Month: September 2018

The best writers are thinking about their work and thinking about the things that inspire their work all of the time. I don’t know this to be true, but I believe this to be true. Why? Because I’m not one of the best writer, and I don’t spend a majority of my time thinking about my work. In truth, I think about my work when I am working and, lately, only rarely when I am not working. There are reasons behind this too numerous to list at this point, but I still believe that thinking about your story–falling into that world–is how to become a good writer. In fact, it might be the biggest part of how to become a great writer.

Consider where your thoughts go. The universe is teeming with interesting things happening, which, for the purposes of this ten minute exercise, we will be referring to as distractions. These come in all shapes and sizes. Instagram is a clearing house of distractions following in the footsteps of Facebook, Youtube, and of course, TV. My distractions are physical and virtual. I get distracted by video games (though less so than I have in the past. I think I am searching for story in video games and finding very little). More often than not I get distracted by the lives of my kids and the sports that they are involved in. Lately I am consumed by the littlest kid’s football team. I’m thinking about them on a daily basis and reflecting on the relative powerlessness to help them be successful by reaching out into the ether on a regular basis to draw in information to be helpful. 

This is time that should be spent writing. This is time that should at the least be spent thinking about the writing and being as excited about it as I am about him winning games. 

I’m glad this is a waiver day, because I’m sick and don’t have a lot of energy or brain cycles to devote to anything deeper than calling a few games. Not that I get this right all too often. I only called 6 games correctly this past week, further cementing the notion that I don’t entirely know what I am talking about just yet. I haven’t followed these things with the fervor of past years, and it shows. This week is being approached with the same lack of research but is informed by intuition based on two weeks of game film.

CLE over NYJ
Despite throwing picks every week and having a legit supporting cast, Darnold is sucking. Sure, he threw for 300+ and fired up a bit of a comeback, but he was playing against the Dolphins and a mediocre pass rush. Darnold is not good. He is not the ‘real deal‘ and I am tired of the media pundits trying to cover for their failed expectations by saying that he is. How much are you willing to forgive? He has a far better line than Eli Manning and is playing a lower caliber of team and still poops the bed daily. I know he’s young, but he ought to be past the need for diapers. CLE gets this one because of Sam and because Zane G. got fired.

NO over ATL
Shoot out in Georgia. I think the Saints are putting something together. I also think the Falcons are entirely overrated. 

Quick Hitters

DEN over BAL
CAR over CIN
TEN over JAX
KC over SF
MIN over BUF
PHI over IND
GB over WAS
SEA over DAL
NE over DET

OAK over MIA
Let me preach for a minute: Gruden is figuring this out. While he hasn’t had (or used) the full Beast Mode, this week he has a chance to be really productive in the power game against a speed team. His game plan is taking time to come together, but week three is about the time such things start to coalesce.

TB over PIT
FitzMagick! I’m a fan of Fitz. I have long enjoyed the way the Highland High product slings the rock around and plays this game. I feel like the team is gelling around the dude and so long as he starts, they’ll keep winning against B-level competition. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Unusual youth football waiver call of the week: My son’s Cardinals over the Sabres. They ought to have a league legal roster (16 kids) by the weekend, which means that this one actually counts. They won last week, but with the roster issues that win was discounted. Now they need to win out for a 4-4 record and a chance to join the top 8 in the playoffs. Three or four teams have practically booked their tickets. The other four play us.

I weighed in at 212.4 prior to the blogging. That’s about 17 lbs less than I was a few weeks ago. I feel like I am still dropping and moving back into a physical shape that I am happy about. More importantly, I feel like I am shedding those tendencies that had me much bigger and still growing.  This pleases me, because losing weight without changing habits means the losses are going to be temporary. I’m trying for lasting change here. I want this second half of life to be an incredible and uplifting experience. When I take my last breath I want to know that I lived well and accomplished something I am personally proud of.

Yeah, I am asking for a hell of a lot out of this slightly used life. I suppose I’m asking for legit memoir content. I want to experience things everyday that are beyond the routine. I want to touch lives and say and do things that matter both to me and those around me. I want more than what I’ve had and more than what I am doing now. 

What am I doing to get there? Writing about it, I suppose. Learning about myself and grinding through these weeks and months with an eye towards possibility. Slowly I am exposing myself to the possibilities of what can be if I put my mind to it.

Some Thoughts:

1. So I learned that my son’s heroic football game is being recorded as a loss. Turns out we didn’t have the players to certify the roster, moving his new team to 0-4. This means they need to win out in order to make the playoffs. Hopefully they can suit up a few more kids in order to be legal, because he gave up a sure thing in order to actually play the positions he wanted to play in the sport.
2. I’ve mostly stayed away from the thoughts as of late. No reason. Just didn’t get there. 

They banished me from the living room because I was watching Family Guy and not doing this. It was the right move. I want to believe that every writer battles with the twin headed viper of distraction and laziness. This is likely less true than I wish it were. Haruki Murakami famously rises at 4 am and writes for 5 or 6 hours followed by a 10k run or a 1500m swim. Honestly, I’d like to watch him do it and then, when he’s finished, punch him in the teeth. It is my way of saying, “Thanks for setting the bar so damn high.”

E.B. White once said (as with Murakami he said such to the famous Paris Review,“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” Indeed he is speaking of the excuse we often claim of not having the proper conditions to write. I used to write on the bus or train coming and going to school. I found any chance, any scrap of paper, any opportunity to put word on page. I wrote so much that it became a way of life. Today other things and thoughts are a way of life. My children and their hobbies dominate my mental. I don’t know how to balance how much I think about their stuff with giving thoughts over to the story world. I want to. 

I want a lot of things that I don’t make enough effort to obtain. I believe that is what passes for laziness. I also feel like that is an excuse. Anyone who wants a thing bad enough should be able to go get it. I have always served as living proof of that. I’ve fought for what I want my entire life. I’ve created the conditions to make it happen. Only now have I arrived at a point where I no longer do that and let defeat seep in like water through the cracks of a door. Still, I cannot quite understand why.

I completely missed out on week one, so the official start of my waiver season comes… quite a bit late. It is just before 7:30 on a Sunday morning and I am trying to get it in before these games get moving. So, here we go.

CAR over ATL
This is an emotion game. The coaches are going to be in the locker room spinning that America’s Team nonsense and I think it is going to work. We over publicized the storm as an overcorrection to what happened in Puerto Rico (let’s hope 3k don’t die here, right?). Carolina wants this one badly. They’ll get it.

LAC over BUF
Buffalo flat out sucks and it is unfortunate. This is the team I grabbed in Madden. I traded or cut the entire offense. Perhaps the ownership ought to do the same.

MIN over GB
I don’t know that Rodgers is going to be able to play–let alone be 100%. No A-aron, no chance. I blame Izod.

CLE over NO
It is time.

NYJ over MIA
I still despise the Darnold pick. I still do not respect it. However, the dude has a decent supporting cast and Miami does not–even on a short week.

Quick Hits:

KC over PIT
PHI over TB
HOU over TEN
IND over WAS
LA over AZ
SEA over CHI
SF over DET

DEN over OAK
This is a revenge game for my favorite punter. He’ll get some chances to hurt the Raiders with field position, but the real issue is the culture. The Raiders are going back to what Gruden made them, but it takes time. It also takes decent receivers. 

NYG over DAL
This is entirely about my love for the G-men. Sort of. The short pass game has been crazy good for the G-men and if they keep up that stout run D, the Cowboys will fall.

I don’t know what to write about tonight. I could talk sports. I could talk about the Cyclones or ASU or GGG v. Canelo 2 or… none of that matters. What does? Leaving a mark, I suppose. The names I just mentioned do that through sport. I acknowledge that sport has supreme meaning to most of the people I interact with in my life. I also acknowledge that those same people largely don’t read–or at least don’t read the kind of stories I produce. I live in two worlds. Maybe more. 

Meanwhile ASU is completely untethered. It always interests me to watch how a team maintains composure. You have to have those players on the roster that can keep everyone together. The same holds true for a classroom or any group situation where there needs to be a positive energy. 

The same holds true for a group of writers and make no mistake: a group of writers is essential to the functioning of a single writer. Basically, we work alone in order to bring something to the table of other writers. 

That is all I got for the night. Saturdays be like that.

Back in the writing groove and it feels amazing. I submerged myself in writing today and, fortunately, lifted my head in time to realize I was late to a meeting. At least I made the meeting. 

It was one of those days where I experienced true separation from the natural world while being immersed in a facsimile of that world. I wrote listening to rain and slipped into the world I was writing about, completely forgetting I didn’t live in it myself. Writing does that to me. I fall into it and connect with something greater than myself. That is what writing is, and I am grateful to fall into it.

Some Thoughts:

1. OSU v. TCU is fixin to be an incredible football matchup. People regularly sleep on the Big 12. They should not.
2. Speaking of TCU, there is another team with an amazing locker room. I’m talking top flight money. That is a locker room that makes you feel like you made it.
3. Predator is going to be awful. I will learn this personally as I will go see this movie. 

My partner noticed, rightly, that I spend a great deal of time lost in thought about the situations my boys get involved with. Football is especially time consuming. This is a way of life that is totally alien to her but is absolutely natural to me. I see it. I wish I had ‘football hours’ where I could contain my thoughts about the situation to a small period of time and then just move on. Instead it bleeds into everything just like everything I think and do bleeds into everything else, leaving my brain a multi-colored rorschach of a situation desperately trying to focus on one thing at a time.

Or, I just gotta get better at not getting sucked in. 

The big issue of the week was my youngest switching football teams three games into the season and by doing so giving a younger team a real chance to compete. Saturday he’ll start for the new team after just 2 hrs of practice and a walkthrough. I’m excited, because he is playing with kids his own age and that seems to always give him an advantage. This could be fun for him and really cool to watch. I think I will get a chance to shoot another video as a result. 

I woke up this morning with a sore ankle and a shitty, self-defeating mood. I started to measure things out in minutes and mistakes, as if suddenly recognizing exactly how much of my life up to this point has been defined by bad decisions. That darkness spread out of me and formed a cloud that sat over my entire household. The boys recognized it right away. How could they miss it? I stormed into their room just a tick after 6 AM, shut the noise fan down and demanded they get dressed and get downstairs for breakfast. Under normal circumstances, being up and ready for breakfast is a good thing, but the darkness had me. I wasn’t yelling or stomping around. In truth I was limping from a badly throbbing ankle whose injury had apparently materialized over the course of the night while I slept.

There were four solid minutes where I hypothesized that I hadn’t slept at all. Instead my body had been hijacked in the middle of the night by someone or something and the injury came as a result of whatever actions my soulless body had been directed to take. Occam’s razor (and a smidge of common sense) won over in the end. I recognized that there is likely a simpler answer to the conundrum. Perhaps cancer. Once the darkness settles, cancer provides a timely answer to all of the big questions.

I moved on. I made breakfast for the boys and settled into a phone-based video game as they ate. I lost. Repeatedly. This did nothing to improve my mood. I considered contacting my partner, but common sense held its ground. I knew if I contacted her then I’d let the darkness out. Then she might let it in.  Instead I held it in. I limited my vocal interaction with the boys and drove them to school. I did finally contact my partner and shed some of the dark on her, but she didn’t respond. She’s brilliant and beautiful and funny (sometimes) and knows when not to engage.

So I came back home and came back here, to the page, where I decided the best course of action was to pour that dark into the page for a solid ten minutes and hope that it is satisfied by my meager offering.

So much of reality is dependent on the attitude we bring to it. This darkness is a part of my reality because I allow it to be. I can change it. I can push it back into the closet of my soul and in that create space for light and happiness. I can create the conditions for my happiness or I can allow the world’s woes to thud against my skin like water falling from a showerhead, washing away my pride, my love for life, and my desires. I don’t wish to be cleansed of those things. I wish to remain dirty with joy and hope and possibility.

I know this was triggered by the recent cycle of failures my kids have faced. I know I see their failures and think, ‘What could I have done differently.’ I also know I cannot do that. Their burdens are their own and I recognize I’ve put them in positions to be successful. They have to work towards that success and create it for themselves. Still, I see my failures reflected in their failures and those moments cleanse me of hope and pride.

Some Thoughts:

1. As I go to post this the problem has been corrected. We online!

I continue to experience intermittent internet failures with the site at a rate higher than before the provider’s purchase by site5. From this I can extrapolate that site5 sucks worse than the previous host. Still, I’m paid up for quite some time that I have to bear it. Bearing it is the family theme for the night. My kids and I are all learning the important lesson of how to put up with both mediocrity and external perceptions of us that impact our ability to function. Even the youngest is facing this reality. In three seasons he’s gone from 1000 yard running back to Left Tackle. This has nothing to do with his play. By all accounts—even those of his present coach—he’s improved dramatically. Yet the way the offense works, he is not going to be in a position to do more than line. In truth, should he stay in this system, he will never do more than play line.

We have to move on. I’ve resisted it for a long time, but now I am going to give in to the real here: He’s a bad fit for the system and his learning has topped out.

All the boys are struggling in the football way. The freshman is riding the bench and is completely discouraged. The pass catcher is running routes like a maniac but hasn’t had one pass thrown his way. In reality, they see him as a running back instead of receiver. They see him as a linebacker more than a corner. Even at this young age all three boys are watching their opportunities narrow to a single point not determined by themselves. It is a rough lesson of life that I do not want to stick. I want them to believe they can do what they want if they try hard enough. I don’t find that to be naive. Instead I find it to be hopeful. That’s been missing in action for a long time.