Tag: Support

  • Coaching My Kid

    I like soccer/football. If you follow this blog, then you know that I support Tottenham Hotspur, and follow all the major international football tournaments. I am a fan, through and through.

    My daughter knows I’m a football fan, and on occasion will watch a match with me. Yet, I think she has come to believe that my dedicated fandom also equals that I know how to physically play soccer.

    I mean, I know how to kick a ball with the inside of my foot. I also can explain the offside rule…

    My daughter is going to try out for a travel soccer team, and she wants to be prepared. As a man who strives to be a good father, I am 100% in support of her ambition, and am willing to do anything to help out. For me, that meant going to YouTube and watching a video on teaching your kids the fundamentals of soccer by running several different drills.

    My kid, to say the least, was very surprised that I needed to watch a video, as she explained to me that she expected that I should “just know” how to coach soccer. I won’t say disappointed, but I think she is now coming to understand that when I yell at the Tottenham players that “I could do that!” when they mess up a play, I don’t actually mean that I could do that.

    Better she learn that now.

    As for coaching her; it’s actually fun. I have a drill checklist, and we go to the park every day and run through them. I find myself saying cool coach stuff like, “give me ten more.” Or “Dig deep and try that again.” She responds positive to it, which reinforces that I know what I am doing.

    And maybe I do know what I am doing.

  • A Little Fish in a Little Pond

    I was getting ready to work on the blog this morning, and I had been thinking that I was going to write about either Tottenham beating Frankfurt, or buying shoes for my kid’s Halloween costume, and then I saw the WORDPRESS.COM ad come up for monetizing my blog. Hell, who doesn’t like making money, right? And who out there wouldn’t like making money from the thing they like to do most; for me that’s writing about my observations that are neither revolutionary nor revelatory, but might slightly be funny. I went down the rabbit hole of having ads on my blog, and the bottom line is that if I want to see any substantial money to, let’s say, pay my family’s phone bill, then I would need thousands of people to visit my site a month. Currently, the most views I have every received on my site for a single month was 228. Though my numbers have been growing almost every month for the past year, I am a long way off from having views that would generate an income.

    The other fact that must be shared is that I am not working very hard to make this blog successful. You reap what you sow? Sure, I guess that’s true. I put forth a minimum effort, as I don’t think about design or social media, and I’m very terrible about following other blogs, and commenting on them. These are all the things you are “supposed to do” to make a blog successful, and for the life of me, I suck at it.

    What I really want to do is just write, and I do that. And this is the result.

    And you know, there is a reason why I don’t tell people about this blog, or the writing that I am doing, because when I tell them that I have a blog, and I’m writing stories, some of them will immediately start telling all the things I should do the be successful at it. I know that these friends are doing this because they care about me, and want to support me to be successful at what I am doing. Yet, when this happens, it leaves me feeling annoyed because it’s like they didn’t listen to the part of why I am doing this.

    I’m doing this because I like to do it, and I want to share it, and I’m not too concerned with how many people I share it with. I’m not saying that I’m not looking for validation, as there is a little bit of vanity in me for I do check my numbers daily. (There is something nice about seeing my four to six regular readers like a post. That does make me happy.) No matter how many people read this blog today, it will not affect my resolve to write one tomorrow.

    But I will add this, as I do think about it often if not daily; My Grandma Groff used to say that in life you need at least these three things – 1. A reason to get up in the morning. 2. You gotta have a goal. 3. A little spending money doesn’t hurt. I’m not sure if this blog, or my writing in general is fulfilling those three points, but I do feel that they are intertwined. I like getting up in the morning, and I have a goal, but it’s just that “spending money” point seems to be lacking.

    The point here people – I currently won’t be putting ads on my site.

    (So… Hey Ya! Now that you have made it this far, if you would be so kind, please take a moment to give a like, or a share, throw a comment at me, or follow this blog. Because, you know, I am a little vain.)

  • ODDS and ENDS: Playing Dumb, Vacation, and The Next Stage of Life

    When I went to pick up my daughter from school yesterday, she was super excited to tell me all about these new Solar System facts she just learned! How the sun is a star, and Venus is the hottest planet, and Jupiter Saturn and Uranus and Neptune were giant gas planets, and Pluto was a dwarf planet, and on and on. She was bubbling over with how cool space was, and how there is an international space station, and that we send robots to the planets and even to a comet! And each new fact that she presented to me was in the form of a question; “Dad, did you know Pluto is a dwarf planet?” Well, yes I do know that, and I was alive when Pluto was considered a normal, regular planet. But I don’t say anything. I just smile and nod my head because I have come full circle. All the years I went rattling off facts to my parents, which I now see they clearly already knew, but they let me proudly prattle on. Now, I am being prattled on, but I see the excitement of learning in my daughter’s eyes. That feeling of the world being knowable and accessible at the same time.

    I want to go on vacation. As it starts to get warmer out, I have this need to get out of the City. It would be great to get away, even for a long three-day weekend. I like living in New York City, but I also love getting the hell out of New York City.

    Another friend of mine lost their parent last night. They put up a post on social media, and I commented, telling them how sorry I am, and love them. Sadly, this has been happening more and more often with my friends, and this isn’t due to Covid. This is life. Me and my friends are hitting middle age, and our parents are reaching the end of their lives. Before, when a parent passed, it was a rare and unexpected occurrence. Now, it is becoming a bit more common, as, sadly, this is the next stage in life. And these things happen in waves. First, we all got married, and then started having babies, and then there was the small divorce wave, followed by more babies and second marriages. Now, we are at the time when on parents start to leave us. I wish there was more I could do or say to my friend at this time. I do remember when my Ma passed, and I received many posts, messages and texts. It meant a lot to me, knowing that people cared and were still decent. I hope my friend is getting some comfort at this time from all the people that care for them.