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As a father I often worry and even wait for the dreaded injury. It happened last week to the last born. He fractured a bone in his hand near the knuckle. Seemed like he’d be out a few weeks until he went to practice that following Monday and decided he needed to get a cast and play the game. I’m not quite sure what shifted his thinking, but he will be out there trying to build on his best season yet. His best season–not theirs. They’ve won a single game in 4 attempts. He’s up to 22 tackles or an avg of 5.5 a game. He’s making a difference and growing as a player. He will need to do more as the season progresses if they hope to reach 3 or more wins.

His big bro is not playing yet. He’s flirting with a redshirt, trying to determine if it is in his best interests to burn the season or burn the redshirt. My advice is the former–especially if he intends to move to one of the power 5 later in his career. He’s still young and needs film and experience and once he does move (his major will eventually force that move) he will need to sit a season and learn the team. That doesn’t happen without a redshirt.

As for me, well my time as a fantasy manager has taken a turn for the sad. I’m losing in each of the three leagues I’m in. Feels like I cannot catch a break. For example, I missed out on Juan Jennings weeks ago when I thought to take him. I still have holes at WR and fear they aren’t going to be filed by what is on my bench right now. Tough season. At least the Giants notched a win…

As I work through learning how to rebuild my schedule I am coming to the realization that not having a standard work day (9-5X5) is impacting expectations at every level and for everyone–myself included. This is another obstacle I need to overcome. I need to be able to reshape expectations in a way that allow for me to have the appropriate amount of time to get what I need out of a day, including down time to really enjoy myself. I don’t actually get a whole lot of that. I want more solo time on some days. Less on others. It really comes down to this concept of shaping expectations, and I haven’t done very well at that at all.

Some Thoughts:

1. Well, that was cryptic.
2. I really don’t have more to say on the issue. I’m starting to sound like a politician here…
3. What I can be more clear about is my absolute disappointment about not being able to keep the cats from ripping my couches to shreds. It didn’t matter so much when they were old couches that didn’t look good. We spent quite a bit of money on these new ones and they do look really nice. At least for now. The cats are going ham on those things…
4. Some days ten minutes are a word flood. Some days it is a trickle. It all depends on how open my brain is to conversations.

Well, yesterday I talked about being burned out and needing to get organized. Today I started getting a list together. It feels like each novel destroys me for a little while and I am left adrift by the shift from constant daily work and deadlines to not that at all. It comes with a level of stress, but it comes with a much higher level of joy. I do in fact have stuff due right now, but I haven’t been fired up to write any of it. I need to get down to working and get back to being in the moment and in the rhythm of the moment. I also need to learn how to spell rhythm without butchering it to the point that spell checks is like “what the heck is even that?!”

It is about the stakes, but it is more about the directions. I am best when I know where a story or project is going and my monkey brain just has to make it pretty. However, since I am in the making the outline stages, stuff is very hard and demanding and encourages me to slough off. So I do… mostly. In truth I churn in out in my subconscious and wait for a door to open to the particular universe where that story came from so I can watch it unfold in real time. I’m more of a reporter than writer after a fashion. Yet until I get that Blake Crouch-esque door propped open, I am a mess. I am messy. I am often aimless in appearance. I need to lock it in faster. I’m certain this is not the first time I’ve said this. Maybe the next book ought to be a sci-fi fantasy about actually doing it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Been thinking about the concept of syncretism. I really think this idea has permeated much of modern religion. Perhaps I should call them social religions because the fundamental tenets are hardly there own. The more I look the more I see how much is borrowed from somewhere else. Teaching mythology has jaded me a bit on the concept of differentiated religions.
2. Fantasy football is a crap show.
3. The kid with the busted hand is trying to cast it up and play anyhow. Man, he’s really got that FOMO.

I’ve been taking this strange pepper and ginger-driven morning health shot my kid dreamt up. It has effectively ruined my stomach, but in a way that cleans me out. So less ruined than renewed I suppose. It, like so many other choices in my life, is directed towards improving my physical health. My mental health remains unchecked and in disrepair.

So what is wrong? Specifically: I’m discombobulated. I don’t have a system in place. I don’t have a schedule for daily habits. I have a lot of unlisted things I want to do and get done, but no plan in place of how and when. The stress of that and what it does to the home life is crippling. Add to that the stress of my loved ones and I am totally run down. I’m not sure how to reset either and I can see how it is getting worse. I need time. I need solutions. I need to figure out how to chill in an effective way that leaves an opportunity to get right moving forward. That is tomorrow’s big goal.

Some Thoughts:

1. Love them or hate them, the Buffs bring excitement. The Prime Effect is a real thing and he has guys who make plays. Travis Hunter should be a Heisman Candidate, but who knows? The way that award works is very stupid. They’ll probably give Manning more votes in spite of a mid game.
2. Strange ‘getting old’ moment today. Feeling around my bald spot it seems to be getting bigger again. Time to embrace the suck.
3. Derrick Henry doesn’t run as hard as he used to. Old man in NFL Years. I feel his pain…. in real person years
4. Tom Brady commercial is hilarious but especially in the reality of the moment that is largely overlooked. “Yeah, Tom. The guy who took a couple snaps in JuCo wants answers.” That moment reflects the reality of the vast number of unskilled people who are good at writing or running their mouths or both and find themselves being considered experts in the field when they are really really not.

I’m sitting here in a office clocking in at around 89 degrees and rising. I don’t have a reliable AC unit in the office, and probably need to replace the unit I have. Little things like this really are not so little. They feel like boulders on my psyche after a while, and my psyche feels overworked as of late. Yesterday my partner took a mental health day. I need one. I need to find a moment to get organized and then find a different moment to get reset mentally and then I will be ready to dive back into the day to day life I live and the all too busy next few months that are coming up. I am still excited about everything that is unfolding, but I do not feel like I have a grasp on any of it. In fact, I feel like I have no grasp on any part of my life. It all feels like a series of things I need to figure out while I sit back and don’t.

It is impacting me and I hardly realize it until I see it in my own actions. I am stressed and less than. I need to get right fast.

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to watch the Colo game. Might not happen for more than say, a quarter. These are the choices relationships bring. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

Tomas settled back on the couch, tv remote balanced precariously on rim of a bowl of chips. He shifted and the black device plummeted into his lap, but the chips didn’t. With a smile he set down his soda, freeing his hand to power on the TV. He didn’t get the chance.

“Want to go shopping with me?” Laura said from behind him.

He turned to look. She was wearing a black dress with her hair up in a bun. Her face looked Neutrogena scrubbed. Red hoop earrings dangled from each ear. She was smiling. He said, “I mean, if you want me to, I guess.”

“You don’t have to.” The smile straightened into more of a line.

“I don’t.”

“I mean if you don’t want to go shopping, it is perfectly fine. I can go by myself.”

Tomas started to speak but managed to stop himself. In truth, she sent him out for things all the time. He shopped alone far more than he shopped with her. It wasn’t a thing he thought about very often, but now in the midsts of an ask he started to wonder what he was supposed to say. Then he said, “What am I supposed to say here?”

“Just say how you feel.”

Tomas paused again, masking his growing confusion with a bite of a chip. This was beginning to take on the appearance of a trap. He found this strange, because Laura wasn’t the trapping type, yet there he was settling in to watch TV and there she was preparing to leave… with him. He said, “I’m in. Let’s go shopping.”

“Only if you want to.”

Now it was definitely a trap.

I think I need to write the corporate commandments series. The idea is to have a series of ten books that follow a single individual who works corporate security on his journey from being just a corp sec guy to getting more and more twisted up in the politics of corporations and the underpinnings of what corporate society really is developing into in our modern world. This is not a shadowrun book. This is a cyberpunk book in the sense of having those connections to the punk ant-corp culture and the relationships with technology. It is a book series I have had on my mind for years. I feel like I wait too long between books and wind up spinning my wheels when the reality is that I have a ton of projects and ideas just brewing beneath the surface that do not ever get properly addressed.

So, what is CC? It came to me when I was doing web research for teaching. I found a series of, well, business theorems that felt to me like lead-ins for interesting plots that could help me dive into the inner workings of corporations and how those corps impact the world around us. I turned one of them into the outline for The Law of Diminishing Returns. That was meant to be the first of the series, and I staged it in the shadowrun universe. However, it doesn’t truly belong in that world. It is not about magic or cybertech or the shadows between the corps. It is about the shadows cast by corps over everything else. It is a chance to have that conversation in a way that I want independent of the world rules by which I am bound. It is also an opportunity to stretch my legs and really get back to thinking about story in unique ways and allowing myself to channel the stories that come to me.

I want to get back to that. I want to write more stuff as opposed to waiting around to write more shadowrun. I’ve allowed myself to be typecast as one thing for twenty five years. That means I have been doing that one thing half my life. Crazy. Time to do more.

If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like to watch a fantasy team (and fantasy manager) implode in real time, just keep your eyes on this post once a week. I am in the midsts of a terrible season. Perhaps midsts is being too forward. It is week, what, three? I’ve already lost CMC and Kupp to IR. I have yet to be featured in the wins column or even sniff the dang vicinity. I drafted poorly (in retrospect). Now I am trying to salvage what I can with backups and late waiver grabs. At least the Beach Born league looks vaguely promising. I managed to offload CMC for Barkley an A. Jones prior to the IR announcement, giving me something vaguely resembling hope during a 1-1 start to that season. This is how it goes in fantasy. You want something to happen and then reality steps in.

The reality of this week is games that should be blowouts but may be winnable. At the college level my kid faces a #6 FCS ranked South Dakota. They lost by two scores to FBS Wisconsin, a team that gets highlights for being in the Big 10 but is not actually terribly good this year after having essentially the same margin with Western Michigan as they did with SD and getting blown out by Ohio State pretty much in the first quarter. South Dakota is good. Drake is better than people think. They’ll try to make it a fight.

Desert Vista is facing a very young Hamilton team. They’re top 8 in the state and undefeated with wins against two middling teams and a tough W over A Centennial program that was in the open state championship last year but has not one a game since, currently standing at 0-3. I don’t know who Hamilton is, but I know who DV is. I know that if they keep their heads in the fight they can make this a game. I expect that they will.

I’m turning it back to a version of 4.85 that apparently never was printed. I found it on the list of drafts. It goes as such:

Long day today. Not a lot of sleep from yesterday and a ton of activity across the span of the day. It felt like the hypertension was surging towards stage 2 for the better half of the morning, and then I came down to stage 1 again. That may have something to do with the anticipation of all that I had going on over the course of the day. It has been a really good day overall and has already transitioned into a very good night. I’m pausing on the night for ten to get this in.

Some Thoughts:

1. I still love the keyboard feel of the very old (2013) macs and the recently not new (2017) macs. At the same time I am hugely disappointed in the mouse click feel. Such a letdown.
2. This tells me that I am definitely a weirdo to have so much to say (and more to think) about the feel of a keyboard.
3. Enjoying the youth football season. Kids are doing well and really growing and adjusting to not being the best–but wanting to be. I can see that transition and growth happening and I love it.
4. I also love that a lot of these teams that once seemed invincible are not. It furthers this nascent idea of hope and competitiveness.
5. In the end though, it is still JUST youth football and not a big deal. In the end it is just me diving into everything around me and swimming around in the drama of it all. Totally a me thing.
6. Maybe also a writer thing? That there is my version of hope…

Me diving into everything has been a thing for most of my life. I remain convinced that I can do and be all things without stressing. Ace of all vs. Jack, because I can never settle for Jackdom. A lot of that blog still feels current despite being years old. The feel of keyboards, the hypertension, the football… I’ve always been intrigued by the theory (perhaps false) that the body renews itself every seven years. I think about being at the point of renewal now and what seems to remain as a core tenet of my personage. I am all about particular things. I am all about the football, though I’ve transitioned from improving myself as a player to improving myself as a coach–even if I am no longer that either. The tech crawls forward, but the feel of what I like remains. The high BP is being dealt with, though it too creeps upward all the time.

I guess what I can take away from all of this history is that there are things that I recognize as making me me, but I never dive too deeply into what it is about those things that defines me. Looking backwards today gives me a moment to pause and think about that aura I create and more importantly, why.

Sloppy.

Yet another day where I come to the blog only to realize the previous day’s post was not published. This is becoming habitual. I can attribute it to two things: The first being me not paying attention. The second being that extra click of the mouse in order to publish the work. The deeper reason is the first reason. I am not focused on the blog. I am not focused at all lately. There is so much madness swirling around me that trying to pay attention to all of it leaves me scattered. There is work drama (namely individuals who want to teach the stuff I am teaching and are mad that I get to do it and they don’t). There is politics (a headache for all of us). There is life. Kids. Writing. There is football (self-induced drama to be certain). I allow all of these to surround me like a gang of angry voices shouting to be heard over one another and the end result is chaos and fatigue.

Some Thoughts:

1. On the work drama stuff: I haven’t taken to the blog to discuss work in some time, but I will now only to say that people always want what they see and not what they have. I’ve worked to create an amazing schedule for myself. I’ve developed new classes and honed older ones to the point where I know what I want to accomplish and will continually improve that on a semester to semester basis. Now people are trying to take these classes away, simply because they want them and think it is okay to change or remove what I worked my ass off to develop. I am not good with that. I will never be good with that. I like the situation I created for myself and my students. Changing it fundamentally damages the way I develop content. I try to create new experiences for the students, which are based on past progress. If you strip that out–If I am robbed of the iterative process and or the ability to shape these experiences, then I’m just a guy teaching rote stuff I found in a stinky textbook. We invest in what we love and what we are good at. Stop trying to take it away because you want to play in what was created.