Frenzied Daddy

When I was a kid, I spent a season playing volleyball. I thought I was pretty good- but some of the other people were questionable. Of course, this was like fifth grade, so “questionable” didn’t really apply. But we didn’t get very far in the tournaments or the games, for a simple reason; the ball would be served from our side, the other team would return it, I’d run to behind whomever was in the area the ball was destined for, to “back them up” and they’d return the ball, the other team would spike the ball down in my area. Basically, even though I had only limited experience with the whole volleyball thing, I didn’t trust my teammates enough to handle their own section- leaving me alone to manage mine.

This experience was somewhat repeated to me a couple of years later, when I tried out for soccer. I was still young, and not yet a nerd, I could run and jump for hours. So I tried out for the soccer team, got on, and essentially tried to be the star of the team (of course, since it was my first season, you can imagine the results of that experiment.)

I came to the realization that I’m not really “good” at team sports. I want to be the star, I want to handle the ball, I want to save the day. But I don’t have the sports skills necessary. I’m better at, say, swimming, where I’m part of a team, but I have a predefined role.

This also seems true in the workplace. One of the hardest things I do is rely on my teammates to handle this site with me; I take care of a few of the sections, they handle the rest. My difficulty is increased because I’m not in charge, but decreased because I mentally assign ownership to the webmaster. But it’s very difficult for me to coordinate my efforts with theirs.

And I think it’s an issue with parenting, too. In essence, I’m in a team with Brookes. We have unspecific “zones.” I’m trying to do it all, with regards to the child- I’m worrying about her bath, I had been worried about her bedtime, except I seem to hit the hay before she does (thanks to the paper route). I worry about her food, what she does, what she wears, if she jumps on the couch, what happens to the couch cushions, what her friend Kylie eats, how long she’s out … I worry about all of that, and consider it my job. Brookes may disagree with some of the specifics, but I think she’d agree that I stress too much these issues.

Perhaps I’m playing Man-on-Man basketball, when the rest of my team is playing zones. In other words; maybe I shouldn’t take ownership for everything, and should check with my teammate before I blow my stack.