Author: admin

It took a lot of research for this one.

I’ve been trying to get a sense of what the 18 team 13u pool looks like in the youth football league. I will go through 11u next week, but since I got a kid in the 13u game I have skin in the 13u game. The standings shake out like this:

	Wins	Losses	PF	PA
CG Scorpions	3	0	92	8
Argonauts	3	0	63	24
Outcast	3	0	108	14
Juggernauts	3	0	129	25
WV Spartans	2	1	52	45
Anthem Jags	2	0	64	19
CC Falcons	2	0	97	13
Jr Vipers	2	1	92	27
AZ Fire Dawgs	1	2	13	96
Arcadia Titans	1	2	30	61
EV Bulldogs	1	2	39	69
WV Cardinals	1	2	52	66
PHX Dragons	1	2	59	86
AZ Buffs	0	3	31	78
Lightning	0	3	20	119
PHX Grizzlies	0	2	0	56
Demon District	0	3	12	74
TOA Skyhawks	0	2	0	77

That is based on a non-weighted sort, which actually means the Juggernauts (my kid’s team) is likely on top. They haven’t given up a point since he joined and have played better teams since that first week where they gave up a bunch. Next up for them are the Cardinals, which looks to be a worse matchup on paper than it is when you think about who the Cardinals played. The Cards fell to undefeated teams. Looking forward to seeing how that shakes out this weekend.

In terms of the overall, it feels as if there are probably 8 solid teams in this league. That leads me to believe the playoffs will be a very good time–high level competition that will be enjoyable to watch and give my kid the time and reps he needs to be successful come fall as he vies for a varsity spot as a DB and as a Kicker.

Some Thoughts:

1. The media really wants to love Sam Darnold. Even after the trade he is being treated like a star and the Jets as the problem. Conversely, Bridgewater is being treated like a trash QB. I would like to see Bridge head over to the Saints, compete, and show the world that Darnold is not good.
2. The Giants are starting to do some off the books workouts with their QB. This is a good sign. I suspect that Barkley and probably Beckham will come through and hang out, leading to media speculation that OBJ is headed back to the Giants when the reality is he is just chillin with his peeps.

I had to go back through the last few blogs and redo the dates. I didn’t realize what day of the week it was/is. Chalk that up to another Covid Casualty of Sensibility. If I don’t leave the house on a regular basis and work/teach asynchronously, days of the week do not matter. Sure, there are some track meets and youth games that fall on weekends, and I see my kids on particular days of the week, but those moments feel like snapping back into a reality that is temporary. In truth, short of needing to be somewhere on a specific date or needing to post something for a class, I am legitimately not connected to the standard seven day reality at all, and I like it. That is one good thing to come out of all of this.

So, here I am up in the woods. Last night I noticed my neighbor watching OAN news (for several hours) through their open window. I found myself wondering what sort of reality they’ve been spinning up as a result of that newsfeed. I wonder how much anger they are collecting as a result of what is being pumped into their brains in this otherwise empty wilderness. That too is a Covid Casualty. No, not them persay but the pursuit of Common Sense. We stopped asking questions (or at least the right ones) and began looking for the people who were saying the things we quietly wanted to hear or the things that felt right to us. This has always been the way but it feels much larger now. The filter bubble is expanding. All it took was a strongman megalomaniac on the heels of someone who didn’t look or feel like anyone the ‘people’ were ‘used to’ and the result is what we have right here.

But that is not my cross to bear. Yes, by saying that I am living in a deflection, but I have other things–smaller and more immediate crosses to bear.

Some Thoughts:

1. I love it out here. I want to live out in the woods and have my own treehouse or other retreat where I can hear the water gurgling in a nearby pond or stream and the laughter of my loved ones in the distance. It is from this perch high in the trees that I would write and love that I was writing as I do now.
2. Tomorrow is actually Wednesday and I will have some halfway decent football talk. Is football my only sport now? Seems so…

The words are finding me again. As I go through another draft of this novel I find myself finally ramping back up into writer mode and feeling good about the story and the characters and the conflicts and the world I am helping to shape in this fiction. I really do believe this is going to be a good novel. Will it be a #1 bestseller? Nah. It is still missing something to make it universal like that, but it will do good for what it is and it should be well received by the fan base. I hope.

Well, I am doing my part to make that happen, and as I ramp up and move into my stride I feel like I am going to be able to keep up this energy on into the next project (which I already have) and beyond into whatever comes after that.

Point of Fact: One of the keys to being a successful writer is knowing what you want to do next and in those spaces where the ‘now’ project is not foremost on your mind, the next things start to form up. So, as I proceed and continue to rock this life I intend to focus up on that specific goal of always working on what is next and never letting my writing life turn into that old car that sits in your driveway for months and then cannot start without a lot of help.

Some Thoughts:

1. In the end the Big 12 did still rep in NCAA basketball. As I write they are putting the brakes on the Gonzaga story with a big time whuppin. Of course, I could be wrong. This can still somehow go the other way, but down 20 seems like it is over.
2. A baseball stadium hit capacity for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic became front page news. Too soon, I think. I fear there will be repercussions.
3. The interface for this wordpress is not as good as past ones. It feels glitchy.

This ought to become a thing.

I’m in the woods on yet another weekday and enjoying a cool afternoon where I am with the family and having a wonderful time. We are happy to be out and about and exploring, but I am happiest to be experiencing that type of peace that comes with being out of the city. I want to be the guy who spends time deep in the city (like New York City) and spends time completely removed from it. I enjoy both environments and both add a lot to my emotion and my way of being.

I am working towards falling into my being. I am happiest when I am in that space of writing and spending time with my partner and playing games and having fun on so many different levels. This is how life ought to be and how it actually is. Sadly, life is mostly like this only when I am out of the confines of suburbia or whatever it is you call my natural environment. I don’t know how to make that environment feel like this tends to feel.

Regardless, there is a sense of reset in escape. When you go somewhere else you have a chance to leave the baggage of your daily routine behind and perhaps that is why I cannot make home feel like these days feel. Perhaps that is, in some ways, the point.

Some Thoughts:

1. Tried unsalted potato chips for the first time. Not great, but they are not terrible. Just okay.
2. Also trying a Traeger pellet grill for the first time. Should be interesting.

The is a no spoilers review of the latest Kaiju installment featuring the major monsters of the past. The Kong v. Zilla movie is not very good. However, it is an enjoyable ride full of the upcoming top memes of 2021. I believe we will find most every scene eventually memed. I look forward to this years version of Red Dress Girl done with Godzilla footage. Which, BTW has Matrix roots.

Yes, I know it is a meme to simulate similarity, but the scene unfolds in a similar fashion so… I am making the point that this new movie sort of feels like that. It sort of feels like the end of everything for that franchise the way that the last Mortal Kombat movie felt like the end of that one or the last Fast and Furious felt like the end of that one. To be honest, the movie would’ve been a lot better without humans taking feature roles. It wasn’t about us. There is so much mythology locked up in these stories that we lose our ability to tell it when we waste time on very bad human drama. Also very rote human drama. No good.

Still, See it. Go into it knowing it is bad, but enjoy it anyhow.

Some Thoughts:

1. Fun youth football day. Got to enjoy seeing a lot of the kids I coached for years out playing for various teams and doing a good job. The 13u squad crushed it, and that was great to watch. My kid got involved on offense and showed what he can do. That’s always fun.
2. Sliding into the new laptop. Love the tech, struggling with the sticker. DO I go back to the classic Batman or should I do as I always do and come up with a new approach. I know not what to do…

Bear with me now. This is going to be a little more of a difficult look than normal because the WOTD is a verb, and one that I don’t often use as a sense of anything larger but largely as a bridge. So, let’s see what happens over the next ten minutes.

Word of the Day: Pertain

I am a coward. I know it. I am learning to accept it. I have no choice.

People like to talk about fault.; about how it is not because of themselves that they are in the condition they are in. If I look back at my life I can find a number of entry points for fault. Take my Grandmother, for example. She was a wonderful woman at times. She went to church, she fed and clothed me, she treated me like I was her own son, and she still died screaming. I remember it well. I Stood outside the room as the doctors worked on her, begging to be let in–to see her that one last time. I often hear her screams in the night, the way she sounded was worse than terrified. She kept telling them that she didn’t want to die, that she knew what was out there and she didn’t want to go, didn’t want to get any closer. She told them to pull her back and they didn’t.

That was the first time I knew that I couldn’t die. No, not that I was unable, but that I was unwilling. I tried to rationalize that fear so many different ways. I stayed up shivering through the nights haunted by the sounds of her dying and asked myself what could be so terrible out there in the beyond that she fought t stay away from. She was old. her body hurt everyday. Yet she refused to go until death snatched her from the living.

That is why I started to research. That is why I looked into all of the science behind life and death seeking some form of answer. When I found none in the pages of the scientists who’ve been searching for these answers for a thousand years, I turned to the people who’ve been looking far longer. I found the answers in religion. Not the new stuff that we allow to define our understanding of time. No, I mean before the concepts of AD existed, in the when before.

Did you know that Jesus was far from the first to return from beyond? The Catonese spoke of Geung-si long before that middle eastern man was murdered to great fanfare. I learned of them and then I learned of others like them whose Qi allowed them not to return from the land of the dead but avoid it entirely. However, it came with a bargain. It came with a very stiff bargain.

So, you see, I am a coward. I did not want to ever die, so I sought out the means of everlife. I sought out that bargain, that belonging that made me what I am. Now I mean to pass on that cost to you.

Trying to get organized and find a new way to approach the work and the writing and the life in general. The tech side of this conversation has me really struggling due to the fact that both MS Word and pages are unwilling to be used on my apparently outdated OS. So as a result I am stuck relying on Google or dealing with the situation in a printed fashion. So, I am going to have to print out these pages I am working on. I’d love to believe I can use Google but I cannot reliably say I will have internet access.

So, here we are trying to figure out how to be better at what it is I do on a daily basis. At the same time the struggle on a day to day basis to get things done is very real. So, what will I do? I don’t know. My “A” plan is to print everything out. I’ve assembled the first 25 pages on a single doc and I could print those. I wish I had a reliable laptop to work with, but that feels more like a dream than ever.

Some Thoughts:

1. Twenty years ago tech did not rule my life. What happened?
2. Better yet, how can I translate that into story?

Barkley and Beckham are working out in Arizona. They are also taking time out to visit the kids. OBJ in particular has been doing photo ops with the youth teams associated with his agent. Those teams, the Elite 7 on 7 team and the Chandler Bears franchise (now known as the Elite Bears and likely adding an 11u this year) are top notch and likely to draw more kids with star power like that. Meanwhile another former player is starting his own franchise. Kyle VandenBosch is starting the AZ Irish franchise as a way to build kids up for the High School program he’s working with. He’s brought along star power from the Cardinals, but it is not driving kids away from some of the more well known youth clubs.

The youth game be like that now. Everyone is trying to muster forces to have their own super squad to take nationally. Truth be told, I don’t want to travel for football. That stuff creates a ton of problems at home–especially considering that my partner (correctly) surmises the situation there is more about the parents than it is about the competition. I believe the competition has a role too and for some of the kids it is in fact about that. However, it is mostly about swag and getting noticed. You do not need to travel to be successful at the next level.

Unfortunately, the league we are in has made travel a central part of the experience. We are now part of a 4-state collective dedicated to holding competitions, regularly scheduled games, and championships at the D1 and D2 levels across state lines. I don’t know what to do about that just yet.

How is it going for him right now? Well, he isn’t playing. He isn’t working out regularly and not showing the heart and dedication for the sport as he used to. I’m not going to push it. He has to want it more than I do, and at this point he has to want it a lot more for it to matter. The other boy, the mid-kid, is playing 13u ball, closing out his youth career with his friends while he runs Varsity HS track. It’s a big deal for him to be able to do those two things and it fills him with confidence. I am proud of the dude. I am proud of the first born too as he works his way back from an ACL tear. Now there is a kid who wants it. He has been fighting to get back almost entirely on his own. I need to chip in and help now–do some workouts with him.

Some Thoughts:

1. Let my kid’s car sit idle for almost half a year. I got it up and running today and drove it around. Still have work to do on the thing. Specifically, I need to reinflate the tires and add a fuel stabilizer for the old gas in the tank.

The first day of the rest of my life.

Every day should feel like that for all of us. No matter where we are or what we are into this day–today–is the opportunity for a new beginning, and a chance to bring an end to whatever is in your head holding you down and holding you back.

So, what is holding me back? Fear.

In public I do a pretty good job of holding it together. In private and in the family I am less bodacious and tend to take the hits harder and let things get to me and impact me more. There is a lot of weight on me in this small world I inhabit and from time to time it gets to me. Time to time I feel alone and I feel the weight and feel like I am the one person who feels like any of it is worth it or feels like any of it matters and or doesn’t take it for granted.

I’m on the new schedule but I have yet to take actual advantage of it. I’ve yet to grow, build, or do more than just sit around and play games. I think if there were a documentary of my life I would be terrified to watch it. Now there is a feeling you don’t want to have in life.

Instead you want to feel like growth is constant. You want to feel energized and do something for the world around you that makes you feel worthwhile as oppsoed to feeling like you (in this case me) don’t have your shit together.

How’s that for reflection?

Hope is a thing people talk about when they have to rely on something that is not in their control. We often believe in the loss of control as an act beyond our personal control and often it is as such, but as with luck, control favors the prepared mind. It is in this vein of understanding that I choose to approach the new week. There are several hurdles and obstacles I face in the race towards the weekend and that coming pause before the next race. Perhaps it is best not to consider life as a race but as a journey in which I am trying to constantly better myself. I believe that I have the ability to control my situation though it requires planning, preparation, and dedication. I’ve lacked all three on a regular basis.

I’m a smart man–though functionally less so over the years. Still smarts are not enough to get my stuff back on the proper tracks. I gotta get organized again and get it right fast.

Some Thoughts:

1. The more I watch shows about business and politics, the more the feel like the same show and the same exact situation over and again. I do not quite recognize where these core stories are coming from, but I need to keep looking and learning. The key is to be there at the core before you become the person pumping out a rehashed version of what was already done. I’m not talking the core seven stories here but a deeper relational experience reflective of the now.