No Whistles and Other Thoughts

Epic flooding cost me two weeks worth of refereeing it feels like. And it’s a hard pill to swallow. All said and done, I lost around 700 USD of refereeing fees that I had been scheduled for. It’s rough. But I’ll survive because I always do. I’m supposed to have a whistle tonight, but it may get rained out. Should know in a bit if it’s a go or not.

Other thoughts

There’s a popular quote from Mr. Fred Rogers, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” As my generation has gotten older it has fallen on us to be the helpers.

But, it’s a continual struggle. I bought my first legal beer 3 days before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. My entire adult life has been a financial collapse or disaster after another - the dot com bubble, the housing bubble, the NINJA loans bubble, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, etc. This comes after as a preteen hearing Ronald Reagan tell Gorbachev to tear the Berlin Wall down. It’s tiresome to see so much greed and environmental damage to the economy and earth.

I’m also from the generation that was told constantly by the church I grew up in to ask “What Would Jesus Do?” Well, turns out they didn’t like the answer that a lot of us came up with after reading the Bible. Turns out that Jesus would frown on for profit healthcare. Or ensuring that the poor could afford to eat.

In short, I can only speak for myself, but I’m fairly certain that a lot of my generation is burned out. When another recession in my lifetime was called for, I shrugged. I roll my eyes when I hear the crazy shit that red hatted congress critters say. I want to care. I cared for a really long time. Truly I do, but I’m starting to think that my older cousins from GenX had it right when they’re like “meh.”

I just wanted to check in. Hopefully, next week will be better. I’m supposed to have a whole host of soccer games to referee this coming weekend. So yay for that.

Stay well y’all.

Love all y’all.