When I was a boy, just moments before every football game,

I’d slip into a panic.

My heart thumped,

And my mind crashed into a hoard of anxious thoughts.

Thankfully, when the whistle blew, and the first play was signaled-in from the sideline,

I always found my focus.

My breathing slowed,

and my thoughts melted into one single notion: the task at hand.

For the next sixty minutes, the game was all that existed in my world,

and all my energy went into it.

25 years year after I stopped playing the game I loved,

I’m still searching for the moments when nothing matters but the task at hand,

the game to replace the game.