Month: April 2018

Somewhere in the depths of my brain a chime went off, alerting me to the positive impacts of actually working out. Two days in the gym in three days. The space between the visits parsed by a slight amount of physical activity with a yearning for much more. With any luck I’ll spend the next few years of my life building up to a decent reserve of physical stamina and be able to handle whatever the world throws my way.

This does not include zombies. I am not prepared for zombies.

I am prepared for manufacturing, modifying, and sticking to routines that lead to the overall betterment of myself. I am prepared for trying to live long enough to see my kids have kids and to hold those kids and tell them about all the wonderful stories I’ve written. Maybe they’ll sit and listen to me spin new tales of fancy and fiction. Maybe they’ll listen to me tell them about my life and they tell me about theirs. Above all I want to hold hands with the woman I love and sit in a hot tub near the beach when I am 80 years old like in some commercial (like the ones advertising erectile dysfunction… isn’t it sad how that is what we associate with men getting old. That and, “get off my lawn’) .All in all, I want to be around for a great many things, and I intend to put myself in the best position to do so.

Some Thoughts:

1. I should’ve been working out all along. I’m going to make sure the kids keep staying in fantastic shape.
2. I’m really wanting to get a neighborhood game of capture the flag going. I am excited to see my own kid play in the coming weeks.

I’m in my office, catching some zen, and hanging out with my son’s cat. Just being in the space reminds me of more productive times, and encourages me to discover a mindset where that kind and breadth of production is not only possible but common. I think I fled from the room because it reminded me of the things I needed to do in order to be successful and the weight of all of it was more than I wanted to manage at the time. I still do not want to be in here. I’ve considered painting it or changing it in some other way in order to find a way to use the space again. I think the key is literally to stay in the space and face those demons that reside there.

Calling them demons gives them too much power. In truth, I’m talking about a disorganized desk, a pile of mail that needs to be read, and a row of books chosen to inform the life I crave, the classes I teach, and the writing I do. So, I need to just do it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Having a loaded gun in the room only makes me feel safe if I trust the person holding the gun. That is where I stand on the gun issue. I am not against guns. I am against gun owners who subscribe to a very narrowly drawn sense of entitlement that always appears to speak to a type of protectionism that doesn’t include people who look like me, think like me, or even have my level of income in the us who deserve guns. I remain convinced that it is this self-same sense of entitlement which has school shootings becoming very trendy again.

This year my students are doing research on the powers of connectivity–specifically they are looking at the communities that sprout up primarily through network gameplay and may examine how that affects the local societies they inhabit in real life. This one is near to me, because I’ve watched video games snatch my kids away from me for days at a time. I have the pleasure of enjoying my boys every weekend, but more and more that time has become me walking by as they play Fortnite on various devices. We often try to play a game together or watch a film together, but it is always clear to me that they’re trying to rush through it in order to get back to what really makes them happy. This, unsurprisingly, doesn’t make me happy at all.

I originally backed off of controlling their gameplay. I figured I’d give them a week or two to completely burn themselves out on gameplay. That did not happen. Play intensified. At one point the boys were each playing somewhere between 4 and 8 hours per day on the weekends–barely stopping to eat or poop. The interactions between the boys and with their friends online are fraught with the kind of lightly malicious banter that is toxic and all too common among boys who have no empathy for other people. The game itself does little to build cohesive teamwork and relies on basic internet memes and cartoonish physics in order to suck in an audience of vapid game players who themselves want little more than to show off to anyone and everyone who will watch and listen. To say I am underwhelmed with the positive effects would be giving the game too much credit. In fact, I am most disappointed in how willing they are to tune out everything else in existence to the point where anything but playing online with their friends seems like black and white in a world of stunning 4k color.

I am at a loss here. I don’t know what there is to do.

The more I consider what has me run down and often behind these days (most days?), the more I am forced to look at the times when I am at my best. The difference often isn’t how much I play or how much work I have scheduled to handle. Instead the difference often falls to maintenance.

It is really that simple.

When I handle my business on a daily basis; when I pause to reflect and make sure stuff is getting taken care of, I do well. When I don’t, I don’t. More often than not as of late I have not done well, because I have not taken care of what I need to and handled the daily chores and responsibilities of life. Instead I’ve allowed little things to pile like dust in a corner (or clean laundry at the foot of the bed) and build until they become a problem–several problems–that weigh me down completely.

I have also failed to enlist my kids to do their part. They’ve gotten off pretty easy–especially when it comes to the stuff I had to do as a kid–dishes, laundry, etc. It is once in a blue moon that a kid vacuums and I’m not entirely sure that any of them could pick a broom out of a lineup. This too is going to have to change if I intend to keep on track with the writing and improving and life transforming. Everyone needs to pitch in and pull weight. Those who don’t run the risk of making my life harder than it ought to naturally be, and I cannot afford that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had the opportunity to see Post Modern Jukebox again (thank you, my heart). I remain impressed at how talented these performers are and how they manipulate pop music to resemble the old standards. Equally impressive is the fact that they’ve done all of this touring and production of music without a label ever being involved. Dope.
2. Getting excited about the coming summer and the opportunities this affords. I intend to get a ton of me time in and use that me time to do me, and by me I mean write my ass off.
3. The desert landscape is beautiful this time of year–especially at night. As I write under a canopy of stars I am reminded why I still live here.

 

The good news: I made that list.

The bad news: There are a lot of things to be crossed off.

I got a start this morning by making the list itself. I labeled over 50 individual actions I need to take in order to get back to even. There is a lot of writing and grading involved, but there are also all kinds of other tasks for the betterment of myself, my home, and my soul. I have a lot of work to be done and most of it should have been worked on long ago, but I have really been lazy about a lot of my life.

Time for that to go away. Time to move forward.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The latest episode of The Blacklist mirrors Orphan X, a Greg Hurowitz character. Interesting how much stolen literature finds its way to the mainstream…

Days like today I am awed by the beauty of the outdoors. To be in a wide, clean, and open space feels like a gift. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the love that makes moments like these possible. I’ve started to really consider what matters. I feel at once like the guy in the trailer home with the Lamborghini under tarps outside and the man with a thousand toys and a thousand debts and only the barest hint of a smile. It is, after all, about what makes you happy. For me that is people I love, a space to feel safe and happy, and beyond that the ability to feel happy and create.

When I think about the layers of fat gilted around my waist it is easy to compare them to the years of lazy that whittled away the drive towards that comfortable life. I get glimpses of it, in moments, and feel like it lives on the other side of a mirror that I can only see from certain angles and certain moments.

When I catch that blissful glimpse I lock on to it and think, if only I could ignite and get there. I think, If only I could extend myself into that next gear. I believe so many things in my life are aligned right now in the same swirl of problem + solution; a Fibonacci sequence of affairs radiating outwards towards eventually calm and success.

If I could just start.

Home alone on Easter Sunday, there is plenty of time to think; to consider, for example, what life might look like if I’d just had a little more willpower. To reflect on what could have and still could be in the space between now and too late. These are not thoughts drawn darkly, but instead the constant tick and hum of my heartbeat cycling towards what if. I am no great fan of regret. It does not fire me the way motivators should–little does these days. Still, I have no desire to look back in a week, a month, a decade and wonder how life should have been better. I prefer to believe that there is still a part of me that holds ember and can choose to spark flame–even if that part of me is tethered to the parts of me soaked in fat and doubt and disuse.

I was thinking about my mid-kid the other day and how much he reminds me of a younger version of myself. It terrifies me. He is absolutely the kid who sees a bit of thread hanging loose and tears at it until the world itself unravels. He is the kid who knows too much for his own good and deep down inside even knows when he is outclassed. He is the kid who can never accept being outclassed less that fire –that pile of ember burning red inside of him–is smothered by reality. I am terrified because I know I cannot protect him from the reality he faces everyday.

I am terrified that I don’t have the drive to show him that life won’t smother those embers and that if it does, it is life that will burn and not you whose flame blinks out forever. Perhaps I am terrified that what I want to believe isn’t true.

I think if a person steps back and recognizes that a book is a separate beast from the movie it spawns then they can appreciate both separate forms more. I think Ernest Cline thinks that too. Why else would he fully embed the film version of The Shining into the Ready Player One script he helped create. He knew–he had to know–that what Spielberg was trying to accomplish was an entirely different bit of storytelling than what he already created. He knew Spielberg would play to his strengths much in the same way his longtime friend and fellow filmmaker Stanley Kubrick did with all of his adaptations. He knew this because Ernest Cline is a thinker, and that is why I am convinced that the film version of Ready Player One is a giant easter egg. I’m still trying to crack it.

On the surface, RPO takes on the decayed smell of the easter egg nobody ever found. The acting falls terribly flat and the plot takes on a direction so distant from the book as to be nearly unrecognizable. Still, there are several solid scenes that remind me of Spielberg’s prowess, and moments throughout that convince me that I am in fact being punked. At one point the creator of the hunt, Halladay, drops the 4th wall and has a direct communication with the audience. That is the moment I knew the game was afoot. There were clues before, but that one sold it.

So, it isn’t a good movie but it is pretty and I’m pretty sure there’s more hidden in that script than I figured on first glance.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Infrequent readers of the blog might suspect I hate my kids. Nope. I love my kids. They are, however, a handful. A big ole handful. Too big. Especially after a certain hour at which time they legitimately turn into gremlins, regardless of age.