On the power of sharing what you learn with younger generations

Being a professional athlete takes a lot of time and commitment. Did you find yourself getting burnt out at all when juggling writing a children’s book, while also going to practice and working out, etc. How did you balance writing the book with football?

Oddly enough, it helped me with football, because it took my mind off football. It gave me something to do with my spare time. Sometimes, especially with training camp, you want to overwork yourself. You thinkg, “I’m going to do all this football stuff, football, football, football…” In order to not burn out football, you need to do something outside of football. You need to have some time to yourself.

So I was writing the book all through camp. I would make sure once I’m on the field, I’m getting every last buck out of what I’m doing. Once I’m in the film room, I’m making sure whatever I need to work on, I’m working every last thing in the film room. Once I reach the dorms, it’s free time.

Writing the book helped because, while I was doing it, I didn’t think about football. Sometimes you might mess up [in a game or in practice] and it will be on your mind the whole day, but the more I grew in my faith and the more I knew God has a plan for everything you do, the more I noticed that writing this book helped me free my mind and that God helped me relax.

Writing this book helped me get through camp.

How’d you first start writing it? Your sister did the art. Did you talk to her at the beginning, or did you write the book first?

I wrote the book first. I always wanted to write a book, and I always wanted to do something for the kids. I love inspiring them, giving them resources and knowledge. I feel like knowledge goes further than materialistic things. Knowledge can continuously be passed down for eternity. You know what I’m saying? So I wanted to do something like that. I’m also into fashion [which is a big part of the book’s subject matter], so all of that just clicked.

My friend [Buffalo Bills cornerback] Ja’Marcus [Ingram] wrote a book and we always talked to each other about business ideas and things like that. That also helped me with the book. Just understanding what I like to do, who I am, and putting it all into a form for kids to grasp it and to retain it, to remember it enough to pass it along.

Was it easier to write a book than you thought it would be?

Writing the book itself was pretty easy. The process of selling the book, getting it on websites… Stuff like that was pretty tedious, because I wasn’t too knowledgeable in that area.

I’ve talked to people in so many different kinds of creative outlets. It seems like making the project is the easy part and dealing with it after the fact, finding a publisher, waiting for a year for it to come out… that’s the hardest part. One thing I thought was cool is the coloring book aspect of the book. Was that an idea you had from the beginning?

Yeah, my book is all about being yourself; thinking and using your imagination to construct your own self, construct your own clothes, construct your own beliefs. The coloring books allow people to do that. You create your fashion within the characters in the book. You color whatever color you want them to wear.

One of my kids recently turned 15, the other one’s 12, and they suddenly have a very specific sense of fashion. And, truthfully, it might be different than what I think of as fashionable. I saw an interview where you’re saying, “You might have the very specific sneakers you want to give to your kid, and they’re like, ‘I don’t really want these. I’m into something different.’” Have you found that your own personal sense of fashion is not reflected in your kid?

Yeah, 100 percent. My kid would want to wear the same two sneakers. I’m like, “Put these on. It’s going to look cool. The outfit’s going to look cool.” And he’s like, “Daddy, no.” He wants to wear the old ones, but I’m like, “Bro, they’re dirty. They’re dirty.” He’d be like, “Well, I like them.” It’d be a whole conversation. [laughs] My son, me and my son are like best friends, so if you ever catch us conversing, you’ll probably think we’re brothers.

But yeah, I would try to put him in some crazy nice outfits. But I let him pick his clothes, let him be creative. I would never want to kill his creativity. The way to kill somebody’s creativity is to take control. You pick them for them. So I give him options. Now, the majority of the time, I have to learn. I’m like, bro, he’s six. If he really get into fashion, because he’ll see his daddy into fashion, he’ll probably pick it up. Whenever that time is, I’ll always be there to help him. But it’s definitely—it’s not humbling, but it’s definitely grounding.

How did you decide to work with your sister, Jewell, on the book?

She loves to draw and she draws all the time. I just told her I thought it would be a great opportunity to show her artwork and to show that her skills. So I said, “Jewel, draw my book.” Why not? You know what I’m saying? That’s my sister.

When she came back with the drawings, did she get it on the first try or did you have to work together to make sure it looked the way you wanted it to look or she just kind of nailed it right off the bat?

She nailed it off the bat. There were hiccups where she was like, “Oh yeah, I don’t like that actually. Look at this one.” And I’m like, “That one looks even better.” She would point out stuff to me, because she’s the artsy one, and she was like, “Yeah, watch. Look at this,” and try something new, and I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t even know that was a thing, and I actually like that better, too.” She nailed it on the T.

Now that you’ve done one book, do you want to do another one?

Yeah, I’m actually thinking about doing a sequel. There are more books to come.

When an idea comes to you, do you start working on it immediately, or do you let it develop a bit in your head first?

I just try to let everything simmer in, to let me understand everything before I try to get into it. I have the ideas now, but I’m just going to wait until camp starts. Whenever it drops, stay tuned. [laughs]

When I first reached out, I mentioned that I’m a lifelong Bills fan. I always think of sports as being creative as well. People have to improvise and come up with different solutions in the midst of a game. Do you think of playing football as creative as well?

Yeah, you do have to be creative. As a cornerback, you have to have your own creative styles, you have to have multiple styles to play the game with the receiver. That way the receiver doesn’t know your tells. I have to come up with different strategies. This way, when the receiver lines up, he has no clue what I’m about to do.

I know in defense you’re supposed to react and stop, but you can also play chess with them. They could not know your tell, so when you’re stopping them, it’s easier for you, because they don’t know what you’re going to do next. You have to trick the quarterback, too, by making one thing look like something else. You have to be creative in that standpoint. It makes the game easier for you.

I was saying that to my kids once, sometimes someone will have their first game as a quarterback or something and they’ll do really well, but then by game three, people have figured them out and it’s not as easy to have a good game again. Like you’re saying, they watch your tells and figure out what you’re going to do. You have to keep reinventing it over and over and over again. You have to stay ahead.

Exactly.

I read that your father and sister are also big readers and big book people. When you were growing up, what books were they reading? And I imagine it’s an exciting thing to have, “Hey, we love books, and now Christian’s written a book.” What’s been the reaction within the family?

Honestly, it was exciting , because I was the last one to be expected to write a book. I just never told them I was into books. When I was younger, I was not into books, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t. I was an action guy. I wanted to be outside. I didn’t want to read. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to play. My dad was into psychology books, stuff on the interpersonal level and about understanding individuals. My sister was more artsy, into fiction, and the non-fiction world of storytelling. So when they saw me write that book, they were really stoked.

Younger me hated going to the bookstore, because we was there for hours. They would just catch me eating food, drinking soda and playing with the bookstore toys. That’s what I did until I got tired of it. Or I would go find football books. I was like, I can get better at football as an eight-year-old. But other than that, nah. It was pretty like a turnaround, like a shocker. They were shocked because the kid that hated to go to the bookstore wrote a book.

Does your son like the book?

Yeah, my son loves it. He loves reading, when you’re reading it to him. He finds it really cool. He’s at the age where he understands it, which is big for me. Like, “Oh wow, daddy really did that. Daddy, that’s your name.” And he’d be like, “Oh, that’s my name,” because I dedicated part of it to him.

**I know one of the characters, Benny, references when you were a kid. In the book, there’s a bully who picks on him for his style. I read that when you were a kid, some kid picked on you for wearing a Power Rangers watch. **

Yeah. Everybody got jokes. Everybody got jokes. When I was younger, my outcomes was the wrong way. I just wanted to teach kids that you don’t have to be upset or fight or go that route. There’s other routes you can take.

As I got older, I majored in sociology, psychology, communication, and I understood people a little bit more. You look at the world way differently because you understand that. So I understood kids.

A lot of the kids nowadays, they only go about based off their environment. You can’t expect a kid to understand something that he’s never seen before. The only thing he’s going to do is laugh about it. Why? Because he doesn’t understand it. So I want to teach kids. You could bring them aboard and change, help them change. Everybody changes, everybody, because you learn new things. That’s just a common human fact.

For example, you could tell a little boy, “Yo, you can wear pink.” Or something like that. Back in the day, the little boy would probably laugh at you. But you could show them like, bro, this fit’s cool. If the coat is pink, and the pink matches the shoes and harmonizes the outfit, it’s a nice fit. That little boy has probably only seen a bunch of girls wear pink in his environment. But you could be the one to teach him like, “Yo, just because every girl likes pink doesn’t mean pink is a bad color.” It just means it just goes with the fit. You rewire how they think of the world. That boy might wear pink tomorrow. Now he might wear pink the next week because you taught him a different way to look at things.

I put that into the book to teach things I wish I knew when I was younger. You don’t have to fight, fight, fight. It’s not going to work. Yelling, arguing, it’s not going to work. It’s not good for your peace. It’s not good for your character, especially as individuals of God, where we’re supposed to be delivering the fruits of the spirit, love, kindness, peace, and then joy. All that stuff helps. And as God says, be kind. Nobody should use foul language, stuff like that. It teaches you like, “Dang, if I didn’t use foul language, my relationships will change for the better.”

It’s like, man, you can teach stuff like this to kids. And then the kids can teach the other kids and so forth and so on. Even for the parents. Shoot, it be like that for adults, too.