{"id":4155,"date":"2023-10-06T12:46:40","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T17:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2023-10-06T12:51:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T17:51:11","slug":"life-is-like-a-staircase-and-also-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/?p=4155","title":{"rendered":"Life is like a staircase. And also soccer."},"content":{"rendered":"
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What DALL\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2E gave me when I asked for a soccer ball going down a staircase<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/span>\n\n\n\n

This post is adapted from a message I sent to one of our users this morning. Since early 2021, we’ve gotten on the phone for an hour and a half about once a month. Sometimes, it’s CheckBook<\/a> tech support. More often, it’s a lot of reflection and sharing our human experience. So, stuff like this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning, my mom and I talked about how my kids are doing with soccer and how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m explaining things as I coach the team. \u00c2\u00a0One point was about how to explain to 6 year-old kids, and their parents, how no one turns into a superstar overnight. \u00c2\u00a0Heck<\/em>, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even be decent<\/em> at half<\/em> of it after your first year – and almost all of us are in our first year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I told Mom, if you think of life as a staircase, where your skills or understanding level up as you climb, you’ll spend a lot of time on each individual stair and very little actually climbing to the next. \u00c2\u00a0The time you spend on a stair is like how deep it is – and most of the stairs are far<\/em> deeper than they are tall. \u00c2\u00a0Sometimes, you feel like you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing the same thing on the same stair\u00c2\u00a0forever.<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 Other times, you might start to worry you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve fallen back down a stair or two. \u00c2\u00a0But then, you have to remind yourself you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really fall down so much as not give yourself what you need to be your best on whatever stair you’re on. Sleep, diet, other habits of just about every kind, who you hang out with, who you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, what kind of information you let your brain eat, what kind you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t; the list goes on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, I continued, life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a lot like soccer – you get out on the field, put a mental box around the position you play, and wait. “Oh, here comes the ball,” you might say. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, it’s\u00c2\u00a0kinda<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0coming at me but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a few feet out of my position so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just gonna let it go\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And, so, you miss a lot of the action. Why not run up to the ball, kick it around a bit, see what happens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is, when you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got all your answers, whether you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just been running in place on the same stair for so long you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve forgotten you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on a staircase in the first place or you play a soccer position and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to stretch out a bit for a ball that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about positions<\/em> at all, maybe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not meeting life where it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at. \u00c2\u00a0To play better, think outside of your position but don’t forget it, keep that next stair in mind even as you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry too much about it. \u00c2\u00a0And, give yourself what you need to play your best. \u00c2\u00a0Sometimes, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a self kick in the pants. \u00c2\u00a0Other times, it’s a self nod that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get there when you get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this would make any sense at all to a 6 year-old, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m probably going to sell it with an analogy about how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been eating at least three times a day, every day of their life (which, if you factor out their first year, is something like\u00c2\u00a05500 times<\/em><\/strong>), and they\u00c2\u00a0still<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0make a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep eating, reach for your own condiments, don’t sweat your messes. And clean up already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is adapted from a message I sent to one of our users this morning. Since early 2021, we’ve gotten on the phone for an hour and a half about once a month. Sometimes, it’s CheckBook tech support. More … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4155"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4162,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions\/4162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}