Month: March 2019

I’m writing a novel presently and each chapter feels worse than the last. It is a first draft and I generally take those very very seriously to the point where I get stuck on the language of a draft and fail to move the work forward because I can’t figure out a phrase or something doesn’t sound as great as I want. Over the last 15 days I’ve been putting in 1000 words a day on the novella I am presently writing. I’m doing it without going back and fixing things. I am doing it without worrying about anything but writing the 1000 words a day I’ve promised myself. It feels pretty damn good.

The story is bad. Woefully bad. It is about as bad and cliche as a draft can get, but that is the beauty of the thing. I don’t think it can be good on the first run. It needs a ton of editing to be remotely successful. In other words, I’ve removed the pressure of a perfect first draft. I did so with great difficulity, but having done so I feel amazing about it. I feel like I have the freedom to fail at a scene so long as I write it all the way through to the end.

Some Thoughts:

1. Still have this strange feeling I am living in a simulation and at times the simulation breaks down or oversimplifies as a way to conserve its memory banks.
2. One of those oversimplifications feels like the appearance of certain dogs once that kind of dog becomes important in my life. Another is the way that insects and birds instinctively move and ‘flock’

This is not a blog about Captain Marvel and the ‘important moment’ being generated by a female led comic film being produced by a female director (Wonder Woman already did that and in doing so helped the DC universe remain relevant). This is more about the divide between what is good and groundbreaking vs. what sells tickets and copies. Part of it is the conversation about best sellers vs. solid literature. Part of it is about movies that move ideas and the conversation forward vs. cool blockbusters.

I wish there was a place where those things met. I think Extinction lived in the junction–in spite of my distaste for the novel. I also think that the works of PKD do a lot for the written fiction while the films straight suck.

In short I don’t feel like people watch a lot of good stuff anymore or read a lot of good stuff anymore and as a result our overall appreciation of good cinema and literature has diminished. It has really gotten to the point where we don’t even appreciate good stuff because we are so used to stuff not being that good.

Some Thoughts:

1. It would be nice to adopt a dog.
2. It would be nicer if I could actually breed dogs
3. Considering getting myself a switch just to play Apex and Minecraft on the go. Price point is killing me.
4. This was really a trash blog. If I am not focused then the writing does not go well.

Look, this Trump thing is just out of control. I am not sure if people are just mad enough about perceived slights/racism/or whatever or if the media outlets for the right have just amassed so much trust and faith from their viewership that the sheep are willing to follow blindly. There’s a old Navajo saying: Sheep is life. I take that to mean that we have a service to the flock, and we lead that flock in a direction that is for the betterment of the earth.

But we don’t.

Thanks in large part to how good the republican machine is at churning out bullcrap, we find ourselves in an increasingly dangerous situation. It feels a lot like we jokingly let the kids climb into the driver’s seat to play, but then the little fracker’s strapped in, turned on the car, and drove away. Nobody has any real control over the situation. The party is too scared of decimating it’s lock step philosophy to fix the problem. Instead they are clearly looking to gain what they can from the present administration over the next term and a half and then put in a candidate they can sell to the American people.

The democrats? Still wishing Obama was coming back or AOC could come forward. Neither is happening, and like with Trump, the party has a real problem rallying behind Bernie Sanders, who represents the only legitimate chance the dems have of energizing the so-called base.

Here’s what I think: The republicans have a much larger base. Why? because the voting republicans–the ride or die folk–are the older generation of Americans who take the time to vote for one. This is compounded by gerrymandered districts that limit the voice of the mass of democrats. The older dems find themselves in voting districts where power is both concentrated and limited. The real power is in the young vote, and they aren’t coming out yet.

My partner said that, at moments, the film had an afterschool special feel to it. I agreed with her, nodding and thinking about the characters and the situation these people were placed in. For those who haven’t seen it, THUG is about a black teen named Starr who is in the car when her friend is shot and killed by a cop during a traffic stop. The shooting ignites racial tensions and forces Starr to question her life choices and her responsibility to stand up for what is right. The film is exactly what you’d guess it is and as such reflects a lot of that hallmark/after school special quality that comes across when you know you’re being taught a lesson. During that lesson I found myself asking a bunch of questions of myself. I asked me, for example, how much do people understand about me and how close I am to the experiences of the black men in that film? How lucky and fortunate was I to have a mom who, like the mom here, pulled me out of the depressed school system and sent me somewhere that I could use my brain to gain some advantage in life? It also made me think about where I am now, and where I want my kids to be when they are my age.

I’m no thug. I stopped fighting in elementary school. Football offered a very brief window into an escapist world where violence was okay, but even there I felt like I didn’t belong in the culture. I put that on my momma for training me as an intellectual and not giving a damn about sports—no matter how hard I worked at them or how well I did when provided opportunities to succeed. Your mind outlasts the talents of your body, and that is why in my forties I can still be an intellectual when I no longer have access to that second gear of speed I used to engage to kick it up and straight pass people.

Every parent I know sees a little of themselves in their kids. It becomes a dangerous view when those parents try to fulfill their dreams through their kids. I am aware of this because of how I treat my kids in sports. They have that talent and see that as a way up. Note that I said way up, because in the THUG world it was and still is a way out. One of these days I’ll write about the difference and how it impacts athletes. However, in regards to where the film brought me, it was a strong reminder that my kids don’t know that world. They’ve been in the car when I have been pulled over. They’ve been given ‘the talk’ yet they still feel like (and are still taught in the educational system that) racism –especially institutional racism is outdated and a relic of a past that people who don’t know how to move on hang on to. I hope they are right.

I know they are not. That is why I will continue to ready them for the day that reality looks down on them and reminds them they are still black.

Some Thoughts:

1. Impromptu Subway performances are yet another reason New York City is amazing and I have no choice but to spend more and more of my life in the city of my birth. If I can last out until my retirement, then I can probably afford for my partner and I to live there without working the ridiculous load we do presently.

Shaq O’Neal is heralded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He grew up squarely in my era, being only a few years older than myself. I was able to watch from the perspective of a young (clearly less physically gifted) athlete as he grew into a phenomenon. Shaq didn’t make it because he was big. It was a factor. An equally sized factor was the fact that Shaq did not give a fuck. That is the one thing he had going for him that I never caught on to. He didn’t care what others thought or how his actions ‘played’ in the wider world. Shaq is and always will be unapologetically Shaq, and for that I give him thanks. I finally figured out that it’s the secret sauce to being successful.

I care what people think about me. I walk around my job like a ghost because I don’t want to have to encounter people who have thoughts or feelings about who I am and how I operate. It needs to change, and I am making those changes starting with the acknowledgement of how and why that happens. Part of it has to do with how I established relationships. I was everybody’s friend–the social chameleon type who wanted to be in on the conversation. That never seemed like a hinderance until the tide shifted and people started to look at me more as a liability in some circles than a boon. I started getting tugged in different directions and the emotional tide pulled me away from the reasons and habits that formed my early success. I became the fodder of whispers and trash talk and that absolutely hurt me. I cared and I was sad and for years I wanted to quit. That emotional low affected the effort I put into the job and straight up made things worse.

Over time I found friends and a group/purpose within the school that made me proud. However, that too began to conflict with what was at the core of my life and I ruined that in the course of time.

I should’ve been more like Shaq.

I should’ve done me and been 100% unapologetic about doing me and wanting to do the things that both make me happy and create an environment where I feel at peace and where I explore the things in life I want to explore and achieve without any fucks to give about what other people think. Shaq did.

10 days and 10 chapters into the process I finally think I am starting to get my shit together. It is about deciding to live a life worth living. I think somewhere in the darkest recesses of my irony driven psyche I am still convinced that the moment I completely have it together I am going to drop dead–never having enjoyed being on the top of my game. Morbid, I know, but I gotta go sometime (sadly), and I might as well go out on top.

So, what does it take to get there? Dedication, focus, less stuff to do? All of that helps, but I think the key for me is manageable tasks that build towards a goal. I always take it back to Steinback who wrote, “When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.” So I write 1000 words and then another. I find the kernel of a thing and build from that. In coaching I learn one skill and then another, knowing that they all come together to form a matrix; knowing that all the words coalesce into a story.

Another part of it is sleep. I actually get some. Not enough, mind you. There are multiple days in a week where I’m not with my partner and thus have no reason to retire and instead lie there consuming bad TV and playing Apex Legends long into the night. On a whole though, I’m doing pretty good with the sleep cycle.

I’m also doing much better with delegating. I used to feel responsible for everything. I used to manage all the housework. Now I manage far less at one location, and conversely far less than I should at the other (I am fixing that part posthaste).

The key I see when I consider all of these things is the concept of balance and manageable tasks. I’m old. I can’t write a novel in two weeks like I did in college. I can’t stay up for three days like I did in high school. Those moments and actions shaped me into who I am, but they also set false expectations of what I can achieve in ‘normal’ mode.

So, if you’re reading this then you ought to take away one thing: Set small goals that you can manage and that build towards a larger ideal. Do enough of these things in the areas of your life that are important and don’t overdo it.

I’ve been quite reflective as of late. I’ve also been fearing the end of the world, but I chalk that up to populism. I’ve been listening to the zeitgeist and understanding how things can slide one way or another although how they slide might not actually be about the reality. Take Captain Marvel as a prime example. This movie has become about being a female heroine and pleasing the ‘generation of females who grew up with Danvers as a hero’ while ignoring (openly) the truth of the Captain Marvel character in Marvel lore. But it isn’t about the truth. Not much is anymore. We’ve become a world built around the ideas more than the action or the actuality of things. We are in a world where Trump can be the scion for religious right at the same time that they rail against everything that he is as a human being.

Zeitgeist is generally defined as the spirit or mood of a particular period of time and I feel like this particular period is defined by image as things went in the middle ages. I feel most strongly about this when I watch situations like Brexit and the Trump election unfold. I also feel like the smartest people in the room are the ones pushing image in one direction or another by causing friction between the polar ideas occupying the headspace of the most fringe people in our society. This is a problem. This is the way things have gone cyclically in our world. Sad to see we are cycling towards such a thing again.

Some Thoughts:

1. Personally, I think I can be happy with just a handful of things in my daily life. So long as I cuddle with my lady, hear, read, or write something interesting, and maybe play a game I’m good for the day. Anything less than the first two and the day is not good. If I miss all three I’m gonna revolt.
2. Funny how I define so much of my reality in threes.
3. Or less funny than funky math.
4. One of those days, I guess…

Hear ye, hear ye, pray ye hear of the greatest story ever told. Or not. In truth here of an experimentation so vast and intrinsically overdone that the impact of said experiment served only to dim the bright within.

Yeah, I’m watching Game of Thrones again and also listening to Lincoln in the Bardo. I simply cannot suffer both at once. Lincoln is going to lose.

The book was named a top 10 by multiple well read and well sourced media outlets including the New York Times. Generally I take the opinion of that review very highly. In this instance they may not be wrong persay, but the way I am indulging in the book limits its value to me tremendously. This is a book that needs to be read. I cannot for the life of me sink into the audio in spite of a dramatic cast that features many of my favorite narrators.

The book is a meditation on the multi-perspective view. Most passages are cobbled together from accounts or voices from the afterworld that come together to form a complete picture of a moment or a life. The NY Times argues the effect of this can seem overwrought. Saying, “The supernatural chatter can grow tedious at times — the novel would have benefited immensely from some judicious pruning — but their voices gain emotional momentum as the book progresses. And they lend the story a choral dimension that turns Lincoln’s personal grief into a meditation on the losses suffered by the nation during the Civil War, and the more universal heartbreak that is part of the human condition.”

I agree with the assessment but lack the time to edit my response down to such a meaningful yet snappy reply. I’ll just say this: Listening to 17 perspectives of the same scene can be a bit tedious in an audiobook, especially if you have to break into a new narrator voice for every description of who or what is saying the thing. So I’m going from voice to voice with a transitional voice in between to clean my auditory palate like so much sorbet.

I have not finished this book. It seems better suited for playing minecraft and lauding the disconnect from the real world than it does for driving to and from wherever. I’ll finish it another time, and maybe I’ll enjoy it then.

for now, too much. Too much indeed.

Long day. One of the longest I’ve had this year and it is only 4:23. I’ve gone through a consultation with my mechanic, got the car repaired, help diagnose the remaining car issues, completed a full football workout with the kids we are trying to pull into a team for the fall, played games with the kids, played video games with the kids, quit a job I once loved, and now I am writing.

Speaking of the kids, my kids are being very respectful of my writing. This is not to say they no longer want my full attention. They do. Still they realize I need to write and give me the time and space to do that. What’s more is that they’ve been telling people I’m a writer and that I publish stuff. That’s a new development.

Okay seriously, I know I buried the lead deep there. It turns out I wasn’t really up to being an advisor for the honors society any longer. I don’t have it in me. I love what it brings to the students. I don’t love how I feel when I am there. They deserve someone who is about this first. They need a guy who is 100% in and is going to drop the rest of his life to handle what they need. I’m not it. I have other things going on. I was willing to lose an entire day of hanging with my boys, catching up on rest, and catching up on grading to be a convention that I did not see a ton of personal value in. I am done giving up weekends and taking trips for stuff that pulls me away from the people that matter in my life.

So what now? I don’t know. I am still focused on creating an amazing learning environment. Taking this off my plate will help narrow my focus down to the key essentials. The goal is to make the most time for what matters. And limit how much I allow to matter so I can be completely committed to what remains.

I’m listening to Ghost Stories and preparing to finish day 6 of the 1000 words a day habit architecture (trying to build up to naming this and writing it up). I am trying to decompress and reflect on being in a situation where it is clear that everyone else around me cares quite a bit more about what they are doing than I do. I’m a dabbler. I can be very good at a number of things, but I choose to be one foot in, and don’t apply the full attention. The only thing outside of my love life and parenting that gets 100% presence is writing. When I write I’m all in. Perhaps that is why some of the other stuff is sloughing away.

This week I’ve experienced a number of failures or short circuits in my professional life that have ruined my image with co-workers. That is to say the small number of co-workers who still apparently appreciate me has dwindled entirely due to my actions. Not much to say about that other than I’ve proven myself to be unreliable as of late. More to the point, I’ve decided that writing is my primary focus and as a result I feel as if the other stuff matters far less. It goes Writing then coaching and then teaching. The last two might not even be in that order as I haven’t been willing to put in the number of hours of research I ought to in order to be more successful in the coaching realm.

Loose thoughts are trailing around, so I’ll shut down this pity party and turn things over to them.

Some Thoughts:

1. I wonder if we are capable of shifting through timelines post death and experiencing other timelines as ghosts. Is death a reset or do we move to another form.
2. Got a weird call from my mother in-law who called me because she said I called her earlier. I didn’t and I hadn’t heard from her for almost a year prior. It struck me as odd, because she said she was worried that I called as if something was wrong. Just one of those nights I suppose.
3. I like writing to light rain vs. thunderstorms.
4. Yeah, these are some random thoughts tonight.
5. My kids are watching Kevin Hart’s black history special entirely on their own.