Author: admin

I am not a fan of the way our POTUS is running things, but I understand. Lets consider for a second who the man is: He is a relic of a bygone era who truly believes that America’s best times were when there was a clear sense of racial division and hierarchy. He is a man who is fiercely loyal to those who support him the most, and someone who will fight tooth and nail to defend his self-inflicted machismo and idealism. Sadly he is also someone fighting for a nation that does not exist and is unwilling to recognize the reality of what does exist. This is only highlighted by his inability to see alt-right as inherently bad vs. defined by it. If defined by anything it is defined by his ad hoc creation of the alt-left boogie man and dogged belief in an idea of a leftism that doesn’t really exist.

In other words, he is a man that sees antifa as a name of a terrorist organization vs. the idea of anti-facism being something that we should all be rallying behind. He isn’t the leader we need. However, he is the leader we have and that isn’t going to change for a while. So, what do we do while he is here?

I’d say the more central-thinking individuals we turn away from his stink the better. There is a certain amount of comfort in the ideas of white oppression. It is a convenient excuse for those who have no other solid foundation for why things are bad in their lives. It is a message that (like most republican rhetoric) targets a poor and disenfranchised audience that wants to believe they have the same chance as any other hard worker to become a billionaire. These are the people who see Trump as a ‘common man’ or ‘working class leader’ while the reality is that he comes from extreme wealth and only ever pays lipservice to their needs. What happened with his pledge to bring back coal is case and point of that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Those were just some anti-Trump thoughts swirling around in my brain that needed to find an outlet. I am constantly amazed at how much a presidency reflects where the nation thinks it is at. Obama’s presidency marked the ‘end of American racism’ while Trump’s marks the ‘normalization of white rage.’ Both are exaggerations.
2. The beam approaches. Less than a week now.

Funny how the random links that appear at the bottom of articles can sometimes be the path to enlightenment. This one came courtesy of the cancer center website, which appeared (for some strange reason) at the bottom of a digital spy article about the upcoming season of The Defenders. The article focused on the five forms of intimacy. I perked up, because I have a predilection towards one form of intimacy, meaning I could be missing out on 80% of the loving! Turns out, I’m not entirely. However, I was missing out on a wealth of emotional understanding.

The five forms, according to the article, are emotional, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, and of course, sexual. Physical touch is one of my two primary love languages, thus the sexual form of intimacy is prominent. What really caught my eye here though were the twin headlights of spiritual and intellectual intimacy. Having a sense of a connection beyond the physical always means something to me. Soon we will be under the beam of a full eclipse, and I won’t be with my partner at that moment. That is a reflection of spiritual separation, Ka pulling us in different directions. That matters. By understanding that I recognize now how much the spiritual matters in building a loving and lasting partnership. I don’t believe I’ve ever had that in a long term relationship.

The intellectual intimacy is one I often overlook. The sharing of ideas and the trust to be open and honest about one’s intellectual passions is a rare gift. I share that and we develop ideas together. This is a vital form of intimacy that I believe I have taken for granted. What is seen cannot be unseen, and that is a good thing.

So, there are five areas to work on in intimacy. Time I got to work.

Today marks the start of the 2017 fall work semester for me. A year ago today I was half-burned out and uncertain about the work world I’d helped to create. Two weeks later I was done with all thoughts of professional leadership at that college. I’d discovered what that world was actually about and decided–openly–to shift focus back to becoming a better teacher. The results were mixed. I improved in some areas and drastically fell off in others. I lost all sense of community within the college and became a ghost of my social and often professional self.

For all intents and purposes, this is my New Year’s Day. Everything for the past few months has been summer break-styled downtime, trips to the beach, and mental preparation. This is the fall of my content. I am determined to reach the level teaching ability I ascribe to. Furthermore, I recognize that teaching at the college level is only one leg of my true work. I am a writer first. What I always am teaching is how students can recognize and thus tell their own story. Therefore it is important that I recognize and tell my own. I am dedicated to writing an original novel over the course of the school year. This is not, as with past dedications, a pie in the sky idea. This is tied to classwork, scheduling, and how I expect to lead my life moving forward.

One of the scariest truths of my life is that I now expect to die. I don’t know when it is going to happen. I hope I live well into my eighties. Still there are nights that I am shook awake by the concept that I will one day close my eyes forever. When that moment comes and I am faced with the idea of what life I lived, I don’t want that fleeting forever to be filled with regret. I want to die empty. I want to die knowing I poured everything I had into life. I want to feel like the ideas that fill my head are left to serve as my legacy to those I love and leave.

I don’t mean to be so morbid, but the fundamental truth of life is that we are given a moment to explore, to love, and to make things happen. The person we face in the end is the one we faced all along–our own worst critic–ourselves. I can trace back all of the failures in my life to one person: me. I was always athletic enough, and a good enough writer, and smart enough to accomplish anything I wanted to. Though bothered–even hampered at times–by racism, it never stopped me from being able to achieve whatever I wanted. The only obstacle I’ve ever faced in my life is my inability to follow through. I cannot expect to defeat it all at once, but I can sure as hell give it all I have this semester.

I broke a promise to my writing crew. I promised to develop a new page of writing this week and, blog not withstanding, I did not. This betrayal is fairly typical of my writing slump. I don’t call it writer’s block because I’m not blocked. I’m simply not putting butt in chair to get the work done. As a result the work piles up and becomes this mountain that I need to climb before the semester starts. Let me be clear: The semester starts in 10 days. You heard of 90 days to a novel? This is 10 days to an outline.

In order to further the motivation for what needs doing, I am am going to be using the blog to publish some of that work. I need to create an outline in order to give my students a current sample of work that can be used as an example of the expectations of the class. I can continue driving through the process once class starts, but when I hand out the notebooks and everything on day one I need to be ready with a solid amount of the work in order to get them going and encourage them that the work is doable. Heck, it ought to be encouragement for me to finish the project.

Some Thoughts:

1. The website format is still… up in the air.
2. The Giants dropped a preseason game that highlighted the weaknesses of the O-line. At the same time I was encouraged by the speed and play of their rookie right tackle. My team is in a position to be amazing this year if that line can hold for a split second longer.
3. I did this entire blog with the coffee sitting in the coffee maker. Blasphemy.

My routine went to hell this morning. It fell apart when I woke up 20 minutes before my youngest needed to be on the school bus. Of course, he wasn’t trying to move around fast that early in the morning. We made it, but it broke the routine. Breaking such things is bad for habit. That’s why I wind up here, writing about what went wrong.

It goes back to making smart choices. I chose to snooze that morning alarm, roll back over when I initially woke up on my own around 4:30. My partner has this humorous print on her hallway wall chronicling the normal wake up times of famous authors. I thought of it as I shut my eyes. Again, choice. Not that waking up that early does anything magical. In truth your body finds its own circadian rhythm (I constantly thank spell check for allowing me to spell that word). Mine bounces in and out of sequence, occasionally shifting as far as two hours. This morning it trended upward towards midnight, and I should’ve made the choice to listen. Instead I slept and now I am all kinds of fatigued.

Which is why Ka lends us coffee.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Still working on the right theme for the page. This one, Adamos Pro, looked solid in theory. In practice it needs work.
2. I think this might work a lot better for 2626east.
3. Built a new site: houseofbeys.com. It is wonderfully fun. The site chronicles the in-house beyblade burst league. It even has a schedule of matches! Life is good.
4. Life is love.

Seven days into the post-semester glow I have that hankering for a new semester. I’m not even done yet. I have grading to do and feedback to email to several creative writers (the 5 week format for a writing workshop needs work–actually it needs less work and more focused feedback). I’m falling back into that prep mode and that creator phase where I like building cool stuff and taking advantage of the tools (tech) at my disposal and even using all the wonderful media out there in order to create something amazing for my students. Also for my kids. I am feeling a bit like a creator again, and I need to ride that wave of emotion and start doing big things with it, less the wave crashes against the shores empty and forgotten.

Flag for unnecessary darkness there.

What I am trying to say is that I am happy and I am ready to work. I don’t know what writing projects I want to work on, but I am ready to move on from the past and dive headlong into whatever awaits.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve long marveled at my eldest’s athletic prowess, but lately I have come to see some of that as location. The last few years he’s been close with a kid who is a superstar athlete. He can hang with the kid to a certain extent, but is clearly the smaller, slower, less agile athlete. This kid has two brothers in the NFL. So that says a lot about where my kid isn’t. However, it also offers an opportunity to see the ceiling and push himself to the level this other kid is at. This is an opportunity for all of my kids to grow.
2. Staying on that path, motivation is a big deal to me right now. I don’t have a tremendous amount of intrinsic motivation, but I’ve been bolstered by the Tony Robbins of the world. I use that kind of media to jumpstart my own engine and get it up to revving potential. I have to accept that I’m not that same 26 yr old kid sitting at a house party full of writers spinning tales. I’m a dad and a teacher and a coach. I’m someone different with different inputs. I have to accept where I am and use that to power forward to where I want to go.

I reminded myself halfway through the movie that what I was seeing on the big screen had no bearing on what was being told on paper.

Game of Thrones really screwed me up. Just yesterday I was having a conversation about Jeyne Poole, the character who actually dealt with the rape and marriage storyline involving Ramsey Bolton and Reek. Poole’s story is so much worse than what Sansa faces in her place and highlights one of many inconsistencies between print and screen. However, given the lack of any print books beyond The Winds of Winter, the HBO team can be forgiven.

The Sony Pictures Team cannot.

What’s that line? ‘You had one job.’ They failed miserably at that job. In fact, there are several moments in the movie where it feels as though they could have succeeded in creating a film that launched the series as a viable franchise. No such luck. The movie sank like a man wearing armor in a lake.

There was some good here. Idris Elba’s portrayal of Roland was dark, brooding, and occasionally outstanding. The kid who plays Jake Chambers was solid throughout. Heck, there even were moments where it felt like the book. Unfortunately there were more moments where it felt like a drinking game–take a drink every time a different Stephen King book is referenced. Short of ‘Under the Dome’ it felt like the major novels were fairly well represented. This of course, is not the point of the story. That is the problem of the film. It doesn’t tell a story related to the text in ay substantial way. It goes off course in a direction that will never lead it to the books.

Or the Tower.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I started a list!
2. A conversation with my partner reminded me that my lack of motivation affects more than just me.

The key to my productivity is lists. When I don’t have one staring at me I tend to behave as if I don’t have anything truly pressing to accomplish. I allow myself to fall into this stupor of lazy inaction and it eats away my hours until only sleep remains. Of course I do have things to do. Plenty of things need doing on a daily basis, but lately I cannot convince (motivate) myself to do much of anything. Depression? I’ve addressed that side of it already on this space. The other side of the equation has to do with desire and goal setting. This equation needs to be better balanced. That is where lists come in.

When I am low everything feels out of reach. Get a soda? No, it is too tough to go all the way upstairs. Besides, it will certainly fatten me up, which will lead to heart problems and then I die. This is the classic slippery slope. A list helps with that. I can alter my thinking around measurable and reachable goals. Get a soda? Check. Then add to the list: fold laundry. Because I’m upstairs it seems a bit more feasible. Now I am feeling a sense of accomplishment and I’ve organized my day into a series of expected events and I am not left to my own devices.

My devices suck.

Now getting to the point where I actually write this stuff down is a chore in of itself. Perhaps it slides into the daily 5: Contact, Coffee, Write, Tabata, List. Yeah… that sounds fantastic. What a recipe for success this is! Now all that remains is the follow through. That topic is a post all of its own.

Contact. Coffee. Write.

When I went dark for those few days I was truly in a dark place. I had, for the first time in memory, abandoned a writing project. I took on the project because I had a solid idea and felt the due date would motivate me to write. It didn’t. My will to write was sucked into the black void that was my relationship problems and after a while everything went dark. I cannot say that I’m back 100%. I will admit here on this blog that I was suffering from a terrible bout of depression, and I don’t believe I’ve fully emerged from that void.

Lately I start my day by reaching out to loved ones and making that human connection. The most important thing to me is the people I love most in this life. Once I make sure to connect with my love I feel grounded in something other than myself. This is important right now, because depression often means you are unaware of how negative you are towards yourself and of the people in your corner. In fact, the only reason I know I’m depressed still is because I found myself sitting at home most of Sunday watching bad Zac Snyder films and the Sharknado marathon. Yep, I sat through a chunk of Batman v. Superman and then went on to watch most of Sharknado 4 and part of 3 (why they’re playing in reverse order is beyond me. Sharknado makes no sense).

This is what depression looks like for me: A cluttered desk filled with unopened bags of supplies thoughtfully purchased in an effort to boost my awareness of what needs to be done and how it can be done. Meanwhile what needs to be done piles up on the desk amidst wrappers and old paper towels and loose change I haven’t the energy to deposit in the change cup. All of this happens in the near dark, because the light would reveal too much… okay that last part was pure melodrama, but the rest is accurate.

The real problem with depression is that knowing is only ‘half the battle’ (thanks, G.I. Joe, you’re a real American hero–I wonder why there has not been a stronger re-release in this war-driven economy… oh wait there was. We called it Transformers and snuck you in on the back end). The other half of the battle is figuring out how to fire through it and keep going until you’re clear.

Some Thoughts:

1. Going to see The Dark Tower today. The books carry weight in my life. The movie… I’m going to go in without reservation.