My kid became obsessed with balls when he was only a few months old, so I made a home made ball pit for him. I would find all the balls in the house (soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, golf balls, volleyballs) and put them in his bassinet and he would play in there happy as could be. I too loved balls when I was a kid. I was always bouncing, throwing, or kicking a ball off the wall and it drove my Mom and my sisters crazy. I would make homemade basketball hoops out of boxes, hangers, and duct tape and fasten it to our second floor railing.

Sports were a big part of my life when I was a kid. I learned so many good things from playing them. I learned the value of team work, goal setting, preparation, hard work, resiliency, trust, and so many other things. But I think the greatest lesson I learned was practice and repetition. I learned to keep trying over and over again until I got it right, and then kept trying it until I got it right five times in a row, then ten times in a row. I had a target that I sidewalk chalked on the brick wall outside our house that I would kick the soccer ball at. I would kick the ball at the target until I hit it five or ten times in a row without missing. I tore up about half a dozen soccer balls kicking them against that brick wall. But there was a huge lesson for me in this practice. It taught me not to be afraid of failure. It taught me that the more times I tried and failed, the more times I would succeed, and the faster I tried and failed, the faster I would get to that success. This has helped me in every aspect of my life, including my art. I find that the large majority of the pieces that I make are not very good, but if I just keep making, I’ll end up with a couple good ones, and I know that the more I practice, the better my ratio of good-to-bad pieces will get.

Along with the good things, I also have a little bit of trauma from playing sports. Most of that pressure came from overbearing adults. Some of these adults were my coaches, some were the opposing team’s coaches, and some were just overbearing parents on the sidelines. I want my kid to learn all the good things that I learned from playing sports, but I don’t want him to have to experience some of the shame, embarrassment, and intimidation that I experienced as a kid. I’ll tell you more about this later.