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Honestly when I loaded up to write the blog I was convinced I missed a day. I could not get around to thinking it was actually Thursday. I say Waiver Wednesday and thought, crap. Then I thought about it for a while and recognized that it was not friday and could not be friday. This is how it feels in the new world when I go into the office once a week and spend the rest of my time working from home and struggling to devise a schedule that I will stick to. It doesn’t help that two of my kids are in college and one is taking his entire semester online, so there is not that sense of having to take kids to school every day. There are few touchstones in the week to remind me of what day it is, so I get lost as a result. I need to be developing my own touchstones–not just day to day but within a day to create a sense of what a day ought to feel like. Right now it is just a matter of ‘when is my partner getting home?’

Life is good, in general. I have long stretches of the day where everything is wonderful. Then, inexcusably, I do something to damage my relationship and spend a large part of the remains of the day trying to set it right. I’ve reached the conclusion that I am a thoughtless partner, and it is getting worse each day. I need to figure out a way to get better–be a better person and version of myself. I would not be surprised if I wind up alone in a year’s time. People can only deal with living below expectations for so long before they decide to find a way to reach their expectations.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out I have none tonight…

A lot of football to talk about. Let’s get started at the High School Level:

High School

Desert Vista named Dave Bills its new Freshman coach to work alongside Nate Gill, 2021 AZ High School Football coach of the year. That shows me they have every intention of continuing the rebuild set in motion by coach Wisdom (now coaching in Nebraska). My sophomore started at CB throughout the year and, after making that jump from freshman B-team, has his eyes on being noticed nationally. He has a chance, because the Thunder will be playing out of state this season as part of the Honor Bowl. Each team gets to award an MVP and a Character award. I think if he keeps up the good work he can figure for the character this season. It is tough sledding for a CB to win MVP, though he hopes to play all three phases of the game this year.

His little brother will be training with the incoming freshmen this spring as a way to prepare himself to be a leader once he is in that incoming freshman role. Finishing the season as a 14u starter, the 12yr old has shown a lot of growth. He toughed it out playing multiple downs as a RB and started the entire season as a CB and never gave up a single TD or big catch. Big time work ethic on the field and some real desire off the field means he has a solid future indeed.

The Pro Game

The Giants. It is all about the Giants. I hope they get it together and get clear of this recent Flores scandal. The fact is they only interviewed Flores because they had to via the Rooney rule. Schoen knew who he wanted. The texts indicate as much. Once the smoke clears and the staff gets back to work there will be some solid questions to answer and about more than the line. What about Barkley? How to rebuild the WR corps? How to clear enough cap space to be a destination? None of these answers are near focus, so we just have to wait until they are.

Not a lot of cohesive things to say but I do have…

Some Thoughts:

1. Given the influx of African American fandom to anime will there be more black characters in Anime? No. Here is why: There are less than 25,000 black folk in Japan. There are more Ainu than blacks. In truth the anime culture focuses heavily on Japanese and German culture specifically. There are 83 million Germans still which is not reflective of the percentage of the world pop the nation had during the height of the cultural alliance between Japan and Germany. In short, we don’t have the market size to make an impact. There are quite a large number of black people in the world, but the African American population is sub 50 million. So, there’s that.
2. Interesting developments in the Brian Flores situation. Man gone went and sued the NFL (and the Giants) claiming he never got a fair shot at a job. He isn’t wrong. Giants knew it was Daboll and the two non-white candidates were merely Rooney show horses. They interviewed Graham to keep him there. Flores was just the big name. NFL racist? No surprise. Given the increased number of highly talented black assistants over the last decade it is hard to fathom that there is only one black coach in the NFL. One Hispanic coach too… And that is all.
3. It is Black History Month! Not sure what to do with that in the age of CRT…
4. Somehow this rolled into a rant. Imagine that. I gotta stop peeking at Fox news and getting mad.

I am back in the Bat chair. No, seriously. I literally have a Bat chair (made by Titan). I have a bad ass partner who gets me such wonderful toys. So I am here and trying to lock in on what I need to be doing as a writer. It is very difficult to say the least. I’ve done all I can to avoid distraction and that act itself was, well, distracting. The truth of the matter is that I don’t know how to move forward in either of the big works I am toiling over, so I move forward with neither. I even considered writing for a new Shadowrun game book, but I didn’t have anything relevant to say. I refuse to say I am out of ideas, because that is absolutely not it. Instead, I’m just stuck. The only way to get unstuck is to force my way out through writing. I wound up doing more mapping instead. Even that is a part of the process. The more I map, the more I am forced to think about characters and places and peoples. The more I do that, the more I draw near to telling an actual story. I just need to pick one story out of these two to tell first and in that begin to do the hard work of writing it the way it ought to be written.

Some Thoughts:

1. Part of the reason the negativity hits me so hard is that I know I am not living my best life or being my best self and it is easy to fall upon blaming my surroundings for such things. Surroundings matter, but people are successful under far more difficult conditions than these. My main culprit is myself.
2. Began listening to Eaters of the Dead, because I saw it on Audible and I like Chrichton. I suspect we are kindred in some small way. He passed in 2008, though I intend for a measure of his spirit of research to live on through my own work moving forward.
3. Always forward.

I’ve spoken about negativity a great deal lately as I’ve been dealing with a lot of it in my life lately. I feel like I am drowning in it. While others in the family opt to ignore or feed in I simply sit there and seethe, growing more despondent about the situation and my inability to change it. More over I find myself wondering why these people are so negative. What is it about our lives that leads to expressing negativity so often. Why are we living in the era of Eeore? I think it has to do with expectation and a lack of a real sense of purpose and future and love. All of that plays a role and different parts play different roles in different levels. However, the fact remains that these negative mindsets are not mine and not my cross to bear. While I love everyone around me, my main responsibility–especially in terms of mentality–is my partner. That is my focus. She and I have to be good regardless of the external surroundings. That means reinforcing our bonds and making sure there is positive energy and positive language at the front of all of our interactions. I’ve done horribly at that thus far. So, I aim to improve.

Some Thoughts:

1. Part of that improvement has to be getting my shop in order. I have to get back to a solid writing schedule, keep looking at my health, get ahead of the school situation, and be on top of the finances.
2. In terms of health, I need to sweat. I haven’t–not once since I hit the gym. Not even in the Sauna.

That Clockwork Dynasty book utterly fell apart. It fell into the sad and familiar patterns of a male writer trying to breathe life into a female narrative. Nope. Sorry. He’s not that guy. It instead felt like what men think of as the female fantasy moment and it showed. Hard. In the end, a wonderful male narrator was wasted as the backstory voice of a bad bad bad narrative which felt trite and small in the end–a far cry from the beautiful and terrifically engaging beginning. In short, he sold the bag.

Some Thoughts:

1. Always interesting to watch the power dynamics between brothers. In one such situation in our home it is the younger brother who holds sway. His big brother orbits around him like a protective moon, working fervently to show him things he’ll like and learn about everything he does like as a source of conversation. It is the reverse of the expected dynamic. Meanwhile, with our other set of three the Eldest/Youngest dynamic is exactly what you’d expect from the situation.
2. Speaking on kids, my youngest advanced to the final four in his Madden 22 tournament today. The NFL-sponsored tourney covers kids 8-12 and he is at the top end of the age spectrum and has been winning big throughout. I am hopeful that he wins the entire thing. He only needs 1 win to get to the Super Bowl and earn a prize. Good luck, moneyman.
3. Don’t have much more to say. Its been a deeply meh week for creativity. Hopefully I get something going here soon.

So, I am trying to have this multi-user franchise with the boys and it has been fun so far. I’m in a strange situation where I am looking at my roster and thinking… I only have one guy at this position. I only have one guy at that position. I have 7 guys at this position! Yet in the overstaffed spaces I’m loathe to let anyone go. I just traded away one of my six running backs and I feel bad about losing that talent. Heck, when I scour the practice squad wire I see guys I got stolen from me a year or two ago and feel odd about not having those WRs on my roster! It is a strange mindset to feel as though you cannot lose anything from one or two specific positions and as a result other positions are woefully understaffed. If I lose an end then I need to grab a guy off the wire. That right there is poor team management mixed with absolute greed. I took all the smoke I could hold and won’t share. Why? Because I am waiting for one of these guys to emerge and the guy. So, the trade of Vinson felt good in that maybe he becomes the real deal on another squad, but also maybe I screwed up by letting him walk.

Some Thoughts:

1. A lot of energy devoted to video game football. Have I been away from coaching that long?
2. My mid-kid (and youngest soon enough) school got a new coach. He was our State FB coach of the year this year and I hope he brings that dynamism to the table for us. There is real hope in my mind that he keeps some of the guys on and, overall, puts together a staff of professionals that can make these kids better by playing into their strengths while building them up and ironing out their weaknesses. For example, my kid is a really great cover corner but is terrible in press coverage. Let’s see him play more press in practices to develop skill but let him lean on what he is good at in more game situations than he previously has done. Mix it up effectively.
3. Yeah, still talking football tonight. That’s all that I’ve got on my mind for this particular blog situation…

Reading Daniel Wilson’s Clockwork Dynasty I find myself wondering if he wanted to write a fantasy novel and decided the way to do such was to focus on the idea of Clockwork. I also wonder if there is a hint of the deeper ideas of magic in all of this. The book is well written but falls below the level of Robopacolypse by far. It is not as memorable and creates more questions in each chapter than can possibly be resolved at story’s end. It is also a rather effective learning tool I am discovering what to do and what not to do as a writer by exploring what people have (and have not) been successful doing in their narratives. Success is such a funny thing to me. You find your niche audience and, depending on how wide the niche, you will be successful. Still others will see that same writing as crap and avoid it completely. I fear this is the basic construct of literature–with a few responsible for the choosing.

Some Thoughts:

1. Biden says he will pick a Black Woman for SCOTUS. Why say that up front? Transparency? All you’ve done here is given the opposition party more ammo to gun at whomever you ultimately pick. In fact, they’ll work doubly hard to ensure it isn’t a black woman simply to show you are a failure. Come on, man. This is rookie level. Just do it and don’t talk about it up front.

In the world of fantasy it is taking a long time to make the Giants great again. In real life it may take longer. The front-end work is happening. There is a possibility the Giants new GM may go all in on clearing cap space in order to build something up new again, and I hope he does. This is the way. It might be the only way, as the existing talent pool is worn through in spots. We need to rebuild the WR corps and let go of the overpriced people jamming up the cap. We need LINE on the Offensive side of the ball. I think some of the line concerns can be handled in the later rounds of the draft. I’m all in on a QB pickup via that route as well. I think we have to push Jones but I think he is worth keeping this year and letting him play for a contract–no resign for 21 million. That is not a smart move.

We need a coach too. Who is that going to be?

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m dwelling on things and speaking out on them like a frustrated dad. It isn’t helping my relationship, so I am shutting up about them. Forever.
2. Not Writing ENOUGH.

First, I butchered the spelling of the great Thich Nhat Hanh a few days ago when lamenting his death. If that wasn’t bad enough I should have been celebrating his life. I got that one wrong. I get a lot of them wrong. It is a fundamental part of my unwokeness. Ordinarily I would be lamenting my unwokeness but I’m not prepared to have that conversation. I think that the idea of being ‘woke’ is difficult to navigate, primarily because it is about being accepting and accommodating of people who are different, but only if that different is a like-minded sense of acceptance. We don’t ever firmly choose to accept the non-accepting, because that would be enabling hate.

I am rambling. I do that more and more lately. I think it is a gut reaction to not creating narratives and the characters that populate my imagination are bleeding into my reality, but the negative ones are the strongest, because negativity apparently has more upfront and in your face noticability than happiness. Oh also, the happy characters always seem to be less interesting.

Some Thoughts:

1. I miss Razzi-ann. She was the only cat who really wanted to snuggle up with me all the time. It sounds strange but she even groomed my hair and that was perhaps the most loving thing an animal has done for me. All other cats are <
2. I have to get out of my own head in terms of negativity. It doesn’t help that I am surrounded by it on a daily basis. Negativity, laziness, and lack of personal motivation to do more than sit on your ass and watch shows and play video games. Talislegger, This is your Universe!
3. Gotta go to work now.