Uncategorized

Last week’s WOTD freewrite was disastrous (why can’t that word pop up?). This week I am hoping for better results. The word we are stemming from is Quiescent…

ergo sum peccatore

I last confessed twelve years ago. I don’t know, I guess I felt there wasn’t much point in the thing. I believe–I still believe, mind you. I don’t know what people would do without belief. Can you imagine a world where the only thing you had to believe in was a voice on the TV humming at you eery night to explain the news and what was causing all that news; all that violence? I had to stop, you know, after it happened.

No, now I am not saying that I did it. I wouldn’t say that, because I did not do it. Don’t go telling me you came all the way down here to stare at me through this thick plastic and hear me say I done did something I didn’t. You won’t hear it. Not from me. Not ever.

No, I stopped watching the TV.

They have it on here almost all the time. There are fights in the rec room once every few days because somebody gets riled up about a show or says something about a character somebody else likes, and just like that they are fighting and the TV goes off and the two idiots (though from time to time its more than two) get put in the hold where they are supposed to ‘cool off’. Tell me this: how do you cool off in a place that has to be at least 118-120 in the pitch dark? Way I heard it the pipes run behind those walls. Not the good kind either. Not the kind that brings cool water or the air ones people are supposed to be able to climb through and escape. No, these are the nasty pipes that come from down deep, rising out of whatever it is that powers this place.

Did you know we ain’t on the grid? Can’t be. They can’t risk power failing and all of us getting out into the world. Treat us like we are boogey men come to getcha! Still don’t explain where the power comes from and why it smells so damn awful down there and especially why it gets so hot.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes. I stopped the TV stuff straight off. I went and got me a good spot in the library and learned to take joy in reading. It’s different, you know? When you read the words they come out as slow as I want them to. That gives me time to think about what is written down there. It also kills time for a lot longer than that TV. The big part of it is it doesn’t poison my mind. Since I’ve been on books I’ve come round to a more relaxed way of thinking and talking and acting. I have become quiescent in my old age. I have learned that in spite of my innocence I have long been a sinner, so perhaps this place is what it needs to be for me for as long as that may be.

Yep. 19 years in this place. First three were easy. I still had appeals. After that it started to settle in that I was never leaving here. Few years after that still is when you started coming around. You need to understand that I cannot give you what the stories refer to as ‘closure’. I mean I suppose I could, but it wouldn’t be proper. Why? Well because I did not do it.

Saying I did wouldn’t make it true. All you’d ask me after is why and I wouldn’t have any sort of answer that made sense. It would be one more lie built on the last and maybe that is what you want right now, but I promise you the lie is hollow and you’ll be hungry for the truth before long.

I hope you find it. Once you do you’ll be like me. quiescent. Only you’ll be out there where the world keeps changing and asking you things and I’ll be in here with my books and my three walls and my three meals with nothing more to worry about than what I have to look forward to.

What’s that? Why the next story, of course.

I am conducting this blog from the beach in San Diego. It is my last day, thus the one day I would mention I am gone (so none of y’all rob me!) and by the time this gets online I will be back. I love writing on the beach more than I thought was possible. I love the idea of being able to get all of the sensory input that keeps me focused and calm yet feel the sun at my back and smell the cool clean air of the ocean. I prefer to live this way. I would prefer to have a home here, footsteps away from the water where I can visit and thrive two or three months out of the year in a space where my responsibilities are tied only to the online world and the whims of my fancy. That is, of course, fantasy. I don’t have a budget for such things. Nevertheless I am driven to remember how fortunate I am to have what I have now and to be able to spend these last few days here with the woman I love and the job I most cherish—the words.

More and more my partner and I discuss the idea of the life we want to live and the way it contrasts with the life we live. I believe there is a way to combine these things that leans more towards the wants and desires than it does the daily reality. I am working on that. I am moving towards a deeper realization of how to make that happen. Trips like these help me understand, but they also are a part of that reality I seek to hold on to.

The beach reminds me that I love people watching and love absorbing the aura of the ocean and the energy of the people there. It reminds me how to be active when I spend my days in a state that, for this stage of the year, is too hot to want to be active outdoors or even in. The beach is a reset or a recharge permitting me to go back to the doldrums and face the day to day.

The beach makes me want to change that day to day to something else entirely that feels less like tolerance and more like waking up to a life that I look forward to and activities that remind me that I am in charge of my own (brief) reality. The universe has been around for billions of years. I’m here for what, 80? As I feel the way life has weathered my body and spirit I find that more and more I am looking to heal and to guide my life towards personal fulfilment and enjoyment less I waste what little time I have left in this mortal coil.

I don’t have access to the web this evening, so I will be posting in the morning. What am I posting about? Sports rant. It is Waiver Wednesday after all. With two of the big 5 conferences in football cancelling it looks like there will be little to know college ball. There is still high school ball. There is still youth ball (more on that later). Overall, there is a lot happening in this Covid world, but the approach to dealing with it has been entirely uneven.

Here in AZ most kids probably won’t be back in school physically until October. The first game of the H.S. season for my kids’ team in on October 2^nd. Whether or not fans are allowed remains to be seen. However, they are still training every day and expecting to play. It is a strange thing to see the school only open for football players while everyone else shelters in place.

Youth football is also strange. Our league swelled o 98 organizations and over 300 teams. That is with some teams folding under the weight of Covid and others (like ours) limiting our practices in order to be safe. All coaches are wearing masks during practice, and probably will do the same during the game. It still remains to be scene where these games will be. While the H.S. is open to football players it appears to not be open to youth football.

Honestly, I wish we had one rule and one set of behaviors, but we don’t. We are all riding this wave of crazy in our own way and pace. This is dangerous, but it could be worse.

I am working on the second of two novellas to be released in the coming months. The due date for this one is, well, saturday. I won’t pretend I am in any shape to feel good about hitting the date, but a good today will be a huge step in that direction. What does it take to have a good writing day any day? Well, that is what I am taking ten minutes to figure out.

I don’t expect all the answers in 10. I do expect progress. Lets start with what I already know: Having a good writing day starts with having a positive mindset and a wealth of energy to put towards the task. This means being fully awake and limiting distractions. For a long time that meant putting on the sounds of water and closing the door. Now it means more of a pregame. The blog helps to serve as my mental calisthenics. It gets the mind blood pumping. I need that. And coffee.

I also need to have structure. That is a blog for another day… Thursday maybe.

Some Thoughts:

1. Being on the beach makes me extremely happy. While there is the obvious and undeniable enjoyment of being surrounded by beautiful people, the major joy comes from the sounds of the waves and being able to put my feet in the water and feel like I am surrounded by openness–even on a crowded beach. That is the thing about the ocean: the vastness of it is heartening.
2. Also, I watched Vast of Night last night and it was really well done. It was shot and felt very much like a radio play. It was beautiful and dark and the characters were powerful. The ending… Just watch.
3. Reading Critical Mass–the last of Craig Alanson’s Col. Bishop & Skippy series. With under 15 hrs left, I have no idea how he could even begin to end this thing in a way that does NOT leave me wanting another volume.

Lately I have been spending more money than I make–more money than I should spend. Part of the issue is supporting two homes (as we transition from one to the other). The rest of the issue is entirely about building out this new home and making it a place I am happy to inhabit each day. It is working. I am happy every time I look at the place. At the same time, I am concerned that I have repeatedly gone the route of ‘pay for the best’ instead of finding alternatives to make it beautiful on the cheap. Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of that as well, but facts being what they are, I bought stuff. I bought nice stuff. It costs money.

Normally this is not a blog about money, and tonight is only a slight deviation. This is a blog about understanding the things that make you happy and understanding the things that steal moments from that happiness. I am happy in a nice space, but I am unhappy when I (or my partner) am stressed about money. I am edging towards that difficult void of spending concerns, and I can only stay back from the void by slowing down. For example, I bought the mid kid a bed frame on offer up and he’s going to use a mattress from a bed we already have–a rollout bed for guests that can be fitted with an older mattress.

This dropped the cost of remaining ‘stuff to buy’ down to roughly 1500. Once I get through that glut of spending, I will be done! I think. I didn’t calculate in the moving truck, so there’s that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Enjoying a change of pace in the lifestyle, but with all change it takes time for things to take. So, I didn’t get a lot of writing done today. This feels like it does when I end any project. I go dormant like a bear in winter.
2. Interesting thought: Aren’t we ‘hibernating’ in a way? Going Covid dormant as a society?
3. The truth is, I need to be writing two or three stories at a time to be able to switch over to another as the difficult one hits a wall. I have no others on the table, so I will be putting two there.

I am an observer of technology. I call myself a futurist but it is likely disrespectful to futurists to consider myself as such. In short, I don’t work had enough to be a futurist (this is a likely side effect of trying to be and do everything in the universe at once… the Jack of all trades phenomenon).

Even as I type this on an outdated and, frankly, worn out macbook I still feel I have something to add to the conversation. I want to talk for a moment about the idea of Logic in building advanced algorithms, or Semi-autonomous shells. I believe the secret to advanced gaming is to move to that space. We need algorithms that are designed well enough to be competitive in a way that is not cheating, i.e. knowing what choices we made, but predicting what choices we could make based on tendency. This would make us as gamers more self-aware of tendency and improve overall gameplay. That is all.

Some Thoughts:

1. Coconut oil is the best moisturizer I’ve used yet. Take it from a man with perennially dry skin. Try that stuff.
2. Video game rage is a terrible phenomenon that has become so mainstream in my household that I am considering shutting down gaming for a full day at first rage. I get passion. Be passionate. Stop yelling at a screen. Who are you really yelling at when you do that?

My partner (how much longer till I can just say wife?) has a theory that I get strung out when left alone with my boys for any extended length of time. She thinks, with valid evidence, that I stay up late, wake up early, and spend the hours in between partying like a teenager. There is truth in this. When off with the boys less work gets done, more games get played, and there is very little by way of balance achieved. I expect joint living will return the feminine energy to the fold, thereby creating the balance needed to not go so far off in the one direction.

I lack the necessary filter to do tis on my own. This is a proven fact. Evidence? Well, it is almost midnight and I am finally hitting the blog. There’s that.

Some weeks are better than others. It is worst when I go long stretches without spending time with them or seeing them only to get the full force of ‘missed you’ need. I love it. I am not angered by the energy. I am also not able to handle the direct blast in a sustainable way.

So, yeah. I’m really worn out and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow promises to be a long day of a different sort.

The word of the day is Midriff

He thinks about Sydney Bristow all of the time. It isn’t that bad. Some guys have pin up models. Other guys fancy themselves lovers of true beauty and reserve their eyes for the rarest of beauties–the ladies who have unique and interesting features. He was just a guy who liked Sydney.

Barney did not have a lot going for him. He was not particularly good looking or talented. He didn’t have a mastery of the internet like Neo or Morpheus. He was, as they said on his favorite SportsCenter hour, JaG. Just another Guy. Today he wore joggers and a Game of Thrones shirt that showed midriff just like Sydney. It lacked the appeal hers carried.

Some Thoughts:

1. Yikes. Some days you really DO NOT have it.
2. Rough dad evening. Haven’t been with the kids a lot this last week and they are pretty needy and are not being respectful of the writing time and space.

Every so often I look at my life and ask myself, “Would I be satisfied with my life if it ended today?” The answer is no. It is always no. I suppose there is a bit of fear that to say yes would mean that I could end my life, but the truth is I am not close. Not at all.

My life is comprised of moments of joy floating in a sea of unease. In one sense I could argue that the unease makes the joy more meaningful, however I don’t feel like I need that much of it to make the point. There is a lot of good in my life but lately the good feels like it pushes against each other threatening to cancel each other out.

I’ve spoken about balance before, but I mean to reiterate here: Balance is the key to getting more moments of happiness in my life and I am a person who is historically bad at creating balance (and historically bad a relationships to boot). So, I am trying to learn how to be better at such things. I have that to live for and that to move me towards a life of satisfaction.

I used to view satisfied as a bad word, as though ‘enough’ was not to be lauded. Now all I want to do is find a bit of satisfaction before my candle blows out.

Meanwhile in Youth Football Land, the national 11u landscape is set. N.C. Giants fell to the Lauderhill Lions, establishing two of the top 5 teams in the nation… in theory. I do not give a lot of credence to national rankings of non-unified sports (that is why there are so many belts in boxing). However, I did see the footage and came away with a few bits of information.

So, what did I learn? Those boys are huge and their ‘skills’ are fast. In other words, our Argonauts are straight up outclassed by these kids.

That video above is a mismatched collection of 11 and 13u kids, and none of them are huge. So, the lesson to be learned here is simple: Stay in your lane. We won’t though. We are not trying to be a weighted football team. We want to be an unweighted team and test the best. We have the skills, but we don’t have the line and that is why, so far, we don’t shine.

Okay the rhyme was a little extra but I get that way when talking about youth football. It is a strange passion of mine that has a time limit on it. Next year is the last year we will be involved in youth football. So, I am going to enjoy these next two seasons and summers as much as possible before it is finally over.