Month: January 2017

It isn’t Wednesday and this is not about football, but i thought it might be nice to talk basketball for a few minutes. Now I will preface this by saying I am a Knicks fan. To hear the Carmelo trade rumors fills me with a sense of joy only matched by the realization that so many of the contracts are expiring. Could it be that Phil Jackson has once again worked his magic? I hope against hope for this to be true. I feel like the Knicks, like the Cavs, are teams owned and operated by people I find personally despicable. Liking them feels a little like being a huge fan of shrimp cocktail while also being allergic to shrimp. Its a conundrum. The Knicks are not their owner(s). Instead they are the embodiment of an era and an idea of a New York that never quite could be. I think they have a chance of being more, though. I think they are primed to become a legit trade/free agency destination once again.

All of this thinking in predicated on building a young core around Porzingas. It isn’t often you build a team around a PF, but he is the kind of big that you can do something with–especially once paired with a legit point guard. I’d hoped they’d get a vet, but that is not happening. They gotta go old school Yankee style and build from the farm up.

Here is the point: The beauty of NY sports is homegrown heroes. We want the kids who came in through the draft or worked up through the ranks hard to reach the top. We are gritty folk so we want gritty players in all of our sports. We don’t mind the flash, but we gotta know you can crawl down in the dirt and thrash a little.

Yesterday I drove the boys to Flagstaff in hopes of waking up in the morning to a glorious sledding day. The evening became a slow moving nightmare of tired youth and angry father. I worried, for quite a spell, that I might snap. I did not. At some point during the evening the boys approached humanity. This was temporary, of course. They went back to the follies of youth quite quickly and I was quite through with it all by noon the next day.

All things considered, I had a good time on the slopes. I learned inexpensive ways to get in solid snowplay. I also learned what we do (and don’t) need in order to have a really good time on a budget. By budget I mean far far less than what was actually spent on this particular trip. Final damages: Lost my favorite winter coat, spent a slew on second rate cold gear, three happy kids.

That last bit is what really matters when you boil it all down. One thing I learned: My kids have a strange attraction to 80’s styled music. I blame the Teen Titans. This song by BER was on crazy repeat the whole trip. That is, when they weren’t singing Black Beetles. Maybe I’m raising DJ’s after all…

The anger bubbling inside of me is layered with fatigue and disappointment. My kids are after all, kids. They’ve gotten better over the years but there are times when circumstances are way past reason and the kids become unmanageable creatures who ought to be put to bed…for at least a few days.

 

It started on the way out of the door. We’d long planned a trip to Flagstaff, AZ in order to see the snow. It finally came time and the boys were so beyond basic excitement that it was impossible for them to carry out simple instructions without devolving into giggles and or fights. This translated into the youngest arriving in Flag without his shoes. Yeah, no shoes. Despite three reminders and him telling me disgruntledly that he had them, no shoes.

 

I get excitement. It cannibalizes common sense, leaving a thrill zombie in its wake. By 10 pm that night all three kids were literally spinning in circles as they danced down the hall back to the room. There was no music save for the shouts I was forced to put down time and again before we made it to the room and long after.

 

It is a burden of parenthood to have children who occasionally act out. How you handle that is one of the defining moments of how your parenting is received. There is a razor wire separating good parenting and straight outrage. I am pleased to say that no child was harmed in the events leading to this blog.

 

Well, not yet at least.

I spent a great deal of my life wondering whether or not I mattered to people and actively trying to matter. I am not talking about, ‘what legacy will you leave’ mattering. I mean day to day, I benefit from having him in my life sort of mattering. Yes, this does sound like a God complex, but the truth is more…complex.. than that. This mattering need was grounded in a sense of not mattering and not being appreciated in any real way–especially by the women in my life. Because I did not matter in a significant way in my personal life (from childhood), I wanted to reach out into the world and build that layer of family around me, so that I could make up for all the years I did not feel that in my own life.

Mattering can be burdensome. You stretch yourself thin trying to be of value to everyone. I wound up overextended and often guilty of letting people down. I can honestly say that I matter–actually matter–to but a handful of individuals these days. I count my girlfriend, my kids, her kids, and my adoptive family as the ones who would be affected if I were suddenly erased from the planet. Others would take note and perhaps shed a reflective tear, but the circle of matter is very small. The cosmos would not ripple at my passing and that no longer leaves me sad. See, when you focus on less you can give that less much more, and I feel like I do so now.

I don’t know why I do it to myself, but I spend a silly amount of time reading about the nonsense Trump does. It actually began back after 9/11, 2001 when Bush made his historic ‘with us or against us’ speech sparking the war that eventually gave us Isis. I want to know what is true(ish) I suppose; to have a better grasp on what is being said vs. what is actually happening in the world. I feel like this is more of an issue during a ‘Republican’ presidency, because the truth and facts also seem to have alternative ‘truth’s and facts’ to be hotly contested.

In other words, facts are subjective in an authoritarian regime.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Gradually developing slurred speech and clumsier hand movements. I do not want to consult dear old WebMD, because it will tell me I have something terrible and fatal.
2. Since making the pledge to write a chapter a week I have written less and less and procrastinated more and more, but my minecraft game is on point.
3. Speaking of which, I am doing the exploded build they published and doing it with the boys. I’ll write a review one day. I’m kind of excited about the build.

I told my students to write a chapter a week. I wasn’t expecting final draft level stuff. I wanted something slightly above word vomit–the core of the story put to page with room to improve in rewrite. I think I sealed the deal, because they all seemed like they were willing to try and because I promised I’d write a chapter a week myself. This is of course easier said than done. I know I have the core story in my head and ready to commit to paper. I just have to get my butt in the chair and get to a place where I am using the little time I have in a more productive fashion. A good deal of my time is lost to side projects and video games and video games serving as side projects. I want to limit those things and start taking better care of my mental health so I have the energy to create the worlds and landscapes I imagine.

The old quote suggests ‘may we live in interesting times’ and we do live in such times. Here I sit in an era where big business is poised to make (and likely keep) ridiculous amounts of money. After all, these are some of the same political leaders that made buying an SUV all but free in America–so long as you did so for business purposes. Which brings me to my point: It is high time to start a business. Sure, the economy is going to sag for a very large financial demographic, but if you’re putting your time and (borrowed) capital into the right kind of business then you are in a really good spot to profit. What, might you ask, is that business? Schools.

This is the prime time to open a charter school. Should she get nominated, the incoming education secretary is highly interested in privatizing (read: monetizing) the public school system. If you take tax dollars off the register then, in this political climate, you look like you are doing something. So, when those funds go towards increasing other areas of note such as private business you look like you are doing even more. Add it all up and building a charter program is all about the bucks. Why not? Teacher salaries are ebbing towards a low in most states, and with little limitations on how charters operate it is simple enough to fortify your numbers through partnerships with colleges and other areas where teachers are being trained and retrained. So long as the student grades meet the often arbitrary state numbers you can be very successful and personally profitable.

Which leads me to this: I want to open a school. Sarcasm aside, I have a lot of ideas on how to make it work and I have very little need for mass profiteering. I want enough to have a little house and feed my boys, but the bulk of money ought to be invested in the school itself and providing the best education and programs outside of the basic areas that any school is directed to provide. I want to offer coding, pottery, advanced music and dance, a relationship with the museums, creative writing that links students to a publishing track, a robust sports program that draws the eye of local high schools, etc.

I want it all. I think I can get it now.

I might have just uncovered one of the most accurate superbowl predictors in recent history: Me. I’m not making a joke here. In the all too unpredictable world of guessing who is going to the show I am 5 for 6 in the last six years. How do I do it, you ask? By being a flag football coach.

Follow me for a moment. Seven years ago I started picking which teams my kids played for. I took the advice of a good friend and tried to give them a new team as much as possible. I often had one kid be the Giants, because they are the best football franchise ever. Still the others were subject to this new opportunity. In that first year, 2009, I picked the Packers. They went to the Superbowl in feb of 2011. The next year we were the Giants, then the Ravens, then the Seahawks, then the Broncos… I was also spot on with the Saints when they took it, but I didn’t choose that team name.

Three guesses who all my kids played as last year:

Yep, the Falcons.

This is spooky accurate and somewhat sad now, because I did not coach this year and the one kid who played is playing as an LA Ram. Meanwhile his brother has been helping the Texans during their practices. It would stand to reason that one or both will be in the championship next year.

I always had this idea that I would have the ‘kids house’ meaning the one all the kids would want to hang at, which also meant a modicum of control over who my boys spent time with. Lately it has been that way, but lately it has been too much.

The old saying, ‘be careful what you wish for’ proves itself true everyday. Kids are kids. They want to get into everything and eat everything and milk your time. They want to play constantly and have zero regard for the work you need to do–even if they are your own kids. Today was much the same, with eight kids roaming the halls of the TalisSpace. We played games and had fun, but as always the younger kids (not mine) completely forgot about the rules and spent their moments digging around in the pantry and touching a bunch of stuff that they should not. Perhaps the lesson here is to be prepared that if you’re going to have that many kids over you are going to need to be ready to watch them with eight eyes, because two never seems to be enough. My eldest gets it. He prefers when we all play outside where none of our belongings are at risk. At times he even suggests the friends not be allowed inside.

He isn’t wrong.

After my brief and guilty love affair with Sense8, I have fallen into the arms of the OA. This is a better category of distraction, if only moderately. It is not a book. I have not picked up a book in pleasure since the summer when I curled up around a copy of Amped. I used to act like I don’t know why, but that isn’t possible anymore. I know the reasons. I remain stunningly disappointed in the quality of material I am producing, which is to say none. Moreover I know that the reasons for not writing stem from being torn between the fear of not being able to write the story I actually want to tell and writing stuff that I continue to be provided contracts for and not be paid for.

I think it all comes back to the archive. I used to keep a public archive of ideas–sharing what I thought and imagined for those who were in need of such things. It kept me creative and active. I built characters and plots and relationships. Short scenarios welled up in my mind to burst forth unto the internet every Wednesday night. It died, as all things do. I did not kill it. I allowed it to pass away gracefully.

Now, when I am most frazzled from the hectic start of the semester and parenting and loads of responsibility and choices needing to be made, I find myself thinking about that archive and what it meant. I find myself thinking about the simpler times when I did put butt in chair for an hour at least each day. I wish for those times. I know I have the power to bring them back. I just don’t understand why I haven’t.