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I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the choices I made in life. Regret is a complicated thing. I don’t regret most of my choices; none of the big ones. Little moments are always regrettable in the rear view. I could’ve said this or that in the moment. I could’ve taught this person this or been more emphatic about this or more empathetic about that. All of these choices small and big add up to form the conditions of your life where it is at the moment you’re present and conscious in yuor thinking. We all are the sum of our previous moments. Understanding that and understanding how little or big the power that has over our future moments is an important thing to consider.

I think a lot about my kids. I created the conditions in their lives in which they have the drive and desire to be elsewhere for most of their days. They have their own lives that exist in other states or other areas of the city for the most part. Yet I am alone in feeling bereft as a result. It is the only part of my life I feel alone in. It is the only part of my life in which nobody else appears to understand the gravity of those choices I made and how the contrast of such things in my every day life is an open wound.

I see my youngest twice a week. This is a far cry from the everyday experience of him living at home. He comes as a familiar visitor because he is not a part of the normal rhythms of the space. Everything here is a departure from his daily life. I am a departure from his daily life. That feeling underscores my point. This is a result of choices I made or allowed. I don’t regret any of it. That doesn’t change the fact that the conditions leading up to it created a relationship that isn’t a daily practice; isn’t really constructed around mutual care and admiration. If I regret any major thing in life it is the series of choices that led to my boys not caring about who I am as a person. Will they show up for me? Probably. That’s an aspect of love I did teach them. Do they care if I live or die? Yes, of course. Does my daily existence and how that goes for me actually matter to them? Not in any real way. In truth, the only person in my life that cares about me on a daily personal level is the Lady Talis. Before that, nobody did.

Life is full of hits and misses. I’ve made a lot of both in my time.

Some Thoughts:

1. No thoughts…

Kid did good. He didn’t give up a single catch. He recorded a 65 rating though. This is likely because of the penalty he got after an illegal pick sprung his WR for a gain. He tracked down the WR and tackled him, but it was a horse collar. Penalties offset and the play vanished. Still, the idea of it is working against him. I hate that for him. I do love the 81.5 tackler rating. That’s heavy work against a top 20 team. Didn’t miss a single tackle. made several defensive stops. He played big today.

They still lost 55-0

There is a separation between a team being good and a player playing good. I saw that today. A lot of players played very well, but as a team they were outclassed. It started up front. It was a matter of big men on the UNI side not being able to take Iowa Bigs. Thats a top 20 vs. FCS matchup for you. It isn’t really a challenging thing for them.

Some Thoughts:

1. Good football weekend overall so far. Feels nice.

We were talking in a room not much bigger than my Grandma’s living room, but with far more kitch. Coffee houses were like that anymore; social media versions of a cozy nook where you could slide in and do your daily business with a hot cup of brown water and sugar buzzing with caffeine. Ella sat across from me wearing the fraying black stockings I hate beneath a jean skirt and a shoulder less yellow top that made her light brown skin look like it glowed.

She said, “what would you do if you could go back?”

“Depends on how far. Depends on what I could change in the past. It isn’t as simple as you see on the shows, you know.”

Her lips turned up slightly the way they always did when she was feeling wry. “I don’t know. Neither do they. For the sake of conversation, lets say you go back as far as you want, but you’re in the body you had at that time with the mental capacity you had at that time.”

An interesting distinction. Did that mean that if I went back to being a baby I’d lose all memory of my life after? How would that moment feel? How would it feel to be blissfully unaware of the world around me and its coming troubles? I said, “In that case, I would be twelve.”

“I would be fifteen,” she said without hesitation. The silence that followed challenged each of us to follow up with the obvious ‘why’ but neither of us did. I didn’t meet her until she was nineteen and me twenty three. So many of my experiences had already gathered themselves into a life by the time I met her.

Some Thouughts:

1. Ran out of time…

I’ve noticed a trend when I see people posting about my kids online. It isn’t about them. It is about their proximity to them. “That’s my nephew!” sort of posts. It shouldn’t irritate me, but it does, because my kids struggle with spotting fake friends. That term definitely includes family who appear to love you and want to show up when you’re shining or expected to do really good, but aren’t there for the grind. It makes me mad not only because of the fact that these kids love basking in their glow, but because of the fear that the glow is all they’ll really learn to appreciate.

I don’t glaze my kids.

I am not the dad who says, “That’s my son!” They know who they are to me. It isn’t something that needs to be the focus of public attention. What is sad is that the working narrative for most FB players is the mom narrative. Unless the dad is a former player or famous in some major regard, it is about the mom. It is so much about the mom that the dad is often moved off the X to show how the mom is carrying the load. I remember for years how the Kelce story was all about their mom going to games and she was on all the commercials. I had to stop and wonder if the dad was dead. No, he was right there in the stands… one seat over from mom. He ain’t ever the story, though he is the one who helped forge them into athletes. My situation is going to be the same, if not worse, because the birth mom in this case prefers to tell the world I’m a dead beat who ruins everything and is never there for his kids.

At least the kids and the Lady Talis know better.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Judge orders Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before any physical changes like demolition” This president is the biggest fit thrower in history. Bro is really going to tear down a monument to a president who lost his life in service of our nation simply because he can’t put his name over that dude’s name? What are we doing here, people?

Wanted to get to this first thing in the morning, because I have so much going on today that I cannot afford to talk sports beyond these pre-work hours. First things first: I’m smelling a closer game than expected in Iowa City this weekend. The Hawkeyes are banged up. They may be the #18 team in the nation, but they aren’t built to run up the score on people–Ferentz isn’t like that–and there are depth questions this week at the RB position, which is the core of their offense. That argues they’ll pass. They will see UNI as vulnerable to it, given the team has let up 276 yards a game. What is lost in that is the 6.5 yards per attempt they’ve let up. UNI isn’t giving up many explosive plays through the air. I believe those are the types of plays Iowa wants to show heading into their Big10 play.

What I’m saying is I think these guys are going to get caught looking ahead. Whereas UNI has their eyes squarely on Iowa. They know they need a strong showing against Iowa to let the MVFC know this is a real team. So, we’re going to have a war on our hands this Saturday. Meanwhile, Friday has me more concerned. Valley Vista scheduled DV as their homecoming opponent. That’s disrespectful. Add to that the fact that VV hasn’t scored in any of the three games they’ve played and given up 164 points on top of that, the worry is about the DV team playing too wild and angry; not taking the opponent seriously. I’ve schooled the kid against that. I’ve let him know the real challenge is the D not letting VV have their first score of the season.

Some Thoughts:

1. Out of time…

Had to update a bunch of slugs. This is the downside of working with two computers. If something doesn’t publish from one, you never know until you open that one again–at least that is my practice. It is a terrible practice, or at least a terrible problem. At any rate, we’re good now. No days missed officially (or otherwise). I shut down come Thursday. I often fall back to the personal computer where I am open to doing more of my own stuff. I’m trying to learn to be more tech-compartmentalized in that fashion.

Yet, here I am blogging… on that work deck again. I preach this stuff but I do not do it nearly as much as I should. We call that discipline… or the lack thereof.

Some Thoughts:

1. Playing a Ted Talk for my students and watching that mix of interest and glazed expressions. I gotta punch up this course. They’re not interested for the most part and I don’t want this to be fourteen more weeks of a chore.
2. Mixed week in fantasy for me. More on that Wednesday as well as well as the skinny on this week’s Iowa game.

Breathe in deeply through your nose and then back out through it again, because nobody wants to see any of that mouth breathing and especially not in the moment itself; check that your eyes are almost meeting theirs, but hold them slightly lower so your looking at the bags below and not directly at them; Let your shoulders slump, you should probably start with that, because straight shoulders are the second worst of the signs; make sure your hands are open, but not too open like one of those fans people buy and spread and wave back and forth when its hot, because either extreme is going to have the same effect; talk slower than you want to or are used to, letting the syllables fall like boulders; but don’t say the words you’re thinking about saying–give them back the words they give you all chewed up and nice the way a bird does with a baby; this is how to be good; this is how to act like man when you can’t really act like a man wanna act; this is how to stay safe and make them feel safe; this is how you take it when they’re coming down on you with hot breath and spit and all the things they are angry about and afraid of and they know that whatever you do it is going to be you who gets the short end, you who gets the blame, you who is the problem and the instigator and the one ‘they were always afraid would do this’  but never paused to think of how they would drive you to it because they don’t have the same rules but all the same passions; you want to be the kind of man they can do this to because you can’t afford to be the kind of man they can’t.

Some Thoughts:

1. Rough day at work. See above.
2. There is too much of a disparity birthed by the color of a person’s skin and the perceived behavior thereof for me to respond to people the way they come at me. Still, I can only hold back for so long.

I am blessed.

I don’t say that enough. I have a tendency to focus on the negative things in my life and try to fix them or when I cannot, dwell on them endlessly. I turn most things in my life into a competitive bloodsport that, when I cannot win, I choose to see as a failing on my part. I do it with self talk about my kids, about the things I do wrong in my relationships, my physical shortcomings, and even about my failures as a writer. It is really self-destructive. When I get into this kind of cycle (which is weekly if not daily) I find that it impacts my mood and energy level in a way that detracts from being good at any of the things I mentioned above. In fact, it is easier to negatively spiral than it is to put in the work to fix any of those problems which generally tend to start out as small things.

Fixing the problems might not even be possible. It is important to recognize that as well. It is equally important to accept these things you cannot change. I cannot fix the fact that my kids choose to stay with their mom when they come back home. I can, however, accept it and make sure the time that I do get to spend with them is worthwhile and that there is always space available here for them when they want to show up.

I am learning to think about the writing in the same way: opportunities vs errors. Growth mindset, some say. I could definitely use it.

Some Thoughts:

1. I think I am going to finally get around to writing and putting out that book on writing based on years of this blog. I am going to call it The Ten Minute Rule. There will be some kind of subtitle as well, but I haven’t gotten that far. I think it should also have a 365 calendar (with adjustments for leap year?) that gives prompts if you’re struggling that day. Yes. This feels right.
2. PFF missed my kid’s PBU. Go over the tape again, folks! Get his numbers right! Better not miss next week on his stats against Iowa…

Being back in Iowa reminds me why I left. Life is different here. Not better. Not deep or meaningful or anything more than that steady grind of meaningless moments building towards the weekend and ultimately deflating until the next week comes along to start pumping you up again. Arizona isn’t much better, but it is a lot less expensive to fly or drive away. Iowa always made me sad because it felt like a dead end; like I’d pulled into the culdesac and there was nothing left to do but go round and round amongst the pretty houses until I died. There has to be more to life than the low ceiling this place presents.

Except here, you can’t see it.

Today at breakfast the Lady Talis was exposed to what I like to refer as the Iowa Girl Down on the World. You may have met her in other circumstances or perhaps seen her ancestors littered throughout European history. She feels like she is above everyone around her, a trait likely picked up somewhere between grades k-12, and everything she isn’t or isn’t a part of is awful; most notably the things closest to her. The local team sucks. The college sucks. The people she doesn’t want to talk to suck. She doesn’t say outright that she is good or better, but it is evident in her endless commentary on the rest of existence. These are often people who find a home in reflective political parties. They are sometimes Karen’s who’ve yet to be exposed. They are always deeply unhappy and mean to spread that seed outward. I am not here for it. Don’t think I ever will be. So, I left.

The kid brought me right back.

This is twice now I’ve been back to the state. Two different cities and cultures and colleges. Still the same Iowa from the angle of a different facet. It’s good to be living elsewhere, but even there is not my final destination.

Some Thoughts:

1. Iowa game matters more and more. Let’s see how he measures up against a top WR on a Top 25 team…

The Cyclones can still pull this out. The Cy-Hawk Trophy is the biggest thing in the state for football. This year both FCS teams played each other (which is why I’m in state) and both FBS teams went head to head. The FCS game was a blowout and a joy. 56-14. The kid gave up a touchdown on a ten second play, which is not entirely going to ruin his numbers (I hope). Meanwhile, the Cyclones have 15 seconds left to get in range for a FG to tie or a TD to win. I’m listening to it in the background as I type this blog. I shouldn’t have turned it on, because I’m literal bad luck for the ‘Clones. Have been since I stepped on campus.

I was never much of a winner in football anywhere I played. I didn’t actually even make it to taking the field in my one season and we went 0-10-1. Later in life I played for the Flagstaff Hitmen. We lost all but one game… Just like the ‘Clones are losing right now.

I’ve always been a person steeped in superstitions. I actually believe that a person can have good and bad luck. I think both flow through us on a regular basis and we might have the power to harness such things if we understand how to do it. There are an endless number of things we don’t understand about ourselves and our relationship to this planet and this universe. Luck can be one of those things.

Some Thoughts:

1. It was really good to see the kid. It was really sad to recognize that they don’t really want to live with me.