Author: admin

I am officially fed up with all of the politics. What it boils down to for me is the sad reality that Trump can say or do anything he want and it isn’t disqualifying, but our democratic candidate is having to watch her words and behave in a fashion where she is constantly on the defense for everything. That is not fair. Nothing about this is fair–especially the constant refrain of “we will accept a fair election.” We already know you think this election is rigged. You’ve said it over and over again to the tune of dozens of active lawsuits before the ballots are even counted and before election day even happens. So, what do I think–what have I been programmed to think–will happen? Violence. On a scale we haven’t seen in our lifetimes. Someone will be killed during this process and I expect a lot of someones will be killed if Trump doesn’t win.

They have all but stated they won’t accept it. Let’s be clear, you cannot say the things you say and then hide behind the veil of ‘those were not my exact words!’ or ‘you are taking my exact words out of context!’ or ‘you don’t get when I am joking’ well we know you are not joking. We know that this is the next stage in a very long process of subverting the rules of American governance in order to be able to rewrite the rules of American governance to ensure this smaller party remains in power while they work to figure out how to once again become the popular majority. It sucks. It makes me think I am going to need to leave the USA in the next few months on a permanent basis (or at least for the next 8-12 years while this shit gets sorted). Why leave and not fight? Because I don’t exist in a place where I can fight and stay on my feet. I can fight from afar–settled with my family safe and the rules of interracial marriage intact.

Things are getting very scary here and the ones who are shouting are merely echoing the nonsensical party lines they see on partisan TV. Fox and its even more to the right ilk are the problem, because they warp things with fear and fail to even attempt to tell the truth. If I watched for too long I’d be scared too. But scared of what? Nothing real.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve resorted to wearing noise cancelling headphones in my office to avoid being distracted by the constant blah blah of the TV outside of the space. How much more can I ask a kid hard of hearing to turn the thing down? I think the real stressor is that the co-existence of a person trying to work from home and one who doesn’t work at all is difficult… on the worker.

I was going to call this one ‘Write with your pants off’ but I realized there is already a book with a similar title, a shortcut to the meat of which is provided here.
My own approach to the blog was different from the outline in that I am not actually wearing pants, and it led me to a sense of newfound understanding about the idea of vulnerability. Writing is about being vulnerable. It is a duality of a sort because you are actually hiding behind the words and having them speak your truth, but in that truth you are extremely visible and vulnerable. I believe the best writers embrace that vulnerability–especially in terms of what their characters experience and how those individuals are reflective of them as people and their own experiences. Write what you know. I should then be writing about loss and love and being seen as less than by those closest to me. In fact, my upcoming novella is all of those things. I hope to write it in full over the next two months–as a bridge into the larger two projects I am excited and terrified about.

Pants off means looking at yourself for real. I, again for example, am suffering from a debilitating pinched nerve, which has expanded into a cluster of nerves that impact me in various debilitating ways and arouse a question of my own mortality…. You don’t know how much I’d prefer to say impending mortality, whatever that means… Pants off means I am looking at the coming shift in life where my kids are all gone and I am left to live and love with the Lady Talis. This is wonderful and terrifying as well, because we have longed for the moment, but to see it so close is to see it being real and to not truly know if we have everything in place to seize that moment.

Gosh. A lot happened once I started looking inward. Maybe I ought to do it more often.

This is a blog about my Son’s football season. Not the D1 one, but the High School one. No, it is not over, and in fact he has two more opportunities for success. That being said, I will not be present for either, due to other responsibilities. I’ve watched my last High School game of 2024. Overall, the kid improved on his freshman season. He did not come close to making the leap he expected to make. He dealt with long stretches of timidness in terms of getting to the football. He thought too much; trying to make sure the kid he was tackling (or considering tackling) wouldn’t escape for a big play. There are reasons for this. He plays safety, which is often the last line of defense. He plays safety on a bad team, which means he is often the last person to beat before a touchdown and often the only person to beat before a touchdown. The pressure of failure was too great at times and had him hesitant.

If you study the film, he looks like he’s always jogging to the play. This is a bad look, and the kind of look recruiters do not want to see. He has two games to understand that, and thus the sort of leap he needs to make in order to get to the next level. It is not all bad news. He shows explosiveness at times, and with that the ability to excel anywhere in the secondary. He does have the tools. He will need to put in even more work this off season through track to get himself to where he needs to be to get offers at the D1 level as a Junior. Consider his brother who was looked at by USC, BYU, and Drake only receiving an offer from FCS Drake. He is two years older than his sophomore brother and a far superior technical player. #16 has two seasons to get there and earn that opportunity to continue his quest at the next level.

I think he gets there. I think he’s a 15 year old kid playing as a starting Varsity player without the coordination or physical power he will have as a 16 then 17 year old high school player. He will get there physically. He has the mind to play the game. The key is the mental fortitude–the confidence to play without fear. Part of that requires him to accept that he may screw up and that his team may suffer because of it. However, playing balls to the wall is the only way his team will honestly and realistically benefit from his skillset.

He has to decide to let things go. He has to accept that he needs to do his job and only his job right now. I think I may have contributed to him thinking he needs to do more, and I will work to change that immediately. What he needs to do is lock in and dominate.

I do not have a thing to say today. So, I am going to write as much as I can about as much that comes to mind as humanly possible. The other day I gave a reading and one of the questions after was about the concept of writer’s block. They asked how to deal with it. I’m dealing with it right now. I am just sitting in this chair and letting the words move through me with the hopes that something of value comes to mind to share with the greater world. So far, nothing. Still, if I can get out one impactful sentence then I’ve done something. It is enough to say that you got something down each day. That was the other thing I said about writer’s block: you need to write through it. You need to put that butt in that chair and stare at that keyboard until you make your hands move. Then you keep moving them as the words come out. Not all of it will be good. Most of it will be this. Still, some of it will be a line or a phrase or a particular matching of words that means something. That’s when you know you are starting to break through.

Do not stop. Keep going. Keep pushing through until the end of the time limit. It feels to me like I write more when I don’t think about what I am trying to say and just let the words and phrases move through me. That is why I can go from a post that is 34 words to a post that is 450 or more. When I was younger I had this knack for drawing out all of this creative stuff. It was like I had a billion ideas and nothing but time to get it all down. I have a job and kids and the Lady Talis now, and as such none of that empty time is filled with words or creating ideas in my mind. I really do think that there is something magical there though. I really believe that if we can capture that freedom of youth–that mental state of not giving a damn about the heavy realities of bills and I gotta work tomorrow, then we can focus in on the fantastic.

This is not to say that you cannot have things going on and write. I was a dang demon in college. I’d spit out volumes in class. I’d be writing in the linings of my textbook, drawing story from the knowledge the teachers were trying to contextualize in so many other ways that I did not connect with. I think that this too is a pathway towards creativity. The subconscious marinates on stuff. It develops amazing connections between the weirdest things. Let it. Clear your mind. Let the part of it you don’t focus on help you figure out the stuff you do.

Some Thoughts:

1. A read an opinion piece by a clearly republican writer that tried to explain how Trump doing the McD’s but was political magic. He went so far to try to reassociate the trump weirdness as a good thing, saying America is weird. Nah, man. Not like that. Quit acting like this dude is of the people. He’s famous, and he is beloved because enough influencers in the lives of the people who follow (worship) him told them to love him. They all drank the sauce. I didn’t. Bro is a huckster. He is seen and he is dangerously thin-skinned. I’m out on Trump.

I never realized how much I craved silence until I could not find it.

There are different types of quiet, the most common being when you can listen to the sounds of the world and the sounds of the house uninterrupted by blaring youtube videos and the sounds of video games or the distant screams of a kid when something in game or on screen goes in an unexpected direction. I live in a world where I either need to leave the space, not work, or schedule my work around the time where the noise is greatest. I do this–I tiptoe angrily around the situation–because it is my nature to avoid the confrontation and maintain the peace. Yes, this is bad parenting, but it is also a practical impossibility to parent as the stepfather of grown children. What I can do is find an uneasy peace, and I have created that (I think). However, I am a victim of my own creation. I am the guy who needs to leave to seek peace or balance or to find a way to break through on a project because the distractions are so plentiful or I am so locked in on the flavor of that distraction and what it ultimately means in regards to my life and my hard work that it feels impossible to break free and do what I need to do.

Maybe what I need to do is be the asshole.

Maybe what I need to do is surreptitiously control the situation in a way that avoids the lingering days of stress and general disgruntledness of everyone that is the unfortunate result of direct confrontation where the natural reaction is one of protection and self-preservation and often, to minimize my concerns out of a sense of loyalty and balance on one hand and to dismiss them outright and openly on another. I’m not here for it. Not anymore.

I’m leading off with the blog today; putting firmly in my mind so I can put it out of my mind for the day. I want the mental space clear and ready to write fiction, because I have a ton of fiction to write. Before I get there I need to talk here about sports. I’ll start at the High School level and see how far I get.

My son’s team is terrible. I found myself saying that out loud the other day when my mother called and asked how his team was doing. They are 1-5 and ranked 29th out of a possible 31 teams in the 6A. This is in spite of being the 5th largest school in the state. Sloppy. Just plain sloppy stuff right there. If you have over 3000 students you ought to be able to find 24 (kicker and punter) starters to make a competitive team. They didn’t. They haven’t even found a coach who’ll stay longer than a year. I’m hoping this one will, if only to provide some consistency.

There are two teams with worse records in 6A, and it is my deepest hope that we get them on the schedule for the next two years. I am openly lobbying to get 27, 28, 30, and 31 on the schedule. We already will have 25 (who is a fellow district team and who we play in a few weeks). That could offer the chance for a 5 win season. Throw in a 5A team and we could be looking at a 6 win affair. In fact, we have a 5A this week. The team, Ironwood, has gone 4-3 this season, beating terrible teams and losing to the ones with winning records in 5A. We are not a winning record by any means, but we are larger (for however much that counts) and we did whip these guys 42-0 last season. Of course, that was a different coach and a different Talis-boy leading the secondary. Ironwood too has changed. They have a shifty QB who drank the Lamar sauce. I’ve been studying film this week in order to help the kid get an in-game and prep advantage. I’m going to teach him how to read the linemen preplay. He has the cues on how to read the qb once the play starts, but now the WRs are the next read. A two-stage read is an important skill for a safety, so here is an opportunity to grow and to harness that.

I was part of a panel today during which the host read a remarkably old bio that neglected to mention half my kids and the Lady Talis. I need to clean that up. Your bio is the image you put out of yourself to the world, and if I am denying half my family and literally half the books I’ve written then that is a bad look. I need to add roughly 40 volumes, two novels, and three novellas. Work needs to be done there to be sure.

That moment was a good moment to reflect on how far I’ve come since I first took work at Arizona State. The bio is likely slightly newer than the one on this blog, meaning I have work to do everywhere. It is a longstanding problem, me not keeping up with things of this nature. In fact it is only through thinking about this content that I discovered that my work appeared in an anthology several years back. This is not sustainable, though I’ve sustained it for decades. Funny how once you get old the things that were easy to overlook become all that you think about.

I live in a space where rewatching every episode of TV series is considered a significant accomplishment. I could end the blog there and you would already know everything you need to know about what that does to my psyche. 73 hours of actively watching TV only to flip through lists to locate another 70+ hours is the consumer version of what I do for a living. Here I see the dual sides of creation and consumption, but consumption wins out. Consumption is the driving force–a distraction from anything that is valuable. What bugs me most is that it is a distraction to me as I try to exist in the space. All I hear is the noise of TV–often that of high pitched Japanese girls screaming unintelligibly (to me) about things I’d rather not care about. To stop it I need to actively take control of the TV or tell the culprits I want to watch something else. Yet in this there is an inherent unfairness. I live with them. They are family that has a right to exist. Moreover, and more importantly, I have a partner who puts up with my taste for football and also deals with the nonsense alongside me. So, I have, IMHO, little right to constantly cancel the behavior.

Yet the impact is killing me.

I cannot focus. I cannot work consistently. I need to go back to white noise and headphones…

I had really high hopes for the week. They didn’t pan out. I did get started. I did get the ball rolling. I did complete some of the tasks required, but overall I was underproductive and left a lot of opportunity on the table. Most of my energy went in a very good direction, and I am insanely proud of having made a step forward with the Lady Talis. On the other side of the life-work balance… nope.

The key to maintaining life-work balance is having success in both. It does not have to be huge but it cannot be push pull. You cannot allow yourself to sacrifice either. I pulled back on the working this week. It had nothing to do with life. It was just me feeling a bit overwhelmed in general with the work and stressed over little shifts within the home environment. This destabilization vexed me all week and now I need to work twice as hard to get halfway caught up.

I will not let another week go by like this. I need to lock in on many levels.

I started thinking about the algorithms that track your internet activity and create ad profiles catered to what they think you want. It turns out there are story ideas in this (because of course there are). I started thinking about all the searches I’ve been doing and then thought about if a person started searching for something off kilter and a partner or lover found those searches… or if the past searches belonged to a loved one who passed away and the constant pop ups lead to depression. I think a lot about the algorithms in terms of youtube and what my kids watch and how I don’t want that to be attributed to me and my habits. It amazes me how open the younger generation is to feeding these algorithms and training the large language models to follow them. I don’t find it the least bit healthy, but of course it makes for great fiction.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is extremely hard to really determine what teams are better than others beyond, well, high school. Heck even then there can be legitimate factors at play in terms of play style and matchups. College football exhibits better coaching and more athletic parity in certain conferences. All this to say that, dang, I cannot figure out how good Drake is or is not.