Welcome to life hacks with Eric! In this February edition, we are going to be looking at New Year’s resolutions! Since it is February, I can only assume that you have already given up on your New Year’s resolution. Well, I have a life hack to help you get well into May before you break your resolution.
I don’t know if you knew, but I started my year off in Africa. And while I was there, one of my co-immersion trip buddies commented on how red my skin was. We had a two minute discussion on skincare and the sun. She asked me if I used sunscreen ever. My response was, “For about a week every June, but then I get permaburn/tan and kind of stay that way.”
Her reply (real creative here), “You should wear sunscreen.” Who do you think you are? Gail and/or my dermatologist friend who yelled at me in church for not wearing sunscreen? (She said my mole on my arm was normal though so, we good.) So right then and there I made my New Year’s Resolution for 2k20 to apply sunscreen twice a day on sunny days! And you know what the best part is? I’m over 50 days into the new year and I still haven’t broken it! I applied sunscreen twice a day in Uganda, but the sun hasn’t come up in South Dakota yet so I’ll be good for a while! I could go 100 days easy without breaking this, I’m great at establishing habits!
(Side story: 2017, coming off the worst year of my life, I thought it would be good if I set New Year’s Resolutions and goals. I made like 8 good ones, wrote them out and everything. Failed all but one. The only one I kept, was “eating a bag of Skittles once a month.” Now I know what you’re thinking (I use this way too much, I never want to have phrases, I’ll work on it), how is eating a bag of Skittles a resolution? Two things: First, it’s incredibly easy (like your mom). I knew I would fail most of my resolutions so I needed an easy win. Second, I wanted to stay young. Do you ever see old people eating Skittles? No you do not, boom we just found the key to eternal life and it rhymes with former New Jersey Nets shooting guard!)
Bad transition
Now I’ve had two posts in a row where I mentioned that I don’t like sports, and at least two friends have brought this up to me and acted like I am an idiot because they think I’m lying. I’m not (lying or an idiot) and this week I was reassured why. Now this is post one on a 1000 post series about fanhood. Here is a little background for you.
2004 – The first year I started liking college basketball and I just copied my sister’s favorite team and became a fan of the Duke Blue Devils. (Chris Duhon’s senior year, it’s either him or Caris LeVert as my favorite College basketball player of all time.) I thought this was a match made in heaven. Private school, does it the right way, bla bla bla.
(From 2004 to 2012 I would like the records to show I had a huge hatred for the Big Ten)
March Madness 2011, Duke is playing a Tim Hardaway Jr. led Michigan team in the second round. I was so sick of watching Duke, I hated the entitlement. I hated the fake hard work. Duke won, but I couldn’t get Coach Beilein’s team out of my head. The next year Duke lost in the first round and I was done with them. I posted a video on facebook declaring my fanhood over and I was switching my allegiances to Michigan. I had become what I hated, a Big Ten Fan, but secretly it’s what I’ve wanted all along.
(The Big 10 and I have a lot in common, we’re both big and slow, from the midwest, and we love hard work.)
The thing that made me fall in love with Michigan basketball was the fact that Coach Beilein wouldn’t have a system and make his players fit in that system. He took players and made the team’s focus that season what his players’ strengths were. (2013 and 2018 both national runner-up—the former, offensive juggernaut; the latter, defensive powerhouse. Love and miss you, Coach.) And then he left for the Cleveland Cavaliers, an NBA franchise that has no chance of winning until LeBron comes back for round three. Now everything that I love about Michigan basketball is gone. I’m just supposed to blindly follow Juwan Howard? (Who I don’t think is a bad coach, just not a great one.) The worst part of this whole situation is that Beilein didn’t even last a full year in the NBA, he left for nothing. So, what is even the point of being a fan? My soul is just going to get crushed anyway.
*Stolen take: The Cavs and Michigan should just trade coaches, Howard wants to be in the NBA and Beilein wants to be back in college.*
Maybe the conflict is really that I am smart and sports are dumb. Allegiances to a school/team are so arbitrary, why should we be stuck with a choice we made when we were 12? We don’t let 12 year olds vote, why should we let them pick their sports teams that they are supposed to be associated with for the rest of their lives?
But at the end of the day, go team and go sports.
bteamballer 