Bill at the dog park was telling me about the pickup softball game he played yesterday. Mostly a bunch of retired guys. I hinted at crashing the party and he said he’d lend me a glove and pick me up. I like Bill and I like softball. I miss sports like that. Team sports.

Over breakfast I told Mom that I was trying to decide whether to add Tuesday morning softball to my schedule. She said it would be good for me and I agree. But, I pointed out, I’ve already booked myself big. One morning a week wouldn’t hurt, she said.

She’s right that it wouldn’t hurt a lot of things but it might hurt my reachier goals. For a guy like me, a goal like publishing a novel requires sacrifice. People too often use phrases like “requires sacrifice” in abstract ways so let me see what that sacrifice might look like for me.

I might have to put my many valued friendships that I have historically spent so much time and energy cultivating on the way-back burner. That hurts (me and maybe some of them). I might have to put rustlin me up a girlfriend—a thing that I’m champing at the bit to do—aside until I’ve gotten all my notebooks entered. Maybe I’ll need to hold off on learning variations of the martillo on the bongos. Maybe I’ll have to say no to a fun, good-for-me Tuesday morning softball ritual.

Hard to tell. If I knew that the sacrifice would pay off, it’d be easy to make. But it’s a gamble. The sacrifice is made—you lose that thing you gave up no matter what—but you might not get the payoff. I may write another crappy novel. I may realize after getting all my notebooks into a database that they contain nothing so salvagable as I dreamed, or, at least, that I’m not able to make something of it. That’s always been the hard part for me. All my adultish life. And now I’m at a more critical point.