Tennis Is Better

I’m thinking back to a piece, the first piece I wrote for GenMeh about being your own expert and how relevant it still is and how many people still don’t get that and just stand around waiting for the universe and its cool kids to pick them for the kickball team instead of saying, “F*** it, I like tennis better anyway.” This is what happens when you think of it as a game and decide that someone else makes up the rules and that the best you can hope for is to memorize those rules, eat, sleep and breathe them until no one knows them better, can apply them more skilfully, can suss out the loopholes to squeeze through. How can I fold myself up small enough to take advantage of this teeny, tiny opportunity? you ask. How can you fit your whole career on two pages, your entire romantic history in the time that it takes to drink a latte, distill your brain into 140 characters or less, make yourself thin enough to slide right through the bars.

It’s slumming it and selling out and deep down you know it.

You’re better than this, better than nickel slots and the kids table at Thanksgiving and a sense of self-esteem that can only conceive of “entry-level” and “people much more experienced and successful than me.” Please stop doing that. Stop scheming up ways to get the universe to notice you and invite you to the prom because that’s your idea of validation. Stop buying your ambition in the children’s section. Stop picking at the carcass because you think the first bite is destined to go to someone bigger and better and stronger and that leftovers are your lot.

Do it for no other reason than it makes me so sad to think that you still believe kickball matters.