Author: admin

Traditionally sundays are tied to writing, reflection, and football. I have a little bit to say about some of those things. I don’t have anything coherent enough to design an entire 10 minute post around. So, I’ll just dive into…

Some Thoughts:

1. The Dragon Ball Hunt is officially back for 2017, and I am looking for ideas to make the hunt amazing. I’m thinking seven or maybe even an 8th clue this year and tying the whole thing in with Naruto as both sets of kids are Naruto crazy right now.
2. It reminds me that I am hosting my kiddos for thanksgiving this year. Ugh. I don’t have a clue what to do. Maybe I can piece together a turkey bowl? That seems quite ambitious though.
3. Starting tabata training with the boys this morning. They need to get ready for a long and rough football season (all three are on new and largely raw teams) and I need to not die from the fat belly.
4. Tabata. One more responsibility I’m adding to my not so short list. It might be time to write down the list of responsibilities and figure out what stays and what doesn’t.
5. Coffeenerdness: I have issues with the Ninja Coffee Maker. Issue #1: Once the cleaning light goes on it never ever goes off. I cleaned it about 10 times. #2: And this is a good issue. It definitely tells me the quality of my coffee. Largely this is discovered through the condition of the coffee in the filter post brew. Some brands look ready to brew again. Some resemble the nastiest variety of sludge.
6. My son’s cat is crazy lonely. She mewls about it to me once or twice a day, like a patient coming in for therapy.
7. I had a lot of fun experimenting with plays on friday, but I am not sure the team felt the same. It can’t instill confidence if the coach changes the play as you’re repping it. However, I plan to pitch that Tuesday as my process and seeing what players are capable of and building around that. It is true: You play to the talents you have, and not what you wish you had.
8. That being said, I maintain doubt that we field a team at all. 11 kids is the most I’ve ever had show up at a practice and that does include most of the regulars. We are not even allowed to go to war with less than 14. Current roster size is 15. Of that number there are probably 4 kids who shouldn’t be on the field at the same time because of size. They’re all too small and a such limited in what they can do. Likewise, there are two players who are over the weight limit, which means that we really only have 13 or we go unweighted and kids will get hurt bad.
9. My kids are spending their allowances on beyblades. This is cool, because it means they will truly enjoy the stadium. Down the road we will have a fun tournament with only the leftover extra parts.
10. I’m still stupid in love. At this point it has become a permanent state of mind.

I just spent $100 on a 39″ satellite dish. I didn’t buy it to pick up cable signals. I bought it to use as a Beyblade stadium. Since the first time we played Beyblade my kids have been wishing and hoping for a colossal stadium like the one on the show:

Now that is a massive arena–at least 6 feet in diameter. I didn’t manage that, but 3.5 feet isn’t half bad and is a sight larger and more impressive than anything we’ve had in the past. In other words, I went all out. It makes me happy to make them happy by doing stuff like this. I feel like they deserve a crazy wish-fulfilling childhood that makes them pass that tradition down to their kids. My own childhood was the opposite. My wishes and dreams unfolded in my mind or were played out in the handful of action figures I got from my dad. I stopped getting toys all together after he died.

I’m not saying my childhood was utter trash. You learn from everything you experience in your life and I am fortunate to have lived a life where I did not face sexual abuse or anything so awful. I wasn’t spoiled, and it is clear that they are, so there are downsides to what I am doing too.

What I am doing is working it out and excising my own ancient demons and having a damn (pun!) good time in the process. Maybe I still am that twelve year old kid, only now I have a steady income and three other mini me’s to fuel my devious imagination.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am right back in that wonderful yet terrible space–right near the edge of something yet afraid to look over and engage. I don’t feel like I am quite ready to take in a story. It sounds very odd, I know, but that is the way I am about such things. I have to be prepared to accept it and ready to give it the attention it deserves. Too many distractions. Too much on the plate. What I need to do is clear up these distractions, get organized, and get ready to take on story.

5:05 AM. The youngest kid’s bus leaves in an hour. That is a pretty dramatic shift for a kid who has grown accustomed to waking up between 7 and 8:30 over the past 10 weeks. Summer crawled by and atrophied our muscles, sense of timing, and academic responsibility. It has been a long hard fight to get myself up and going in preparation for this week, and I realize that it is going to take the brood much longer.

One thing I’ve learned is that ritual/routine is powerful. Doing the blog each morning fires up my brain. Occasionally the fire starts after the words have already hit the screen, but the fire does start. Given the early start and the need to quickly train my little one’s brains, I ought to devise some similar style of ritual for them. If not writing then something else that gets the mind going.

For me, writing this every morning is a healthy start and a reminder that the brain still has a little bit left to offer. I don’t always have a wealth of things to say, but I make the effort. That is the key trait I want to promote in all of them through a ritual such as this. Later we will get back into doing morning laps and conditioning our bodies–the stuff that comes easy to them and feels like a nightmare to me. For now let’s stick to what I am presently good at and thus can teach a little.

 

Some Thoughts;

1. A little over a month since I unquit and I am slowly moving towards being able to sit down and write stories again. I am actually starting to want to.
2. Football was played last night. The Cowboys won, the Cardinals lost. All is right with the universe once again. Next week Beast Mode is coming to town and I intend to be there. Not front seat, but close enough.

When I came to the page this morning I found myself staring at the two calendars on my wall. To the right is a calendar from Half-Price books turned to May. Directly behind my screen is another larger calendar that shows July with the days marked out through the 17th. Well, at least they are both 2017 calendars. I think that has a great deal to do with follow through. As an idea guy I come up with a wealth of structures and one offs on how to be better organized, what to write, how to do things, and so on. I dive into these plans with gusto, often spending money to get the little parts that help me execute these plans. What I’m left with is a cluttered space with too many calendars (I also have 4 notebook calendars within arm’s reach) and the vestiges of half-thought plans that never went anywhere.

My office is littered with the carcasses of good intentions. There are unused RFID tags from the time I helped my kids set up an RFID tagging biz. There are rocket parts scattered everywhere. Half-finished offensive concepts lay crumpled beside the books that refined them. Post-it notes polkadot the desk itself. The pivot then is to take those intentions and focus on one plan, one idea and see it through to the ultimate conclusion. As a writer I have to allow myself the freedom to fail, but I have to maintain the commitment to see the plan through to that ultimate failure.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Was talking with my partner about how Naruto is based on Japanese mythology and got to thinking about how other anime is also based on myth. Beyblade, for example is based on mythology. I never considered how useful that could be in a classroom setting. Heck, I teach a mythology class and have never used that stuff… till now.
2. BER’s The Night Begins to Shine has become a Teen Titans staple. This week they released a 4-part episode chronicling the life and war taking place in a dimension created by the story. Puffy UmiYumi showed up. So did Ceelo. Yeah, I bought the album.

One thing I’ve always wanted to do in fantasy writing and never have is to deeply explore the relationship between fantasy races and human racial classifications. Particular races are often associated with, even aligned with certain minority groups. I don’t think this is by accident. Our brains are designed to create order from perceived chaos/lack of understanding and free association is one way in which we do that. When we absently align Orks with blacks it is no accident. It happens because we can see certain characteristics in the writing that prescribe to our perceptions of back people. White supremacists regularly cast Tolkien as one of their own, citing in particular the description of orcs as being heavily based on that of blacks and asians. ““…squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes”

This description notwithstanding, there are other cultural clues within the writing that label orks as evil, lesser, etc. which are all the traits we have traditionally ascribed to minorities. Here is the thing though: I think Tolkien was talking about religion far more than he was about race itself when it comes to those races. Where I think there is a more interesting comparison is where I want to focus my own writing: I want to talk about where they shop.

You can tell the what stereotype an area pays homage to based on what you find in the strip malls. For example, there are two Yoga studios along the entire stretch of Crenshaw blvd. Neither are in what is affectionately known as ‘the hood’. Likewise, pawn shops and liquor stores tend to cluster in certain areas.

This is but a fledgling analysis that lives in the spectrum of a much larger truth, but that is what makes it fun to explore in writing. I have the opportunity through writing to explore whatever I find interesting. I love that about my life.

Some Thoughts:

1. Other things I love about my life: My partner, my kids, my opportunity to grow.
2. Speaking of growth, I will never use the term ‘flower’ to describe growth again. It is just a bad bad way to describe stuff.
3. I might do it again because, jokes.

 

I don’t want to talk about yesterday. Well, maybe later.

Today I am on the back 9 of my summer classes with a ton to grade but only a few days left before I am free… Somewhat free. There is a ton of creative writing feedback I mean to present to students after the fact and beyond that there is that pesky little novel outline I ought to start writing, once I have an idea of what to write about. Long have I discussed creating a working outline as an example for students who are struggling with putting their ideas together. I even evolved my plan to include student notebooks with tabs and worksheets to lead them through the creative process. At this point I have 8 students in the class, which is not too many to do this work-intensive project. It is something I feel I can handle this semester, so long as I can handle the initial idea of constructing an outline myself.

I think I’ll start principle writing this week–laying out the characters and really getting down on paper who the protagonist is and what that person wants. Truthfully, I am torn between designing a more mature and a teenfic style outline–mostly because I have no idea what story I am trying to tell.

Yes, I get that a novel ought to start with a core idea or character. I just have a scene. Hopefully it is enough.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. In other news, I figured out a possible solution to making the prized life-size beyblade stadium: a 120cm offset satellite dish antenna. The bowl shape ought to be near perfect. I have questions about the depth, but nothing else comes in at that size and roundness.
2. Yesterday was yet another epic shit show in my life. When everything goes wrong, the little bit that goes less wrong feels like salvation. I suppose this is the universe’s version of breaking down a torture victim.
3. So I binged How I met Your Mother for an entire season. That happened.

Inside Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Bleak House’ is a wonderworks of horror and fantasy inspiration. Toro has created in this space a world where any writer can be inspired to connect to universes outside of our own. He has one room in particular where it is always raining. Through the magic of (lord knows what) he’s crafted windows that constantly show and sound like it is pouring outside. I’m guessing he uses TV screens, because that is what I use in my space as of late. The effect of the rain on my concentration is amazing. It focuses me and helps me to feel like I am in not only the right headspace but the right environment to be an author. As I fall back into trying to write it is becoming increasingly clear that the key is to put your mind and spirit in a place where accessing the storyverse is as easy as possible. For me that means rain and cold and blankets and it means more stuff too, but I am trying to figure out what.

My walls are a mix of calendars and fantasy maps and framed images of good writing. All of it works to create an environment of encouragement. It is not entirely perfect. My desk is always too messy and nothing I want access to is ever at my fingertips. Still, it is always a slippery question, what I want. I suppose I want a little red pill that slides me into the best creative mindset, a place inside of myself where all the stories are lined up side by side and I can pull one out of line and walk it to the front room in my brain and sit it down next to me and have a conversation.

Yeah. I want a space that makes me feel like that.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My final coaching season looks to be in jeopardy. We lost another kid from the roster and haven’t even had our first official practice yet. We are down to 14-16 kids depending on who actually pays the fee. League minimum is 15, but to be safe you need at least 20–especially given how undersized our team is right now. The HC and I plan to make the final determination on August 14th. What this means to my eldest is that he will not have that prep year to help him move into high school and be ready to try out for the high school freshman team. Ultimately, that means he is unlikely to play HS Football, killing his college football dreams dead–unless he runs track and builds up his speed and body and walks on somewhere. These things have been known to happen…
2. In a post that was supposed to be about creativity and writing conditions I find myself immediately straying to football. This is likely about being an offensive coordinator and learning to express that kind of creativity. It is also on my mind as I run my first solo optional team practice in a few days.
3. Being in love is crazy. So crazy that it occupies your thoughts at the strangest times. I can be thinking about anything else and my thoughts wander back to her.

I recently wound up in a conversation with a friend’s dad about teaching. It started with a quick diagnosis of my profession and led to a larger conversation about that choice and what that means you ascribe to in terms of personal goals. This was a really important conversation to have at this particular crossroad in my professional life. I was reminded of my original intention in teaching: I wanted to find someone who wanted to be a teacher and reach and cultivate that individual to reach others. On the surface it sounds like a prosyletic meme or, more specifically, a self replicating virus. In some ways the teaching faith can be that. However, I achieved that goal years ago. So now what?

The conversation led me through the various reasons I taught and teach. The replacement doctrine has long passed. Now I primarily teach in order to share cool shit, which is not exactly why I started doing it in the first place. Somewhere in the middle of my career (thus far) I was teaching to learn about the students and the local culture and how to be better as a teacher. Ultimately I should be trying to marry those two doctrines together and become more of a holistic teacher who wants to both learn cool shit and share cool shit. Essentially that is what I do in my summer Sci-fi Learning Community and in my Creative Writing courses. Not coincidentally, that is where I have the most fun.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. If there is one lesson my kids need to learn from me it is the importance of silence. Few kids I know, and especially not my own, appreciate moments of silence. I feel like kids should meditate every day in order to center themselves and reflect. I’ll try to make that part of our routine, but I have to be honest about where I am with routines involving kids. My followthrough is not strong, because it is pretty tough to keep them doing X, Y, or Z.
2. One more routine ought to involve reading for at least 30 minutes a day, because that is basically gone from their lives short of reading the text scrolling by on the latest anime episode.
3. Despacito is one of the most brilliant songs out right now. This is not because of what it says but of who is on it. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee played on the popularity of Justin Bieber to introduce a latin club banger to the mainstream, and then quickly and thoroughly outperformed Beiber on the track. Well played.

Recently I sat with a student and discussed the basics of the Fermi Paradox. The idea behind that goes like this: Since we haven’t seen evidence of alien life, given the enormity of the galaxy and number of Earth-like planets, then they don’t exist. Now I haven’t tackled that subject beyond the few suggestions spat at me in my high school physics class, because I immediately assumed it was wrong. Moving one step further to a basic search I realized that not only is it probably wrong but it also is miscredited to Fermi, perhaps for political reasons. According to those who were part of the conversation that birthed the debate Fermi statement was more about transportation, “… the reason that we hadn’t been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn’t last long enough for it to happen.”

This in no way means there cannot be aliens. In fact it speaks specifically to the voracity of space travel itself. Fermi was talking about the inability to reach even 1/10th the speed of light (29 979 245.8 m/s) which is necessary for interstellar travel to nearby galaxies in a human lifespan.

To add to the confusion, Pablo Picasso said ‘Anything we can imagine is real’ and as a writer I want to believe that–perhaps literally. What if these worlds we are creating do exist in the multitude of dimensions and the infinity of space. What if our understanding of magic and intrigue and worlds beyond our own comes from some deeper yet still untapped connection to string theory and quantum entanglement. What if in the infinite space of reality we are all linked and all visit each other–not by starship but by story?

Some Thoughts:

1. Murphy’s Law of the Universe: The moment you suggest needing more of something you are immediately rewarded with a situation where you are in line to get much much less.

It took me 42 years to really settle into the notion that I work best in the mornings. This blog is evidence of a mind preparing itself for the day as opposed to the unhinged ramblings of a man desperate for sleep. When I consider the accomplishments of my schoolmates I realize that this lack of self-awareness has really been the deciding factor in my failure to accomplish much of what I am capable of thus far in my life. There are two new truths that sprout from this one as branches from my olive tree. I am no longer capable of the magic I once was, and I still have a way to go before I am the writer I am capable of being and thus the human I am capable of being.

We all face diminished capacity at some point in our lives. I think about models who, with age, find solace in exercise and eventually plastic surgery to prolong their beauty. There is not an external fix for being a writer, though our capacity diminishes at a far slower pace. What becomes ultimately important is creating an ease of access to ideas and a regularity–a habit–with which you approach the craft. Stephen King wrote some of his best work after 60. I do not intend to wait that long. I cannot promise a schedule short of saying that I utterly expect to have a clean and set office space by week’s end. This lack of clutter ought to serve as an external extension of my internal workings.

In other words, I need to get my head straight and buckle down. The stories are there, if I can find the will to reach them.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Had the first major football meeting last night and a practice is happening tonight. That means football is happening at the youth level. This is going to be my first year coordinating the offense and it is happening at the 12u level where kids are going into school-level football. This is going to be quite the experience for us and I intend to learn a lot and enjoy the hell out of my final season as a coach.
2. Always nice to get a check in the mail. I just got one for some past writing. It felt pretty special.
3. I still miss my love. This has grown into a bit of a state of mind, really. There is a point in a relationship where you just want to be with that person constantly. I keep running up against that point.