Now What?

Even though I have two months left before I go home, it’s only two months. I’ve now been in California for three months and yet it only feels like three days, which mean the next two months will fly by. I’m already three weeks into the fall programme and it barely feels like we’ve got off the ground.
And yet a little bit of me is bursting to get home. I miss so many things: my friends, my family, London, English newspapers, proper football. I know that when I do finally board that plane at the end of November and step onto English soil I will feel great for a day or two. But then I will realise that all the things that made me quit my old job in England and search for a life abroad will slowly resurface.
I know another change is nearly upon me, but what is it? I know I can’t deal with English town life, I need to be living in a city. I know I need to be doing a job that excites and motivates me. And I know it needs to involve as much writing as possible.
But that aside, I’m stumped. I’m constantly looking at available jobs here in America and back home, but little seems to be open.
I’m trying to forge my own way too by writing freelance articles and attempting to piece together a sitcom and book. But I’ve had little interest in all three.
Being someone who wants to have all his fingers (and most of his toes) in different pies is both exciting and worrying. The future could be brilliant and wonderful, but it might not. I don’t know where I’m going next and that excites me, but it also makes me anxious.
I know I love being in America but I’ve decided not as a soccer coach. I’ve realised I just don’t care enough about it and I feel I’m doing the coaches and players here a disservice when they get me as a coach. I’m enthusiastic alright, and I know my stuff but I have nowhere near the amount of motivation that’s needed to really change a player (or a coach’s) life. Some of the other coaches here live and breath soccer. I don’t. Some really believe in what they do, and what they say to the coaches and kids. I don’t. Some want to make a difference in the way soccer is coached and played here, and help shape the future of the game across America. I don’t. Which is why I have to leave the company. But hopefully not America.
Which leaves me…well, undecided. I know my next step involves returning home for Christmas. After that? Who knows. Maybe back to America. Maybe to another country. Maybe to another city. I’ll just have to wait and see.

About A Boy

This week there was a kid called James in one of my sessions. He was a right pain. Always mucking around when the coach was talking, always inciting the other players to join him, not really listening to instructions (and then not being able to play the drills), and generally wanting to do his own thing and just kick a ball around.
Now, do you think this scenarios is about a) a kid in a group I coached or b) me during a training exercise with other MLS coaches?
The answer is actually all of the above and it made me realise that I am a hypocrite. I yell and yell at my kids I coach to behave and listen when I’m talking but every Thursday when we have coaches training at the Home Depot Centre in Carson, I am exactly the same. I’m the kid I hate to coach.
It means I’m not really in any position to have a go at the kids and it made me realise that to correct any wrongs with anything in your life you have to look closer to home first.
Before I criticise the kids for being badly behaved I have to ask myself why I feel the need to muck around during training (and it’s something I’ve always done throughout my playing career).
I guess it’s because of my lifelong ambition to be liked and thought of as entertaining by my peers rather than anyone in authority. Not that I don’t aspire to do well and improve, but I seem to be more concerned with my improvement as a social being rather than moving my way up the food chain.
The more I think about it, the more this trait was apparent at school where compassion and humbleness were apparent in bundles towards everyone (teacher included) but a yearning for academic success and fulfilment was overtaken by an aspiration to be thought of as funny.
When I did finally fall into a career it was unsurprising that it was one that involved talking and making friends, something I seemed keener to do in my youth than actual work.
Then again, I could just be an absolute moron.

On The Road

Here’s another poem, this time from my road trip across California a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!

I’m driving with the windows down because the air con is broken
The shadows from the trees so tall are keeping me cool
My road is winding, wide and open
But still I can’t help feeling like a fool

I spent a day with the San Francisco bay
We shared stories and joked with the wind
The painted ladies asked me to stay
But my time there had to come to an end

I saw a dolphin in Yosemite
And the sun set the horizon on fire
I was filled with a sense of serenity
Standing on California’s spire

I cheated greed in Las Vegas
To suck me in he wasn’t able
I drew a line at having fun
When I put my cards on the table

I stopped taking photos in Arizona
My shots of the Grand Canyon were unjust
I spent my time questioning my persona
As the afternoon sun turned to dusk

Side-projects

A wise man once said ‘creativity is the catalyst of life’. Actually it wasn’t a wise man. It was me. Just then.
So I am trying to align myself with such a notion by writing as much creative stuff as I can. My latest project is a sitcom based on my experiences of coaching soccer in America. Here’s a snippet of episode two. Enjoy!

Scene 3
The boys are in the car pulling up to a field.
Mark: Decent sized field. Could easily do a tournament towards the end of the week.
Nick: Any chance of just doing one all week?
Dan: what’s the name of the co-ordinator again?
Mark: Jamie something. Sounds like a right prick.
Dan: (Looking out of the window) Prick isn’t the word I’d use.
A beautiful blonde is sanding there, with a clip board in soccer shorts and shirt.
Mark (Looking heavenwards) Thank you God. Maybe this week won’t be so bad after all.
They pull up and get out of the car.
Mark: Jamie! Mark Nappierella from English Soccer Camps. I must say you weren’t quite was I was expec..
Jamie: (Cutting him off) I thought you Brits were impeccable time keepers?
Mark: Yes, well, sorry about that. Someone wanted to stop for food. (he looks slyly at Nick, who is munching on candy).
Jamie: Well we’re here now. (She’s very proper, and organised and a little uptight). Here’s your rosters and I’ve put those who are all on the same team in bold. Also there is a list of camp rules, as well as some suggestions for you guys, you know, how to look, what not to say, how long activity breaks should last, that sort of thing.
Mark: O…k
Jamie (ignoring him). Also, here’s some extra games I thought might be good. (She hands him a folder, he starts to struggle with all the paper work). I trust there won’t be any problems this week but if there are here’s my cell phone number. I only work a few blocks away from the field, so can be here in a few minutes.
Mark: oh right, great. Thanks for all that Jamie. He drops a few papers.
Jamie: Right, must be off, pilates in 20 minutes. See you guys at the end of camp.
Mark: Er…I…ok. Thanks Jamie.
He drops all the papers and looks down at them despondently.
Dan appears.
Dan: How did it go? Did you work your magic?
Mark: Well I made her disappear. Does that count?

Expect to see it never aired.

Washing Machine

It has been said numerous times on the pages of this blog that my mind is a mess. Like a washing machine stuck on ‘go’ it is churning myriad thoughts around in a perpetual motion with no apparent ending in sight.
Now and then someone opens the door and a thought shoots out and lands on this blog, splattering onto the pages with little consideration for arrangement. It needs someone to wring them out and fold neatly.
I really need someone to switch my washing machine off and shift thought my thoughts, iron them out and arrange them. I need a dryer.

A Week Off

This week is something of a rarity – a week off from work. I’m using the opportunity to take in a few sights around California that I haven’t yet seen. I managed to rope in two other coaches and we’re in the midst of a whistlestop tour of the state.
We started by taking in one of the world’s most famous roads – the Pacific Coast Highway, which winds its way up the west coast of California, from San Diego to San Francisco. We joined it in Los Angeles and followed it all the way up to the home of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It’s not often I use hyperboles in this blog but oh ,my, god, the views were amazing. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road as we twisted and turned around some of California’s stunning coastline. As we climbed towards Big Sur the low lying clouds met the water and created a spectacular view. It looked like what I would imagine heaven to be, the clouds close enough to walk on, hovering over the earth below. Of course, I’ll never actually make it to the land upstairs, so this is the best I’ll have to deal with.
When we got to San Francisco, we dumped our bags in our grotty little hotel and headed out to the bay. We did all the usual touristy stuff which you can see on about a million other websites, but they were views that had to be taken in. the synchronised swimming of the cars down Lombard Street – the world’s self-proclaimed crookedest road, the eerie silence of Alcatraz, San Francisco’s famous roads slicing up the city into neatly formed cake slices, and the quaint houses lining the streets like giant Liquorice Allsorts.
From there we headed to Sacramento to see my friends Rob, Laura and Lauren, and the six of us took in a movie at the drive-in theatre. How quintessentially American.
The next leg of the journey took us to Yosemite National Park. Thanks to some ‘controlled’ forest fires that got out of control (a mere 90 acres of ash turning into 6,000) we had to turn back from one entrance and drive two and a half hours to another.
The views in Yosemite over the canyons looked like a painting of a Hollywood backdrop. They didn’t look real.
As sun set we drove to a viewpoint overlooking Half Dome, a giant mountain peak that has been sliced in half thanks to water erosion, or something. Thanks to our set back earlier in the day we knew we were fighting a losing battle against the sun to get to the viewpoint in time to watch sunset. So we put our foot down and raced towards the summit. It was like a Top Gear challenge – the boys in the Ford Focus versus the biggest star in the sky.
And you can guess who won. Wrong! The boys in the Ford Focus. Jeremy Clarkson would be delighted.
Two nights later we were having fun in Old Town Vegas, which I found to be much more fun and friendly than the normal part of the Strip that everyone frequents. Yes I returned to my hotel $40 down but the drinks were free all night, so that’s ok. Right?
What amazes me about travelling is the generosity I encounter, from a small gesture like someone guy jump starting your car at the drive in because you ran down the battery watching the film, to larger ones like your friend’s dad letting you ad your two travel buddies who he’s never met before stay at his house.
The final leg of our tour was the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. I decided to stop taking photos at this point because my stupid little camera was not doing any of the views anywhere near enough justice. The sunset over the canyon and the following thunderstorm kept me captivated for what felt like days.
So numerous sights crammed into a mere seven days, but a trip I owed to myself. Thanks, self.

Confidence

Being in the presence of someone who is better at something than you can have two effects: 1) Their ability can rub off on you or 2) watching someone do exactly what you’re doing only ten times better can make you feel insignificantly worthless.
For me it was a bit of both when I found myself working next to a coach who was about a million times better at everything than me. He has an instant rapport with the kids, he was enthusiastic, his games flowed from one to the next and he gave off an aura of knowing exactly what he was doing. I am the complete opposite and during the week I felt like a kid who was shadowing this other coach.
It was like I was a newcomer to soccer coaching, never mind that it’s my fourth year with the company. I’m probably the most experienced coach on the West Coast in terms of hours with MLS Camps, but last week I felt like a beginner.
I felt like this other coach connected better with my group than I did. He could have easily coached both groups and I would have been totally redundant. It gave my confidence a pretty sharp jab in the face, confidence which wasn’t that high anyway.
Yet weirdly, I found his exuberance rub off on me. We had a clinic coaching the parents on Saturday and when it was my turn to take a session, I sprang into life. I heard bits of this other coach come out of me and it made me feel like I an actually do things and I might, actually be half decent at this. I think when you are so uncertain about your future you grab onto any little thing that defines you. A decent coaching session here and there makes me feel like I am worth having around. For a bit anyway.