Author: admin

I’m having a bit of a crisis of creativity on many levels. Of course, this is likely the depression creeping up again (when it was never actually gone). It is a struggle right now to do anything, and there is much to do… like this blog. The word of the day is: Idiopathic (arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause).

At first we couldn’t figure out a name for them. For a very small portion of the population the age of seven was an awakening. It would happen on their birthday, as though their biological engines clicked over in time with that day and sequence. These children would fall asleep the night prior with a headache or other localized pain and when they woke they would be changed.

Once the military caught wind of the change they called it an ‘activation’ as though a flip had been switched or a sleeper agent awakened. The thousands of scientists and institutes concurrently studying the condition called it just that–a condition.

We all called it and them Sevens.

Whatever the cause, a select few would wake up on their seventh birthday in possession of strange new abilities. Hyper-strength. Hyper speed, and increased intellectual ability were among the common gifts. Rare cases had the ability to manipulate items at a distance with their thoughts. Others still could interface with computers with their minds. All of it was magical to the normals like us, and frightening to the older generation who saw nothing but a threat and a potential weapon.

Been working on the novella lately and enjoying every moment of the work. I’m happy about how the writing is going. I’m mostly happy about how the life is going save for the moments where I find myself walking on eggshells hoping everything is right with the family. Life is good.

Over this break we spent a good deal of time re-watching the Gilmore Girls. It is a tradition here; one that I’ve grown to enjoy. Watching old shows feels like going home. What I really need to do is figure out how to balance that activity with the gaming. There is not a great deal of balance in this situation. There is a great deal of binging of various activities and subjects.

Yet I’m joyful. I’m happy about how life is going and how I’m doing in life. It is Kaizen pure and simple. Today’s Kaizen involved writing and focusing on the words. I gave myself a few hours of writing and research and the two came together to develop a very good chapter. One more to go in that sequence, and I will be on the way to being done by Sunday….

Then it is on the the next novel.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had the Madden Superbowl. Lost. It was actually a good thing as it seems to have injected a great deal of excitement into the league. Everyone feels like the ‘ship is up for grabs, and 3 out of 4 of us have won it. Gonna be a great season.

My boy was invited to the Battle AZ Allstars. It is a wonderful opportunity that I feel is worth taking up, so I will look into the opportunity this weekend. It could be fun. My mid kid high schooler might also have a chance to compete with his friends for one of the last times as he is no longer able to compete with them based on the grade difference, so that could be fun.

I’ve been enjoying this time off, and should this Battle thing work out I will not be a part of it from the coaching standpoint. Instead I will be on the ‘kickback’ side of things and just watching to observe how he is sen by his peers. I find that enormously interesting. It is good to see him perform without me by his side. It shows that he can do this and wants to do this even without me. It needs to be about him as it is for the others.

Beyond the youth game I am watching the pro game with new interest. The Giants are limping towards a playoff opportunity. On the one hand this puts them out of reach for a solid draft pick, but on the other hand it is something this team has been needing for a very long time. We don’t have a real chance to go to the superbowl, and we don’t have a QB who can do it by himself. I wonder if he can do it with Barkley, a renewed D and a few more WR weapons around him. We will see in the next two years.

In the fantasy game… I’m done. I lost big in all three leagues regardless of how many points I put up. It has been a rough year for such things.

Lastly, our family Madden league is having the next super bowl tomorrow. It will be our 5th and the 2nd where I get to rep the NFC. My comp come down to one of two teams and they will be duking it out in the morning. Looking forward to seeing what goes down.

I realize that there is not much point to saying this other than to actually put it out there, so I am saying it so that it has been said: American Media is manipulating what should essentially be a minor political divide in order to capture eyeballs. The two largest perpetrators are Fox and CNN. I wanted to say MSNBC, but that organization doesn’t garner nearly as many views as the CNN machine. Fox is King, and the King has many princes clogging up the reality works. As a result, the American public is truly screwed and glued to their feeds.

Nearly all of the news operations in this country are for profit. They all brand themselves in one way or another, but that branding is more about surface and message than any deeply seeded truth. For example, Fox who rails against the injustice of Liberalism and the commie socialist scum, also has a side hustle of buying up student debt and raising interest levels on said debt through a subsidiary known as Credible Labs. This undercuts the messaging of anti-this and that as they are showing themselves to be pushing that messaging not for the benefit of a strong ‘Christian Nation’ but for themselves. Futhermore, we are not a Christian nation. We are meant to be built on principles outside of one religion.

CNN is an eyeball machine. They roll opposite of Fox in hopes of catching those eyeballs. They push and push and push stories they think the readership will love and keep clicking on. In modern parlance, CNN is straight clickbait. The underlying principle governing CNN is: Get them to watch our stuff. In that sense they are no different than Fox and no less insidious. Fox simply does it better, because the Republican party is built on the principle of follow the leader and do whatever the leader says (very non-American) and CNN caters to a democratic audience that feels that following the leader is less important than speaking your truth and protecting your truth.

I’d like to say the problem boils down to politics but the problem really boils down to Money, Power, and Sheep. We, the people, are the sheep and we face a number of shepherds trying to lead us into the valley of darkness. Not one of them is his brothers keeper. It is our responsibility as individuals to see through the nonsense and make choices based on what we think and feel and believe is best for the nation–not what these outlets tell us to do.

Spent the better part of the evening looking at lights around the part of the city where we live. I’m sinking into the xmas spirit. This makes me happy. Beyond that my mind is filled with…

Some Thoughts:

1. Barring an over the top scorefest by Jarvis Landry I will be eliminated from the last of three fantasy leagues. 2020 sucks.
2. Madden wish list: play cooldown for franchise mode and a way to interview for coaching positions with other teams while you are already a coach. In fact, I’d like a way to have OC, DC, and Special Teams coordinator positions as well as a more involved trainer and scouting department interface. I feel a more in depth coaching experience is definitely possible and important. I don’t know how to fix owner mode. I think adding owners meetings and stuff like that could be fun if the experience offered some in-game and or franchise value to the process.
3. I’m deep in the Madden conversation because I am avoiding my novella tonight. It is in that state where, like a puzzle, you can start to make out the picture but you can also recognize all the missing pieces.
4. Kaizen: I thought about this in the morning. I wanted to be able to avoid reaching the end of the night and realizing I had not improved in any sensible way. I didn’t decide how I wanted to improve, so I tried to make progress in every possible way I could. I eliminated a bunch of the clutter in the extra bedroom. I finally put real hours of focus on the novel. I told my partner exactly what I was thinking and feeling without being afraid of the repercussions. So, I’ve improved in my willingness to move forward.
5. Tomorrow I want to work on patience and understanding…

This Japanese term means continuous improvement, and I’ve decided to adopt it as a way of being in the now and next. I want to be able to look at myself each day at the end of the day and say how I’ve gotten a little bit better.

Getting better is more than a New Year’s resolution. It is a definite need for me, as I am an individual who has become stagnant in more ways than I can imagine. I am surrounded by stagnancy and likely bring many of the people around me down. I sink to the lowest possible level, like a sponge soaking up all the suck, swallowing it and wallowing in it. I need to tell myself to get better. I need to make those around me better vs. worse. This is my task.

Kaizen:

1. I recognized that I have to get better ever day. Knowing is half the battle. The other half is hard ass work.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ll mess with that format. It is likely the Kaizen will become a part of some thoughts.
2. My mom showed up. This is not a simple ‘oh she walked or drove across town.” No, she flew across the country during Covid. Popped in for business, and briefly stopped by the house to say hello. Unannounced. I cannot make this shit up… and I’m a fiction writer.
3. Jr. Talislegger #2 is back in the football game and that means that I need to rise early in order to get the kid to practice on Sundays. Yay.
4. These blogs are getting later and later and about less and less… That is never a good sign.
5. Coffee talk: While I have a love for large cups of coffee a la Gilmore Girls, I find that a smaller cup holds more heat and thus flavor.
6. I enjoy these short thoughts… especially when I have little to say.
7. I will say that I am increasingly aware that I am falling ill. Not quite sure what it is. It does not match up with Covid, which is good.

Antediluvian: of or relating to the period before the flood described in the Bible

“In the beginning, there was pork chops.” Barry said. He waved his hands in the air as if a magician showing off the best part of the trick. Sitting on the kitchen table in front of him was a package of pork chops.

Arry said, “What, not bacon? Why go straight for the bone in stuff?”

“Pork chops are professional grade cooking. Bacon is what people can do on a microwave or a pan, but they don’t even have to watch it.”

Arry had a round face that looked a bit like a cross between orphan Annie and an emoji when she smiled. She was smiling now, all teeth and crazy ideas. She said, “Are you calling yourself a professional? Are you saying that you, Mr. I’m seventeen and never used a microwave, is suddenly top chef?”

Once, Arry had told Barry his face turned red when she made fun of him. This was incredibly hard to believe since Barry was black. When she said it he felt his face go hot and he wondered if she was right. He was wondering that right now. “Do you want me to cook or not?”

“Maybe you could deconstruct the pork chop. Cook it as if we were in the antediluvian era, you know, just us and a fire we stumbled upon after the lightning hit and managed to surround it with rocks.”

“Maybe you could make a few less jokes and actually take the time to witness genius act work.”

Arry stuck her tongue out and said, “That would require genius.”

“Watch and learn, pretty girl.”

He started with a simple sear. He’d seen it done with steak and figured the process could work the same with pork. There was the thing about how long pork had to be cooked and how to keep it from drying out, but he would deal with all of that during the oven stage. The sear was the thing now. If he could just show her the sear, maybe she’d give him the other smile, the one that made him want to tolerate her throwing around words like Antediluvian.

I meant to do the freewrite, but I am starting this at 10:40 and my brain is cooked. I mean cooked. I’ve been playing games for hours and I have not done that in a long time. Honestly, I wonder how kids (especially my kids) can do this for like 9 hours in a day and be ready for more. The amount of screen time is astounding. The lack of independent creativity is astounding and likely my fault.

Tomorrow the goal is to slip out of this one day bingefest and back into the writer mode, so expect a saturday freewrite as a way to appease y’all (and myself) for the sloppy friday situation.

I’m coming to a particular conclusion about this life and this world: We cannot always be what we want or expect to be, and that is a beautiful thing. I’ve learned more about myself from failure than success. Perhaps that is because the success was an expectation, and the failure was a shock that required change.

I still fail all the time. I failed today in some ways as a partner. I failed in some ways as a parent. Yet I was successful in both as well. Success and failure are the yin and yang of my life as these words are the fatigue driven ramblings of a man who is up far too late.

I’ll be putting an end to that right now…

I got to see snow.

This is a rarity for me and something I took for granted all those years in New York. My partner and I spent the evening up north in search of the elusive flakes. We found them in droves. By early afternoon fat flakes were pouring from the sky. I captured them on film as I watched from the window. It was a perfect morning.

By evening I’d settled in with the fam to watch Peninsula, the sequel to the highly regarded Train to Busan. The sequel sucked. It was about on par with most sequels in this new movie era. It felt like a cash grab where the director had very little to say and far more people to please with what he put on screen. It felt exactly like Ready Player 2, except I didn’t know these characters, so they had to build them wholly out of tropes. It was, at least entertaining. This, in spite of very bad CGI (as though they were using found footage from I am Legend) and largely overdone chase scenes.

I miss small movies. I miss movies where the intrigue is about the story and the realism of the acting and the characters. Roman Polanski’s Carnage comes to mind. Man I enjoyed the heck out of that movie.

I need more good cinema and more good writing. I need to find a way out of low and even mid-tier and into high tier stuff. I need film and literature that make me want to be a better writer vs. make me want to be a volume writer. I hope it is out there. I’ll keep looking until I find it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Something else I took for granted living in NYC? Humidity. That sweat helped me stay healthy, I think.

2021 needs to be entirely on point.

2020 is such a clusterfrag of a year (and such a fitting conclusion to an American Presidency that really pooped on the planet) that we need a hard reset. We need that mentality that gets us going in a new and vibrant direction. Since this is Waiver Wednesday (and I’m done predicting) I’ll talk about that direction and how it reflects on my sporting world.

Youth Game
Next year represents the last year of youth sports. We are taking a ‘gap year’ to not do the club stuff and not do football and instead the last youth is going to train with the High School folks and get ready for that experience. Moreover, it is going to be a gap year of reflection in which the kid experiences other stuff and decides if he wants to put in that work to be a High School athlete. As a result this is going to be the 12u year of fanfare. We want to go out big–State Championship, etc. He was invited to the All Star game this year locally and, if possible, I’d like to see him go to the All Star game locally and Nationally next year–collect those Jerseys and collect that feeling heading into the real show.

High School
2021 is going to be different. With multiple big names applying for the HC position at the H.S. we are sure to get an influx of talent in the coaching department. This means we may actually get on the road towards building a legit program. My kid has a chance to start over. He will be 14 by the start of the school year and on age (and grown up enough) with the freshman. The choice that remains is ‘does he play freshman ball again?’ I suspect he will play JV and some freshman as well, moving up and down the ranks as a WR/CB while developing as a K, which is his likely spot at Varsity and possibly beyond.

The Pro Game
I love what I’ve seen out of NY over the last month. This team is finally getting a sense of what the O and D should look like. We have the draft and free agency to build on that. The emergence of Gallman means that Barkley will have time to recover and work his way back into the offense as opposed to the weight of the team slamming down on his shoulders (and thus his knee).

I love my sports. I love writing about them. I’m excited for what 2021 may bring.