This week we flipped the calendar from January to February. Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. That’s okay… I am enjoying winter this year and appreciate the way the sun is coming up earlier each morning and staying light two minutes longer each day.
On February first I felt a real sense of accomplishment that I had fulfilled my new years resolution to publish a post each day. It hasn’t been easy and a couple of times I almost didn’t make it and had to stay up late by the fire to write.
The last two weeks as my time has been taken up with managing the home remodel, my father’s health crisis, teaching, and trying to find time to spend with Sarah. But somehow the habit of posting has helped me reclaim at least an hour of my day and feel a bit more grounded in this chaotic time.
Yesterday I was inspired to count how many post I had made so far. The reason I even thought about it was because I was driving home from work yesterday and listening to a story about LeBron James on NPR. He is fast approaching surpassing the all time scoring record set by one of my childhood sports heroes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I thought about what a unreachable goal that must have been and how the past twenty years of his career were spent without even thinking the goal was attainable. All he could manage to do was play the game in front of him. It is the proverbial journey of a thousand miles being achieved by one step at a time.
I don’t spend much time paying attention to the NBA these days. When I was a kid I was a huge fan of the Lakers. I hated the Celtics Pistons, and the Knicks and rooted for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Norm Nixon, Michael Cooper, and the awkward Curt Rambis who wore thick glasses and seem to have to hustle more than the average player like I did. I was never naturally gifted at athletics.
My dad coached my first basketball team and held practices in the back of his camera repair shop. We were poor but I felt pretty cool having an indoor basketball court where he worked and our family lived illegally for a year while my parents saved money for their first house.
The team name assigned to us was the Sonics. I had hoped we would be the lakers but fate intervened. We ended up moving to Spokane and at the time the Seattle Sonics were in back to back NBA finals against the Washington Bullets. I became familiar with downtown Freddy Brown and Gus and Dennis Johnson as well as Jack Sikma because they were the only team on television in Washington State.
When I was in fourth grade I won the school free-throw contest. I didn’t look like a basketball player because I was thick and chunky around the middle. I have a photo somewhere that proves it. That year my dad took a picture of me with Jerry West who was signing autographs at a sports convention. I didn’t plan on winning the contest. I thought an older kid would but I just didn’t miss and made one shot after another until the teacher Mrs. Rousseau who was announcing the contest asked me to slow down! I got out of a groove and missed the last three shots in a row. It was enough to win, but I definitely was not setting any records.
We didn’t have a television at times in my childhood so it would be a treat when we went over to my mother’s best friends house. Her husband coached basketball too and we would watch Laker games live. It was the only time I saw them play in their yellow home jerseys during the regular season due to blackout rules. I don’t remember why he was able to get the home games as well as the away but I still remember all the times the announcer Chic Hearn would say something like, “Less than two minutes to go the Lakers are only down by 20!” He was the eternal optimist.
Chic Hearn called 3,338 consecutive games during his 42-year career as play-by-play announcer. I don’t think he set out to do that on the night he called his first Lakers game. It just sort of happened because he was a professional who loved doing the work. LeBron James didn’t intend to set a new scoring record any more than Kareem did. It just happened as a consequence of putting in the effort.
Today as I respond to student questions about finding their personal style I am thinking about how they shouldn’t intentionally set out to define a style. They should let it emerge organically by just putting in a lot of work and seeing what patterns emerge. In the first 31 days of posting in January I can look back and see how my mind and eye work together subconsciously. The top of a candle lantern appears a day later after an image of a Korean pagoda. The similarity of shapes reveals a pattern of what draws my eye without having to think about it.
Finding a personal style is like setting a scoring record. Today I am going to stop counting blog post and not worry bout setting even a personal record. I’m just committed to keeping my head down and showing up daily to do the work. One hour a day. One day at a time.
NPR reporter Tom Goldman summarized LeBron Jame’s achievement this way, “Turns out you can do some big things you don’t set your mind to. “
Thank you for being here and a coming along on my journey.
Ira