Month: January 2019

I love football. I hate the media surrounding it. 

Every year the media (often with a wink and nod) works hard to perpetuate ideas and remain relevant, like Fox News and the Republican party. They tell you what they think (expect?) you want to hear about teams and conflicts and drama and it really forces teams to do what the media says despite that often being the worst possible idea. The Browns have been victims of this ideology for years and the moment they bucked the system they suddenly became successful. Instead of taking the QB the media exclaimed they should and then following that up with the next media-logical pick, they went with their gut. They got Mayfield and a very good CB to shore up the back end of the defense. It worked. The Giants got Barkley and he’s been spectacular and they continue to be eviscerated in the media because they didn’t take the media’s defacto #1 QB in USC product Sam Darnold. Why? Because Darnold isn’t the best guy out there and the Giants knew it. 

The media still thinks he is. The media is presently praising the Jets for bringing in a new coach to mentor Darnold. In other words, it is always about the QB. However, as Brady demonstrated, you don’t have to be a #1 pick QB in order to make an impact on the league. In fact, most first pick QB’s fail. That just isn’t the narrative the media wants to spin. 

So, yeah, I’m more interested in the analytics than the analytics than pundit analysis. Show me the numbers and show me how the pieces fit together. The Giants did that, and though they still need a new qb sooner than later, they’ve established the pieces that can go around someone with basic mobility and confidence in order to create something that is very special in the NFL.

Some Thoughts:

1. What I’ve learned above all else is that I love being a play caller and that the route to doing that effectively lies in teaching the players a handful of very effective plays that work in conjunction and can be quickly audibled from the line of scrimmage. The reason is that it allows you to do as every coach says to do: Take what the defense gives you. Football is much like chess, and once you approach it from that mindset it becomes a different type of playcalling. You are constantly building upon moves to realize a touchdown. 
2. This all being said, I don’t know that I will be able to find myself in a suitable coaching situation come fall. I hope that I can. I really want to do this at least one more time.
3. What does suitable mean? Offensive autonomy. 

Fitting that the rant fall on 187, the murder code in the California penal system. I’m dealing with murderous anger at the condition of education in general. What ever happened to learning? It feels so much now that people are entering the CC system looking for a fast and cheap way to University and often entering University looking for a fast and cheap way to a career. Nobody wants to learn for the sake of learning. Nobody wants to be in a class and get anything out of it outside of grade. This seems especially true in the CC system where a long history of stereotyping has led to the assumption that the teachers are either less-than or simply don’t care. 

I’m angry, in part, because that is slowly becoming true. I don’t know if it were always true and I ignored it in my Talis-bubble or if it is becoming the reality based on shifting demographics and citizen needs. I can’t be sure of any of this, but there is one certainty–learning is an afterthought. Being seen as ‘someone’ appears to live in the forefront of most people’s minds and imaginations.

I absolutely hope to turn this into topics for a story. I feel there is a lot of stuff here that can be gleaned both about learners and about education much in the way the book, Moo, was produced. That was back in Iowa and as of late I’ve remembered (abre los ojos?) that Arizona is the combination of a certain type of Iowan and certain type of New Yorker who moved here to get a fresh start. I’m not ignoring the South American and California influences, but the root–the base is what I articulated above. That is really just an aside and another tick in the column of how much there is to unpack about this time and place.

All of this is to say that I’ve been forced to shift the way I think about work and the workplace. I’ve been forced to reevaluate the way I think about the classroom and my role. I feel like this is going to have to be a conversation at the start of every semester, because what I’m trying to accomplish and what the students want are not necessarily the same thing.

Apparently they never have been.

I am making a kind of peace with my professional life. As my partner pointed out, I need to start looking at one office as the place where I grind and the rest of the opportunities as where I grow. Well, I added the grow. I’m writerly like that. I will be presenting as a writer multiple times in February and moving forward I am abandoning the creative writing program at my community college. It is a personal choice based on a need to get classes and have a schedule I can rely on. CRW is not heavily supported, so if I want the classes to make I need to grind in order to get them to make. Even when I do, it feels like the effort is wasted. More time needs to be spent writing and publishing, so that is what I will do. Meanwhile I’ll grind composition courses and continuing publishing a steady stream of stories in order to remain a relevant writer and keep my heart in it on the path to my novels. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Waiver Wire coming tomorrow. I’m going to talk coaches, team future, and whatever else I can think of in what figures to be more of a post mortem than anything.
2. There is something to this social hierarchy of skins and dances that Fortnite uses. Nothing insidious or clever, but something… basic to human need…
3. I’m never going to be perfect. I’m going to screw up in my relationships and I’m never ever going to understand how to act when I do.

I (had) this friend. He is the type of person who is highly organized and lauds order and structure. He is largely a moral and upstanding person who can get buried in the work, but is trying to do what is best. He started out teaching one subject but moved into teaching teachers. That is where I think things began to fall apart. 

This is not a criticism on the man himself, but a criticism on the art of teaching vs. the structure of teaching. See, I feel like once he crossed over he became more officious and more concerned about the theory and rhetoric of teaching than teaching itself. It got me thinking about how I was taught to be a teacher (which happened only after I was thrust into a classroom entirely unprepared for the horde of honors students that awaited me). I believe that the structure of teaching looks at being a teacher from very far away. I believe it is concerned with so-called best practices and rights and responsibilities and often the pie in the sky view of what teaching could be and tends to ignore the ‘boots on the ground’ truth of what happens inside the classroom. 

Each classroom is a unique space that builds upon the initial interaction you have with the students and the composition of students in that classroom. There are no set rules that can prepare you for the unique composition of your teaching space. Best practices, while extremely useful, are only guidelines for how to enter the interaction and come to an understanding about various student types. Still, that group of students you encounter on day 1 are yours and yours alone. The style of interaction you set up with them is yours and yours alone. This means that someone else walking into your space might have a very different way of dealing with the specific conditions, which is right for them but not necessarily right for you or your students.

This is a lesson I’ve learned over the years of being a teacher. I have also learned that content is based on this dynamic. You cannot expect to teach the same stuff to every class, because not every class is going to be reached with the same content. This is part of why I waffle with my content from semester to semester. The other part of it is trying to keep it fresh and entertaining for myself. If I get bored, then it is completely over for me as a useful and cogent instructor. 

Best practices matter. Rules matter. However, these things are not absolutes or constants. You have to adjust to the population and the relationship you form with your student group.

Some Thoughts:

1. Officially back to work today, and that means learning and leaning into the process of organizing my time. Not an easy thing coming off an almost entirely structureless break.

Finished the Globes and learned that Roma is a big deal. It is also apparently available on Netflix, so I will probably watch the film. I am in this mode of reducing the amount of money I spend on things, so Netflix is a good thing. I will probably watch Birdbox as well. It got the Stephen King seal of approval, so there’s that. 

This is laundry list of thoughts tonight. I feel like my neurons are firing off about this about anything and everything. I have thoughts about the Dallas and Eagles victories, which conversely highlight the actual skill level of the Giants this season and the possibilities that can be the reality next season. I’m thinking about the offense I want to use in the youth football realm and how I’ve been modeling it in Madden and it works like a freaking charm. This is all useless speculation, but there is a lot of that kind of stuff in my head as of late. That and Minecraft (and that Travelers show that I’m almost done with).

Some Thoughts:

1. Having fun with both families. Life is really good now. I’m not wanting to go back to work. It seems I vacillate on the topic quite a bit.

I played a theme song. I chose Album Done, by Nas. I know it’s corny (not the song–Nas is truth) but I’ve accepted the corny. I’ve leaned into it. There are things about life that you can change and things that you ought to change and things that, once changed, fundamentally unbalance the self, so I decided that my corny was and is acceptable. I even made a dad joke or seven. So, I played a theme song in the car to mark the moment I recognized the vacation was and is officially over and I have to find my way back to a place of work/life balance. 

It’s the work part that makes it difficult.

I don’t want to act like I don’t love my job. I do. I love the idea of my job far more than the day to day and the emotional baggage of the workplace. I might have mentioned several times my desire to be a better teacher in the classroom, and I feel like if I can ignore the rest of the cacophony then I have a decent chance of achieving that goal this semester in some small way. 

So now I move back to a life where I cannot veg out on Minecraft and audiobooks (as of late I’ve been binge-watching Travelers as I craft mindlessly) for four to six hours a day. I must limit myself to an hour or less of time on that task (perfect for imbibing single episodes of Travelers) and renew my focus on bettering myself as both a writer, teacher, and father.

Somewhere in the back of my psyche the inner coach is asking, “What about me?!!” You might be dead, Coach T. The signs look very bad for being able to be a relevant OC next season. If forced to wait over a year to coach in that capacity I might burst.. or give it up entirely in order to avoid bursting. 

I’m back. Sort of. I’m coming back. Vacation over. 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve come to the assumption that this house of mine is cursed. The power output numbers (electric meter readings) are way out of hack and the heated elements seem to work far too well. All my clothing shrinks in the dryer (even the polyester) and food burns in the oven on lower heat and shorter times than advertised. More research is required…

I woke up with this really great idea for the blog but then I didn’t write it down and now, a great deal of time later, I’ve got nothing. I still have ten minutes to fill and it feels more chore than championing writing. This is the dark side of craft—when your brain is all dried up and that’s the best you can offer by way of excuse and Minecraft is the best you can offer by way of creativity. 

I’m back in the office on Monday. 

It feels like it’s been a long time but not nearly as long as needed to make me feel like I’m reset. Instead I feel like my heart is roiling with unresolved issues (primarily teaching and coaching based). I watch my kids and miss what it felt like to have no responsibility and be able to bury yourself completely in a game. I think that’s what is happening with Minecraft, though I wish it was happening with stories again. 

Well, I managed to write something, if slowly. 

I make a decent amount of money—so much so that I’ve fielded several calls from Unsolved Mysteries looking to reboot the series on the back of the story, ‘why am I so damn broke?’

I’m serious. I’m always very poor and it does not appear to change regardless of incoming income. I had an opportunity to talk with the mom of a son’s friend as she was dropping off her boy. She explained that she only makes 16 an hour and in spite of having 2 kids still manages to own a home and a car. I make more than her, and I have those things, but I don’t feel like I have the kind of money I actually make. It defies logic. The money spins into a black hole and is gone.

This feels like a very American story. At least it feels like a stereotypical American story about disposable income. It is also a story about chasing a life of things and activities when what I really need is the partner I already have. It is a story about wanting and needing and grinding only to realize that none of those things matter or actually make me happy. Instead my happiness was already in hand. 

So maybe the best laid plans is to get away from spending so much and get back to the pleasures of home. 

Maybe get back to writing while I’m at it. 

Started watching Tokyo Ghoul with the partner’s boys. Quite the interesting show there. I enjoy how some anime work so hard to talk about seriously moral questions and don’t openly tell you one side is better than the other. This is often the beauty of foreign cinema. There is a lack of moral quandary in American cinema that serves to reinforce what is quickly becoming a society of everyone thinking they are right, moral, and good.

Are we right? Are we moral or good? In truth we are capitalistic and all morals serve the dollar in the most basic sense. We form legislation primarily designed to promote wealth. We cloak it in religion but argue that we should legislate separate from religion. In truth we are a quilt of contradictions knitted together by people whose common interest is being rich and happy. Unfortunately, we have conflated the ideas of one with the other.  

Some Thoughts:

1. Having an interesting house argument about whether or not it is okay to “one-shot” the Hulk before he goes into full rage mode. My position on this is as such: Is it moral to attack someone before they become a real threat? This is the pre-emptive strike argument. Of course, one could make the argument that once Banner goes Hulk he automatically presents a threat, because he was already made angry. Of course the same threat could be assumed pre-anger. He’s gonna get mad, or as the MCU suggests, he’s always angry. So, no. Don’t one shot the Hulk before he goes full power. Don’t create the conditions for him to go full power on you. 

I stole a glance at the enrollment numbers for the creative writing classes I teach at the community college. Not Good. This does not come entirely as a surprise. I haven’t marketed the classes and as they don’t map to any degree pathway, they are basically classes designed for learning and work product. Less and less students are taking classes to learn. More and more are there to get a piece of paper that will help them get into the job they want or make it to the next stage of the education they require in order to get the job they want. Learning for the sake of learning is a relic of my university years.

I stole that glance because I know that school is about to wind up again and that means this vacation business is about over. I’m not happy about it. I don’t have that same desire to get up and be ‘on’ for five classes a day. I actually just want to kick back and work my way towards cultivating a better understanding of my personal motivations (this is psych-speak for lazy and just want to craft and write all day). 

I go back and forth on the school thing, but one thought that remains constant is that I want to put out a good product for my learners. It is all the stuff around that which makes me less inclined to show my face.