I write daily. Sometimes to the detriment of my own time.

Often, it ends up being vague ideas or attempts at comedy. I’m scratching thoughts down in small notebooks or the edge of a piece of mail. Or to-do lists of what I should knock out for this weekend’s set of house projects.

There is a mode of writing where I feel less pressure to produce something and meander into musing. Reactionary writing has its place; however, I’m referring to a slow, deliberate step back.

As a writer, you spend a lot of time with yourself talking out storylines or simply pitching ideas about what could be. I spend a ton of my mental energy in full stop. It is slow. Painfully slow. But it has given rise to noticing.

By noticing, I mean taking a break to assess, analyze, and ask big questions. It is hard declaring what your super power is without sounding arrogant or self-absorbed. In my line of writing, I use this adage: “statistics are often descriptive (here’s what happened) not necessarily prescriptive (here’s what this means moving forward)”.

While I’ve been writing for the Fantasy Footballers since 2016 and dabbled in some film work in past for other companies, my strength(s) lie in looking at the landscape and asking simple questions: How does this fit in? Where is this going? What am I not seeing? What is not being said? We ask big questions and reflect.

The posture of noticing involves taking ourselves out of the picture to become an engaged and enthusiastic bystander willing to wait. We’re waiting to make meaning but also to simply appreciate whatever we are watching (sports, family, the economy, etc.) without jumping to a knee-jerk conclusion. We have enough quick takes.

This Carver quote has stayed with me for the better part of the last two decades:

When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.” –George Washington Carver

Yes, it is a bit vague and perhaps grandiose in its trajectory but the spirit of the quote and the man who embodied it speaks volumes. A agricultural scientist transformed the way we live, eat, and take care of ourselves by staring at a peanut long enough. The scientific approach GWC took is foreign to the way my brain processes life but the principle remains the same: he took the time to notice.

Starting a blog without a clear end result in mind might be foolish. The world has enough voices (dear lord do we need another podcast?) so perhaps this is a chance to practice the art of noticing… without anyone noticing.

The goal is to elaborate on some of my musings and consistently write. The title of the blog “Life Full of Stats” is a vague concept I’ve sat with for awhile. If I stare at different aspects of my life (and others), what meaningful data and stories can we open up? I’ll probably lend myself more towards the humorous and often obsessive side of life data but there is a quality angle I desire.

Whatever statistics you are accumulating in life (someone’s WAR in baseball, the # of return trips you’ve made to the hardware store on a Saturday, the ounces of coffee you drank in the last decade) are building towards something. Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum or a timeline of nothingness. There is value to extract, assess, and appreciate.

Only through noticing can we begin to add up where the value lies and how we can double down on pouring our attention fully to what matters.