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Yesterday while at my place to write in a Peppermint Mocha Smocha trance, Starbucks, I started scanning all the blogs Sportface wrote in 2023 with the goal of figuring out if any of them would still touch me or be of any lasting resonance.
When you’re a writer you’d be surprised at how often you don’t remember what you’ve written and when you see some blog you forgot you wrote back in February or some other time, you read it as if someone else wrote it, with more personal detachment. It’s a serendipitous trip into the recent past.
I promised myself I would only re-share here blogs that personally, I like for reasons that are hard to pinpoint but heart-felt. Here they are.
The World, Man, Is Huge
I feel compelled to start with this one titled The World: It’s Massive, Man. I read a book this year, Prisoners of Geography, that put into better context how the world functions on all continents and why. I felt so ignorant about the world while reading this, wondering why I wasn’t taught or sought to learn on my own, these basic and crucial truths and insights and explanations. A treasure of a book that helped me see that, for example, if you are near water rather than inland you’re probably going to be better off economically, and that Russia is insanely huge, and the Congo is a rough place indeed.
Jokes Make Fools of Critics
I relished re-reading my rant blog titled Joker’s Critics Were All Fools because I finally got to unload on all the social agenda creeps who tried to argue this guy was not the NBA’s best player. He was – and it wasn’t a competition. He was unjustly and unfairly denigrated, remained humble, and kicked all hoopers’ asses on his way to the world title and most outstanding player in the Finals. As cool as cool gets, Joker is a total badass – the best in the business, and he’s showing that again this season. A rare superstar with humility.
Your Life is About to Change
I chose this blog, Your Life is About to Change: Meet ChatGPT, because it allowed me to gripe about a fear I feel daily that ChatGPT will replace me because it writes faster and in some ways better than I do. What it takes me 15 hours to research and write this tool pumps out in a few seconds. I’m worried. I’m frustrated. I don’t know how long I will be able to be a writer before this thing makes my abilities obsolete.
How Did It Come to This?
When you write, you’d be surprised at how often you just crank something out and don’t really know how it will be received. You just keep writing and, if you like it, you post it with no reliable sense of how anyone will react.
I wrote this blog, Celebration of Us: Wake Forest Friends For 40 Years, as just another daily writing session and posted it not thinking much about it. The reaction was surprisingly good. One friend wrote it’s the best thing written by me. A simple typing of a few sentences, re-reading once, doing spell check, and hitting send. Not much mental energy. Yet someone put it at the top of the list of hundreds of blogs written.
Art is unpredictable. It doesn’t follow patterns that are easy to copy or explain. I learned this from the reaction to this blog; no blog I wrote this year generated more upbeat reactions than this one by more people. I feel liberated by the reaction to this blog that no matter what I write I can’t control reactions and should therefore write what I like and not worry.
Being The Father of the Bride
I feel compelled, honored, and humbled to make this fifth blog the final one I will reference for the year. It’s titled Father of the Bride Reflects on Perfect Day.
This one has staying power for me. It captured a moment that is true and won’t be duplicated, walking down the aisle outside with my oldest daughter on her wedding day. What I remember most was thinking “I can’t believe my daughter is getting married and I am her father. How did life get to the point where this was actually happening?”
It felt like a fast train ride and I was just along, looking out the window, amazed at how far we had traveled, curious how life unfolds, thinking that old age is scary but also deeply meaningful and fulfilling.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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