ping])!





















Roadtripped to $TEXAS (paid fifty-four dollars to rent a car for four days, drive it ninety miles per hour, and put seventeen-hundred miles on it. I almost feel bad)!

And lost more soccer games.

Yes, lost more. It's been tough. I've been practicing a lot and I can see improvement in my own stamina and game, but only just now I've realized that most of the teams we are competing against have played together in this league for a while now. Whereas my team came into this season largely unfamiliar with one another and at least half had no indoor experience (including myself).

It's been a pretty steep game of catch-up. Last Tuesday was by far the best we've done, and it very nearly paid off. I think the final result was 3-7, which while seemingly bad is, in fact, our closest finish and the way we were developing our attack and getting back on defense actually looked like we were a team.

Which is exciting to me. If you don't know, I don't discourage easily. Whether that is for a lack of connection to the looming onslaught of reality or because of everlasting springs of divine joy remains to be determined.

And now! A confession. A dark revelation of shame.

This is not the first blog I've ever written. There are OTHER blogs. Older blogs.

Some of them very, very old.

And their collective content is- well, how to put this delicately; steaming animal compost. Emphasis on the present-tenseness of this steam. No amount of time would be adequate for the horribleness to cease being freshly rank.

Yes, dear reader. More so than what you now feast your eyes (but starve your brain) on- if you can believe it.

I occasionally have fits of anxiety that one day I'll do something important, become famous, and all these old blogs will be discovered the social-media-adepts; who would find a nearly infinite resource of utterly humiliating material to by processed through buzzfeed and the Huffington Post.

Imagine my joy, then, to discover just now that xanga has officially archived all its old content. It's inaccessible except by upgrading the account!

Such joy that is mine! All of my splendid political ambitions are free to flourish!

*prance*

It's an odd combination of comforting and dissatisfying when I google my own name. Nothing about me ever comes up, which is comforting as I haven't done anything that I would wish to have public attention directed toward, but dissatisfying because surely I've done something more noteworthy than yet another dead-end blog by TieFighterGuy85 blabbering about their brochacho named Ethan who "may do this" or "may do that."

As a side note, having a permissional last name is a great way to fade in the search engine noise. Apparently there are a lot of articles about what Ethan Hawke may or may not do. So much speculation around one man!

There remains only one website to throw my political ascendance athwart and I have NO idea how to get rid of it. Gratefully, even with knowing certain precise word combinations to put into the search engine, it is nigh impossible to stumble upon- even with Google's almighty power.

Eventually I will find a seedy hacker, or a really awesome one like Lizbeth Salander and pay them to "nuke it." But with 1s and 0s. Technologically.

Are you still reading this?

Indefatigable. Let's go.