Up until this moment, from 2020, I’ve written 107,047 words for Ted Lasso. (I did, in fact, copy everything into one doc to get a headcount. It felt necessary to be thorough with this one.) Yet, there’s one thing I might never find the right words for. I can try, but they’re going to fall flat because you can’t ever fully sum up why something means so much to you, no matter how hard you try.
“Onward, forward.” Two words, one perfect delivery, will always leave me at a loss for words.
When I first heard Ted tell the team, “Look around this room, ain’t nobody in here sad and alone.” I was sitting alone in my bedroom, lights off, laptop in front of me at the height of the pandemic, facing the worst writer’s block I’d ever known. I was, in more ways than one, sad and alone. But something snapped almost instantly as I heard the words “onward, forward.” I didn’t understand it then as I sat weeping uncontrollably, realizing I’d just watched what would turn out to be one of my favorite shows ever.
For the longest time, it felt like my words no longer mattered. I wasn’t getting hired anywhere I’d applied. I was begrudgingly back in school, ready to leave journalism behind for good to pursue a job I didn’t want in teaching. Well, if no one cares about my words, I guess I’ll just preach about someone else’s to a class that needs it.
It was particularly awful one night because, on top of feeling inadequate, my brain was trying to convince me that I was the worst writer to exist. So I prayed to God, begging for a sign. I couldn’t let the ideas go; I didn’t want to stop writing, but every rejection felt like the universe telling me I wasn’t cut out for this. Simultaneously, when I mostly had zero inspiration left, and my anxieties were eating me alive, I had the urge to get my feelings out for a little show called Ted Lasso anyway. I didn’t think anything of it—I just wanted to write about Roy Kent’s vulnerability because it mattered that someone saw him even when he believed that pushing everyone away from his hatred was the better option. It was then that I wrote the Scene Breakdown: Locker Room Vulnerability in Ted Lasso’s “The Hope That Kills You” Between Keeley and Roy.
The next morning, I woke up to the Brett Goldstein (I don’t need to specify that he’s Roy Kent, do I?) sharing my article. He didn’t simply RT it, but he somehow found my username on Twitter and mentioned me specifically. I don’t think he’ll ever realize what a huge deal that was. Because after a horrible breakdown the night before, I firmly believed that was the sign I had prayed for—the something, anything to show me that my words weren’t just falling into some void. It then became about every single person who crossed my path because of the show—the friends I made and the emotions we shared.
People don’t believe me when I say that Ted Lasso changed my writing journey. But the words “onward forward” spoke to a part of me that I was scared to reach into—a part of me that I put aside. My therapist recently said that rejections in the creative field hurt so deeply because they are such an innate part of who we are that they strike all our emotions at once. We can’t think logically when our emotions are the ones bared and broken down.
Writing will always feel personal to me because I feel so much of what I’m watching and reading on a deep, indescribable level. It’s why I stubbornly refuse to leave this field behind even when, once again, I’m sitting here without a job and fighting tooth and nail in an industry that’s trying to replace me with emotionless robots. But onward, forward—words matter.
They’re always going to matter, and they’re especially going to matter when they come from a place of vulnerability or passion. The good, the bad, the ugly—it all matters. So, while I can’t fully articulate why the words mean so much to me, I got them tattooed on my skin to remember how much this entire journey changed me. It’s about the words left unsaid, the ones that will unfold later, the stories we’ll continue to tell, and how writing could be a powerful reminder of our inherent human desires to be seen and understood. And it’s about my personal fight to keep writing even when it feels bleak, heartbreaking, and worthless.
Additional Analysis: Why Ted’s Locker Room Speech in Ted Lasso’s “The Hope That Kills You” Matters
What do the words “onward, forward” mean to you? Let us know in the comments below.