Lance Allred the official website of the Lance Allred who is not the professional Poker player

Dying Young-

Sorry, I know, I know I don't update as much as I should. But does a music artist, put up music for free?
On a serious note, I am a writer, not a blogger. Blogging for me, is more unchecked, rambling thought, and I know myself well enough that when I blog, the ego wants to come out and be one more of the many nameless faces offering their unrequested two cents and rather mean opinions. (Check youtube, it still blows my mind sometimes.) But I guess it is easier for most people to say those type of things if they can remain a nameless face, and not have full accountability for it.
But with that said: Go, Butler. Go, disciplined, scrappy basketball. I hear a lot of people complaining that this year's final four is anti-climactic. Are you serious?! This is the best tournament I have seen in a long while, excepting for the part how the officials are letting Duke back into the game against Baylor. That is no good. But Baylor, are you really going to give Duke 24 offensive rebounds? Really?
We have 3 games left this season. But we are for all intents and purposes, finished. This will be my first season ever, where I am not competing in post-season play. It is an odd feeling- walking out there onto the court, with no ultimate objective, other than to just play and win this game, just for the sake of competing.
But, can I follow through on my commitment to myself, when I returned to Boise this year, to just play, to play. Nothing else, no call-up, no validation? And I have done it thus far, and.... I will do it for these last 3 games of this season, and maybe last 3 of my career. Can I leave it all on good terms? Can I walk away, an athlete dying young, before his gradual demise, and be grateful for the time that I had?
Can I walk away, knowing that my greatest accomplishment in basketball, was not a call-up, but rather being able to return to the d-league, and just playing to play and enjoying myself, for the first time, in a long time, allowing me to bid it farewell, this game that has been my life for more than half-my life now, with no bitterness or remorse, but with gratitude?

To An Athlete Dying Young-

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

-A.E. Housman