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There is a part of me that wants to ‘pen’ a day before Thanksgiving blog, but I don’t have it in me right now. I have to burn through these next ten minutes in a more scattered fashion, because my mind is everywhere. It is about time I refocused and locked in on the next project (which is due pretty quickly it turns out), but until then I need to clear out my mind by getting rid of…

Some Thoughts:

1. Set aside the foundational idea of Thanksgiving and you get a moment in time dedicated to family and understanding what we are grateful for. I would love this to be a monthly routine. Giving thanks once a year is pretty weak. The Lady Talis gives thankfuls every morning. Me, not so much. I should be doing it more often than yearly, because I have a ton to be thankful for.
2. I want to take a minute to talk about writing. There is still this strange expectation, at least where I tend to publish, that we are going to be politically correct. I write in a genre born from cyberpunk. What correctness is expected? Moreover, if everyone is maintaining correctness, then nobody is real. I want the writing to be real and have people who say and think things that are not always perfect. I don’t care if they are likable or what they say is likable. I want it to feel genuine. That is what bugged me about this last editing process. None of it felt like I was being allowed to speak with real voice.
3. I need to write more and better stuff.
4. I need to go to a doctor and get myself checked out. Too old to not do this regularly.
5. Speaking of which, I always assume everyone is older than me. I see myself as a far younger person than I am. I find myself treating these 30 year olds with the respect reserved for my elders when I could be their parents. Wild. Someone recently wrote that Gen X are the 45-60 year olds who look like they are 30 – 40 but act like teenagers. That tracks.

I am done with revisions to Lethal Knowledge! Super grateful to have made it to the end of the process (finally) and ready for the next challenge! It feels good to finish. It is like being at the end of a race and knowing you conquered the challenge of yourself. I’ve yet to reach the point where I’ve finished more novels than I’ve abandoned. I’ll get there soon enough. In the meanwhile, I have a few short projects to carry me through the Christmas break and then it is on to the next novel. I am not sure which one is going to take my interest but I really need it to be the Justice Engine.

Some Thoughts:

1. Is the novel good? I think so. It could’ve been better and longer and slower, but then it wouldn’t be Shadowrun. The thriller mold is what works best for the genre and I teetered on the edge of something else entirely.
2. Portal opens on the 2nd of January and the kid is indeed jumping in…
3. I’m pretty sure I said that yesterday. The days (and information) started running together once I stuck my head deep in the word mines.

I’ve been doing this for nearly fifteen years. Ten minutes a day recorded for posterity. Maybe not the best writing and often quite wild and uninteresting but there are a thousand or more real gems out there—forever.

I found a way to open the novel. That too will be preserved for posterity and is almost done. I’m trying to get it done in the morning. 40 pages left.

I’m feeling good about the way it’s going but more wanting it to be over and on shelves than to work on it anymore. I’m drained and done with this one. Ready to move on to a new project.

likewise, my kid is ready to move on to a new team. This better be the last one. He hasn’t had the same coach for longer than a season since youth football. Time to settle down and grind his way to the league. I’m excited to see how far he can take it.

I’m excited to see how far his little brother takes it. He’s racking up the accolades—All City, Second Team all region. He’s angry he isn’t first. That’s one to grow on. That’s one he can seek out his senior year. Going to be a good senior year for him. Not so sure about his team though. They need to find talent at multiple positions. He can only get them right for two…

So, I just got more than three quarters of the way through a novel rewrite that is due by the 29th. I got a little nervous about this being on a single word file and decided to back it up. This is when my world collapsed. See, suddenly I don’t have permission to access my file or the backups I just created of the file. I’m going to see what I can do to fix this, but the central idea is that word is trash and has entirely failed me. Perhaps I grew too used to google docs and this sort of angry vengeance seeking behavior is what naturally happens when you go back to the old. Regardless, I don’t want to be in a position where I need to rewrite the entirety of what I just did (quite well, I may add) in 6 days. Some of those days are holidays, mind you. I don’t have time for this madness. My goal was to finish by Tuesday, get it in early and feel good about myself, my effort, and my choices.

All of that could go up in smoke if I don’t find a way to fix these damned files…

I go t my youtube ASMR on for this one. I’ve taken up with Zenfinite. From John Butler to random chill moments like the Women’s Chess Grand Prix, the channel is consistently dropping bangers. Okay, that term is a tough one to use in this type of media, but they are on the max chill. ASMR helps me relax before (and occasionally while) I write. I use it to block out the rest of the world and to achieve a state of mind where I can maintain a high level of focus. I use that focus to get stuff done.

That’s been on my mind a lot lately: What am I getting done? As I move through this latest and last novel revision I find that I am dodging my AI novel. I am looking for anything else to write in order to avoid writing this thing and it is supposed to be my thesis! I haven’t gotten to the point where I know the story and how to tell it well enough. I haven’t aligned with the characters or sorted out the situation in full. I don’t know that I know how.

These are the things I find myself constantly considering and thinking about when my mind is not consumed by my relationship, future, or the awful timpani of my finances. I think about what I will write and whether it will be successful and if I will make enough money to live out my life the way I want. As I do I see this curtain comming down closing the act that I am presently in faster than I am prepared for it to be over.

Too much stress in that. ASMR definitely helps.

Two years. Possibly three. That is all he has left.

When my son started this journey to become a professional athlete I was impressed with the idea of it and the effort. I wanted the same for myself, but I didn’t put in the work the way he has. I don’t know that I knew what it takes to make it to the show. I’m starting to figure it out. 1.6% of College football players make it to the NFL. What’s even more amazing is how few players even make it to the field in spite of heavy recruiting and the way the system is geared on the front end to make you feel like a superstar. Those are the stories we love to talk about. We love hearing how this high school 5 star turned into a pro champion. We also love hearing the other story–the one about the kid who had zero stars and excelled beyond his supposed ceiling because he worked his ass off. That’s the script my kid is following.

He didn’t have a single star coming out of high school. He was a 16 year old kid with great grades and even better drive playing out of position in a team that didn’t know how to win football games. He’d seen four head coaches in four years and only been a full time starter two of those years–and not consecutively. He’s had to fight for it at every level. He went to Drake and played on an academic scholarship and earned the starting spot. He went to Northern Colorado on a football scholarship and fought his way onto the NIL list and team poster. On a team where the entire story is how they’re doing it with Colorado kids, he’s the transfer from Arizona who is sitting on the poster for the whole school to see.

The season started well. They accumulated 3 wins. By the time the conference games were underway they’d hit a wall. The offense faltered. The defense was on the field far too long, and they started losing close games. Then those games weren’t so close. The kid’s confidence took a hit. Then he got sick; lost 30 lbs. By the time he was back the HC was looking towards the future, moving to a rotation that got almost everyone in the CB room involved. He started, but played less than half the games.

Setbacks are his fuel. It is the last week and he has his mind right. Let’s see how far tomorrow can take him.

Here is the Prompt:

Write a seven sentence story (in any genre) by following the prompt below:

1. Write the first sentence, introducing one character.

2. Introduce second character and establish conflict.

3. The problem grows more complex with the third sentence.

4. The first character speaks.

5. The second character speaks.

6. The sixth sentence is the climax.

7. The seventh and final sentence is the resolution.

Here’s what ten minutes brings:

The first time he met the Colonel, Audrey was coming in off night shift from the far side of the fire support base after babysitting a team of Rangers gung-ho to cause some damage deep inside the Venezuelan firelines. The Colonel wasn’t the type of man he expected, and in fact wasn’t a man at all, which it turns out, was the problem. She was wobbling down the perimeter road wearing an oversized sweatshirt with an embroidered Michigan logo, which is why he failed to stop himself from whistling at her.

She tipped towards him, studying him up and down in his combat fatigues and full kit and said, “I hope that sound you just made was entirely out of respect for my person and or my station, because if it wasn’t you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

Audrey had an easy smile, and he found it often worked with the ladies, so he reached out a hand to steady her, made that magic smile, and said, “It was out of disappointment for your alma mater, young lady, but also out of an absolute respect and admiration for the beautiful woman it produced.”

A Jeep rumbled by, further down the road, splashing light on the two of them and allowing him to fully take in her hard features, red rimmed eyes, and the collar of the military shirt that had been tucked beneath the sweatshirt, hiding the silver eagle insignia that showed her far superior rank.

Now she smiled, pointed at his hand in a ‘pick it up’ gesture and directed him through a mock salute as she said, “Now, I think you might want to take that back.”

This is another day when I don’t know what to write about, so I am taking the moment to talk about sports. Later, as I drive to get my kid from school I will listen to the college kid’s coach talk about the situation with losing four weeks in a row and how that dismantles a team. There’s one game and thus one more chance to get this right. They need to right the ship and finish with an eye to the future. A win means a 4 win season, which is a drastic improvement over the past few years. Three is an improvement, but if you end down, you might stay down. End on your feet and looking for more.

Days when I don’t feel remotely healthy are the worst. I feel like if I try to move too much my body will fold in on itself, leaving me looking like a horror flick victim… or someone who was half-compressed by a black hole. Neither would feel very good. The heat on my back does. I’ve been giving myself periodic heat treatments. Years ago I developed a ‘trick back’ that seems to manifest around this time of the year (or later) which leaves me in a useless state. It manifested between flag and tackle football–towards the tail end of flag, I believe.

Been thinking about the past a lot. The Lady Talis doesn’t fully by into regret, so I’ve tried to consider that perspective. I do wish I made better choices in a lot of areas. I wish I understood then the things I do now. I think we all feel that way about a time in our lives. I am happy to know my kids feel like they had a good childhood. It pains me to think they might be the last American generation to have that kind of childhood. Nowadays everything is parsed over cellphones. Memes are the currency, not bikes and balls and trips to the park. That starts earlier and earlier. I’ve watched kids in strollers dialed into screens like that wss the only thing that mattered. Before long it will be.

Some Thoughts:

1. It really sucks to disappoint the people you love. I do this daily as of late. It has me wondering about personal worth and if the people I love (the person, actually) would be better off without me. That is how depression starts. I’m not there, nor do I plan to be, but I am really worn down and prone to mistakes, which means these disappointments will only get worse.
2. I am blessed with a good partner, so this too shall pass, I hope. In the meanwhile it absolutely sucks to be the one person someone expects to make you smile and not be able to provide that. This too is what depression looks like. I’m not there, nor to I intend to be. Feels pretty close though.

I don’t have the words in me today, so I a just going to write what I write for the next ten minutes. That, expectedly, will come in the form of…

Some Thoughts:

1. My brother today brought up an interesting idea about victims and antagonists in western literature. We have a tendency to ‘purify’ our victims, making it okay to ignore their sins prior to victimization. I added that when we cannot do that we tend to think of them less as victims and more as people who ‘had it coming’. I wonder if this holds true in eastern writings. I know it impacts our day to day understanding of social norms and mores, because we get that stuff from TV.
2. Trump gets his stuff from TV. The man really thought Chicago PD was how it was in Chicago. That’s drama, buddy.
3. Speaking of old Gold, he’s reviving the Presidential Fitness Test. This, from a leader who even now continues to lie about his only physical fitness. Here are his published stats:
   • VITAL STATISTICS:
   • Age: 78 years, 10 months
   • Height: 75 inches
   • Weight: 224 pounds
   • Resting Heart Rate: 62 beats per minute
   • Blood Pressure: 128/74 mmHg
   • Pulse Oximetry: 99% on room air
   • Temperature: 98.6 °F
4. I don’t want to sound entirely disbelieving, but the man has better stats at 78 than I do at 50. Across the board, actually. Somehow, I weigh 10 lbs more than him but lack the belly, jowls, etc. Someone is confused here. Oh, also he supposedly has 4.8 percent body fat…. I’m thinking someone misplaced that decimal point.
5. Long day. Rough day. Made a mistake. Ruined the evening.
6. What are you supposed to do when people are mad at you? Just wait it out?