Month: July 2019

I love sports. I love the drama and the intrigue. I love the camaraderie. I appreciate (and disdain) the atmosphere of fanship. We fans decide what team we love and … some of us… stick to that. Others are more like me and love certain organizations and place whatever we want to deem as our ‘loyalty’ on a franchise while holding secondarily to certain players. I enjoy who and what I enjoy and my team loyalties largely boil down to childhood affiliations. I feel, like most of us I think, I relate those connections to my childhood where my primary allegiances were formed. I, for example, still consider myself a New Yorker though I no longer live there. As such, I am given to love the New York Giants, Mets, Yankees, Jets, and yes, Knicks.

So, let us talk about some of these lesser affiliations. I am a Knicks and a Jets fan and I do not like where these franchises are headed. I do not like it at all. As a result I am inclined not to be a fan of these things, but I am ‘locked in’ in a sense, because I feel like I am doing them and my city an injustice if I choose not to like them. I don’t quite fully understand why this is beyond some linkage to a childhood love that I am betraying. That is the word there–betrayal. It is as if I tell people I’m out on the Knicks and the Jets they’ll see me as a lesser and disloyal human. Yet I am out.

I feel like this tug of false loyalty that is most prevalent in sports also appears in politics. It is why people who voted for Trump in the last election dig in so hard and choose to overlook so much in order to maintain their allegiance and thus their belief in the choices they made and the properness/rightness of such choices.

Nobody wants to be wrong. Nobody wants to be a loser. When we stick with these choices that become soured we too become soured by choosing baseless loyalty over common sense. I do not need to haunt the new factory of sadness (read: Madison Square Garden) in order to feel joy when the Knicks finally turn things around. In fact, shunning them now is probably a clearer path to helping them realize that they are not doing the right thing.

I used to have a macbook pro 15″. When I left my teaching job for another school I left that computer behind. Since my birthday I’ve been assembling pieces in order to construct a new one. This is part and parcel of a larger plan to get a system of computers working–largely cobbled together from old tech I can buy on ebay cheaply. This one is special, however. This is the one I am trying to build out as my JARVIS deck.

Yeah, a dream, I know. But I’m about this idea. I got even more excited about it after watching Spiderman tonight and watching him step into those huge Tony Stark shoes. I’m writing the blog from the aforementioned system right now. It is an extremely comfortable writing station, largely due to the wider base. The system is programmed hardly at all, though. I’m talking clean OS and a memory system that needs another upgrade. Once that is handled the plan is to use the old memory in another system that I will likely give to the college bound kid for his b-day. Only a month left or so to get that in place…

The larger conversation here is that a movie moved me again the way they did when the marvel universe series first emerged and the way it did when I was a kid. Maybe that means I am peaking through this dark (so dark) cloud cover that has blocked out the light of joy for so long in my life. It hasn’t all been despair, but I haven’t felt the drum beat of steady inspiration from multiple sources in a long time. Moreover, I have rarely been excited about the opportunity to do anything with the inspiration I receive. New day. New light shining.

Time to make this computer rock and roll.

I am experiencing a number of internet and computer problems family wide. It reminds me of how ungrateful I’ve become over the course of my life of the ability to even communicate in this fashion. Wonder has morphed into expectation over the years, and that expectation is set incredibly high. If I am paying 80 bucks a month for internet I expect the net to be on point always. It isn’t, of course and the result tends to be a pang of disappointment resonating in my gut, but again that says more about me than it does about the technical failures. One does not blame the wind for blowing.

One blames himself for relying on the wind. I have become incredibly reliant on this digital breeze that pushes ever so gently through the wires and through the still desert air. I often debate exactly how much I know how to be still; how much I know how to function in the absence of screens.

I suppose this post is, in its own way, about an addiction. I’m addicted to the electronics and the games and the brief push of dopamine that follows winning but drains away so very quickly. Perhaps the kids I raise are the same, which is why they get so very upset when the glitch happens–when the internet slows enough to make the game wonky.

Some Thoughts:

1. This was not the best of days for me. I succumbed to a lot of negativity and hopelessness on many levels. I made small failures large. I felt defensive. I allowed myself to feel like I was being monitored and couldn’t do the things that make me happy when in reality I was not sure what was going to make me happy. I felt expectations that, in retrospect, probably were never really there.
2. This isn’t the first time. When I’m low I get this way. I think it goes back to growing up and all of that stuff being real whereas now it isn’t so much.

68 million people (and bot accounts) follow Kim Kardashian. 68 million follow Trump. 71 Million follow Ellen Degeneres. 107 Million follow Obama. He’s still out there making a difference post presidency. This reminds me that hope is not a temporary salve but instead the beating engine behind all change. I needed that thought, because I spent some time following the Fox Soccer feed trying to keep up on the score of the USWNT game in which they won their 4th World Cup. I’m, so happy and proud of that group of women. However, most of that nasty Fox feed was people hating on the team simply because they won’t go to the White House. Somehow that protest of Trump makes them Unamerican to those who object. That right there is why I needed a lift. See, I am learning again and again that the idea of America is different for most people in it. We don’t share a singular vision or idea of what it means to be American. We are a divided people because we are divided in our understanding of who deserves freedom, who deserves to be here, and who should be on top, in charge, and even have jobs. The firewall of the internet only intensifies this, because we are all free to hide behind our screens and either say what is lurking in the dark corners of our minds, or troll out on people simply to get a rise out of them.

Is anyone genuine anymore? Is anyone accountable?

I’m feeling less and less like we are. If things go wrong we blame and scream and cuss and complain, but we don’t take accountability for our own actions and feelings. It isn’t getting better with the younger generations and that, for me, points to the downfall of our country.

To me America is a refuge. It is a place to act on your on religious and social freedoms so long as those freedoms do no harm to others. To me being American is more about understanding it is your responsibility to stand up against oppression of all kinds than it is to wear colors on your body.

Maybe I’m just a different kind of American.

This is the fourth iteration of a blog I started years ago based around the principle of forming a habit of writing. I believed if I could write for ten minutes a day it would increase my dedication to the words and increase my output dramatically. This has gone on for over 7 years–longer than that but I can definitely quantify it as that at least. Long enough for, according to some, to replace most cells in your body with new ones. I wanted to become a new person–a better version of myself. I wanted to dedicate myself to a life that swirled around love and words like the paired ends of a magnet.

Since I started my life has changed a lot. I’ve bettered myself in many ways, but I have also fallen into dark gullies of depression. I fell in love more than I ever had in the history of my life. I made mistakes. I won some. I lost some. I watched myself grow old and slow and stale in so many ways. I got bad at video games. I got desperate for achievements in sports (see posts on my offense). I did so many things that were out of character that I lost sight of my character.

Now, here we are.

I’ve come a long way for not having a direction beyond betterment. I’ve done a lot of damage and done some good. I’m at a space mentally where I am ready to move forward. 4. Always forward. 4 means the next stage in my life. I’m starting late, but I’ll keep this 4 going for a while. 5 will be a big one, but we have years to go before that happens. I’m going to enjoy the 4 and the growth and pain and love and loss and all that it brings. I am going to be mindful and I am going to learn how to get locked in.

Here we are. A year later and my life has come back to the same place I was a year ago– the same exact place. A year ago (2.365) I wrote, “I didn’t spend the last year living but instead trying to figure out a way to live and making sense of what little there was to hold on to while hoping for more.” I was despondent and I’ve drifted in and out of that despondency for a year more. I didn’t get married or even engaged as I wanted. I didn’t publish a book as I wanted. I didn’t see my kids reach the athletic success as I wanted. I did make progress in understanding that there is a balance between what I want and need and what can actually be done. I learned my limits. I moved a little further on the path. I came to realize a lot about my own needs.

This next year holds change and promise in so many ways. My partner is moving into a new house and I get to be a part of that experience. I’m losing my house and I’ll be dramatically downsizing in an experience that promises a very tough next few years. I’m learning that relationships are about the wants and needs of each person being met and that sometimes means you have to embrace patience about the big things like marriage. I’m learning that Always Forward also means that we learn by looking back. I’m learning about my writing in terms of what I need to do and what I haven’t given my heart and time to. I’m learning about my gaming addiction.

Learning is life long, but I feel like I should be focusing a lot more on action based on the learning. Tomorrow I’ll start the next stage of the blog and we can all learn what that means.

Started Stranger Things season 3 and enjoyed the familiar rush of starting a new show. I’m liking what I see already. It builds upon past conflicts in a way that shows growing maturity. Moreover, it is pretty darn cool to fall back into the eighties in this way. The family spent the 4th together. We played games, and watched the show, and now we are in that pause before we take in the local fireworks display and finally return here for more Stranger Things. The 4th was supposed to be that last day before the reset. I had it in my mind that way, though I was off by one. Still, it is in my mind as an important hurdle and a moment to reflect. I have been growing increasingly reflective over the last few weeks in anticipation of that day I talk about the year in review.

I’ll save it for tomorrow, of course, but I can say that I’ve grown in some ways and regressed in others.

Today I’ll spend the remaining few minutes focused on story–clinging to that feeling of joy of sinking into familiar characters thrust into a new situation. I want that. Perhaps that is why I want to write series. I like seeing how a character I’ve come to know and love responds to the evolving situations of their life. I need to get back to that as soon as possible.

Some Thoughts:

1. Great article about Eli Manning and where his head is at about retirement and football overall. I’m curious to see where he is with things at the end of the season–especially if the team gets into the playoffs.
2. I am still in the same place in regards to sports. I love seeing the boys play, but I only want to coach this one last year. I’m okay with being done after that. Perhaps my energy is best spent home training my kids vs. focusing on entire teams.
3. That ought to read “sports energy” or competitive energy. My true energy is best spent loving the one I’m with and putting words to page.

ESPN has an article up about how the Knicks did and did not botch free agency. It is worth the read. To be honest, in the first few hours of seeing posts about free agency I thought to myself, damn, there goes another season. I might still be right, but I was also right about what the Knicks should do. They did what I suggested–they played moneyball. They signed a multitude of role players who are playing on one year contracts (only Julius Randle has gotten a multiyear deal so far) that are basically ‘show me’ contracts for the teams they really want to be on. This works to the Knicks advantage because they have a motivated core who could work together well, given the systems they came from. The Knicks could be developing a competitive team that matches up well with who is in their division and, beyond which, follow the coaches strategy.

Long story short, they did alright by themselves.

I’m not sold yet. This is clearly not the design of a team who thinks they can get the top talent. As this article illustrates, the move seems to be driven largely my desperation. They knew they couldn’t sign this year’s big names and didn’t have a core to build the rookies around. In truth, Porzingas bailed on them so the world now knows that the Knicks are a junk franchise with Junk leadership.

Still, they persist. The Nets are now the biggest basketball name in NYC after signing the filthiest PG in the league and the potential of a Durant return. I don’t buy into any of it. Kyrie is a great player but a poor leader. Durant is the same exact way and the two personalities are bound to clash–should Durant ever return with the same energy he had pre-injury. I’m not a Nets guy. I was born and raised a Knicks guy, so I’m trying to be loyal to the league’s new Factory of Sadness. That being said, I believe without bias that the moneyball plan will get them enough wins to make the playoffs in an eastern conference that is largely devoid of true second tier franchises. We pretty much have to call Boston, Toronto, Philly the first tier and after that I believe it remains a crap shoot–especially after free agency.

Knicks bout to play some craps.

Some Thoughts:

1. For those keeping track, I am not going to hit 365 on the 4th. It will be the 5th. I don’t do math too good, y’all.

I could almost call it afternoon. 11:37 sneaks closer and closer to that heated noon hour. The class is watching an adaptation of the PKD short The Hanging Stranger. It stays consistent to the story but adds levels on top of the basics. What it does is speak to the industrial culture upon which the USA was founded. We are long removed from that physical industrial complex. We have moved into an information complex which is where the real money is made, but it leaves behind the majority of the nation.

The truth is we are a consumer culture. What makes us great (what we also complain a lot about) is the buying power of the American citizen. We can buy a lot of ‘cheese’ with the money we make. The more we raise the wage of the people, the more we have the ability to purchase. It makes me think about the Bernie Sanders plan to delete student debt. That would be a legitimate boost to the economy. We need that right now. Sure, the economy looks good, but it is a house of cards. Those cards, unfortunately, are built upon the faulty premise of exchanges between the nations being different or becoming different than they are right now. We are headed in a different direction thanks to the dangerous tariff game being played by our ‘Made for Reality TV President’

Such is the way of the world now. This world we live in feels strangely similar to the shape of the PKD worlds. We are living his dark future more and more each day.

I started teaching face to face again. The experience is decidedly different than teaching online where I don’t have to worry about being ‘on’ and explanations and lessons are less a reflection of my on the spot knowledge and ability than the ability to prepare and successfully link to cool shit. I’m grateful to be back. I’m grateful even more to be doing it with my partner where we can play off each other and enjoy the passion we both share, further igniting the passion we have for each other.

Yeah, teaching makes me feel like that. Writing makes me feel like that. I’ve missed feeling that way for some time. I can pour back through past blogs and tell you the last time I felt ignited–the last time I felt back in the saddle–but I will let you all do that on your own. Instead it is suffice to say that feeling it is like a breath of fresh air after being cooped away for a very long time.

I’m not fully ignited. I am not in the headspace where I will be burning through my outstanding writing jobs. I’m going to need to build up to that. In that is also a realization that maybe some of the work I do damages my joy for writing. It is a job, of course, but when you are entirely committed to the passion it ignites in you it doesn’t feel quite like a job. It feels more like what I was set forth on this planet to do.

Some Thoughts:

1. The fourth (May the 4th be with you!) approaches. I am looking forward to the experience. I’m excited to have the Stranger Things launch party and then follow that with some serious weekend binging.
2. Interesting conversation with the older kids about that yesterday. At least two of them don’t like watching shows as they come out. They want to binge. They grew up in the bingeverse and treat consuming entire season at their leisure as a right. I do not come from that era, and while I appreciate what they are saying and thinking, I feel like the waiting–the anticipation–adds to the enjoyment of the media.
3. That being said, I still binged Jessica Jones Season 3 over the course of 72 hours. Apparently I like the binge a little myself.