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Recovery is a process. So is Jet lag, apparently.

This is another day waking up before 3 AM. This time I have the common sense to blog before noon–even if I lack the sense to workout before then (and likely not at all as a result). So, what is it I have to say? I’ll just jump into…

Some Thoughts:

1. A student recently called me out for being a overly difficult grader–something he put to me being an author. That bothered me. It made me feel like he wants lower standards. It reminded me that a great number of students I encounter are not there to learn. They are there to collect credits. Some are actively against learning and think they avoid that by feeding OpenAI’s ChatGPT their assignments and just cutting and pasting the results without any real thought to the idea of process. It is a bit harder in a process class, but still entirely doable. Sadly, it is not always effective. I caught two students using the app this past week because the AI (I kid you not) lied about the content of the stories they were supposed to review, making up random plots and characters and applying the real title.
2. More on the 2025 papers: Yeah, they intend to do a complete remake of the government and make the most vulnerable rank and file positions political appointments in order to “get things done” They also plan to outsource almost all research to universities…. That is wild to me because 55% of research is already funded by the government. More and more of the document feels like smoke, but the fire is there and the fire is extremely dangerous. We choke on the smoke parts, but that fire–like the reclaiming of Alaskan land from the natives under the guise of ‘allowing them to use it to pillage resources’ is crazy.
3. All of this.. all of these real issues masquerade as a choice between a doddering old man and a slightly younger megalomaniac. What’s nuts is the idea that Trump won’t be a doddering old man halfway into his term. Again, these should not be the binary choices. We need a better way.

This should be a freewrite friday but the jetlag is REAL. I’ve been up for 16 hours after being up longer than that last night. I won’t sleep for another several hours because I need to get back on track as opposed to waking up at 1:30 in the morning and being up for the entire next day. I am also working on maintaining this routine of getting right physically, so in addition to no sleep I am also walking 4 miles a day. I skipped the gym this morning, so I need to go tomorrow. That is on condition of not being an absolute vegetable.

I’m drifting towards veggie mode right now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Hot take: If Caitlin Clark were more ‘universally attractive’ she would have LeBron level sponsorships. She already has a $28 mil shoe deal with Nike. She is going to be a hall of fame player at this usage rate (fix your turnovers, CC!). She also may miss out on the rookie of the year, because Angel Reese is going completely off. Cameron Brink might have been in the conversation if not for a torn ACL which also knocked her out of the olympics 3on3 team.
2. Too tired to form cohesive thoughts at this point… I’m feeling like Biden.

okay, the Biden thing has me shook.
The truth of the matter is that Trump doesn’t care about America so much as he cares about winning. It is well documented how little he wanted to do the work for the job last time and by the graces of nobody being prepared for him to win and his inability to execute the foolishly and disturbingly dangerous agenda he intended that we are still a country with positive gravitas.

Trump represents a lot of things to a lot of different people but he is not a representative for these people. He’s down for self and for his inner circle of blood relatives. That’s the entire show there. He doesn’t want to do the work of bettering the country. He wants to do the work of revenge and then let his ‘very good people’ handle the day to day. Those people are the ones who created project 2025. They appear to be inevitable. They are an increasingly stronger yet smaller and smaller voice whose plan quite literally calls for the development of a deep state whose leaders will be able to hire and fire rank and file government employees based on political preference. That is a recipe for disaster.

what we often forget in all of this is that the executive order to achieve this goal was issued at the end of the Trump presidency only to be rescinded by Biden. We got lucky. It won’t happen again.

Still, that isn’t the story. The story is an old man who makes mistakes. A man whose decline is so obvious that it shouldn’t even be a question. Why our choice is him or Trump boils down to ego. On both sides

maybe the plan is to invoke the 25th at let Kamala cook, but she is deemed so unlivable that she’s catching Hillary C vibes. I’m seeing a lose lose here, but I’m seeing Kamala as a healthy and hopeful way out. I hope we take that way out.

A simple fact of life is Size Matters. Often you can be too large for the extremely small seats of an airplane and find yourself scrunched into a chair typing straight down into your half-closed laptop because the person in front of you has reclined to the maximum position, leaving you no room whatsoever. This is a size penalty. I find that my size is regularly penalized on planes. Should I lose weight to the level of my desire, that penalty will be slightly decreased, but I am long enough to recognize it will not go away entirely.

Some Thoughts:

1. Heathrow is a lousy airport. I wish I could say better, but I cannot. It is crammed full of people and offers little by way of swift transit between terminals. BTW, when you do move between terminals you do so by bus. This seems so extra in this day and age. You built the Chunnel, England. Figure this out.
2. I am 4 hours into a ten hour flight. I already watched Godzilla, and now it appears my downloads have expired. The computer thing is a bust, so who knows what happens next… I really expected to get some writing done.
3.  

Not the very last, to be sure, but the last in Italy. I am headed back to the states with the Lady Talis. headed back into all the heat and stillness and nonsense that awaits… I don’t want to say I hate home–there are good things there like the kids and the pets. There is also an ex-wife and insects and, i will say it again, stillness. Nothing changes there. In truth, the house will be in a degraded version of how we left it, in spite of it being lived in every single day. The kids will be doing the same things they always do–quite literally in the same place and state as we left them 30 days ago. Nothing changes. Nothing happens. We survive a semester and then we get to leave again for a while.

All of this is to say that the existence as it is no longer works for me. It gets less and less sustainable each time I get away for a month to a thriving community. I need to not be stuck the way the space lends itself to being stuck. I just have yet to figure out how to not be stuck.

The stupid people are winning. They are winning because of a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that they are louder and do not seem to care (or know) they are stupid and should be quiet. This is happening all over what I call reality–from the classroom to the boardroom to the White House and every step in between. For example, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted recently about the average ages of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. She went on to list the ages of eight people she claimed to be signees. Only two were. Her awareness of basic history is abysmal, but to make matters worse after being repeatedly checked she refuses to take the post down. Remember folks, alternative facts became a thing less than a decade ago and it seems to have taken hold.

Stupid is painful and everywhere. I have students who ask me stupid questions all the time. Yes, I know there should be no stupid questions in learning, but if you read the instructions and then ask me a question that was specific bolded and answered in a form that you could not miss that this is the answer to your potential question… stupid.

I guess it is not only okay to be stupid anymore but it is okay to feel good about being stupid because the filter bubble allows you to reshape your reality to the point where you are never wrong and never need to learn anything, because Google tells all, and if it isn’t easily accessible there then what is even the point of knowing it? I mean, like how does it really effect my life?

I worry for my future grandchildren. I fear we have one good generation left in us and then that’s the game right there. No, AI isn’t going to kill us. This is more of a Wall-E situation. We may not all grow fat, but the lazy is certainly going to win out. More than anything, being stupid is about being lazy. It is about not reaching and instead yelling, like the commercial of the fat kid yelling to his grandma for a grape soda…

I blog, therefore I am.

Seriously, it feels that way. These ten minutes of writing are connected to my identity the way football players are defined by the fact that they play football. I am a writer and this is my most present expression of writing, therefore blogging is who I am. I am of course more than ten minutes. This is a pebble in very deep waters, but it is emblematic of what I do. But back to that earlier thought: Is it who I am?

I want to believe no. I am many things. I was once a player of the football, and I defined myself as such through action and behavior and followings. Yet as one professor defined me more as a samurai poet (as I wrote and I played) I allowed for a multi-faceted approach to self. I guess this is less about self and self awareness than it is about external identity. How people see me is a type of definition. I cannot control that definition, but it does in part arrive as a result of what I put out there. So, when I say I blog, therefore I am, that is what I refer to. I didn’t even tell my kids I was an author till they were 10+. I doubt any has read my work or this blog. What they see me as is quite different as a result.

I believe I am a writer to the building blocks of my soul. Regardless of who I tell or what I put out, I want the writing to be how I am remembered.

Some Thoughts:

1. If I had it to do all over again, I would have been a better father to all 6. I would have been a better coach to 3. Maybe they’d be further along on their paths. Maybe I would be feeling better about mine.

My apple watch calls for me to exercise for 60 minutes a day, the reward being a closed green circle. It isn’t much, but it does get my mind sprinting forward about how to live a life of closed circles. I think I have taken another step forward in uncovering what that means for me. It starts with being out wandering about. I do not spend enough time exercising or being outdoors. The latter is harder in AZ, especially in the summer. Evenings mean bugs out in the streets and parks (gross, right?) and the days are way too hot to be out for any serious length of time. So there are things in this equation yet to be solved. That being said, being out for 3 hrs a day sounds right. Add the writing to that (4), add the gaming (2), that’s a 9 hour day right there. Then give me 2 hrs of pure chillax. 11.

Yes, I have a job. It factors in to be sure, so I have to be thinking about that as well. There are always going to be things that take a hit. Yet it is a dream and in that dream I can factor in the times where and when I work. I can make a bit of magic if l allow it.

Orvieto could be a great place to grow old. Only recently have I given any real thought to the idea of growing old. I rarely paise to consider my withered future self in the timeline. I think that is not a thing most people think to do. We who are fortunate to grow old never see ourselves as such until it is unmistakable. I’m nearly 50 and that’s already very old. I feel enough of it in my back and bones to know I’m no longer young. But I have a long way to go. Many years and many nights filled with blogs like this one that trace into the past like signposts on the road of a life lived and loved.

I do tend towards the dramatic and the poetic late at night in beautiful places. That is another reason I could grow old here. Wherever I land will be a place to grow with and grow from. The Lady Talia and I will set roots against some distant shore and sprout a life seeded by dreams.

this is my promise to the future.

I was forced to activate my cellular service this morning in a rush of panic that can best be described as overwhelming anxiety triggered by overwhelming anxiety. If I’d been relaxed and forward thinking earlier I would not have made the mistakes leading to this costly activation and thus not be writing this blog right now.

I’m on a train (of the moderate speed local variety) headed for a return dalliance with the beautiful and medieval hillside town of Orvieto. It is market day, and the Lady Talis and I wanted to experience that one time before we go. The plan is to collect supplies for a romantic picnic and spend the day roaming the city before returning by train in the early evening.

Orvieto is likely to be our last trip that far outside of Rome on this journey. We inch ever closer to a return to AZ and the incumbent heat and still-life nature of the space. I think life is better outside of AZ in a lot of ways. That being said I remain in support of my kids and their pursuits. If only those pursuits didn’t require me to be in AZ…

Ten is coming to a close so as a parting word I will say this: Intentionality is a powerful tool. I intend to live a better life in AZ this year than I did the last.