Shohei Ohtani is the best player in baseball right now, and he could end up being the best player of all time, the GOAT of GOAT’s. To be the best at something, you have to sacrifice so much, and Ohtani is no different. I was so fascinated by Ken Rosenthal’s article today in The Athletic about Ohtani and the relationships around him (paywall).

Joe Maddon, Ohtani’s manager with the Angels from 2020 to June 2022, asked:

“Was he that married to baseball?”

The answer, those in Ohtani’s orbit say, was yes. Experts say such single-mindedness is not uncommon among Japanese athletes. But while many players who moved from Japan to the majors showed intense focus, Ohtani’s single-mindedness as both a pitcher and hitter is a level above.

Even though the article was focused more on the relationships around Ohtani, particularly Ippei Mizuhara, his interpreter that pilfered almost $17 million from Ohtani to satisfy his gambling debts, I was most interested in Ohtani’s intense focus to simply be the best, to be great. “One former Angels employee,” the article continues,

described Ohtani’s work-life balance as “99 to 1” in favor of work. He was so regimented in his daily preparation as a pitcher and hitter, the employee said, “it was not in his mind space to enjoy the moment.” Ohtani would take an iPad home to watch the next day’s starting pitcher. He even monitored his sleep — Sports Illustrated reported Ohtani strives for 10 hours a night, plus a two-hour nap before a game — through a wearable device.

Ten hours of sleep plus a two hour nap before the game. Half his day is spent sleeping, the other half is spent working on and becoming the absolute best baseball player he can be.

I’ve latched onto this article today because I am tired of consistently being disappointed with myself whenever I don’t live up to whatever lofty standards I want to meet, and I know I won’t ever be great at something like Ohtani is great at baseball, nor do I actually want to be great like him at any one thing, but I am tired of any and all excuses I come up with for not doing something I want to do. I want to do a lot of things, and I would love to be great at them, but at the very least, I want to respect myself and the things I want to do, and I don’t think I am. I feel like I’m consistently disrespecting myself and the things I want to accomplish, and I feel like I’ve lost my focus. The coronavirus obviously did not help, but if I’m being truthful to myself, I feel like I had lost it years before that.

One way I’ve tried to motivate myself is by reminding myself of what I have done and what I have accomplished, but instead of having that energize me, it drains me. I’ve read books and tried productivity systems and I’ve tried building habits and so many other things, and yet… I’m still here, frustrated and angry and depressed and a million other things. Again, I’m not comparing myself to Ohtani because he’s such a unicorn, but what I am doing is looking at his motivation to be great to my own lack of motivation to even read a book, let alone writing one.

I’m frustrated because I used to have this insane level of motivation to push myself to become something greater than my own imagination could conjure up, and it’s just gone now. Where did it go? Fuck, it’s frustrating. Where did it go? I don’t know, and I have no idea where to even begin to find it again.

I bought College Football 25 for my PS5 today, the first time I’ve purchased an EA Sports game in maybe two decades. After the heart-pumping intro, I was met with this Positive Play message that truly warmed my heart. Is this relatively new? Has it been part of EA games for a while? I’m not sure, but I liked it. I chose the USC Trojans as my favorite team because they are my alma mater, and I began a quick match against Stanford. I beat them 70-0, and it was some of the most fun I’ve had in a long while. I then began the new dynasty mode, but I had to cut it short, so I couldn’t quite delve too deeply into it.

I don’t play video games as much as I used to, and I think that’s mostly because I’ve trained myself to think of them as pointless distractions. I tell myself that I should be writing or that I should be reading or that I should be finishing this project or that project. And maybe that’s still true most of the time, but even without video games, I’m not always working or getting things done. God, I wish I was working and getting things done most of the time! But I’m not, and that’s just the honest truth. Hell, I’ve had to drag myself off my ass to write these daily entries every night and to grab my camera and shoot something, regardless of “quality”.

And maybe that’s where my attitude on things needs to change. Like EA’s message, play can be positive, and maybe I should let some of it back into my life. After all, all work and no play makes Mario a dull boy, and nobody wants that.

The longer I’ve gone without writing a new entry, the more I question the value of this place. I’ve been spending more and more of my time in my notebooks, and in many ways, they have replaced what this website used to be, as a place to explore myself, my life, and my role in this world. I enjoy myself more when I sit down to write in my notebook more than I ever have since I started writing and sharing my entries online. My notebooks are safe. They are full of mistakes and crossed out words and wrong turns. They are messy like my life is messy, like the world is messy. Each time I return to them, I seem to find myself back at home, back to a world of comfort and security and again, safety.

But that’s not why I created my website. I created it so I wouldn’t live in my own little world. I created it to share my writing, my thoughts, my life to an indifferent world with the hope that maybe I can affect the world in some way. Receiving notes from other people has been a blessing, and I’m grateful for the connections, however small, I’ve made over the years. It’s been great. I am just unsure of what I want.

Life has been messy lately, and each day, I tell myself that I will find my way back home, but each day, the universe and my own inertia has other things to say about that. Each day I tell myself that today I will write an essay or start writing that new book or go out on an excursion with my camera and take some photos or that today will be the day I pick up my guitar and learn a new song or grab my pencil and draw a sketch in my notebook. Most of the time, I don’t do any of that. Instead, I’m fighting fires or indulging myself in things that are fun but unproductive.

I’m really starting to hate that word, productive. Productivity. It makes me nauseous. Can doing what I want to do really be considered productive? Productive for whom? Definitely not for society, right? Does society care if I write some essays or take some photos or draw some sketches? Does society actually care about any of that? The only way I can ever see society care is if I produce some great work of art, something I used to believe I was capable of but not so much lately. The only one that cares if I ever do any of this is me. I care if I write essays or write books or take photos or draw some sketches. I care about that, but in hindsight, I don’t think that’s enough. I’m not enough. If I don’t care to live my life this way then no one cares. And if nobody cares?

But I care. I care about doing all these things. That’s why I do them! Okay, so back in the day, whenever I knew I needed to write, I would sit in front of my computer, put some music on, and I would just sit there. I would let myself feel the music and I would let it enchant my mind and I would feel something as my mind opened and I felt the words in my heart and I would start writing to figure out those words. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t shut out the world like that anymore. I have so many more distractions around me now. But those were good times, and I miss them. I can always return there if I choose to. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still right there on my map. I just have to grab my compass, find north, and take that first step.

And here’s that step. Now to keep going.