Month: December 2020

I meant to do the freewrite, but I am starting this at 10:40 and my brain is cooked. I mean cooked. I’ve been playing games for hours and I have not done that in a long time. Honestly, I wonder how kids (especially my kids) can do this for like 9 hours in a day and be ready for more. The amount of screen time is astounding. The lack of independent creativity is astounding and likely my fault.

Tomorrow the goal is to slip out of this one day bingefest and back into the writer mode, so expect a saturday freewrite as a way to appease y’all (and myself) for the sloppy friday situation.

I’m coming to a particular conclusion about this life and this world: We cannot always be what we want or expect to be, and that is a beautiful thing. I’ve learned more about myself from failure than success. Perhaps that is because the success was an expectation, and the failure was a shock that required change.

I still fail all the time. I failed today in some ways as a partner. I failed in some ways as a parent. Yet I was successful in both as well. Success and failure are the yin and yang of my life as these words are the fatigue driven ramblings of a man who is up far too late.

I’ll be putting an end to that right now…

I got to see snow.

This is a rarity for me and something I took for granted all those years in New York. My partner and I spent the evening up north in search of the elusive flakes. We found them in droves. By early afternoon fat flakes were pouring from the sky. I captured them on film as I watched from the window. It was a perfect morning.

By evening I’d settled in with the fam to watch Peninsula, the sequel to the highly regarded Train to Busan. The sequel sucked. It was about on par with most sequels in this new movie era. It felt like a cash grab where the director had very little to say and far more people to please with what he put on screen. It felt exactly like Ready Player 2, except I didn’t know these characters, so they had to build them wholly out of tropes. It was, at least entertaining. This, in spite of very bad CGI (as though they were using found footage from I am Legend) and largely overdone chase scenes.

I miss small movies. I miss movies where the intrigue is about the story and the realism of the acting and the characters. Roman Polanski’s Carnage comes to mind. Man I enjoyed the heck out of that movie.

I need more good cinema and more good writing. I need to find a way out of low and even mid-tier and into high tier stuff. I need film and literature that make me want to be a better writer vs. make me want to be a volume writer. I hope it is out there. I’ll keep looking until I find it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Something else I took for granted living in NYC? Humidity. That sweat helped me stay healthy, I think.

2021 needs to be entirely on point.

2020 is such a clusterfrag of a year (and such a fitting conclusion to an American Presidency that really pooped on the planet) that we need a hard reset. We need that mentality that gets us going in a new and vibrant direction. Since this is Waiver Wednesday (and I’m done predicting) I’ll talk about that direction and how it reflects on my sporting world.

Youth Game
Next year represents the last year of youth sports. We are taking a ‘gap year’ to not do the club stuff and not do football and instead the last youth is going to train with the High School folks and get ready for that experience. Moreover, it is going to be a gap year of reflection in which the kid experiences other stuff and decides if he wants to put in that work to be a High School athlete. As a result this is going to be the 12u year of fanfare. We want to go out big–State Championship, etc. He was invited to the All Star game this year locally and, if possible, I’d like to see him go to the All Star game locally and Nationally next year–collect those Jerseys and collect that feeling heading into the real show.

High School
2021 is going to be different. With multiple big names applying for the HC position at the H.S. we are sure to get an influx of talent in the coaching department. This means we may actually get on the road towards building a legit program. My kid has a chance to start over. He will be 14 by the start of the school year and on age (and grown up enough) with the freshman. The choice that remains is ‘does he play freshman ball again?’ I suspect he will play JV and some freshman as well, moving up and down the ranks as a WR/CB while developing as a K, which is his likely spot at Varsity and possibly beyond.

The Pro Game
I love what I’ve seen out of NY over the last month. This team is finally getting a sense of what the O and D should look like. We have the draft and free agency to build on that. The emergence of Gallman means that Barkley will have time to recover and work his way back into the offense as opposed to the weight of the team slamming down on his shoulders (and thus his knee).

I love my sports. I love writing about them. I’m excited for what 2021 may bring.

One of those focused day–one of the days where the mind is on the novel and on little else. Outside of the words I dived into some solid quality time with the love of my life and that was wonderful. It was a moment of pure happiness. Life is full of these little moments. It is also full of…

Some Thoughts:

1. The more I see evidence of UFOs be published and not refuted the more I wonder if we are being primed in some way to be accepting of extra-planetary intelligence. I don’t think we are ready for that as a species. I do think that if these things are not extra-terrestrial then we are dealing with wicked good tech we ought to be really worried about. I’m talking post-Musk type tech.
2. Speaking of which, what happened to WONDER? we used to be impressed and surprised at new tech and now we just rush to get it to be the first to have it and consider the tech evolution to be inevitable.
3. The VR bubble doesn’t have to be a bubble. Seriously.
4. I need to explore the raspberry pi stuff. I have had one sitting by my bed for two years. Haven’t touched it. Crazy.

“Why does it always happen to me?”

“Must be a glitch! This can’t be right!”

I can go on for days. I hear them on a constant basis and they represent a growing mentality. I feel this generation and mine before it is engaging in a level of victimhood that is both damaging and confusing.

I am not talking about reparations here, though that and the argument that ‘blacks act like victims’ factors into this. In truth that is the confusing part. It is most often the people who are acting the most like victims that are claiming black people are victims as part of their corrosive narrative.

Excuses and victimhood are the way of the world right now. It is easy and comforting to say you aren’t responsible and to say in an even stronger voice that you are being cheated or there is a plot/conspiracy to get you. It is as familiar as religion. When we don’t have a reason or don’t choose to accept the existing reason for something we turn to God or we turn to excuses.

I have multiple kids who think this way. The majority of my students and co-workers think this way. I fight every single day to avoid thinking this way. My truth is that the universe is very good to me. I am a lucky lucky man who has been fortunate enough to be placed in good situations. Any screwing up is entirely my fault.

I wish more people had the confidence to admit the position they are in. It is easier to talk about your position when it is crappy than it is when it is good.

Had a strange moment today when I was in line at Trader Joes with an old white man with a Make America Great Again face mask and his younger, purchased(?), asian wife. Now this could have been Pragma, that enduring love built over time. I’d love to be able to believe I live in that world. Instead I expect I live in a world where racist old men longing for a time that no longer exists are picking out brides who want a fast way into the country and getting extremely worked up over people who aren’t willing to sleep with them trying to get into that same country.

I am struggling with understanding who I am in this world. I am a black man with a multi-racial family who lives, primarily, in a very white social structure. If there was a black card I’d argue that I’ve lost mine some time ago. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I feel deeply secure in my personal identity but far less secure in what is commonly referred to as ‘street cred’

I don’t know that any of it actually matters, to be honest. It was a thought that prickled my brain as I was watching that scene unfold. It has prickled my brain a few times recently when I think about black writers and how their characters are primarily black and my are primarily not.

I don’t know what any of this means or how I feel about it. I know that it was a thought and, on occasion, is a thought and I wonder why that is.

I’m not on the field.

That is the first thing that went through my mind this morning as I curled my fingers around a cup of coffee and considered my day. I’ve been doing the football thing for close to five months straight. Each Saturday entails a game or an early practice. That situation is over, replaced by family games and video games with the kids. Madden has replaced Argos. Writing has superseded game planing. This is how it ought to be and how it will be for the near future. We are taking a much needed pause from the youth FB world and working on being a better family and being healthier.

Do I miss it? Yes. Heck, I still miss parts of the job I was fired from (paycheck, dealing with writers, knowing I produced something cool). However, everything has a time and a place. Now is the winter of our contentment. I will write and spend time with my partner and we will play in the snow and we will continue to build this amazing family. We will build our bodies too, as so many of these kids and even myself needs time for physical repair. All of this is how we will spend our winter. All of this we will do with love in our hearts.

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to see snow again this winter. I want to see real snow this time–the stuff you have to trudge through…

Been a while, but I’m back with a new one. The word of the day is: Distend (to enlarge, expand, or stretch out (as from internal pressure))

Kenyan knew the money wouldn’t last long. He’d hoped to make it two, maybe three more weeks on the severance, but he’d gotten hungry for real food. Wendy’s twice a day wasn’t doing his stomach any favors, but that trip to Trader Joe’s had cost him twenty four dollars. That was three days on the 4for4 menu.

He nestled into the shrinking shade of the Ironwood tree, holding his purchase in both hands. He’d splurged on the sandwich and probably bought more fruit than he needed. When he was a kid he’d read stories about pirates at sea and they got scurvy when they didn’t eat enough fruit–oranges if he remembered correctly. He wasn’t sure, so he got oranges and apples and two bananas that were still green enough to be good in the morning. They were still in his car, a Toyota Camry that was old when he was still in diapers. It ran well. His dad had a Toyota once. He ran that thing for nearly 400,000 miles until one day the old man tried to turn in on in the driveway and the car just said no.

Orange rinds lay at his feet. He watched a line of ants march towards it as he munched greedily on the sandwich. He felt the weight of it settling in his stomach and smiled. Eating good mattered, because when you ate good you felt good, and when you felt good anything seemed possible. That interview at three seemed possible.

He sighed, watching the highway. Cars raced in both directions, people heading somewhere in a hurry. When the virus first hit he’d watched the roads go from a snarl of traffic to near empty and now back to what he referred to as ‘school break’ levels. He wondered how many of these folks were actually going to a job and how many weren’t going anywhere at all.

Kenyan’s stomach hurt.

He stopped chewing and put what was left of his sandwich in the recycled plastic pouch it came in. His stomach gurgled and he looked down at it. His belly was bulging. That was unusual. A burp escaped his lips. It tased like the sandwich and the oranges and the apples before that. Perhaps he’d overdone the healthy thing this time.

Upon hearing the rumors about the upcoming Black Panther II film I recognized one thing: I need to be writing better stuff. If I write better stuff I will get invited to write more stuff and perhaps one day get invited to Skywalker Ranch or Marvel Studios and get a chance to have input in the stories I want to tell to the world and get a chance to tell even more cool stories and even riff on my favorite heroes and make their stories better. Yes, I am channeling my inner Abrams, but I don’t intend to screw it up. In fact, I would like the opportunity to release a new version of Ready Player One that actually pages homage to the 80s as it should, and a Gunslinger series that brings the Gunslinger to the stream in 8+ episode series. In reality, I’d like to see 19 episodes per season with the finale being ultra legit.

I’m here dreaming and that is a good thing. For a while I’d forgotten how to dream. I’ve been locked up in so much drama and disappointment and regret about daily life and the things I don’t do that I clearly forgot about a little thing called W O N D E R. I also forgot about another little thing called input. I’ve been struggling with getting my mind going, and getting myself to be and do the things in life that make me happy. I need to get back to being that dude. I need to do it fast.

We only have so much time in these meat bags.

Some Thoughts:

1. The sodram jet design is the coolest thing I’ve heard in 2020. if TLDR, the thing goes 16 times the speed of sound. Read it. Just saying. Then go down that rabbit hole like I did. Man, it’s deep.

Yesterday I wrote the Waiver Wednesday blog. It wasn’t Wednesday. What’s worse is that I completely thought it was due to the fact that I hardly leave the house anymore. I teach online in an asynchronous format, which means I don’t interact with the students on daily basis. We have certain days when work is due, but interactions happen whenever work is submitted, which is tied to the due dates.

All of this is to say that I had no clue it was not Wednesday yesterday. I woke up, wrote a blog, and later recognized it was a day earlier than I thought it was. Sad, but strangely unimportant beyond the blog. This is the new world for us now. The day doesn’t necessarily matter as much as it used to.

I feel as though we are in the midsts of a major shift in human behavior/reality. This goes beyond the shifting landscape of world power. This is about the death of theaters and the rise of VR and self driving cars and telepresence and the technologies that will be arriving shortly to unite these things. This is about the moon becoming a new source of mining and the resultant change in mining tech. This is about how we are going to respond to a shift in how we create power. This is about the return of nuclear and the impact of overpopulation. This is about deciding what is next and contextualizing that.

It occurs to me that, as a sci fi writer I’m supposed to be shining a light on these possibilities and the impacts to human lives. I have work to do…