The Slow Starter (and I mean SLOWWWWWW....)

I have always been a slow starter.  Going back to my childhood, growing up in New Jersey, my life revolved around sports.  Football (American style, although I am now a Premier League football fan; I say this because I had my first European view of my blog yesterday, from Germany!), baseball, and basketball, depending on the season.  I was always the smallest guy on the field or court, and I was extremely competitive.  And baseball was my passion.  I was the star pitcher from the tender age of  9, for all of the teams I played for until I was 13 (then puberty struck-another example of a slow start-and sports were an afterthought; but I still played sandlot ball anywhere I could).  As a pitcher, my first two innings were always the toughest.  I always struggled to get into a groove.  But once I did, I was virtually unstoppable.  My Little League baseball days were the most memorable, playing before packed stands and pitching my heart out, all 4' 11" of me (and I was in 7th grade!).  As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Here I am, 23 years beyond college graduation, and I'm still talking about owning my own business.  Sound familiar?  I always questioned those who jumped in head first into their endeavours growing up.  I lost all of my closest companions after 7th grade, because they all began experimenting with drinking, drugs, and the like. How do they do it?  Aren't they afraid?  What if their parents find out?  What if they overdose or die of alcohol poisoning?  Now, I don't regret making the decision to leave this group; it wasn't my gig.  And for the most part, it still isn't my gig (although I do enjoy a great glass of California Zinfandel or Belgian Ale).  But there are parallels to this experience that mirror my life today.  I have watched countless people throw their hat in to the arena of entrepreneurship  from the sidelines  (very few of them in my personal life, except for a handful), and I have lived vicariously through them for so long.  It's like a perpetual warmup in baseball, never throwing a pitch in the heat of a game, or smacking a tennis ball against the wall with an imaginary opponent.  At least in Little League I had the balls to get out there and compete, fighting through those first two innings toward victory (most of the time).  Why do we lose that childhood fearlessness?  What do we have to lose?  I used to pretend I was the Bionic Man as a kid:  "This is Steve Austin, astronaut.  A man barely alive.  We can rebuild him.  We have the technology to make him better than he was..better, stronger, faster..."  I used to ran as fast as I can from place to place, listening to the music play in my head from my favorite show, feeling the wind in my face with my blue windbreaker on (I think his was red, but it didn't matter; it had stripes on the sleeves, and that's all I cared about).  I WAS Steve Austin, and nobody could catch me.  When I was a bit older, Han Solo's Millenium Falcon was parked in the woods at the local park.  It was made out of a tree.  If you walked past this tree, you would not have noticed this fact.  But when I sat in the cockpit with my friend John, that tree flew into hyperspace quicker than it ever did in the movies (I didn't experience the same mechanical problems Han Solo did).  When do we stop dreaming?  I just finished James Altucher's book Choose Yourself.  It's a quick read, full of information and ideas.  He talks about the SuperFriends, the cartoon from the 70's with all of our favorite superheroes, all in one show.  He spoke at length about Superman in particular, and I read that part of the book just before I went to sleep.  Our 3 month old son sleeps in a crib in our room (not for much longer), and he has a projector that shoots the stars and nebulae of the universe on the ceiling of the room, so you can sleep beneath the stars.  It's the coolest mini-planetarium I have ever seen.  So, I dream a lot.  Many of my dreams come true (so far the less consequential ones, but I'm shooting for the stars on that, too).  And last night's dreams were amazing.  I was swimming along the azure shores of a beautiful mountain-lined beach.  The water was warm and I was swimming fast.  Below the surface, every sea creature imaginable was visible.  I love watching nature shows, and I am familiar with most discovered wildlife.  But there were creatures beneath this surface of such color and beauty, of the likes I have never seen.  Segue into the next dream; I am Superman.  Yes, the Man of Steel himself.  I couldn't see what I was wearing, but I was flying above the clouds at such speeds that I could only have been Kal-El himself.  Through the clouds (most of them were puffy and vapor-filled, but some were actually made of ice, like a snow cone).  And the sun was rising above the horizon, in such vivid hues of orange, red, and purple.  I was soaring through the stratosphere, looking for my next adventure.  What are we waiting for?  We still have the world at our fingertips.  NOTHING HAS CHANGED.  We are only a little older.  THAT'S IT.  There is absolutely nothing that can hold us back from pursuing our dreams.  Nothing.  Only me.  Only you.  The rest of the obstacles are absolutely imaginary, figments of our imagination.  Your boss, your friends, your family obligations, your debt, the guy who flipped you off in traffic, they can't stop you.  Nobody can stop you.  We are all Steve Austin, or Superman, or Wonder Woman, or Scarlett Johannsen (ok, focus....).  To finish where we started, when will you step on the mound, stare down the batter, focused on the weathered catcher's mitt 90 feet away, and fire away?  Will you take that first step from the dugout toward the mound?  What is your dream?