Month: August 2021

Long day. I found myself mired in more work than is really needed, because I am woefully behind on a number of things that are achieving critical mass. First and foremost, I need to be in the classroom tomorrow and be able to deliver several different lessons that just are not put together as well as they need to be right now. To make matters worse, I seriously gassed out this afternoon. I hit a hard wall where I could not do any more work. What deepens that drama is the fact that my computer crashed yesterday (and almost again today) and as a result a lot of what I did today was rebuilding what was lost.

None of what I am talking about is novel work. I didn’t write a single word on the novel today and I desperately need to in order to stay on schedule. I am legit struggling. So, what to do? Not sure. I listened to some meditative music as I worked today, and I think that it helped. However, I need more butt in chair time, and I am short on that for certain. The scheduling has yet to work out the way it needs to. I hope it does sooner than later.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am seriously wondering why the interface looks different depending on which mac I use. I find this sus….
2. I need to buy more work clothes.

1. I just don’t have it in me tonight to get to the bloganovella. Let’s hope I kick off Monday the proper way and get back deep into the words. I truly need to. I’m on Chapter a week status now, so I don’t have a lot of time or energy to screw off.
2. Jake Paul won that fight. Sad that it happened because he gets to keep running his mouth. People love that kid for reasons I will never understand–the way I will never understand Qanon or be down with it. Maybe he should fight an actual boxer now? That or stop claiming to be an actual boxer or just climb in the MMA ring and get rocked.
3. Biden deserves the criticism. We ought to be criticizing our leadership when our soldiers are getting killed. Everyone is so amped up about fault and trying to push past all the stuff that Trump did to put us in this difficult position and trying to get Biden to break that deal we–the USA–made. Good for him for sticking to the deal. Guess what? If he didn’t there would’ve been criticism there as well.
4. Things are not the best in the land of Talis, and honestly I don’t know when they will be good again or really understand the steps needed to get there. I’ll keep trying to communicate and be better within myself.
5. Week 2 of classes is rolling up like Hurricane Ida.

This is entirely theoretical but I am thinking I should get back to the bloganovella tomorrow. I need to get moving on that and try to recraft a semblance of normalcy in a life that has been disrupted by a return to a version of near-normalcy in the resumption of classes and especially face to face classes where I am actually leaving the house and going out into the world for more than the end of week kid pickup and the occasional date or even trip to the store. For one, I’m wearing clothes for professional reasons and that requires me to have such things. This is a growing issue as I roll into week two with basically nothing to wear.

Some Thoughts:

1. I figure I ought to just jump right into the thoughts because I am struggling stringing together anything more coherent than a paragraph lately. This is why it has been so long since real creative stuff has come out.
2. I don’t have thoughts though…

I am writing this primarily as a way to understand it in my own head. I have not been in the classroom in a very long time and especially at the end there it was less about the structure and content than it was about creating an environment in which students were encouraged to share their thoughts. I teach with my partner in a learning community that meets once a week and needs a definitive structure that creates space for learning and understanding but also checks off marks on the ‘what should they be learning’ sheet every time they are in the classroom. I am struggling tremendously with this to the point where I don’t know that my partner really enjoys working with me anymore or even wants to as a result of my inability to wrap my head around creating a daily/weekly in-class experience with her. That WITH is an important delineator in all of this. I am having trouble working WITH her and WITH other humans in general in regards to designing learning, because I have not done it in a while, because I am becoming fairly insecure about my contributions, and because I am trying all too hard not to rock the boat or do anything contrary.

Frankly, I don’t know how to solve this issue. The one thing I think I want to start doing is beginning class with a slide that shows what we want them to learn/know by the time they leave the room that day and then work backwards in our planning towards understanding how we hit those goals in a way that is engaging and fun. I’ve largely forgotten how to have fun in class, and that sucks. I’m not the teacher I once was, and I want to get back to that.

Some Thoughts:

1. New keyboard. I hate it. I don’t think it is going to work out. The keys and key placements are far too confined for these long yet fat fingers and I wind up missing letters or hitting the wrong ones entirely. I will need to find a way to switch the wireless dongle from this keyboard to one that actually works for me.

This is the last time I get to talk to you all before the 3 drafts begin. My position in each is, well, terrible. The worst probably being the middle slot in the Beach Blanket Draft where I know the draft will snake back to me absent most of the players I wanted in the early rounds. I have the fourth pick there, which leaves me probably grabbing a running back I didn’t want. The thing I struggle with most in fantasy drafts is the acceptance that I need to pick players that the consensus thinks are good but I just don’t support. Dalvin Cook is a wonderful example of that. I’d rather grab King Henry and will if given the chance.

The key to each of these drafts is being able to recognize who is going to have opportunities beyond the well known and well worn names. It is also being able to take a chance on people who may let you down. Players like Jameis Winston may wind up being legit or may end up on the bench. Sam Darnold may give you solid numbers for a few games before he crashes. This is the fun of fantasy–you gotta watch and react and make moves very quickly. Of course, this is all for fun and money and a wonderful way to keep us folk glued to our seats for games we otherwise would not care about.

There are certainly a ton of those in the NFL. After all, without fantasy who would care about the Panthers?

I have come to the unfortunate realization that I am in a slump. Long time readers may have noticed this due to the brevity of the posts and, if you were really paying attention, the unfortunate fact that the last 6 posts were numbered with the 2.XXX system, which ended several years ago. Yeah, I’m not all together right yet. It turns out my immediate response to overwhelming stress is to go into a bubble and forget the basic tenets of life outside of my relationship, and even that seems to suffer. So, I need to chill.

How, you may ask? Renewal activities. I’m going to cut my hair. I’m going to turn on a book and play minecraft. I am going to try to spend a chunk of time with my partner and think about nothing but her. The key to all of this is to get the mind on even footing so I can cope with the nonsense rounding the bend. So, after this post it is off for a shave and a cut and a chill session. Tomorrow I’ll get back to working on classes and working out a sensible schedule in which I can write effectively and feel like I am back on track. I may need to tweak the writing schedule a bit more, but the good news is that I am not way off track. I’m just a little behind on the novel and I’m about due for a recap chapter in the bloganovella before the thing really takes off for its final act.

Some Thoughts:

1. As I age, I deal with stress less effectively. I wonder why that is?
2. Part of what I want to make sure I do is get my sticky notes back up on the board, so I can start feeling that sense of accomplishment. Little things such as that are effective.
3. Sadly, Stephen King continues to teach a master class in a genre of fiction he hardly ever writes and I write prolifically and I am straight learning in every chapter of his book.
4. Maybe that is not so sad. No shame in getting better. No shame in learning something brand new.
5. The 2.xxx thing was a real miss. I had to go back and correct all of it 😛
6. I am looking forward to turning the page on August. I’m really done with this month.

First day in the books. I wasn’t going to write about the experience in spite of prodding from my prescient partner, but here we are.

Above all else the top thing I realized in going back to class is that I don’t really know what students care about anymore. It’s been too long away from the face to face to have a real sense of what their lives and wants and needs really look like in this new reality. Moreover, I didn’t ask. I’ll try to fix that the next time in. Beyond that my Canvas course isn’t quite game ready. There are a few tweaks needed to make that part of the experience flow smoothly. So, that one is on me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Truth be told: I need to get back into a settled routine. That is what tomorrow ought to accomplish for me. I need to get back to where I am coming to the page in the morning excited and ready. I’ve drifted from that space.
2. Stephen King’s Billy Summer is an interesting look into the life and work of an assassin. I write about assassins quite often and I’ve never done it quite this way. I’m still learning from the guy.
3. You can always tell when I’m not into the blog that night because it runs quite short. That is the result of slow typing as a mechanism of understanding how little I truly have or want to say.

Twas the night before classes
and all through my brain
I couldn’t stop thinking
tomorrow will be a pain

It comes from my knowing
that its been so long
Thought I was ready for classes
But it turns out I’m wrong

I don’t even have what to do
this first day
I don’t know what to write
Don’t know what to say

I’ll ask them some questions
and make it seem fun
But inside my heart
I just want to run

I used to be good at
this teaching game
But that was two years ago
I bet now I’m lame

The world has moved on to
a place I’ve not found
Students got smarter
I got fat and round

Yet I’ll still hit the classroom
and hope for the best
That should get me started
I’ll bullshit the rest.

In all seriousness, I’m a mess. I don’t have the first bit of a plan of what to do when I see these kids face to face and I have to do it for 4 straight classes. I’m nervous and unprepared and today was highly reflective of that. I didn’t get any writing done and I basically sat around and stared at the screen secretly hoping it would tell me what to do. It didn’t. The face to face stuff is terrifying all of a sudden and it used to represent the backbone of what I did as an instructor. Now I have to go back and relearn how to be a teacher and do it wearing a mask in a room full of masked faces that hide emotion and don’t betray understanding.

It is going to be a long day.

The thing about Stephen King that makes him so enduring to me is the nature of his writing voice. It feels like a guy telling you a story. Even the false steps feel like the meanderings of a storyteller. I hope to attain that control over my writing voice one day so that I can tell stories that feel so present and meaningful. I’ve never felt that way about George RR Martin. He tells epic tales that tend to feel like dirty fantasies. Even back in the Wildcards days he told the same kind of story. This did not change with GoT. If anything he got worse. He also steals a lot. As my partner continues to work her way through the Dune series (I quit after book 2) I see more and more of Heberts footprints in all of GoT. The characters, the situations, all of it is straight robbed from Dune and fancied up with a lot of sex and a few Dragons.

I am no longer impressed.

I am, however, hoping to avoid that same kind of thievery as I build my fantasy world from the ground up with a careful attention to the details of how and why. I’m looking forward to what I can create.

Some Thoughts:

1. The new update is still a hot mess. I’m strongly considering changing themes in order to compensate.

As I write this I’m noticing a notification from my iPhone that one of my passwords appeared in a data leak. That isn’t ideal. What is also not ideal is the amount of time between bloganovella posts. That has to be corrected. No, not tonight. I’m on the phone again fresh off my first round of madden 22 and feeling weird about the experience. Let’s start with the fact that I had to be told what buttons to push to load into the game… I’m worried about my mental health. I have gaps that shouldn’t be there and appear more often than they have in the past. It troubles me.

Madden 22 troubles me. Basically it’s a fresh paint job on a game that needed real upgrades and repairs. It didn’t get any of that at the game level for current generation. There was supposedly work done at the next gen level but I can’t find a ps5 under $800–twice the value of the thing—so no. What I’ve seen of the game so far is a weak attempt to replicate the success of 2k sports’ nba franchise by monetizing the single play story mode. They worked to integrate the single player intro story with the Yard mode and even create what resembles a MyCareer but that isn’t what people play Madden for. The stuff we want—the on field and franchise is not good. More on the franchise later as I do a real deep dive. Tonight I’m only prepared to offer a grade: C. It passes but only because it added the new players and I happen to enjoy playing… less so as the years go by and the game retreats into sadness.