Month: February 2017

I am trying to find ways not to be so negative. I am trying, but I am failing. See, the more I peel back the layers of my worldview, the more I see a world that is very different from the happy space I love to live in. Moreover, the reality –the really real world– is a place where I am responsible for a great deal of hurt, stagnation, and failure.

I am not being specific, but I am not being evasive or coy. The fact is I have learned that there are people in the world who are just flat out bad humans. There are selfish people who I’ve invited into my life and now, no matter what life changes occur, they remained linked to me.

There are people whose lives are forever changed because they met me. These changes aren’t good or healthy or safe. I don’t know that I am worth those changes. This isn’t to say that I have no value, for I believe I do have value to myself. This is to say that my value might not always outweigh the road traveled. In truth I am the bumpy, painful, road that leads nowhere anyone planned to go.

That got dark quickly.

This is a tough time of the year because it is easy to get physically run down and, as a result, find your creativity lagging tremendously. Coffee helps, but sleep is much better. I’ve been having much more of the former and the result is a low functioning brain and, well, everything else. I’m considering lavender therapy. And a nap. Maybe two naps. Still, there are other obstacles that hold me back personally. The pay issue is a big one.

I’ve grown a little accustomed to being paid for the writing I do. Not all of it, of course, but the contract stuff. I’ve been looking for a check since late 2015. Several checks, actually. I’m not writing to burn anyone, but I need to get it off my chest. I think it is killing my desire. I have had opportunities to write quite a bit more for this company–really good stuff–and let it go because of pay concerns. That, in turn, led me to lose a lot of my desire in the writing field. I could just stop thinking about writing in terms of profit, but there is also a lot of hurt there. Maybe the best option is to step away for a while and focus on an entirely different direction.

Suddenly Mike Pence is looking pretty good.

I say this knowing that if Trump really gets a sense of what is going on he’s likely to sabotage the dude (you can’t fire the VP). Here is what I know: Today Fox News dropped an article about how Pence was kept in the dark about all the shady stuff going on between Trump’s people and the Russians. In other words, someone leaked information effectively distancing Pence from this fiasco. Given the seriousness of the FBI investigation in stands to reason that heads could roll. One already toppled Game of Thrones style. Flynn was sacrificed to protect the idea that this problem doesn’t go all the way up. But we know it does. However, according to some, it skipped a step. So that means that Pence might be thinking beyond impeachment to his own term in office. He need not worry. The American people will never impeach Trump. That man will serve his term and find a way to squeeze four more years out of us. How do I know? I know because that seems completely impossible. Like his election.

One day I want to figure out what made Hillary so dang toxic. Whatever it is brought us to this awful moment in history. One in which our people are viewed as a joke. A dangerous joke, but a joke.

I spent a few hours over the last week thinking and reading about how to better organize and structure my life. The result of that research was an answer I already knew but had little motivation to actualize: Journals. The act of journaling each day can be tedious. I’m not talking 10 minute rule here. I’m talking about assessing the day and planning the next day, week, month, etc. I am going to give it a shot–following the same productive philosophy that brought me to the talisblog 2,652 days ago.

In other words, I’m slicing out a bit more of my daily life to be dedicated to a daily routine. Of course, there are daily routines that I don’t think about. I don’t see them as restrictive or prohibitive in the way I see talis. I shouldn’t see talis in that fashion, because that kind of thinking does little to encourage. Instead I should be taking the time to assess what I actually do and think on a daily basis and how those things alter my state of consciousness.

Tomorrow the journal begins while today I spend time building it and committing to the idea.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m not sure if ASMR videos are actually being sexualized or I’m just tilting at windmills. It does bother me that something fundamentally good and healthy is being made into something else for the purpose of clicks. It’s like selling an apple using a chick in a bikini. Just stop.

Inevitably all parenting winds up pushing children towards or away from what you value in life. This is often intentional, though the effects of said action are often unintentional and unpredictable. I guided my children towards sports and video games. My clearest young memories of my first born are of him curled up on my chest as I played Madden and him, 3 now, squatting on a soccer field picking grass as the ball rolled by. Nine years later he’s dressed in team colors cutting and weaving through a gang of flag pullers, smirking all the way. At rest he is parked on the couch, iphone 7 in his lap and controller in his hand. These are activities he learned by watching me (insert PSA). These aren’t necessarily good or bad; that isn’t the point of this reflection. No, I’m talking about awareness of action and how those actions, activities, and especially attitudes take root in our children.

You cannot feel strongly about something–especially something relevant and constant–and not expect it to have an effect on those around you. The PSA above (in full form) provides a simple, inelegant example of the transitive property of parenting. Another example is that of a lazy parent (read: me) who engages in a great deal of gaming and general lounging. If this behavior is seen as leading to rewards (i.e. having fun, being happy all the dang time) then this behavior might suggest that the way to said rewards is to engage in this behavior or that engaging in this behavior has no relevant consequences. In a way it is about the children not knowing the whole story and taking from it what they will.

We as parents have limited control over how children receive the information given. The context they apply is not always the context we wish to emote. This is part of the reason why motion picture ratings exist. This is also why punching a hole through a wall or screaming at your kids and merely making that behavior normalized leads to consequences.

This has been my version of a PSA.

I find myself seeking an organizational philosophy. This need is so direct that even the vaunted ‘algorithm’ noticed, loading my sidebars and Facebook stream with organizational books and thoughts. Getting right is as easy as writing: all it requires is butt in chair. Yes, but there is the issue right there.

The love of my life introduced me to the Neil Gaiman ‘book job’ episode of the Simpsons where Lisa tries to become an author. Predictably, she finds herself sitting at her desk and discovering anything else to do. I have a TV poised above my desk wired into the chromecast, which means the sucker runs Netflix, youtube, and, well, the web. Of course I mitigate this distraction by first explaining it as a necessary research element (lie) and then as a device that I can turn off whenever I want to (junkie). Herein lies the problem at hand.

It is not enough to want to be better in life. You must create the uncomfortable conditions that force your flabby self into the mold of a literary (and productivity) Adonis. These piles marring the edges of my desk are not good. Tonight, after a rousing tackle practice with the kids, I intend to lash out at the desk beast and start to whittle away at this clutter that dominates my life and steals my ability to function. Yes, I’m aging, but I am not dead. I shall rise.

Maybe just climb to my feet.

Quite a bit of time between the last ten things and now. Many moons. Many thoughts. Here are 10:

1. I think I still see ghosts. It isn’t fully formed apparitions but streaks of movement at the edges of my vision. A scientist might suggest that at the edges of my ocular acuity the brain is just filling in the blanks and forming meaning out of what it can and cannot see. Maybe. Or maybe there is something at the edge of my perception–that thing lurking at the base of the stairs watching me and wanting to taste life.
2. I think the volume of my words fluctuates wildly from night to night in step with where my head is at and where my attention span is actually directed. The more I have on the brain, the less words find their way out of that maze of thoughts through my fingers and on to the screen.
3. I think it is very difficult for any writer to take critical feedback that challenges the pristine vision of what they believe to be a clear and directed piece of writing. I think this is worse for creative writers where the idea of meaning is so subjective.
4. I think we become our parents to a certain extent. I think this happens in the same fashion that a white shirt washed with reds can sometimes take on a pinkish hue. We are students and victims of those who raise us.
5. I think I live in a time when I am struggling to teach people to avoid logical fallacy and poor writing etiquette by, for example, not writing in all caps. Meanwhile, our president tweets in al caps and deals in fallacy openly.
6. I think alcohol at night helps you fall asleep faster but challenges what one might call a peaceful sleep.
7. I think I am afraid to take everything off my plate, for then I will have no excuse for not producing fantastic fiction.
8. I think it is time to move on from Maricopa and begin to develop a new social world with new challenges and opportunities.
9. I think my girlfriend is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, a title formerly held by Christina Chang.
10. I think I missed this format far more than I thought I would and I will probably return to it more often.

It occurs to me that I don’t have terribly long to live. I might have five minutes, five years, or fifty years. What is true is that there is a finality coming–what Charles Stross calls a Halting State. It still scares me sometimes. What bothers me more than scares me is how much I feel like I am squandering the time I have left. This isn’t about playing video games or watching bad TV. This is about a failure to break the habits that have me stuck in a cycle of mediocrity. As Jay-Z once quipped to a producer, “You’re wasting your talent!” Indeed I can feel the skills atrophy. It is clear the quality of my skills and even intelligence have dipped precipitously. I see this even more now that I’m in a position to motivate my kids to be successful and fail to do so. I once argued that I could, with proper lead time, teach any subject matter at the 100 college level. Now I’m questioning my ability to successfully teach the stuff I’m paid to. This confidence drop off is tied to the spottiness of the blog and a host of other concerns that have me spending more time worrying than thinking.

The weight of the life can really wear on you–especially if you worry about situations you cannot really control. The thing I need to learn and remember is to deal with the things I can change and create the best situation for me.

There is no question that Trump is a product of a wealth. He is an arrogant, thin-skinned man who is, for all intents and purposes, a bully. Now that he is president and we’ve seen that his form of bullying is not going to change, the question becomes this: Is he indeed the the American Id? I still say yes. There is an undercurrent of privilege that runs through our way of life. The only actual question is who deserves that privilege?

Our economic system is built on the premise of having things and getting better things as soon as those things are announced. We are an impermanent culture. It is in every commercial, every holiday, heck, it is even engrained in our churches and schools. Look around you. It is more common to find a brand new church building filled with the latest tech toys than it is to find and old brick and mortar institution. Schools are racing to build themselves up in the same fashion. It is a lot like our cellphone plans where you hold on to a model for a while and then give it back when the next one comes out. Same is true of our clothing. I can’t name ten items I own that are more than a decade old. All of this new and disposableness we allow is a sort of privilege because it creates an expectation that we need the newest and hottest and we, the American people, deserve only the best. Heck, the fact that we claim singular ownership of ‘America’ given the vast number of American Continent nations outside of the US is further proof of this sense of privilege and, in fact, blindness to that privilege.

The people who voted for Trump are more at peace with this truth than those of us who did not. Sure, a number of fringe folks, racists, etc. also hit the polls hard to stop Clinton, but they didn’t put Trump in office. Our Id did.

Some Thoughts:

1. This gets posted late again because the spotty internet in my burb strikes again. Nothing like coming home to no service and waiting around till there is service again.

I’m here watching the Falcons spank the Patriots in a Super Bowl I was not planning to watch. To be honest, I lost interest when the Giants lost to the Packers. I found a bit of it today when I was laying around and realized the game would start soon. Sure, it was really just an excuse to avoid working, but football is always my excuse. I believe that, given the chance, I would leave my job to call plays for an NFL team. Football is battlechess for gym rats. It is strategy mixed with raw violence and rife with storylines. Presently I’m living in such a storyline. I left the coaching staff of one son’s team to join the staff of another–a rival program.

The first question ought to be: Why the heck are your kids on rival teams? Because Friday Night Tykes has nothing on Maricopa. My mid-kid is part of a team that has been together for two seasons and barely missed out on the championship both times. The first time we just couldn’t overcome an injury to a starter on the first play of the game. My boy filled in nicely, but it exposed the fact that we hadn’t trained a backup at that position. We didn’t prepare for the possibility of injury. The second time we were prepared and we were better, but we honestly were not good enough to survive the changing momentum of a tough game against the team who eventually went to Florida for the National Championship (they finished 3rd). To make a long story ten-minute possible, that team reloaded and limited the roster to the top kids with no hope of playing time for the second string. While my youngest was an epic runner at the youngest level, he’s second string on this older team. So, he ends up on another team. My new team. See, storyline.

So now this new team is made up of a bunch of rookies and kids who were cast off from the main team and they are trying to pull it together in the twelve or so practices before we start the season–a season that may pit brother against brother.