Month: November 2016

When I was married, one of the things my ex and I went back and forth about was the amount of work I brought home. To make matters worse, I wasn’t bringing home work I was getting a monthly paycheck for or at times getting paid at all for. I brought home writing work. I allocated time that could’ve been spent with her and the kids on stories that may or may never see the light of publication. Clearly I was not spending my time in a fashion that made a lot of sense to her.

She isn’t a writer. If I’m being totally honest I held that lack of understanding against her. As opposed to encouraging the work she tolerated it the way my mother once tolerated the work and it made me feel like I might be using my time in the wrong way. I felt more and more that way the less and less work I published.

In retrospect I forgive her and recognize that I expected far too much from her. People who don’t write or draw or hold that solitary creative endeavor rarely understand those who do. Once you find a person who does it triggers a deeper appreciation for that person and the craft itself, because you are joined in a rare collective of creators.

I am slowly falling back into the writer’s life. I am absolving myself of much of the guilt that accompanied writing and thus reaching back towards a place where I write for more than just immediate profit.

With all the hype and media coverage about the Trump presidency I’ve retreated from the political world, circling back into the sports world. It isn’t the best use of my time and energy, but it allows me to engage in a situation where there remains some modicum of hope.

Sports allow individuals a measurable and finite opportunity to express difference at the level of engagements and stakes as they so choose. The more invested we become in the sports, the less control we have over our level of engagement. The key difference between this and, say, politics is that sports are essentially low stakes. Even in Europe where soccer stadium deaths happen yearly, the level of the stakes remain comparatively low. See, if Manchester City or the NY Giants lose a game I’ll feel bad for a minute. If a team like the Jets continuously squanders opportunities they’ll get a shot at a top drat pick next year and likely free up a lot of capital to grab some other pieces to the puzzle.

If Trump shits the bed then we are all in trouble for longer than the four years he is going to be in office. Sadly, the formula to mess up Trump’s game was just broadcast recently by the Daily Show. It isn’t a terribly secret formula: Bomb a Trump hotel abroad and he’s gonna retaliate.

So that is what high stakes look like…

I had an opportunity to see Post Modern Jukebox for the first time, also marking the first time I’d been to a concert in some time. It served to immediately remind me of what I enjoy—shows, creativity, and people doing what makes them feel good. Going to the show made me feel good and remembering what it felt like to be backstage and in the presence of performers made me feel spectacular. It was at that point that I realized I am a vampire.

 

I’ve come to that realization a few times now, each time allowing ‘the awakening’ to fall back asleep. I am a vampire. I feed on the pleasure of others. I enjoy watching people perform and play and live life. I enjoy to do these things on my own as well, but I equally (perhaps even more) enjoy when others do it and I can taste the joy in their eyes and feel from a far the richness of their hearts.

 

Well, that was decidedly creepy. It wasn’t altogether untrue. There are parts of me that do feel vampiric. As a writer I drink the stories I see other people living in life and spit them back upon the page. I draw my inspiration and strength and life from these stories, so I suppose it makes me a bit vampiric.

 

Perhaps we all are.

Some Thoughts:

1. Giants win again! 8-3 means they have a shot to overtake the Cowboys… Lets roll, gentlemen.
2. Speaking of rolling… Tide. Just the Tide. Nobody else needs to appear in the Final 4.

I’ve been fighting to get organized. Gilmore’s slam on Marie Kondo notwithstanding, I could use a bit of tidying up. I took an unusual step today, decluttering my memory banks of some Minecraft stuff, recording it in a book made specifically for that purpose. It helped in multiple ways, the foremost being the transformation of the ‘craft from boredom killing game to creativity engine. By starting to record this world I am building I also started to build the story of the world. I once again merged game with storytelling.

Sounds like a load of crap doesn’t it?

The truth of it is I started writing in this very fashion. I would write the stories of the worlds I explored through roleplay. I told the tales of D&D and Shadowrun. I still tell the tales of Shadowrun and Minecraft is only slightly removed from D&D. In a sense I have been doing this sort of thing forever and finding great pleasure, energy, and creativity in all of it.

The key here is imagination. So much of what people do today–myself especially–serves to kill or fails to incite imagination. Here I have found a way to do so. I feel like the hardest part of being a writer is holding unto that writhing snake of imagination.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Remember this? “Give me your tired, your poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

I’ve been a secret Gilmore fan for years–I’m not loathe to admit it. The new season started midnight today and I managed to wait long enough for my Gilmore viewing team to join me in order to watch and wonder. I love Gilmore Girls because the writing is sharp and the characters fold into that writing fully, leaving no doubt that the world they created is a part of them–and a part of me as well.

I’m about to start the new season (4 episodes at 90 minutes per netting a loss of nearly 14 hrs per episode–certain to change the scope). Before I do I wanted to blog about why the show matters. This show does, in its own way, what Fifa 17’s black male lead does–create a space for the people who watch to feel comfortable yet still be challenged enough by the situation and the dialogue to not fight me.

I once considered watching Parenthood for the Lori factor but no. It isn’t happening. Beyond that this feels like the first step in bringing a well heeled TV drama to a close. I’ve lost many good shows over the years and losing this one feels bad but feels necessary. It had to end and end well–hence the final short season.

I wanted to start this blog before Thanksgiving kicked in and I entered a food coma so severe that my pulse rate would fall to near death as the juices in my stomach worked to clear out what will inevitably become a logjam of ‘bridge gate’ proportions. I wanted to talk about Monsters. By monsters I mean people who have no real regard for what you or I think and feel both that they can be awful people and chide us for being awful right back.

‘You’re supposed to be better than that’ sounds like the tagline for my childhood. It is one of many things I carried with me into adulthood and, finally, fatherhood. I have established boundaries in broad strokes of what my kids do and do not do. They, as children might, test said boundaries with the regularity and ferocity of a Jurassic Park T-Rex working at the electrified fence. Every failed attempt to break through results in a tskd, ‘you’re supposed to be…’ On occasion one of the trio will ask, ‘well what am I supposed to be?’ Not evil, I answer.

Then I need to reflect on why. Evil is easy. You live in a society based on rules and openly manipulate and fight to alter said rules at your leisure. When you are exposed as a rulebreaker or people call you bad names you immediately chide them for too being rule breakers by pointing fingers at you. This is the blueprint of many a business head, politician, Smoke dealer, etc. All of it amounting to a very clear dividing line between what I deem as good v. Evil.

Evil can look at the tenets of good and say, ‘you people ought to do that and until you do, let me do my thing.’ It is the essence of the glass houses rule and we, the good, are holding David sized piles of stone. So, I tell my kids to be better and play by the rules and not be monsters.

They, in turn, remind me that it is the Monsters that get to have all the fun.

The girl at the kneaders counter fixed me with a stare that looked like disappointment making out with sadness. She said, "yeah, what we have out there on the racks is usually what we have."
I turned around to take in an eye gasm of glitter, bowsilk, and every pretty label style I'd ever imagined. Amongst the color and flare sat 8 powder dusted racks, empty save for two cinnamon bread loafs spaced as far apart as two things could be and still remain in the same store. 
When I turned back around I knew that look wasn't disappointment for me but at me and my half-cocked idea that a place like this would still have product this close to thanksgiving. 

Then she made the smile that wasn't a smile and aimed her eyes at the door as directly as if she were pointing her fingers.
I think those eyes were telling me to go to Walmart, or maybe Frys if she was forgiving. 
So decided to skip the whole thing, at least for now. My ego had just been through the equivalent of being rejected by a teenager whilst still being a teenager. A shy, geeked up teenager with ballooning dreams in a sea of needles. I figured the best course of action would be to chalk it up to really good 10 minute material. 

And here we are. 
The thing about thanksgiving that always got me was the protocol. It's one thing to bring the proper food stuffs, and another to haunt the seasonal hot spots trying to feign cultural flavor by investing time and income in a company that manufactures such things.
Such things, as it were, ought to be carved from the reality of need, desire, history wrought with turmoil and situational awareness 
You don't buy a turkey because you were supposed to, but because you recognize and are a part of that history and culture you are struggling to recreate in the moment. As the Cowboys take the field tomorrow I'm going to give thanks for being around people and in a situation where the moment is genuine. 

At least as genuine as anything can be when family gets together

Dear Allie Brosh, what is up with that blog? Hyperbole and a Half hasn’t been updated since ’13! what, you get a book deal and forget about the fans? Andy Debolt tried to figure things out in 2015, discovering that her depression kept her from the page. I get it. It can be really tough to believe that the words are worth it and that you have the gumption to produce something amazing. Then again you don’t have to produce something amazing. You have to produce something. Brosh is a prime example of a very talented individual lost to depression and fear. This specter lives in all of us in some form and often writing is the only way to exorcize our feelings.

Except for when the writing triggers those feelings.

That brings me to my point. Once the writing becomes the job it can be very hard to maintain the joy you get from the act of writing. I used to get incredibly nervous and worked up about my first drafts and the idea that people might not like what I write. I still deal with the latter but I’ve come to recognize that not everyone is going to like what I put out and that is okay. Some people will. Writing is a refuge. It is my refuge and my joy.

Some Thoughts:

1. The Toys R Us black friday sale starts Thursday at 5 PM. So… are we supposed to abandon our children pre-bedtime Thanksgiving day in order to get them gifts?
2. When did Khakis and a dress shirt become a thing. Better question: why? God why?
3. The Giants have the 3rd best record in the NFC. Yeah, boy!
4. I remain completely in love and devoted to my love. Always.

Lately the ‘rule has been about me airing out my feelings and coming to grips with some changes happening in the world. And yes, Trump is a change coming to the world. Obviously he is or else he wouldn’t have been elected on a Tsunami of change. Still, the bloodletting of emotions and stuff on my chest has become standard for the blog. This led me to an interesting revelation: I don’t entirely mind being public about my feelings. Public airing of qualms forces me to explain the logic driving the emotional response and, sometimes, explain the emotion driving the illogical response. I think this kind of thing is important for everyone to attempt at least once. Say what you feel and explain why you feel that way.

I feel pretty good right now. I feel like it is going to be a great Thanksgiving week, even if the commercials profess more interest in the mass quantity of shopping that begins at 6 PM that night than the deeply moving and happy reason for the holiday. No, I’m not speaking of Native American genocide, but the reimagined view of the holiday as an opportunity to join with friends and loved ones without the worry of work or rush to go somewhere (other than black friday sales).

Relaxation is the real beauty of the holiday, because we allow ourselves so little time to simply be and enjoy being. We are rushed forward, driven into the daily fray like mice forced into the maze to scramble for cheese.

So, this holiday give thanks for the time and space to actually give thanks and to be around loved ones. Who knows, maybe next year black friday starts at 4.

This upcoming city flag football season will mark the first in at least three years that I did not coach. I’ve heard a lot about the upcoming season, namely about the conniving and hustling going on between coaches trying to recruit star players to their team. There were under 45,000 people in my town as of last year’s census numbers. Given the small population, the idea of stacking a flag football team in order to defeat the handful of other kids who actually have talent is stupid. I’m surprised it took so long for me to get to that realization.

This is really about the coaches and the families and the parents who want to see their kids be superstars vs. see them grow and develop. When I coached I worked to create a system that put the players in the best position to succeed. I liked the challenge of facing these so-called superstar teams and got an ego thrill from beating them, but coaching wasn’t about that. For me coaching was about being there for and being involved with my kids and their friends in their element. I still coach for those reasons, but I also have become more intrinsically aware of the growth aspect and understanding what these kids are working towards. Playing the city league can be fun and the practices can be an important learning tool, but it can’t be the end all. You can’t treat it like the Super Bowl.

Can you believe at one point I did? I sure cannot.