Author: admin

It is 4:53 by the clock on my computer. I have been awake for over three hours. I am a bit tired, coming off three hours of sleep, and I am a lot worried about the growing deterioration of my mind as a result of not getting good sleep in weeks. I can make a half dozen excuses about why the situation is as it is, but the one truth I return to is that I am not doing enough physically or mentally to settle myself by the end of the night. I’ve gone from walking 5+ miles a day to walking 5+ minutes a day and rarely leaving the house–even to empty the garbage. I’ve gone from two or more hours of morning writing to not doing any fiction at all and struggling to keep up with the blog. In truth, the only writing I seem to be accomplishing is prepping for this semester. Most of that is editorial in nature. I’m trying to shoehorn existing material into a form that works for my purposes. The more creative endeavors–the two classes I have on Wednesday that still need building–aren’t even getting done. I lack creative energy.

I need to move by body to get it back.

I need to find peace to get it back. Part of that is location, of course. Heck, most of it I believe to be locational. I do not do well here with the space and responsibilities and vibe. I’ve complained about the nature of this for days and yet I continue to spiral dangerously. So, what is to be done about this?

For now, I’m going to work in a few hours. I’ll see if being in front of students helps me get moving.

It ought to be a refelction on a semester start. This was the first day of my teaching semester with several online classes making their start. I didn’t start them on time, because it is that kind of year. I’m not at the top of my game with this janky return to the desert, but I am working on getting myself back and getting myself right. I need to do it faster and I need to do it in a healthy fashion. I am not the person I was before summer and I am trying to move forward/be better.

That means remembering the blog at least.

As I write, I am enjoying the marble league in the background. The time on the episode aligns with the ten for the blog, so I have that visual and audio cue to let me know when time is up as opposed to checking a watch or a timer. I need to get back to some organization in my life. Today I moved and sweated a little bit and cleaned a little bit and got to a point where I was actually doing stuff. I don’t know if it is enough to get a good night’s sleep, because I haven’t had one of those since I landed.

I need to get right. I want to get right. I intend to get back on schedule. I set myself up to be the first review in this upcoming Grad course, and that ought to get me rolling and working on the draft of the novel. It has to be solid. I want to make that move to general fiction and make it powerfully. I don’t know if this is the right story or the right character and I am losing faith in my ability to write it. That being said, I want to give it my all. I’m learning in this class and learning again. I need that learning. I need that routine.

I need to get back to doing it.

lying in bed tonight unable to sleep, I realized three things in quick succession:

1. The majority of my unhappiness can be traced back to living here.
2. I’m both restless and aimless.
3. I did not blog.

Just like that I almost blew another iteration not even a year into the damn thing. 168 days is nothing. Yet it is evidence that coming back here is ruinous to me. I haven’t exercised in over a week and I’ve hardly left the house under the 110+ heat wave. Still, all of it is excuse. I have weights here. I have a space I can clean up and worm in. I have all that I need to be healthy and successful in this space but I’ve chosen surrender and the boredom that comes with it. I’m not even writing.

all of it is a result of the malaise inherited from the here and the static nature of here. I’m living in a dead end frat house in a culdesac of people who don’t exist outside their home

more excuses for not doing anything. I’m never going to run out of those, so I may Berber do anything again except accept the fact that I’m not me when I’m here. .

Football.

I should leave it at that.

No, I want to say more. The countdown has begun for the first week of both my players’ seasons and they are both incredibly jacked to be out there. One is looking to move to the Power 4 after the season and one is looking for his first collegiate offer. Both have the opportunities to do so. More and more we are seeing the FCS do well against FBS teams–especially outside of the power 4. Last year Idaho State went 3-5 in conference play. Today they fought UNLV to the bitter end, falling 31-38. They weren’t a good team. UNLV was a top 25 team last year. So, the FCS is bringing heat. It leads me to believe conference play will be stronger this season and that the week two clash between UNC and Colorado State could raise eyebrows.

The difference between the two D1 divisions is money, but the FBS doesn’t simply have better teams across the board. Some conferences would struggle to beat some FCS conferences. Unilaterally the top schools in FBS are better than the top FCS squads, but that comes back to the money conversation. Michigan’s Freshman QB makes more in NIL than the entire UNC roster combined. He makes more than three Big Sky teams put together. 10.5 million minimum over 4 years, with incentives that could push the number to 12 million. That is one player. That is more than Brock Purdy made on his first contract and that man went to the Super Bowl as the starting QB.

Yeah it is out of control. I just want to see my kid get his share of the winnings before the tide turns against this practice. A fraction of money like that can set him up for life. Throw in his engineering degree and he’s set to be peak. That’s the future. The present is Chadron State in 7 days.

The count is on.

Since leaving the USA earlier this summer I have re-discovered a simple, yet painful truth. The way we live in this country is deleterious. The more I watch and even participate in the culture, the more I realize the profound and simple truth of it. We, as a country, lack patience, carry hate and anger, and feast on the concepts of constantly being either right or in the right, and seeking revenge on those who would claim otherwise. It is no wonder that our leader, our Avatar in a true sense, is Donald J Trump, a man who embodies everything I’ve listed above. We are reflected in him. Now, I do not have the time to break down the entirety of this argument, but I can start with the one that I think most applies to me and this moment–Patience.

Since returning, my patience has dwindled. It shadows that lack of patience I witness all around me. The more I see of this lack, the more I see of the lack within myself. It has always been there, of course. I was born a New Yorker. When they cut the umbilical cord, they harvest our newborn patience with it, likely feeding it into some machine deep within the MTA that slows trains and busses causing them to run exactly 6 minutes later than we need them to run. This poor-man’s Omelas machine has stripped me of the basic level of patience I see elsewhere–especially in British Colombia. Correction–Especially in Catalan Spain. Those folks are as patient as the mountains waiting for the winter snow to bleed off. Perhaps my troubles with here were reignited there during the slow afternoons when we turned our bodies in the sun like pottery setting in an oven.

The problems did begin. That they have not ended, that I have this awareness of how impatient and harried everyone around me appears to be is causing me qualms. As I’ve stated since I returned: I do not want to be here. I am ready to be elsewhere and have a life less harried. I am ready for the next act. Now begins the preparation for such.

It’s fall preseason and that means I am watching film!

Kid didn’t look good. Looked like the heat got him. He wasn’t thinking straight, taking bad angles and he dove way too often. I keep thinking about that not-so-old adage, “You can’t do epic shit with basic bitches” and it has me thinking he needs to be thinking about how he stays focused and trains right outside of what is happening with the team. The #1 thing the kid needs to do in-play is stay under control. Bring your feet. Don’t lose them.

The number one thing the kid needs to do overall is show the passion. You watch the film and there are moments he pops. He looks the part for sure. He has the size and speed to be that guy in the secondary, but he has to show he’s hungry. He looks well fed. He does not always finish plays the way he should and needs to read the QB better on the broken plays.

All of this is fixable. I still believe in the kid and believe he has a D1 chance. The window to make the most of that is closing, so he needs to act now. The season starts next week. He needs to bring it.

count this as another day of not knowing what to say. I’m drowning in a sense. I’m treading water in another. I’m grinding in a third. All of this movement swirls around moving towards the first day of classes and trying to settle back into the home space and a daily routine. I haven’t settled in or finished classes or really been able to feel like I’m getting where I need to be. Occasionally I have these bright flashes of story but I haven’t stopped to write any of it down. This is the drowning.

Where I am treading water is in the physical. I’m not progressing and I’m not falling backwards as fast as I probably could be. It is a loosing battle right now, because I cannot tread water forever no more than I can hold my breath forever. I need a bouy to hold on to. I need a fixture that gets me through.

The same can be said for the idea of teaching, which remains the sole area in which progress is actually moving forward. Not quickly. Not enough. Moving nevertheless. Gotta keep moving and planning and grinding on in order to get to the place where on feel on top of things.

I should’ve turned back tonight, but I didn’t want to think about where I was this time last year. It is one of those moments where I felt, “always forward” was the key. Still, I don’t have much to say about forward. I’m in the middle of the swamplands right now. I don’t have a lot to say beside what I am seeing on the football feeds. There isn’t much else going on. I’m trying to build 8 classes by friday and I am halfway done with one. This is not the way, but it is the way things are headed right now…

Some Thoughts:

1. Speaking of the Way, Pedro Pascal is a busy Disney guy lately. The Mandalorian Movie is set to drop in 26 after he just released Fantastic Four and is gearing up for additional Marvel adventures. May 22nd is the presumed release date. I ought to find a way to see that right off.
2. Not much else smoking hot coming out of the Disneyverse. The Lady Talis and I are rewatching Jessica Jones, but I really want to get back to seeing new stuff. New Sci-Fi is a hope, as that is what we purportedly will be teaching together come Tuesday.
3. But who knows…

At first I thought I was the problem. Everything here felt slightly off colored or perhaps off center. It hung on me like badly fitted shirt. I could feel how everyone and everything was off, how I felt physically off and could not understand what was happening. Then I did. It wasn’t me. It is this place. Phoenix. USA. It is these people and how differently they were brought up and what lives in their minds and conscience. Nothing about it is what I want to be or experience. I’ve moved on.

Reading The Dark Tower series is giving me the words and the perspective to understand what I experience every time the Lady Talis and I return from a stay abroad. We don’t belong here. Short of being present for my kids and their football seasons, we have no real place here. There is work, but there is work everywhere. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to work within our degree in the places we hope to inhabit, but we still hope to inhabit those places and find our own way. As for the question of children, I want to be able to show these boys a different way of life. I want them to be able to escape the grind and darkness of these states and find a path towards something better. Something that isn’t this constant anger and negative energy.

It was never just coming from the home. It comes from all around us and we are both sensitive to it.

I’ve traveled across a good swath of this world and I can say without reservation that getting into the USA is the worst and most problematic situation I’ve seen. It is not inviting. The people are rarely nice on the way in, and you generally find yourself herded off into separate areas with lower end duty free and other sub par services.

I’m ready to be done.

Some Thoughts:

1. At least there’s football. Without it I don’t think I would find much purpose or passion left for the country.
   I’ve done more contemptuous sighing since reaching this section of the airport than I have in the past month…
2. There isn’t even good football anymore. Short of wanting quite desperately to see my kids succeed, the storylines are woeful. There isn’t a team I truly love that is also good.
   
3. Maybe it’s just Phoenix. Maybe that’s the thing I’m struggling with. The impressive landscape of Victoria Island is quite difficult to leave behind.
   
4. There’s fantasy for all.. that has some appeal to it.
   
5. it isn’t that the people are not genuine—i think they are genuinely as they present themselves. It’s that I don’t like what is being presented. It isn’t who I am or want to be around. I’ve moved on. My world has moved on…