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Crunching through my evening salad I realized that my life has changed. I’m actively working towards becoming a healthier person. That is not to say I don’t need assistance. I have serious cardiovascular issues that I will be working to address with a specialist. I want to be alive. I want to love, to create, to enjoy the world. All of this I want to continue doing for as long as possible. I am happy, and happiness makes me want to keep going and get better and be better for everyone around me.

All that being said, I really wish I hadn’t allowed it to get this bad. Being a black man, I ought to know about the serious heart and blood pressure stuff that is common to those like me. I should’ve made better choices, as I am finally making better choices now. I need to continue making better choices and moving myself towards a place of continued joy. This is all.

Some Thoughts:

1. I love being me. Sometimes being me annoys others I love to no end. This is a problem. Still, I gotta be me. If I were not I would not be the person that they and I love.

Another day goes by listening to the constant thrum of YouTube videos in the background and trying to find some mental space away from all that noise. It’s working a little–enough so that I’m on the verge of understanding the magical system of my fantasy world from the top down. I know where magic comes from, but not how it arrives or is channeled or traversed. These reveals will not appear on these pages, because the world and its connection to the magic is central to story and plot. By the dang book, y’all!

I will offer NFL predictions freely now.

Niners. There, I said it. People insist the team greatly struggled against the Cowboys given the 19-12 final score, but you have to consider how those two squads actually stack up. Dak is going to be able to find success through the air to Lamb. Period. The two picks are are a troubling statistic largely because of the power of the Dallas run D. Eagles lack that run D. Sure, they can blitz and sack with the best of them–in fact they ARE the best of them, but McCaffery is gonna gouge them with runs and that is what this game turns on. The end.

Honestly, I like the Chiefs. I like Mahomes. I want to cheer him on. I want to see my guy K. Toney show out. Unfortunately, the league’s biggest villains, the Bengals, will be going back to the show, because they are flat out too good. It will be close. The emergence of a KC run game reshapes the conflict, but the injury to Mahomes–if as serious as indicated–will limit his ability to scramble and create and that is what this game turns on. The end.

Don’t you hate it when you’re all clean and warm from the shower and snuggled up in bed and realize, ‘shit, I didn’t blog’. So you (read: me) have to pull out your phone and smash your Oscar Mayer thick thumbs against a screen that wants none of that action. It’s not pretty.

yet here we are. Going back a short distance this evening to a week ago when I was full of excitement about the coming semester—before the workload descended like mountain snow. I’ll tell you this: if you love what you do, it’s still work but it is also manageable. I’m having fun managing it. I’m happy with the workload and enjoying the students in spite of not always being fully on top of the content game. I’m doing me and I’ve got my mind on a dozen tasks including games.

all of it works for me and makes me happy, so all of it is all good. The key here is personal joy in my work life and my home life. So long as those two stay steady my life will be golden.

This is going to be a Madden blog, because I’ve been thinking about the game today and realizing how difficult it is to build a team when you start with the Browns in their present (draft pick) condition, don’t fantasy draft well, and cannot lure people to your town with free agency because you only get to play games against the other users (3) in the league, which leaves you with a max of 6 user games and the rest are sim based on the quality of your team… which isn’t good. I am coming off a 4-win season and definitely in a rebuild type of year. I don’t know what is going to happen moving forward with the team, but I seriously worry about getting fired, because we won’t win more games than we won last year. We might not win any at all and still won’t get more than a second round pick. The Browns are ruined for a while.

Needless to say this has me needing to up my stick skills. I’ve talked about this a little already, but I am working on getting better–especially this week with my boys around and the opportunity to play a few games. I’m not expecting wins, but I have to be able to compete. I have to be able to hold on to the meager talent I already have on the roster at the very least.

Part of what I need to be doing is getting my team locked in with playbooks that are aligned to their skills. I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job setting up the game to be simmed. Maybe my QB (Brock Purdy) takes some steps forward. The way our league works he does have a shot to grow given the 4 boosts a season I can delegate to my team. Not sure I can skip using one on him this year, though I do need to work on his offense line first. My defense has hopes… maybe. There is a lot for me to see what happens in this new season. I’ll get to that tomorrow.

Got sloppy with the publish button again. Sorry about that. I can draw a correlation to how late I post to how often I miss the publish button. I’m not the night guy I used to be. I’m listening to the Madden Academy cast in the background as I write this. I’m trying the basic 101 to get some of the basic mindset back as opposed to falling into relying on the glitch game like the kids. I cannot abide that. I gotta get better at fundamentals and teach them that this is how you win the game–stick skills. Beyond that the fundamentals of a solid game plan and knowing what the opponent is doing and giving you. In other words, I’m back to the basics and back to the lab–trying to get good again; first at running the rock and then short passes and then longer. This is the way.

Some Thoughts:

1. Week two of 18/8 for school and I am excited to get back into it. This slate of classes is challenging, because these students are hungry and the majority of the material is new build. I’m teaching three entirely new classes and that makes me a hard working man in the classroom for the first time in a while. I’m definitely feeling it.

I keep having this moment where I think that the people and programs I love are on the edge of a breakthrough and then… collapse. I just finished watching the Giants do it. I watched my youngest do it earlier today. I realized in him that he doesn’t want to play football, he wants to be the star without grinding. It is a difficult thing to recognize in a kid. He begged forever for a chance to play seven on seven and I found him a spot and the first ting he said was, “Is there a better team I can play for?” He isn’t willing to be on a bad team anymore. he just wants to be on a spotlight squad winning championships. That makes me feel like he isn’t going to make it through high school and certainly not college ball. He isn’t the guy who is going to grind from the ground up to earn that smoke.

On the other hand, the Giants just aren’t there yet. They don’t have the talent and may not for another year or two. Yet they have the foundations and they have the people who want to work their asses off to be good. That matters the most in my book.

Some Thoughts:

1. On a major losing streak in Madden. Cannot win against the boys anymore. I’m struggling to even make the games competitive. I’m finally resorting to deep research to figure out the best plays to run and pass the ball and I’m trying to put those together into a cohesive system, but these sure fire plays just don’t work for me. I have to face the fact that I am predictable as a play caller and not very good at the game.

I live well. It does not always feel that way. I’ve spoken at length about the home issues and the respect issues, but I am learning to make myself ignorant of those things and seizing the power by engaging on my terms and only then. This is a lesson I had to learn. Other equally important lessons include finding balance in how I spend my time, finding ways to be creative, and understanding what happiness looks like to me and to my partner–even when those are not necessarily identical. I can, for example, spend three hours on Minecraft and feel entirely fulfilled by the experience. But that isn’t balance. We both need to feel fulfilled together and individually. This is the way.

Some Thoughts:

1. Finally watched that 90s show and realized that Eric Forman grew up to be me…. sorta. Oof.

I accidentally broke my favorite wine glass today and split open my index finger in the process, so I’m blogging with the wrong fingers on one hand. This is an oddity that occurs from time to time and serves to remind me of how fortunate I am to be whole-bodied and able-bodied, and the responsibility I have to myself to remain as such. That’s all. I’ll leave the rest to…

Some Thoughts:

1. So, EA Madden just informed me that only 2% of the franchises were impacted by the glitch. Yeah… That isn’t real. I lost 4 myself. They also informed me that those who could not have the game restored would get %50 off on Madden 24 and be able to access the ’24 beta. I like that. How do they know who lost what though?
2. Still super stoked for Saturday. Hoping the Giants keep rolling. The pundits betting against them have done so all season, so what do they know?
3. I wish I had more to say here, but I’m all out of words… and time.

I’m saying there’s a chance. I mean people are even starting to respect Daniel Jones as he starts to look like an actual Vanilla Vick. The man is playing extremely well and taking care of the ball better than he has his entire pro career. This is enough to make it so Barkley only needs 9 rushes to win a game. Seriously. We have a chance against the Eagles. This will be the 3rd matchup of the season and it is dang hard to beat a team three times in a row–especially in such a short turnaround (last team the Eagles played was the Giants). I’m very excited and I suspect the Eagles might be a little flat coming off the bye week. So, there’s a chance.

Meanwhile, I’m in the top half of the players in a three week Champion of Champions Yahoo experience. I get to play for free and have the chance to win money if I pick the top point getting players from a limited slate of options. That slate is presently limited to this Sunday’s games. So, I have to ask myself how much I trust the 49rs defense. I don’t entirely trust the Bengals D in Buffalo. They’ll do fine–even challenge for the win, but getting fantasy points? That comes down to Niners or Cowboys and I think the Niners have the better look. I think they can get to Prescott and force him to do Prescott things. I also have no faith that the Maher situation has stabilized. He might get one blocked and returned.

Overall, this looks to be a fun football weekend, and I cannot wait for Saturday to get started.

I’m feeling good about the start of the semester and I randomly decided to turn back to 2.187, because the title caught my eye: The New Plan. Boy, was that a doozy to fall back into. I was trying to figure out next steps in my life (aren’t I always ?) and lamenting on my laziness and the idea that I was always the guy who, if not for laziness, could teach any subject if, “teach any subject if given enough lead time to plan a lesson and learn the stuff he doesn’t know.” So, here we are. I’m teaching Video Game Narrative, Introduction to Comic Book Writing, and Game Studies 202. All of these are new builds and necessitate me not being lazy. All of this while still working on a fantasy epic, a sci-fi novel, and trying to build a viable offense and defense for Madden that actually makes sense from a scheme (hurry up) perspective while acknowledging the difference between game logic and real world football mechanics.

Oh, and I’m building another massive Minecraft castle. Really just trying to finally complete a legitimate version of the one from the Minecraft exploded builds from top to bottom. I also want to do something cool with the Castle grounds like below:

I’m on a hill facing a village on a peninsula, so I’m not sure how that is going to work out… but I am clearly rambling at this point, so I will move on. The idea is: I’m not lazy anymore. I’m not sitting around doing nothing. The things I do matter and engage me. They may not matter to anyone else, but they matter to me and they fulfill me. I think that is important. I think it is important that I give my all to these endeavors, so I do just that. Half-ass is lazy. I’m going hard.