Fighting The Good Fight

The Only Option, Really

This weekend was filled with strong Guy Fun for me, with three events that I enjoy a lot, but are in no way guaranteed to bring satisfaction. The first was hosting my poker game, which went well, with a mild cash in the tournament, and break even in the later cash game. The second was a round of golf at one of my favorite courses, with great weather and good play (had a tap in birdie at a picturesque hole, which is a very rare event for me) making up for slow pace. Today was watching my pro football team (never mind which one; it's not germane to the conversation) and tracking my fantasy football team.

Well, two out of three isn't bad, right?

My teams, both real and fake, lost handily, and both defeats were utterly maddening, in that they didn't play well, but were in contests where just giving up and not watching would have been giving up before the loss was assured. So it was bad time after good, and a situation where I didn't just feel bad about my teams losing, but worse for wasting the time to watch in the first place. (I've also gone on record as not believing in my real team this year, even back in pre-season, and feeling that they were doomed so long as they had the current management... but, well, being right is of no comfort, really.)

Logically, it's a pretty simple solution -- just stop watching the games. I've honestly got enough to do without this amount of timesuck, and my other hobbies are far more participatory. But I've had bad times playing poker and golf as well, and if you give up every hobby that doesn't work out for you every time you do it, you'll be out of hobbies very soon. Besides, I'm a creature of habit, and just losing one isn't very likely, no matter how exasperating my team is. (And yes, they are powerfully exasperating.)

We pivot, as always, to insights about our chosen field. There's been any number of times in my career when, in the back of my mind, I pretty much knew the project was doomed (just like my football team, really)... but had to put my whole heart into it anyway, and find reasons to convince myself to become a fan of it. It's not as if you get into a level of true self-delusion, but without some measure of hope, creative execution of a marketing or advertising program will fall into the dread valley of going through the motions. And no one ever made a good ad or marketing piece that way.

But in the back of my mind, if you had asked me off the record which approaches were going to tank? I almost always knew. And tried like mad to forget while doing the job.

Not every project is going to be a winner. Same as any poker tournament, golf round, sports game, and so on, and so on. But self-sabotaging the process with negativity before hand doesn't make the struggle any easier, or give you any points when it goes off the rails. The only thing it will do for you is give more time to prepare your excuse. And who, really, needs that?

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