Month: May 2018

My partner asked me, in a sense, if I was over being a writer. Nope. I am struggling with the idea of sitting down and putting in the hard work these last few days. This is the meat of the thing: If you want to write then you need to sit down and do it. Fear of failure, fear that a project is too big, fear that you suck–all of that is going to be there with you in the writing space, but you gotta fight through it all. This is what it means to be a writer. Like any other job, you have to show up.

So, I am deciding on a two hour block (half of my lasting goal) during which I will write every day until work forces a change of schedule. I’m thinking about 8-10, or within a half hour of that, because it is early enough that I can wake normally and not eat into the time I want to spend with my boys. I should move it up an hour in order to give myself space to fall right into it first thing in the morning. The problem is that my schedule is so shifty that I cannot pick out 2 morning hours to work consistently. I need to shift from month to month. I also feel completely drained in the evenings (see many many previous blogs), so writing long after dark is no longer a possibility.

Butt in Chair. It all comes down to that one thing. I’ve been talking to my students about this 4 part soup of success. Hard work, Talent, Luck, and Life experience. Any two will make you successful–especially if the hard work is one of the two. I have two on that list, so if I get the hard work down I ought to be a damned prolific beast.

Some Thoughts:

1. Warriors v. Cavs part 4 is about to start tomorrow. WOW. I’m not excited. Hopefully Lebron goes somewhere like New York next year and carries them to his 9th straight finals.
2. Speaking of LJ, I recently heard him listed in the top 3 all time greats, but the other two went unmentioned. I wonder who they are.
3. Love matters. Big time.

My ‘just do it’ attitude is turned down to one lately. I walk around in the ‘can we do it?’ mode, superimposing that not-so-winning ideology on everything happening in my life. The problem is not seeing the obstacles as insurmountable, but the recognition that there are so many obstacles and we are (in many aspects) so far behind the eight ball on most things that it occasionally feels useless to try.

Then it sometimes feels like I am the only one left trying.

I felt this again when picking my son up from freshman football. I didn’t know how he would feel about where he was in the pack of kids, but I did not expect him to feel like he is in the back, as though every other kid is both more athletic and more experienced than he is. It hurt to see him use language like, ‘Maybe I’ll switch positions to one where there aren’t any other kids so then I could play.’ I come from a world where my mother thought Garbage Man was the highest possible achievement for me, so to hear that kind of defeatism out of my kid made me take a long look at where I am and what is happening in my life.

Everyone around me is defeated. Utterly beaten down and broken people define my daily interactions. I need to be the strong and positive one and I have not been. I also need to be around more of those people to feed off of that energy to replenish my own tanks.

Some Thoughts:

1. Roseanne was canceled. This time it was as a result of a racist tweet from Barr herself. 140 characters cost her millions. I also suspect that the show will become even more popular amongst those who feel that ‘whiteness’ is under siege. My guess: Someone like the NRA channel will pick up the show.
2. Love is stronger than bullshit. Much stronger.
3. Platitudes, while largely romantic are also useless. I am starting to understand why and how it is easier to say nothing than to wound or anger by trying to inject cheer. Occasionally people need to be sad for a minute and then get over that shit and get to work. I think I’m about ready to get over that shit and get to work.

Assessment has become the key phrase in education as of late. The general idea behind it is sensible: how do you know that students are learning, and how do you know that they way you are teaching is aiding vs. inhibiting that learning? Of course as with all things that force you to look at yourself in a somewhat arbitrary fashion, it involves a ton of resistance and paperwork. Honestly my resistance is largely to the paperwork. I am not good at it. I do not want to get better at it. I do not want to waste my life doing it. There is no need for TPS reports in my reality. Or fax machines. Regardless, the era of assessment is upon us, and the people in charge are exactly the people who find immense joy in this stuff but act like its a chore because they want to make sure they’re still one of the cool kids.

Assessment at my school basically breaks down to measuring one specific outcome through an assignment (which will grow to multiple outcomes through multiple assignments and make me groan and quit). So, we are supposed to take an assignment, view it through a shared rubric, write down some numbers and move on. Except we aren’t supposed to move on. We have to talk about it and analyze it and share it in a circle, passing the talking stick amongst each other until we’ve all stated how we can grow. This is a universal model of reflection on assessment and I’m not a fan. I suppose I’m more of a hermit in my assessment. I want to see how the students did, think about what I did, and fix it. In my dark office. Alone.

I don’t want people telling me how to teach. My preference is to get a bunch of input and see a number of people teach and pick and choose the stuff I like and apply that. This is the model I tried to bring to the college, but this isn’t the model that stuck.

So here we are.

Coming up on the full year since the blog broke. Since I broke the blog in fact. In truth this has been an incredibly long and difficult year which has made me immensely stronger and more focused as a human. I wish this year could’ve happened when I was in the prime of my being as opposed to approaching mid forties and broken down. This is a point of reflection–the full force of which will not be felt for another 35 days (no, the last leap year was ’16). I am seeing myself crystal clear and learning to accept my weaknesses alongside my strengths as the elements that make me who I am. I am also learning how much time I have in a day (in a life?) to make the moves in the world I feel I should (and will). There is a lot of me to be learned and developed and a lot more still to be healed from years and years of flat out abuse.

So here we are in a 35 day window of reflection and wonder as I take the full measure of what has been and what should be and what can be. Let us see what will be learned in the next cycle.

Some Thoughts:

1. Respect to LeBron James more and more each day. What he has done in his life and in his profession is truly amazing. Now he is going back to the finals where he will likely lose, but he will have already proven to the universe that he is top 2.
2. I’m settling into a life where I have someone who loves me and has my back and definitely will help me become an us (we already are) and help us reach our highest.

I spent some time around a handful of very good writers today and recognized immediately that I have not been pulling my weight as a wordsmith. Here is the crux of the issue: I’m not that well read. I don’t have the awareness of the writing that a scholar or full time author has. In short, I’ve existed for a very long time as a betweener. By that I mean I have been a person who gets by on talent and a few solid ideas. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants I reinvent the craft and canon every time I read a book (listen to a book) or write a line. You get a lot further by standing on the shoulders of giants. That, of course, begins with knowing who they are.

The struggle is real and the struggle is balancing all of the elements in my life to the point where I can focus on less and use that extra energy and focus to be legitimately good and knowledgeable about the field as opposed to having to feel uninformed in the presence of authors who do this sort of thing full time.

Knowledge is power. It is also the materials upon which great stories are built.

Some Thoughts:

1. There are moments in time when I absolutely realize I have not done well in preparing my kids for what is out there in the world. Having them stumble across Rick and Morty on their own is such a moment. I suppose had I seen it before them, I would’ve had a better sense of what they were getting into. I think that not seeing and reading all the best stuff is a problem I have to conjure a solution for immediately.

Before I immerse myself in a TV show (Sherlock) and eventually fade away, I want to write a bit about immersion. Since Thursday I’ve been at Comic Fest. While the event is a shade of what it was for the pass few years, it still is quite epic. It is also very different when you are staying right there in the thick of it.

To begin, there is something interesting about being a traveller and staying in the artificially manufactured world of hotels. I don’t ever think to make the space mine. I instead live in this space–often out of a suitcase–and inhabit it and whatever conference world I am suddenly a part of as though this is my new reality. Because it is my new reality the rules and situations are different. I operate on a different calendar. Gone is the steady metronome of school and sports schedules. Days themselves cease to matter as I fall into the rhythm of the conference schedule. My orbit is constructed around such things, and since I never actually return home, there is no break in the schedule to even think about what that ‘real world’ and its routines look like.

This year we chose to stay at a local hotel, just steps away from the con. As it is an official conference hotel the people there were largely people who are at the con as well. Together we formed our own small civilization. It wasn’t until I was driving home tonight that I recognized how different the experience was for me actually staying there than it was visiting. Full immersion.

When the rest of your reality disappears as if in VR, you are left to focus on the con and all of the intricacies of that. I personally stayed at the convention later in the day–long enough to settle in and start to get a feel for the different types of groups and people. I expect I’ll do it again and I will have more of a nuanced experience in the future. Maybe I’ll stay two days… maybe more.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Lebron. You dope, man.

Recently Comic-Con International won a lawsuit granting them full ownership over the term Comic-con. As a result the Phoenix Comic-con sought to avoid the newly litigious nature of the term and changed the name to comic fest. No trademark issues there. There are other issues at play in this latest comic fest. For starters, the event has ramped up security in light of a shooter incident last year. That comic con saw a man dressed as the punisher arrive fully loaded to do battle with the cops. As a result, weapons are no longer allowed on the grounds. This includes the sale of weapons on site. No more pretty swords to purchase. Well, there is still the foam stuff.

I showed up to comicon today in a Punisher tee. Bad taste. I completely forgot what the shooter had been wearing, but apparently so did a lot of people because I only caught a handful of dirty looks. I was the only punisher in the space, and that should’ve tipped me off. It didn’t.

Day 2 ought to be a new experience. The weekend days at comicon (read: comic fest) are the most busy and thus the ones where this issue will have the greatest impact. We shall see.

Today I watched a video with a headline promising that Saquon Barkley was making Odell-like catches in practice. In the video he and fellow running back Wayne Gallman were playing catch. They were throwing each other passes from a few feet apart. Basically, the headline hyped the heck out of nothing. Welcome to OTA’s. Here is the thing: Football is really exciting IN season, but off season is all hype with almost no substance.

There is substance in the NBA right now.

Kobe Bryant’s new show, Detail, is practically a cheat code. There are only a few people in the game who know the game as well as Kobe and when he breaks down a player or an offense/defense then you better take note. So far every player he’s detailed has been immediately shut down the next game or few games or, in cases of players he show how to win, they do a heck of a lot better–if they listen. Kobe is a great coach in the making.

The series in the making is the Boston-Cavs series. Boston has played amazing defense all season. The Cavs have Lebron. 2-2 and we are on our way!

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Still have not fixed that pesky redirect issue. I should. I don’t particularly care to drive traffic to the page (not about that life) but since it is here, I ought to at least show people the latest madness as opposed to things (read: words) that are very old.
2. Some of those posts mirror the stuff I’m reading and writing about today. Odd.
3. Give slim chicken’s five bucks and they will give you a mason jar full of heaven. Real jar. Real good desert. Real fake southern. Still, the fried pickles are legit.

A leader can best be judged by those who he puts in positions of power. To that end it is important to note the people who Obama (and even Bush II) put in power around them. These people got things done. They worked for and often represented the common people. Obama rolled with policy wonks who had the greater interests of the nation and the world in mind. Trump works with people he knew or owed favors to from the business world, and that is a recipe for the slow-motion disaster that is seeping through our nation’s psyche like lava from a Hawaiian mountain top.

Today’s self-aggrandizer is Scott Pruitt. This is the man put in charge of the EPA. This is also the man who rejected both theories of global warming and the Paris Accord. Thanks to Pruitt, whose voice rises to the president’s ear, we are slipping off the stage as world leaders in world preservation. We are still Team America: World Police, but in terms of actually trying to fix the world, we are no longer on that page. According to Pruitt, nothing is wrong.

Everything is wrong. Pruitt is already under investigation for all of the stuff he’s done while in office to increase his personal spending budget (and use that budget for outlandish personal means). Most recently he was outed for having security remove several news agencies from a summit, claiming there were not enough seats for them. Notably the agencies removed were the ones offering unfavorable coverage.

We are in the midsts of an insidious administration driven to use any strategy necessary to keep Americans scared and divided in order to keep themselves in power. We are also in an age of the ‘inmates running the asylum’ with Pruitt and his chief deputy (a historically noted coal lobbyist) making policy on protecting the environment while simultaneously profiting from destroying it.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Generally speaking, any restaurant’s menu is a hustle game. I personally have been hustled many times. I am also learning the hustle–learning what to buy and what to avoid as there are multitudes of similarities in a menu and often the bargain is not where you expect.
2. To whit: the dollars separating a street taco and a super taco are not worth the ‘bargain’. Take the street taco and then take yourself to the fixin’s bar.

I’ve come around to accepting that no good writing happens after 10PM. 9 even. I keep winding up writing these things later and later into the evening and finding out through these trials that I cannot do it. I cannot write with any real zeal or sense of lasting cohesion after a certain hour. I break down. Stress has me breaking down earlier and starting later, which is to say that the window for performance is shrinking. Today, for example, I spent a few hours working on paperwork and that totally wiped me out. I was done. So, what ended up happening was entirely nothing until this.

This is not great, obviously, but it is the result of needing to hit that release valve hard after a day that was hard in a long string of tough days. It wears on the body and the soul.