You have the ball, you don't have the ball, you shoot for the gate, Reader

---

Hey there, Reader,

This email comes about three days too late — but better late than never, right?

Right.

Ironically, this issue is a bit like my subject line: I’m walking the plank but still shooting for the gate. I guess most beginnings are like this, and although I’ve been writing my entire life (one way or another), Procrastinatr does feel like a new beginning.

And a pretty public one too.

---

Read time: 6 minutes

---

I’m fairly certain my dad wanted a boy — it’s either that or he never cared much for stereotypes. Both options are equally likely. Whatever it was, he spent my entire childhood hoping I’d get into soccer.

He used to take me to the games, and I remember how exciting it all was. We’d usually meet with all his friends and their kids. We’d then walk to the stadium, about 15 minutes from where we lived.

In front of the stadium, fierce old ladies wearing headkerchiefs sold roasted sunflower seeds. Two for one, but only for the sunflower seeds, never the pumpkin ones. You didn’t want to mess with the sunflower seed mafia, so you’d get the stuff and move along before they scolded you. ‘Cos scolding was invariably right around the corner (or so it felt.)

Dad would get me a cone of seeds, and then we’d walk through the rusty gates. He’d shake hands with the people at the entry, they’d ha-ha and ho-ho about the last few games, and then we’d all go to our seats.

The stadium was usually so empty you could sit anywhere. It was hot. It smelled a bit dusty and a bit green and bit like stale beer. The wooden seats were mostly broken and cracked, like most things that survived the beginning of the 90s Romania. The skies were blue, but it was summer before the weather went crazy in the Balkans, so you knew that later that day, they’d turn to black, and it would rain, and the heat would dissipate through the thousands of water droplets soaking the communist buildings.

“Phwwwwwhht,” the referee’s whistle would blow to start the game.

…Which would also be my sign to turn my back to the game and work on my crossword puzzles for kids.

I couldn’t be bothered. The noise, the odd looks in my direction, not even my dad’s attempts to make me pay attention. “How do you make an M, dad?”, I’d ask, as I was just learning to read and write. He’d draw an M in the air, eyes still on the game.

Even for me, the kid who couldn’t care less for soccer, Hagi was a superhero.

You don’t quite understand the value of moments like these until you grow up. Suddenly, you’re almost the age your dad was when he took you to the games, and you see the world through a slightly different lens.

Gica Hagi was the name everyone knew in Romania in the 90s. He made us all cry with joy and scream and feel proud of who we were, even when it seemed we have no reason to rejoice. Because we didn’t have. We were all living in a country that had just crumbled under the weight of history. In pictures, everyone looked mildly rosy, but in real life, the filters were all grayed out.

Hagi brought hope back to Romania. He played for the game, not for the fame. And it showed.

I still don’t know what a penalty is, and you’d need an entire masterclass to explain it to me. I only know about seven names in soccer (and six of them are from 2004.) But I remember how Hagi made us all feel — and I don’t think there ever will be anything like that, ever again.

We’ve dusted off the 90s now. They’re in the past, like a cringy moment that keeps returning to you when you want to sleep. They left their scars, but we’re all adults now and — whether we have the ball or not, we gotta shoot for that gate.

Deep within Hagi’s (sometimes mocked) snippets of thinking lie priceless pearls of wisdom for life and work. Hagi and marketers, well, it’s likely we wouldn’t get along that well. And yet, the more you look into the funny words he’s been uttering for the last couple of decades, the more you can see that, in a different context, he’d really get us, marketers.

Like, for example:

“Humans are human persons.”

Write like you speak.

“You see a girl, you look at her. But then you look at her and you want to see what’s in her.”

Marketers begging for customer interviews.

“Life is beautiful, but even so, it’s worth living it.”

Marketers, shocked the thing worked.

“To win the title, that’s impossible. But it’s doable.”

Marketers looking at their KPIs for 2023.

“Next year, we’ll have another year and a new year.”

Marketers, every December.

“Let’s go out there, let’s get out, let’s win, let’s win anything. Let’s make it good so it isn’t bad.”

Marketers, every January.

“It’s mathematics, no, I won’t say I discovered it myself. 55 players in 5 years, that’s 10 players a year”

Marketers, counting MQLs.

“I’m always unhappy with what I have, and even if I’m happy, I’ll go and sing again just like last time.”

Marketers, stuck in the same tactics.

“Not words, but actions, which means you have to know what you’re talking about”

Marketers, on LinkedIn.

“Sir, that’s two players! My opinion, a team is made up of more [people]!”

Marketers in startups.

“When they play in the middle, they write, they don’t draw, they write and they draw. And the techniques… that’s what you write with.”

Marketing writers + design = love.

“I was alone before, and alone I’ll move on, I’m a leader, and I’ll go with my own [ideas/ instincts]. ‘Cos I’m a leader. I am because that’s how mom made me.”

Solo marketers.

“I was born to be a leader, not to just exist.”

Marketing hustle bros.

“It’s very difficult, but it’s not easy. It’s winter time. Winter is hard, complicated, we don’t make the weather. You play soccer outside.”

Marketers, looking at a recession.

“Well, that’s what happens if, in Romania, we change coaches like, pardon me, internalgarments.”

Marketing teams changing structure for the third time in a year.

“That who does good, the people will see you.”

Marketers on social media.

“A game, basically every game has its history, the moments that can go in your favor, positively or negatively.”

Marketers about ChatGPT.

***

Jokes aside, you don’t grow to be Gheorghe Hagi with hacks and magic tricks.

“I think you’re born with a gift, and then you perfect it. You take it from zero to infinity,” he said in an interview a few years ago. “You work a lot, and you repeat it, and then you can trust your instinct and get to automate it.”

And you don’t get to be as loved as he was if you’re in it for the eternal glory.

“We play for the people back home, everyone’s sad there, this makes them happy,” he said in another interview in the 90s, his heyday.

I cannot help but wonder how the world would look if we all thought — and worked — like this. How would the Tech space look now?

I’ll leave it as food for thought.

---

PS: You have the ball, you don’t have the ball, you shoot for the gate is a sentence frequently attributed to Hagi, but as it appears, he wasn’t the one to come up with it. People just felt it was fitting for him, so now everyone believes he said it first.

---

Procrastinatr's Hall of Fame (02/12/2023 - 03/01/2023)

• ​If you listen to podcasts more than I do (once/ week when I scrub my house clean), check these out​
• ​This thing about the layoffs that feels like a giant elephant in a student dorm room​
• ​This LI post from Ann Handley, the comments, and the connected New Yorker article ​
• ​If you only read one thing against ChatGPT, read this one​
• ​This 34-minute-long video capturing the euphoria people felt after Romania beat Argentina in '94​

---

​

Shoot for the stars,

Octavia

113 Cherry St #92768, Dumbravita, Timis 307160
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​