Month: August 2020

Lately I have been spending more money than I make–more money than I should spend. Part of the issue is supporting two homes (as we transition from one to the other). The rest of the issue is entirely about building out this new home and making it a place I am happy to inhabit each day. It is working. I am happy every time I look at the place. At the same time, I am concerned that I have repeatedly gone the route of ‘pay for the best’ instead of finding alternatives to make it beautiful on the cheap. Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of that as well, but facts being what they are, I bought stuff. I bought nice stuff. It costs money.

Normally this is not a blog about money, and tonight is only a slight deviation. This is a blog about understanding the things that make you happy and understanding the things that steal moments from that happiness. I am happy in a nice space, but I am unhappy when I (or my partner) am stressed about money. I am edging towards that difficult void of spending concerns, and I can only stay back from the void by slowing down. For example, I bought the mid kid a bed frame on offer up and he’s going to use a mattress from a bed we already have–a rollout bed for guests that can be fitted with an older mattress.

This dropped the cost of remaining ‘stuff to buy’ down to roughly 1500. Once I get through that glut of spending, I will be done! I think. I didn’t calculate in the moving truck, so there’s that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Enjoying a change of pace in the lifestyle, but with all change it takes time for things to take. So, I didn’t get a lot of writing done today. This feels like it does when I end any project. I go dormant like a bear in winter.
2. Interesting thought: Aren’t we ‘hibernating’ in a way? Going Covid dormant as a society?
3. The truth is, I need to be writing two or three stories at a time to be able to switch over to another as the difficult one hits a wall. I have no others on the table, so I will be putting two there.

I am an observer of technology. I call myself a futurist but it is likely disrespectful to futurists to consider myself as such. In short, I don’t work had enough to be a futurist (this is a likely side effect of trying to be and do everything in the universe at once… the Jack of all trades phenomenon).

Even as I type this on an outdated and, frankly, worn out macbook I still feel I have something to add to the conversation. I want to talk for a moment about the idea of Logic in building advanced algorithms, or Semi-autonomous shells. I believe the secret to advanced gaming is to move to that space. We need algorithms that are designed well enough to be competitive in a way that is not cheating, i.e. knowing what choices we made, but predicting what choices we could make based on tendency. This would make us as gamers more self-aware of tendency and improve overall gameplay. That is all.

Some Thoughts:

1. Coconut oil is the best moisturizer I’ve used yet. Take it from a man with perennially dry skin. Try that stuff.
2. Video game rage is a terrible phenomenon that has become so mainstream in my household that I am considering shutting down gaming for a full day at first rage. I get passion. Be passionate. Stop yelling at a screen. Who are you really yelling at when you do that?

My partner (how much longer till I can just say wife?) has a theory that I get strung out when left alone with my boys for any extended length of time. She thinks, with valid evidence, that I stay up late, wake up early, and spend the hours in between partying like a teenager. There is truth in this. When off with the boys less work gets done, more games get played, and there is very little by way of balance achieved. I expect joint living will return the feminine energy to the fold, thereby creating the balance needed to not go so far off in the one direction.

I lack the necessary filter to do tis on my own. This is a proven fact. Evidence? Well, it is almost midnight and I am finally hitting the blog. There’s that.

Some weeks are better than others. It is worst when I go long stretches without spending time with them or seeing them only to get the full force of ‘missed you’ need. I love it. I am not angered by the energy. I am also not able to handle the direct blast in a sustainable way.

So, yeah. I’m really worn out and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow promises to be a long day of a different sort.

The word of the day is Midriff

He thinks about Sydney Bristow all of the time. It isn’t that bad. Some guys have pin up models. Other guys fancy themselves lovers of true beauty and reserve their eyes for the rarest of beauties–the ladies who have unique and interesting features. He was just a guy who liked Sydney.

Barney did not have a lot going for him. He was not particularly good looking or talented. He didn’t have a mastery of the internet like Neo or Morpheus. He was, as they said on his favorite SportsCenter hour, JaG. Just another Guy. Today he wore joggers and a Game of Thrones shirt that showed midriff just like Sydney. It lacked the appeal hers carried.

Some Thoughts:

1. Yikes. Some days you really DO NOT have it.
2. Rough dad evening. Haven’t been with the kids a lot this last week and they are pretty needy and are not being respectful of the writing time and space.

Every so often I look at my life and ask myself, “Would I be satisfied with my life if it ended today?” The answer is no. It is always no. I suppose there is a bit of fear that to say yes would mean that I could end my life, but the truth is I am not close. Not at all.

My life is comprised of moments of joy floating in a sea of unease. In one sense I could argue that the unease makes the joy more meaningful, however I don’t feel like I need that much of it to make the point. There is a lot of good in my life but lately the good feels like it pushes against each other threatening to cancel each other out.

I’ve spoken about balance before, but I mean to reiterate here: Balance is the key to getting more moments of happiness in my life and I am a person who is historically bad at creating balance (and historically bad a relationships to boot). So, I am trying to learn how to be better at such things. I have that to live for and that to move me towards a life of satisfaction.

I used to view satisfied as a bad word, as though ‘enough’ was not to be lauded. Now all I want to do is find a bit of satisfaction before my candle blows out.

Meanwhile in Youth Football Land, the national 11u landscape is set. N.C. Giants fell to the Lauderhill Lions, establishing two of the top 5 teams in the nation… in theory. I do not give a lot of credence to national rankings of non-unified sports (that is why there are so many belts in boxing). However, I did see the footage and came away with a few bits of information.

So, what did I learn? Those boys are huge and their ‘skills’ are fast. In other words, our Argonauts are straight up outclassed by these kids.

That video above is a mismatched collection of 11 and 13u kids, and none of them are huge. So, the lesson to be learned here is simple: Stay in your lane. We won’t though. We are not trying to be a weighted football team. We want to be an unweighted team and test the best. We have the skills, but we don’t have the line and that is why, so far, we don’t shine.

Okay the rhyme was a little extra but I get that way when talking about youth football. It is a strange passion of mine that has a time limit on it. Next year is the last year we will be involved in youth football. So, I am going to enjoy these next two seasons and summers as much as possible before it is finally over.

While this Covid experience has many drawbacks it also has many benefits. It also has many unintended side effects. One of which is the strain it puts on individuals from an existential standpoint. I feel it in my household where everyone over the age of 20 is struggling with the ancient questions of who am I, and what am I doing with this gift of existence? The rest are playing Fortnite.

Honestly, I wish I had the mindset to be in the latter category. It is so easy to fall into the rhythm of gaming and other distractions and not consider life itself and by extension, death. I’ve found in my household that such considerations lead inexorably to disappointment. Everyone here of a certain age is sad or lost or some combination of the two. My own sadness comes from their sadness, because I feel very differently about this entire thing. I feel as though this is in many ways an opportunity to grow and to probe deeper into discovering myself as a writer (for as long as I continue being such) and, yeah, to enjoy the distraction of video games and new old shows from time to time. We established yesterday that I am selfish, but I am not an unfeeling swine, so I am quite fully sad at all of what is happening around me and feeling a great deal of guilt at the very idea of wanting to be happy and from the moments of happiness I do find be it through story, or game, or show, or what have you.

Overall, the arc of my life is trending towards disappointment, but maybe that is entirely my fault and the quicker I abandon the things I believe matter (but nobody else does) the quicker I will adopt a new life and level of joy.

Some Thoughts:

1. I missed freewrite friday.

I don’t consider myself a selfish person. However, if you look at my life then I appear extremely selfish to those around me. Buying this house next to my partner was, in its way, selfish. My actions in general are selfish. I have done a number of things and continue to fill my life with a number of things that I enjoy and do not in any way correlate to my partners wants and needs, and that is selfish. So what now? Now I suppose I finish my selfish ways. I go about my business and slowly change the direction of my life until that point where it aligns with an opportunity to stop.

In five years I will quit my jobs. All of them. That quitting may come sooner, but I am fearful that it won’t come soon enough. The years will continue to represent a shedding of responsibilities. I will leave behind the majority of these selfish things and explore what may come.

I don’t know what may come. I don’t have expectations and I have discovered that I have fewer and fewer desires in life and that is okay. I want to experience what it is that makes my partner happy and I recognize that how I live is a barrier to that. So, change has to come as soon as it can.

Why wait? Because I am selfish. I don’t want to feel like I didn’t do the things I wanted to do or create the opportunities I wanted to create. In truth I have terrible fears about money and I need a few more years of employment to get to the point where I can survive and live the life I think my partner and I want without needing to have the type of job(s) I do on a daily basis.

One sad truth: I have abandoned any real sense of work goals or even writing goals. I suppose what I want most is to make it to the finish line and present the best version of myself that I can on the way to that end. It is not who I was or who I ever planned to be, but it is who I am and that is the truth.

Some Thoughts:

1. I waited a full minute before I started the blog. I watched the clock turn to 8:37 and then I waited. I allowed the silence to fill me and focused on the idea of what I wanted to say.
2. I needed to say it, if only here.

Over time a writer hits a rhythm that transcends the spectrum of multiple stories, poems, or books. It becomes a workflow with ideas and plots stacking up neatly in the queue allowing the writer to move from one story to the next pausing only to reload emotionally or to refresh themself on ideas and let the input of the world filter in through their senses.

Every successful writer I know talks about tackling multiple projects at once. When one becomes onerous they can step away for a moment and move to the next project and then back again, leaving each in various stages of completion or disrepair. I personally have been keeping a word tally, given the specific nature of the two novellas I am writing and the impending (read: past and quickly approaching in that order) deadlines for the books. I see these numbers and know I am falling behind, but I am reassured that the process works and the finished product will be worth the wait.

I am devoted to being a realist on this page. Writing is hard. Often the most difficult moments are the set pieces that push everything in your story forward. For me I find more excitement in the moments leading to and away from those crafted scenes. I can write those quickly and in that writing, unfortunately I tend to craft interactions that force the scripted set pieces to be rescripted and redesigned and often informed by outside research. This too is the difficult nature of my writing style and where I am now.

In the weeds. Trying to finish a book that ought to be done.

Back to work then.

Not a lot to say, so straight into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Great writing day. I was able to do a lot of clean up work in terms of finishing the first draft of the novella. It is not done, but it is a lot closer.
2. Sadly, this puts me way behind schedule for the next one, so I am going to need to get speedy in order to make up time without sacrificing quality.
3. Purchased the new Madden on pre-order. So much for boycotting the wackness that is franchise mode.
4. House is getting closer to being done. The floors are slowly being installed and that is exciting. As I continue the install I find that there are more and more things that need to get done and will cost money.. like the toilets needing to be replaced. Ahh, the life of a homeowner.
5. I am grateful to have a job that allows me the opportunity to pay for such things.
6. I am grateful in general of the life I am living. Things are good. They are not perfect, because not everyone is happy and, as it turns out, my threshold for happiness is lower than most. Still I cannot be entirely happy unless my partner is happy.