Staying on the Team

On quitting, endurance, and writing without applause

When I was in middle school, I quit the basketball team.

I was first string. I expected to start every game. The coach decided the B team needed more playing time, and something in me couldn’t accept that. So I gave her an ultimatum: start me, or I walk.

She didn’t bend.

I walked.

For years, I told myself I was strong-willed. Success principled. That I wouldn’t settle for less than I deserved. And I kept telling myself that even when regret showed up around the edges, quiet and persistent.

But that’s not the whole truth.

The fuller truth is this: I didn’t know how to stay when I wasn’t the most important person in the room. I didn’t know how to tolerate uncertainty about my place. I needed the spotlight confirmed before I was willing to play.

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I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately, because I want to be a writer.

Not casually. Not privately. Publicly. Professionally. Paid.

And yet every week, something more concrete pulls at me. A bathroom renovation stretching into its second year. Fractional CFO work that pays actual bills. A nervous system that runs on visible progress and gets nothing from abstract exposure.

Spreadsheets give you answers. Sawdust gives you proof that real work was done. Writing gives you a blank page and no promise that filling it will matter.

When I sit down to write, the old voice comes back. What if no one reads this? What if it never pays? What if you’re just not that kind of person?

That last one is the trap.

Because “I’m just not that kind of person” is the same move I made at thirteen. It’s a way of quitting that sounds like self-knowledge. It lets you walk off the court with your dignity intact, before the game has really started, before you’ve had to find out what you’re actually made of.

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Renovation work is straightforward. You show up, you do the next thing, the room changes. Effort and outcome are loosely but genuinely connected.

Writing isn’t like that.

Writing is a longer game, and the feedback loop is strange and slow. You can write something solid and have no one read it. You can write something mediocre and watch it spread. The connection between effort and outcome is real, but it doesn’t announce itself on any schedule you can predict or control.

Which means writing requires something renovation work doesn’t: faith without immediate evidence.

Not blind faith. Not delusion. Just the willingness to keep showing up before you know how the story ends.

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Discipline, I’ve come to think, isn’t grinding through misery. It isn’t white-knuckling your way to results. It’s something quieter than that — choosing what matters, and then staying when the validation doesn’t come on time.

The middle school version of me needed the coach to confirm my value before I’d commit to the team. I was conditioning my effort on guaranteed recognition. And when the recognition wasn’t guaranteed, I left.

I don’t want to write like that.

I don’t need to be the most important voice. I don’t need to know my role yet. I don’t need a standing ovation before I’ve written anything worth applauding.

I just need to stay long enough to find out who I become.

One essay a week. No drama about whether it’s working. No philosophical detours that are really just sophisticated ways of rationalizing the exit.

Just showing up. Just staying on the team.

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Maybe the lesson from middle school was never really about ego.

Maybe it was always about endurance — about learning that the people who get somewhere aren’t always the most talented, or the most certain, or the ones who demanded the spotlight first.

They’re the ones who stayed when staying was hard. Who kept playing when their role was unclear. Who didn’t confuse uncertainty with a sign to leave.

This week, I’m not quitting.

I’m staying on the team.

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