Reminders (vol. 6, no. 8)
This month marks five years of This is the Work. Not bad. And while I usually keep my football world separate, I think you’ll value the reminders I pass along to my former players each August:
1. Two Quotes:
- “You are not here to be anything that you want, you are here to be something quite specific.” – Martin Shaw (Courting the Wild Twin)
- “Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man.” – Hadrian (I would complement “slower” with “harder”.)
2. And excerpt from “Savagely Individual” by Robinson Jeffers
Heavy and yellow with the clay wrack from the flooded valley / The river forces itself into the sea / Not mixing in it, a long crude-ochre serpent / outlined with foam / Splitting the blue-black ocean. / Thus a man through the mass of men / Forces his way, savagely individual, / It is only saints and idiots forget themselves.
3. One request:
- Every once in a while, reach out to your people to say “I’m having a good day. Just wanted to say I love you.”
4. One Mantra:
- It’s a great day to be alive!
5. FOOTBALL IS… is available to buy on AMAZON.
When I asked ChatGPT “What two books would Football Is… sit between on a shelf?” it answered:
- Football Is… sits somewhere between Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art and H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights. Like The War of Art, it’s part philosophy, part personal reckoning—a meditation on discipline, failure, and identity. Like Friday Night Lights, it’s rooted in the rawness of high school football—the mythology, the ache, the brotherhood. It doesn’t just ask what the game gives us. It asks what the game does to us, for us, and through us.
- Free Sampler: Prologue, Introduction, Ache of August
- Listen to the “The Ache of August” as narrated Eleven Labs
- Listen to a podcast overview of FOOTBALL IS… as narrated by Google’s NotbookLM
Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn
