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I don’t even know what the numbers are at this point and the blog is experiencing that nasty critical error. I’m hoping to spend some time this week to get that up and more time this week getting myself back to productive on all possible levels. It has been a struggle for me these past few months to find the level of productivity and success I am looking for in life. I need to get there, and I have to put in the time and work to do so. It isn’t simply about having the working blog (which I will update and php fix the heck out of), but it is about having stories I want to tell and getting writing work beyond my narrow little corner of the universe. It is about finally getting around to joining the science fiction writers association and feeling like I’m doing the work. 50 isn’t too far away and I want to hit that historical mark feeling like my life is where it ought to and needs to be.

I’m still grinding, but those gears feel hecka dull these days.

Some Thoughts:

1. Superbowl… I’ll talk about that Wednesday, but short version: I don’t want the Eagles to win.

Now comes the time to think about what is next. Generally, people reserve this moment for the hours or even days and weeks leading into the New Year. I like to taste the air and feel how the year is going to settle on me. It takes a little time. It took me about this long, and now there are things.

This conversation is happening in Seattle, where I find I think differently. It is not like New York at all, where I spent so many years and had so much of a mental ‘gestalt’ if you will, but it is also not the desert where my brain is stuck between gears so regularly. So, this place of possibility and wonder remains a great place to figure out next steps.

Here is what I want to happen: I want a solid outline of the fantasy world and thus the novel. I want to finish writing the Maricopa novel. I want to finish my sequel novel that is in some phase of pre-writing as we speak. I want to do one other project or story that is unconnected to any of that and totally different from what I do regularly.

These are the things thus far. I expect there will be more, but this is quite a bit to begin with. I ought to get started on that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Somewhat connected to this conversation is the recent failure of the s key on my keyboard. It is not an old computer, but the s key is finicky now and that is on my mind when I type. I sometimes find that the words lack the s and then I need to go back and then I’m worried it will happen again and then I am weird about the typing in general. The only thing that should be on my mind when I type is the words flowing from that other place. So, this needs to be addressed.

This is a blog about M.Night and a few other things. Movies. This is a blog about movies. I’ve been very unimpressed with movies lately. It feels like they are the last things to return post covid in any meaningful way. There are a few out right now that are solid—Tar was on point. However, the stuff I see coming is not very noteworthy. I was holding out hope for Knock at the Cabin, which is based off of Paul Tremblay’s Cabin at the end of the World. I thought it would be twisted and devious and interesting. However, it is not. The film is straight forward and clear from beginning to end. Any minor attempt at twist is lost almost in the moment the attempt it made. This is further interesting because according to an article I glanced over, the ending in the film does not mesh with the novel whatsoever. So, the straightforward nature of the film is definitely a choice.

All of this is to say that I have not been very impressed with films. Moreover, I don’t expect to be. The stuff coming out looks pretty straightforward as well, or at least looks to be, well, bridgey, if you are looking at this Marvel film about to be dumped on us like an afterthought. I want good. I really do. Maybe I need to go back to being the change I wish to see in the world and start making good fiction myself. Perhaps that is the problem. Too many of us aren’t really pushing the envelope and creating interesting stories. Safe is boring. Safe is dull…. Safe pays the bills.

I recently pitched a story that was not safe. It was downright literary in comparison to a lot of what has been coming out in that storyworld, and I didn’t get that story. I’m trying to learn from that. I’m trying to learn to keep being unsafe. We all should try to be a little more daring.

I am becoming increasingly aware of the fragility of life. I believe this to be a good ign. It means, perhaps, that I am learning more about this temporary state and my place in it. As yesterday I discussed my ideas and evolving understanding of failure, today I mean to tackle my evolving understanding of the status quo.

We all live within the status quo. We wake up and expect things will be as they were when we last slept. We assume routines and organize our lives on a schedule reflected by these routines. Even vacations—a break from the routine—are rote. Some of this is good and necessary to the functioning of a lasting society, but mostly it crimps our creativity in a way that makes the average person less than.

I’ve spoken often of my kids as consumers of culture vs. creators or expanders—this irks me on a soul level to be sure—but I’ve accepted how those things merely are and have made an open choice to avoid interruption of their way and path. Again, here we are talking about choice and status quo. Things are as they are and we musn’t change them to dramatically, right? Change is good but too much change?

This is the central gist of my thinking. Lately my dreams have been strangely post-apocalyptic. Not ‘Last of Us’ or ‘Walking Dead’ post-apocalyptic, but a different way of being in a world that essentially functions as a series of interconnected locales with human purpose largely refocused as internal v. external. In other words, I’m dreaming of thinking worlds where the masses care less about the bachelor than they do about understanding the basics of how and especially why to extend life. It may be that I’m dreaming of another self, or it may be nothing, or it may be that I am dying quite faster than I once assumed. Any of this could be why I am dreaming of the elsewhere. I’m convinced that I am taking the next step in reconnecting to the storyverse…. I’m also rambling.

Here’s the short of it: Today doesn’t have to look anything like yesterday or tomorrow. We are beings of choice. No matter how much we tie ourselves to things and responsibilities, we do so because we’ve decided that this is what life is supposed to look like. But the question/point is: Should it? It never has to.

I am struggling with losses.

Losses pile up. I could end right there, but 10 minutes is ten minutes, so I’ll dive right in. Losses make you feel less valuable as a person. Losses add up to being a looser, and I’ve been experiencing a ton of losses over the last few months. It is to the point where–no matter the game or scenario–I lose at a 4-1 ratio, which is so far past reasonable that it makes me feel entirely useless as a being.

Yet I continue to play and move forward. If ever slowly.

70 plus days into the latest iteration of the blog I suffered a critical error of unknown origin. This is to say the blog is dead. I mean to bring it back, of course, but I haven’t figured out how to do that. Therefore I’m blogging it out on this google page with all intentions of posting this and any future blogs back on the site once I resolve the issue. 

It sucks. 

I used to really know the tech and be able to move around a website pretty well, but I let those skills dry up and made no effort to keep up. So I am here doing what I have to until I learn how to do what needs to be done. To make matters worse, I am about to travel and that means being able to access a laptop with a connections that gets me into the system as opposed to just linking to the site from my phone. It is not a very big deal, but it is another layer I have to work through until I fix the problem.

As such, there is no turnback tuesday. Today I’m just going to be thinking about where I am now and where I want to be a week from now. Small goals work the best right now. I want to have lost a pound and be moving towards a home workout routine that I can do daily, because I don’t even have that yet, and I know moving keeps me alive. Beyond that I just want to have reached out to a doc and scheduled an appointment. 

On the writing front, it is time to write a short story. So, let’s see if I started that by then.

At the start of a new work week I am reminded of how frail all of this really is. We, as a NATO country, may be getting into direct conflict with Russia, which means a dramatic change in the world order and something that could really put the world at risk of Russia decides to play it tough and drop real bombs.

this feels like a hot war and a bit of a proxy one at that. As Russia grapples for the respect it’s lost we must recognize how we ourselves risk that turn sooner than later.

I’m worried about these things. Is that because I’m maturing or simply paying attention?

Football can be really exciting–even if your team is already done. Today I watched the Eagles play very bad ball against a depleted 49rs squad and make it to the show. Then I watched a depleted Chiefs squad do the same. We’ll see how the ‘show’ goes….

Some Thoughts:

1. Madden is going badly. I got mollywhopped by my kid and I think I learned but one defensive thing from the entire situation. I gotta be faster on the sticks in terms of adjustments and I really need to learn how to play offense and read the D ALOT better than I do. I see an 8 man rush and I still try to run the ball–I have no way to hurt him for committing that many because my Wrs and TE still cannot get open in the man or the thin zone coverage. This is me failing.
2. In the athletic world of children, both the boys are in HS training to play at the DB position. The younger still wants to do RB and hopefully gets a chance to play at the freshman level and perhaps develop into a sold back. He has the frame and size to be a terrifying corner right now. Does he have the technique, speed, and instinct? Not yet. His big bro does, and I’m hoping for a good Senior year for him. Because of the way High School Football works, he has already started getting ready and serious practice is coming up early summer.
3. I don’t have a lot to say tonight. Not about anything really. Sometimes it be like that.

The Tyre situation was really heavy to talk about, so I am going to talk about something utterly frivolous: how to win at Madden.

The answer is practice and research. I learned that from the kids. Of course, having 99 speed on everyone in the secondary helps. They watch a lot of YouTube pros like Throne and TD Barrett, taking the lessons they learn from watching superior gameplay. Throne, I notice, doesn’t often walk viewers through all of his stuff. He just shows them live games and they love it. The key, it seems, is to understand a defense. A secondary key is practice. You gotta know your plays and know the 9 areas of the field and how each type of man and zone player will react based on the type of coverage (and type of zone specifically) they are in.

I’m learning. It takes a lot of time. I don’t know how much time I am truly willing to commit to the situation. Not as much as I need in order to be really great–that’s for sure. At this point though, I just want to be able to beat the kids.

A lot of lives are going to be changed as a result of a life being lost as a result of a deadly beating by a handful of police officers in the Memphis area. A lot happened that night that Tyre Nichols ran from the cops. The scene here is far from unbelievable. In truth it feels expected. It reflects everything we see and have come to expect from TV shows about cops . The cops were punching him for running. They weren’t trying to put him into custody, they were treating him the way you treat a member of a rival gang when you finally catch them–you punish them for making you chase them.

It is wrong. It is someone in power feeling that power and losing all sense of humanity while they beat a restrained man senseless. What’s worse is they know the script for self-defense. They are talking about the things they are acting like he did to put them in harm, however it is clear that this was not the case at any point, and they were simply hyped up after the chase and beat a man to death like a pack of animals who’ve caught their prey.

This is bad. This is instructionally bad. This is us seeing the results of how we train our society and how we train our officers. It is entirely debatable why he was stopped and why he ran. I’ve heard things ranging from him being armed and dangerous and fleeing in commission of a crime from him not using a turn signal and the cops coming for him. I don’t know why he ran. If I had to speculate I would say he was afraid he had warrants or something of the sort. I don’t believe someone who runs from the police is entirely innocent, and I don’t believe what happened to him was in any way justified.

This is going to be a story for a long time.