Month: October 2018

I find writers everywhere. I found a handful today sprinkled amongst my english classes. I found them because they announced themselves and talked about having a passion to write a novel or stories or scripts. They are out there, moving amongst the common folk undetected. These quiet and hidden seekers of story are the ones I need to cultivate if for no better reason than to hear some more good stories and absorb their tales into my own personal zeitgeist. 

The thing I dislike most about this entire process is the recruiting. You’d think it would be the best part, because I get to go meet people and draw them in. However, this is not fun. This is like submitting work for publication and getting no after no after no. Not fun. Instead of smiles I see that fear and doubt well up inside them and spill out in some bland excuse or another. 

Writing can be really scary. It is moreso when you are expecting to be judged. A grade is a judgement. I have to give grades, so I have to judge. 

I worry that I won’t be able to continue the incredible creative writing community that I became a part of here. I hope I can find a way for both of my writing classes to make and continue to share the beautiful art of story.

Some Thoughts:

1. Getting things off my chest helped. The school day was excellent and a reminder that I have a really good life.
2. 
   

I had a handful of things I wanted to write about today ranging from the power and role of story to education and passion. Instead I find myself in front of a keyboard and angry because of the role agenda and coddling play in all facets of life and how whenever that part of life worms its way into my own, things do not go well. 

There is a tendency to assume that because someone has special needs they are necessarily a good person. This is untrue. Having special needs does not determine a person’s personality or ability to manipulate a situation for personal gain. 

I find myself in a situation where I am faced with a person who is like many other people I encounter in day to day life–in that they are trying to get what they want and have no sense of anything beyond their own needs. 

This is a difficult one for me, because I will be seen as the bad guy for doing anything less than supporting and acquiescing to the needs of that specific person. I will not do that and as a result things are not going to go well. I can tell you this: I have learned from this experience that I will not put myself in this situation ever again. 

Some Thoughts:

1. I long for a life where my only work is the creation of stories and the teaching of the process of story.

Back on day 91 I hit the quarter break on this year of change, but I really haven’t fallen into that break and that self reflection/realization until recently. This 3rd iteration of the rule was designed to be a journey into personal understanding about how and why I write as well as how I intend to move forward in my personal and professional life. There have been glimpses of revelation and movement largely lost under the deluge of responsibility (and neglected responsibility) that is my life. I meant to get it all fixed in a year, which is clearly ambitious and more difficult than I thought it could be. Now I’m at the point of being resigned to certain things, and recognizing the likely irreparable damage I’ve done to parts of my life.

To begin, I have made mistakes and failures in many areas that have eroded the trust and faith that others have in me. That’s a real problem in more than one part of my life. Winning back that trust is not a realistic option. After so long you can’t change someone’s faith in you, instead I have to adjust to the new reality and strike a balance between making all the changes possible (both professional and personal) and hoping those adjustments lead to something better.

I don’t know what the future holds for me beyond more of a grind. I have a long way to go before I reach anything that feels like where I thought I was headed a few years ago. in the next 200 plus days maybe I can figure out a plan and a direction towards where I ought to be heading. 

My eldest son just came back from his first High School homecoming dance. Lets reflect for a minute on the fact that I have a son in High School and that he’s going to homecoming. It has been an incredibly long time since I was a freshman, but I remember clearly that life fast-forwarded from the moment I hit HS till my mid 20’s. Talk about a blur. Seeing my boy enter into this period of life is satisfying and strangely terrifying. He is going to fall in love. He is going to find out who he is. He is going to fail at things and succeed at other things. This is his time of trials. This is his coming of age story.

We don’t get to talk about mine. It is very sad and fragmented. It is story fuel and why I tend to script fantasy novels about communities in isolation. Like every other writer, I’m probably trying to work some shit out. 

What I am working out in my life right now is twofold. I’m trying to strike a balance in my personal life and a return to some sort of happiness. I am seeking a taste of professional passion–specifically for the words. I believe the two things are connected. Once I get right in my heart I can get right in my head. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Just breathe.

I play a lot of Madden. More specifically, I sim a lot of Madden. Having a game like that allows me to project and predict deep into the future. I can create a scenario where the Giants are finally good. Moreover, I can estimate just how long and what that will take. I suspect there is a version of this interface in a lab somewhere that is dedicated to GM’s really thinking through how long and what it will take to bring their teams to the top.

I am becoming obsessed with the idea of ancestor simulations–specifically the idea that we are living in a simulation. I have no evidence that this is happening. I do however recognize patterns in my life that don’t follow biology or social flow. One example is how if anything breaks down then everything seems to break down about the same time a year. It is never the same stuff either. I call it Gremlins, though it could just as easily be a test of my parameters. 

Those self same parameters are constantly being revised according to the choices I make, so having a recurring situation as almost a control would make sense. Why someone would want to do that to my or any simulated life form is beyond my present ability to understand. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Love is hard. 
2. Relationships ought not be so tough.
3. Love is worth the tough.

As I move closer to teaching my first ever Cli-fi class I find myself thinking about the roots of this genre. Specifically, I am thinking about the big questions that Cli-fi seeks to address. Primarily I think cli-fi is about our relationship with the environment. It is in fact a relationship, with all of the feelings and doubts and agenda that ought to be associated with that term.

We are in a relationship with this planet and we are absolutely taking it for granted. I think cli-fi rises out of that association. I think that the genre speaks to those who are hurt, ignored, abused, overlooked, and under appreciated. When we see nature we tend to see it in terms of what we want or need from it. We see what we want to use or take or even change until it is so boxed off and manipulated that what we called nature doesn’t actually ever look a such. When we hear stories or see films about post-apocalypse the first thing we tend to observe is how fast nature got over us. Unless we’ve created a nuclear wasteland most of the places I’ve seen as of late in readings and even my own words are green.

This matters because we see ourselves in an abusive relationship with the planet and we see this earth as the protagonist in that story. We see ourselves in a much more negative light.

My sister is in a fantasy football league and she is winning. I’m not entirely surprised, because she is a strange form of me (though not by blood). Still, she didn’t invite me to the league, which also works because I know she wants to do this on her own. I’m going to force my way in next year and beat her. Because I can.

In the meanwhile her abilities and my obsession with the Madden franchise have me ready to leap back into the fray. I’m learning how to recognize teams beyond the narrative the media and perhaps even the team wants you to believe. For example, I can tell you that the Raiders and the Giants are legitimately racing to the bottom in search of a retool. The Raiders are expecting to build from the draft (Gruden guys) and the Giants will be building from free agency and backfilling from late draft picks. How do I know? They are dumping salary before the trade deadline. They dumped Eli Apple before needing to resign him in 2 and they dumped ‘Snacks’ to save 8 million. They didn’t get higher than a 4th for either player. As a result, they are down some major pieces on defense and it doesn’t look like anyone is trying to fill them right now. Giants want to see what they have–at every spot save for the QB. I’m not clear on what is happening there.

It needs to be resolved.

Some Thoughts:

1. Met with a student today who is taking a 1 on 1 course with me. He reminded me how it felt to be really passionate about being a writer. I’m talking about the life and the work and the world that writing opens. He’s passionate about all of it and that is refreshing. It is something I need to get back to.
2. D2 Championships for Youth Football. It should be a fun game to coach. The opposing team’s offense is super easy to scheme and I doubt they realize how much film study I’ve done breaking it down. Truthfully, it didn’t take long. Now to execute…

The thing that scares me most about this time in America is the openly partisan separation that has come to define our relationships with each other. Politics have largely superseded religion in terms of conflict points. Why? Because we have an ‘enemy’ religion in Islam and that battle is largely being played out far beyond our borders. We have an enemy class in immigrants and that battle is being waged in the media and along the border. All of these battles are encapsulated in the partisan battle. One side feels we need to militarize the border. That same side favors increased aggression against muslims. 

This is a simplified assessment of a complicated political divide. However, I believe the divide itself is largely fabricated. Most people don’t define themselves by one issue. The flexibility and nuance of humanity argues that you can believe in one concept that feels liberal and still be conservative in other areas. Political pundits argue the same, separating groups into social and or fiscal conservatives or liberals. However, it is easier and cheaper to divide us along binary lines and tell people they need to be one or the other, because the other is the enemy. The other is bad and not us and, generally speaking, un-American, because both sides can’t be American because they believe in different things. 

I would argue that believing in different things is the soul of the American dream. We function as a country and we excel as a people because we have different ideas that must be measured and vetted and argued. I believe the polarization of our nation removes the ability to argue. There is no longer discourse. There is only us and them and ‘us’ makes all the rules until ‘they’ come into power and change them all.

My partner is sleeping quietly in the next room. She told me to wake her by 10 if she didn’t stir on her own, but I can’t do that. She isn’t 100% so I’m going to give her a few more minutes to get right. 4 more minutes to be exact. It isn’t much, but it also isn’t so much that I’ve made her feel rushed to get to the rest of her day. Being rushed and overwhelmed seems to be a condition of life for us both lately. Between an onslaught of classes, grading, and the rigors of raising our kids it can be hard to carve out time to keep ourselves balanced. 

I’m teetering on the edge of illness. I feel it swirling around me like a crow circling the road after a car has made short work of a squirrel. The sick is simply waiting for a chance to land. Meanwhile I am fighting it with all of the vitamins I can. I’m not resting. I don’t have time for that. I have always wondered about that statement–having time. I recognize that I find time to play a video game every so often or find time to watch two hours of TV. Why then can’t I find time to sleep? That is a matter of priority. I place more value on those other activities than I do on the act of resting my bones. I feel like watching shows and playing games helps me mentally. It is an escape from the rigors of daily life to the point where it has become my dessert for daily life. However, on those days when I should be home working and catching up, it can become the main course. This is why I need to find a way to balance myself. 

Mondays are a good opportunity to reflect because they represent the start of the week for me. Today I plan to dive into that pile of grading, work with my students, and try to create a plan for the week that offers a bit more balance than the see saw tilt that has come to define my days and nights and finds me on the verge of sickness and finds my partner still slumbering. 

But later. I have to wake her up now.

This post was deleted due to some strange technical difficulties. It seems silly to rewrite it the next day. It was about Trump, so maybe the deletion was not entirely my doing?