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Five days in I finally started thinking about a calendar. It should’ve come up before, but nothing before that felt actionable. In fact, the first five days of the new year felt more like a reflection of the past year: We have a bunch of stuff happening with the kids, we find some brief escape after, and we spend a few days recovering and looking for a new rhythm post escape’s return. It didn’t take long last year for me to realize how all that kept me off balance, but I convinced myself that being off balance was itself a type of balance, because I could predict what it would be like and adjust week to week. As I mentioned yesterday (or the day before) that quickly spiraled into a recognition of me not being centered at all in my life while half the people around me were completely rooted–be it in a nonsensical cycle or not.

So came the realization that I need a calendar. I need a way to moor myself to the dates and realize what is due and what is important and what I need to be focusing on day in and day out. I have what amounts to a daily organizational list, but it isn’t very good. It isn’t something I’ve locked into and decided that this i going to be my life. It also doesn’t reflect anything beyond the work I have to do or even the mental shifting required to handle each of those tasks. It is, however, a starting point–a jumping off moment from which I can actually build a day and from that day a week and from that week a month and so on. All of this can and should flower from the simple principle of what matters the most and what is it I am making time for and, what am I moving towards.

I finally have the answer to that last one. In 5 years time I want to begin publishing a series on Amazon. It will likely be a fantasy series, regardless of the honest fact that fantasy appears to be waning. I still have always wanted to publish these stories. So, I shall. Along with the five year plan, I will also be writing and pitching a science fiction novel that has mass commercial appeal. All of my plans moving forward will include these two major projects. So, I have a personal goal. Now I need to add to my familial ones…

I’m down to 236, which is 12 from when we began this journey yet roughly +1 since late last week. That tells me I’ve hit a plateau. This is the most dangerous time of the process–when you feel like you’ve been cooking but suddenly you’re not moving or worse going in the wrong direction. I have to hit a solid series of workouts over the next seven in order to break through and fight my way down to 34. I need 34 because I need 32 and so on. I need to keep the 2 a week going for as long as possible, because I am woefully unhealthy, and the longer I stay in this condition, the shorter my life becomes. This is mission critical stuff.

I spent a few blogs outlining the horrors of being overweight. I should point out that being over my weight is specific to me. I’m someone who is not good when I am at such a high BMI. My body and mind and already failing heart react poorly to the situation. I’ve been struggling as a writer since this has come to pass. I’ve lost so much creativity that I am nearly certain I don’t have the talent I used to have, and I hope to move back towards a level of where I was before. I have serious writing goals, but it all starts with being healthy.

My mid kid is committing to Drake University today. It’s a verbal, because he missed the signing day. He should’ve done the verbal earlier, but that would’ve forced him to early sign, which he wasn’t prepared to do with BYU still in the running. Since they’ve fallen back, he’s gotten to the point where he is ready to lock in with the Bulldogs and find his future in Iowa. The business of recruitment and NIL has changed college football in ways I had not seen coming. It has always been a business. In fact, College Football make more money than the NFL. There are more teams and less per capita income, but the fact remains that players at good schools can expect $300,000 a year easy. My kid wasn’t put in that position to be successful. I have one more coming down the line who ought to be able to achieve at that level. If so, I want to make sure I am there to be helpful in a business sense as his agent, because, I don’t trust anyone else to do right by him.

Sports is money and it is starting earlier and earlier. Unfortunately, the hype machine aspect of it is built around things that are not real football. Reading an off the record interview with several recently signed players (posted in the athletic) served to confirm suspicions that they earned their star status playing 7 on 7 for notable teams. That is part of the business. Holding your kid back so he is older and more developed is part of the business. I did the opposite. My senior is only 16. If he had two more years he’d be an All American. Heck, he’s one year removed from being all state, having just missed the cut to a 4-star player who played with him a year ago and, by that players and players family’s own admission got his stars and offers from 7 on 7 play.

The system is broken, but that doesn’t mean we cannot play the system.

And on the 2nd day we left.

Left entirely I mean. We pulled up stakes and disappeared into the frozen north. Three hours north to be exact. Decided to get out and get reset and get away from kids and the clockwork routine of a house that resembles a frat house more and more each day. For me I wanted to get out and get some space to clear my head and be a writer, but neither of those things have yet come to pass. The blog represents my first effort of putting fingers to keyboard and efforting to create anything that is greater and longer lasting than myself. I feel like it matters to look at things that way–I am writing to put out stories that make people think and care and feel. It has to be done with some level of mattering. It has to happen with a degree of purpose.

First is the clearing of the cobwebs and burned out gray matter that defines the past year or three. I’ve been on a steady decline since Covid. It isn’t that I never recovered, it is that the outbreak happened at a time when I was largely in transition and nothing ever settled for me to the point that I was able to feel like I was safe or healthy or settled entirely. I’ve watched everyone else around me settle into where they are and form routines and be able to hold on to something whereas the one thing I’ve held onto since the start of it all is this laptop. Even that feels transitional at this stage.

Time to find my center. Time to own this year.

Some Thoughts:

1. The next 100 posts will be the first 100 days of 2024. (401-500)

The first thing I thought about when I started considering how to work on the problem of my failing creativity was how to attack the problem. As I write this I am watching previews of the movies of 2024 and thinking about the stuff that is coming out and what that means about what sells and what people supposedly want and what, above all else, are the standard narratives. I think the first step for me is to avoid falling into expectations and to think about the stories I write as natural things again and, as such, begin to create narratives that are linked to a space and place that is real vs. expected.

I am working on being a better version of myself, so I need to be thinking about what it means to write a better version of a story.

If you read this on a monthly basis at least, you know that I have some thoughts for how the new year ought to go. I have yet to formalize that into a clear list of resolutions, because I do not normally believe in the concept of resolutions. However, words even lists are power. So with that in mind, here is mine:

1. The Fat Issue: I have already started on this one. I mean to reduce my weight this year to 210 lbs. From there I will go for the 190 look. Seeing that I started this journey at 248 a few weeks back, this is a HUGE goal on my part. I intend to make it right. That means exercise and eating less. I am moving to foodieville in my mind. Small plates of lovely more often.
2. Health and Hygiene: I am already a clean person, but I am really bad about checkups. I intend to have a tooth checkup this year and at least two doctor visits. I’m nearing 50 and I want to get there on healthy terms.
3. Write Harder: I don’t give enough of myself to the words and the stories and I have lost my unconscious connection to that realm. I will do all that it takes to get that back this year.
4. Love Harder: I suck at date night. I cannot let that stand. It is a symptom of a larger romance issue where I don’t devote the appropriate energy to the task. I will reinvest in showing my partner love.
5. Game Smarter: I cannot just waste energy on gaming forever. I need to set aside reward time for gaming and, above even that, try new stuff.
6. Organize: I need to clean and organize all my spaces and start being better and staying on top of a plan.
7. Teach at Peak Talis: This year needs to be my best teaching year in a long time. I need to stay devoted and update my content to be the best teacher I can for these kids. Moreover, I will know names this year!

I don’t know that people are ever truly honest with each other. It always feels like we hold something back or we give a hint of the truth to spare feelings or arguments. We say enough to clear the table but rarely enough to clear the mind or the spirit. For me it isn’t little white lies that I tell. My problems always boil down to money. If anything I don’t say everything that I do for the kids–be it providing a little extra on the lunch money or throwing a kid a 20 for gas–things that ought not to make me feel guilt but do. As I approach this time of turnover and change I am thinking about how those tiny leave outs add up and create this stream of uncomfortableness which tears away that clear mind and spirit.

I need to live in a home existence where I feel safe and secure enough to be complete honest about all that I do in life. A safe core means I can devote my mental processes to other things and not towards worrying about if the core is safe. It’s basic Maslow’s hierarchy of needs type stuff. I need to feel like that at home and I need to be locked into that same mindset at work, as opposed to feeling like I am watching my back or playing political games or stepping carefully around peoples feelings. Such is what leads me to believe that I am not one cut out for politics but better cut out for writing.

So, on this eve of eve’s I am making a personal vow to be of clean mind and spirit with my partner and by extension in our lives. I want to make sure there are no secrets in the core. Even small ones cause fissures.

Some Thoughts:

1. Post 400 will be on New Year’s eve. turning over to a new hundred as we prepare to turn over to a new 365 feels momentous in a way I cannot fully place.
2. As I lean into a new semester of teaching I need to get my priorities listed and straightened out. I need to get back to having a center and being organized and applying the time I have in a useful way.

I am hacking out this post on a 2012 macbook, which is 11 years old and 6 years past obsolete. Heck, if you consider anything with the intel chipset obsolete, then this is much further down that dark and forgettable road. The thing is, it works. Not amazingly well, but it works better than spending a thousand dollars I don’t have to spend. I think about these things constantly as I try to keep my tech just slightly above bleeding late, because I cannot begin to afford bleeding edge. When I cross that threshold, I’ll know I made it.

When thinking about what to upgrade, it always starts with portable electronics for me. I run mac products nearly exclusively. I carry an ipad 10, this old macbook (unless I have my work rig which is newer), last year’s Iphone (still paying) and a slightly outdated Iwatch. Outside of the macbook, the gear seems to be legit. I do need to consider the computer upgrade, because the work rig is neither mine nor something I can load software on to. I totally want to buy a new system and wire it up to my (outdated) Meta Quest 2 rig and start being the guy who works via VR. That feels right to me.

Some Thoughts:

1. My lady discovered Girlfriend Reviews. Life will never be the same again.
2. If I am being honest with myself, I miss having an existence with friends I go visit where we plan and stage events. The white elephant season left me feeling empty. It feels like everyone in our house but my partner and I went one of those parties. That is when I realized we don’t have parties to go to because none of our people are even as close as 1,000 miles away. Perhaps we need new people… or need to move. Or both.

You take the good and the bad in equal measures. After all, we cannot appreciate one without the other. I think about this concept every morning I wake up and make my way to the living room to try and spend a little time out there enjoying the space before it is occupied by a cavalcade of boys who are deeply ensconced in a world dominated by anime. They call people of this sort Weebs. I have no formal definition of the term other than to say they are teens and young adults who value Japanese anime culture above all else in spite of not being Japanese. The more derogatory Weaboo indicates that they would prefer to be Japanese than what they presently are. Not sure where my boys are in the respect. I mention all this to show the good and bad in equal measures. To the good, the partner and I had a decent amount of time together without any kids and it was wonderful. To the bad, they came home and we realized that nothing had changed. Nothing every changes. They are set in their selves and goals and ideas.

Honestly, what they do is no different than what anyone else does in regards to what they find important. They sink in, they talk about it constantly, and they build their lives around it. I’m the same about the things I find value in, but the difference to me is that I find value in those things. This is not to say I don’t value what they like–I value that they like it.

Okay I did the math. I’m in two leagues: Louisiana’s Finest Fantasy Football League ($$ Winner 2022-3 Season) and Beach Born League (2nd Place 2022-3). Had I done better in the do or die week to reach the playoffs in the $$ league, I still would’ve been knocked out by #2 heading into this week’s ‘ship. The math is a bit fuzzy, given that I don’t know exactly if I would’ve been 5 or 6. 5 would mean I am in the ‘ship. Regardless, I am out and that shows me that I have a lot of work to do to be back IN next year–in both leagues. I have first pick next year in Beach Born (I get to keep McCaffery in the other, so I am good there). I will likely use that pick to get a solid point maker like Mc-Point-rey, or someone nearly as good (imagine Barkley on a team with an O-line!).

Meanwhile, the people who are at the top deserve to be there. In the family league, we have the 3-time most points son vs. the perennial dead last son. Any questions as to who I am rooting for? Everyone loves an underdog. On the bright side, both earn significant cash for the win in this two-week final. This format makes it so luck plays less of a factor. Injury still makes a difference. My kid whose team was called hospital for that very reason missed the finals because Amari Cooper benefited from an injury to all of his QBs forcing an oldhead out of retirement to throw to the one guy he could see downfield… 51 points later the kid is out. Football can be crazy like that.

So here are some predictions: The Giants won’t make the playoffs… just kidding, everyone knows that isn’t even being entertained. I do think the long time loser will be a winner this year. He deserves the shine. I will proudly don the toilet bowl next year at the draft and accept what the league becomes moving forward.