05-26-2023, 04:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-01-2023, 07:31 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 1 time in total.)
It is Friday afternoon here and I just got off work unexpectedly early and have a couple hours to kill before a show I'm playing for. Usually that would mean I'm going home to hang out with my wife and 2 (almost 3!) year old girl for a little special family time, but today they are out of state visiting my sister-in-law and her family, so I find myself sitting in a library killing a little time and decided to check out what the heck is going on in the world of the ISFL. I checked my bank and found it unfortunately dry and realized I have a little time, maybe I could write a media post! I love writing (in fact, I should probably be writing my sermon for next Sunday right now...don't tell) but I haven't had a lot of time to do so lately. As I thought about what I should write about, I saw the post that Memorial Day weekend is being celebrated with double pay and that sealed it for me. So here's a trip down memory lane for me...
I joined this league in the summer of 2020. My wife was 8 months pregnant and I had just begun working from home for a pest control company. We left the world of the office when Covid hit and never went back, but at the time I thought this was a temporary change. I was crammed in our guest room at a makeshift desk, answering phone calls, selling services, and putting out fires, and suddenly realized just how much of my days had been previously made up of talking to coworkers. Now that I was working from home, needing to be isolated so that I could hear customers and not have too much background noise, I was bored. I began catching up on YouTube in ways I hadn't done since high school, but could only do that for so long before I remembered why I didn't watch much YouTube anymore. I tried lots of different coping mechanisms but nothing was really clicking. That was when I remembered that my friend @mithrandir had talked to me a few times about this fictional football league that he was a part of. We'd played fantasy football together for years and talked often about all things sports, but this sounded truly weird...The sell was, basically, you do homework so that your dot can be good at football? But when I say I was bored, I was REALLY bored. So, what the heck, I gave it a try.
What I found was a world that catered to the things that I love to do. Compete, create, and commune with people who also liked those things. Once I got through the initial headache of creating a profile and learning how to make money and earn experience, I was hooked. Before long, I downloaded Discord so that I could talk to these people a little bit more, and found that this league is filled with weird and awesome people who just like to have fun, and that was a heck of a discovery. Suddenly, when I was having a particularly boring day at work, I was able to cope by reading about these fake football players and their hilarious background stories, or build out my own wild story for the player that I had created. Not only that, but I began running my own statistical analyses of wins vs championships, where the most important positions are to have high TPE players, and comparing these results to real life NFL football in order to make things feel more real to myself. I wrote articles that I worked on harder than many things I've turned in throughout my education just to scratch the itch of exploring and make some pretend dollars.
Then, just a month later, my life changed forever with the birth of my daughter. Suddenly I had a chance to hang with an awesome little human every chance I could and to shape a life that I'll be around forever. That shifted the priorities a bit. I still was able to do some Discord (which by the way was filled with people I had only talked to online congratulating me for the birth of my child and asking me about how things were going!), some writing, and some live watching of games, but most things got pushed to the side a bit further as I had a larger responsibility to my family of 3 than before. At that point, my circle grew a bit smaller, mostly consisting of some chatting in the Tijuana channel and some conversations with my draft partner @Tonzy. The two of us did a few mock interviews that were a lot of fun, but my schedule made it clear to one destined for greater things that his time should be prioritized elsewhere. I will always be grateful, though, for his constant check ins to see how life was going even though I so rarely remembered to do the same in response.
A year later, I accepted a part time job as a director of kids and families at a church nearby which only added to the load. I must say, the addition was extremely welcome, but there's no question when it comes to ISFL that my time became more limited. I was only able to do a weekly check-in and at times even that didn't happen. I still enjoyed watching games, usually 2 or 3 at a time on a slow evening after my family was sleeping, but the community side of things slipped a bit. One of the bigger reasons I stuck around at this point was the efforts of my new GM @Dewalt27. For some reason, he traded one of Berlin's inaugural draft picks to rescue me from a situation that was less than ideal and brought me into Berlin's locker room before anyone had even been drafted. To get to be one of the first four in that room made things feel like they had bigger stakes. I was now a foundational piece of something that people were working hard to build from the ground up, and I didn't want to let them down. This became a new little family that encouraged me that it was still worth the work to keep up a fun player that I had built from scratch, and that in fact this was the best time to keep working because he was now a 1000+ TPE player who could make a bit impact! Why leave now?
So, I got to watch Berlin go from cellar dwellers to reaching the Ultimus twice before the retirement of Adam Schell, who still holds the record for most tackles in Berlin's young franchise history and sits top three in the franchise for career TFLs, sacks, PDs, FFs, and FRs, including a highlight moment of getting a pick six that sent us to our first conference championship game. It was devastating not ever getting a championship with this player, but at the same time his career meant more than that to me, as it represented my introduction into the ISFL and its wonderful people. It was also a career that I was able to build far greater than I expected to. Schell peaked with something like 1450 TPE and was one of the top earners in that class, a testament to the greater amount of time I had then, but also to the addictive nature of this league and the way that it captured me. I truly had such a blast with that first render.
As my career was winding down, Dewalt asked me if I was planning on creating another player. My initial answer was no. I had put so much into this career and didn't know if I could sustain the same effort level for a new one. Additionally, I'm not someone who can half-ass something easily - I tend to be all or nothing. At this point, he gave me the advice which is the reason I am still in this league today. He told me, your current render is plenty good to make it another couple seasons without doing trainings, so save all your money that you would normally make so that you have it banked for your next render. Because of this, I ended up accruing about $12m with which to start a new career, and decided to do so.
Thus, Really Creative-Name was born. Around the same time, my work schedules changed again and things got even harder to be consistent with this shindig, but I was able most weeks to still check in and have gotten to watch most of the games. As a wide receiver this time around, it's been a new joy to watch my little dot run around and try to be faster than all the other little dots, though I don't understand how he can be open so often and not thrown to (hear this in the voice of a little league dad yelling at his coach)!
I mostly have funded this career with Twitter, so losing that source of income earlier this year was a huge bummer that has cast some doubt on if I can continue my career after this one (days to write like today don't come around often for me), but if I do have to give it up eventually, it will be a decision I make with great sadness.
However, I am all but sure I will finish out this career in Berlin. When I came into the league, my goal was to end up on the same team as my buddy Mith someday. But then I drank the Kool Aid. After Berlin brought me in and I helped to build out that franchise initially, all that I want is to see them win it all. So even though I've missed a few updates and my predictions have been absolute doggie doo doo this year, I'm trying my hardest to help build a team that can win it all. It's not the only goal that I have, but it is one that I would love to see us achieve!
It's crazy to think that this has been a part of my life for 3 years now. It has seen me through two moves, three job changes, starting school, stopping school, and starting school again. I had my first kid and just reached my 5 year wedding anniversary, and if I'm lucky, I'll soon be purchasing the business that I currently work for. And through all of those things, I've watched my little dot run around on a fake football screen, chasing other little dots (or running away from them) to try and score points for fake teams. I have written two different fake life stories, one with admittedly far greater detail than the other, and learned the stories of many other fake people. I have even played fantasy fake football, which is one of the wilder things I've ever had to explain to my bewildered wife, and obsessed over the optimal lineup of pretend football player dots to roster against my competitors. I've sent messages to strangers on Discord to discuss their interest in and predictions for their future fake football career, and in so doing have met some hilarious and bizarre humans like me who just needed an outlet for creativity and a community to invest in.
I don't know if this will be a lifelong adventure for me - in fact, I strongly doubt that it will be - but it has been an amazing community that I needed at a time that I was quickly approaching rock bottom. In the last three years, I've learned how to be a better dad, husband, employee, teacher, pastor, and overall person than I was when I created this account. I'm not crediting the ISFL with all of those things, but the truth is it has been a consistent part of my life through all of those things and has allowed me to focus my thoughts and funnel my energy at times when I felt like everything was out of my control. Fact is, whether or not I could control what was happening in my real life, I could make my players attend silly events, begin dream charities, and have successful careers through my work on their profiles. And sometimes I think we all need that.
So, even though this post was inspired by the fact that I could make double money by making it, it has been awesome to reflect on the last three years, both within and outside of the ISFL. Thank you to all of you who have shown me the ropes of how to do this well, and thank you for all of you who have shown genuine interest in me. This is a special community to be a part of, even if I've only been able to be on the fringe of it for the latter half of my time here.
If I may, I'd love to share a couple of thoughts while I'm here.
1) Don't make this league harder to be a part of than is necessary. Our strength is not in how difficult it is to max out a player, it is in the people that we have here and the community that we offer others to be a part of.
2) Invite your friends. This league has been so much more fun because it started with someone who was my friend in real life. There was a stretch where I wasn't sure how close we were going to remain due to geographical limitations, but this league was a catalyst for conversation in a season where it would have been easy to fall apart. It's actually pretty dang cool to think about that as well as the other fun acquaintances I've made along the way as a part of this league.
3) Just have fun with it. I've still never won a championship. I hope that I do. But even if I don't, the investment that I've gotten to make in Berlin and the blind belief I have that we are going to win an Ultimus someday has given me the real life fan experience that I only get from September through February as a Bengals fan (that's right, I said February #WhoDey). To get to have that type of experience year round has been a blast (even if it has only been an extension of my annual heartbreak) and I'm convinced that someday we're gonna freaking win it all - watch out, league!!!
Thank you all for honoring me with your kind words, investment, and encouragement of me over the course of the last three years. I know that my story isn't super common - most people who are involved around here are more active on Discord or get into leadership in this league in one way or another, but I hope that my story is one that is more and more common as people stumble upon this wild and wacky league. Not everyone has to be a GM or team captain or even in the war room to have fun with this. I'm a testament to the possibility of a small time commitment with big time fun. So if you have someone in your life who isn't going to be able to do it all, feel free to use my story as an example of how you can still enjoy this league, even if you only have an hour or so a week to give to it. In short, keep it up, everybody! You've built an awesome community and I'm honored just to be a part of it. I hope you all have an awesome Memorial Day weekend and that my story and the dozens of others we'll get to read in the coming week will keep moving this league toward bigger and better things.
I joined this league in the summer of 2020. My wife was 8 months pregnant and I had just begun working from home for a pest control company. We left the world of the office when Covid hit and never went back, but at the time I thought this was a temporary change. I was crammed in our guest room at a makeshift desk, answering phone calls, selling services, and putting out fires, and suddenly realized just how much of my days had been previously made up of talking to coworkers. Now that I was working from home, needing to be isolated so that I could hear customers and not have too much background noise, I was bored. I began catching up on YouTube in ways I hadn't done since high school, but could only do that for so long before I remembered why I didn't watch much YouTube anymore. I tried lots of different coping mechanisms but nothing was really clicking. That was when I remembered that my friend @mithrandir had talked to me a few times about this fictional football league that he was a part of. We'd played fantasy football together for years and talked often about all things sports, but this sounded truly weird...The sell was, basically, you do homework so that your dot can be good at football? But when I say I was bored, I was REALLY bored. So, what the heck, I gave it a try.
What I found was a world that catered to the things that I love to do. Compete, create, and commune with people who also liked those things. Once I got through the initial headache of creating a profile and learning how to make money and earn experience, I was hooked. Before long, I downloaded Discord so that I could talk to these people a little bit more, and found that this league is filled with weird and awesome people who just like to have fun, and that was a heck of a discovery. Suddenly, when I was having a particularly boring day at work, I was able to cope by reading about these fake football players and their hilarious background stories, or build out my own wild story for the player that I had created. Not only that, but I began running my own statistical analyses of wins vs championships, where the most important positions are to have high TPE players, and comparing these results to real life NFL football in order to make things feel more real to myself. I wrote articles that I worked on harder than many things I've turned in throughout my education just to scratch the itch of exploring and make some pretend dollars.
Then, just a month later, my life changed forever with the birth of my daughter. Suddenly I had a chance to hang with an awesome little human every chance I could and to shape a life that I'll be around forever. That shifted the priorities a bit. I still was able to do some Discord (which by the way was filled with people I had only talked to online congratulating me for the birth of my child and asking me about how things were going!), some writing, and some live watching of games, but most things got pushed to the side a bit further as I had a larger responsibility to my family of 3 than before. At that point, my circle grew a bit smaller, mostly consisting of some chatting in the Tijuana channel and some conversations with my draft partner @Tonzy. The two of us did a few mock interviews that were a lot of fun, but my schedule made it clear to one destined for greater things that his time should be prioritized elsewhere. I will always be grateful, though, for his constant check ins to see how life was going even though I so rarely remembered to do the same in response.
A year later, I accepted a part time job as a director of kids and families at a church nearby which only added to the load. I must say, the addition was extremely welcome, but there's no question when it comes to ISFL that my time became more limited. I was only able to do a weekly check-in and at times even that didn't happen. I still enjoyed watching games, usually 2 or 3 at a time on a slow evening after my family was sleeping, but the community side of things slipped a bit. One of the bigger reasons I stuck around at this point was the efforts of my new GM @Dewalt27. For some reason, he traded one of Berlin's inaugural draft picks to rescue me from a situation that was less than ideal and brought me into Berlin's locker room before anyone had even been drafted. To get to be one of the first four in that room made things feel like they had bigger stakes. I was now a foundational piece of something that people were working hard to build from the ground up, and I didn't want to let them down. This became a new little family that encouraged me that it was still worth the work to keep up a fun player that I had built from scratch, and that in fact this was the best time to keep working because he was now a 1000+ TPE player who could make a bit impact! Why leave now?
So, I got to watch Berlin go from cellar dwellers to reaching the Ultimus twice before the retirement of Adam Schell, who still holds the record for most tackles in Berlin's young franchise history and sits top three in the franchise for career TFLs, sacks, PDs, FFs, and FRs, including a highlight moment of getting a pick six that sent us to our first conference championship game. It was devastating not ever getting a championship with this player, but at the same time his career meant more than that to me, as it represented my introduction into the ISFL and its wonderful people. It was also a career that I was able to build far greater than I expected to. Schell peaked with something like 1450 TPE and was one of the top earners in that class, a testament to the greater amount of time I had then, but also to the addictive nature of this league and the way that it captured me. I truly had such a blast with that first render.
As my career was winding down, Dewalt asked me if I was planning on creating another player. My initial answer was no. I had put so much into this career and didn't know if I could sustain the same effort level for a new one. Additionally, I'm not someone who can half-ass something easily - I tend to be all or nothing. At this point, he gave me the advice which is the reason I am still in this league today. He told me, your current render is plenty good to make it another couple seasons without doing trainings, so save all your money that you would normally make so that you have it banked for your next render. Because of this, I ended up accruing about $12m with which to start a new career, and decided to do so.
Thus, Really Creative-Name was born. Around the same time, my work schedules changed again and things got even harder to be consistent with this shindig, but I was able most weeks to still check in and have gotten to watch most of the games. As a wide receiver this time around, it's been a new joy to watch my little dot run around and try to be faster than all the other little dots, though I don't understand how he can be open so often and not thrown to (hear this in the voice of a little league dad yelling at his coach)!
I mostly have funded this career with Twitter, so losing that source of income earlier this year was a huge bummer that has cast some doubt on if I can continue my career after this one (days to write like today don't come around often for me), but if I do have to give it up eventually, it will be a decision I make with great sadness.
However, I am all but sure I will finish out this career in Berlin. When I came into the league, my goal was to end up on the same team as my buddy Mith someday. But then I drank the Kool Aid. After Berlin brought me in and I helped to build out that franchise initially, all that I want is to see them win it all. So even though I've missed a few updates and my predictions have been absolute doggie doo doo this year, I'm trying my hardest to help build a team that can win it all. It's not the only goal that I have, but it is one that I would love to see us achieve!
It's crazy to think that this has been a part of my life for 3 years now. It has seen me through two moves, three job changes, starting school, stopping school, and starting school again. I had my first kid and just reached my 5 year wedding anniversary, and if I'm lucky, I'll soon be purchasing the business that I currently work for. And through all of those things, I've watched my little dot run around on a fake football screen, chasing other little dots (or running away from them) to try and score points for fake teams. I have written two different fake life stories, one with admittedly far greater detail than the other, and learned the stories of many other fake people. I have even played fantasy fake football, which is one of the wilder things I've ever had to explain to my bewildered wife, and obsessed over the optimal lineup of pretend football player dots to roster against my competitors. I've sent messages to strangers on Discord to discuss their interest in and predictions for their future fake football career, and in so doing have met some hilarious and bizarre humans like me who just needed an outlet for creativity and a community to invest in.
I don't know if this will be a lifelong adventure for me - in fact, I strongly doubt that it will be - but it has been an amazing community that I needed at a time that I was quickly approaching rock bottom. In the last three years, I've learned how to be a better dad, husband, employee, teacher, pastor, and overall person than I was when I created this account. I'm not crediting the ISFL with all of those things, but the truth is it has been a consistent part of my life through all of those things and has allowed me to focus my thoughts and funnel my energy at times when I felt like everything was out of my control. Fact is, whether or not I could control what was happening in my real life, I could make my players attend silly events, begin dream charities, and have successful careers through my work on their profiles. And sometimes I think we all need that.
So, even though this post was inspired by the fact that I could make double money by making it, it has been awesome to reflect on the last three years, both within and outside of the ISFL. Thank you to all of you who have shown me the ropes of how to do this well, and thank you for all of you who have shown genuine interest in me. This is a special community to be a part of, even if I've only been able to be on the fringe of it for the latter half of my time here.
If I may, I'd love to share a couple of thoughts while I'm here.
1) Don't make this league harder to be a part of than is necessary. Our strength is not in how difficult it is to max out a player, it is in the people that we have here and the community that we offer others to be a part of.
2) Invite your friends. This league has been so much more fun because it started with someone who was my friend in real life. There was a stretch where I wasn't sure how close we were going to remain due to geographical limitations, but this league was a catalyst for conversation in a season where it would have been easy to fall apart. It's actually pretty dang cool to think about that as well as the other fun acquaintances I've made along the way as a part of this league.
3) Just have fun with it. I've still never won a championship. I hope that I do. But even if I don't, the investment that I've gotten to make in Berlin and the blind belief I have that we are going to win an Ultimus someday has given me the real life fan experience that I only get from September through February as a Bengals fan (that's right, I said February #WhoDey). To get to have that type of experience year round has been a blast (even if it has only been an extension of my annual heartbreak) and I'm convinced that someday we're gonna freaking win it all - watch out, league!!!
Thank you all for honoring me with your kind words, investment, and encouragement of me over the course of the last three years. I know that my story isn't super common - most people who are involved around here are more active on Discord or get into leadership in this league in one way or another, but I hope that my story is one that is more and more common as people stumble upon this wild and wacky league. Not everyone has to be a GM or team captain or even in the war room to have fun with this. I'm a testament to the possibility of a small time commitment with big time fun. So if you have someone in your life who isn't going to be able to do it all, feel free to use my story as an example of how you can still enjoy this league, even if you only have an hour or so a week to give to it. In short, keep it up, everybody! You've built an awesome community and I'm honored just to be a part of it. I hope you all have an awesome Memorial Day weekend and that my story and the dozens of others we'll get to read in the coming week will keep moving this league toward bigger and better things.