Month: February 2014

It occurred to me last night that my basketball game, my fourth of the season, is likely my fourth organized basketball game of all time. I’ve only played two sports at any level of organization–football and baseball. In truth, I’ve coached far more sports than I ever played and what I did play I didn’t play for terribly long. It goes back to a conversation I had with my mid-kid about potential and the expiring-milk-like value therein. We talked about the boy’s raw potential and the fact that he could be extremely good at whatever he wants if he puts in the hours to get good. It made me think about why I didn’t put in the hours. In baseball I put in just enough effort to accomplish my goal–which was taking a roster spot from another kid. In football I put in enough effort to be invited to walk on, and once there invited to stick around, and once injured invited to walk away. It all ties into the relationship between motivation and zone of proximal development (ZPD). See, you got to want something bad enough to fight for it and it has to be close enough in reach that you can do it with assistance.

I remember that sense of knowing every piece of dead weight lifted is working towards the none-too-distant goal of taking someone’s spot on the roster, breaking that next tackle, jumping just a bit higher for the catch, and onward. I also remember how lost and confused I was in that first football practice where everyone else in a 3 mile radius seemed to know exactly what the frack they were doing. I needed help, and our QB picked up on it. He showed me the ropes that first day and then drove me back to the dorm after practice. It was real leadership, but it was also motivation to go back the next day and put in the work to make him successful. I’m starting to feel that sense in basketball, where I recognize where and how I can improve in the sport and I care enough about helping my team that I’ll put in the work.

It can be hard to get to the point where you are wiling to put in the hard work to accomplish your goals. I don’t think Vygotsky felt that it was something people could initially do alone. ZPD tells us that we get the most out of being at a place where we need that help and even that push to get better. In my experience being pushed and even being the pusher, he’s right.

 

 

I’ve had a lot of questions over the past few months about what separates the top writers from the next schlub on the street with an epic writing voice. Stephen King explained this in his memoir, On Writing, and I’ll paraphrase him here: You cannot be a great writer if you aren’t writing constantly. I find that this is much like you cannot be a great athlete if you don’t practice.

Allen Iverson famously detonated his career with this telling rant about practice. He didn’t get that keeping yourself in that routine of doing something makes you absolutely golden when the moment strikes. For writers inspiration comes when it wants to, but inspiration, like chance, favors the prepared mind. Great writers practice all the time. They don’t get trapped by the lulls in writing. They write every day–even if what they produce is garbage. Being able to work through the bad days might be the most important part of the craft.

A longstanding trope, or constantly reoccurring theme, in fantasy and science fiction is the theory of a manasphere. This is a place of magic where practitioners can draw power to cast their spells. Although it is magic, there is a cost-benefit logic in place. What you draw from the manasphere either comes from somewhere, damages you in someway, or both. My current novel project tackles this idea head on in a world living with magic and trying to rationalize the role that religion plays therein. Without using the scientific terms in-text, I’m pushing the theory that quantum entanglement exists on a grand scale, and that each of us have within ourselves a ‘God region’ that if triggered, houses the idea of a higher power and serves as a conduit between us and the people who can access those conduits in order to pull energy from what many writers refer to as the manasphere.

When someone says, ‘I’m praying for you’ what does it mean? I’ve always taken that to mean that they are attempting to channel energy from themselves to you. The effects of this  supposedly increase as the number of people praying for you increase. Why? One way to rationalize this is the idea that people do have a part of their brains that allow them to rationalize faith and to gather will to steel themselves and or aid others. As we are all linked  (entanglement), perhaps on some fundamental level these areas of the brain constitute a shared sphere of belief that one can access if they have sufficient training and belief themselves.

Its a working theory.

Some Thoughts:

1. If the last post didn’t tip my hand enough, I don’t like Fox News. I think the idea of news network that slants the story and even facts to reflect what its administration believes its audience wants to hear about a particular story is dangerous. We start entering into a realm where the ‘truth’ is relative to our fixed political position. I stopped watching CNN almost entirely, because the slant was to a ratings position–they tell the story they think most viewers want to watch. It is the dictionary definition of sensationalism. I’ll leave MSNBC out of it, because the channel is unwatchable regardless of your political affiliation. At least Fox is compelling. They aren’t NY1 or PBS, but they get you riled up and interested in a story–that ends up being an exaggeration and at times a straight up lie.

One of those nights where a myriad of thoughts are running through my head. I figure I might as well get right to it.

1. The magic of Fox News has managed to pin the entirety of the Bush-era NSA spying situation on Obama. For some reason the station would like us to believe that these policies are rooted in an incumbent president’s socialist need to control the world and not the result of a nation reeling from a major terrorist attack nearly 13 yrs ago. Check the timeline link above. I’m pretty sure Obama wasn’t in office when this stuff began.
2. Say what you will about the president’s continuations of the policy, but Snowden is no hero. Since when did exposing national secrets and putting the nation’s security apparatus at risk worthy of a Peace Prize?
3. Budweiser’s Best Buds commercial remains a shining light in an otherwise disappointing Super Bowl commercial fest. Sure, there may have been a commercial or two that hit hard on the social unity of the nation (coke did it), pissing off Fox News in the process, but I’ve long held that the role (and thus audience) of these commercials is comical. How many people are even sober watching the show from home?
4. Vampire Academy? Really? Its like Ender’s Game with teeth.
5. I love my classes more this semester than in a long time. Usually there is a class or two that carries me happily through the semester. This semester every class is a hit. Part of it is me–I’m trying new things and I’m excited about learning from the students as much as I am about teaching them. This may be the key to staying excited about the work.

A recent NPR report by Tom Goldman spoke to the sometimes devastating injuries that can come from a kid playing youth sports. This article/newscast is one of many that speaks to the negative impact of youth sports on the body. Goldman writes that specializing in youth sports at an early age leads to back problems that can sideline the kids for months or even permanently. Goldman isn’t the first to show us the research-based statistics of how physical activity can hurt kids. This article on Brain Trauma is one in a forest of scholarly reports on the ills of tackle football. The articles seeks to raise awareness and, in some instances, warn parents off of sports like football and hockey. I get it. We want to keep our kids safe, but I also feel like we cannot keep them safe no matter what we try to do. There is always going to be some activity, or food, or weather condition, or airborne pathogen, or close contact situation, etc that poses a dramatic risk to us. This utter lack of safety is a fact of life, and the moment we cave to the fear is the moment we stop living to the fullest.

My neighborhood makes an old-school New Yorker like me laugh out loud. My small town Iowan wife is obsessed with locking the doors and windows at night in order to ensure that burglars won’t waltz into our house undetected. I support this mild level of paranoia, but from time to time I have to rib her by reminding her that we live in a neighborhood where everyone in a 3 mile radius has glass doors on the back of their houses and glass windows  without bars on the first floor. These same people tend to have 50-90 inch flat screen TVs only inches away from those glass doors and windows. If a burglar wanted to take advantage of a situation they’d have their pick of homes across the state of Arizona. Of course, some of those home owners might have guns, but so will a good crook, so we’re suddenly in a deadly shootout in the middle of suburban USA. Its a ridiculous speculatory leap, but no more ridiculous than the idea that we are absolutely made safe by turning a lock one direction or the other on a flimsy port of entry. In all aspects of life we are pushed towards action (or inaction) by fear. Because we are afraid, we seek to find a situation where we can create the illusion of safety.

At some point each of us have to accept that life is a one-way train ticket with risks of departure at every stop along the way. That shouldn’t stop us from taking the ride and enjoying all that life has to offer. There are warnings in the air about everything we do, but the warnings should be telling us how to be aware and to manage the risk as opposed to telling us to stop living all together. The cessation of life will come soon enough, but if you haven’t lived before it happened then losing life won’t even matter.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This past weekend I watched a few of my players beat themselves up and insult themselves. I’m still struggling to come to grips with this behavior. I feel like they are working so hard to please not only themselves but someone else. These are players who don’t necessarily have the physical skills to excel at the game of flag football the way my team plays it. These are exactly the kids I write about when I write about finding a way to get everyone involved and put them in a position to succeed. At first I thought maybe I was a part of the reason why they beat themselves up. Next I looked to my players who, like most kids, are harsh when a teammate isn’t living up to the high expectations they set for themselves. Finally, I looked at a combination of factors–including the parents. I still think it is my job to put them in a position to succeed, but if they don’t succeed I realize now that it is up to myself, the team, and the parents to make them feel like making the effort towards success is enough for us. After all, it is enough for me as their coach.
2. WTF, Broncos? I mean, seriously?

In these rare moments I find myself smiling about the crazy uncertainties of life. A few days ago I said in no uncertain terms that the Broncos were going to take the Superbowl. File that under things I thought I knew but actually had no idea. 43-8 is a shockingly different outcome from what I expected. Sadly (and strangely) there was a moment early on when they flashed on the Offensive Coordinator and he had this look on his face–the same look I had the other day in the game I was coaching and lost handily. Clearly we aren’t talking about the same stakes or the same level but we are talking about the same sense. In that instant that coach recognized that his players wouldn’t be able to do a single thing he wanted to do on offense, because the guys on the other side had that something special working for them and his guys absolutely did not. This feeling is akin to despair and is very tough to shake. In truth it can be a contagion as you saw it transfer through the entire offensive coaching staff and emboldened the defensive play calling. To paraphrase Coach Dennis Allen, They are who we thought they were.

Now comes the next steps. In a video game you hardly get the chance to celebrate before you are resigning restricted free agents and making flight plans for the annual rookie combine. Real life is starting to look like a video game thanks to the tons of media coverage that every aspect of the off season gets. Now is the hour of our discontent, if you are a Broncos family member. In this time of defeat and dejection, you now have to figure out how to hold on to the talent that got you this far. With Decker already announcing plans for free agency, holding on to the core people might be hard to do.

The weeks race by during the flag football season. Every day is a hesitation between saturdays when I get to watch my boys streak across the fields laughing and feeling great about themselves. This was Jets week. All three boys were playing against the Jets in different age groups and the Jets would all represent the toughest challenge of the season so far, and perhaps at all. Three teams with three different challenges and results I never expected.

The 4-5 yr old games are always fun. It is less about play calling then it is about having the fastest kids and the kids who pay the most attention. I’m fortunate to have a team that has enough of both to remain competitive against the best the age group has to offer. These Jets were the best the age group has to offer, and we managed to survive with a 4 pt win.

6-7 is where athleticism and play calling start to balance out a bit more. The experienced kids can do a lot more than a learning the sport for the first time–no matter their athleticism. We have enough raw athletes to have earned that 3-0 start, but these Jets are more athletic, and far more experienced than our players. Beyond that, they were better coached on both sides of the ball. We suffered a 42-6 beating that was far worse than the score indicated. One of our players completely came unglued, booing at the other team and behaving like, well, an undisciplined 6 yr old. I pulled him from the game and let his parents handle the rest. The trouble is the team considers him a leader and they go how he goes. They fell apart after that. We recovered enough from the early disaster to put six on the board and in that we learned a bit more about the toughness of our players and where the true team leadership lives. It is my job moving forward to cultivate that leadership and start directing my team towards sportsmanship, understanding, and some pretty good football.

8-9 is already playing pretty good football. The problem is the 1st ten minutes of every single game is a disaster. Once we get going we’re tough to contain, but it takes too long to get started. at one point the 8-9 Jets were up 12-6 on us. We recovered to turn in a (44 or 50) to 21 victory. My wife is afraid of our boys getting injured in tackle, but I saw more kids banged up in today’s flag game than I do in the average tackle dust up. One fractured arm, one twisted knee, and several boys with their helmetless heads driven into the ground. We had what the Greeks would call a Pyrrhic victory. The kid with the fractured arm was our top receiver. Now he is the kid who’ll lead the workouts in practice and the honorary team captain for the remainder of the year. Maybe he can be more. Maybe he can be that kid who makes our team function as one and turn into something greater than they are at the start of games; greater than they are as individuals.

There are some fundamental skills the kids still lead to learn in order to be effective players at all levels in the remainder of the season. They need to learn how to carry out play fakes, a fundamental part of the tackle game and the core stunt of the flag game. They need to learn how to be better teammates and communicators. That’s my job as a coach, so it really means I need to get better at what I do.

 

The most common form of communication I bear witness to is complaint and various forms of derision. It took me 38 yrs to figure this out. At first I thought it was my particular circumstance. I’m a New Yorker and we complain a lot. So I moved from state to state, trying to land in a place where being positive (vs. being resilient) was the nom de geurre. It appears to me that place only exists in the heart of certain individuals and they are independent of location, even if they are influenced by it.

Mean people suck but complainers linger. I say this with no malice. In truth, I understand the need to unshoulder a load of personal misery. I’ve become one of the legion myself. As I look back at the 10 minute rule over the last few months I see a lot of short posts that remind me how much I’m battling the urge to unleash a wicked tirade of complaints upon the world. There is value in complaining. The catharsis of sharing your worldly ills with another person not only helps you get through it, but reminds you that there are others who are living less than perfect existences and in your shared disappointment lives a particular kinship. Yet complaining can be a high as well. You get hooked on the feeling of telling someone how shitty some person or situation is and you feel good about yourself—you feel above it—or maybe you feel a certain sense of relief in recognizing that someone understands what you are going through. Case and point: when I share about my cut up kid who keys my car and forgets his shoes and book bag for school, It warms my heart to hear a friend say, ‘yeah, I’ve been through that’. This is especially true if I know their kids are not presently incarcerated or 36 and still living at home and playing xbox all day. That kind of stuff gives me hope.

Too often hope is confounded with derisiveness, as if to feel good about your possible future you have to demolish the standing of those around you. This is a New York thing, but it isn’t only a New York thing. If people aren’t complaining about someone then they are generally talking smack about them. I am guilty of this as well—especially in situations where that individual has wronged me and I have no power to right the wrong. Again, catharsis. I understand why we do it. I see the need to do it. That doesn’t mean that it propels us all forward in any sustainable way; instead the act of demeaning and degrading others brings everyone down.

I want to live in a world where we can all be honest with each other and escape the petty confusions and competitions that fuel our mutually assured misery. I want to live in a world where the bottom line is, ‘how does what you are doing make us all better’. I want to live in a pipe dream, I suppose. Still, when we can put aside individual grievances and personal goals to reach a place where we can come to an amicable conclusion on any issue, that’s when I start to feel positive about the world I’m in.

10 minutes, out!