Month: December 2021

Rough day with the map editor. My computer is deeply unhappy with the interface being open so long and often and has begun to fight back. Basically, I need more ram… and a restart. I’ll do that in a little bit after I take care of all the business left open on other windows, and yes, I hear that out loud. The process has been demanding but at the same time fulfilling. While I don’t know the story of the novel quite yet, I am beginning to uncover the story of the world. I know a great deal about where it has been and what has transpired over these many long and hard eras. This is a story about a world that has forgotten much about itself and lost even more to myth and confusion. It is a story about rediscovery and the fears also attached to that. It is ultimately a story about people who are navigating this world. It is about characters I’ve carried with me since high school some thirty years back.

I am excited to see what comes of the story and the world. I feel it was waiting for the technology to provide me the means of creation and here we are finally. This does not mean the other writing is done. In fact, I mean to tell the science fiction still and do that work as well this summer. I am redrawing the deadlines in order to give room for me to truly create with some pressure but not so much that I fail. I aim to succeed.

I feel a little like a creeper. I’m sitting here staring out of my window and into the windows of people blocks away trying to make out their tiny forms moving to and fro and imagining their lives; imagining what this city means to them and how they breathe it in each day. I am a tourist here, but I am trying to understand what here is as I intend to spend more and more time here with my partner. We are working to become part time residents and working to enjoy this other space and the other life it brings, but that begins with understanding it.

I don’t yet understand the rhythms of this city. Just after 8 am the downtown area looks entirely dead. Nobody on the streets and few cars moving beyond the ones on the highway. By 8pm most of the stores shut down as if trailing dusk by three hours in their disappearance. The homeless take over by then. The streets of Pike and Pine are so flooded with those without homes that it becomes a community unto itself. Dangerous? perhaps, but only in the sense that we are foreigners to them and lookey loos at worst. Nobody wants to feel like they are being watched or pitied in the watching. That isn’t what we are doing, but curiosity can be mistaken for a great many things.

I don’t know what today will bring on these streets but I remain curious and excited to find out.

Some Thoughts:

1. Sometimes I still look at the keys when I type. They are blurry this morning–early eyes and all.

My laptop is close to dying and I’m trying to squeeze in these last ten. My partner is on the roof, staring out at Seattle from 400 feet in the evening sky. It’s after 8 pm and it feels like the entire city has shut down for the night. I cannot understand it. What I do know is that we’re having a good time and enjoying this lifestyle and time together away from being parents. This is what our present and future looks like, minus 5+ month chunks of sweating in the desert while we put 3 other kids through middle and high school. I get her being done with all of that. I still see some joy left to squeeze out of that life, but she’s done it four times now.

But the blog isn’t about the disparities. It is about what brings us together. Often that is travel and exploring the day to day life together. We are a good pair–especially when left to be just the two of us. We do well and argue or disagree about little beyond the kids. She helps me be a better writer, and I help her be a better explorer. We work and we are happy in each other’s arms. I cannot ask for terribly more than that out of this life.

Getting ready to spend some much needed downtime in Seattle. I’m excited both about the opportunity to be there and the time to be just about me and my lady. We do well on the road together, and I think we could really use some of that right about now. It has been a tough semester. There is a lot of work that goes into teaching and a lot of wear and tear mentally when it isn’t done right. Sometimes more when it is… I don’t know that I did it right this semester. I know I have learning and growing yet to be done as an educator and as a man who embraces responsibility overall. I’ve shown some bad tendencies this semester and that needs to be cleaned up. That is also part of the break reflection.

It is also a time to step back from big games. I play a ton of Apex and Minecraft and Madden. I’ll spend a solid week offline, which is much needed at this juncture. I’ve lost a real sense of balance when it comes to such things. Overall, I am looking forward to the peace and merry and the different that makes Seattle a key destination even in the deep of winter rains.

I read this quote on the back of my daughter’s truck today: “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” 

It is commonly Attributed to Oscar Wilde and I am surprised I entirely forgot it existed. Feels like it ought to be the thesis of how I feel Americans ought to be. I want to include it in my class next semester and make sure there is a sense of that understanding of what it means and why it matters.

it was also cool to see her have it.

in other news, I did start the Giants sim and leveraged everything I could into getting draft picks, changing to a spread offense and trying to rebuild. Haven’t finished the draft but it’s looking good so far. Yes, I went with a new QB.

Giants suck.

This is a fact of reality that I cannot change in real life. Instead I intend to recast the Giants reality in the fantasy realms. I have to. I have to feel good about my G-men at some point or at least understand why things have gone so badly. It’s like I said yesterday, and G.I. Joe said before me, “knowing is half the battle.” So, here is what I know:

Daniel Jones was a good pick. The only other option in that situation would’ve been trading for or signing a QB to backup Manning and leveraging that pick for one in the 2020 draft. Jones is arguably the second best QB in that 2019 draft. That draft itself was painfully thin. Kyler Murray was the first QB off the board and he’s legit. Behind him was Jones and then Dwayne Haskins. The only other notable QB in that draft is Gardner Minshew. Now, had I been ‘the guy’ I would have certainly drafted Minshew and traded my pick for 1st round capital in the next draft as well as something in the later rounds of 2019. Minshew is Hostetler, the guy the Giants rode for a short period of time near the end of the Simms era and found a way to push their QB and a way to get some needed wins. I could have worked with that.

Two first rounders don’t mean success is coming. In fact, it is a trap situation. The Giants lack explosiveness on either side of the line. While I feel it is coming on D, I don’t see the O-line growing up to be a tough enough unit to create running lanes. Something needs to be done there. A glance at the Sporting News Big Board shows little to be excited about. There is a guard that shows some Nasty and a center that could be a long time NFL starter. There are also trap plays… Malik Willis could be legit or he could be trash. He’s a QB who hasn’t played top talent and do the G-men really want to start over at QB? In the first round? I say no. I say trade down, actually. The Giants have 11 picks in the draft and 5 inside the first three rounds. There is ample opportunity to beef up the squad with players to grow on and not take on two first round contracts. Trade for a second this year and a 1st next. Use the 1st this year to get a lineman and use free agency to get another.

Some Thoughts:

1. Missed submitting the post again yesterday. First time I didn’t follow through on the double click in a long time. I must be distracted…

When I first went to Azgaar’s website (https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) I was overwhelmed. There are so many options to choose from here that it is safe to say that this is the most immersive free map generator I’ve ever used. Also safe to say is it is better than what I’ve payed for over the years. I’ve been using the site for hours now, trying to garner a better understanding of the depth of it and how to translate that into a world map reflective of the world I am trying to construct. Guess what I learned from that process? I don’t actually know enough about my world to fully construct a map.

And there it is. There is the subconscious truth that has haunted me all these years. I cannot write about a world unless and until I fully understand what this world is and the forces at play. It is a relief to understand it after all these years of absolutely getting it wrong. Now that I have diagnosed the issue, the real work of world building is underway. I’ve tasked hours to the job. My entire winter break is about figuring out what this world is and what are the stories that have been and will be across the ages. One thing I’ve learned from the generator is how little I’ve thought about politics outside a handful of national skirmishes. I don’t even know all of the nations. It is not enough to know the races. you need to know where they came from and where they’ve migrated to and why. All of this is part of the questioning that goes into developing a world map. That, and geological events. Weather is so important yet I’ve ignored it largely in my thinking. This too takes a huge burden off of my soldiers as I now realize what I need to do in order to build this fantasy reality instead of spinning for more years trying to figure that part out. Now the real work begins.

I’m trying to construct the map for this fantasy world and all it gives me is a headache. I feel so far out of my depth that I don’t begin to understand how to get to where I want to get. In fact, I don’t know where to start. In fact, I don’t know what I want the world to look like. I prefer to have a picture of a world all premade and from there shape the human conflicts that impact that space. There are a few things within the world which I feel I need in order to tell the part of the story I know, but for the most part, I am struggling with getting started with all of it. This is what comes of drifting away from fantasy for the better part of twenty years. That, and my headspace for the day is entirely out of whack.

Perhaps this is the day where I say, let it go, and fall back to simpler thoughts and ideas. I don’t have to get everything perfect today. I just need to know that I am trying to get moving forward.

Is it possible to fall out of love with a person, even though you’ve known them and grown with them for years? I am deeply worried that I’ve fallen out of love with myself. I was reading a quote about self-love from a motivational app I’ve been using over the past week. The quote hit me funny. It argued that you need to love yourself first and my gut reaction was, do I? I am not entirely sure, and I think that not being sure is just as good as saying no. I can honestly argue that I love my partner more than I love myself. I can also argue that I am a slave to my habits and I hate that about myself. I feel like an automaton, ceaselessly moving through the motions and not feeling much for many of them. This is not to say I don’t find joy in moments, but as my partner is quick to point out, ‘moments aren’t a life.’ So, what then?

I think the question of self-love starts with why. Why do we love ourselves? Are we simply supposed to? What do we love about ourselves? For me I find that everything that brings me joy about myself is fading. More specifically, my ability to do these things and feel these things within my own body is fading and I am doing next to nothing to fix the problem. There is another quote that popped up on the app, courtesy of Wayne Dyer (I don’t know who he is), “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”

It occurs to me that time and again I’ve chosen obstacle over opportunity in a way that is greater than a mindset but more of an excuse making–a way of letting things happen over and again. I’ve decided that growing old means fading and weakening and I haven’t allowed my self to experience the ‘growing’ in growing old. This too is a mindset. I think this is part of why I’ve fallen out of love with myself. I used to appreciate challenge and change. Now I’m just a scared old man hiding from it as I fade into nothingness.

This is not the way.

I know I should be blogging about football today, but I find myself back in the chair for the first time in weeks and it is worth a ten minute conversation. It is a bat-chair specifically. It is one of a number of fine crafted items of the bat variety gifted to me by my partner. I love the feel of it and the idea of what that symbol represents. I’ve always seen myself as a Robin, but nearing 50, I ought to be considering the fact of growing old with at least a modicum of grace. In other words, I should be assuming that mantle of adulthood with my own take and flavor.

It is interesting to think about how fast the years fly by until one day you wake up old and wondering what happened to all of that time. What did you do? What were your experiences? How will you share that with the world? Is anything in your own life story-worthy? I suppose there are experiences at every stage of life that have been story-worthy, and I know most of the feelings behind them will make their way into story in some fashion. That is, after all, why I am back in this chair and in this cold office space wearing my Robben Island pullover and thinking about history and how to intertwine that with fiction and ideals and ideas.

I’m working on two things: I’m working on building a fantasy world and the stories that shaped that world until it’s “starting point” of fiction. I am also working on the collection of short stories that are actually telling one larger story or novel from different perspectives that build to a conclusion that forces the reader to face their own biases and feelings. It is a whodunnit that isn’t really about who done it. I’ve promised myself 3 hours to build one or both of these ideas a little more fully today and hopefully the next day. The idea of when I write is becoming as important as how much I write and where. Call it the trinity of possible success.

All success starts with trying. It starts with putting one foot down and the other in front of it. You press one key and then another and then another and eventually it shapes a word that shapes a world that shapes an idea that has been living inside of you yearning to be set free.