Why I'm Not GM Material

[der meister 3,246]

               The theme week task is to write about General Managers and management in general in the VHL, right? Well, the one thing I've learned about this league is that I do not want to be a General Manager. Yes, part of that is due to my many years of being a GM in the SHL and the burnout that it caused in me, but there are other reasons as well. I guess I'll make a list.

 

1 – Burnout

               As I mentioned, I was an SHL manager for many seasons, just over 20, actually. Dealing with the personalities, the budget, the heartbreak, and my own player's development gets to be overwhelming sooner or later. In terms of the SHL, it basically led me to leave the league altogether for 40 seasons before I finally came back to recreate. Incidentally, my current player there will be my last. So the last thing I want to do is burn myself out of the VHL and start hating the hobby entirely.

 

2 – Discord

               One of the theme articles last week mentioned the importance of communicating with the team off-site, specifically on Discord. Yeah man, that ain't happening with me. Similarly, my communication would be through DMs and the on-site locker room, and I feel like fewer and fewer people actually utilize these functions.

 

3 – Attention to Detail

               In some aspects of life, I think I have a really strong attention to detail - household chores, short story and novel crafting, my day job – so this is actually something of a positive argument for me pursuing a GM gig in the VHL at some point, at least in theory. When I start to examine my day to day life, though, I realize that I'm physically and mentally exhausted, to the point where I'm passing up on other opportunities because I'm at my limit.

 

4 – Time, Specifically a Lack Thereof

               This kind of fits in to being at my limit. I have two kids - 12 and 15 years old now, which is its own mind-boggling, terrifying reality – and they demand a lot of my time and attention. For example, my older child has activities every Monday at 6, every Tuesday at 3:30, every Wednesday and Friday at 4:30, and starting this week, every Saturday at noon. Thankfully, my wife handles the activity schedule of our younger, but that's a lot of time out of the house beyond what I already have to do because of work. The idea of actually scheduling a time to actively pursue a required activity for my hypothetical GM hobby [say, the Draft], is daunting.

 

               I could have used this article to single out managers I've had in the past, but that felt cliché, and I was bound to miss some of them. Hell, I can barely remember what teams I've played for with Ryuji at this point, and this is only his second VHL season. Instead, I hope that my laundry list of complaints helps to emphasize how much I appreciate the GMs in the VHL, regardless of the league, for their commitment to making this league a place I want to spend my time.