We need our crowd

"We need our crowd." This was a David Lucas quote in this morning's Gazette Times. Maybe this is the problem with our team. They only seem to be able to play to the best of their abilities when there's 10,000 people screaming for them. I guess I'm old fashioned in thinking that people should play for themselves, not for the adulation they get from Joe Ticketholder. Now I can't say that the whole team feels this way, but when your team leader feels that way, it's going to have a trickle-down effect. Granted it's always better to have more people in the crowd than not, but to say that you need them? I don't think that sends a very good message. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you need an audience to get the most out of yourself, that doesn't say much about you.


Whenever I state an opinion like that, it always makes me think "do you live up to your own expectations?" More often than not, the answer is no. I know that I crave attention and that I love it when someone notices the effort I put in to something. Sometimes I'll half ass my way through something because there's no reward. But I do take pride in doing things right. That's why I've always given my best at work regardless of the fact that nobody seemed to take notice. The only thing they noticed was that I wasn't doing anything because I'd finished what they'd already given me. And then I'm lazy. Not effective, lazy. Nonetheless, I didn't slack off on any job they gave me, I always did them to the best of my abilities. By the way, that 37 page procedures manual they had me do last summer that HAD to be done before the first of July - it still hasn't been printed or distributed to the new interns. Yeah I'm bitter that I put a lot of work into that thing so it could collect space on a hard drive, but the point is that I didn't put out a 37 page pile of crap. It's 37 pages of useful information that I put a lot of work into. Not because I wanted people to say "great job Andy, we couldn't have done this without you."

Joel and I spent a lot of time last night browsing through random livejournals. It seems like 80% of the journals belonged to people with serious emotional issues. People who had a difficult time coping with everyday life. I don't feel that way, but I wonder if they feel that way about themselves. Do they go to sleep at night going "man I'm really fucked up?" I know I don't. Yet we all end up on livejournal. I don't know what this means, but it's interesting to me.

Two nights ago, I had dream. Mark Odom was in it. I haven't seen or thought about Mark in at least a year. The next day, I see Mark Odom at Safeway. Yet he shows up in my dream one night and then I see him the next day. I dont' know what this means, but it's interesting to me. Of course Mark wasn't at Safeway in my dream. We were at the restaurant Sweet Tomatoes bitching about how the only thing on the menu was turkey sandwiches. But I've come to the conclusion that I can no longer just dismiss my dreams as a bunch of gibberish. If I have a dream that my dead grandmother is telling me something, I will be forced to listen, because I have to at least entertain the possibility that it really is my grandmother telling me something. Maybe it's evidence of a higher power, maybe it's evidence that we as humans have abilities that we do not yet fully understand and can't control.