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I believe my son is afraid to play football. His brother, a Varsity player, tore his ACL. His other brother has bursitis from overworking his legs. He himself landed hard and perhaps sprained his knee and hasn’t been right since. He played so poorly last game and so timidly that I was speechless as a coach and entirely ready to see him on the B team. It appears that I am past the point of believing that I have the power to turn my kids into super stars. They are going to be what they are going to be under their own power and determination.

This is not the way I planned things in my head. Still, this is the way things are now. This is how things are. I am trying to come to a place of acceptance of how things are in my life and come to an understanding of how I want things to be in the future. This is evolution.

How it lands on an 11 year old boy is a different conversation. I’ve written at length about my concerns about being a good dad. In my own lineage being a good dad merely means not running out. My step dad died when I was 12. My real dad may or may not be alive in one of the Carolinas. I don’t know and I am not entirely sure I care. I do know that there is a definite possibility I will one day soon run out on my kids and I hate myself for that, but there is a reason for everything in life. No, this is not me forgiving this man. This is me trying to come to an understanding of how things are and how I want them to be in the future.

Life is hard. Making life choices is hard.

Some Thoughts:

1. The Dak injury is a rough one. That man’s foot fell off. Still, I hope the Giants make the decision to pursue him in free agency. They need a leader like that in the locker room. They need a QB who can step up and do the job. Danny Drops is not that guy.
2. The Cowboys are not good. Yet the Giants are worse.
3. I think about football an awful lot. Even the youth stuff.

This season is a dumpster fire at every level. I could start with the Giants, but I won’t. I am going to start with youth football, because that is the one that, apparently, intends to finish a season no matter what.

Our 11u team, heralded as a Florida bound juggernaut, scraped past a team that was entirely smaller, slower, and not as well coached with a 19-6 win. We were very bad. We didn’t run the ball well despite three running backs who were basically starters for their former teams. We didn’t throw the ball well despite two quarterbacks with the same sort of resume. The coaches argued openly on the sidelines, I was basically useless on the sideline, and none of the players have gotten to that ‘we are one’ vibe that makes the engine run. Instead they played timid, played hurt, or in the case of my kid, both.

We built a solid core of players last year and lost half of them. We embedded another entire team into our ranks and that was meant to strengthen us and strengthen the coaching, but instead we find ourselves completely out of step with an o-line that doesn’t stop anyone. Will we turn it around? Maybe. It all depends on time on task and on Covid, which is rising right now and I don’t see anyone at the youth level thinking about testing in any way. I mask up every game, which is a stop gap, because the kids are still playing and banging and we know the problem is out there somewhere, just like we know when we walk into a store that we are touching things that other people have touched and we have no idea where those people have been.

We are forgetting–I am forgetting–this is a pandemic.

Which brings me to the NFL and yet another week where a team is forced to postpone a game because of positive Covid results. The struggle here is this: In a highly competitive situation like this where there are not many make up opportunities, how do you hold a season that may hinge on one bad result? How do you do playoffs? No answers yet in this dumpster fire.

Instead I am content with watching it burn.

This day has been a complete dumpster fire from start to finish and I feel like if I was hit by a sack of flying cockroaches it would clearly be an improvement. admittedly I am exaggerating a bit, but things have gone quite badly. To wit: I came upon the realization that wrecking my computer and losing that novella a year ago did no just mean I lost the novella. I lost all of the files on that computer and among that means stuff I have been gathering for years. This includes my transcripts, etc. All of the things one need to apply for professional academic work are gone. Now I have to find these relics and have the long conversations with middle men and registrars etc. I really do not want to have.

Oh and I have a 3rd kid injured.

Oh and his football team is dog crap.

Oh and my partner thinks I am dog crap and I never see us as a we and I am really just not telling people about this relationship for some reason.

I don’t have any good news. In truth the one thing I learned from today is to not talk to people. I am better off staying socially distanced from everyone because it will allow me to avoid creating problems for the one person that matters. Even if they think I don’t listen or that what they say and ask matter.

Frankly, this is for the best. I’ve grown extremely tired of relationships and human contact. I am so tired of the metronome of love and pain and feeling like the moment things go really well for a few hours or days that the world is going to spit a nasty green loogie in my sandwich and turn it into a sad-which. I am tired of being right about that happening every single time. I’ve reached to the point where feeling good and happy absolutely terrifies me, because I am waiting for the ball to be pulled away like I’m Charlie Brown and Lucy is just waiting to snatch it away from me and I keep on falling for it every single time, because there is no life without that opportunity to feel like things are going to be okay.

They aren’t though.

Back from nature just in time to post the last few days and to freewrite on the word of the day…

Pertinacious

I knew the moment he walked up to the counter that he wasn’t going to let it go. It was a Sunday afternoon; the time we always get those customers who’d normally be eating at Chick Filet, but thanks to God, that can’t happen, so I get stuck with them.

Stuck is perhaps too strong a word. I’ve worked at Popeye’s Chicken for six years–since I was fifteen and all they let me do was wash dishes. I worked my way up the ladder to manager despite everyone in the place telling me a a do nothing in a do rag didn’t have a chance to do more than work the cook lines. Well, I did that too and mop floors and clean stalls and eventually I made it to the counter and eventually I made it to the back office. I’m nothing if not determined.

I have this thing I used to do. Every day Webster’s dictionary puts out a word. If I like it then I try to work it into a conversation with people. If I can’t I keep it on a piece of paper in my pocket. My pockets are full of little slops of paper torn off the register reams or rescued from the edge of a used sandwich bag. Tenure, Letimotif, meliorism. The list goes on and on. I even try to find the words that best apply to me, and I did: Pertinacious. It means stubbornly willful in pursuit of a task. I recognize that in me, which is why I recognized it in that man.

He had small eyes that darted around behind his narrow glasses. He wore a jacked and a button up shirt in this 90+ Arizona heat. People like that make me anxious and a little wary. Like, what are you dressing up for bro? What is it you think you’re going to get into at 4PM in a Popeye’s Chicken?

There was this viral thing the company did once about people getting shot over the chicken sandwich. Nobody actually got shot. It isn’t like we’re selling Jordans in the eighties or anything. Nah, it was the kind of thing that gets popular on snapchat. He was the kind of thing that gets turned into a meme on snapchat. Heck, everywhere. He was pudgy enough and atwitter enough that he made me think about the fat guy from Jurrassic Park–you know the one who does the meme where the comedian dude says ‘Hello, Newman’ and he makes the face? Yeah, it is a bad meme. This was a bad meme waiting to happen.

I am still in a type of mourning over the job loss. There are indeed stages to such things. I am, I suppose in a bit of a revenge mindset. This is a relic of my distant past where everything I did was out of spite for those who said I could not. In this particular instance I am aware that I have the ability to become a faculty member, earn the right to run the center, and fire everyone who was involved in this debacle. Still, that would mean devoting my time and energy to a pursuit that was ultimately about them and not me, so instead I feel my best interests lay in focusing on the words.

To that end, I am grateful for the loss of job (not income… that is still a conversation to be had). Last night I woke under the kiss of the moonlight and I began to think about how to revamp my screenwriting class. Those moments would not have happened before, because my subroutines were dedicated to processing the anxiety, responsibility, and organization of the initial managerial job post. That is gone now. And, as I continue to process why, it is more and more clear that the job was largely extraneous to the functioning of that organization. They did not need me and having me be the voice of that team functionally separated that team from the upper management, which was the goal and was the obstacle because I wasn’t the docile mousy person that they needed to push around in that spot.

I glossed over this yesterday in pursuit of getting the waiver out, but I got fired. I was working for a creative writing center in an administrative capacity and it was clear that the work was very catty corporate nonsense and, sadly, led by people who are not actually writers or about the writing life. I brought that up. I combated a great deal of the nonsense and incompetence going on and in response they promoted the most incompetent person while firing me for an error that was largely (almost entirely) his fault. The error they fired me for was an excuse. It was an environment where they often made excuses for this individual and took no measure of excuse from other individuals. They chose to end my employment because I was combative and because I would not follow status quo. The entire thing pissed me off for the day, and I am still angry today, but honestly, I am angry about the loss of income and the fact that they fired me before I quit (stealing the power from the situation and sullying my name if only in that small circle where they maintain the power to say I was bad at something when I truly wasn’t). I am dealing with those two things.

Life presents opportunities and failure is an opportunity. I have the opportunity to remind my kids that bad things can happen. I have the opportunity to rebound. I have the opportunity to turn this failure into a greater success and a better situation for myself. So, it is time to get on my grind and turn this around.

I’m going into the woods tomorrow, so I figured I ought to do the Waiver now before I lost all touch with the modern world.

Bucs over Bears
Brady ball is really working now. He just needed time to get it together with these new guys. I expect this to be a playoff team. By this I do not mean the Bears.

Washington over Rams
Notice how badly the Rams beat the Giants? Wait, it wasn’t that bad? Oh. Well, I suppose the Rams don’t have that offense they used to.

Titans over Bills
Ball control is the name of the game in this one. If the Titans can lean on the run they will win this game.

Steelers over Eagles
Eagles are trash. They’ll even let the Giants get a win or two this season.

Cardinals over Jets
Jets… The Cards needed this game bad. It will feel good to punk an inferior team.

Chiefs over Raiders
I don’t know that anyone can hold this team down this year. I want to see them play the Steelers.

Texans over Jags
Loser bowl! I choose you, Texans! I think the firing of the coach will trigger some survival instinct.

Ravens over Bengals
Bengals will be fun to watch in this one, especially if they go down in score early. I expect big points from the homie Burrow.

Falcons over Panthers
Bout time for this team to get off the mat and get a W.

49rs over Dolphins
Kittle! Miami is good vs. the TE but Kittle will not be denied.

Cowboys over Giants
Giants are not good. Cowboys have really good WRs. This is a formula for shame.

Colts over Browns
Colts might have the best D in football. That will be put to the test this week.

Patriots over Broncos
The QB room is trash, but they’ll have enough to beat Denver. Melvin Gordon will go off.

Seahawks over Vikings
A 5-0 start is within reach. It will take a healthy Carson and a DK not dropping stuff. Expect Olson to emerge as a threat this week.

Saints over Chargers
I love watching the Saints and the #1 fantasy RB go to work. Lets see how many points get scored between these teams.

Some Thoughts:

1. Got fired today. It was my side hustle, but it was lucrative. I’m pissed at the way it went down. All politics and racism. We are still in a place where it is not about how good you do your job.
2. Being fired, no matter the cause, feels shameful. I am hurt by this.
3. Didn’t list my w/l from last week. Maybe later…

Social bonds and blood bonds are unrelated. In truth, what we define as family is as much of a choice as what we define as our favorite comfort foods. Family is who we turn to when times are good or bad. Family is who we’ve spent the time with; the people who were most involved in our continuing socialization. I must say that I have less blood-linked family than I do family of choice and it is my family of choice that I feel the most bonded with and choose to spend my time with and energy on the most.

You can be both blood and choice. As I said, they are unrelated. I have three children. As a black man in America it would surprise no one if I chose to be absent from their lives. Somehow the single mom and the deadbeat black dad morphed into a cultural expectation. Last night at the end of the Giants v. Rams game two players ended up in a fist fight because one got the other’s sister pregnant and refused to have anything to do with her afterwards. This is not a standard of wealth or the lack thereof. It is simply how culture has come to be. So, I argue that my continued involvement with my kids is a matter of choice. I choose to be a good father.

I choose to build my life around my lady. The marital (or pre-marital in our case) bond is one of choice as well. There are social reinforcements telling us to get or stay married in life, but in the end it all comes down to what we ant to do and who we wish to involve in our lives. I choose her before all others. Likewise I choose not to continue to involve my mother in my life. I don’t have a responsibility to keep her in my life. There is no personal expectation of payback for being raised by her.

This is a tough realization for many to accept, as we all tend to bind ourselves in the armor of social norm and expectation. In truth and in sum, we get to choose the life we live and the people we live it with and the people we don’t.

I thought it would be nice to blog by the fire tonight, but the fire won’t start and the internet is spotty, and the mosquitos are hungry, so the entire thing is feeling less and less like a good time. Sort of how today went.

This was not a bad day. Overall it was a productive day. I am building a computer for the first born and windows was installed today. I cleaned the new space (loft 2.0?) a little more and I even added a new family xbox account to make it so anyone could play without using my account and causing untold disaster.

*note* the anyone clause does not apply to all of us playing madden at the same time because that would mean 5 machines and two copies of the game. I am considering a disk copy for one of the machines in order to make it so we don’t need to deal with that problem but a 3rd copy of a trash game???

In general it was the kind of day that reminds me how close I am to the kind of life I want to have and how far I am from having all the details down. As I write this I am resting my legs on a chair and the chair is sliding away slowly because of the pressure I’ve placed on it and the day feels sort of like that as well. And the life feels sort of like that as well. All of this is to say that there is a way to be in life and a way to make life be for you.

I am learning the way.

I am learning that part of the way is to be a hard worker when you need to be and to turn everything off sometimes as well.

I thought it would be nice to blog by the fire tonight, but the fire won’t start and the internet is spotty, and the mosquitos are hungry, so the entire thing is feeling less and less like a good time. Sort of how today went.

This was not a bad day. Overall it was a productive day. I am building a computer for the first born and windows was installed today. I cleaned the new space (loft 2.0?) a little more and I even added a new family xbox account to make it so anyone could play without using my account and causing untold disaster.

*note* the anyone clause does not apply to all of us playing madden at the same time because that would mean 5 machines and two copies of the game. I am considering a disk copy for one of the machines in order to make it so we don’t need to deal with that problem but a 3rd copy of a trash game???

In general it was the kind of day that reminds me how close I am to the kind of life I want to have and how far I am from having all the details down. As I write this I am resting my legs on a chair and the chair is sliding away slowly because of the pressure I’ve placed on it and the day feels sort of like that as well. And the life feels sort of like that as well. All of this is to say that there is a way to be in life and a way to make life be for you.

I am learning the way.