Month: August 2018

Sitting here at the loading screen for Hard Knocks and considering my relationship with the manufactured reality of football vs. the true reality. Hard Knocks is reality tv designed to make a story of rookies and veterans returning to their jobs. I like it. I like the storylines. I’ve read and watched enough narratives to recognize how these things will go and what it is I get out of them. This is going to be about returning heroes, new hope, and an underdog. All of them are that way and most stories contain trace elements of those pieces. Still, that I find more interest in the unreality than the reality does say a bunch about my relationship with the sport. The reality is a disappointment. Two of my three boys are finding themselves in the path of such disappointment. For the eldest, this comes in the form of realizing you are not good enough, fast enough, or big enough to play (and actually get PT) at the Tier One High School level. For the mid kid it is recognizing that what you were sold as an all star organization is really just bad pre-game coaching and empty promises.

I will say, I am still debating offering some (albeit unwanted) advice to the mid-kid’s coaching staff. I am good at seeing things from a distance (Quality Control) and I can see how a few well-placed moves can really open up the opportunities and play into the skillsets of the talent that team has. I can offer up 6 plays that are based around the idea of what they say they want to do, but in a fashion that works with a lot of what they have already put together. 

I don’t know that I should.

I want to. I want to drop data and move along, and maybe that is just me pretending–injecting the elements of unreality into the reality the kids face in order to help things meet in the middle. Or maybe I just think I know better. 

This is going to be a rant. Well, it is going to be several. I want to start with the idea of privilege. I’m not even talking about racial privilege or economic privilege yet. No, this is positional. I just had a rather stupid and pointed text exchange with my son’s high school head coach, because –late yesterday–the ‘team mom’ (I hate that damn term) sent out a request for someone to film the game. I offered to help. She explained that they would provide the camera and a booster would contact me to let me know more information. This evening I get a text from the coach asking how we can connect and he can get the film. He explains that since I never contacted him he assumes I already had a camera and handled things. I did not. By the end of the exchange it was made clear that I was somehow to blame here. That, dear reader, is leadership privilege. Or as my college buddies were fond of saying, “shit always rolls downhill.” He decided he could blame me for the situation and remain faultless. As he is the defacto boss of that world and completely controls my boy’s playing time, I cannot do anything. In truth, anything I do wouldn’t matter. He matters in that world and I do not. So, I straight up am not going to engage. Ever again. 

Of course, no discussion of privilege can go by without talking about the idea of race. I was thinking about the latest iteration of the Daily Show as it is hosted by Trevor Noah. I often find myself thinking, ‘Wow, he has a lot of black guests.’ It is a noticeable thing. However that right there is the very evidence of privilege. When I see other talk show hosts and what not have a lot of white guests I never even think about it. Why? Because that’s how it is, that is how it always has been, so it is something that is different from the accepted normal seems strange or at least noticeable. 

I can’t wait to the time when I don’t think that it’s weird that someone has a lot of black guests

Settling in to write for the day. I have a few projects that I am working on and I am also thinking about what kind of teaching I want to focus on now that I don’t have a novel writing class to work with. Odds are I am just going to refocus entirely on writing. The slow restart of the idea archive has really helped me recognize that I still have a little bit going on up there and I want to harvest what I have and keep using what is happening in the world around me to replant the seeds of creativity. 

44 days into this process I am started to see the remake as something actually possible and I am getting excited about the person I am becoming. This is me moving forward and not trying to be a version of who I was. Always Forward. 

Some Thoughts:

1. The Phantom Time hypothesis has me thinking. It is based on an academic paper suggesting that the formation of the Gregorian Calendar got things wrong–perhaps on purpose. If the research is right, then we aren’t actually living in 2018 but at some point in the 1700’s. I’m going to need to use this for class…

The preview text in the box said, ‘write your story’ and I felt it was an invitation. I need to write my story. I have lost count of how many blogs I wrote talking about how I need to write my story and to write stories in general. Writer’s Day was about that. The days in general have been adding up to a strange sort of chorus of write, write, write. 

Yet I am not writing with the courage and certainty of a man who has done this for as many years as I have.

Yet I am writing.

Maybe it is best to start with that. Yesterday an idea fell out of me and it felt very good. Tomorrow I am going to complete a project and then move on to a story I am slowly becoming excited about writing. This is a good moment and step in the process. It feels like things are starting to come together for me in so many ways. It feels like the universe might want to knock me off track, but I am going to flow with the energies of the universe and turn this life back towards something special.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out you have to click Publish twice to publish in Gutenberg. I haven’t decided that I like the interface yet, but I can tell you it is making me feel like I am forgetting to blog or just losing my mind. When I sat down to write this tonight I saw that I had not published yesterday. I wrote. It did not publish. This is not acceptable.

The plan is to make sure there are at least 3 out of seven days in the week where I get real writing done. Eventually that should shift to 7, but baby steps. Three means that I am devoting no less than two hour chunks to the craft. The plan, as it stands, is to start with this ten minutes of freewriting and then go directly into some creative, well, creation. I want to repopulate my idea archive. Now as a professional there is a good deal of that archive I need to keep to myself. I don’t want to give all my story ideas away. I want to be able to write some of them. I also want to be able to give some of them away, so there is a good chance I will be repopulating the archive here on this site. Expect a new page that details such things. I’ll work out the specifics within the wordpress code. 

Writing is the act of creation. It is more than just accessing our personal histories and talking about what did happen and what could have happened. Writing goes beyond that and becomes the thing that reflects our inner desires and fears. It is, to me, a kind of religion. I’m not trying to hype myself up here, just admitting that it is a fundamental part of my core being and despite a very hectic life (in need of organization and activity reduction) I have no expectation of living and not writing. I don’t believe I could or would exist peacefully in such a state. Even now when the ideas seem like the lone protozoa in an ocean of vapid thought, I know there is a need to populate my hours and thus my life with words and stories and in that fashion to recolonize the ocean of thoughts towards a goal of creation. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Yep, I am calling off the fantasy football. I’m not quite ready for the workload. 
2. Speaking of workload, I will not be teaching a novel writing class for the first semester in almost a decade.  There may have been another similar gap when I first started my new school seven years ago, but I do not remember it. This is a poor development that demands attention. I love teaching writers. It fuels me to see their passion and ideas flourish on the page. 

Here is something I learned about me tonight: I’m not very good at academic code switching. See, there is a language that is used in the world of academia that might in some way point towards this idea of a ‘deeper understanding’ of the general communication concepts. There are words like synthesis and we perform careful examination of the most minute bits of the process of writing and give those stages names and then we create names for the names and the naming. After a while it is easy to forget that you are talking about someone sitting down to write an essay. 

I cannot do it. I tried. I sat through two meetings where it was a lot of language I struggle to understand (both in content and relevancy). Eventually I broke and said something real. That real was retranslated into teacher speak by one of my colleagues. The message, in its new form, was lost to me.

I believe in teaching writing as a form of self expression and argument. I tell students that they need to realize the page is their medium to transmit ideas from their minds directly into someone else’s. That’s it. There are ways to do it and several facets I break down, but the general idea behind the craft is, ‘I want you to experience what I am feeling and how I am feeling it.’ 

It doesn’t need the excess terminology to give it weight. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Presently experiencing tech difficulties with this crap server. Who knows when this will post…

I am starting a new routine with assigned writing hours. I want to lead off that time with the blog. This is part of a larger conversation where I am trying to make larger changes and be both supportive and be fully in one part of that two world system I wrote about yesterday. I don’t think it is a system that is going to work long term. Part of that is not having a place that really feels like it is my own in one space and part of it is that disconnect from the electronic world (no recorded shows, no PS4 saves, No x-box, No rain background to write to). All of this could be a very good thing in the long run, because it forces me away from the things that make me comfortable. Also, it forces me away from the things that make me comfortable, which by default leaves me feeling uncomfortable. There is a lot I still need to figure out about fitting in.

I think the term fitting in is the wrong way to even go about considering the situation. She tries to fit in to my thing. I try to fit into hers. When are we ever actually making something new that accommodates the needs and desires of both parties to the best of our ability? She built a home that feels like her. I built a home (although falling apart from desperate neglect) that feels like me (perhaps desperate neglect is me). Neither space feels like us. 

This is popping up in my head because there are a couple of days a week I’ll be sinking in here in the same way there are a couple of days a week I get to sink into the other space. The difference is that when I sink into the other space I am constantly trying to balance catching up on me time, (which means playing games by myself and watching my recorded shows), catching up on the housework (gotta cook, clean, get rid of a bunch of excess stuff, organizing bookshelves, figuring out how to neatly store the excess crap I still have, trying to maintain the fun spaces–the gaming equipment), and raising three boys (getting them to and from where they need to be, spending quality time with them just hearing about their lives, helping with homework).

The combination of such things runs me ragged.

I waited until the evening to blog, because I have nothing to say. Really. I could mention that the ‘off day’ blog was written with the same date slug as the previous day, showing how off I was. I’ll mention that I played Cranium for a few hours and it wasn’t until the end of the game that my brain really started humming. I just don’t feel entirely there today. I feel like I am living in a shell of a person and watching the lives of living breathing people around me without any real life force of my own to speak of. 

Part of it is living between two homes and having what feels like two distinct lives in these spaces–neither of which seem to actually belong to me. Nearly every day feels like a transition day. I’m falling out of one set of responsibilities and behaviors into another. In both I feel like I am playing a lot of catch up and trying to both meet expectations and to get a foothold on feeling comfortable and like I can actually do my own thing without feeling like I am neglecting something or someone else. It is a hard way of being and not a life I intend to live for years and years.

In many ways I’ve lost active control of my household and creating that sense of family there, so that space is largely about catch up, clean up, and find a few good moments of alone time to do the things I enjoy. My second household hums along smoothly and requires little from me, but as such I feel out of place and more than a little useless. Both households leave me unsettled and I need to figure out how to settle in.

Some Thoughts:

1. I might cancel the fantasy league for this year. A lot of work on my end that I just don’t have the time for.

My Madden skills have deteriorated, so I can actually write this piece as though I am someone who isn’t that good at the game. I can also write this piece as someone who has lived on the verge of dumping the game altogether. As both people I can firmly say that Madden 19 is a solid addition to the Franchise Mode of games and to regular gameplay that can puts more power in the hands of the user to create whatever kind of experience they want.

Madden 19 is a good game. The graphics have improved. The sound, while not excellent, boasts a soundtrack that is in keeping with past editions which offer breakout musical songs and stars. Gameplay, the key portion of a gaming experience, is improved in some ways.

Graphically, Madden builds on previous editions to provide a visual experience that is very compelling. It has holes. The faces for created players are generally ugly and not at all interesting. They need to triple to choices at the very least for every skin tone. That being said, the interface graphics are improved and well organized, offering a better visual experience–especially in Franchise. There is room to grow here, but I like what I see.

The sound is not as good. Every hit sounds the same, resonating with the same bony crunch if you hit someone in the ankle or the head. The non-diegetic sounds are where the game constantly makes it’s mark. The score here is outstanding. It is good enough that I found myself bopping my head to a host of artists I generally don’t like (Pusha T, Cardi B, Creek Boyz). The beats fit with the game, and that makes the experience all the better. If you’ve ever been at a party or concert and felt the music was somehow better because of where it was being played, you’ll appreciate the work here.

Gameplay deserves a blog of its own and I know I will give it the attention it deserves. I’m jaded, because I have been losing a lot of games here on the tail end of 18–to the point that I deleted that junk from my PS4. More loosing with 19, but I believe there is hope, and a slew of new moves to unleash on the CPU and my kids.

I’m just cracking the shell of Madden 19 and I am having a great time so far. More info as things progress.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I wrote this under the digital sound of rain and my flow was much better. I need that soothing white noise. Or at least I do better with it.

Ever have one of those nights where nothing seems to work as it should? I am experiencing a ton of that. There are specific internet glitches–mostly games and videos–holding my kids back from playing the games they want. Meanwhile, I seem to be just a bit off as well. It feels like I am literally one key off from every key I try to type. I’m not going to take an error count tonight, but suffice to say that this is more than metaphorical offness.

I think I am going to call it a realignment. It is going around too. All of my kids have said something about being not quite right today and my partner is certainly feeling it. This is a strange week and even stranger weekend. Something is in the air. I suspect it is the weather fallout from the California fires, but who really knows?