Month: November 2022

I spent the first ten minutes assigned to the post trying to get to the point where I could get to the post. My computer was largely unresponsive and now is struggling to even keep up with the words I type. There are a slew of background processes running that probably should not be. I don’t think it is a virus but it isn’t good nonetheless.

I’m not here to talk about that or about Wolves, the story I’ve started dreaming up based in the Amish community and seen through the eyes of a young girl. It is tangentially related to that though, because I want to spend this time talking about the writerverse.

I think writers reach into somewhere else for their stories. I think research and experience help guide our minds and fingers to the place where stories come from. I think writers can lose connection to that place based largely on why they go there–specifically they ought to be writing from a place of wanting to tell stories. I’ve been writing from a place of wanting to get published and popular enough to publish again, which is not the way.

I didn’t even recognize this until my partner and I were discussing why and how I can no longer tell her stories to put her to sleep at night. I think of every story as a sales point, and those tales were not ever that. They were never meant to be more than moments, and I forgot how to have good moments. So, I am trying to get back to a place where I can have those moments again.

Is social interaction shifting to a non-contact sport? The more I observe my kids the more I wonder about the future and how people will interact as we move forward. My five boys are very different, but without being forced to, they each fall back into a near purely online engagement with the world. This isn’t about COVID. It is likely that the pandemic exacerbated an existing condition. My boys won’t leave the house unless required. They have all they need on their screens. I have one who went away to college and he’s been experiencing an entirely different social life than the others. He’s hardly online in comparison to the others. He spends every day hanging out with friends and exploring and playing in RL. The two high school boys only experience the outside world as a result of being in school. The other two, both college students hardly ever leave the house. The one who doesn’t work only leaves for the handful of classes he takes, and doesn’t really interact with people in person. He interacts online and on his terms.

I think that is the key to my concerns here. These boys are all learning to interact with the world on their terms. They don’t want to leave the comfort zone and be challenged – even the ones who are out in the world are experiencing it in their comfort zone. I’ve predicated my parenthood on making sure my kids are more comfortable than I was as a kid and that comfort made them complacent. I don’t know what steps I need to take to break them of that, but I do want to try.

Some Thoughts:

1. On a side note, I found myself in a high school classroom and I saw two students plop bags down next to each other and they were the same exact (and not common) bag. Later they accidentally switched bags. What makes that interesting to me is that I have a student whose screenplay is built on that premise, and I’d been really uncertain about whether or not that old school switch would hold up, but dang. I saw it in real time, and it totally does.

So, I’m old. I realized that when I was sitting in the classroom and recognized how disconnected from the students I am. They find it giggle worthy that the old dude knows slang. I’m him–that old guy who doesn’t know he’s old. Except now I’m that old guy who doesn’t quite care.

There were other signifiers. The inability to sleep, the blurry eyes in the morning, getting tired merely trotting up the stairs. The act of moving up the stairs makes me feel old in of itself. I can feel my knees cratering on impact and my mind wanders to five years down the line when I will be, as one of my 5 boys suggests, ‘decrepit’.

I’m not doing anything about it. I’m supposed to, but I am in a moment of resignation. I’ve been turning towards the grim acceptance of my eventual demise and recognizing that time can be counted in decades. On one hand. As long as I have been in the world may not be much shorter than as long as I will be in the world, and that is me feeling gratitude and hopefulness for a long long second half. Yet I recognize that in order for that to come to pass I need to do things on my end. I need to put in the work in order to live and I have yet to really accept the work of doing that.

Lazy gets people killed. I just never realized that I’m people too.

Giants got another one! I’m a bit nervous about the weekend game because the Lions are dangerous and pretty dang good. They don’t have a ton of wins, but are still in contention. I think I may have switched my obsessive nature as a coach to a somewhat less obsessive nature as a fan. I’m a data guy. I want as much info as I can have so I feel like I know what the outcome will be and what to be prepared for.

I’m recognizing that it is a part of me and I am learning what to do with it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Getting old is not great. I’m losing some of that reflex talent.
2. In regards to my work life it feels like I am just hanging on… Need a real vacation.

The only way to get into a rhythm is to do what you are supposed to be doing–no hesitation, no I will do it tomorrow. So, I’m turning over a new leaf (pre Thanksgiving and New Year’s resolutions). I’m turning the clock way back to the original 1,000 posts: 838 to be precise. It was a politiblog where I discussed a $50 dollar bet a democrat made me that Obama would lose the election, as well as some nonsense that Rep. King said back in the day about rape and abortion. My how things have advanced. Abortion was struck down by the Supreme Court in a wave of right-leaning power mongering that eventually resulted in a Trump win. Now we’re seeing –and I mean EVERYONE– the self-serving nature of that false leader. It might actually be a very good thing. He might be powerful enough to make the right cannabalize itself and destabilize the powerful media engine that drives that party. Once upon a time it was okay to be a Republican and to have debates and differences of opinion. Now its about lock step and we are going to follow party platform to the end. However, Trump isn’t about party. He’s down for self, and DeSantis is a threat to that. I’m excited to see that clash on display and in the process Democrats might actually get stuff done.. for the first time since Obama won that election… and I won that bet.

Three quarters of the way to a thousand days in version/phase 6 of the Ten Minute rule. I think I’ll be really reflective at a thousand. Time moves strangely depending on how you look at it. No two days ever feel quite the same length, and as the days line up

Some Thoughts:

1. I read the Terminal Man specifically because the show was coming out and I wanted to get the real first. The real is better. The show is okay at best. In truth, I am bothered by the change in multiple character portrayals.
2. Waiver Wednesday will contain a fantasy update..
3. Dirty bathrooms in movies somehow always look less insidious than the real thing.
4. Rezvani is selling legit urban tactical vehicles. To the public.

I’m writing this from my phone as I sit in bed alone at the end of a long Sunday. I’ve been ‘dadding’ four boys all day, which means cooking and cleaning and playing games while they contribute little to the work being done. This is not the way, but it is, and I’ve too often been just another boy doing little. I get that now, following a few days on the other side. I get how the house is boy-land and lacks the balance that would make a woman want to live here. My lady is gone, for a while, and I’ve been holding it down. It is a full time job for a man that has two already. Needless to say, things are getting neglected.

now more than ever I need to embrace the list and some semblance of balance and understanding how long things take. Perhaps this is the push I’ve needed all along.

I’m woefully behind on quite a few things right now. I’d enjoy seeing a year when this was not the case. It is the way, but it shouldn’t be. I’m working on making a new way. I have all the tools I need, but after 40+ years on this plane of existence, I seem quite set on being lazy. Imagine who I would’ve been had I not been so. I think like that a lot, and that is useless backwards thinking. Instead I need to be forward thinking. Always forward. So, what am I going to do today?

Some Thoughts:

1. I love spell check.
2. Hulu is intent on making me use a new unified password across all properties. But why?

Too much screen time tonight. It’s left me drained and discombobulated. This is what happens when left to my own devices. Literally, I suppose. I played a lot of Gotham Nights and now I am experiencing eye strain and cannot entirely think straight. I’ll give the world a new look tomorrow. Tonight I need to get to bed. However, first….

Some Thoughts:

1. I don’t get how my kids live like this every single day. It feels so empty and pointless.

I wish I wouldn’t get so excited to see a film. It can never live up to the buildup in my imagination. It can never be as grand and wonderful as I wanted it to be. It can never tell the full story. Why? Because I’m a book guy, and a book gives you as many pages as it needs to tell the tale. A movie clocks in at 3 hrs or lest for the most part. That is not enough time to tell the story of Wakanda. That was not enough time to build up to everything they wanted to do and resolve it in the way it needed to be resolved. It is not enough time to explore as many characters as they chose to fill the screen with and still feel like you’ve been told the story of each.

This is not to say this is a bad movie. It was good. I enjoyed it. That being said, it was not as much as I hoped, in spite of the length. I am happy I saw it and I will likely see it again at a much later date. It was not as good as the first movie, yet it was a deeply stirring tribute to the man who brought the Black Panther to life.

The mantle sits on new shoulders now, and it is worth it to see how this new Panther handles things. It is also worth it to see what happens to some of the other characters as we move forward. Wakanda is in good hands–Good enough that I look forward to what it does in the future.