The Time I Decided to Quit Soccer

Around the age of eight I decided I wanted to join a soccer team.  I had played soccer at school before and I guess I liked it enough that I wanted to play in a league, so I joined the local community house league.  The first team I was ever on was called the spiders, I don't know why though, none of the other house league teams I was on had a name, but the first year it did.  Our team jerseys were bright green, you know that well known spider colour.  It was mostly just for fun at that age, no one really took it competitively yet.  I enjoyed it so I stuck with it next year, which was about the same, this time maroon jerseys and no team name though.  A lot of the kids were the same and I actually made a few friends, one of them even invited me to their birthday party that year.  I had one more year with this team and this coach, the last one were the blue team.  The next year however I was now in middle school and things would be different.

My middle school had a competitive soccer team, that had tryouts, so I thought I'd give it a try.  Now I'm not going to lie, I was a fat kid.  I remember in the second grade one day they weighed everyone for whatever reason.  Everyone before me got their weight and it was all in the area of 30kg, then it was my turn, I weighed 44kg; no one else was in the forties.  I could see how this would be embarrassing to some people, but I honestly didn't care.  I was big too, so no one ever teased me or bullied me, I never really even thought about it.  During this try out though, it became clear it was a problem and it was the first time ever I felt self conscious about it.  One of the first trials was an endurance race, and I came in dead last.  After the first week the first round of cuts was posted and I wasn't on the list of people that would continue onto the next round.  At the time I was pretty upset about it, but it didn't take long for me to get over it.  I would just continue with house league soccer and not worry about it again until next year.

This year house league was starting to get competitive.  I was eleven now and starting to take soccer more seriously.  I knew I wasn't the fastest player so I started practicing my tackling to make up for it, and I was actually starting to get good at it.  Up until then I had tried to make my tackles when the ball was farthest away from the player dribbling it, but then I realized the best time was actually to make your move as soon as the ball left their foot.  This way it would be moving away from them and towards me, giving me the more time to get to it before the did.  This turned out to be quite effective and I started to become significantly good at defense.  My other problem was my kicking technique.  Now I was actually a pretty powerful kicker, maybe even the most on the team.  The year before one of our games was a tie and went to a shootout.  I was selected to shoot first because my coach also recognized I could kick pretty hard.  I had never practiced penalty shots before so I just decided to blast it as hard as I could and just aim to get it above the goalie.  Of course that didn't work, I hit the crossbar, it bounced straight down and it didn't go in.  My problem was I kicked with my toe, and not with the laces of my shoe, so I decided this year to fix this and learn to kick with my laces.  It was tough, I certainly lost some power, but I could definitely see why it was better.  You just have so much more control over where the ball goes.  When game day rolled round for the first time ever we had a starting lineup.  Every other year we'd just rotate everyone around every break, whoever started on the field didn't really matter you'd be substituted soon after.  My coach had seen Id been working hard to improve and so I started every game.  I could see other people on my team has also become more serious as well and all that extra work paid off because my team ended up winning the championship that year.

Next year along came the tryouts for my middle school team again.  I was confident that I had made big improvements since last year and I had a real shot of making the team.  The endurance run came and I finished dead last again.  I knew that was going to happen, but I'd make it up in the skills competitions.  In the first important one everyone on the offense lined up on one side and everyone on the defense lined up on the other.  We took turns doing two on two attacking drills, and in every one of my attempts I successfully tackled the offense and recovered the ball.  Now to be fair one time one of the players very obviously accidently kicked the ball right at me, but all the rest were genuine tackles.  I felt very confident in my chances, but again after the first week I was not selected.  All the hard work I had made had amounted to nothing.  I was upset again but I thought you know why do I care I have more fun playing house league soccer anyways let's just keep doing that anyways.  This year however house league was going to be very different.

First off I was on a new team, none of my friends or even any of the players from my previous four teams were there; it was a completely new group of players and a new coach.  We  started practicing and I was doing good again, it looked like it was going to be a similar season to last year.  It was not. When the first game day arrived the coach started calling out the starting line up, I was not called.  I didn't even play the entire first half.  I thought maybe Id get a chance next game but it was the same.  They ended up only playing me once the game was already decided and it didn't matter.  I didn't give up at first I thought if I worked hard in practice Id get my shot eventually, and I did so the entire season, but it didn't change anything.  It became clear to me I was always going to be the fat kid now and that was going to overshadow anything else I would do.  I didnt even make any friends on my team this year, which was really the worst part.  I decided not to go to end of season pizza party, and that I was done with soccer for good.

The next year I was now in high school and my high school did have a soccer team.  I did consider joining as I did actually enjoy team sports, but then another friend of mine wanted to join the football team and I thought what the hell I'll join that instead.  I never missed playing soccer on a team, it was kind of fun playing it again in gym class, but after a few years of playing football, my kicking power went way down and it would have just been not practical to even attempting getting back into soccer.  I will admit though even as an adult I still have an appreciation for the sport and watch it on tv now and then.

Usually by the end of these I try to have some kind of take away lesson I learned, but in this case it just never went anywhere and I'm fine with that.  Sometimes things just don't work out and it's not your fault, maybe I could have done more and persisted, but soccer just wasn't worth it in the long run.  I guess it did help me end up in a sport I actually did like and set a good baseline for what to expect from myself to make sure I had the best chance of success in a competitive environment.  This is now the second post I've talked about football so I guess I better talk about that soon, if not next.

This post really did not end up having a satisfying ending, which I guess was bound to happen considering I don't plan the content of these out in advance at all.  I aim for more of just a constant stream of consciousness, so when I start writing I don't stop until the post is completely finished.  I believe this gives me the most authentic portrayal of how I feel about these events, and thats what Im aiming for.  The problem with this one was I just didn't know how I feel about soccer anymore, and unlike my previous posts, did not come to an resolution by writing about it.  Maybe that's not even a problem, but right now it doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything here, so I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about this.  I will say though after the back pain posted I decided to create the titles of my next eight or so posts, including the last three.  I can tell you I have pretty strong feelings about the remaining posts, so this shouldn't happen again anytime soon.  I just wanted to get all my early life stories out of the way before I start talking about bigger events in my life.  More to come soon, bye.

The Time I Decided to Quit World of Warcraft

Alright this is going to be a nerdy one, so I apologize, but I promise if you stick with it I'm going to talk about Jason Statham so it's not all dorky.  The first idea that probably comes to your mind is the typical online gamer story, I played too much to the point that it negatively impacted my life, and then I eventually quit and went outside to ride my bicycle.  Well there probably was some of that, it's not that kind of story.

So yes, I played world of warcraft, for a couple of years even.  I first started when it was in open beta.  I had played most Blizzard titles before, starcraft, diablo 1&2, etc.  I had also played warcraft 2 and 3, so I was somewhat familiar with the canon.  When I had heard they were making an mmo I was pretty excited.  I had some experience with mmos before as well.  I had played asheron's call for a few months, but I had never really meshed with anyone there and the game wasn't good enough to carry me alone.  I had also played Neocron, which I had enjoyed quite a bit, maybe I'll write a post about that sometime.

Anyways back to world of warcraft.  Right from the beginning I was stunned.  It had looked so much better then any rpg I had played before.  The world was stunning, and exploring It would become one of my favourite activities.  The game's map started completely covered and the player had to reveal it by visiting each part of the map, a feature which sadly they abandoned in later versions, the maps just starts fully revealed.

Up until this point I had mostly just played the game by myself, but I was getting to the point where I was ready to start running dungeons.  Now dungeons typically needed to be run by groups of five, so I had to start interacting with people in the looking for group channels.  I ran a few until finally I ran one with a group of people that just clicked with me and we became friends.  We ran a few more dungeons over the next few days and eventually they invited me to join their guild.  I met even more people in this group and we continued to run dungeons until the majority of us finally made it to the max level.  By this point the majority of us had completed the top level dungeons enough that the only really opportunity for a new challenge in the game was to star raiding.  This is really where the game took a bad turn for me.

Now I had another friend who also played WoW, but I had originally known them from playing the game counter strike.  They had a much stronger mmo background from playing the game everquest, and they were clearly much better at WoW then me.  They had a bit of an attitude of superiority about it, and to be fair they were always respectful with me, it was still clear that they had a disdain for people that weren't as good.  I eventually adopted this bad habit as well and this is where everything started to go wrong.

The character class I played was a mage, and my guild had one other mage.  We never really interacted much early on, in a five man group you don't typically bring two of the same class, so there was no reason for us to ever group.  Now one of our, and many other players, past time during downtime was to duel each other.  It's just a system for a friendly one on one fight that ends when someone reaches one hitpoint.  I had several duels with a warrior in our guild and I had won most of them, not for any particular reason other then the mage class just had a natural advantage over the warrior class.  The warrior mentioned how he usually beat the other mage in the guild and how I was much better. This is exactly what I did not need to hear, and would be the beginning of a terrible relationship with the other mage, and it was going to be entirely my fault.

As I mentioned it was around this time my guild started raiding.  Now raiding is different from dungeons in that instead of the normal five man groups, the group size is now forty.  This means me and the other mage both have to attend these raids or we won't have enough people.  Now the rewards from these raids are better equipment upgrades for your characters.  Every Time your group defeats a boss a random piece of 'loot' is dropped, and each piece belongs to a set for a particular class.  What this means is any time a piece of mage loot drops its now between me and this other mage on who gets it.  This combined with my negative opinion of the other mage really started to make my resent them, and apparently it showed.

I remember one night I must have given them enough attitude that they had finally had enough and in front of everyone they told me off pretty thoroughly , and I can't say I didn't have it coming.  I reacted the normal way I reacted to conflict, I just shut down, I didn't even say anything back.  I don't remember what happened next, but I remember what happened the next day.  I started thinking about it and they were right.  Why was I acting like this?  This person had done nothing wrong to me, I barely even knew that but I had already formed an opinion of them based on nothing of importance.  I had decided clearly it was the game that was problem and I should stop playing it.  I was wrong though, it wasn't the game it was me.

I ended up taking a solid three months off of the game.  It was during this time when I saw the movie Revolver and it had quite a big impact on me.  Now for those of you not familiar it was one of the director Guy Ritchie's gangster movies.  This one though had a key difference, it delved deeply into the idea of the ego, it even contained interviews with some 'experts' in the credits.  I put experts in quotation because one of them was Deepak Chopra, who could be considered a controversial figure today.  Personally I found his interview for the film very enlightening.  He's on twitter if you would like more context on this.

Unfortunately this is considered to be Guy's worst film, and I can see why.  The message is really just beaten over you head.  It lacks any kind of subtlety that a finely crafted film would portray the message in a way the audience can learn it through the experience of the main character (Jason Statham, see I told you Id mention him!).  Well while this makes for a poor film, it was a time in my life when I needed this message beaten over my head, and so I'm glad it was the way that it was.  If you're interested here's the trailer for Revolver, although it feels very disingenuous to the actual subject matter of the movie, probably on purpose.  It may be worth watching the whole film, I haven't seen it since so I can honestly say if its still relevant today, but I think it might.

I had realized that it was my ego that was making me resent this person who I had no real reason to resent, not the game, and in my time off I had lost all those feelings.  I thought maybe I could come back to the game and give it another shot.  For awhile it was all good again, I had fun, people were happy to see me and vice versa.  I thought everything was going to work out.  Then the first raid happened.

I remember it very clearly, it was Onyxia, which I had never done before (all the previous raids were Molten Core, shout out to the fellow WoWers).  The other mage was there, and I attempted to great him in a somewhat joking friendly manner.  They were not having it one bit.  In the time I had taken off, they had been grinding, getting geared up, and well surpassed me.  Now the tables were turned and I was the one on the bottom, and they were just waiting for their turn to treat me as poorly as possible.  I had created a monster.  Before I met this person they had none of my trademark superior attitude, but now they had embraced it with the sole purpose of unleashing it on me as I had on them.  I couldn't even be mad about it, it was clearly my fault this person had become like this.  I decided then and there I was never going to do another raid again.

It wasn't long after that I quit the game again.  There wasn't much widespread use of out of game communications then so I never heard from any of these people again, which I think is a shame.  I have played other online games since then and become part of communities that extend past the game they're created around, and really that's the best part of online gaming.  The real shame though is what I did to this person.  Part of me thinks I should have stayed, and tried to help them see what I saw, but Im probably the last person they'd listen to at that point, and I can't blame them.  In the end they just have to make their own decisions and I wish them the best.  I have done you a great disservice and you have my deepest apologies.

I did end up making another attempt at playing WoW after a much longer break, and had some fun, ran some dungeons again, met a new group.  However once this group also started approaching the raiding stage of the game I just couldn't do it, and quit before even attempting another raid.  At this point in the game the burning crusade expansion was just about to come out next month as well.  Many years later I've tried a few free trial weekends again, but the game had changed so much by then.  The leveling system was now so much easier, which meant all the low level zones were already empty, and so Id have to play by myself up until the end game content, which frankly just isn't fun.  They had also introduced a dungeon finder system that would automatically pair you up with a group to run a dungeon.  This was a lot quicker then the old looking for group channel I mentioned above, but it changed the changed the game in another way I didn't like.  

I remember seeing a news article about a famous incident at a BlizzCon where some fan asked an executive of the company about possibly adding a 'classic wow' version of the game for fans of the original.  He made a snarky remark about how you wouldn't want to go back to waiting around for hours trolling the old looking for group channel, well actually yes, yes I would.  The looking for group channel was slow, but it forced you to meet new people and sometimes even build lasting friendships out of the necessity that finding dungeon groups was difficult.  The new dungeon finder system turned every dungeon into a tinder one night stand, where'd you never see these people again; mostly because they were from different servers and it was not possible to interact with them outside this one dungeon instance.  Well it turns out that questioner will get the last laugh, because wow eventually did make a classic mode, and it came out last month.  I've had a few invitations from people in online communities I frequent to try it out, maybe it's time to give it another go.  Thanks Guy.

The Time I Decided to Quit Swimming Lessons

This is the story of the first time I ever quit something significant.  You'd think since it was the first I should have written it first, but the band story really had a much more significant impact on me.  Id quit other things obviously, somethings I had put quite a lot of time into. That isn't to say this story isn't siginficant, it was the just first time the switch ever flipped.  What I mean by that was I had no intention to quit swimming lessons right up until it happened, then I immediately knew I never wanted to do it again.  I can't say how long it actually took but I knew before I had even left the pool that I was never coming back, and I didnt even have the slightest feeling of that when I arrived at the pool that day.  Anyways enough preamble here we go.

I started taking swimming lessons when I was a young child, probably around six to eight.  They had a coloured level system.  Now I had done them for a few years, but I definitely quit before I was ten, and I definitely didn't start them before I was five.  However I did seven different classes, so I must have done multiple in a single year, but I can't honestly remember.  Anyways the first three were yellow, orange and red, they were in the small pool. After that I graduated on to the full olympic sized pool for maroon, grey, blue, and then the final colour I attempted, green.

Up until now all the classes were basically just to teach you to swim.  Now that may seem obvious, but what I mean is practical swimming, the techniques most effective to move you through water in a way you are least likely to drown.   Green on the other hand is now geared more on how to teach you how to endurance swim.  Think olympic swimming, not at the beach swimming.  To be honest I can't even remember most of what we did, but I do remember two main lessons that influenced the results more then anything else.  The first of which was the deep dive.

Now this particular pool had an end for diving with a three meter board, and at that end the pool was very deep, easily thirty feet.  The lesson for today would be to just swim down to the bottom and back up.  It wasnt so much a lesson as just go and do it.  I must have looked hesitant because the instructor then said you don't have to if you don't want to, cool I dont want to, I'm not even going to try.  Was I scared?  Probably, but the reason I chose not to was very clear. Even diving to the bottom of the five feet deep shallow end would give me a headache.  I didn't know how or why, as an adult I now know there was/is something wrong with my sinuses.  I still to this day get sinus headaches, it's just pain in my forehead at a single point directly above one of my eyes.  I also use to frequently get nose bleeds, and I was probably correct in assuming they were related.  In hindsight the worst part about it probably wasn't that I didn't do it, but that I didn't even try, I didn't even get in the pool.

The second lesson was the endurance swim.  We had to do eight laps, with as much time as we needed, the only stipulation was that you had to use a different stroke for at least one of the eight laps.  Now each lap is 100 meters, so eight of them in a row is actually quite a feat, and I doubt anyone in the classes had ever attempted to swim more than a pool length at a time.  The idea behind this exercise was just to see what it felt like, and to do it casually.  The point of the two different stroke rule was just to prevent everyone from doing all eight laps with the backstroke, because its just the easiest and not really a challenge to slowly back stroke the entire thing.  I on the other hand did not like the backstroke at all.  I didn't have goggles so with every stroke water would drip off my arms and hit me in the eyes, and it stung like hell.  There was no way I was voluntarily going to do any more backstroke then I needed to.  I elected to do the front stroke for the first four, a backstroke lap to take a break, then finish the last three front stroke.  Now the front stroke is inherently faster than the backstroke, but I decided to really put the extra effort in and swim as fast as I could.  I blew through all eight laps way faster than everyone, it wasn't even close.   When I got out my instructor didn't believe I was done, they were very skeptical I had done all eight, but I counted them and I was very sure I had done them all.  I stood there for another few minutes before the second person finished and the rest slowly trickled in after that.  It would be easy to see why someone would think I did not complete them all, they all finished in a similar time frame and I was way ahead.  Why would a ten year old try to go full Michael Phelps on their first attempt at long distance swimming?  I couldn't tell you, but I did it and I never regretted it.

Finally came the last class where'd be given our final grade.  There wasn't a test or anything the instructor just would call out the names of all the people that passed and they'd get their badges.  When the time came for this the instructor announced that three people had failed.  There wasn't even an inkling in my mind that I could have failed.  I was clearly a strong swimmer, if not the strongest in the class.  The names were called and gone, and mine was not called.  I don't honestly remember what happened now, but I remember I decided then and there I was done with swimming for good; as I mentioned earlier, the switch had flipped.  I knew how to swim, there was no practical purpose to continuing the lessons really, and I didnt know about competitive swimming or really have any interest in it.

At the time I was quite angry with my instructor, but I didn't say anything to them I just left.  Initially I had though the deciding factor was that they thought I cheated at the endurance race, but it was almost certainly the dive.  As an adult now I realize now that they were just a teenager and it really isn't their fault.  It's almost certainly better to fail someone who won't even attempt a deep swim, something that may be required to save themselves or someone else in a drowning situation, then let them pass the course.  I'm still not certain though and in hindsight I probably should have just gone and spoken to my instructor and asked them why, especially  if I intended to repeat the class, but I already knew there was a 0% chance I was going to do that so why bother.

Do I regret quitting this now?  Not really.  In high school my school had a swim team, I had considered trying out for about 30 seconds before reaffirming my decision that I still don't care about swimming at all.  I had already moved on to new sports and never looked back.  In between those two events I had one last swim test.  I had gone to a summer camp in middle school that had a pool day at the same swimming pool.  Everyone was required to take a swimming test down the side lane of the big pool.  If you made it a quarter of the way you wouldnt have to wear a life jacket, if you made it halfway you were allowed in the big pool.  I was one of three people to swim the entire length of the pool.  There was no need to for the test, I just wanted to see if I could still do it, and it was effortless.  I haven't swam a full lap (length of the pool and back) since then, maybe it's time to get back in pool.  I don't even own a bathing suit, but I can still remember a time when I did actually enjoy going to swimming lessons.