10 minutes of writing each and every day.
Watching Squid Game as I blog and noting the odd simplicity of the PlayStation feeling shapes that denote character rank. Good show. Clever and energetic. Definitely worth the binge.
moreover it takes my mind off the nonsense of this final season. We ended up as a 4 seed and played a 5 seed that was ranked above a team with a better record. Junk.
I will get past it. Again, this is not how I expected things or wanted things to end. Yet, such is life.
As you know, dear reader, this is my last season of coaching youth football and the last season of being so deeply invested in the kids’ sports. Sadly, it is about to come to an abrupt finish. We play the toughest youth team in the league and possibly the state. We put 6 on them last time but they put 40 on us, so round two is set to be a rugged rematch. To make matters worse we are down our RB1 and our starting tackle. That means a lot of shifting things around and a lot of preparing for the end on all fronts. Win or lose there is only one more week after this. With my older kids both injured, I am practically done with High School football as well. I walk my kid across the field for Senior Night and that is that. It feels anticlimactic.
It feels like it should end better than this. Oh well.
Some Thoughts:
Blue Sunday.
I am without partner. This is a temporary state but one that finds me unmoored. I know that my continuing purpose is tied to my partner, but I am becoming more aware of the state of emptiness that persists without her. It is difficult. It is a reminder that my ‘self’ has long been focused around football, video games, and bad TV. In absence of her I fall into all three and into reading audiobooks. The last is a better use of time. Writing has long served as a mooring and even a purpose, so who am I if I am not writing? Perhaps the answer is to write or at least to recognize why I am not writing.
Some Thoughts:
Well, we won. 21-20. We gave up touchdowns on big plays and gave up more points than all but one game this season. We were short a key offensive threat but that’s how it’s going to be moving forward. We didn’t give our 100 this game. We were not the better team today, but we were good enough to get it done.
this won’t work next week, no matter who we face. I don’t know who that is going to be because the other playoff game is presently 5 hours late publishing its score. It’s either the Lions or it’s the Spartans. Either way it’s a team who wants to go to the championship as much as we do. We need to find a way to win and find a way to be the best version of ourselves.
Some Thoughts:
I’m thinking about jumping into novel and world development for nanowrimo. Yes, I’m very late to the November party. Still, I think I have plenty of days left to write. The idea I am thinking of is structural. Often there are moments in the beginning of a story that pay off later in the story. I want to build those scenes at once. I want to have that moment in the beginning and write the corresponding scene right away and then build the stuff in between after. I want to write out all of these big moments and then fill in the blanks. I’ve never written this way, but in terms of the fantasy story all I know about it is a handful of moments I really want to see hit. That’s it. So, why not put together the story in a way that allows for all of that to come out and then, as I am forming the world and these characters, I am telling a deeper and more nuanced character story entirely born of the need to tell these individuals stories without trying to work us towards these preexisting PLOT HAPPENS HERE moments that are important in the larger sense but absolutely secondary to the emotional arc of the characters living in these times.
Let’s see how it turns out.
I teach English Composition at the college level. Each semester I work to develop a class that makes sense to me and engages the student base as well. This semester I returned to the Hero 101 mold and taught the class through super heroes and villains. Now I am nearing the endgame and the students are developing their super hero project. It is a simple project. They are supposed to design a super hero for the year 2021-22 and that hero has to have a life reflective of the now and a problem or antagonist reflective of the world we live in. That is simply said but less easily understood or done. I’m starting to wonder if the students are up to the challenge.
What does it mean to build a modern hero? Is Spiderman a ‘now’ hero? Batman? Superman? none of these heroes were created in the last 50 years, yet so much has happened in the last 50 years that these characters should be reflective of that. Somehow they feel like they are, even if they absolutely aren’t. That is the key here. I want to introduce the students to a way to be reflective of their own lives and safely develop alter egos in a way that acknowledges their lives and their worlds and their realities–which are so different than my own.
This project scares me because it is so ambitious and has such a high chance of being a complete mess. Still I try. I hope it goes amazingly well. I expect some of these students will succeed and others will fall flat. This is life. This is the way.
we are about to kick off the family madden league. The rules this year are each person picks a team from a different division with three in the afc and three in the nfc. First pick was obviously the Rams. That defense is too good to pass up. I wound up with the Titans. I expect I’ll be making some trades rather quickly—I need more speed at the WR position. If I can get one burner and a better TE and shore up any weak spots on the line, King Henry and AP ought to get me to the playoffs east.
The real problem is that I don’t play a lot of Madden. I don’t know the automatic plays to beat the bot. I don’t know the plays I need to beat these kids either. I’ll be fighting to figure it out all next week because the league starts soon after.
in the real world I’m still all about the Giants. I still believe that they can take over the NFC East but it will come down to end of season wins. They’ll get easier teams as the season progresses whereas I don’t see that happening for the other three east teams. I also see our guys eventually coming back. We have been struggling with injuries. Most of the skill starters are out and Engram has just been plum bad this year, so he don’t count.
all that being said, I’m clinging to the belief of a Giants win on the short week. I think we have a chance to put one on the Raiders this week. Oddly, I also suspect the Jets might make the Colts game interesting. They aren’t going to be overlooked the way they were last week, that’s for sure.
I didn’t do much by way of predictions today, so I will make time for that tomorrow. Call it about ten minutes
Some Thoughts:
Before we get into Waiver Wednesday, I wanted to take time to update you all on the youth world and speculate on the pro one. We played the toughest team in the league and we got destroyed. Then we had to play another surprisingly good team and beat them. That led us to a 6-1 record and fairly high playoff seeding. We are headed into a battle with another tough team–one that held the best team to their least amount of points all season, but could not score on them. in other words, we are about to face our toughest offensive challenge yet. I’m excited and nervous and proud of the way the boys have held up. Now I’m readying them for yet another battle without key offensive and defensive contributors. It is a challenge, but one we are prepared to face head on.
In the pro game surprising trades are unfolding. A perennial all star linebacker was shipped off to an already all star defense for 2nd and 3rd round picks. The wheeling and dealing is only getting started. More to come before the deadline later today. The Chiefs are loading up on talent in light of offensive woes. The Giants are standing pat. I don’t know what the Raiders will do as their star player was JUST charged with DUI in relation to a fatal crash. The sports world is shifting beneath our feet. I’m curious to see how it all looks when it settles.
I found myself thinking about Zac Snyder soundtracks and Wonder Woman today, which for me is a reflection that I still want to tell stories if but a little. This lull wil pass. I know that now because I’ve been scripting a plot for the past few seconds in my head of what Wonder Woman III could look like. So, why not share:
I want to approach this from the sidekick perspective. My big picture is thus: Wonder Woman takes on a troubled sidekick brimming with power but raised in the modern world and suffering from the pressures of that world placed on her because she is a young woman. She also brings trouble with her. Wonder Woman, struggling to cope with this new adoptive sidekick, returns to Themiscira with the girl in tow with intentions of training her. That return triggers familial responsibilities and conflicts with wonder woman, who is forced to confront her own leaving and deal with that which she left behind. Torn between the worlds, she tries to help this sidekick find purpose and place. All seems like there will be balance until Astaria reaches out to inform Wonder Woman that the new world she left behind is in trouble as a result of her leaving and the sidekick is at the center of why. She must decide if she is to return and face her destiny or if she will stay in Themiscira and face her responsibility.
Now that is a rough outline. A lot of it delves into the roots of power and identity and especially discusses why heroes are emerging now. I propose in this creating a cycle–one that Astaria and Diana both followed but one established by the old Gods that, with the awakening of heroes like Shazam, etc. has awakened bloodlines of the Gods and opened the world to their descendants. Hopefully this is NOT too close to what is about to happen in the Eternals. Heck, I cannot decide if I even want to see that mess. However, making some sense of why supers are emerging would be a good look for DC and build off of the Synder cut of the justice league in a way that could lead to a JLA movie that would actually be good. It could also make the Darkseid conversation worthwhile again without breaking the ‘Superman is too OP to be in this’ mold because it would inevitably argue for why Supe is not getting involved.
I think I want to write movies. Or at least script universe storylines…
It occurs to me that 6.666 should’ve been today. That would’ve been timely and more sensible. Life isn’t always such, though we often try to storybook these situations that are not storybook situations. My situation is not very storybook. I work hard and try to create a world I am happy to live in. It hasn’t gone entirely my way yet, but I keep trying. Tonight the world feels okay. It feels like the fun of the holiday worked out a little and everyone is getting on just fine. I am happy to be in this life I have if only for a while.
Some Thoughts: