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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.

I start classes tomorrow. I’ve posted two of the four online classes already (the other two start a week later on 1/23). I’m not entirely prepared for the three I have in person tomorrow. Two are new builds, and the digital shells are not quite ready. I don’t know when they will be ready–feasibly before class. I’ll be up at 5:30–earlier than the planned 6 AM start–in order to get that work done. I’m done for the night. I just don’t have it in me.

Some Thoughts:

1. The crazy business of Offensive Coordinators and the brainiacs that develop NFL offenses around specific players and opponent tendencies has created a new breed of OCs and I like it. I like Kafka. I hope he doesn’t leave NYC.
2. I need to get on board with being able to develop an offense built as above as well as a defense. I play a lot of Madden against glitch plays and heavy blitzes. I need an offense that can stop that. I also need the time to develop that offense.
3. Don’t care who wins football tonight. Like not at all.

Good news! I’m back to dreaming in story. Bad news: I have yet to write anything down. This does confirm that my link to the story verse is not severed but has been greatly damaged by years. That being said, I’m completely on the path of getting back. I want to write and create and build. I even found a spot to work on a new Minecraft town while I listen to (great?) fiction. All of this is leading somewhere. I am on a path yet again to getting into a writing groove and I (once again?) intend to stay there and produce the kind of fiction my childhood self would be proud of.

I think that matters. I think the person you ought to be trying to make proud is yourself. Self pride is critical and when I am not proud of myself I tend to be less of a person. I’m often not proud of myself, but when I am… Yeah. it goes well.

I wonder if the connection to the story verse is linked in some way to a connection with the supernatural? I feel more of that connection again as well, and that does make me curious. Perhaps connection itself is a measure. Perhaps I am simply more linked to my own being and as such my other senses are again aligning… All things to be considered.

Some Thoughts:

1. Well, I ate crow last night. Lawrence did throw 4 picks, and should have lost that game –being down 27-7 at half. However, they won. 31-30 I believe. Which means the Chargers completely collapsed offensively and couldn’t force many more turnovers.
2. Giants step up to the pitch in a few hours.
3. I step up to the teaching pitch in a few days, and I’m not ready. My 8-week will be especially hectic, and I need to have that 100% locked in and ready to roll from day 1. I’ll get to work early that first day to do final layout of the day one experience, but I want to have the digital (canvas and more) backend ready to go by Monday. I also expect to have a good layout for the other classes and at least the first week done by Monday. Tuesday is game on.

As I make this argument I have already been informed that I run the risk of being exclusionary and arguing against what I do as a primary money maker. Still, when I heard this simple argument in a story I was like, “ooooof” Here is what was said, “Is this argument merely academic or is there some practical point to what you are saying?”

At that very moment I realized the line had been drawn, and on one end of it was academic. On the other was practical. I thought back to my recent conflicts with co workers and realized, yeah. That’s exactly the issue. I’ve watched some of them spend years renaming and reinventing simple concepts in an attempt to show a different way of saying the stuff we already know to be true… The recent reinvigoration of the word ‘Grit’ is a prime example. What sucks for me is to feel like there is that real division in teaching between people who are trying to activate students to be better and people who are talking about how we should be trying to do it and what language to use around that. Moreover, I fear I am sinking into an academic space where the people who are having the large conversations aren’t actually doing anything but creating structures that make them invaluable but don’t do anything practical for the end user, which is the student.

Some Thoughts:

1. Trevor Lawrence is junk. I said it when he came out. I said it multiple times this year. He is a remarkable college QB, but in the pros he is simply NOT him. To that point: 3 picks in the first quarter of his first playoff game. Game exposes lack of game.

I haven’t written a scene in months. I’ve read or listened to plenty, but the act of putting words down has eluded me as of late. The cause? Lazinesss perhaps. Lack of butt in chair to be certain. I also haven’t been inspired. I have two novels ready to be written and revised respectively, but nothing outside of the two is ‘popping’

it could be a simple case of my mind moving in too many directions at once and none of them towards the page. This is not the way.

I just had an important moment.

I was really excited to be involved in an event my school was planning and, hearing about what some specific and vocal people were trying to make it, I decide to step away. I’m angry and those people suck, but I don’t have the time or mental energy to deal with it, so I won’t. More importantly, I don’t have to. I no longer need to be in a situation where my contribution is neither recognized or valued. I don’t need to scream in order to have my voice heard, and I don’t need to lend my air to a balloon with a hole in it. I’m definitely mixing metaphors, which apparently is bad, but I’m speaking from the heart–which I am learning is more and more of the good and more of the person I used to be. The old me was a better me for it, so I’m returning to the roots of what made me me and what made me a person people wanted to have in the room.

More and more I find the person I was and the person I want to be slipping away. More and more I have been watching it happen and feeling really awful about who I am becoming. I cannot let that continue. I cannot be walked on any longer or store up all this rage that materializes as a result. None of it is healthy, and my health is hardly good to begin with. I’m done.

This is a story about how the Giants have a path to the Super Bowl. This story features matchups and possibilities drawn purely from my imagination, but my imagination is powered by hope, and hope is a dangerous thing.

It all starts with the Wildcard game against the Vikings. SKOL rules the matchup this season, but a lot of that is based on the G-men not being healthy or on anything resembling ‘a roll’. Over the last few weeks (including a close loss against the Eagles) the team has been clicking and coming together the way they did in the early weeks–except the offense keeps shifting and evolving to meet new challenges. This is what the Vikings must be careful about. Over the last few weeks the Giants have thrown the ball just about as well as anyone in the league. They’ve become a legitimate passing team in spite of the top pass catcher being a dude they picked up off the Bills Practice Squad following Week 9…

The pass rush is getting home and the Vikings are down a few linemen. This helps. What hurts is how thoroughly the Vikings TE dominated us. I think that looks different now with Landon Collins contributing really good minutes as a Money backer being able to play the pass and the run. I think that is going to be a difference maker in this match up, and in others if and when the Giants move forward. I believe they can win, and I am excited to see them do it. If they do, what happens?

Eagles, baby. There ain’t no way the Niner’s fall this early.

Some Thoughts:

1. I like anime. However, when it is on for at least 14 hrs a day, I don’t like anime. I need it in moderation–like anything else.

Seems like I am slipping again. I’m not hitting that publish button a second time, which means I am not really focused on what I am putting down on the screen (page?!). This peculiar habit rises every so often, so I wanted to dive back to a time when it arose prior and think about what was going on then. That led me to a post from 4.85. Only, here is the thing: I never published it. It remains one of 24 unpublished draft posts from various spots in the past. The most difficult aspect of this is that these posts reflect a sum of 240 minutes of my life that I meant to have external value that never actually did. I wasted those words in a sense.

All that being said, I’m still in that place to a certain extent. I am steel dealing with hypertension–thought I am at stage two (at least) all the time, vs. being at stage one in that post. All of the issues and situations in my life way back then still resonate. It is in this fashion that I have learned that I am not moving forward, though I am really trying to do so.

I am giving myself this week to get my shit together. It’s been 17,155 days of me being aware that I drew breath. Time to use that awareness to do something.

Alexander C. Kane has fun with his characters. I miss the days of doing that. I miss putting my people in wild situations and then just seeing what happens. I think the crux of having fun with the writing is to challenge your characters in unique ways and to develop characters who have the personalities to do truly unusual stuff. For example: I write a lot of Shadowrun, which is typically described as stories about shadow runners. Okay. So, how about you take that convention and blow it up. No, not in the traditional–write a counter story about someone trying to catch a runner, but in a more interesting way. What does that mean? Off the top of my head I’m thinking about the idea of a runner who overhears someone hiring for a big job and decides to take that information and sell it to the highest bidder, which winds up getting them in a bit of danger… somehow? To make matters worse, the runner whose payday job he is selling out is his sister.

That’s what I mean. have fun. Create dynamic characters and thrust them into situations. To make it even more fun, it could be a basic situation that is only odd or untenable because of who they are or what they can do. A man who speaks with ghosts ends up in a poker game and the ghosts decide to help him until he becomes so emboldened by their aid that they don’t, simply to teach him a lesson… one that he fails to properly learn.

I just want to get back to telling good stories. I feel like I have to remind myself how to do that.

A lot of things to talk about but they don’t actually string together coherently. So, it seems I have to layer them into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Partner just reminded me about a very basic and super important fact: Genre has become a series of hoops authors are expected to jump through in every story of that ‘type’ vs. an easy way to organize books by ‘type’. I need to be reminded of that, especially in light of being a genre writer who has succumbed to those expectations. I want to move forward with my writing being less about that genre and more about the fundamentals of storytelling and the idea of ‘what happens next?’
2. Alexander C. Kane is an excellent storyteller, and while I can predict with some certainty the outcome of his stories, I don’t care. I enjoy the characters and the interactions immensely, so I continue.
3. My three new classes all look to be in a position to go forward in two weeks, so I am excited… and terrified. I have not taught a purely new class in a long time and all three of these are being offered at the college for the first time. I have work to do in order to get them up to snuff. Moreover, I believe the three all play into the comic con style con we intend to run in April, and that excites me (and the situation) even more, because these classes are going to be taking a hands on approach. That is a lot of visibility for these kids. This is public assessment at it’s finest.
4. Giants v. Vikings in the first round of the playoffs next week. That is going to be great. More on that Wednesday.
5. Not so great is how easily I forget things like the name of the Minnesota team, or name of a board game…. I’m having issues holding on to my intellect that extend far beyond mere fatigue or burnout and these must be dealt with if I am going to make any impact in the world in the time I have left to be a part of it.
6. I discovered remote play on Xbox and Ps5. I’m considering acquiring a G Cloud device to use this interesting feature. More research is needed, and perhaps a hands on moment to see how the lag works.