This issue is sponsored by Chris Meyer, author of Life in 20 Lessons: What a Funeral Guy Discovered About Life, from Death and The ‘Wood, who is excited to announce his upcoming book, Four Months … And A Lifetime.
Four Months … And A Lifetime is the touching true story of a father who coached his son’s basketball team from kindergarten through eighth grade, a remarkable nine-year journey with the same boys.
Their final march to the eighth-grade season Championship is interspersed with Chris Meyer’s own journey of falling in love with basketball in early-seventies New York, filled with anecdotes of Dr. J, sneaking into Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, and playing pickup in Larry Bird’s home state of Indiana. This is not only a love story about a father and his son, but of a coach who strived to teach his team the greatest game of basketball and, hopefully, a few life lessons along the way.
You can purchase your copy of Four Months … And A Lifetime anywhere books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books. The audiobook is also available on Audible and iTunes.
Issue 122: When Good Things Get Erased
Happy October! As the world gets more spooky, I wanted to share a horror tale that’s, unfortunately, all too common.
Have you ever put a lot of effort into something, only to watch it fall to the side, unappreciated, or float away into the air, like a plastic bag caught in an updraft?
I recently had that happen with this very newsletter. I had written a BRILLIANT email (you know, the kind you regularly get as a subscriber), but I did it directly in my email provider, instead of in a Google Doc, like normal.
I went to adjust the font for one section and it got wonky, so I did a quick little undo to fix it. Only…that undo undid everything I had written.
For reasons I still do not understand, trying to undo the undo (or redo it, as normal people call it) didn’t work. The entire email just vanished into thin air.
I’ve developed a saying during this pandemic. As we’re all working from home and using technology more regularly, that technology will inevitably fail. And when it does, I like to ask, “what’s changed?”
My wireless mouse was working ten minutes earlier and all of a sudden won’t connect? What’s changed? I literally just took a picture with my phone and now the camera is inoperable? What’s changed?
Sure, asking that doesn’t always solve the problem, but it often does make me look at things from different angles. Maybe I accidentally switched a setting, or I’m now in some new mode.
In this case, I troubleshot a TON of things, and none of them worked. That email is lost to the ether. But I know it was entertaining, even if it didn’t count.
It’s like all of the plays in this video of “what if it counted” moments. Although at least in this case, someone caught the cool plays in action. My favorites are the very first one from Isaiah Thomas and every single one with Steph Curry.
Just know that even if you don’t have anyone watching you doing big things, I still appreciate you for doing them. Enjoy the weekend.