Maybe I Don’t Have to Score the Goal

 

Today started with middle school.

Which is a sentence that feels significantly more terrifying when you're the parent than I remember it feeling when I was the kid.

Nellie has been excited about sixth grade.

And nervous.

Really fucking nervous.

So today we went to orientation together.

We got into her locker. We walked her schedule. We found all of her classrooms so she could see exactly where she needed to go instead of spending the next several days imagining some enormous labyrinth designed specifically to make sixth graders late for math.

And then we discovered something huge:

Her locker is really close to her best friend's.

Crisis fucking averted.

We had an awesome time.

But somewhere during all of this, Nellie asked me a question that I absolutely was not prepared for.

“Dad, do I have to only use one strap on my backpack because I'm in middle school now?”

Jesus Christ.

Apparently this is what growing up looks like.

Not driver's licenses.

Not first jobs.

Not moving out.

It starts with standing in a middle-school hallway wondering whether the cool kids still use both backpack straps.

I told her she could wear her backpack however the hell she wanted.

But I understand the question.

Probably more than she realizes.

Because lately I've been asking the 38-year-old version of the exact same thing.

Do I actually belong here?

Welcome Back to the Clam Jam
Tonight was another scrimmage with the Clam Jammers.

And if you've been following this ridiculous Rocket League adventure, you know I've spent a fair amount of time wondering whether I'm actually good enough to be here.

I'm 38.

I'm playing competitive Rocket League.

I'm sitting somewhere around Gold.

I've already been cut from a team once.

I've analyzed rotations. I've worried about boost. I've watched myself make stupid decisions. I've worried about being too slow. I've worried about my comms. I've worried about whether everybody else on the field knows something that I somehow missed.

And there have absolutely been moments when part of me wanted to make the decision for everyone else.

Maybe I should just bow out.

Maybe I'm wasting their time.

Maybe I don't belong at this level.

Maybe somebody else deserves the roster spot.

Basically:

Volunteer as tribute to be cut before anybody gets the opportunity to cut me.

That's a hell of a defense mechanism.

You can't be told you weren't good enough if you quit before anybody gets to decide.

Except tonight I played with Bobbafett and Extracrispy.

And we grooved.

I'm talking bread, peanut butter, and jelly.

Unfortunately for RBF, apparently they had a fucking peanut allergy.

Because Vox popped off.

Game 1 ended.

I looked at the scoreboard.

MVP.

Me.

VoxIncredible.

The 38-year-old Gold player who has spent entirely too much time wondering whether he belongs on this roster.

MVP.

And here's my favorite part:

Zero goals.

But I got Playmaker.

And that might mean more to me than if I'd scored three.

Because maybe I've been measuring the wrong thing.

Maybe I Don't Have to Score the Goal
I've been trying to get better at Rocket League by figuring out what my team actually needs from me.

Not what makes me look impressive.

Where are my teammates?

When should I challenge?

When should I rotate?

When should I get the hell out of the way?

When do I need to communicate even if somebody sounds frustrated?

When am I abandoning the play because my stupid brain has decided 47 boost is a national emergency?

Tonight, something clicked.

I didn't need to be the guy scoring every goal.

I needed to help create the goals.

Playmaker.

And weirdly enough, that's starting to sound familiar.

Because something else has been happening this week.

I Accidentally Wrote Another Business Plan
There's been something else eating my brain lately.

I'm not ready to tell you what it is.

And no, that's not me doing the annoying internet thing where I say “BIG THINGS COMING ” and then disappear for six months.

I'm deliberately keeping this one quiet for now.

But I can tell you this:

I wrote the business plan.

And if you've known me for any significant amount of time, that sentence isn't particularly impressive.

I've been writing business plans since I was 16.

I'm 38 now.

I've probably written 25 different business plans over the years.

I fucking love this part.

Give me an idea and my brain immediately starts connecting things.

How does it make money?

Who needs to be involved?

What does the customer experience look like?

What breaks?

What if we did this?

Wait—if we did that, then this other thing becomes possible.

Before long, there are spreadsheets and diagrams and documents and some poor bastard I've cornered into hearing a 45-minute explanation of something that started as a three-minute thought.

That's never been my problem.

My problem has been what comes after the plan.

Because eventually that little voice shows up:

Who the fuck are you to think you can actually do this?

Maybe it needs more research.

Maybe I need more money.

Maybe somebody else could execute it better.

Maybe the timing isn't right.

Maybe the plan isn't good enough.

Maybe I'm not good enough.

And eventually, another really well-thought-out idea gets placed on the shelf.

But something feels different about this one.

Today I finally got one of the biggest pieces of the concept out of my head and into something I could actually see.

Then three people whose opinions I genuinely respect told me they wanted to read the business plan.

So I finished it.

Version 0.1 exists.

And for once, finishing the plan doesn't feel like the finish line.

It feels like I'm standing at the starting line.

Playmaker
That's when tonight's Rocket League game started making a weird amount of sense.

Maybe I've spent way too much of my life thinking I needed to be the person who scores the goal.

I don't.

Maybe I'm actually pretty fucking good at seeing where all the pieces need to go.

Find the people.

See the connections.

Build the system.

Recognize what somebody else does better than me and put them in position to do it.

Make the pass.

Playmaker.

Holy shit.

Maybe I don't have to score the goal.

Two People Trying to Figure Out Whether They Belong
And that brings me back to Nellie.

This morning, my daughter stood in her new middle school trying to figure out her locker combination.

We walked her schedule.

We found her classrooms.

We found out her best friend would be nearby.

And she wondered whether she was supposed to start wearing her backpack differently now because she was a middle-schooler.

She wanted to know the rules before she got there.

She wanted some evidence that she'd fit in.

Meanwhile, her idiot father has been doing basically the same thing.

Do people my age belong in competitive Rocket League?

Am I good enough for this team?

Is this business idea actually good enough?

Am I capable of doing something with it?

What if everybody else knows the rules and I'm the asshole walking around with both backpack straps on?

But there's a problem with waiting until you know you belong.

You can't prove that you belong somewhere without actually showing up.

If I had volunteered as tribute and taken myself off this Rocket League team because I was afraid I wasn't good enough, tonight never happens.

There is no MVP.

There is no Playmaker.

There is no moment where I get to prove something to my teammates.

More importantly, there is no moment where I get to prove it to myself.

And how many times have I done exactly that with everything else?

Twenty-five business plans.

Twenty-five versions of me getting excited about something, seeing what it could become, and then eventually deciding maybe it wasn't good enough before the world ever got the opportunity to answer.

I don't want to do that anymore.

This idea might work.

It might fail spectacularly.

I have absolutely no fucking idea.

There are hundreds of things between the document sitting on my computer tonight and this thing becoming real.

But for once, I'm going to make the world tell me no.

I'm not doing it for them.

And maybe that's what has felt so strange lately.

Something in me really does feel like it's popping off.

Rocket League.

Writing.

The business.

Being Dad.

None of it suddenly became easy.

I didn't suddenly become the smartest, richest, most talented person in every room.

I think I just stopped requiring myself to be those things before I was allowed to participate.

I'm going to keep showing up.

I'm going to make the pass.

I'm going to take the shot when it's mine.

I'm going to fuck some of them up.

And when I do, I'm going to rotate back and try again.

Because apparently sometimes the 38-year-old Gold player gets MVP.

Sometimes the guy with 25 abandoned business plans finishes number 26.

And sometimes the sixth grader learns that she can wear however many fucking backpack straps she wants.

This time, I'm not volunteering as tribute.

This time, I'm staying in the fucking game.

This time, I'm going to find out how good I can actually be.

How many things did you quit because you didn't think you were good enough—and what could you have proven to everyone else, but more importantly to yourself, if you'd stayed in the game long enough to find out?