You Can't Win If You Don't Play

by Shannon Baker

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

 

My father was an optimist and a risk-taker, a meticulous planner with an analytical mind. He was a product of Zig Zigler and Norman Vincent Peale.

Now days, I think they call it The Secret or maybe See it, believe it, achieve it.

Me? Not so much. I learned early that if I visualized success in detail it wouldn’t come true.

At the end of my eighth grade year I tried out for the pom-pom squad. I don’t mind telling you, I was great. I learned the moves and had the smile. I saw myself in those cute uniforms, hanging out with the cool kids and having a boyfriend—because all the pom-pom girls had boyfriends.

When they announced the new squad I sat on the bleachers knowing the next name called would be mine. I believed in the very fiber of my being. They called name after name and none of them was mine. There had to be a mistake because I was destined to be on that team. Days later, when I had to admit they weren’t going to bring me from class and tell me about the terrible misunderstanding of my votes being tallied wrong (I visualized this scene in detail also) the pain of failure crushed my heart. Oh, it was okay, I told everyone. I was moving to another state anyway and it didn’t matter.

A few months later they had try-outs for freshmen cheerleaders at my new school. I was new and the student body voted so there was no way I’d get picked. I didn’t hope for it. Guess what? I got it.

Lesson learned. Don’t want it too badly. Don’t visualize too intricately. If you win it will be glorious. If you lose, no big deal.

The youngest of three kids, I have this idea the Universe functions sort of like my family. If the Universe finds out I want something really badly, it will tease me and thwart me and I’ll end up getting hurt.

Although I never really believe I’ll win the jackpot, it doesn’t keep me from putting in my chips. My life philosophy has always been: You can’t win if you don’t play.

Almost every good thing in my life happened not because I believed it would or even dreamed about it. Mostly, things happen because I think, “Why not try?”

I might as well put an effort into my day job. I’ve got to spend at least eight hours a day somewhere earning a living; I ought to make it enjoyable and challenging.

I never thought I’d get a novel published but why not keep writing and sending stuff out? What else was I going to do with my spare time since I’m really bad at crafts? While I was going to write I might as well study craft and become versed in the way the business works.

I know I should write goals and plan timelines. I’ve gone to enough inspirational speakers, read Covey’s advice, taken management courses that Lebowski’s Little Achievers would envy.

I don’t do any of that. I keep my future plans vague in case the Universe is plotting against giving me what I really want.

What I do is show up. Work hard. Be adaptable. Try not to take myself too seriously.

I’ll never know what it was like to be a pom-pom girl and it might always hurt just a little. But since then, I’ve had a really great ride.

Milestones

My niece got married last weekend. She was a radiant, happy, lovely bride. If I look at my own wedding photos, I’m radiant and happy too—it was one of the first milestones in my life.

In a few days I’ll turn 49. This fact was emphasized by how LOUD the music was at my niece’s wedding and how fast my dancing energy waned. I had unlimited energy at my own wedding, certainly!

My first milestone occurred on the day I graduated from college. The world was before me: I was young, talented, and barring my student loan debt, no obstacles blocked me from doing anything I wanted to do. Three years later I got married. Now WE could do anything we wanted to do, together. Four years after that I had my first baby: Milestones don’t get much more important or thrilling.

In 1992, Tom Hanks starred in a movie about the women’s baseball teams during World War Two, called A League of Their Own. At the end, one character gives up her career to be a homemaker and her younger sister continues to play baseball. I watched that movie with a baby in my arms and a preschooler asleep upstairs, and thought: My life is over. It’s a hamster wheel of diapers, laundry, work—lather, rinse, repeat. I’ll never accomplish anything I dreamed of at those milestones.

That day I chose not to let those dreams slip away. Not to see myself only as mom/homemaker/Day Job grunt. I had dreams once. I had ambition, and energy, and goals. I reread letters from high school and college friends. We were all in theater or music or the arts, and all but one of our group had chosen the life of the audience rather than the one on stage.

It took many years to make my dream a reality. Being a stubborn broad helped.

How many of us reached that nadir but didn’t give in? The fact that we’re all on this blog is proof of our stubbornness. What was your milestone? What triggered your compulsion to grab your dreams with both hands and drag them into reality?

The "eep" Factor

Back when I was a weird grade-schooler in a dinky inner-city school, I wrote cute little poems that my grandparents loved. Is there a grandchild’s scribble grandparents through the ages haven’t loved? (Rhetorical question #1.) Then I hit high school and created a notebook filled with angsty teenage love poems that I entered into contests. Won a few, too, and somewhere in the basement are a few tarnished vase/bowl/water dish thingys to prove it.

But at the same time, I stopped showing my “real” writing to anyone. That would be the bizarre horror short stories and the scenery-chewing D-R-A-M-A. (Teenage girl, remember? What did you think I’d be writing?) (Rhetorical question #2.) This was the “scardey-cat” factor: What if I show it to my BFF and they hate it? Or worse, laugh?

So my fiction languished in desk drawers for years. (Yes, any whippersnappers reading this post, I mean “before PCs.” Now pull up your pants and get off my lawn.) I took it with me when I went into the convent and kept it with me for the next 20 years. The “cold feet” factor, perhaps.

The stack grew, the plots and pace and storylines improving. No more blue zombies re-fleshing themselves from garden dust—the incinerator got that one years ago. No more drama-laden unrequited love stories. (You’re welcome.)

Until the day I looked at the rut I’d dug for myself: Work, cooking, laundry, cleaning, chauffeuring the kids,. Lather, rinse, repeat. Watching people act now that I didn’t have six weeks to dedicate to a community theater production. Reading books I liked rather than writing one. I’d become a bystander.

Not for long. Also known as the “in a pig’s eye” factor.

Fast-forward several years. MI just had my book launch meeting. They discussed cover designs, suggested some minor edits, confirmed the title. My book is going to be sold on the Net. In bookstores. Bought and read by total strangers. Oh, wow. Did that weird grade-schooler writing cute poems for her grandparents ever dream of this? Maybe.

Unlike some versions of the Cinderella story, no fairy godmother dropped this in my lap. I worked my tail off for this, always hoping, always with a tiny, nagging doubt that it would happen. Yet it has.

Eep.