The Starting Five

Vince Carter is definitely a finisher

What does it take to finish? In life there are a million and two starters. Those who can draw up plans, give motivational speeches, and rally the troops come a dime a dozen. There are significantly less people who can finish. People who can persevere and see the project through completion are more valuable than the idea or even the project itself.

As a writer the urge to start is always present. Ideas are always swirling, thesis statements always appearing before the minds eye. As a thinker, questions are constantly being asked and challenges being posed.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Mike Tillery for being a finisher. I met Mike through another website a few years back and the connection was instant. We appreciated each others work and respected the voice that we brought with our writing.

Shortly, after meeting Mike life happened to me. I got involved in the struggles that becoming a man present. While grappling with my issues and wandering through my dark days I lost my voice. Writing took a back seat to other issues and slowly but surely I lost the fire. The pen seemed foreign to my hand and I fell away from the very thing that gave me a sense of purpose. What is a man without purpose? He is a ship without a sail, drifting along waiting to sink and end his misery. So I waited……

I waited long enough to miss her, to miss it, to miss you. I missed giving the world a piece of me with every article. I missed the process of making, then remaking love to each word of each paragraph. This may seem like grandiose language for an aspiring sports writer but the weight of this issue cannot be lost on you my friend.

If our lives are to have meaning then we must fill it with passion. What are you passionate about? What do you long for in the stillness of night? I long for a career as a sports journalist. I covet the freedom to express and the burden to inform. Sports imitate life and so many of our society’s ills are mirrored in athletics. Every practice, every game, every season, athletes face both failure and success; they face disappointments, they reach the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair. How amazing then to show folks how to deal, how to heal, and how to learn through the medium of sports writing?

Let each one pick up his tools and work. The expression of my passion lies right here with The Starting Five. I’m not sure where this gift to write will take me but I know that it started right here. It started with a few people that supported the idea of us writing about what we see from our point of view. It will continue with you, so long as you finish.

Let’s be finishers.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Jerold Wells Jr., Michael Tillery, Vince Carter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.