Month: January 2020

I am starting to think that video games have something to do with short attention spa, and may lead to the eventual downfall of humanity. Yes, it is a lot to put on games, but consider this: We used to have the ability to delay gratification for a long time. Now we have to build in a zone of proximal development in nearly everything we do, less the participants quit.

Nobody wants to be bad at the game–no matter what game this is–be it life or GTA, we need to feel successful in order to want to continue. With so many games ready to occupy our moments, we turn to the ones that offer gratification quickly and repeatedly, making us feel like we earned the high. Life is not really like that. To use an example, science is about the ability to delay gratification for a long time–at least for the duration of an experiment and the intense vetting that precludes and follows said experiment. One of the key indicators of who is successful as a scientist and who can’t do the work.

I cannot do the work. I need gratification pretty regularly or I just get bored of the work. It is a constant struggle as a writer, because the writing is never a swift process. I’m very much a novelist not built to be a novelist. I knew this when I dropped out of the Aerospace Engineering program in my college years. I knew this when I started and quickly stopped considering a law degree. I see it everyday on the faces and in the actions of the young people in my life.

Some Thoughts:

1. Chill weekend.

As I prepare for the coming semester (only a few days off now) I find myself reflecting on the idea of teaching to and learning from freshman students. Last semester I was entirely closed off to learning from them. I had expectations of what students were and wanted and fired off a semester based entirely on assumption. I didn’t know what they wanted so much as I knew what I wanted and as a result I didn’t give them what they wanted so much as what I felt they needed. That has to change.

I’m starting the 101 conversation with an exploration of self and student. We will be doing a semester that culminates in the creation of Superheroes based on the zeitgeist. I want to start that with an exploration of who they are, what they like/love/dislike in their lives and what their focus is in terms of hero worship.

So, I’ve come through that storm of a semester to a point where I want to spend the first month learning from them what their needs, wants, and goals are. It starts with that day 1 assignment. Now that first assignment is the problem, because it becomes prescriptive. I dislike starting a semester with a prescriptive approach, because it instantly sets the tone of this being more of what they experienced in High School. In truth I prefer the gamification aspect of things, which argues that I should be playing a game on day one where the students figure out their own mini-profiles (Needs, Wants, Heroes, Goals) and then pair up with each other to form teams and those teams form a symbolic representation of those shared desires in terms of image and name and then produce that for the class and present it.

Yeah… That might be it.

Here is the cold truth: The Giants have a serious culture and leadership problem in the locker room. I can see it from the sideline images. I can see it on the faces of the players who’ve lost game after game in consecutive seasons. They (as a fan I want to say we) are headed in the wrong direction.

Enter Joe Judge.

The guy has been a solid leader in the Patriots system for years and, apparently above others, gets the seal of approval from the legendary HC. This to me indicates that the guy is a leader. He is also a teacher–having earned a teaching degree. That tells me something as a teacher myself. It tells me he knows how to adapt to different personalities and he is presented with a great number of those in the Giants system.

So, will he be successful? Yeah. I think he will. I think the Giants faithful has to get behind a few things first.

1. We need a much better secondary. That has to happen now and has to happen through draft or through free agency. Defense needs to be a top priority.
2. We have some fat to trim on the O-line. We made mistakes in free agency (Solder) and those need to be corrected. There is money available now in FA with the departures of Manning and Jenkins, and while we will be spending a ton on the D-Line, we need to address the O-Line as well. The key there is agility. We need pass protection and pulling guards, because both work towards enhancing what Barkley can do.
3. Barkley is that dude. Not Jones. Jones is a fumbler and we gotta fix that too, but Barkley is the key to this offense. Some WRs are being developed very nicely (though one has had so many concussions that I think he should retire), but it comes back to needing to establish a strong run game first.
4. Hire an OC that understands point #3. Eric Bienemy didn’t get the HC role, but we really need that dude.
5. Stick with the Defensive Philosophy. If we switch D-Coord, we need to swap a lot of players. Give this thing an honest chance to work out.

That’s all. That’s the blueprint. It remains my dream job to be a NY Giants GM. I wish they’d call and let me help get this ship right. Heck, I’d take the Knicks job right now (call me, Dolan!). We need a quality NYC team. No, the Bills don’t count.

This is the start of the new semester–first of 2020. The classes I am teaching offer me a chance to try new things and try to induct a new generation of students into the idea of creative writing. I am going to be focusing on Super heroes and the zeitgeist this semester–using that primary idea as a final project. How do we get there? Not entirely sure yet. I have few days left to figure that out.

I’m figuring a few things out, such as what to read and what I am really excited to be writing. Trudging away on the novel shows me that I am not really excited about the story, but I am going to keep trying. More changes to the protagonist are clearly required.

As for reading, I am really unclear on what I want to read. I’m in a lull. I’m presently listening to Daniel H. Wilson’s sequel to Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. I enjoy his style here and appreciate a good sci-fi adventure romp.

I feel like I need to be exploring more writing and more writers in general as part of this change to a more writing-centric life. I’m moving there… slowly…

Some Thoughts:

1. Giants have a new coach, but does that mean a new staff? Wondering what is going to happen with the coordinator positions. Specifically, what kind of Offense is gonna happen and what defense can we look forward to given that the team is built around a specific style of D and seems to lack the players to go in a different direction.
2. That seems to leave the Browns as the last organization to snap up a Patriots coach. I’d LOVE to see them grab Bellicheck…
3. Outside of that, I’m just chillin…

This is one of those dark days. I think we have all had them. This one feels particularly bad because there is both a physical and mental component to it that has me feeling quite unstable.

I’ve been hard at work on the 100 push ups a day and today my back gave out on me after the first 25. I knew something was wrong at 13, yet I persisted. As a result I am laid up in bed and unable to do more than sit up. I can hardly do that. I’ve also been feeling quite drained and mentally unprepared as a writer lately, so those two things have coalesced into one and turned my thoughts towards feeling flat out broken.

it becomes a snowball effect if you let it. I struggled in video games and blamed it on the other stuff. My vision feels blurry after all the watching and gaming that resulted from being laid up and now it all feels like one big Bad thing.

this is how the brain works. We build these causal relationships to make sense of the world I. Front of us, though there may be no relationship whatsoever. It is a form of mania to feel the universe is out to get you… even if it is.

alas, the truth of the matter is likely that I am extremely stressed out by a great number of things and as a result I have been unable to write effectively. The physical stuff likely derived from pushing my 40+ year old body like I am a 22 year old and not properly building up to anything I am trying to achieve. There is likely no relationship between these things save that they are all happening to me at the same time. Hard to have to go through it all at once but not a conspiracy or an end level event.

I’ll get through as I always do.. in time

It occurred to me as I was figuring out which number blog this is that it is a little over halfway through the year. 183 days of the 4th iteration of the rule. In fact as 2020 is a leap year (I’ve been informed) it may actually be the midway point. Yes, I’m ignoring that this blog year is not aligned to the moral years…

but on to the reflection.

I am watching the globes and thinking about how these actors I saw as a kid are all aging up and so am I. There ought to be a comfort in that but there isn’t because I don’t feel like I’ve done enough to feel comfortable in my life. In fact, I feel like today is the last day of vacation and my first real night before a job —a real working man life—since senior year of high school. It’s all felt like an extended vacation in a way. That could be Jitters or it could be real. Only time will tell.

Some Thoughts:

1. This year’s playoffs have been fantastic. Great wildcard stuff and next week we see the big guns and see if they actually hold up.
   

We are barely into the new year and already I’ve arrived at a place where I am not able to continue some of these resolutions. One in particular, actually. I’ve not been doing good at all on the writing. I find myself waiting until too late in the day to be effective and as a result the words are not coming. I quit tonight–refusing even to put forth the effort.

A least I’m still doing the 100 pushups.

My mental gymnastics on that one is, “lets make sure we are healthy enough to write another day” or at least play games and chill and soak up the last few days of the break. The prior statement is obviously an excuse. I’m full of those things lately and it weakens me in ways. It also feels like it leaves me open to manipulations, because when I make excuses for myself I start to feel bad about myself, opening the door to manipulation. At least one of my kids has a mind to take advantage of such things. He is quite the pusher.

I’ve gotten off track here, which is more evidence of the obvious. I’m drained. I don’t have any real excuse for being drained and don’t believe that I need one. It has been a long and satisfying few days and now I’m in need of a reset.

I need to get back to work mode.

Some Thoughts:

1. Being a dad can be really hard especially with an egocentric kid who really does believe the world spins on his thoughts. This is the only kid I have real concerns about being able to maintain a relationship with through the teenage years. When I was really too tired (both mentally and physically) to play a card game he tried to get me to justify why I was tired–step one towards getting his way and coercing me to play… or getting kicked out of the house for good.
2. Curious that any reference to sexual organs–at least the common names for said organs–is consider a slander. To ‘be a dick’ is a bad thing. Likewise, the feminine variety denotes weakness. How did this happen?

Only a few days into the new year and I am already regretting some of the promises I made to myself. Specifically, this 100 push ups a day has been taxing. I am sore and struggling to do the work. I have 40 left today and it is almost 7pm. This goes to show you that what is good for you doesn’t always feel that good in the moment or even for weeks after.

Beyond that promise I have been struggling to get back into the novel. I left it in a spot where I could easily pick it up and move forward, but the issue I’ve been encountering is the utter poopiness of the story itself. It is not good. I’m hopeful that subsequent drafts will improve that part of it, but for now it seems to not be worth the write. Yet I endure.

The story is simple and fairly straightforward, which I am starting to see as a limitation of my writing. It doesn’t have any deeper issues to unveil or surprises and the character himself feels rather one dimensional. I expect to work on that part of things in this next chapter.

Perhaps the problem is that he still feels like a lot of my male antagonists do: A version of my younger self dealing with the kind of mental hurdles I felt I went through at that age and likely never got past. Perhaps the writing then is a catharsis and once I get through it I can move on to other things.

Perhaps.

Some Thoughts:

1. The keyboard really is a mess and limits my enjoyment of the typing experience. I will get used to this over time or I will research ways to fix it. Either or.
2. Fix it.

10pm and I am starting the writing process for the evening. This is far too late to begin writing. I am not at the top of my game and feel like any slight disturbance of the force will make this impossible. So this ten minutes is rife with very slow and methodically typed words which are likewise error filled and fairly useless.

Ten minutes and this is about all I can get.

Some Thoughts:

1. side note: spilled sticky drinks of some type on the keyboard and now the satisfying click of the keys is definitely NOT satisfying.
2. having tech issues with the network speed of the Disney network. Also having issues with the sound system that is making the entire experience less enjoyable. It feels like a rock in my shoe between the computer and the loft not being quite right.

I’ve never given much credence to the ‘first day of the rest of your life’ stuff, but here it feels like it applies–it matters. I am starting a new phase and I think that matters as well. Today I am determined to write, exercise, and just be a better human in general. I’m moving towards a greater sense of purpose and belonging and I am starting to behave like I am on the clock, as I in fact am on the clock.

We all are, but we rarely act like it. Each day matters, and I want to end each day by reflecting on what I did and realizing that what I did held value. I need to do something that matters each day (I need to stop the vagaries of something, but that is another post indeed).

So here on year one, day one the idea is for me to move forward with my plans and start to get everyone involved. I’ll start slow. I’ll make sure the kids all exercise a bit. I determined that if we lock into 40 pushups a day, we can move to 100 a day by the end of the year. In fact, I will make my personal challenge to move to 100 a day from day one, breaking it up in less and less sets over the course of a year. 40 is good for the littles though.

As for the writing, it is a big deal to fall into a novel. What often holds me back is not knowing a character well enough to slip into his mind and tell his story or the stories of the people around him. This one is the story of a kid who stopped a terrorist attack and paid a terrible price for that and of the people around him who treated him as a hero for a moment and then didn’t know how to treat him after. It is about the truth of their feelings coming out in times of panic and the truth of his path being illuminated.

It is also a cli-fi novella, so there’s that.

I know the character well enough now to get into the principle writing, but I cannot promise it will go well at first. There will be drafts, and maybe that is what I need for this sophomore effort of sorts.

Regardless of how it goes, this year is about the journey and this journey is one I’ve long been ready to make.