{"id":53,"date":"2006-03-10T01:02:55","date_gmt":"2006-03-10T01:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/10\/importance-of-being-earnest\/"},"modified":"2006-03-10T01:02:55","modified_gmt":"2006-03-10T01:02:55","slug":"importance-of-being-earnest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/10\/importance-of-being-earnest\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance of Being Earnest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><style type=\"text\/css\">\n.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }<br \/>\n.flickr-yourcomment { }<br \/>\n.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }<br \/>\n.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<br \/>\n<\/style>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\">\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/trentdouthat\/110277584\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/43\/110277584_57e008d780.jpg\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t<span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/trentdouthat\/110277584\/\">Importance of Being Earnest<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/trentdouthat\/\">tdouthat<\/a>.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\">\n\tI&#8217;m sitting in the small gym at Truman High School watching Jill&#8217;s basketball practice. This is her first practice with her new team, the Blazers. It&#8217;s a big program in Independence with about 22 teams in different age divisions. Most of the teams play in AAU tournaments and some play in local leagues.  I&#8217;ve only been watching for about 30 minutes but this is a whole new level for me. I&#8217;ve never been involved in a competition program before. Practices are run completely different and the kids are completely different. Everyone is much more serious, and I don&#8217;t mean that in a bad way. It&#8217;s refreshing to see this many people being earnest.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle and I like to laugh at the Horatio Caine character in CSI:Miami because he is so cheesy and earnest, but I also secretly envy the attitude. It&#8217;s hard to not be sarcastic, cynical, and ironic all the time. It takes a lot of emotional energy to actually care about what goes on around you, but I&#8217;m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that maybe people who give a crap are happier, healthier people. Maybe not everything is a joke and an opportunity to screw around.<\/p>\n<p>Jill has more skills than I knew about. At her practices with her winter league IYAA team, she was so busy clowning and mouthing off, that I never noticed that she is actually a pretty good player.<\/p>\n<p>This little discussion reminds me of an article I found a few months ago about<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sirlin.net\/Features\/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm\">playing to win<\/a>. It talks about the extra depth that brings to a video gaming experience, but I think you could apply it to any competitive endeavor.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s enough for one night. Maybe now that I&#8217;ve switched from using Blogger to WordPress I&#8217;ll post more often. (Heck, maybe I could become an earnest blogger who competes for readers with other blogs.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Importance of Being Earnest, originally uploaded by tdouthat. I&#8217;m sitting in the small gym at Truman High School watching Jill&#8217;s basketball practice. This is her first practice with her new team, the Blazers. It&#8217;s a big program in Independence with about 22 teams in different age divisions. Most of the teams play in AAU tournaments [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trentdouthat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}