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Seven days into the post-semester glow I have that hankering for a new semester. I’m not even done yet. I have grading to do and feedback to email to several creative writers (the 5 week format for a writing workshop needs work–actually it needs less work and more focused feedback). I’m falling back into that prep mode and that creator phase where I like building cool stuff and taking advantage of the tools (tech) at my disposal and even using all the wonderful media out there in order to create something amazing for my students. Also for my kids. I am feeling a bit like a creator again, and I need to ride that wave of emotion and start doing big things with it, less the wave crashes against the shores empty and forgotten.

Flag for unnecessary darkness there.

What I am trying to say is that I am happy and I am ready to work. I don’t know what writing projects I want to work on, but I am ready to move on from the past and dive headlong into whatever awaits.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve long marveled at my eldest’s athletic prowess, but lately I have come to see some of that as location. The last few years he’s been close with a kid who is a superstar athlete. He can hang with the kid to a certain extent, but is clearly the smaller, slower, less agile athlete. This kid has two brothers in the NFL. So that says a lot about where my kid isn’t. However, it also offers an opportunity to see the ceiling and push himself to the level this other kid is at. This is an opportunity for all of my kids to grow.
2. Staying on that path, motivation is a big deal to me right now. I don’t have a tremendous amount of intrinsic motivation, but I’ve been bolstered by the Tony Robbins of the world. I use that kind of media to jumpstart my own engine and get it up to revving potential. I have to accept that I’m not that same 26 yr old kid sitting at a house party full of writers spinning tales. I’m a dad and a teacher and a coach. I’m someone different with different inputs. I have to accept where I am and use that to power forward to where I want to go.

I reminded myself halfway through the movie that what I was seeing on the big screen had no bearing on what was being told on paper.

Game of Thrones really screwed me up. Just yesterday I was having a conversation about Jeyne Poole, the character who actually dealt with the rape and marriage storyline involving Ramsey Bolton and Reek. Poole’s story is so much worse than what Sansa faces in her place and highlights one of many inconsistencies between print and screen. However, given the lack of any print books beyond The Winds of Winter, the HBO team can be forgiven.

The Sony Pictures Team cannot.

What’s that line? ‘You had one job.’ They failed miserably at that job. In fact, there are several moments in the movie where it feels as though they could have succeeded in creating a film that launched the series as a viable franchise. No such luck. The movie sank like a man wearing armor in a lake.

There was some good here. Idris Elba’s portrayal of Roland was dark, brooding, and occasionally outstanding. The kid who plays Jake Chambers was solid throughout. Heck, there even were moments where it felt like the book. Unfortunately there were more moments where it felt like a drinking game–take a drink every time a different Stephen King book is referenced. Short of ‘Under the Dome’ it felt like the major novels were fairly well represented. This of course, is not the point of the story. That is the problem of the film. It doesn’t tell a story related to the text in ay substantial way. It goes off course in a direction that will never lead it to the books.

Or the Tower.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I started a list!
2. A conversation with my partner reminded me that my lack of motivation affects more than just me.

The key to my productivity is lists. When I don’t have one staring at me I tend to behave as if I don’t have anything truly pressing to accomplish. I allow myself to fall into this stupor of lazy inaction and it eats away my hours until only sleep remains. Of course I do have things to do. Plenty of things need doing on a daily basis, but lately I cannot convince (motivate) myself to do much of anything. Depression? I’ve addressed that side of it already on this space. The other side of the equation has to do with desire and goal setting. This equation needs to be better balanced. That is where lists come in.

When I am low everything feels out of reach. Get a soda? No, it is too tough to go all the way upstairs. Besides, it will certainly fatten me up, which will lead to heart problems and then I die. This is the classic slippery slope. A list helps with that. I can alter my thinking around measurable and reachable goals. Get a soda? Check. Then add to the list: fold laundry. Because I’m upstairs it seems a bit more feasible. Now I am feeling a sense of accomplishment and I’ve organized my day into a series of expected events and I am not left to my own devices.

My devices suck.

Now getting to the point where I actually write this stuff down is a chore in of itself. Perhaps it slides into the daily 5: Contact, Coffee, Write, Tabata, List. Yeah… that sounds fantastic. What a recipe for success this is! Now all that remains is the follow through. That topic is a post all of its own.

Contact. Coffee. Write.

When I went dark for those few days I was truly in a dark place. I had, for the first time in memory, abandoned a writing project. I took on the project because I had a solid idea and felt the due date would motivate me to write. It didn’t. My will to write was sucked into the black void that was my relationship problems and after a while everything went dark. I cannot say that I’m back 100%. I will admit here on this blog that I was suffering from a terrible bout of depression, and I don’t believe I’ve fully emerged from that void.

Lately I start my day by reaching out to loved ones and making that human connection. The most important thing to me is the people I love most in this life. Once I make sure to connect with my love I feel grounded in something other than myself. This is important right now, because depression often means you are unaware of how negative you are towards yourself and of the people in your corner. In fact, the only reason I know I’m depressed still is because I found myself sitting at home most of Sunday watching bad Zac Snyder films and the Sharknado marathon. Yep, I sat through a chunk of Batman v. Superman and then went on to watch most of Sharknado 4 and part of 3 (why they’re playing in reverse order is beyond me. Sharknado makes no sense).

This is what depression looks like for me: A cluttered desk filled with unopened bags of supplies thoughtfully purchased in an effort to boost my awareness of what needs to be done and how it can be done. Meanwhile what needs to be done piles up on the desk amidst wrappers and old paper towels and loose change I haven’t the energy to deposit in the change cup. All of this happens in the near dark, because the light would reveal too much… okay that last part was pure melodrama, but the rest is accurate.

The real problem with depression is that knowing is only ‘half the battle’ (thanks, G.I. Joe, you’re a real American hero–I wonder why there has not been a stronger re-release in this war-driven economy… oh wait there was. We called it Transformers and snuck you in on the back end). The other half of the battle is figuring out how to fire through it and keep going until you’re clear.

Some Thoughts:

1. Going to see The Dark Tower today. The books carry weight in my life. The movie… I’m going to go in without reservation.

Traditionally sundays are tied to writing, reflection, and football. I have a little bit to say about some of those things. I don’t have anything coherent enough to design an entire 10 minute post around. So, I’ll just dive into…

Some Thoughts:

1. The Dragon Ball Hunt is officially back for 2017, and I am looking for ideas to make the hunt amazing. I’m thinking seven or maybe even an 8th clue this year and tying the whole thing in with Naruto as both sets of kids are Naruto crazy right now.
2. It reminds me that I am hosting my kiddos for thanksgiving this year. Ugh. I don’t have a clue what to do. Maybe I can piece together a turkey bowl? That seems quite ambitious though.
3. Starting tabata training with the boys this morning. They need to get ready for a long and rough football season (all three are on new and largely raw teams) and I need to not die from the fat belly.
4. Tabata. One more responsibility I’m adding to my not so short list. It might be time to write down the list of responsibilities and figure out what stays and what doesn’t.
5. Coffeenerdness: I have issues with the Ninja Coffee Maker. Issue #1: Once the cleaning light goes on it never ever goes off. I cleaned it about 10 times. #2: And this is a good issue. It definitely tells me the quality of my coffee. Largely this is discovered through the condition of the coffee in the filter post brew. Some brands look ready to brew again. Some resemble the nastiest variety of sludge.
6. My son’s cat is crazy lonely. She mewls about it to me once or twice a day, like a patient coming in for therapy.
7. I had a lot of fun experimenting with plays on friday, but I am not sure the team felt the same. It can’t instill confidence if the coach changes the play as you’re repping it. However, I plan to pitch that Tuesday as my process and seeing what players are capable of and building around that. It is true: You play to the talents you have, and not what you wish you had.
8. That being said, I maintain doubt that we field a team at all. 11 kids is the most I’ve ever had show up at a practice and that does include most of the regulars. We are not even allowed to go to war with less than 14. Current roster size is 15. Of that number there are probably 4 kids who shouldn’t be on the field at the same time because of size. They’re all too small and a such limited in what they can do. Likewise, there are two players who are over the weight limit, which means that we really only have 13 or we go unweighted and kids will get hurt bad.
9. My kids are spending their allowances on beyblades. This is cool, because it means they will truly enjoy the stadium. Down the road we will have a fun tournament with only the leftover extra parts.
10. I’m still stupid in love. At this point it has become a permanent state of mind.

I just spent $100 on a 39″ satellite dish. I didn’t buy it to pick up cable signals. I bought it to use as a Beyblade stadium. Since the first time we played Beyblade my kids have been wishing and hoping for a colossal stadium like the one on the show:

Now that is a massive arena–at least 6 feet in diameter. I didn’t manage that, but 3.5 feet isn’t half bad and is a sight larger and more impressive than anything we’ve had in the past. In other words, I went all out. It makes me happy to make them happy by doing stuff like this. I feel like they deserve a crazy wish-fulfilling childhood that makes them pass that tradition down to their kids. My own childhood was the opposite. My wishes and dreams unfolded in my mind or were played out in the handful of action figures I got from my dad. I stopped getting toys all together after he died.

I’m not saying my childhood was utter trash. You learn from everything you experience in your life and I am fortunate to have lived a life where I did not face sexual abuse or anything so awful. I wasn’t spoiled, and it is clear that they are, so there are downsides to what I am doing too.

What I am doing is working it out and excising my own ancient demons and having a damn (pun!) good time in the process. Maybe I still am that twelve year old kid, only now I have a steady income and three other mini me’s to fuel my devious imagination.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am right back in that wonderful yet terrible space–right near the edge of something yet afraid to look over and engage. I don’t feel like I am quite ready to take in a story. It sounds very odd, I know, but that is the way I am about such things. I have to be prepared to accept it and ready to give it the attention it deserves. Too many distractions. Too much on the plate. What I need to do is clear up these distractions, get organized, and get ready to take on story.

5:05 AM. The youngest kid’s bus leaves in an hour. That is a pretty dramatic shift for a kid who has grown accustomed to waking up between 7 and 8:30 over the past 10 weeks. Summer crawled by and atrophied our muscles, sense of timing, and academic responsibility. It has been a long hard fight to get myself up and going in preparation for this week, and I realize that it is going to take the brood much longer.

One thing I’ve learned is that ritual/routine is powerful. Doing the blog each morning fires up my brain. Occasionally the fire starts after the words have already hit the screen, but the fire does start. Given the early start and the need to quickly train my little one’s brains, I ought to devise some similar style of ritual for them. If not writing then something else that gets the mind going.

For me, writing this every morning is a healthy start and a reminder that the brain still has a little bit left to offer. I don’t always have a wealth of things to say, but I make the effort. That is the key trait I want to promote in all of them through a ritual such as this. Later we will get back into doing morning laps and conditioning our bodies–the stuff that comes easy to them and feels like a nightmare to me. For now let’s stick to what I am presently good at and thus can teach a little.

 

Some Thoughts;

1. A little over a month since I unquit and I am slowly moving towards being able to sit down and write stories again. I am actually starting to want to.
2. Football was played last night. The Cowboys won, the Cardinals lost. All is right with the universe once again. Next week Beast Mode is coming to town and I intend to be there. Not front seat, but close enough.

When I came to the page this morning I found myself staring at the two calendars on my wall. To the right is a calendar from Half-Price books turned to May. Directly behind my screen is another larger calendar that shows July with the days marked out through the 17th. Well, at least they are both 2017 calendars. I think that has a great deal to do with follow through. As an idea guy I come up with a wealth of structures and one offs on how to be better organized, what to write, how to do things, and so on. I dive into these plans with gusto, often spending money to get the little parts that help me execute these plans. What I’m left with is a cluttered space with too many calendars (I also have 4 notebook calendars within arm’s reach) and the vestiges of half-thought plans that never went anywhere.

My office is littered with the carcasses of good intentions. There are unused RFID tags from the time I helped my kids set up an RFID tagging biz. There are rocket parts scattered everywhere. Half-finished offensive concepts lay crumpled beside the books that refined them. Post-it notes polkadot the desk itself. The pivot then is to take those intentions and focus on one plan, one idea and see it through to the ultimate conclusion. As a writer I have to allow myself the freedom to fail, but I have to maintain the commitment to see the plan through to that ultimate failure.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Was talking with my partner about how Naruto is based on Japanese mythology and got to thinking about how other anime is also based on myth. Beyblade, for example is based on mythology. I never considered how useful that could be in a classroom setting. Heck, I teach a mythology class and have never used that stuff… till now.
2. BER’s The Night Begins to Shine has become a Teen Titans staple. This week they released a 4-part episode chronicling the life and war taking place in a dimension created by the story. Puffy UmiYumi showed up. So did Ceelo. Yeah, I bought the album.

One thing I’ve always wanted to do in fantasy writing and never have is to deeply explore the relationship between fantasy races and human racial classifications. Particular races are often associated with, even aligned with certain minority groups. I don’t think this is by accident. Our brains are designed to create order from perceived chaos/lack of understanding and free association is one way in which we do that. When we absently align Orks with blacks it is no accident. It happens because we can see certain characteristics in the writing that prescribe to our perceptions of back people. White supremacists regularly cast Tolkien as one of their own, citing in particular the description of orcs as being heavily based on that of blacks and asians. ““…squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes”

This description notwithstanding, there are other cultural clues within the writing that label orks as evil, lesser, etc. which are all the traits we have traditionally ascribed to minorities. Here is the thing though: I think Tolkien was talking about religion far more than he was about race itself when it comes to those races. Where I think there is a more interesting comparison is where I want to focus my own writing: I want to talk about where they shop.

You can tell the what stereotype an area pays homage to based on what you find in the strip malls. For example, there are two Yoga studios along the entire stretch of Crenshaw blvd. Neither are in what is affectionately known as ‘the hood’. Likewise, pawn shops and liquor stores tend to cluster in certain areas.

This is but a fledgling analysis that lives in the spectrum of a much larger truth, but that is what makes it fun to explore in writing. I have the opportunity through writing to explore whatever I find interesting. I love that about my life.

Some Thoughts:

1. Other things I love about my life: My partner, my kids, my opportunity to grow.
2. Speaking of growth, I will never use the term ‘flower’ to describe growth again. It is just a bad bad way to describe stuff.
3. I might do it again because, jokes.

 

I don’t want to talk about yesterday. Well, maybe later.

Today I am on the back 9 of my summer classes with a ton to grade but only a few days left before I am free… Somewhat free. There is a ton of creative writing feedback I mean to present to students after the fact and beyond that there is that pesky little novel outline I ought to start writing, once I have an idea of what to write about. Long have I discussed creating a working outline as an example for students who are struggling with putting their ideas together. I even evolved my plan to include student notebooks with tabs and worksheets to lead them through the creative process. At this point I have 8 students in the class, which is not too many to do this work-intensive project. It is something I feel I can handle this semester, so long as I can handle the initial idea of constructing an outline myself.

I think I’ll start principle writing this week–laying out the characters and really getting down on paper who the protagonist is and what that person wants. Truthfully, I am torn between designing a more mature and a teenfic style outline–mostly because I have no idea what story I am trying to tell.

Yes, I get that a novel ought to start with a core idea or character. I just have a scene. Hopefully it is enough.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. In other news, I figured out a possible solution to making the prized life-size beyblade stadium: a 120cm offset satellite dish antenna. The bowl shape ought to be near perfect. I have questions about the depth, but nothing else comes in at that size and roundness.
2. Yesterday was yet another epic shit show in my life. When everything goes wrong, the little bit that goes less wrong feels like salvation. I suppose this is the universe’s version of breaking down a torture victim.
3. So I binged How I met Your Mother for an entire season. That happened.