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Giants are a 2-0 team and looking to go 3-0 after the upcoming Monday Night tilt with the Cowboys. Give credit where credit is due. The Gints (spelling on purpose) are a team finding a way to win, which is a distinct contrast from a year ago when they were finding a way to lose. Clearly. Now, there are still issues. This is not a finished product, and we are sitting on some players/salary stuff that will be very impactful in the long run, but I trust in the front office and I trust in the coaching staff and I trust in the players. Win or lose, it is going to be exciting.

Win. Definitely win. Cooper Rush means more of a commitment to the run game and more of a balanced offensive attack from a coach who basically broke his top RB. That being said, we bottled up two of the leagues top rushers in the first two weeks. Now we face Zeke and Pollard, who will need to do serious damage against what will likely be an 8-man front. On the offensive side of the ball we know the Giants are weak against speed edges. Panthers took advantage there, and the week before that the sacks kept coming. However, I think Barkley will continue to produce and setup opportunities for guys like Toney to expose a suspect yet opportunistic secondary.

Other folks are playing football too…

Miami goes to Buffalo and Tua is about to experience a beatdown.

Carolina might get off the L column at home against NO

PIT will defeat CLE.

CHI over HOU

KC dominates a very bad Colts team

DET proves itself against MIN in a shootout

BAL proves too much against NE

CIN gets a WIN in NY

In a battle of 0-2 teams, we finally see King Henry ascend the throne.

Philly is legit gonna be 3-0

While the Jags will fall to 1-2

I cannot call LA v. AZ. I just don’t know about either team anymore. They both feel like shells of their former selves.

Speaking of Shells… Atlanta sucks. They will be defeated by Seattle, but possibly it is a moment to see Pitts shine?

Tampa 3-0? Probably.

SF is better without Lance? Maybe. I don’t know. It isn’t fair to the kid after that rainy start and ensuing week 2 injury. I think there is alot on the line here in Denver. I don’t know what happens, but it ought to be a show.

I’m going to be brief in the intro. A lot transpires on a Tuesday–namely because I am out the door before the sun. Often I’m done teaching before noon and deep into grading by one. Here and now I’ve chosen to pause and get some of the very important stuff handled. Stuff like blogging my ten. However, I don’t have a single deep or meaningful thought. I do have…

Some Thoughts:

1. Relatively lost my mind today when I discovered that the class I busted my butt to bring to the campus was being taught by a random person and not me. My conspiracy-hacked brain assumed malicious intent and I started asking questions. My partner forced me into cool down upon which I discovered that there was not malicious intent and I am a overheated dummy.
2. All of that is to say that I am dealing with a stress level beyond that with which I am comfortable. I am no fan of the condition. Not at all. I need the woosaaa treatment quickly. I need to refocus on the things that matter and realize that this isn’t all a house of cards. I have spent equal time generating and feeding into negativity and this must end.
3. Listing helps. Personal diary rants help. What helps most of all is having a plan with which to move forward. I am working on that at every level. Patience is key, and nobody who matters in the main arenas of what is to be is patient anymore, so that heaps more stress on me.
4. At least the Giants are winning.
5. I recognize more each day how major a role football plays in my existence.
6. I recognize more each day how many more healthy days I’ve lived than I have left to live if I don’t get my pre-diabetic ass back in the gym.
7. The problem is I want all the issues of the personal sphere solved today. I lack the patience for the journey.
8. I ought to just kick back and write more stories…
9. Yes, that.

You have to believe it. You have to allow yourself to believe it. A new week is a new opportunity to get your shit together. If it isn’t then a new week is merely the extension of the bad shit that dogged you last week. That is not a very healthy way to roll into Monday morning. You have an opportunity to excel today. You have every ability to grab control of your life and, no matter your situation, make one choice that is better for you today.

My choice is planning.

I am, by nature, a bad planner. While I attempt at planning it never sticks. This is what holds me back from any true leadership or exceptional (by public standards) parenting. If I’m being honest, it makes me a shit partner as well, because she is constantly left to plan everything because I cannot (for the life of me) get my shit together. That last part is the truth I evade constantly. If I could just take a step forward in getting my shit together I would be infinitely better as a partner. So, you can see why my choice is planning.

What is a small step you can take to move forward? For me I’ve gone through dozens of iterations of how to get it right, and the ‘coolest’ is to get a nice daily journal and write down everything for the day in that journal. I’ve spent a wealth on journals with specific lines and structures to tell me how to plan out my day, but do I really need all that? In truth, I need a list. I need to know: This is what I need to handle today. This is the way these things are prioritized. Then I go from there. So, my plan is to use one of my many many empty journals as my new daily planner. They are small enough to be portable and efficient to the task. They are also quite pretty, and that appeals to me as well.

Being comfortable in carrying that journal, I will write down my list of priorities, rank them, and execute with extreme determination. This is indeed The Way.

Find your Way.

I get to watch the Giants in 30 minutes.

Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote, “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion” I too vow to live the day with compassion and joy. I intend to make the most out of each day. I will imbibe joy as much as possible. I will not dwell in the negative and I will be happy with who I am as an individual. All my faults, all my bad parts are equal in sum to my good parts. They together make me the person that I am and I must embrace that person.

This does not mean I do not strive to be better. I accept who I am and where I am. For example, I tend to dwell on things that don’t matter at all to others–taking me out of the moment I am in with them and into the moment of dwell. I can control when that happens. I can be far more present. I can do this and still dwell in an appropriate time and place when it does not impact those around me.

I must learn to embrace these difficulties as challenges to be overcome. As I stand I have allowed myself to become overwhelmed by challenges. This must not be so. Every challenge has its place in the hierarchy and I must learn to establish both that hierarchy and the ability to shift between challenges when I have an appropriate means to respond.

It is a really beautiful day outside and I am alive. This is all good news. It is important to fall into a little bit of good news once in a while in order to avoid feeling like everything is awful. If I’ve learned one thing about myself it is that the good stuff generally gets ignored, and the problems become focal. This makes me a shit romantic partner and kind of ruins my chances as a human being in general. So, I’m working on that.

I suspect we can all use a little bright in our lives. I could hop in the pool today and enjoy what that has to offer. I actually have a pool. This is not a thing I suspected would be a part of my life throughout the better part of my life, so that is a nice moment of reflection.

In general I am trying to take stock of the good as I come to terms with the not so good moving forward. I cannot allow myself to dwell heavily on the bad, because that is what leads to the dark side. Seriously, ask Anakin.

Some Thoughts:

1. I severely injured myself… while sleeping. I don’t have a clue how it happened. It may be a torn rotator cuff, but the pain stems from a spot above the tricep, which by every website (yeah, i know I need a real doctor) indicates a form of tendonitis or bursitis. Hopefully it is just that and not a tear.

Here’s something most close friends don’t think to tell you–probably because they are close.

At some point you are going to fuck up. Then you are going to do it again. This may continue over and again in a radiant pattern that the people in your life can see, shake their head at, and say, “there s/he goes again.” The people who love you will try and point it out, but the problem is that you are blind to it by now and moreover you probably see it as ‘a part of who you are’

This is a mistake.

Like the fucking up, we are often mistaken in accepting or blaming the fucking up. This allows us to bury the bad action and continue to fuck up–if sporadically. Odds are you are not able to fix the problem on your own. Psychologists and Psychiatrists exist for a reason, in spite of the waning social stigma surrounding the profession. The problem is embedded deep in you, and try as you might to root it out, you cannot because you have another problem.

Your partner sees the problem and doesn’t understand why you keep doing it.

So, every time you dig to the root of the problem your also trying to have an entirely different conversation with your partner. In other words, you are speaking in two different languages at once and nothing is making sense anywhere. So, it continues. And things get worse. And things break down. And then you realize that the entire thing was always your fault and the best solution is to leave, because there is no way another human can still feel good about you being in their lives if you are such a fuck up.

So you leave.

But you don’t leave. Not on a slab and not out the door.

You stay. What happens next?

Hot Take is defined as “a piece of commentary, typically produced quickly in response to a recent event, whose primary purpose is to attract attention.” according to dictionary.com. I started the game rundown section by saying that the Thursday Night game would be a high-scoring affair and that Herbert would not keep up. Hot take. 17-7 Bolts in the third.

Seems like a trend as of late.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back to writing about writing starting tomorrow. I have thoughts about developing a mythos here on the blog. Ten minutes of world building?
2. My dog gets wildly excited when he sees specific people. He go crazy. I don’t get it. Afterwards he lays on the tile fighting to catch his breath. Just wow.

I won two out of three matchups this week. The strange part is, the one I thought I had the best chances of winning ended up being where I was absolutely crushed. This being my strange QB heavy league that I never figured out, I don’t quite know what I ought to be doing differently. Get better players, I suppose. I went out and did a bit of that by securing Taysom Hill as a TE/Flex. Nice to have a QB at flex where he can do serious damage if given the snaps. His team won last week–if barely. My team won last week by an equally bare margin. They go into a week 2 matchup with an 0-1 Panthers team that is hungry, growing, and dangerous.

Still, I think the Giants win this.

Some other matchups:

Chiefs over Chargers
This is a major battle for years to come, but PattyMo is entirely on fire right now, and I don’t know that Herbert has enough weapons to keep up in this shootout.

Ravens over Dolphins
Dolphins have an explosive offense and they still could not score 3 TDs on the Patriots. The Ravens ought to be able to pull away in this one

Browns over Jets
These two AFC divisions are going to be banging all season. I don’t see any East team outside of the Bills taking a single game.

Some Thoughts:

1. I imagine a world where gender stratification is deeply lessened. However, I don’t live in that world. I am supposed to conform to the role I am given as a man–especially when under pressure. I am not allowed to break. I am not supposed to get enraged. I am left to merely be. I need to go back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings and find in that my pathway to inner peace. I say I because in order to be part of something more, you have to first be secure in self.

Here is a peculiar truth about real estate: It attracts the worst kind of people. From renting to owning, the people on the side of buying and renting are generally awful humans. I am speaking on the investors–purveyors of human misery and those who can reduce a person to a series of numbers. I tried to sell my house to an investor and they played the old wait and drop game on me. Wait till the closing date, demand I sell for less. I lost 35,000 in potential revenue before I decided enough was enough and quit. I presently am aiming to sell the house through more traditional means and I hope it goes better. It does mean I have to ‘tee it up’ as the realtor says. That means I need to make it look a thousand times better than it does right now only to have it be nit picked to hell and the buyer try to talk me down again.

I am not going to make half of what I expected. I do have a number I am comfortable with from a profit standpoint, and if I cannot get there I am going to sit on it and wait until I can make some real money. In the meanwhile, maybe I can rent it out to someone who needs a home. I’m good with that part of it, at least. It is a pretty nice home and it will sell for a decent profit sooner or later. I wanted it sooner so I could travel and do some special things for my partner and the kids. That isn’t a realistic plan anymore, so right now I’m trying to figure a way to simply survive the disappointment of a failed sale.

I am extremely stressed out. I’m in the midsts of moving out of the house and while the sale is supposed to close on Wednesday, the people I am selling to are giving me the runaround. This is why you use your real estate agent. The peace of mind is worth the cost of the agent. I’d tell Lamar Jackson the same, but he is a different type of commodity. He will certainly get his regardless. Meanwhile, I am stressed, I have 10,000 words due in 30 days, and I have yet to dig into the new opportunities presented to me. Oh, I’m also supposed to be in plotting for the novel. Yeah. Oh, there is school stuff too–only an issue because I cannot access canvas on the computer I am using right now.

Yesterday I stressed enjoying life and living in the moments because they are all you get. I’m not doing a very fine job of that myself. I will finish moving tomorrow. I will make a moment of it. I will enjoy it both alone and with my partner, because it is about us as much or more than it is about me. She gets a new space out of it. The kids get a new space out of it. I get a peace of mind out of it and that is worth the stress of the entire thing.

Some Thoughts:

1. Hoping to cross the finish line with the move here in a few days. If it doesn’t go well, I still have my realtor and he will get us something.
2. Geno Smith is having the game of his career right now. Russell Wilson is not.
3. Happiness is transitory. It has to be in order to hold its value.
4. Five hours left of D.O.D.O…. almost through it…