I never wanted to be a sports fan.

It takes too much emotion.  Instead of watching pig skin balls cross lines while being carried by brute men in colorful tights, I opted for the arts.  Theater.  Painting.  Galleries of modern art and blissful afternoons of imagery and metaphor, told on the written page.  Now that’s my idea of exhilaration.

I never wanted to be a sports fan.

And then I had no choice.  I moved to Boston.

It was everywhere.  It was on the streets during parades, it was on billboard signs of the trains I took.  I swear, sometimes, it was even in the beer.  Everywhere.  Sports was everywhere.

And still I denied it.

Before any complex understanding of different sports, I was like many non-sport fans: somewhat disgusted with the attention athletes receive and the unparalleled focus society places on sporting events.  I was a snob, in other words.  That is, until I discovered what sports CAN be about.

In the company of my sporty spouse who has a considerable amount of sport knowledge, I began attending Reds games, Ohio State football games, and scoring great seats to watch the Cavs.  Nick began to share the ins and outs of plays, the thought process of calculating risk, the strategy of a team backed up against a wall.  He taught me about watching the clock, how timeouts should be used, when to spike a ball, what it means when a shortstop stands two steps forward, how rankings are done, what preseason is all about.

Before long, my interest grew.  I would never claim to be a diehard fan of anything, but I did take a particular interest in the largest sports story to break this year: LeBron James dissing Cleveland in a long drawn-out process of ego stroking.

But, a deeper analysis of James’ decision reveals much, much more than just a desire to choose which yellow brick road will lead him to the championship ring.  What rocks reluctant fans, like myself, is that James’ decision confirms the worst about sports and small-town folks who make it big: they sell out.

LeBron sold out.  Not with money or power, but he sold out the incredibly rare connection that many of us strive to have: a person-place relationship.  It’s not about the Cavs, it’s about place.  It’s about building a foundation in the place LEAST likely to succeed that truly spins the greatest stories.  More and more, that spirit vanishing.  We are born and raised in one place and then we set our sights on the Emerald City, convinced it has the key to complete our dream. We give shout-outs to our hometowns, but we’d never be caught dead with its zip code.

It rattles and irritates me when I’m told to settle down about LeBron’s decision to leave Ohio.  And not just because his immature and diva-studded process resulted in the largest orchestrated sympathy card for Cleveland imaginable.  I am agitated by the “poor, poor Cleveland” mantra that is decimating the media waves and marching into the open ears of young people.  As if a ring is more significant than growing up with ties and relationships.  As if “finding” success is more meaningful than building it.

However, I do resonate with the geography talk.  As a writer, I’m consistently forced to evaluate my geography. I moan and wail over the midwest louder than anyone.  I worry about the shortage of creative communities.  The likelihood of finding challenging mentors or writing confidants is slim in the midwest because, well, the midwest isn’t known for its creative harbors.  In my mind, New York, Oakland, and other big, glitzy cities offer more square foot refuge to radically minded moms who want to write memoirs about interpersonal transformation and social justice.  It isn’t a coincidence I moved once a year for ten years.  Searching for your mojo kinda makes you feel restless, to put it mildly.

But, I often find myself countering those thoughts with questions like, what exactly is it that will make me the best writer I can be, what will help me best cultivate my writing voice? The answer I found as a writer is the same answer that Lebron James should have come to, the same place every person who is in search of personal achievement eventually (and hopefully) arrives: it’s what you BUILD with what’s inside you that will deliver your glory.

You travel and move to learn from other places and people, but you don’t need to live next to the ocean to learn how to swim. The New Clevelander is someone with talent.  Someone successful.  Someone with every availability to leave, but chooses to stay. You choose to stay not out of loyalty or fear or safety.  You choose to stay because you recognize that what you are pursuing can and must be built by your own two hands.  Who knows if I will be a permanent midwesterner, but I am grateful to it for teaching me its most profound lesson:  what you carry inside you, not where you live, will determine your destiny.