Good Riddance to a Craptastic Year
Let’s be completely honest: two thousand eleven wasn’t all bad. There were some good times sprinkled in among the terrible. A great girl came along. New writing opportunities came up. I took some good trips. But, in general, twenty eleven was not good. Not good at all.
I missed a lot of opportunities, squandered some others, and completely wasted a few more. For the first time in my life, I walked off of a job (and though it felt really good at the time, in hindsight it was a terrible decision). There were some phone calls and emails that I didn’t make that I regret almost daily.
I had my confidence as a writer shaken to it’s core, something I’m still trying to get over. It turns out that there actually is such a thing as being too honest, and I found out first person what happens when you let the absolute truth fly through your fingers without giving it a few seconds of consideration. People get angry, and you get told – sternly – to watch your step.
There are some people who, when 2011 started, were my best friends in the world but now I’m not so sure. It amazes me how much a decision made in self preservation – for my own happiness – has come to haunt me. Those people have proven to me the difference between friend and acquaintance. And poser. I hope I’m wrong about them, but I fear I’m not.
I turned thirty this year. This isn’t really such a bad thing, but it does give one pause and begs life’s priorities to be reevaluated. There’s no denying it anymore I’m an adult, and as such I have no excuse for not acting like it.
But, this is a new year. Two Thousand Twelve will be a good good year for me, whether it wants to or not. I refuse to make the same mistakes on this calendar that I made on the last.
This January First I live in a new place, have a great new girl, have reconnected with my tried and true core of friends and – somewhat thankfully – have a blank slate as far as employment is concerned. All of that, as far as I’m concerned, means that I’m in a perfect position to start this new year off right.
The suckitude that was 2011 taught me a lot of lessons, and reinforced some that I had previously refused to learn. This year, I will not repeat my mistakes. I will work hard – in all facets – to ensure that I come out of this year a better man.
I’m not (publicly) stating any of my goals, the only thing I’m declaring – because if you’re reading this you know me well enough to tell if I’m being successful – is that I will do everything I can to make 2012 a success.
Because, let’s be honest, 2011 was a failure and I won’t fail again. I’m too old to get beaten buy another year.
Director’s Cut
Last week I posted the thoughts of Columbus Crew fan Steve Abreu over on Massive Report. Steve was a better interview than I could have ever dreamed, answering my questions with full, complete thoughts and humor and an incomparable sense of history. As I said on MR, he doesn’t just know the Crew’s past, he’s a student of it and how it is affecting the future. I massaged our conversation down to a blog-friendly length so it would work with the MR format, borrowing the format (just answers, no questions) from Esquire’s monthly What I’ve Learned feature.
Here, in all of it’s unedited 2700-word glory, is my interview with ZipSix:
1) What is your first soccer memory? Was it a game you played in, saw on TV, saw in person? Best non-Crew soccer memory? (If you’re like me your best soccer memory is MLS Cup 08, but other than that…?)
In second grade I lived in Brecksville, Ohio, not too far from Richfield Coliseum, and my dad would take me to see the Cleveland Force. I think I was hooked from the very beginning. The orange ball. Darth Vader pounding on the glass before games. Cris Vaccaro and Ali Kazemaini. Kai Haaskivi. These were my heroes. I remember the Baltimore Blast and that the goalkeeper for the Kansas City Comets would wear a football helmet. It was a great time to be a kid. I had no idea that indoor soccer wasn’t really real outside of America. I played youth soccer like every other kid in the 80’s in Ohio, both indoor and out, and we had awesome team names like Fireballs and Blue Blasters, and we always made the playoffs in my memories, but I doubt we always did.
In 1994 I was back in Lowell, Massachusetts, where my grandmother lived because she had recently passed away and the World Cup was on. I went crazy over it. I made my extended family watch Ireland – Italy or something and when anyone scored I changed the channel to Univision so we could hear Andres Cantor yell GOOOOOOOOOL and if you can’t get excited about that then you have no business watching soccer, let alone breathing oxygen.
My favorite non-Crew soccer related moment was being at the Crew Stadium watch party for our 2002 World Cup opening game, USA – Portugal and scoring so early. I was wearing a lucky blue shirt and I had left my girlfriend back in bed to drive over to the stadium. We scored early. We took such a huge lead. “Drubbing Portugal” as Jack Edwards said and then we held on for dear life. 2002 was an amazing World Cup.
On Creating Opportunity
The first time someone took a chance on me, I let the opportunity pass.
When I was in tenth grade, after moving from north central Ohio to The Middle of Nowhere, Virginia, I tried out for basketball. I didn’t do it because I had been a baller at my old school, but instead because I was six foot five and that’s what sixteen year-olds who are that tall do. I’d never played ball on a school team before, just shot around in the driveway with my brothers and friends and played in a couple of church youth leagues. I was, by all accounts, far from a jock.
But, sometime after I’d left my old school and started my new one, I woke up one morning and was taller than everyone else. All of my new classmates asked, almost immediately upon meeting me, if I played basketball. After I answered in the negative – saying instead that I was in the band – I was encouraged by most to try out.
On the day of the tryout, for some reason or another, I couldn’t find a ride to the school (forgive my shakiness on the details, it’s been a few years since I was 16). So when I got to work on a day that I had told my boss that I wouldn’t be there, he asked why I wasn’t at the tryouts. I explained to him my lack of transport and he – in his lovingly gruff way – said he’d take me.
I’d never tried out for anything before in my life. All of the sports I’d played to that point were of the “if you sign up in time you’re on the team” variety. I had no idea what to expect. But, I stood in the gym with everyone else, listened to the coaches, and ran through the drills as best I could. I didn’t wow anyone with my superior speed, footwork, or jumpshot, but I gave it my everything and, thankfully, was far from the worst guy on the floor. Read more…
LaMacchia Rant: Just Give Me a Chance
Here I am, 173 days shy of turning thirty and I’m lost. Quite literally. It’s like back in the days before turn-by-turn navigation, when you had to get a out a map, find your destination and then pick the best route to get there through the jumbled mess of highways and byways. I know where I am (kinda), I know where I want to be (for the most part), but I’m completely stumped about how to get there.
So, let’s start with the here and now. I’m a decently proficient writer with a passion for sports and storytelling. Mainly storytelling, but sports provide a lot of stories to be told so it works out. I’m building a pretty decent reputation in my admittedly small circle, and it’s high time to move on to the next.
Also, I have this rather large circle of social influence, but I’m not sure a) what to do with it, or b) if that’s even worth anything. But, I think it bears mentioning in this space, if nothing more than a demonstration of value.
But, I want to take my talents to the next level. In my head that means becoming a professional communicator of some kind – writer, talker, show-er, whatever – but I have no idea how to get my foot into that door. I’m not even sure where that door is.
Actually, if I’m going to be honest, I know exactly what I would do to get my foot into one of those doors: I’d charm and schmooze, and then, once standing inside the foyer of “made it” I’d charm some more while working and fighting and scratching and working to prove that I belonged there in the first place.
See, I have a handicap: I’m behind. Not only am I dumbfounded staring at this map, everyone else that has my destination in mind has is already on the road. They all have degrees in things like “journalism” and “PR” and “marketing” or whatever. All I have, other than experience, is a really strong desire to tell stories. To communicate. To do what I love. Read more…
Tilt-Shift Soccer
This past Saturday, the US Womens National soccer team played host to the Japanese Womens National team at Columbus Crew Stadium. As I walked around the concourse, trying to find an angle from which to write about this game, I found a great angle for some impromptu tilt-shift photography.
