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I didn’t want to write this tonight.

This is probably the fourth or fifth time this young year I’ve sat down to write at the end of the evening and been terribly aware of not wanting to do the ten minutes. It isn’t that I’ve outgrown the medium. In fact, I like to believe that I’m only coming into it in a real way over the past 100 or 200 entries (3650 marks ten years! W00t!) I just lack a fundamental drive to be productive when I’m really worn out.

I’m tuckered by the end of the night and stressed to realize there is more to be done. Sometimes I get really into the idea of telling a story or sharing the important ufo of the day/week and other times I just feel devoid of words. This is an empty day.

If I scrape the bottom of my psyche I know that I’m already thinking about the football games my kids play next week and what is needed to prep them. Not a great subject for here at the end of the night.

I guess that is it. This is another short one…

Some Thoughts:

1. Royal Rumble is happening soon. My kids still appreciate the theater of wrestling…

I’m going to have to admit my bias up front. I think Chloe Moretz is a solid actress. My review of the film is somewhat colored by that. It is colored in the sense that I think she puts on an average performance and that is still enough to raise the quality of the film for me. Not enough, however.

The thing about teen action/drama films is it is always about a girl caught between the affections of two guys (see: Hunger Games, City of Bones, Twilight, etc.). This book does that and the movie follows in lock step, though it removes a great deal of the character development that sells the triangle. Everything in the film happens faster and more compressed than in the book yet the movie still manages to feel long.

That is until the totally unbelievable ending.

The holes in the plot and story resolution are legitimate; so much so that a treatment by Akiva Goldsman couldn’t patch them up. The end of the film remains rushed, forced, and fails to resolve much of anything. This is even more evident on the large screen, because the movie cuts out several key character development scenes that lend a shade of credibility to the end of the film. I get it though. These are good scenes but they wouldn’t fit with the movie story they were telling.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Sarah Palin’s endorsement/introduction of Donald Trump in Ames, IA might be the greatest comedic moment in politics that wasn’t intended to be funny at all.
2. I don’t know the true story behind ‘Our Finest Hour’ but It seems very strange. A cargo ship goes down and they send a very small boat to rescue 60 sailors?
3. Youth Tackle football is more of an ego dance than flag. By ego dance I mean it is about the parents more than the kids. I wish I was totally removed from that inclination, but I’m part of it too.

I tend to babble late at night.

Its a result of my mind slipping away to la la land and my fingers and eyes still trying to get things done. This is, of course, why it is a terrible idea to write late at night. It is equally difficult to write early in the day, leaving me without a truly useful writing time or schedule I can stick to daily. I keep a list of problems I’d like to erase from my life and this particular one–keeping a consistent schedule–swells right to the top.

Since it is late and my mind is weak at the moment, I’ll languish in thoughts.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out Brock Osweiler, the Sun Devil Slinger, is in a contract year. The Broncos had to play him. Peyton isn’t going to be around much longer and maybe not at all. If you’re going to tag or pay a QB, you need to know what he can do when it counts.
2. More evidence surfaced for planet Niburu.
3. Is it weird to say that i’m getting a little tired of football. The sport has been a vital part of every day of my life since last spring. I’ve followed the sport, coached the sport, watched my kids play tackle and flag, and sucked in dang near every game this season. Now I have no skin left in the game and I’m starting to get burned out.
4. Money can never buy one happiness. It can however buy a great deal of security and patience.
5. Why won’t they just admit that Elizabeth Keen is Reddington’s daughter? I mean he’s going to be a grandpa after all…
6. I watch too much damn TV. It is an escape, but there are far better ways to escape and to relax. They have these things called books. I write them. Once upon a time I read them. That was a good time..

The initial week of Spring classes is nearly over and I haven’t lost my mind yet. The same can be said of the first quarter of a 7 game flag football season. Now I recognize I’ve given a lot of attention to the coaching, but when there are three teams involved it gets a bit cumbersome. Add in 125 students and nightmares begin to take form.

Its the names that worry me. I’m not good with names to begin with. I tend to remember people in context. The kid with the too white hair and Knicks ball cap who said that one thing that one time, the girl with the pretty shoes. These people have names and, on occasion, I’ll remember them. however, en masse remembering 150 people I see at least twice a week (counting in the teams I coach) is a tall order.

All of this is really a symptom of something larger. No, not Alzheimer’s (I hope), but a lack of a system of organization for how I do things. Its become painfully obvious that I’m not at my best when scattered. How else does one lose keys on a mountain, lose keys in a classroom, lose his train of thought… (what was I talking about? oh!) constantly?

So, I’m working hard to not feel so Spent and develop better habits for dealing with this new life I’ve carved out for myself. Change is good and hard — about as hard as remembering 150 names every semester.

I was half-asleep, overwrought, and overworked when I wrote the Land of Broken Dreams post. That was only one shard of dozens of fractured ideas kicking around my head last night, and the only one that seemed to gain any footing on the page. Today I’m just going to let a few more loose and see what happens…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The Warriors blew out the Cavs ugly (34 pts) and the Spurs keep winning. I am starting to think that maybe the NBA isn’t altogether about star power. Sure, Steph Curry is lights out, but there are four other starters and a host of bench players putting in work to make them near invincible. And the Spurs? Three of their top four players are monitoring minutes to be rested and ready for the playoffs and the team is still winning almost every game. At what point do we acknowledge that Popovich is in that same rare air as Belicheck and Madden? The man has been coaching the Spurs since 1996 for pete’s sake.
2. Part of being back on track with my writing is realizing what it takes to get back on and, eventually swerve off track. It all comes down to pace and pressure. When you spend so much time rushing to meet a deadline it takes a lot out of you. How then can you expect yourself to continue that intensity daily while dealing with, well, life? I really can’t say that this is reasonable. What I need to learn (and eventually write about) is how to strike balance as a writer and organize oneself in a fashion that allows you to do a little bit every day, setting reasonable goals all the way up to the deadline.
3. Finally physically let go of my anger in regards to my kids’ football season. I had to sit with it a bit longer to really experience it and understand what it was about. The whole thing really boiled down to broken promises, failed expectations, and my own failures as a parent by being sucked in by a truly charismatic leader. The boys’ coach is truly charismatic and is a very skilled coach–especially at the high school level where it is purely about winning. He selects talent and makes that talent so much more confident and straight up better. Unfortunately, if you are part of the select list you are basically cast down and ignored. I had one son who was part of that good group and one that was not. He pit them against each other and that was hard for me as a parent. I allowed myself to be drawn in by promises of what would be and virtually nothing promised was realized. We won the championship, but given the talent level of the four team league, it would’ve been a shame not to win. What sucks is that I lost a year of valuable teaching for one of my sons. Moreover, he nearly lost his love for the game.
4. I’m excited about being back on track with a work schedule. Perhaps I’m more excited about the structure than the schedule and responsibilities themselves. All I keep thinking about is how much it will help me as a writer and a coach to have that level of structure.
5. Speaking of coaching, my 10-12 team lost their first game while my 8-9 won their first. My 6-7 continues to find wins somehow, despite a very raw and often confused set of players. Those two wins boil down to a couple of players really playing beyond the level of the league. I cannot say that of 8-9 or 10-12 where the problem is an inability to execute on offense. That’s on me. A good offense should create opportunity for the least skilled player to be successful and for those who have talent to excel. I’m still working on that part.

I’m terrified by college and I teach at one. I’m terrified by the responsibility I have to both inform students of what they are capable of and simultaneously make it clear to them what their limitations presently are. You see, so many incoming students enter college full of life but devoid of purpose and so many of those same students leave broken and uncertain about what possibilities await for them in the coming future.

This is something that is done intentionally by colleges across the globe. There is no malice intend in the act. What we do is expose students to reality, to hard work, and to experiences that are not necessarily designed neatly or with a clear answer at the end. This is new for them and generally difficult. It is so difficult in fact that almost 40% of students who start at any college don’t finish in six years.

Everyone wants to have that easy good life but few are interested in working as hard as they can in order to get there. So college is that point where they discover what it takes to get the life they desire and often decide not to have that life at all.

 

At a party with some friends the guys and I wound up talking about the odd stuff our kids say. We came around to the phrase, “Bye, Felicia.” which appeared most recently during a one of the better sequences in Straight Outta Compton. The kids have been saying it over and again, mostly out of context with, well, everything. We shared a laugh and talked about the scene and what it means and how they came around to even knowing about the phrase (thanks, Internet!)

It took me until I was out the door and in the car to actually remember that the line came from Friday and not from Straight Outta Compton. That’s the joke right there. Bye, Felicia is a kiss off line meant to disregard someone coldly and casually–someone who doesn’t know they don’t matter.

Here’s where it gets weird: All these kids saying it are below the age of 12 and have never ever seen friday and most haven’t seen straight out of Compton beyond a handful of clips on the inter webs.

So now the term exists wholly on its own as a social meme that has disconnected from its original generation and reconnected with a generation who have no idea of the historical relevance.

That makes me wonder how many memes have already moved through time and been separated from meaning and intent only to be co-opted by those who have the power to dictate language and trend…

Some Thoughts:

1. For all the talk about the Warriors amazing season and record, people are overlooking the fact that the Spurs are very quietly three games behind them. Lets not forget the Spurs have been this good since the days of David Robinson. That comes down to some amazing coaching–clearly a situation I have yet to achieve, but I at least realize what that means, finally.
2. It means making your players better, helping them learn to work together, and building sportsmanship and skill in tandem. I’m on it.
3. Something I hate: When people smile to your face but actually dislike you behind your back. I’m thinking about that at this moment, which means I am still living with anger I most recently tried to rid myself of.

I spent today being angry a lot. I wasn’t angry at my players. I was angry at myself and at a handful of coaches and parents. The tipping point was when a coach from my boys’ former team explained that they put my 68 lb son on the o-line and d-line so he would know what he’d be doing when he got older. My son is  a sprinter–a rail thin speedster who wants to run. He isn’t a lineman.

I don’t know why that hurt me so much but it did.

The fact remains it is so easy to get caught up in the anger and the ego and the mess of our own failures that we neglect to see that we are playing out these home movies on the screens of our children and they are learning from us. They are learning our pride, our wishes, our egos. And in teaching them our needs we all too often make these things a part of their DNA. We all too often, as a result of this, push them and put them in situations that are more about us than about them. We all too often find value in their victories as a reflection of our victories. They are not so.

The other day I was watching my kids run around the house playing games. The eldest would make up rules and use those things to his advantage. After a while the others caught on to the rules and started using them against him. This he did not appreciate and promptly changed the rules and the tone of the game to make it in his favor once more–even going so far as complaining and belittling the rules he once so loudly railed about in order to maintain an advantage.

I think you see where I’m gong here.

The modern political process is a high-priced kids game gone awry. Back during Obama’s first run we saw a great deal of yelling and screaming about how he wasn’t American because he was supposedly born in Kenya. Now nobody at this time (or ever after) bothered to mention that he would still be an American because his mother is an American citizen.

Fast-forward to the new ‘birther’ debate. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. This makes him Canadian. Now this fact on its own makes him ineligible as a candidate because he isn’t a natural born citizen, except all of a sudden everyone is talking about the fact that he has an American born parent, which automatically gives him dual citizenship and makes him an American.

Funny how this fact didn’t sway the anti-obama crowd but now we are supposed to not only know this but accept it so quickly that this issue shouldn’t even be tackled by the media.

There is a double standard–a growing double standard as those who have long been seen as the norm and the power group are losing power. We see those people flailing about and reaching out for any way to hold on, much like kids do when they sense things tipping. Things have already tipped.

I have really been struggling as a writer lately. The issue is not an unwillingness or lack of desire to write but instead the inability to conjure a significant schedule in the absence of a concrete work schedule. The problem could solve itself–I go back to teaching in a matter of days–but the problem could also be complicated by the additional work.

As deadlines loom close I wonder why it has come down to deadlines lately. I used to be able to churn out material long before the due date. Lately I beat a path up to the minute work is due. This is a problem that needs to be corrected.

I’ll be spending a lot of my thought processes in the coming months trying to figure it out…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Finishing up my reading list for Mythology 251 I discovered that I needed to add a last piece: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. The way King weaves a wealth of myth and folktale in and out of his own mono myth is breathtaking.
2. I was thinking about the name Hitler the other day. I’ve never ever met anyone or heard about anyone with that last name. Think about that. The actions of one man destroyed an entire surname. I mean, even the Mussolini line continues on.
3. Ready for the semester–psychologically. That is the one part that matters. Good timing too. I need the money.
4. I think I’ll dress better this semester, because why the heck not.
5. Getting sick. Not a fan of that. Ain’t nobody got time for that.