Month: October 2021

As symbols go, this is unlikely to happen again. It could be considered a portent or perhaps just a simple coincidence that I am feeling as I am on a blog day such as this. I want to talk about gift culture. Specifically, I want to consider the idea that gift culture isn’t always one thing. In other words, what some people see as gift other see as solution to problem or simply the best possible option.

let’s imagine a romantic bond. Thomas and Kit have know each other for years and, together, they share a connection that is no different than family. They both own homes but Thomas’ situation is such that he cannot sustain the home. Thomas wants to leave. Kit doesn’t want to leave. He has attachments that he must tend to, a work situation that means that leaving will cost him a great deal of money, and doesn’t actually understand where to go or if leaving will help change their lives in a positive direction.

Kit’s solution is to sell his home, pay towards Thomas’ home and take over the bills for Thomas in order to help put Thomas in a situation where staying is not only manageable but there is space for Thomas to find the growth and change he needs.

Kit is scared. Kit knows that he is putting himself at extreme risk. If Thomas decides to terminate the relationship then Kit will be homeless and broke, given that he invested all he had into this new living arrangement. Kit is scared but feels it is a reasonable fear to have and one he knows he can get over. However, Thomas sees Kit’s fear as a red flag and Kit starts to wonder if Thomas even sees his fear as irrational. Thomas wants to view the new arrangement as a gift, but is it? Or is it a solid solution to a problem?

The more I consider the conundrum the more i wonder where to go with this story. It’s a human story with feelings and fears and histories intertwining to create real tension. I just don’t know how it’s supposed to end.

Time to get back to the words. Time to get back to me.

I’ve spent so much time working to figure out how to be what I believe everyone else wants me to be and no time at all thinking about who I am and what I want and what it is I want to do, think, be… I need to figure these things out. I need to get back to the words at least long enough to decide what that relationship is meant to be moving forward. The words is the longest relationship I’ve ever had, so the question becomes now what is that relationship supposed to be in light of where my life is headed?

Better question: Where is my life headed?

I’m looking for both answers. I am looking for a way to truly be honest in my communication and my concerns and fears and my recognition of my own vulnerability. A lot is right with my life. More is wrong. Perhaps far more, and that is why I continue to try and explore and even recognize me so I can recognize how to get to a place where me is at peace and in sync with the world around me.

Perhaps the upside of the end is that it is the end. You can no longer fail the ones around you. No more worries about unrealized potential. No jealousy. No fear. Nothing. But that means no joy. No pleasure. No moments basking in the sun. No instances of being in the arms of a loved one and feeling what you feel reflected in their eyes. No laughter.

the end is always just that—the end.

More and more I’m hearing and reading about people believing the end is a transition to something else or a loop of the life you lived or a reset. We experience time in a linear fashion but is that only because of the skin and flesh we call our bodies. Or perhaps there is no soul and thinking—consciousness—is merely a flavor created when so many things function at once to power the same entity.

I am going to find out in time. Death comes for us all one day. I’m less and less afraid, if only because the days are less and less filled with joy and more with the things that make life unbearable.

I don’t know what awaits me on the other side of the life/death equation. I wonder each day if it is a better or worse situation than each day that I continue to survive

I didn’t win all my league games last week, but I won two out of three. That’s progress. I need more. I want to be able to be competitive come playoffs. I haven’t focused on the fantasy nearly as much as I have in past years. I believe it is because I have real football (albeit youth) going on to occupy my minds pace. It could also be about this thins thread of guilt about caring about such things too much. Either way, I don’t like being a loser, so I gotta at least show up and engage.

The Giants engaged in a solid W this past week, and they did it without many key starters. This is a team that can compete and will compete on Monday night. I’m excited about what my team can be, and I will gleefully watch it all unfold.

Some Thoughts:

1. In regards to Youth Football: The league posted its own set of standings and they are flat out wrong. The worst offense is mistakenly misnaming a team. This discounts that team’s 1 loss and locks them into 2nd place in D1. Unless we outscore them we will be playing them on the road next week. It ought to be a home game for us–the last one of the year.

I think, in a relationship, it is possible for conversation to be hindered the way blood flow is hindered by plaque buildup or stress or high pressure against the artery walls. I feel like I’ve reached this space in my own life. Where some respond to such with therapy or other forms of external connection I respond with the internalization and the buildup of sadness and anger and perhaps even resentment. I grow to regret my words and I eat my words and I eat my feelings and I train myself not to feel things and not to care for other things and all of this adds up in my brain and in my heart and, now, in my blood vessels.

My blood pressure was 154/100 tonight. It is getting worse with every reading and I have every reason to believe it is stress related. I’ve hit a point where the medicine I’ve been using to keep it down is either no longer effective or, worse, is all that is keeping me alive. I feel like A truck running down a highway and swerving hard to the right towards that emergency stop area which, always seems to end at the edge of a cliff. Only i don’t know if I will stop or what will happen at all. What I do know is that there is a deep rooted problem in my being and I don’t have the first clue of how to solve it.

I’m dying faster than I want to. And the problem is only accelerating.

So you keep going in the same way that you keep living. Morning after morning you rise and night after night you fall into sleep until you awaken. The keeping going is what you do because there is nothing else to do. There is no value in stopping, because what would happen if you did stop? What would you do next? What else is there? I don’t have that answer or any really. I don’t know that stopping is the answer or keeping going is the answer. I know that I came to the page tonight because I don’t have anything else to do and because it is habit. It is difficult to make habits and it is harder to break habits.

I have several habits that are tough. I play a lot of video games. I coach my kids. I write. These are habits. These are also part of who I am. but are they part of who I would be and who I want to be? I don’t have that answer presently. I don’t know what is next. I know that the now is insanely uncomfortable and I don’t have any way of getting through it faster or better or differently. I don’t have any idea what do do in order to get through this. I’m just going to try to move forward and try to live each day by day by day. Morning becomes day becomes night and unto the next day.

I don’t know if I am going to write a blog tomorrow. I haven’t decided if I find enough value in continuing. At this point the work of ten minutes is pure habit. It is what I do to remain connected to writing when I spend more time on games than I do on creating. There are reasons for this that stretch far beyond what I am capable of sharing on this blog.

I don’t know that I’m getting a lot out of this nor do I know what, if anything would be better or what comes next.

here’s what I know: my desire to write is outpaced by the the immediacy of gaming rewards and tv shows. They—the games especially—offer a quick distraction that folds into hours of lost time.

writing for the sake of writing only motivates me if I feel like I have a story to tell. I don’t. Not presently. I’m dragging everything up on a flimsy sheet of sticky paper disguised as purpose. Hell, even that doesn’t make any sense. The long and short of it is, I don’t have a mind for focusing on anything that matters so long as I can’t get what matters most right. So I fill the hours with distractions until the distractions become a life.

and here we are.

so maybe it’s best to cut all this out. Go dark. See what lives and grows beyond the light

So, we lost. In fact we got beat down. 46-6 and it cost us one of our starting linemen. He broke his collarbone in the loss. The Argos were more physical and bigger and faster. They blocked better. They finished plays and they beat us. There is a lesson to be learned here: You may be the big fish in your pond but when you go out in bigger waters you’re not actually so big. The Argos are a travel team of kids who are largely 14-15 and many of whom were held back. We don’t have those kids. We have multiple 12-13 yr old kids starting the game. We have to be able to recognize that they have more than we do and scheme in such a way to keep their talent locked down and off balance. There will probably be a rematch. The Argos are the only undefeated team and as a result they are the automatic 1 seed barring a freak loss next week. We are somewhere between 2-4. Given that the only other 1 loss teams are the three other D1 teams, we are going to have to find a way to sort out that situation. If we do it purely based on Points For, we get the 2 seed provided we win next week. If we do it by the complicated powerpoints then we may slip to 3 seed. It matters in terms of who hosts the November 6th game, so it matters. We now wait to see who we get next week and how that will impact our season.

Excellent game for the kid tonight. He played like a champ and didn’t allow himself to be out of position. He was only targeted one time the entire game and the ball was overthrown, because he was too close for the QB to drop it in. Like I said, kid did good. Now the other kid needs to do good tomorrow in a situation where he is certainly going to be targeted consistently by his former coach. I’m a bit nervous about my role in all of it. I just need to do what I can to put the kids in position to do their thing. We’ll see how it goes.

Some Thoughts:

1. The love of my life comes back tomorrow. Stoked.
2. Making headway on the backyard project. I’m quite allergic to grass, so it has been an ordeal. I’m considering skipping the rest of the weekend to get the breathing back under control and picking it up on Monday.
3. I ought to get my classes back under control instead.

My son’s (relatively) new kitten is sprawled out on the kitchen counter next to me while I click clack away at today’s blog. His head lols over the side of the granite counter restfully. Occasionally he swipes a paw downward at our last puppy in the litter who, whining, looks up towards him expectantly. Even at this age the puppy knows he’ll never be on a table. He knows there are so many places and elevations in this house that are completely off limits to him and any other dog that lives here. But the cat…

I cannot be sure if it is through choice or feline force of will that so many of us bipedals refuse to train our cats. We (or at least I) find them extremely cute if not occasionally standoffish, but we (I) are willing to tolerate this and so much more from felines than we are from dogs. Canines can’t get away with much. I’ll reserve judgement and analysis on the purse breeds for now, but the average dog isn’t given the same freedoms as the average cat. Maybe its a lack of trust in bowel movements or a ‘size matters’ thing or anything to do with fear. Maybe it is the purring. That hypnotic not-roar tends to shut me down faster than a Mesa, AZ bar approaching 10PM.

And the mewling…

Perhaps the cuteness is key. Cats are far cuter than dogs and that has an impact on how we interact with things. Have you ever wanted to cuddle a cute baby? How about an ugly one? It seems to me that this subject requires further study. John Scalzi once suggested in his writing that Cats may one day replace us–so long as we genetically modify them to have opposable thumbs. He also, more jokingly, talked about Yogurt taking over and their reign was good.

Cats are not quite ready to take over but they are seated in the cuteness epicenter of human culture. Somewhere just beyond that spotlight, a dog is pissed off.