Month: September 2018

Over the last few weeks I’ve been giving serious thought to the ‘whys’ behind my continuing to put my kids in youth sports. I could be saving a lot of money. I could be creating a lifestyle where they have very different goals and are acculturated to very different interests. Instead we live a culture of sports and games and above all, leisure. But is is really leisure or is it preparation for the next level? Why are we doing this? Where do I think this is going to top out?

My eldest is a freshman in high school and playing freshman football. He is on the team, at practice, but has not seen the field since the first game. Even that action was purely mop up duty–two snaps at WR on obvious run downs. He is not a part of the game plan or anything. He is also not interested in coming back next year. That is my fault. I have not cultivated a culture in which my kids are used to sitting behind other players, working but not playing. They’ve been great atheletes their entire lives–at the level and in the grouping they play. Now, in his first exposure to a 6A level system, he is ready to call it quits. He’s acting like I did in college and it is killing me. It is making me think long and hard about what I am doing and what it is I am conditioning my kids to do. 

I want them to be atheletes. I want them to use their physical skills to give them that financial advantage in life. I need to show them the reality of that path and remind them that if they want that–if they think they have the ability to get there–then there is going to be hard work and sacrifice alongside that fun. Maybe you don’t play so much. Maybe you have a lot to prove in practice. Above all else, you need to continue to find ways to get better and not presume you are already on top. 

That is essentially everything you need to know about the next ten minutes of my life. I was fast asleep attempting to watch The Good Place when I woke and realized that I hadn’t yet blogged. So, here we are. 

To start, The Good Place is hard at work attempting to be relevant. I find that the story overall is less interesting than the first season, because the reveal at the end was so stunning and fun that the second season is struggling to live up to it. I also find the idea of eternity quite befuddling, so that is a trip within itself.

Moving on, I did focus a lot on professional football today. Specifically, I focused on my new darlings, The Browns, and my classics, The New York Giants. One lost and the other tied. Yep, the G-men dropped one and looked pretty solid doing it. If not for the ineptitude of the right tackle, I would be talking Super Bowl chances right now. However, I still think they have a chance to be successful. I felt Eli was very good for the most part and the receiving corps was solid as well. That RT problem is a real weakness and teams will scheme to target the dude. 

But enough of that. Part of the day was recovery from my eldest’s first real high school sleepover. It was everything my old sleepovers were about and it was totally cool to be on the other side of that wall and watching my kids enjoy that. 

In a sense this has become a sprawling download of what went on in my mind over the course of sunday and I feel like it worked. I was able to just type and not think and let the words work themselves out on the page. It is not Shakespeare but it is progress. It has been a long time since writing came from that place of flow and this bit of stuff here really feels that way. It is not the hurried, ‘hold on the words’ of a fleeting idea I need to jot down fast. It is the sink turned on just a little bit so the water trickles out and the writing happens. A lot of it I suppose. The new interface isn’t much for word count, but this sure does feel good.

Some Thoughts:

1. Love is important. 
2. I do not love transition day fatigue.

I don’t think I am going to buy a bunch of games this year. Lately games like fortnite have dominated the play cycle. I personally spend $10 or less on the game every few months, which is small compared to the $60 a shot for most stand alone games. I haven’t bought many thus far, though I set aside cash for the purchase. Games are becoming more like the free apps that create so much excitement on phones. You don’t pay to get in, but once you have it you find out that in-app/in-game purchases seem too appealing to pass up. Thanks to in-game purchases Fornite has made over a billion dollars from last October through this July (forbes).

When I was playing the Battlefield V beta yesterday I recognized that I would not spend a lot of time on the game. I wouldn’t spend $60+ worth of time on the game for certain and especially not with Madden being so engaging. Why buy that game when I can get my shoot em up fix for free with Fortnite?

This is the painful reality that gaming is facing at this juncture. We expect free in our society. If you are not willing to provide at least the illusion of something for nothing then you are not going to get the fan buzz you need in order to be profitable. Fortnite will fade away and something else will come along, but the model will remain. We are a culture of privilege and expectation and what we expect is everything for nothing.

Some Thoughts:

1. I need a haircut,
2. Phoenix AYF is slipping. It is Saturday morning–gameday–and the week’s schedule has not been publicly posted. They created that expectation, so they need to live up to the expectations–especially for the amount of money we are paying in order to be a part of this league.
3. Youth sports are expensive and time consuming. Football is among the worst, but soccer… I am glad we got out on the one hand and sad my kids never had the ability to gain the skills they need in order to play at the high school level. The mid-kid especially has such natural talent, but I feel like he is not going to make a high school squad, because he just doesn’t have the training.

I spent a significant portion of my younger life playing role playing games. I started by making up games and scenarios late into the afternoon while I waited for someone in the neighborhood to play with. It continued into college with an ever shrinking cast of friends who enjoyed the practice of spoken imagination. We told stories and acted out those stories, each of us in the role of a different character, and through those eyes we saw worlds shaped by our own creativity. I’ve written about those worlds and characters for years. Since the play has diminished the creation too has diminished. I used to imagine new realms every week. Now it has been a year since I considered what a world different from that which I already know and write about could look like. 

To say there is a connection between play and writing is to say there is a connection between exercise and good health. One enables the other in a very basic way. When you exercise the ability to create you become better capable of creation; moreover, you develop and continue the habit of creation. It is a habit of mind no different than questioning or gathering data. It is a habit of mind that I have long been conditioned to ignore. Creativity never held value in my family. Even through marriage creativity continued to be defined as a distraction from the more pertinent habits of mind. You could say I have always resisted through creativity. 

Yet, now I find myself in a void of sorts. 

I don’t stimulate creativity in my home or in my family. I don’t lead a culture of creativity. In many ways I do my work in secret; locked away in my office with the work product –even the work process–never shared with my kids. I let them rot on video games that inspire nothing more than repetitive button mashing in memorizable environments which offer nothing more exciting than the satisfaction of reaching a point and a product before someone else does. Where I am made of creativity I give them cold, hard math. 

Understanding is always my first step in growing. So, let us see where it goes from here.

I heard a very old clip of an Issac Asimov interview today in which he talked about how people who do the same job over and again for years will experience a great deal of confusion and loss when that simple job is automated and they are now expected to do something knew. Asimov suggested those people would not be able to do something new/use their creativity, because it would have been beaten out of them by the repetition. This started me thinking about the students I deal with regularly and the kids who I am raising who too strive to do the bare minimum and strive –i mean strive– not to engage their creativity unless they actually are required to do so. 

I’m worried about how much of our society is being reduced to a sort of minimum qual stupor. It feels more and more like we are being conditioned to be docile consumers whose only real sense of choice is Android or Iphone and the financial/social stratifying implications that come with it. We are raising a generation of NPCs–drones that seem uninterested in independent thought or function. 

This idea has been brewing for some time. Even when I think about my kids and my partners kids I think of the majority of them as being developed to be cogs in the machine–NPCs who will grow up to perform a designated roll vs. push or pull human society in a direction they desire. 

I feel like people, for the most part, want to be led. Leaders are rare. Vocal leaders are less rare, but true leadership is based on ideas and those are extremely rare. I don’t know how to better cultivate that in the classroom or the home, but I am starting to suspect it is already too late.

So, Evan Engram is cleared to go on Sunday. This pleases me to no end, because I am an avid believer in the power of the NY Giants and their still-suspect line. I believe that an intact Giants team can build steam over the first few weeks in the face of a tough schedule. It goes Jags, Cowboys, Texans, Saints, Panthers, Eagles. Basically, it is every team expected to be a real playoff threat and, oh yeah, the defending champs. 

In spite of a rash of injuries the weakened Giants were in a number of those games last year and they are going to be quite a bit better this year. Odell is growing up and his WR squad is dangerous. 

I’m excited about the weekend because I will finally get to watch a live game. It hasn’t happened in some time. 

I’ve completely fallen off my diet plan. I buried my face in a bag of chips right before this blog as a sort of sad nod to the relapse. In truth, I have fully relapsed. I have been eating deserts far too often and the other morning I had pancakes. Once in a while the sweet, syrup-slathered bread circles might be alright, but I think they helped push me back towards failure. 

I gained two pounds over the last two days. In contrast I’d been losing a pound a week prior to relapse. This is a two week setback and reflective of how easy it can be to lose your way in anything and everything. This is a setback and not a failure. Still, I recognize how easy it can be to fail. I realize that there are only so many setbacks a person gets in life before they cannot do it any longer. 

I haven’t failed at this or at writing yet. I have failures in my past and perhaps in my future as well, but I get to chose where I am willing to fail. I’m not willing to fail at this.

Life is cycle and routine. I am trying to invest in a routine that is productive vs. destructive and the outcome thus far has been subpar. I’m probably being generous. The truth is I am struggling with the concept of living two lives. In one I am the dad-vehicle moving kids to and from practices and finding time between trips to feed kids, handle homework, and perhaps even take a break of an hour or two to play games to stay sane. 

On the other three days of the week I am a quiet family man, present and involved and benefited with a beautiful partnership and kids who do their own thing for the most part, but make time to hang with us parents a bit. 

Neither existence is what I want or what makes me happy entirely. I think I am looking for a compromise or balance between the two. I am looking for help on the one side and more time to do the things I love on the other. In both areas I am looking for a comfortable space/time to write. In essence I don’t write on the hectic life days save for the Friday Write Day and 10 minutes a day of this stuff. It is not ideal.

Solutions? Nothing yet. I’ve been dealing with it for a while and searching for that elusive and oft destructive acceptance. In some cases acceptance is wonderful, but in this case it encourages me to engage in a lifestyle that is not sustainable. I need to find one that is.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am worried about my diet. I’m out of ketosis and I noticed that I am back up to 220 after hitting 218. That low my reflect a natural plateau, which means I need to do more than negative caloric intake to go down further. That more is clearly exercise, and I have not made time in my life for such a practice. 

It is cut day in the NFL as the rosters trim to 53. I won’t go into all of the teams, but I will talk about some that have me interested in learning more. The Jets traded Bridgewater in order to make space for the QB of the future. The USC product Sam Darnold has no future in my book. He’s a limited game manager who strongly leans to one side of the field for completions. Can he get better? Yes. Will he behind this line and this offense? No. He’s headed for Paxton Lynch land. More specifically, he is headed towards failure in slow motion. 

Jets be damned. I’m a Giants fan first. After watching all of the pre-season work I have the answer to the Davis Webb question. No. That is not the guy up next. In fact, he just got cut. This means the Giants will be looking for a QB either through free agency or, more likely, through the draft process next year. They need someone to push the new kid for a roster spot just like the new kid pushed Webb off the roster. 

Actually, Webb pushed himself. He was inaccurate in pre-season and while the new line isn’t as strong as we all would hope, they protected him long enough to deliver good throws. However, no good throws emerged. With any luck he will survive cuts and reemerge on the practice squad with the humility to play harder and earn his starting nod. What a storyline that would be.

The NFL is all stories and youth football tries to model itself in that vein. I say this because I just became aware of a secret meeting of coaches in the cadet ranks where my youngest plays. The idea of the meeting was to review film of a game against my son’s team and for the coaches to come together to find a way to stop their offense. They supposedly met for six hours with the top coaching staffs in the division working together to learn how to beat us. This is too much. This is hilarity. Hopefully it doesn’t work, because now we are in a sense the underdogs and that, my readers, is a story. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Youth football is barely noteworthy, but I am pleased to see my boys winning games. 2-0 and 1-0 respectively and they still have so much to learn. It is a happy Sunday when you win Saturday. Of course, they are kids so the losing only sticks for a hot second.

Writing is a habit. What happens when you don’t stick to the habit is that you waste a lot of time trying to ramp back up to the pace you need to be at in order to be productive. My plan has been to set aside a chunk of time to write. I have been marginally successful at times and not successful at all as of late. In truth, I have been sucking at being a constant writer. I’m still working on it.

No, these ten minutes aren’t enough.

They count. They serve as a warmup of sorts or a download at the end of the day or a rant on the occasion such things are called for (I have a great deal to say about the way our government behaves in regards to political polarization). However, I am talking about two good hours of butt in chair. It isn’t professional level time, but it is a good and healthy chunk of effort that serves to get me going. 

Some Thoughts:

1. First time in a while that I have been truly ravenous. I ate everything in sight when I came home and it all tasted amazing. That being said, I cheated on my diet a bit. While a lot of what I ate was salad, I did inhale a bunch of chocolate and potato chips as well. Balance?
2. College football is back and I find that I really enjoy the game at this level again. I started to not care for a while and now I am back. Iowa State is back and up 7-0 on the Jackrabbits, but that game is going to need to be rescheduled. Weather got really bad fast. 
3.