Month: June 2018

The best way to be a writer is to be around writers–good or just raw. The truth is we are all learning as we write. Even the prolific writers like Stephen King learn new tricks and new ways to reinvest in their work as a result of being around other writers. Many writers I know spend a wealth of time around other writers and traveling to conventions either as speakers or as participants in an effort to embed themselves into the writer’s community.

I’m talking about immersion here. I believe this is the most important thing that a writer can do outside of butt in chair. BIC matters, don’t get me wrong. BIC alone means you’re producing worlds full of words, but it is happening in isolation. That first part of writing–the planning and drafting stages–often are done in isolation, but there are important stages that follow. For me I find so much inspiration from my writing group and as much inspiration from the students I work with every day. Just like an athlete gets better at a sport by being around it we writers develop a sort of writer IQ that allows us to be even more successful as we work towards being masters of our craft.

I’ve seen the difference between myself and other writers of my ilk at conventions. They are immersed in the culture of writing while I am a single dad immersed in the culture of sports who happens to be a not-too-shabby writer. There is a huge difference in terms of level of success that stems purely from that thread. Immersion matters.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve been happy these past few days. That matters.

There is a history of people sitting on rooftops. It goes beyond the superhero history of Batman and his ilk sitting atop a roof peering across a darkened city. The history of rooftop sits clearly predates that and my own knowledge of said history, but I get why it is cool.

I grew up in an apartment building. Half the time I was on the 16th floor leaning off a terrace and staring down into concrete mass of New York City. There is a calmness at the higher altitudes. There is a sense that everything below you is separate from your own existence and you, quiet watcher, are Uatu–carefully observing but never interfering. I feel the same on rooftops now as I did up high in the apartments. I feel separate, safe, even intimately connected with the webwork of lives spiraling outward from the points of my vision.

This is a powerful feeling.

Some Thoughts:

1. My kids are slowly (and resistantly) learning to respect my boundaries when I am writing. I already forced two off this rooftop, but it wasn’t three! This must be progress.
2. Tonight marks the last gasp of Lebron as a Cav. Even if I am wrong about that, I know for certain they cannot win a game on the road to bring the series back to Cleveland. I also recognize that Cleveland traded for a number of players which they can ‘money ball’ a franchise around until their cheapskate, racist, unapologetic, and above all else entitled owner can draft a player with the number one pick a la Philly. I don’t trust that process and no self respecting fan should. Cleveland had their moment. Akron’s favorite son did his duty and now he’s off to… hell, I don’t know where he is going. He loves him some Cp3, so maybe he goes to Houston and helps get another title. If the Rockets had Lebron in a passing role (Harden is best with the ball in his hands) they would rip down the Warriors–no question. Lebron already said he has nothing left to prove and I believe him. I believe the world believes him. I believe he believes it too. At this point, he’s playing for fun.

I don’t have a regularly scheduled gaming column, but a few days ago Trevor Noah dropped a Fortnite joke on one of the most celebrated daily comedy shows in the nation and I thought, ‘okay, I gotta say something.’

This is that something.

Fortnite represents the latest reach from the realms of cyberspace into the meatspace mainstream. In the gamer world youtube and twitch replace CNN and Fox News. Game Informer is the NYT of it’s genre. Channels like Syfy are already reaching out by airing reality tv shows centered around gamers and occasionally dropping one-off airings of Street fighter tournaments. Gaming is here. Gaming has always been here, but it has been avoidable, fringe, even juvenile. It is no less these things for the majority of mainstreamers, but the so-called fringe is getting bigger. At this exact moment there are close to 94,000 viewers watching livestreams of Fortnite battles. There are even more, 147,000+ watching livestreams of Realms Royale–a game I never even heard of until this moment (it looks pretty dope though). 105,000 of those people are watching one guy, Ninja, play the game.

Ninja is their Lebron. The 27 year old Tyler Blevins has captured the hearts and streams of most gamers out there. He topped out at 667,000 concurrent viewers once. They were watching him play a freaking video game! So, he has all the sponsorships and even has the prefunctory trophy wife. Yes, that line sounds sexist, but it is meant to showcase the similarities between the gaming world and the sports world. They are plentiful. In truth, the gaming world might be more sponsor friendly, because the gamers are watching and listening for tips. The gamers think they can be Ninja. The sports buffs know they are not Lebron.

Sitting here and taking in a Bud Light and a meal before I head home. This young week has already been long and enlightening in many ways. I’ve gone through relationship struggles, living arrangement conversations, short and long term planning complications, and a legit stall out in the writing process driven by little more than a bad attitude about putting my butt in the chair. I am learning a tremendous amount about who I am and the new process that I need to enact in this, the second half of my existence.

 

The idea of existence is very peculiar. Are we nothing more than memory and action romanticized through the understood power of the subconscious mind? We apply a certain level of exceptionalism to humanity, claiming a soul that bugs do not share. I have reached a point where I accept the not knowing what is next—even acquiesce to the possibility of darkness and not knowing. Now I am focused on being around and healthy as long as possible and appreciating the iterative process of daily living and what experiences may come each and every day.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I think most people would be surprised at how little professional athletes actually see of the tremendous salaries they are given. The thought struck me as I watched a commercial depicting ARod trying to choose the direction between the dugout and the pressbox in an ESPN commercial. I thought, ‘Why the hell is this guy working?’ In truth he is likely bored—Baseball contracts pay out far more often than other sports, but it did get me thinking about those other sports and the shiny new contracts NFL rookies are getting right now.
2. Yes, I am broke and thinking about how life would be different if I’d made better choices and handled my money right. I didn’t, obviously, and here we are.

Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.

Shakespeare is everywhere. He is in the fabric and phrasing of what we think and do each day. He is, in many senses, the culture’s OG. He–more specifically his historic and lasting phrasing– is also the inspiration for today’s blog.

I am watching my kids go through a major change. This has a lot to do with the shift in living conditions, but it has more to do with how their personalities are morphing as they age. All three are very different and separate creatures with ideas and personalities that do not necessarily gel. They don’t even get along terribly well once disagreement strikes. Disagreement strikes all the time, because these three boys are about mental dominance over each other. They want to be right and they want to be right first. I used to think, egotistically, that this was about vying for my attention and affections. I believe now that it is more about patterns of behavior that have not been corrected (leading them to think that this behavior is simply how it is), as well as a need to escape from each other’s shadows and cast one of their own.

It is a tough thing to live with boys who could be cooperative and wonderful but instead spend the majority of their energies being competitive in every possible way. I love competition and have created specific areas for that intra-family scuffling. We have Beyblade (houseofbeys.com) and board games, and several video games. Maybe we have too much competitive energy between each other and not enough outside competition.

As a result of these behaviors my boys are starting to become very mean. I am starting to get very upset about the status quo.

I spent a bit of time last night starting to work on my June calendar. I appear to have my boys for most of the rest of the month–only not having them 6 out of the remaining 25 days. I’m transitioning, in this time period, to a state of being where they can get along without me. No, I’m not dying or moving away. I am likely moving and in that shift of life and lifestyle there is going to be more people in the house and less of their normal routine in play. In other words, they need to grow as we grow. They also, more basically, need to realize that despite me being around a lot more this month I still have a ton of work that needs doing and cannot play all of the time.

I ought to give my boys some credit. While I act like they are on me all of the time, the truth is they’re about that life roughly half the time. They spend a great deal of time focused on playing fortnite or other games by themselves or having a ton of kids over to run around with them. During these times I remain almost entirely uninvolved. However, the basic facts are such: If they don’t have anything going on they expect me to be there to help them have something going on. What I need to do moving forward is to set clear balance lines and help them understand that I’m not the fall back plan. They gotta learn how to fend for themselves outside of video games.

Of course, it is not a bad thing to have my kids want to hang with me. I greatly appreciate that part of my day and my life. I also appreciate having time to hang with my partner and to write. All of these things need to find balance moving forward. Only time will tell how that goes.

Some Thoughts:

1. Despite the overwhelming power of the Warriors Basketball Franchise and the open fact that Lebron’s #2 is more like the Warriors #4, the games have been close. The games have been altered by some really bad calls and that sort of thing got in the head of an already deflated Cavs team that appeared to phone in Game 2. Now they are going home for game 3 and I have every expectation of a Cavs win. If it is a blowout then we have a series. If not, we go 6.

I’ve spent a large portion of my life talking about the things I want to do, starting them, and never finishing them. I started being a football player, faced adversity, faded out. Twice. I’ve started more novels and stories than I can remember, finishing maybe a 1oth of what I started and leaving some of the really really good stuff undone. It all corresponds to the pattern of being able to say, “I can do this, but is it really worth the effort it is going to take if I already know that I can? Who am I doing this for anyhow? What is it truly worth?” All of this is accurate in terms of how I think, but there is also this line from Atlanta that resonates every single day. I don’t want to be, “someone everybody knew was smart, but ended being a know-it-all fuck up jay that just let shit happen to him.”

Yet here we are on the day of my twenty-five year high school reunion and I’m sitting in a dusty desert suburb likened to the worst parts of New Jersey with little to show for my life and even less to project for my future. Why? Because I haven’t done shit and I’ve let a lot of shit happen to me.

Yet in the driver’s seat what I want seems so simple and so present and so occluded by real life as to seem impossible to actually achieve. When I started teaching I was dumbfounded by the way professors used language and behaved. It wasn’t that they behaved badly but it felt as though they had no real understanding or attachment to the students and the real world those students came from. It was like being in a room full of doctors who refer to a leg in the specifics of the bones composing the leg but never see the leg and its holistic function and role as part of the body itself. Indeed, perhaps it requires new eyes or the ability to step back to see it.

What I want is to be able to spend several hours a day just being alone with my partner, a few hours with my kids and family, an hour on my own just gaming and listening to books, and two to four hours in the lab writing. That’s it.

Yet that is a huge amount to accomplish.

I have nothing to say this evening, but I also have ten minutes of space I am required to fill. So, here we are. I’m learning a lot about my likes and my dislikes. I am also learning a lot about comfort levels and how people behave differently depending on who they are around. This has become an important part of my life in the short term and a guiding influence of what goes on moving forward.

Understanding how people think and act really helps to determine how I am going to live my life moving forward.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am probably moving soon. A year at the far end. I’m leaving the small town life to join the sprawl life. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the primary reason is a joining of families and the chance to start a new way of living.

Lebron James just had the moment where he realized that all his effort is for nothing. Not only did his team lose spectacularly, but it was his team’s fault. Not his. He called for the ball when it happened. Instead things went the other way.

This is going to be a rant. It already is.

The NBA finals were a joke to begin with. This was David vs. Goliath’s entire family. There are no less than 4 current all stars on the Warriors starting lineup. Any one of them can take over a game. two of them are in the top 5 in the league. So to see Lebron’s Cavs with a tie and a chance to go up by a free throw with 4.7 on the clock was amazing. Lebron had already scored 50 points, so he did his part. All his team had to do was either hit a free throw or grab a rebound and either put it back up or get fouled. JR Smith did neither. What he did do was dribble around until the clock ran out, forcing overtime. Why? I have no earthly idea. Apparently he didn’t know they were tied. Apparently he was dribbling to half court to call a timeout. He’s said both reasons, though the first was said in the heat of the moment and the second makes absolutely no sense. None of this does. How a team with (let’s be real) mediocre talent + the world’s greatest gets to a tie in the finals ON THE ROAD only to lose to nonsense is beyond me. JR’s gaff is unforgivable, but there were other issues at play.

Ask Houston about how the refs call games in GS. At one point they called a charge on Kevin Durant, went to the video to see if Lebron was inside the circle (which it was evident before they even went to film that he wasn’t) and decided to take away the call and call him for a foul instead. That resulted in a 3 point turn around which led to the scenario where JR Smith acted a fool. In other words, the refs clearly and egregiously handed the Warriors a win when the team was against the ropes. It was like a boxing ref stepping in because a fighter was actually getting hit. Utter nonsense.

I’m about done with this noise. I’m about done with this blog for today. One wish list item though: Best case scenario: Klay Thompson and Lebron James walk away from their teams to join forced in NYC and win three straight before both retire in style. This seems unlikely, but the combo of those two with Porzingis would be lethal. Just find two big men to board and clear the lane.

Background noise is becoming more important to me by the sitting. Lately I’ve been listening to rain as a sort of ASMR-styled stimulation to the ‘ol parietal-occipital linkup. Rain does it for me the way being under a waterfall allows me to shut off the non-vital thinking functions and just meditate or focus on a singular thought/situation. With the pleasant version of rain (a smattering of light thunder and  rainfall that is more ‘wet the road’ than ‘flood the road’) I hone in on the problem and get down to business.

This is my way of saying I was productive today.

It felt really good. I feel like more production lies in my path, because I love what I do. Even when I am not loving the piece I am writing, I am loving the act of writing and puzzling through the difficult stages of that process. There is no better high than to hit that smooth stretch where the words just come out of you. It reminds me of riding on a dirt road and then suddenly being on blacktop and flying like heretofor impossible speed and smoothness was just unlocked. As I said, even if it isn’t the project I’m excited about, the moment I get going is the best feeling in the world.