Author: admin

NFL.com likes to make a lot of lists this time of the year: 6 most burdened defenses, 8 teams most likely to make the playoffs, 11 expectations for the end of the season… None of them are particularly creative or informative. In essence it feels like they put these out each week, looking at the prior week as an independent universe of variables and failing to make sense of what is going on from a seasonal standpoint. Moreover, all the glee about the overachieving Giants has pestered out entirely. While nobody is directly calling for Daboll’s job, his offensive competency is being openy questioned This today’s NFL, your problems are settled on Sunday TV. In order for the Giants to settle theirs, the need to look to outscoring the Niners–no matter what the list says.

I think they can do it. I also think they lock up a win in the final week against the Eagles. The team should be approaching healthy by then, and as with the Cowboys game, they’ll have a better answer to the pass rush. It all starts (or ends) with a win over the Commanders are home. My money is on the Giants.

Some Thoughts:

1. Date Night at the French Caberet

I turned all the way back to 6.676, which was a free write based on the line, “Something moved in the distance.” I think this was a moment of clarity for me–not the blog be the result of the action to notice this blog. The inciting sentence means different things to me now than it did in the moment of creation. That structure tells me something. It tells me that a writer should revisit prompts and compare those prompts to the past inceptions. I love the idea of seeing where you were and where you are in comparison. Heck, that is what Turnback Tuesday is truly about.

That blog came as part of a week or more of free writes in which I created new things as a way to jump start my writing brain. I always need these jumpstarts and I’m grateful to be able to still create from them. I found myself (and find myself) imagining stories in dreams and in the moments of emerging consciousness and that reminds me that there are stories lurking within–moreover, it encourages me that I may still be connected to the story verse, or what Stephen King once referred to as Boo’ya Moon. I’m excited to still be a writer. Here in Paris I found myself standing at the crypts of Alexander Dumas and Voltaire and thought about the incredible legacy and opportunity and connection being a writer brings. I thought about my life and the narrowness of it, in terms of action and human connection, and I thought about the need–the desperation–for expansion.

I travel to explore and to discover just as much as I travel to escape. However, when I return from the escape the land of the lost that is home descends upon me like darkness. I need to fix that in my own routines and in my own ability to create space in my space–one that has been entirely coopted by purposefully vapid children. They cannot ruin my me-ness any longer. I will not stand for it.

I’ve gone between the phone and the laptop in the blogging and trying to lock in on a rhythm with which to do this. Jet Lag plays a roll. So much so that I am struggling to get this blog out as I lay in bed in the lull before I go out again. Once I muster up the energy to hit the club on a Monday night, I will not have anything left to write with. So here we are.

I’m downing powerberries like their senso beans trying to fight through the strange hours. What bugs is that by the time we’ve gotten this right we will want to go to sleep at the odd time in order to sleep through a significant chunk of the flight home. Nobody wants to be up for 12hrs trapped in a plane.

But until then I need to find the juice to enjoy the stay the way I want to. 

Some Thoughts:

1. We have American neighbors at the hotel. They suck. The most engaging non-locals we met were Greek. The Americans have generally been stand offish and in their own reality. Now they’re listening to what between the walls sounds to be a Whitney Houston documentary. Ahh, Paris. 

Third straight unpublished blog to myself. The situation here in France is difficult on the tech. Even more odd, we blew a circuit breaker in our room and cannot charge devices. That’s rough to deal with. The tech situation here for me Is strange because I blogged on different devices. One blog is on text and another on a dead MacBook. I’m back on the phone which suggests I will need to leave a placeholder for the MacBook blog and work primarily from the phone moving forward–at least I have a portable charge for that. All of this is to say Paris is a new experience on many levels. It isn’t even close to warm so it is a frigid experience on top of everything else. Yet I remain happy. We are starting to deal with the jet lag and the time issue and that is taking a while. We slept till 1pm today and here just before 11pm we aren’t even near tired. When we head back home we will be flying back in time in a sense and will need to deal with that change back. This too will be a lot.

I’m in Paris and I’m having a blast. 

Here is the thing: Paris is a very old city and filled with beautiful architecture that inspired buildings around the world. However, the thing that stands out to me the most thus far is scale. The sheer scale of these buildings is unbelievable. The Louvre can fit the MET and Natural History inside of it. Probably would have room to eat the Guggenheim. Seriously, the scale of these places is beyond what I first imagined and leaves me breathless.

And cold. Paris is very cold. This is probably an exaggeration given my lack of recent familiarity with cold weather locales. At the very least it is a prudent observation of a place that requires a hat and or scarf as a basic survival tool in the winter. 

The other thing I learned about France is that it is a passionate city. I happened upon the place the night of the world cup game vs. England. The streets were filled with fans chanting the national anthem and cheering all the way to the victory. Then they danced through the streets in celebration. 

This is France. This is day one. Crazy to try and imagine what comes next.

This is a bit of a strange one. I’m losing a day. Not entirely but I’m dying towards tomorrow, each stop pushing me closer to the time meridian. As such this blog on a plane is taking place sometime before tomorrow but the next one… well this may be a two on one situation. I’m headed to France and I’m geeked about it. The classes have ended and now I’m out in the world resetting myself in a very romantic place with my very romantic partner. I’m going to write some stuff too. I need to. I’m excited about diving in and exploring and being romantic and even about braving the cold. All of it is definitely different from the daily meh and its those meh rituals that are killing me.

This is living.

It turns out I am not one of those authors who languishes in old novels and spends his hours reading up on how writers of the past lived. I am also not one to sit about and read books all day. Or one to experience the world on a daily basis. No, it seems I am just a guy who is also a dad who is also a professor who likes games and likes food and sits on his haunches a lot waiting for something to happen when not much actually does.

To whit, I am quite passive. I’ve been like this forever. I let life come to me as opposed to pursuing it or getting really deeply invested in what I love. I ought to dive deeper, but as soon as I am knee deep, I bail. I didn’t go too deep in on teaching, or counseling before that. I treated engineering as a surface level hobby. Heck, I don’t even do the required research to be top shelf at gaming (though being old hurts my skill level as well). I am a dabbler, with a dabblers mentality of experiencing everything I can up to a point and then doing other stuff with the mindset of how good I could have been at any of it. I did that with football for sure. I let opportunity walk up into my arms and said, “meh.” More than once.

This has me thinking about what it is I truly want, and why I act like this place is what is holding me back. Perhaps the place is yet another excuse.

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to use my Commodore 64 as a Keyboard.
2. Micah Parsons just fell ass first into the statement we’ve all been trying to make–We don’t like Trump, but we aren’t a fan of Biden either…

8, 9, 7. My wins respectively in three different leagues. While the 9 would be good enough for 1st in two of the three leagues, My 8 and 7’s put me in 5th and 6th in my 12 person leagues. That is, by definition, mid. This week I play the #1 team in the league where I am 5th, and the other three teams ahead of me have easy matches. I could fall to 6th or 7th or I could keep my spot and make a statement leading up to the playoffs. The projected points have me losing by 15, so I don’t know how much of a statement I will be making, but I still believe there is a chance to pull out a win. This might be one of those weeks where I get 3 wins and secure a nice position leading into the playoffs.

The goal for the other 12 man league is to secure the 4-5 matchup. That keeps me out of the sights of the one seed for as long as possible. If I can make it to the finals, I can secure cash, and that is a win enough for me. The family league is a bit different. I’ve been on top the entire season and I really want to stay that way. Quite a bit depends on Barkley. If he can hold a bit of that early season form over these last few games, the Giants will be in the playoffs and I will win the league. I’m excited for the chance for both things to happen there.

A part of me is looking ahead to next season. I tend to be a year ahead on breakout players. I knew that Rhamondre S. would be huge for the Patriots… but I thought it would happen last year. This year I didn’t have a true breakout that I followed, which makes me hesitate on who to grab as a ‘sleeper’ in the next draft. I shouldn’t be looking that far ahead, but the Madden Player in me knows that the season to come has already started in the season you have now.

Speaking of Madden… Still playing and enjoying with the family. Good stuff there.

That’s about ten for me, so…

I dialed back one iteration to 6.14. It starts with: “Willpower. That is what it is going to take to avoid wandering back into youth football this fall. I want the boy to do it deep down. I want to be out there enjoying watching, but that should not happen. He’s gone through football nonstop for a few seasons now, and with the idea still being to have him represent the state in both February and June/July, having a few months off is simply a no brainer. This won’t stop the coaches from asking and me from wanting to cave, but I cannot do it. Instead I need to view this off season as what it truly is: an off season. A chance to pursue other things both athletically and otherwise. This is Waiver Wednesday, so we will focus on the athlete stuff.”

Given yesterday’s admission, not much has changed. I’m struggling here. I get to the point where I get so tired of the every day of how things are here that I’m defeated by it. It crushes my creativity to be surrounded by an air of let’s do nothing. I fall into it too easily and I am quite good at it… for a while. I cannot say football stuff has anything to do with that–my addiction to the youth cycle is more tied to wanting to be a good dad than any of the rest of it. Except, I work in a week on week off cycle now where I have the time to fall into other things if they existed. Instead I am trapped in the cycle and dying oh so slowly from it.

Vacation cannot come soon enough.

Blogging from my phone and it’s hard to see the letters. The nights and early mornings are like this, and it makes me nervous about diabetes. Who knows what is really wrong with me. It could just be too much screen time but it still sucks. Odd day. I’ve come to recognize the connection I have with youth football as an addiction and as a missed opportunity in life. I say this as I recently became aware that the team my kid left was just on TV during the Raiders game. This is not the first second or even fifth time this has happened. He’s adjacent to talent but, like me, teams get noticed once he leaves. I hope it is just that he’s at a level of talent that puts him in that conversation as opposed to it being about his inability to capitalize on the talent he has (me) or that talent not being enough (also me) which is the story of my life thus far.

but this is 7 and lucky number 7 is about growth and change and finding a way to be your greater self as opposed to the other guy. This is about accepting that the youth football period of my life is over and done and I did as good as I did as a coach and a dad in that. No sense in regrets. Time for this last kid to take the torch and find his way to success on his own terms. Failure is a choice but it is not my choice to make. I made mine and did my thing and it went how it went and I made connections in that world and now they don’t know or want to know me and that’s okay too. I’m on to the next thing… once I settle into whatever that is.

maybe that’s the real issue here/ I haven’t moved on because I haven’t decided what to move on to. I’m still here in the space and not filling it with the new.