If You Don’t Shoot You Can’t Score

My daughter, Megan is beautiful with a soccer ball.  I can get lost just watching her move the ball across the field.  She cuts, and fakes and players fall for the moves.  She dribbles up the field, splits the defenders and makes it to the box just in front of the goal.  I watch in eager in anticipation and she…passes the ball.  Sometimes it is a beautiful pass that turns into an assist as her teammate scores but often it is a beautiful pass that ends up wasting all of the work she has done to get it to that point.

“If you don’t shoot, you can’t score,” we would tell her after each and every game.  Finally we stopped repeating it.  We let her play her game and hope that one day she will get that desire to shoot the ball and score, that that goal will give her the shooting bug and she will continue to shoot and score.

In life and on the field, it takes more than just talent to achieve our goals.  It takes desire and passion and just a little bit of bravado.  It takes putting yourself out there and shooting the ball even if you think it might not hit the top right corner of the net. 

I have spent the past thirty years dreaming about being a writer, of putting my work out there in front of other people and having them respond positively. But until a couple of years ago I refused to shoot the ball – out of fear.  I was afraid of what people would think about something I poured my heart into. Instead I wrote stories on my computer that no one every saw, filled journals with my thoughts and every few years tossed the notebooks with the other unwanted items from our house.  I refused to take the chance, to shoot the ball.  Until one day, I did.  I wrote an essay about Megan and showed it to my husband because I knew he would be interested in the subject. After reading it, he encouraged me to take the chance.  I sent it in and received the positive response I had always hoped for.

Since that time I have taken the chance over and over again.  I write and I submit or I write and I post.  Sometimes I get a positive response, sometimes I don’t, but I am not scared anymore.  I am taking the chance and that is the whole point.  I am pursuing a lifelong dream to be a writer and dreams don’t come along everyday.  Maybe I will get published in Runner’s World or Sports Illustrated or write a book that ends up on the bestsellers lists and maybe I won’t but it turns out that shooting (or in my case writing) is the best part of the game.