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The air felt different.

“What? I don’t feel anything at all. It’s just like it is everywhere else around here.” He said.

Except that wasn’t true. She couldn’t explain it as anything more than a sucking presence that filled the stale air. They were at the apartment the kids had rented only a few months ago. She’d been hesitant to see them move out, her husband Roy not so much. The boys, 19 and 21 now were not what she would call adults. She didn’t think anyone would call them that. Grown, sure. Yet not adult. More and more she’d come to realize there was a difference between those things that marred this generation in a way that had not impacted her own generation–merely a quarter century removed from that of their children. What she saw as a problem to be observed Roy read as a hand to be forced. He’d done so more gently than she’d seen him do anything in his life. This, she suspected, was entirely on her behalf. She had wanted them to stay home–till they were each legally able to vote and perhaps even till they were sensible enough to do so. He’d been trying to move them out the door since the last of the pair had flipped his tassel and flung his square cap into the late evening sky.

But Roy loved her more than anything, so she won. Even when she didn’t ask to, she won.

But what had winning brought her in this situation. Standing in the doorway of a house that smelled of complacency and indecision she wondered not about their next steps but her own. What would she do? How could she fix it? Love is, after all, quite demanding in that sense. It was why she so rarely gave it. The cost of the exchange was an unending anxiety for the person to whom it was given. First Roy and now her boys.

“You’re going to act like you don’t feel it?” She wondered aloud.

“I’m going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about, because if I do, that makes it real, which means we become engaged in the matter.” His voice was barely a whisper. Further into the bare space the boys were trying to microwave something resembling a meal. Her face soured. She caught herself and rearranged it into a smile.

She said, “Boys, how about Dad and I take you out for dinner?”

They looked up and nodded lazily, their eyes drifting back to the microwave and then refocusing on her like searchlights seeking some escaped thing. The smile glitched. She nodded vigorously now and said, “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Get your coats.”

Outside the air felt normal again. The world was moving, growing. She’d feed them. She’d make sure there was enough for leftovers for the weekend, staving them off the thin diet of frozen meals for just a bit longer. It wasn’t real change but it was a small win. Sometimes those were enough to get you started. Sometimes those were enough to hold yourself together.

I find myself wanting to build a novel again. I say build, because much of what I’ve been doing is simply writing the story as it plays out in that conduit between my mind and elsewhere (a clogged pipeline at best). By build I am talking about a well crafted outline that identifies the individual characters and the world itself as independent entities who happen to be engaged in these moments caught on our ‘camera’ and woven together into a thread in which one character is set at the center. I don’t know that this type of build works for every story. It may be the sort of thing that works best in revision where you have a list of questions you ask yourself about each moment/chapter. I mean it like thus:

1. What is the weather? How does that impact what is happening around the scene?
2. What is happening in the wider world outside of the scene? What if any connection is there to the scene itself?
3. Consider the characters not directly related to the ‘action’ of the scene. What are their lives? What are they doing there?
4. Consider the perspective of insect and animal life. How do they view this moment?
5. Think of the land itself. What is the history of place that led to this land looking like this in this moment?

I’ve yet to come up with more, but these are largely the result of a lifetime of reading asides that ground the reader in time and place and provide a solid amount of background to where ‘the action’ is taking place, contextualizing it in a larger sphere of story. In part, I’d very much like to try building an outline around these moments and seeing how that shapes the world and perspective I have on the players in the story itself. Could be fun.

4 episodes in and I feel like the Giants are really about to poop the bed. I mean the way it is shot makes the entire thing look like a crap shoot. Nobody really has a sense of who is talented coming out of the draft. I feel like there are moments when I fear the team is playing moneyball. Perhaps they totally are–I mean how could they not given the salary structures and the cap? Far too much reliance is put on QBs who are likely not that good. The margin between decent and good is so small, and the margin between good and game changing is so great.

Speaking of margins, the vids are already starting to come out and College Football is getting its game breaker plays and glitches. Some of the stuff is controller stuff the game is built around that you have to get those stick skills to exploit. Some of it is just video game magic.

That is a brief and underwhelming post, but ten is ten.

… Aight my niggas and my niggarettes
Let’s do it like this
I’ma rub your ass in the moonshine
Let’s take it back to ’79…

Triumph, The Wu-Tang Clan

So here we go. I just republished this one, because, well, I accidentally hit delete while reading it. Sad move, that. Back then I was thinking about how toxic Ann Coulter was to the universe. Now she feels like the first step in a long flight of awful people playing off emotions and selling hope and fear. The news is still a socializing force, but what news? Back then Fox was king to a certain audience, but even they’ve moved deeper into the red, actively seeking out Newsmax and the psuedo-news rants of Dr. Phil.

Then it was about people looking for ways to bring down Obama. Now it is wider reaching and far more insidious, hidden behind terms like DEI–a manufactured and slur that once represented the positive aspects of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion but became a rallying cry for people who believed they weren’t hired because black and brown people needed to get hired. I say black and brown because Asians are largely not included in DEI initiatives. This is problematic at best, but if I am being honest, the entire DEI framework is poisoned now. That doesn’t mean Diversity, equity, and or inclusion are wrong. Pretty damn far from it. The core idea of it makes all the sense in the world. But we aren’t having those real conversations. We are being manipulated by fear mongering.

It is only getting worse.

Soon (if not already) you’ll hear the media talk shift to this idea of VP Harris as a DEI hire and that connection will work on a lot of people waiting for an excuse and a lot more sitting on the edge not sure which way to fall. If the other side wants them to fall for Harris, they need to come up with a better and more compelling narrative than the one hate is spinning up. And they better do it fast, because minds are hard to change.

What can I break down in ten minutes? For starters: I understand why the man didn’t want to drop out. There is a lot of pride involved. He lost so much during his career as a politician. His first wife and daughter died within weeks of him being elected Senator back in 72. His two sons survived the crash. They were 3 and 4 at the time. Then he lost another son and the last remaining boy fell into a deep drug habit… along with some other madness. So, yeah he went through some stuff as a human and this job became and remained his legacy. Still, he took office in 72. That’s 53 years of being in gov come the end of his term as pres. It was and is high time to quit. He can advise. He can help from the shadows in that Obama way. He cannot win this election against a Trump who is now rocking hero status after a failed assassination attempt.

So, what now? We’re 107 days from the election and less than 30 from the democratic convention. There will be chaos, because the pundits bolstered by the news will make it crazy. Who will be her VP pick? Will she be challenged at all? These are all questions that will be answered in time. If I’ve learned one thing of value by tuning out the news and social media this past week it is that patience breeds proper truths. The anticipations and rushes to judgement are not only unhealthy but false. Don’t be caught in the cyclical news trap.

Just lay back and let it happen.

I don’t have a lot to look forward this year when it comes to sports. On the professional end, I get to watch my favorite player play for my team’s rival. I am rooting for him, and as a result am rooting for them, but I wouldn’t call myself an Eagles fan. I’m starting to feel more like that sad Browns fan who shot the video outside of the stadium where he extolled the spot as a “Factory of Sadness”

To quote: We don’t expect you to be good, we expect you to be watchable. These Giants will not be watchable on offense, but the D might give me something to cheer about week to week.

Meanwhile in the High School ranks, Desert Vista is 5 for 5. That is they are on the fifth head coach in five years. This doesn’t bode well for the program. While they have a handful of promising freshman they also have a weak varsity roster. The O-line is good–young but good. The run game is good. The passing game is going to take some time to get together and the #1 WR is probably going to transfer out. The defense is questionable. That could mean my kid gets a lot of snaps and gets to grow into a starting role as a sophomore, but he hasn’t played a lot of football because he had growth plate issues last year. So, he’s going to need to cut his teeth in the JV ranks before the coaches really trust him to be their guy on Varsity. So, I’ll be watching more JV than Var and watching a JV team that actually disbanded last year because nobody wanted to show up… or play for the coach who is still the JV coach.

College football may be the lone bright spot. My FBS teams (Iowa State & Colorado) will surprise folks this season. Unfortunately, anything less than a BCS bid is going to be deemed a failure for the Buffs. The expectations way outstrip where the team is clearly at. Part of that is the high profile coach and his attitude of wanting to be and acting as if he is the best. Part of it is the hate that follows him. Regardless, I’m here for it.

I have an FCS team now. With my son wearing #31 for Drake University I am suddenly locked in on the Pioneer league and figuring out the chances for success. Drake took their first PFL conference championship last season and has the tools to do it again. The boy is good enough to play early, but there are 18 other DBs on that roster, so he has his work cut out for him. I have my watching cut out for me.

I’m still not back in the swing of writing these Friday stories. I know I need to get there. I know I need to be putting out more fiction on many levels. I’m not. I kind of got into that last post, but the real of it is I haven’t settled back into being here in the states, what that means, or how to function. I didn’t even settle into a rhythm overseas. Now that I am back I am totally messed up and feel my daily energy bleeding away. I don’t have time for anything and what little time I have I spend playing NCAA and listening to Adrian Tchaikovsky books on audio. For the record, he looks exactly like what people expect sci-fi guys to look like. I do not. This is not, of course, why he is winning. He’s working hard and he has good ideas. Two things I seem to lack at present. He is a few years older than me. He and Nnedi Okorafor are supposed to be my peer group in this thing and I am straight slipping and falling, falling, failing.

I say this not to make a proclamation, but to come to the realization that I am the one holding me back. Sad, but true. I can blame a lot of things, but the one true blame is me. I need to unlock that part of myself that is connected to more. I need to reaccess what has been closed off. Then I need to do the dang work.

All in all, stalling is going swimmingly. I have not done much of the writing I’ve intended, and I’ve properly allowed myself to believe in the fact that this is entirely okay.

It is not, however, okay.

The time has come to get back to the words in full fashion (and to shed this faux British writing voice I cannot seem to shake). I don’t have a plan as of yet beyond the standard butt in chair, though I feel this is not quite enough. You need a real plan when you sit down. You need goals or at the very least a direction. For example, I have a 3K word project I am sitting on. I know the first 1K fairly cold. I will sit down and write that next session, and see what happens from there. So, that constitutes a plan. Come to the table every day with a small idea of where you want to go and let your mind take your there… bit by bit.

Some Thoughts:

1. Tuning out is hard. I’ve been avoiding most media and sinking deeper into the fiction, but it is a hard habit to break away from. Lots of work to be done there too.
2. I suppose it is time to clean my writing board. Time to set new intentions.

I’m not quite 50 yrs old and my BP is 137/99 after my morning coffee. I’m on blood pressure meds (plural). I need to chill out. The more I look around me and the more I sink into being here the more I realize that this nation is actively trying to kill me. Be it from the food or the media, everything around me colludes to raise my blood pressure. I live in a nation where everything is battling for my attention. Like and Subscribe has become a central tenet, as though I stepped into some manner of dystopian fiction that I myself have already written. It is, in a phrase, Too much.

So, I quit.

Not life, of course. I quit being so dang dialed in. At first (and for a long while) I thought being dialed in was very important to my continued writing. However, it hasn’t really done all that much for the words. In truth, I could download a weekly summary of what is happening in the world, state, neighborhood, house, etc. and be able to passively absorb the information because I would not be so dialed into it. Being stuck in the cycle of consumption is the game plan of every information provider. They need your eyes on them. They want you to watch and listen and to think you might miss something. This is especially true in an era that eschews long-read books for quit burb posts (like this one.. heh). It is how they make their living. It is how they shape yours.

So, being pithy as I am wont to be, I quit rage. I’m rage quitting, as it were. I throw my hands up in disgust at the entire apparatus and refocus my free energies on consuming books (audio or otherwise) and films of non-fiction and fiction alike. I’ll catch the weekly download (perhaps even making my version of a reflection here on this post once a week?) and then moving on. It’s the moving on part that is usually the toughest for me. Yet I believe I have within me the capacity to do so. Only time will prove that out.

Some Thoughts:

1. I just watched a class of 28 students submit final projects for a class. of the 28, 4 did not do the work at all. 20 clearly used a large language model to have the work completed for them. I do not think I can run this creative final project ever again. It is a sad signpost in the slow decline towards education truly not being educating anymore. Even a project designed to test basic understanding of fundamental principles (which they all failed to show as they used a large language model that failed to understand these principles) and be a fun finish is being shat on by an unwillingness to engage. This is not merely a failure as a teacher, but a failure as a system of education bumping up against the monolith of tech designed to make learning less relevant.

I want to begin with a certain level of understanding. To wit: I live in the wrong place and surrounded by people with the wrong motivations. All of this moves me further away from being successful, because it draws me closer to leisure, gluttony, and comfort. There is this theory that writers need to be hungry. It transcends that singular profession to dwell in many corners of reality. The best athletes are the ones who are in it because they came from nothing. The hardest working students are the ones who are fighting to get out of somewhere. The list of such things go on. The flip side of that is the comfort that comes with any plateau of success. Where I live and how I live is a functional plateau. Virtually everyone and everything around me is comfort. We don’t strain or stress for much of anything. I don’t need to write 5 hours a day in order to put food on the table. Food is there. Legs are kicked up. There is a TV in every room. We are too comfortable and we (the Lady and I) work to preserve that comfort for our kids who want for nothing.

This is not the way. The result has been kids who not only want for nothing but do nothing but enjoy the comforts given to them. Again this is not solely about them. This is about how that reflects back on me and my behaviors. I’ve gained back half the weight I lost while overseas and I’ve been here a week. The sedentary level is high and hard to break through. I need to rediscover the willpower to be better.

So far, I’m just treading water.