Retrospective Blogging: Part II

Since I have the possibility to be a leader for a team bigger than the '08 Summit team, I am looking back at what I did right and what I did wrong when I was captain.  Obviously, the biggest problem was the one with Andy and tug.  Since this was the biggest issue I had to deal with, it is the one that is most clear in my mind.  It is also clear because I have run the scenario through my head a thousand times if I have thought about it once.  I have read and reread the comments of my teammates about what they saw in my attitude.  That being said, I believe that the only fault I have in this whole debate was poor word choice.  Here is why (please note that I no longer dislike Andy, nor did I dislike him then.  I have a much more objective view and am literally trying to find fault in myself in this.)

When Andy started having poor technique during tug, I went to him about it multiple times in private during pratice.  He never listened to me.  I went to Everett and asked him to talk to Andy.  Andy didn't listen to Everett.  I gave Andy the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was doing it just to be beligerent and would stop once we actually competed.  He did not.  I was going to go to him that Thursday night and tell him that he needed to do do tug the right way (the right way being the way that would give us the highest chance of winning) or I would pull him out of tug and put someone else in (that someone else would have had to be me because Jeff and Brian were already in seven events each and couldn't possibly do anymore, leaving me as the only person who could legally take his place.)  This is when Andy decided to take it upon himself to call ME out publicly.  I did nothing to provoke this.  I merely made a statement of fact when I wrote.

"Andy and Rebecca scare the crap out of me when the reach. If either of them try to do at Summit what they did at locals, they are going to get destroyed."

Contrary to what I have been accused of, this was not me publicly chastising Andy.  This was a completely innocent comment about the way he and his sister were using improper form.  I didn't "chastise" either one of them.  I simply commented that "It scared the crap out of me" and also stated the fact that "when we play a good tug team and they do that, they are going to get destroyed", which ended up being true.

So as for the first accusation that I "publicly chastised Andy", the documented fact remains that I did no such thing.

The second thing that I was accused of was "mildly cussing him out", which I will admit, I should not have done.  I should have picked my words much more carefully.  However, I will not apologize for saying nothing at all.  Andy called me out in public.  Because he called me out in public, I felt the issue needed to be resolved in public.  The second reason that I attempted to resolve the issue right then and there is because I was basing my actions on Matthew 18:15-17.  For those who don't know it off the top of their heads (I'm included in that category)

¹⁵ "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. ¹⁶But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Though the sin was not solely against me, it was against the team, I still feel the principle applied.  I went to Andy, as the captain, and asked him to stop, then told him to stop.  When he didn't, I went to Everett.  That makes two people who had told him to stop.  I was willing to give Andy another chance before I subtly removed him from the game to avoid his own embarrassment in front of the team, but when he made it public, I decided that going to the entire "church", or team, would be a better option.  I chose the wrong words to speak, which alienated my teammates from actually supporting the decision.  However, I have Biblical backing for what I chose to do.  I just chose the wrong words (or really the wrong word) to do it.

Another accusation that was brought against me was that I was being biased, which I repeatedly said I was not.  I was told that I had been biased on more than one occasion, which no one ever showed me proof of.  The only thing that even remotely resembled proof was Brian's statement when he said

"I could cite names and give examples of different times with different people in events that you changed, if you were to be truly unbiased you would go by times and consistency, not just who you think is more athletic."

Unfortunately, this has absolutely no merit seeing as Brian never saw the times.  The only thing that Brian ever saw was my decision on who to run in which event, after I had already hammered out who was on the team.  Obviously, I changed the events multiple times due to injuries, missed practices, and so on and so forth, but Brian never saw a thing beyond the finished products, including the times.  The only people who saw the times during tryouts were Everett, Arielle, and I.  Obviously, everyone heard the times during the times we ran balloon and basketball.  Whoever had consistently better times during practice was allowed to run the event, regardless of their athletic ability or their years in AWANA or any other outside factor.

And all subsequent accusations about my attitude were based on these things.  Since I have just shown that I did nothing wrong in any of these instances, my poor attitude was only due to being accused of doing things wrong that were, in all actuality, not wrong.  I did not err in any of the things I did except word choice.  And as far as word choice, I did not think that it would be that big a deal since Andy himself advocated the use of the word, but others got offended and in that I was wrong.

I am perhaps the only person who still thinks about this, though I am surely not the only one who remembers it.  I have thought about it more times than I can tell and have run as many scenarios through my head as I possibly could.  I believe that my poor choice of words was to blame.  Had I used better words, my team might have been more inclined to support the way I decided to handle the situation.  But, that is the only thing I would change if I were to go back now and change it.  I think I have sufficiently shown that my decisions were not only the right ones, but were actually Biblically based.

In hindsight, I believe I handled it in the way it needed to be handled (minus my poor word choice).  As far as being self-righteous, I did far more right in this situation than I did wrong.  My "self-righteousness" was not without warrant.  I did what I needed to do, when I needed to do it and, again, minues the word choice, how I needed to do it.

I hope this clears up a few things about why I did what I did and, if anyone still reads this, helps you to realize that I was not at fault in many of the things that I was accused of doing wrongly.

Retrospective Blogging

After reading blogs from Stephen Christian (lyricist/singer for Anberlin), I decided to make my own really amazing blog. But as I logged in to go create it, I found this and I started reading all of my posts. I feel like I need to talk about it a little. I had actually planned to do this before, but I think that I was going to try to have that "I learned a lot because of Summit and it made me a better person..." sort of a speech. Now that I can look back at what I wrote and be a little bit more objective since it has been a year and it is almost like someone else wrote it, I think I will comment on my Summit experience from 07-08, even if it's only for me.

I see some recurring themes in these blogs. The first is girls. There were a lot of girls at Summit and I hung out with a lot of them. Megan, Julia, Allison, Brittney, girl in the red dress (I later found out that her name is Lauren), Alex, Tana, Jocelyn, Allee, girl in the red top (not to be confused with the girl in the red dress because they are two different people), and, of course, my sophomore year love, Jodi, who is Tana's sister. It would happen to me. I'm really not sure what to think about this. To be honest, I really didn't hang out with a lot of them that much. The two girls in red clothing I never hung out with. I saw Megan and Julia 3 or 4 times, but never really got quality time with them. I hung out with Jocelyn and Allee for only a half an hour at best. I only met Allison and Brittney on the last night, so I really didn't hang out with them that much. I met Tana the day of games and we were playing so the majority of my interaction with her was me going up to her and telling her "That was for you" and blowing her a kiss while I was running sprint relay. The only person I really enjoyed the company of for any length of time was Alex, who I ran off to see a great number of times (as you can see from my blog). To me, I think this shows that my mind was in a completely different place. I was not at all interested in team unity. I felt that the last 7 months gave us that and that this was my week. In my defense, I will never see these girls again, and I wanted to be with the friends I'd made over the last two years and meet some new ones. But I probably shouldn't have run off while my team was competing, as boring as it was for me, and I should have considered eating dinner with them the final night, instead of immediately making up my mind that Brian and I were going to meet girls and spend the night with them.

The second thing I noticed when rereading this was my inability to take any sort of blame. I can't even count the number of times I claimed that I was going to throw up. I know at least one of those is true, but as for the rest, I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure I made that up as an excuse for playing poorly and to make myself look better. Sort of a Kirk Gibson "Look at me! I'm playing through the pain," sort of thing. I will put blame on anyone and anything if it is within reason because I can't handle it when I screw up. I expect myself to be perfect and, when I'm not, it drives me insane. The only way I get relief is by putting the blame on anything that isn't me. I still do this a great deal of the time and I have literally convinced myself that things are not my fault, even though I knew in the beginning they are. I am so bad, that I have literally rewritten history so that I could get relief about my short comings.

The third thing I noticed was that I am an arrogant SOB. I already knew this of course, but I was never doign any of this "for the fame of His name". I was doing this "for the fame of my name". There were times when things got so bad that I had to go back and reevaluate everything and see that I was messing up and that I needed God to help me get back on track, but that never lasted. I am just like Israel. I'm just like Nebuchadnezzar. I never learn the message the first time. I have to hear it again and again.

Now that I have addressed the fact that I am arrogant and prideful and realize it, I want to say this. A lot of things transpired between Andy and I and I was definitely wrong in a few places. However, me threatening to pull him out of tug was not because I was prejudiced. I would have done it if Brian decided to tell Everett and me "no" and I would have done it if Arielle had said "no". The captain, with the backing of the coach, told him to change the way he was doing something and he flat out said "I'm not doing it your way." Fact is, the first two or three times I asked him, I was polite about it. And when he continually said "no", that is when I got offended and unleashed all hell on him. In this instance, I was not wrong. It's that simple.

After the initial rage of him slapping me in the middle of a club one night, I let it go. I still comment on it from time to time, but not because I dislike him. Simply because I was, and still am, shocked that he would actually get up and do that. I have long since forgiven him for it and I don't have anything against him anymore. I should not have harbored contempt for him as long as I did and I'm sorry that I did that.

I really didn't learn anything about me beyond the fact that 1) I care about me a lot, 2) I care about girls, 3) I'm arrogant and prideful off the wazoo, 4) I do things for me and not for God, and 5) I'll do anything to not be wrong.