Month: February 2020

I did most of the things that make me happy in life today. I talked with my partner—a stirring conversation over dinner before we took in Gerwig’s Little Women on the eve of the Oscars. I listened to an audiobook. It isn’t quite reading but it is engaging in story. Likewise I engaged in sports by coaching and watching my boys play ball. I hung out with my boys as well and even played games with them. The one thing I didn’t do today that is key to my continued joy is to write. This leads me to wonder if it is key to my continued joy.

that answer is yes but it is more complex than a daily task or ten minutes on a blog. Forty plus years on this planet and I still don’t quite know my process. Perhaps I do and dislike it so thoroughly. I write in fits and starts or the irregular spurts of a rotating garden sprayer. I fail at consistency regularly and have been known to lapse into long periods of wordlessness.

for what it is worth, that serves as my process. That process continues to keep me as a mediocre writer with a narrow body of work, so it has to go. I am not satisfied with my production and know I am capable of more. Yet am I capable of a better and constant process?

this remains to be seen.

Last night my youngest turned towards me and said, “Dad, I don’t think I am going to do very well.” He was standing at the fridge, left hand pressed against the handle. His mouth cut a tight line across his face.

My mouth was moving before my conscious mind could process the words. I knew what he was talking about; knew how I felt about it; knew the space between both of our thoughts and reality. I said, “You’ll do well, so long as you put your heart and time and effort into it.”

Thinking back it was a nonsensical line. It was the hallmark moment fathers are supposed to have where a polite salve of words heals the fractures of growing up. The human body grows from fractures. Our bones are strengthened by microscopic breaks and the re-hardening of bone that quickly follows. Muscle grows and reforms out of the tears that come from stress and effort and from that separation strength is formed.

The mind works in the same fashion. Through pain and failure we better process the value of success. We learn dedication through distraction. We learn love through loss and sometimes envy. We learn the value of family through separation and even death. When he next spoke he asked, “Do you even know what I am talking about?”

“Your book report.” I lied.

“No, dad, I’m talking about this football season. I haven’t trained. I mean, I have trained. I’ve been doing track, but I am not football ready.”

I nodded, watching him walk over to sit beside me. He’s tall for his age, new emotions sprouting up in him alongside the tufts of leg hair that mark the start of early pubescence. He is already five feet and 110 lbs. He still carries a thin sheen of baby fat across his body and it bleeds into the features of his face making him look younger than his ten years. I say, “You’ve been working, but have you been doing everything you can to be as ready as you want?”

“No.”

I ask him why and the answer comes in slow nods. He is like me. He is afraid of success. He is afraid of potential and of realizing how good he is and just how good he isn’t. He rests a lot of faith on this one thing and if it doesn’t go as he wants he doesn’t know what comes next. He is a child and he is me and he is all of us who believe in a singular thing. I nod and I give him a hug and I say, “We go to work and we see what happens.”

It is what I tell myself every day.

I was trying to use the news to come up with a solid topic to discuss for ten minutes tonight, but I just cannot. The news sucks. The entirety of our media cycle these days is predicated on divisiveness, sex, and other tricks to get clicks. Hardly any of it is worth the view, and the news that is worthwhile generally gets lost in an avalanche of nonsense. Yet I am afraid to stop watching less I miss the one thing that is actually important.

I feel like our modern society is making us weak and weak-minded. This feels tangential to a great number of things, but I will give you one brief example: I lose my phone every week. Once, I was strong minded enough to know where my phone always was the way I once was able to always find my keys (another step towards the memory loss disease?). I lose my phone because I know that I don’t need to apply memory cycles to remembering where it is. I can just call up an app on another device to tell my phone to beep until found. Simple.

Degrading. Not to me as a person but to my memory and sense of value of memory. The news as it is is degrading to what news ought to be and to the sense of value we offer news. It has lost a great deal of its value in my eyes and I am still an avid follower. What about those of us who really don’t care? How are you informed? Who is informing you? What is their motivation?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Basketball. The game where a franchise can suck for eternity.

Yeah, it is possible in other sports but with Basketball the sucking can last forever. Take the Knicks. They are my team by birth place. They have not been to the playoffs since 2013. They have not won the entire thing since 73. This is to say they have not won a championship in my lifetime. That is terrible. It is statistically ridiculous. Moreover it reflects a defined failure by management to create the opportunities for success that other franchises have. Nobody wants to come to New York to play for the Knicks. Two Olympic level ballers just signed with the Nets this year. The Knicks were never in the running.

Drafting players has not helped. The don’t ever win the lottery, so they end up with a trash pick. This is a problem, because they used to be legit. The team made the playoffs from 1988 – 2001. This is why it is so hard for me to accept the suck. They had a brief return to the playoffs from 2011 – 2013, getting knocked out in the first round two of those three years. At least it felt good for a minute.

The problem is that they have bad ownership. The good players they draft do not stay and that is almost entirely because of ownership. James Dolan took control of the team 21 years ago. In that time they’ve been a playoff team 7 times. Of those 7, three came in the immediate years after purchase before Dolan et al dismantled the team.

Some people cannot accept that they are not good at a thing. Dolan cannot accept that he is not a good owner the way Trump cannot accept that he is not a good president. Maybe it is a New Yorker thing. We have always been a people who look defeat in the face and say, “nah.”

We tend to treat reality with the same utter disregard.

I see this same thing happening with the Knicks. I see it throughout the New York sports franchises. I see it throughout New York, a city that thinks very little about the worrisome climate reality for a coastal city becoming more and more prone to weather events.

The key, I think, is to wake up and see the reality and decide that it is time to move on. If the ownership does not do so soon, I will as a fan.

Recently I mentioned that I enjoy making lists. I said that list making helped to both organize me and force me into doing the things that I needed to do. This is all true. What is also true is that I don’t affectively begin to work on this until they get really long. This is not something I can easily explain. Perhaps it is just the mental structure of a list not making sense to me until it is truly a long and somewhat frightening list. Whatever the reason may be I am on able to complete at least until the list is long enough to be a challenge.

The result of this is that I wind up with a lot of things to do and I wanna feeling somewhat overwhelmed almost all of the time. Based on this reality it does not seem that list are actually a very good idea for me. Yet I continue to use them and I continue to swear by them. I guess in the end I am going to be who I am.

now the question becomes how do I use this awareness to my advantage? The most obvious and easiest way would be to not wait until the list gets big enough to be a challenge daughter to finish it in the same way that would make sense not to let the sink fill up with dishes until you wash them yet that is also what I do. Maybe the idea of the challenge is what drives me maybe my competitiveness is so raw and to my very core that I absolutely need the structure of the List challenge in order to be effective in anyway. Once, I found a app that rewarded me for completing items on my list. It was fun, but truth be told I don’t know that I am the check list kind of person. I find digital lists entirely ineffective to me. It is as if I’m adding an extra step into the process by transcribing the list to digital format, checking my device for when things are Jean, I’m finally returning to the device to check off the list and say oh it’s done. The physical way gives me this visual representation of which are filled come with the papers that I find immensely satisfying. The digital way allowed me to see a little stick figure dance across my screen. There was even one that I built a tree or a garden but I never gave it enough time to see what could come of successfully completed work. It is still loaded on my phone to this day like so much other detritus that clogs my screen.

All of this is to say I need a better way. Not so much a better way of organizing as a better way of being. I have this unfortunate tendency to rely on being behind I am being forced to come back. Yet doing so create such a massive level of stress on myself that it has made me physically ill over the course of my life. There must be a better way. Only, I do not know what that is. Such is the pursuit of life.

All of this is to say I need a better way. Not so much a better way of organizing as a better way of being. I have this unfortunate tendency to rely on being behind I am being forced to come back. Yet doing so create such a massive level of stress on myself that it has made me physically ill over the course of my life. There must be a better way. Only, I do not know what that is. Such is the pursuit of life.

When I finally sit down to write that book about being a better and more organized Reider is going to include the answers to these questions I posed over the course of this 10 minute blog day after day after day. Perhaps they’re in my answers can provide someone else with a Headstart on getting their life together so that they can be more prolific an even affected as a writer. Or at least more so than I have been over the course of my brief and not so wonderous career.

started Picard. Instantly I was reminded of every little bit of what I love about Star Trek. The future it pictures is so vivid and interesting that I feel like we have a beautiful opportunity ahead of us in our march across time and space. The show follows a retired Picard as he steps into a new adventure involving the Legacy of his old friend Data. I can say no more other than to suggest this show forcefully. Sci fi TV has grown so campy and soap opera focus that we tend to forget that vast beauty that is space and the very real consequences of our interfering with such a wonder filled place.

it is another reminder of the power of good storytelling. I was instantly engaged and transported—not just because Of the characters but because of the setting and the speculation. It struck me as the best version of sci-fi—the kind often overlooked in our imaginings.

yesterday was also the Super Bowl. Chiefs won. Hi hum. I’m really not a fan of that team or the mighty Mahomes, but it was a good game overall. I wanted the other guys to win.

All in all yesterday was a good one. It was a family day and a day filled with happiness. Today had moments of that—especially late in this very evening. Today was a day of change and new beginnings.

Some Thoughts:

1. Yesterday was a palindrome day.

At some point I got really good with lists. I may not always finish them, but I make enough progress that it feels as though a ton of stuff is getting done. Last year I transitioned to post it notes and that was extremely effective as a visual. I have a jar that is filling up with crumpled up and completed notes. This organizing queue helped me to see what I had going on as opposed to holding it all in my head in gossamer thin lattice. I know i need to get back to the daily list of post it notes. I do not know how I ever got away from it.

Without the lists there are a bunch of things that are just not getting done in my life. I don’t see them physically, so I go play Apex or Clash Royale or contemplate some other fashion of time wasting instead of contemplating the growing pile of responsibility strewn at my feet. I was sitting with a new co-worker the other day and they (only now starting to get used to referring to people by the chosen and expected pronoun of they, but that is another post I suppose) showed me their Asana profile, suggesting I try the software. The stuff costs $500 a year, so I am out. Still, what I saw was a high tech version of my stickies, and I do not need the high tech version. The low tech is more viscerally appealing.

What I do need is to sit down and create an initial list of, well, everything. I need to write it out and break down that list into manageable notes that I can use moving forward. Yeah, that sounds like the plan.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m calling 49r’s today. I am also skipping the hours of pre-game hype.
2. Why is nobody talking about the fact that Shakira is also singing at halftime?

I’m happy.

That is an important statement. I am happy because of where my life is right now. I have a partner that respects me and the true work of my life (the words) and wants us to experience the world together. She reminds me to step back from the noise and the nonsense and remember the goal. I need that.

I’m happy because I am not dead. I realize that heart attack gets so many black men in their forties, and that terrifies me. I want to see a pulmonologist, but I am scared to ask the doc, as if the ask itself would conjure maladies forth from the void.

I am happy because of the work and the opportunities. I am writing again. I am putting words on the page. I am creating. It hurts–like picking a scab, but the blood of creativity truly does need to flow.

I am happy because my kids are so very happy. I have good times with these boys and I feel as though these moments will help them become better men.

I am happy because my bank account is not entirely empty. It usually is and that sucks, but I am working on it and I am working to be a debt free individual.

I am happy because I have a good life and minimal drama. There is always going to be some basic level of drama and I will revel in the fallout. Part of me likes the living soap opera, but that same part of me wants to fast forward to the conclusion. I want the emotion of such things all bundled up in one small pill that can explode through my senses and clear away the mystery and madness in my mind.

Some Thoughts:

1. Having successfully processed why assholes rent space in my head, it is possible for me now to consider why i dislike parents who are way too swaggy about their kids in sports. That will be a memorable post.
2. My son’s cat is stalking me. Anywhere I am in the house, I turn to look and there she is, massaging her claws.

I suppose at my core I am someone who considers himself a good dude. I’d like to think that I serve the greater good. I am not a rescuer and I am not someone who feels like he is a great protector. What I am is a guy who does not like to see people get over if they clearly don’t deserve it. In other words I don’t like seeing hustlers who are bad at the game. Most of the people like this are assholes. Consider Trump. This is a man who is by the very nature of his history someone who has gotten over again again and again. He is getting over right now beyond this simple impeachment removal of office trail. In truth he’s getting over and everything he does as a president. His profit from this experience tremendously. I’m not talking about Obama level profit or Clinton level profit or bushel of a profit I am talking about a man who has invested tons of government money into his own business with his own name on it. And he has used the divisive Ness of the American people to profit time and again. I haven’t seen this much in your face shadiness since dick Cheney gave a bunch of money to his friends to wage wars .

I get really upset when I see this on the local level. I get even more disappointed when I see this at the workplace level. I see and hear all the time and I am seeing it in my current situation. When people have the opportunity to fail up merely on the power of their ability To convince others of the need to protect and support them then they turn what is meant to be a meritocracy into a Nonsensical mess the benefits no one but the individual failing. As a result of this others are forced to feel socially powerless, to work much harder in order to accomplish much less, and perhaps most importantly to feel powerless and ejected in their rules. I have seen this time in again. I am seeing this again. In simpler terms I can’t deal with assholes and I really can’t deal with incompetent assholes.

no I’m not saying that everybody who have dealt with in this basket is an asshole often I don’t know them well enough to make that determination. I can say that I have almost always encountered situations where people are not always held to the same standards. And that resulting schism creates for a negative spiral that inevitably leads to more than just hurt feelings but often the failure of the organization or unit to be able to accomplish its goals in any meaningful way.

So, yeah. That is just something I had to get off my chest I am still feeling around and probing out the situation that I am in. I am still happy to be in the situation I have. I am not willing to say that any one individual is responsible for any one individual is a problem I am not open to putting peoples business out on the street like that. I’ve learned Over the years that it is best – always best To handle things internally. I will also say that as a writer I have learned that people often go through the same situations time and again. It always feels like a relief to hear or to read that someone else has gone through what you are going through. So it is for the reason that I share these situations. I am perfectly willing to admit that I am Possibly Possibly wrong in my understanding of the situation. However it is also important to note that these situations are born out of misunderstanding of individuals and misunderstanding of goals. Often, in fact all too often, people working in the same place or not working towards the same goals and I can guarantee people working in the same place I’m not always in agreement on how to achieve the same goals. Therefore when it appears that one party is preference over the other or that one party is held to higher and by default one party is Alta lower standards in the other it creates for a lot of dysfunction and ultimately leads to people feeling like somebody there is the asshole.

when that inevitably happens, I start to feel empathy Towards all parties involved and as a result the party deemed to be at fault even if falsely, rent space in my head