Author: admin

I’ve been burying myself in this concept of ideal life, and through that trying to uncover precisely what it is I want and need to feel like I’m living the life I wish in the (hopefully many) years I have left. Getting to the core of ‘what I want’ is a difficult maze filled with dead ends. However, I made a spot of headway this morning when I said to myself, “wouldn’t it be nice if I had a space where I could lay out my wardrobe for the following day?”

This one small step led to a giant leap in thinking. I realized then that, perhaps, the way to the big picture is by looking at the individual pixels and aligning them in a fashion that allows me to zoom out. So I decided to make a list and through that list of simpleminded tasks and thoughts and desires discover the larger needs.

This begins my journey towards recognizing simplicity or at least what simplicity means to me.

I checked in on the Kyle Rittenhouse case today and left with a general feeling that things are about to get very bad in America. The judge stopped short of saying he’s in the bag for Rittenhouse, but when he wouldn’t even allow the people killed to be called victims in front of the jury and struck down any state of mind testimony that went against the defendant but allowed all state of mind that supported the defendant, you know it isn’t going very well. You really know things are bad when the Judge starts repeating off color jokes from FOx’s Hannity show. Here is the situation in a nutshell. A kid grabs his (illegal) gun and drives to another town in order to help protect and patrol streets that are not his own. He is there because he wants to ‘help support the cops’. Now mind you he is breaking the law by having this weapon and being out beyond curfew. An altercation occurs where he is pointing his gun at individuals. Later, a gun is pointed at him. He opens up on that person ‘in self-defense’. The crowd decides to attack and disarm him (as he is the active shooter) and he opens up on them, killing and injuring more people.

Now he is a hero of the right for what he did. Can you imagine if the tables were turned racially; if a random young black man were protecting someone else’s property and did what Rittenhouse did? There would be no trial. The cops would’ve executed the kid. In fact, the murder of a black man. All of that is forgotten in this trial–as is the illegal possession of the weapon and the fact that Rittenhouse had no business being there or efforting to ‘stand his ground’ This is about racial injustice. This is about protecting the idea that kids like Rittenhouse can do things like this and go on being okay and free. This is where a lot of the US wants our country to go back towards.

There is a precedent for all of this. While we tend to be ahead of the curve in a lot of things in this world we are socially backwards. Some of that is as a result of blowback from what we stir up across the globe. More of it is as a result of those in power seeing the impact of what happens across the globe and attempting to monetize it here. However, the real precedent here is the last pandemic. Following the 1918 influenza outbreak we experienced a terrifying ordeal of racially driven civil unrest. There is a link there, but it is too nuanced to explain in the time I have left. Long story short: Rage and fear walk hand in hand and can be directed at the easiest points of division.

The problem we are experiencing now is not new and the fact that people in power are being influenced in this way is not new. None of this is new, but none of this is good. What we are talking about is taking a giant step backwards and redrawing the battle lines of equality in a way that reinforces the idea of passing and reinforces the idea of self-defense being allowable for some groups but not others. This is dangerous. This is going to end very badly.

There can be no greater metaphorical collision between the life I am living and the life I intend to live than the reality that my partner’s plane touches down at the same time I am scheduled to coach a playoff game. As I cannot be in both places at once I also cannot continue to live both lives at once. It is unmanageable and degrading and detrimental to everyone in the situation. No one grows. No one moves forward. My thought was: I’ll just have my kid(s) stop playing sports and living the lives they are pursuing. However, that doesn’t help anyone either. Their mother doesn’t go to all of their games. She steps away based on her life and the things she wants to do. She makes a choice instead of settling for no choice at all.

So I need to make a choice and discover a way to move forward and let them move forward under their own power. I spend so much mental energy focused on their sports–much more than on their lives in general. It is long past time to scale back and put in the work where I can and see through that choice. It will be difficult. I enjoy the sports a lot, but the choice is the right one–Just like choosing to NOT have the kid play youth football in the Spring was a hard but correct choice.

I need to start making better and more fruitful choices for who I am and who I intend to be moving forward.

Watching Squid Game as I blog and noting the odd simplicity of the PlayStation feeling shapes that denote character rank. Good show. Clever and energetic. Definitely worth the binge.

moreover it takes my mind off the nonsense of this final season. We ended up as a 4 seed and played a 5 seed that was ranked above a team with a better record. Junk.

I will get past it. Again, this is not how I expected things or wanted things to end. Yet, such is life.

As you know, dear reader, this is my last season of coaching youth football and the last season of being so deeply invested in the kids’ sports. Sadly, it is about to come to an abrupt finish. We play the toughest youth team in the league and possibly the state. We put 6 on them last time but they put 40 on us, so round two is set to be a rugged rematch. To make matters worse we are down our RB1 and our starting tackle. That means a lot of shifting things around and a lot of preparing for the end on all fronts. Win or lose there is only one more week after this. With my older kids both injured, I am practically done with High School football as well. I walk my kid across the field for Senior Night and that is that. It feels anticlimactic.

It feels like it should end better than this. Oh well.

Some Thoughts:

1. Kyle Rittenhouse is probably going to go free, because the prosecution sold. They basically proved the defense case that this was self defense. How is it self defense to go to your friend’s stepfather’s house, obtain illegally purchased (and hidden) firearms and then go off claiming to be defending something you’re not even associated with only to wind up in a gun battle you should’ve never been in. Okay, well, any gang shooting moving forward is also self defense.

Blue Sunday.

I am without partner. This is a temporary state but one that finds me unmoored. I know that my continuing purpose is tied to my partner, but I am becoming more aware of the state of emptiness that persists without her. It is difficult. It is a reminder that my ‘self’ has long been focused around football, video games, and bad TV. In absence of her I fall into all three and into reading audiobooks. The last is a better use of time. Writing has long served as a mooring and even a purpose, so who am I if I am not writing? Perhaps the answer is to write or at least to recognize why I am not writing.

Some Thoughts:

1. I need to exercise like now. I was running around on the field on Saturday and it felt like I was trying to murder my weak heart. I think I need to do something to start rebuilding stamina and making sure I don’t actually die.

Well, we won. 21-20. We gave up touchdowns on big plays and gave up more points than all but one game this season. We were short a key offensive threat but that’s how it’s going to be moving forward. We didn’t give our 100 this game. We were not the better team today, but we were good enough to get it done.

this won’t work next week, no matter who we face. I don’t know who that is going to be because the other playoff game is presently 5 hours late publishing its score. It’s either the Lions or it’s the Spartans. Either way it’s a team who wants to go to the championship as much as we do. We need to find a way to win and find a way to be the best version of ourselves.

Some Thoughts:

1. Watched the Kaepernick show with the boys and I’m surprised at how well it connects with them and translates the history of a person and a people and a culture in a way that flat out makes sense and is real.
   

I’m thinking about jumping into novel and world development for nanowrimo. Yes, I’m very late to the November party. Still, I think I have plenty of days left to write. The idea I am thinking of is structural. Often there are moments in the beginning of a story that pay off later in the story. I want to build those scenes at once. I want to have that moment in the beginning and write the corresponding scene right away and then build the stuff in between after. I want to write out all of these big moments and then fill in the blanks. I’ve never written this way, but in terms of the fantasy story all I know about it is a handful of moments I really want to see hit. That’s it. So, why not put together the story in a way that allows for all of that to come out and then, as I am forming the world and these characters, I am telling a deeper and more nuanced character story entirely born of the need to tell these individuals stories without trying to work us towards these preexisting PLOT HAPPENS HERE moments that are important in the larger sense but absolutely secondary to the emotional arc of the characters living in these times.

Let’s see how it turns out.

I teach English Composition at the college level. Each semester I work to develop a class that makes sense to me and engages the student base as well. This semester I returned to the Hero 101 mold and taught the class through super heroes and villains. Now I am nearing the endgame and the students are developing their super hero project. It is a simple project. They are supposed to design a super hero for the year 2021-22 and that hero has to have a life reflective of the now and a problem or antagonist reflective of the world we live in. That is simply said but less easily understood or done. I’m starting to wonder if the students are up to the challenge.

What does it mean to build a modern hero? Is Spiderman a ‘now’ hero? Batman? Superman? none of these heroes were created in the last 50 years, yet so much has happened in the last 50 years that these characters should be reflective of that. Somehow they feel like they are, even if they absolutely aren’t. That is the key here. I want to introduce the students to a way to be reflective of their own lives and safely develop alter egos in a way that acknowledges their lives and their worlds and their realities–which are so different than my own.

This project scares me because it is so ambitious and has such a high chance of being a complete mess. Still I try. I hope it goes amazingly well. I expect some of these students will succeed and others will fall flat. This is life. This is the way.

we are about to kick off the family madden league. The rules this year are each person picks a team from a different division with three in the afc and three in the nfc. First pick was obviously the Rams. That defense is too good to pass up. I wound up with the Titans. I expect I’ll be making some trades rather quickly—I need more speed at the WR position. If I can get one burner and a better TE and shore up any weak spots on the line, King Henry and AP ought to get me to the playoffs east.

The real problem is that I don’t play a lot of Madden. I don’t know the automatic plays to beat the bot. I don’t know the plays I need to beat these kids either. I’ll be fighting to figure it out all next week because the league starts soon after.

in the real world I’m still all about the Giants. I still believe that they can take over the NFC East but it will come down to end of season wins. They’ll get easier teams as the season progresses whereas I don’t see that happening for the other three east teams. I also see our guys eventually coming back. We have been struggling with injuries. Most of the skill starters are out and Engram has just been plum bad this year, so he don’t count.

all that being said, I’m clinging to the belief of a Giants win on the short week. I think we have a chance to put one on the Raiders this week. Oddly, I also suspect the Jets might make the Colts game interesting. They aren’t going to be overlooked the way they were last week, that’s for sure.

I didn’t do much by way of predictions today, so I will make time for that tomorrow. Call it about ten minutes

Some Thoughts:

1. It’s official. We lost our youth RB for the season. He is going in for surgery next week. My boy needs to step up and play big. I think he’s up for it.