Day: May 8, 2017

How quickly the news pivots. Just a year ago everyone was blasting Trump and treating the man like a joke. He wasn’t qualified to be president. He didn’t deserve the political respect of the American people, to say nothing of the world. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected. Yet here we are, and the news cycle has shifted.

None shifted more than Fox News who at first begged for Trump to leave the race so we could find a more appropriate candidate and now praises the man, often citing how good of a president he is and how much the other news stations aren’t willing to admit his greatness. To quote the late Dennis Green, ‘They are who we thought they were, and we let them off the hook.’ Indeed we allowed a media empire to pivot completely and others to fall into a crooked line of folks who quite suddenly are on the Trump bandwagon. Likewise, we as a viewing audience permitted these outlets that we once lambasted as ‘fake news’ to take hold of our imagination and become the so-called real news while bastions such as the New York Times and Washington Post are being considered the fake news for sticking by their dogged and honest criticism of Trump. Why? It’s the office, stupid.

There is a game played in politics that goes like this: Once you’re in the captain’s chair, you represent everything that chair represents, so we as your humble crew will go down to the end with you. That is how we’ve approached things for years now–unless you’re part of the party out of power. When Clinton was in trouble for having sex (yeah, he did) with that woman. The democrats stood behind him because he was in the big chair. Republicans climbed to the moral high ground and launched attacks. The same is happening now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Running out of time, so I wanted to cut it off and point out that yesterday was one in a series of lows. I pulled out old blogs from ’13 to get a sense of how far I’ve come and I’m starting to see a pattern. More on that next time.

 

What do you do with life when you realize the things you ultimately want are not actually obtainable. I’ve watched many people (myself to an extent) throw those hopes into their kids. I don’t want to be that person. I also don’t want to be a quitter and give up on the things that matter most to me. I feel like right now, however, I’m still really beat down and unable to muster the confidence and the oomph to get anything done.

This was going to be the last blog.

I decided against it out of sheer habit and hope for a better tomorrow (which, sidenote, is a worthwhile film to check out). entering into the summer months I recognize that my primary hurdle is the lack of discernible wealth teamed with the willpower of a gnat on a cheesecake. This is a big hurdle. When history remembers me, it probably won’t.

Seriously, the people who are remembered are the ones who made a difference and exemplified some trait the world actually needed in order to continue base functionality. I’m not that guy right now. I’m a shell of that guy who needs to get right but doesn’t have anything left to fight for.

In other words, the life I wanted to build post divorce seems unobtainable and now I’m stuck in the place of knowing that I simply could not do anything great. I wish I had the simplicity of my last partner who just wanted to live in a world where she was handled and had time to do the stuff that made her happy without the worry of working so hard that it made her unhappy or the responsibility of people expecting more of her than she was capable of.

I guess it starts with knowing what you are capable of within yourself. Maybe even accepting the limitations built therein. Not everyone is built to be a star or even good at a thing. Some folks are just average or even below that. Acceptance makes it work. Distractions make it better. So, I’m going to play a video game.

Some Thoughts:

1. I will be watching hours of film this week preparing for a youth football game that is likely more about coaching than talent. We don’t have as many talented players as the other team and their players are more experienced and confident than our own. Truth be told, it is going to come down to how we execute and if the handful of kids in the backfield can do their job. I’ve watched my own son’s confidence shrink and I know that he needs to be a big part of that gameplan if we are to win. So, time to be a coach and a dad and get him right. 6 days till game day.
2. You can’t force a relationship to work.
3. You can’t give up either.