Month: February 2021

I ought to talk about the Madden season. This is not going well. I started the season with the hope that the team I picked up in shambles after a ten year sim would have a thrilling second year with me at the helm. It has been thrills indeed. Lost once (badly) to one of my kids and realized that I didn’t have the secondary to compete. So I went out and traded for some speed. That hasn’t worked well thus far, because now our run defense is junk. Our run game is junk too with the seemingly useless trade for the oft injured Saqoun Barkley at the end of his professional tether and the move of my powerback to fullback and the acquisition of another speedback. None of that has proven to add up to big wins. In fact, we’ve been scraping by in games. We give up leads and then need to come back in the 4th on plays I know the CPU struggles to stop.

The main issue here is the QB situation. Zach Vick (who the system continues to call Mike Vick and it is odd because this is the Falcons) is in a contract year. He wanted 120 million and he is only an 83 (sometimes 84 and sometimes 82 depending on the game). I wound up having to trade him because he went three games in a row with 1 total td and 9 picks–only two were risky throws the rest didn’t go anywhere near where the ball was supposed to. Play for your contract, man.

I found some kid named McKnight who I got for a backup center and a swap of first rounders. He may not be the long term answer, but he is cheap and he will help me finish out this season. I expect I’ll go 13-3 with one more loss on the books after the CPU threw me a bad beating in Vick’s last game. The new kid is making tutty’s and limiting turnovers to one or maybe 2 a game. He isn’t going to win games for me, but he isn’t going to lose them either. I will go into the playoffs with an improved D and hopes of a gameplan to stop the one son of mine in the NFC. Should be interesting to see if I can come up with a plan to stop his speedy TE. That’s the entire show there–A TE, a QB and a WR. It’s basically KC and I gotta be the big bad bucs. We shall see…

Some Thoughts:

1. One of those days… My work computer just died. It froze, so I turned it off and now it refuses to turn back on. So, that happened. I am working now from a backup machine I bought a few years ago as a DJ computer for my bday. I never got the thing outfitted and now it just gets passed around to people who need it or serves as a desktop-style backup. Apparently now it is my main deck.
2. Baseball contracts are out of control.

The mind is the key to everything. It is how we process information. It is how we experience the world. It is–if there is a soul–the linking mechanism between that soul and the body. The mind is a biological machine that needs to be maintained. It is also a mechanism that can be completely derailed and broken. Those who commit suicide do so because that mechanism is so out of whack that the halting state feels like a better idea than continuing. Unfortunately the brain is not a non-biological machine. It cannot be rebooted. That is not to say there are not other ways to dive under the hood and get the thing working right.

Doing so is important. One of the ways I do it is through watching shows and reading books. I know, garbage in, garbage out right? I don’t always watch the best stuff or read things that make me a better writer or person. Often I watch and read junk and that still makes me feel good. The idea that it makes me feel good is part of this diving under the hood.

I’m learning how the machinery of my brain works. Along the way I am discovering myself and discovering a path of less stress.

Spent some time with a chiropractor today. She had nothing good to say about my spinal health. I suppose part of my problem is how I live: I write, I play games, and I teach online–all from a position that has me looking down at a screen. I’m doing that right now in fact, and I can feel it through all of the neck and shoulder areas that have been hurting over the past week. The numbness has lessened at least.

The next step is to continue navigating the nightmarish health care network and try to find in-network support. It is tough. Everyone wants one of those FSA accounts and I only very recently discovered what that even was. Turns out I don’t have one. Turns out that is how most of these outfits get paid. Sigh. Well, at least some of the cracking helped.

I’ve been taking morning walks. I go at least a mile each day and today I did more than that. The experience gives me a chance to get my blood flowing and feels like a darn nice way to start the day. Ideally I’d follow that up with coffee and writing, but I have not gotten that far yet. I have parents who don’t have healthy habits and have lived into their 60’s and seventies. I believe I can be that prosperous in life if I just continue moving towards the right way.

Some Thoughts:

1. For the first time in my life I don’t have the vaguest concept of who or where I will be in five years. There is a part of me that believes I will be somewhere dark and utterly alone.
   1. Started work on ‘The Lab’ and discovered in the process that I lost one of my music cases in the move. I do not know how so much was lost in the move but I know that I lost far more than I would’ve thought possible. It sucks to have lost so much history, but it is helping me shed weight. The less I need to carry, the easier it is to move from place to place.

On occasion I want to sit and talk about the technique of story. Lately I’ve been listening to The Stand, an epic by Stephen King. There are moments in this story that are absolutely brilliant simply because of how they are constructed. There are small moments, such as when he moves from the internal character voice to the external voice and the two are not the same and through that we get characterization. This is accomplished in a simple matter. He may write for example:

She asked, “What is that look on your face?” Tom saw it all going badly then. He thought about the many ways that he could explain the way he was looking at her; the possibilities through which he could explain away that hunger. Out loud he said, “You have something on your chin.”

See how the above presents a contrast that makes the scene more dynamic?

I’ve been thinking about those scene dynamics (ooh! that is now the official title of my eventual book on writing). I’ve been thinking about how I want to return to the world of fantasy but bring that modern sense of writing to the stage there and create a feel that at once shows you ‘this is not our when’ but feels familiar all the same. I’ve been thinking on this for months now as I get deeper and deeper into the sci fi writing that I am doing. It is so very different in concept than the fantasy from whence I started.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m serious about the Scene Dynamics thing… If y’all steal it I will point to this blog.
2. On a personal note, the neck pain is horrendous. I’m excited to try to get in to a chiropractor tomorrow.

Been spending a little time on wallstreet bets reddit and it is very interesting. I know that there are industry bots in the system logging info and using it to further the algorithms for the largest hedge funds. This is all part of the interesting side of the situation. As this GME thing spreads to other stocks I find myself riding a strange wave. I am invested in marijuana (been getting legalized everywhere and the people are feeling it) and the reddit found its way back into the news for talking about that market. So, My stock tripled and then dove deep. What happened? Options trading. The algorithm got involved and was used maliciously to stop a rally that would hurt those in a short position. Hedge funds love the short.

I don’t know how to use this yet. I am writing something corporate and all of this falls into my deepening understanding of the systems. Still, I think the real fun is reapplying those systems to other things. Often biological or semi-biological things. What will that be for my writing? Not sure yet, but that is part of this blog. This is the part where you get to see the beginning of a story before it is hardened by characters and situations.

Some Thoughts:

1. The Saga Continues… My pinched nerve continues to plague my life and limit my ability to function. I will be seeking medical aid in the next few days.
2. Madden. Still fun. Minecraft. Still takes me to that zen place.

Freewrite Friday is going to be postponed until tomorrow because I don’t have it in me today. I drove across the desert back home to AZ from a brief vacation in California during which I learned a lot about my life and my relationship. I also discovered how difficult it is to write with a pinched nerve in your neck. These blogs are the most I can muster in a sitting position before I start to tear up. No, I’m not being dramatic. This is bad enough that I am locked into full desperation mode, looking for the cure. I’m going to see a chiropractor as soon as one can get me in.

I’m going to see a lot more than that. Used to be a time where I thought I could solve all the ills in my life on my own. I don’t feel that anymore. In truth I feel lost and at risk of losing what I’ve built. That is all I can really say about all that right now. I’m going to take time to think about things and talk things out and really get a handle on how I’ve become mostly everything I’ve hated.

Self loathing aside, I am finding moments of real writerly inspiration. I’ve watched good tv, done good reading/listening, and I am more focused now than ever on sharpening my brain. The forties are extremely rough. For a while they’ve felt like an exit from this world. I want them to start feeling like a reentry.

Some Thoughts:

1. My curiosity about the Mass Effect remaster turned to disappointment when I learned that all they really did was reshoot a few shots and rebalance a few AI things. They decided to use the extended cut ending as the main ending, which fails to really address the issues with the ending that most of us had. Blech.
2. Yes, I want to play it all again anyway.

What if we decided to raise AI?

What if we made the choice to culture AI based on ourselves in the way we culture algorithms to respond to our shopping and searching habits? Cultured AI would be a gateway to a new form of interspecies relationship similar to the companionship we seek from our animals. While AI are not ‘true life forms’ as of yet they are already at the responsive capacity to understand who we are and respond in ways that make us feel better. These digital children would be embedded with base code and learning algorithms which would allow for the end user to ‘teach’ it based on the users behaviors. We could sequence program digital behaviors based on what the user inputs as needs as we already do through some of the more complex dating apps.

I don’t know if this is already underway, but it is an idea I will be pursuing in future writing. I have stories on tap that would be really enhanced by this technology and in fact I have stories I want to tell about this type of technology and how it would impact community. I started thinking about this because of the upcoming conference on humans and AI. I believe I will pitch on the subject. I believe I have something to say here–something worth writing about as well. Virtual Children may not end up being the title, but the idea is one that has a lot of steam behind it in my mind. You will hear more of this from me soon.

Let me write Madden 22. The story has not been good for years. The organization is too focused on showing the ins and outs of the new game mechanics through story and less so on telling the actual story of a professional athlete. We have to start looking at the Madden story as an opportunity that interacts with the gameplay but is not guided by it. Here’s one example of what I mean:

What if the player starts at the YOUTH level and builds up from the playground to the middle school to exposing the reality of High School recruiting and then exposing the reality of College recruiting? After a college run in which our protagonist has a chance to switch positions, we are led into the updated combine and draft process and finally the player is packaged in an actual downloadable draft class.

What I am talking about is a process that alights the possibilities of the college game and also moves us into a pro career that can be played as a version of the franchise mode. This is all about possibilities and I think the game has been too limited and stagnant for way too long. It is time for Madden to step up and become something of actual value as opposed to something complained about to the point where the designers are forced to make changes. Believe me when I tell you that nobody wants to be forced to change. It puts a shadow over the whole thing. However, if this is all Madden is going to ever be then it comes down to accepting and living with that or moving on. Soon the fans will have somewhere else to go…

I am supposed to be on vacation writing and enjoying the beach and the great outdoors but none of it is great. My neck is injured to the extent that I am very limited in how long I can even walk around outdoors. I find myself slipping back inside to take an hour or two to recoup. This is the most writing I have done, because it hurts a lot to sit and type. I’m in an incredible amount of pain and I am going to be setback at least a week on my deadlines. All of this is the me. I haven’t even begun to talk about how damaging this is to my relationship. I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe here: I am lame.

I’ve tried to work around it and I am thinking up ways to fix it but the truth is I am lame. I am not a very fun person and I don’t have a great deal of ambition to do fun and exciting things. In truth I don’t hardly recognize what those things are anymore. I am broken in all the important ways. This cannot be good for my partner who is young and vibrant and wants to discover cool stuff. She is trying to hang in there, but I can tell how much life sucks being with me.

I am angry.

I don’t know how to fix these issues and it makes me mad and feel awful about who I am as a person. I am not thoughtful or creative and I don’t do the little things to make this world a better place. I know this and it pisses me off. I ought to be changing and fixing it but I haven’t and I have no idea why or even exactly how. All of this feels like excuse making, so that makes me even more upset.

I am hurt.

I am injured almost constantly these days. I am a wreck of a human and quickly devolving into a medical emergency. I have done nothing to change this and that has to suck for her too.

Overall, I’m not a very good human anymore and I don’t seem to be changing.

I am embarking on this latest path of self discovery and growth. I am trying to recognize how things with my partner fell so far adrift from perfection. I am trying to understand how I have and continue to decline as I age instead of maintaining or even improving in some areas as I’ve watched so many others manage to do. In sum, I stopped growing in the most basic ways and while the universe has provided me with opportunities at every turn, my lack of growth has resulted in a failure to take full advantage of those opportunities in life or even to recognize myself. This internal strife manifests externally as my body continues to atrophy at a horrific rate. I’m shifting quickly from muscle to fat and my spine and heart are suffering the effects of that rapid transition.

So, that is the bad. The fix is unclear. The fix does require self evaluation on a level I’ve not achieved in the past. I’m looking at myself and writing about what I see in all aspects of my life. I’m reducing. I am simplifying the reality around me in order to focus more energy on that simplified reality and do the best I can to pour real energy into that reality.

That is a really wordy way of saying that I am looking at myself and trying to recognize what I like and, as importantly, what I don’t like, and what I need to change. I am learning to give time to myself alone and recognize when I am doing that. I am learning to give time to that bond between myself and my partner and recognize when I am doing that. All of this matters. All of this requires deeper analysis. For example, what does giving time to that bond mean? Am I spending time with her? Am I trying to explore new things? What about me time? Is that also writing time? Is that separate? Even as I write this I think it is separate and should be, because the writing is a career and that deserves its own focus. Likewise the school stuff deserves its own focus.

I need to grow. Things that are not growing are dying. Homeostasis is the space between those two where you’ve worked towards a balance of what you were, are , and will become. I’ve been living in the space of what I was. I drowned in it. It is time to emerge to a place of becoming from a place of where I am now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Brady is the GOAT. I want to be more like that in my life.
2. I might drop a Madden column this week on the Waiver. Feels like something worth exploring a bit.