The Curse of Good Enough

I was a ridiculously talented kid. I made every travel soccer team. I made every travel baseball team. I made all but one travel basketball team. In travel sports I was always a contributor. In regular club leagues I was typically the leading scorer/best goalkeeper. When I played seeker, I snatched up that snitch like a dang boss. I was in one of those janky elementary school systems with a grading scale with E for Excellent, G for Good, S for Satisfactory, and NI for Needs Improvement. I have this great anecdote about when my parents came back from a student teacher conference and had me in tears because I had all Excellents and, without showing me the report card, they briefly convinced that E was just above F, rather than standing for Excellent, and I had straight E's. Actually, that's it. That's the whole story. I hope you got a good laugh. I was scarred for roughly two months.

After what I refer to as "The Golden Age of Clint," the other kids started catching up. By middle school, I wasn't quite as successful in sports or academics. High school came and I was rocking barely a 3.0 GPA while taking those notoriously grade boosting AP classes (This means I was closer to a C student than a B student. I really just did that math and came to that realization. I'm disappointed in you, High School Clint). By senior year, I got cut from the basketball team, representing utter failure in my favorite sport. The only sport I lettered in was lacrosse, and that was only because we were an underachieving club team that took anyone who would suit up. Picture the bad news bears slightly older with substance abuse and anger issues and prolific use of profanity.

I remember being bemused, but rather arrogantly proud as I sat across the table from an acceptance official at a university. The university official was calmly explaining to me that it didn't make sense for them to take a chance on accepting me. My SAT score was proportionately so much higher than my GPA that it was clear I just didn't try or care. I learned a light lesson from that experience. I put far more work in in college and graduated with one of those cum laude-type designations.

I learned enough of a lesson to improve my college performance, but I didn't learn the bigger lesson about life. I always believed that I just developed earlier than most and everyone caught up with and then passed me. I think there may be some truth to that. I was a great test taker and was a little taller than most of the others for a time. However, I don't think this is the whole story. I think I got comfortable with my slight advantage. I didn't strive for more. I think the others that I was a little ahead of definitely caught me, but most of them didn't pass me. A lot of people passed me because they learned how to work hard earlier than I did.

I was having a conversation with a new friend a week ago who had the same experience. We both believe we're talented enough to do most things proficiently. However, we both have strong doubts that we can truly excel at much of anything. We both have patterns of picking things up and being a star briefly, then falling to the middle, and often the back, of the pack. We hit some hard challenges and assume we're just not gifted in whatever field we're competing.

Early life typically only requires brief commitment, so those of us with a quick early learning curve shine. It's the marathons of life where we start to fall short. We're sprinters. We burn ourselves out, we become despondent as the others pass after our brief lead. We get beaten and embarrassed by those with endurance and discipline. The most discouraging part of this is that the marathons of life are all that matter. We're asked to go the distance. Unless we're Usain Bolt. Keep doing what your doing, brah.

A little under a year ago, I did some track training with my buddy Dan, who did some running in college. I remember him saying to me, "You're plenty strong, you just don't have the discipline to pace yourself."

You're plenty strong, you just don't have the discipline to pace yourself.

Although it's now mid-March, I've finally settled on my theme for this year: Discipline. Discipline is more valuable than any talent. It's something you work for rather than something you're given. It's also something you can apply to any of your preexisting talents. This is going to be one of the few things that's ever come slowly to me in the early goings. Discipline is a struggle for me from the moment I encounter it. My expectation is that it will help me discover a lot more about myself. I think it may help me discover where I'm truly gifted in life so that I can stop believing I'm mediocre at everything now that I've become an adult.

It's hard to go these lessons alone. In deciding to discipline myself this year, I've already contacted one of my best friends to help hold me accountable in some of my pursuits. He's going to help me stay accountable on when I go to bed and wake up, so that I don't exhaust myself and Netflix binge. He's going to help me stay on task in a couple of areas of life as well.

This is where you come in. This blog started as an opportunity to share about my missions work in Mexico. Then it became a little self obsessed. Then it became a place for me to share some of the harder things about life, in the hopes that my writing touches and wakes other people up. I like to throw some jokes and entertainment in there, too. As anyone who knows me can attest, I love to make myself and other people laugh. What this blog has never been is disciplined. I write when I want. Sometimes I literally have a dozen ideas backed up in my head. Sometimes I go through a desert of bloggie thoughts. Either way, I write when I feel like it.

Here's the thing: I think that writing might actually be one of the things for which I actually possess a true talent. One that I won't just dominate early on, like the Monstars in the first half against the Looney Toons. For once, I'd like to be Jordan stretching out for that game-winning dunk (Spoiler alert! Also, so many good things here. Bill Murray, for one. Why didn't Jordan ever do this when Karl Malone was mugging him in those series against the Utah Jazz? I digress). So, I've got a request for you. If you read this, dig it and think I should keep writing, drop me one comment. If one person drops one comment per post, that will motivate me and hold me accountable to make sure I get something up next week. The only requirement is that it can't be the same person over and over again. I know there are one or two of you out there (That's all, mind you.) So that's it. One comment from one unique reader per week, help me stay motivated to keep doing something I love. If we can keep this going for a bit and I can find room in my schedule, maybe we can up the stakes. More comments! More posts!

Even as I type this, part of me hopes you won't do me this favor so I can escape this very pedestrian level of discipline and commitment. The thing is, I know if you've made it through this novel of a post, you can probably handle typing a few words about what you think of it.

Please do it. Please help me. Save me from becoming a lifelong monstar.