I’m Tired of Football (this article is not about football)

The last time I published on LinkedIn I was sad, but not because the football team I support blew a first half 2 goal lead, conceded 5 goals in the second half, and gave one of the most disliked players in the sport a hat-trick along the way. The last time I published on LinkedIn I was sad because a year after leaving Game Development to start a career in traditional Software Engineering, I felt like I had made little measurable progress. Since that time however, I landed two jobs — one of which on its own pays me more than I was earning at my best Game Development job, I feel better, I look better, I am much happier and I’m working on personal projects again simply for the sake of passion. Dw, I’m not writing an entire LinkedIn article about football, it just turns out to be a very good metaphor for how I feel like my life is changing.

I Stopped Caring About Football a Long Time Ago Actually

I grew up on football. My brother was a very passionate Man-U supporter, and as a kid I joined him in support of Fergusson’s side. But in 2013, Lewandowski scored 4 goals against Real Madrid to give Dortmund a road to the Champions League final. It was the best underdog story I had yet seen in real life. I couldn’t help it. I instantly became a Dortmund fan.

Unfortunately, it was very soon after that I learned we don’t live in a world for underdogs. Dortmund lost that Champions League final to Bayern — the strongest team in Germany — that had made it their life’s mission to economically bully all the other German teams into submission, quickly buying up any player with even a glimmer of promise from any serious rival German side.

Bayern was bad, but Madrid was worse. Their approach to what is supposed to be the most beautiful sport in the world is simply to spend as much money as possible, buying up “Galacticos” — the best players in the world that have already developed and proven their talent in other teams that cared enough to develop them. But you see, it doesn’t matter that they use these ugly money-based strategies. It never did. And in 2018, when Madrid won their 4th Champions league title in 5 years and their 3rd in a row, I decided I had had enough. I was no longer interested. I stopped caring about football. But Bayern and Madrid understood something that I naively refused to accept for way too long — doing the “right” thing doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is doing the thing that gets you favorable results.

I eventually got back into football in 2021, while I was trapped in a hostel room with 3 other boys that couldn’t really talk about anything else. My favorite thing about football is its ability to help you connect with people you otherwise have nothing in common with, but that is beside the point.

I’ve Been Holding Myself Back My Entire Life Because It Felt Like The “Right” Thing

I am an intelligent man from a third world country. I am a man that cares about people. I am a man that understands that people don’t choose how they come into this world. They don’t choose their height, where they’re born, and they don’t choose their level of natural intelligence. Being intelligent is not a bragging right because you did not earn it, it was given to you. Being intelligent is a responsibility because there are only a small number of intelligent people in the world, and the world we live in and enjoy is designed almost in its entirety by intelligent people.

My dad made me believe (and I still think he is right) that in any given society, only a small number of people actually possess the ability and the will to significantly impact the general fortune of their society and the people in it. We can look anywhere really, the founding fathers of America, the founding fathers of Computing, or most recently, the founding fathers of AI, and the truth is that out of the billions of people in the world, there is always a very short list of people that have the will and the capacity to effectively drive change and progress, carrying the others along with them.

This is why when I had the opportunity to latch on to the FAANG hiring spree that took place around the COVID times, I let it slip through my fingers. I just could not see how moving to a first world country to make >$100k for doing barely anything aligned with my feeling of responsibility to where I’m from. I was trying to do the right thing. No more.

I Still Didn’t Do Anything Worthwhile

For all my claim to intelligence and my feeling of responsibility, you may expect that letting go of the opportunity to trade 3rd world suffering for 1st world comfort would count for something, but it really didn’t. Fresh out of school with no real-world experience, I actually did not have anything worthwhile to contribute. Intelligence without information is just dormant nonsense and I had no valuable information. Realizing that I could not actually just stand up and start making impact out of thin air, I settled to keep doing what had started out as a hobby — Game Development. I made progress, I got a remote job and before I knew it, I was doing exactly what I was running away from. I was making money ($50k not $100k) without contributing anything worthwhile to the world. Every day I woke up to write code that I knew ultimately didn’t mean anything or do anything, code that I knew was not part of any bigger scheme of change or progress. Every day I woke up to write code for yet another cash grab attempt at a Fortnite clone for mobile. Every day I got sadder and more depressed, and one-and-a-half years in, I couldn’t take it anymore. I quit. You know the rest.

The “Right” Thing Doesn’t Matter, Only Results

We live in a complicated world with many different rules. Some of them are natural and irrefutable (like the laws of physics), a lot of them are manmade and mythical (like the laws of the economy and the esoteric, undocumented rules of social engagement), and some of them are a weird mix of the two like the rules of power and social hierarchy. But there is a singular simple truth about the world we live in today that any adult has to eventually accept — the only two true foundations upon which societal impact can be built on in the 21st century are money and popularity.

Money and Popularity

It is so frustratingly simple, yet completely true. These are the only two true currencies of power and hence direct signifiers of the influence a person can exert on the world. You need either one or both of these things to drive any real change in the 21st century. It wasn’t always like this. There were times when blood/lineage were social currency, there were times when knowledge was social currency (Einstein was a world known celebrity despite having no money). Popularity is weird here because it seems to refer back to itself, but what I mean is that in the 21st century, your popularity doesn’t have to be backed by anything. Popularity is in and of itself social currency and can be gotten and maintained by any means necessary…including starting an OnlyFans. OnlyFans is by no stretch of the imagination a “right” thing, but it sure as hell is getting results for many beautiful (or not so beautiful) people. Just to be clear, I have no intentions of starting an OnlyFans anytime in the near future, results or not, I am an Engineer pls.

I’ve come to a mentality reset of sorts. Life is hard enough on its own. Getting results from life is even harder. Getting results from life while trying to make sure you’re doing the “right” thing is nearly impossible.

I’m now primarily focused on getting results, and by results, I mean money and popularity. It is a hard thing to do and there is no guarantee of success, far from it. But, by directly chasing money I will at least get some of it, maybe never enough to exert force on the world but hopefully enough to ensure the comfort and peace of mind of the people close to me — my friends and family. I will get married; I will have kids, and I will try my best to ensure that material possession will not be one of the hindrances to my family’s happiness.

Football is not boring. It is a truly beautiful game, and I can’t just stop watching it all at once. But I’m detaching myself from Dortmund because I no longer align with their ideas of wanting to build a team the “right” way. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are now much closer representations of my new mentality and world view — get results by almost any means necessary. Unfortunately, I dislike both those teams too much to ever be in support of anything they do. I dislike their colors, their logos, their players, their managers and their fans. I may gravitate towards Liverpool. For 9 years, they were managed by Dortmund’s former legendary coach — Jurgen Klopp and I’ve formed a bit of a soft spot for them. They however do not try to play football the “right” way and similarly to Madrid and Bayern, they are simply committed to getting results. The end.