Month: November 2022

Kadarius Toney might be good. He only had two targets and caught both for a total of 12 yards, but the crazy whip route he ran is exactly why he got drafted in the first place. The dude goes hard every play. Even when he blocks he goes all out. That sort of effort will get noticed in KC and will get him on the field. Will it mean more KC wins? Not yet, but who knows?

I know this week is going to be a fun one. The Giants are back at it. Next up is the Texans, and I am waiting to see how the G-men respond to the loss of their defensive play caller as they are forced to contend with one of the toughest runners in the league in Dameon Pierce. Should be a rather Giants sort of game. 4th Q will decide it.

The rest of the league is looking rather odd. The Bills fell to the Jets, like someone said. That means the J-E-T-S are a half game out of first and the NFC and AFC Eastern divisions are looking quite saucy (No Gardner pun intended). If Allen is legit injured, Bills are out of the race. It falls to a Jets v. Dolphins race. If not…

What nobody is talking about is the upcoming return of Deshaun Watson. It won’t mean much this season, with the division presently owned by the Ravens, but it matters for fantasy owners like me. Watson raises the profile of all the Wideouts on that squad. Sure, he’s a dirtbag, and I don’t excuse it, but I also didn’t bury my copies of Silver Linings Playbook and Django unchained because Harvey Weinstein made them. I hope Watson pays his price for his sick fetishizing of female masseurs. I hope I can get a WR some more points because he plays too.

I find myself thinking of a wonderful passage a student once wrote about dust. I’m staring at my ceiling fan and considering the collected dust there and considering how that stillness could be a metaphor for how I conduct this rare and beautiful life. I have so many opportunities available to me and I find that, more often than not, I am waiting for.. something else? Something more? Carpe Diem ought to sit better with me. I have what I need to be successful right now and I have what I need to be creative right now, however, I am lazier than I have any good right to be. I have been since about 14.

It would take years of therapy to dissect how we got here. Suffice to say there is no going back. There is perhaps a way to rebuild and to make of me something of worth. What is it going to take to be focused on the writing and the exploration of the world on a more regular basis?

Some Thoughts:

1. MarbleLeague is back! They’ve seemingly incorporated Jellotech into the proceedings. That company is, apparently, the name they are using to label the very dope marble tech they’ve developed for this amazing show.
2. They also have great gear.
3. Perhaps it is still true that one of the things I truly wish to develop is a league like this where it is very fun and fair and people can enjoy without the anger and blame largely associated with, well, everything else. House of Beys was my last shot at that. HoB was nearly 5 years ago…
4. Gosh, how have I grown in five years?

Not a big idea day. Just have…

Some Thoughts:

1. Do people forget how to see ghosts? People forget or never learn how to channel their own energies all the time. Is it so strange to think we may lose touch with our ability to feel energies beyond ourselves–perhaps even as a result?
2. New update for the blog’s backend. Liking the new update and how it feels to write.
3. Listening to Mr. Nightmare as I do this…
4. I hate roaches
5. I hate how messy my office is… though this has nothing to do with the roach comment above.
6. More than anything, I hate how disorganized I am at present. I need that hard reset and nothing to do for a few weeks…
7. The Lakers should trade LeBron and their Center. In fact, they ought to trade a lot of their talent away. Not Westbrook. Don’t lose the picks needed to trade Westbrook. Ride out the season with him and let him go–keep the money free for free agency and start fresh.
8. If I win the Powerball, I’m definitely buying property internationally. I’d be interested in buying interest in a sports team as well…

Finally watched Midnight in Paris. I’d long mistaken it for a film about a couple that meets on a train and it is absolutely not that. Instead it is a story about a man who roams the streets of France each night and is transported to the past where he meets the literary and Art Giants. It is an amazing thing he goes through and it reminds me of the very brief time I spent at university surrounded by writers and being a part of a working writing community. I don’t interact with a ton of novelists and don’t have the kind of discourse with those kind of artists that helps move my writing to the state I want it to be in. I’m not where I am at, and I don’t truly believe those sorts of communities exist near me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Good weekend of football.
2. Good weekend with the family.
3. Bad weekend for writing.
4. I’m trying to develop a playbook in madden I can really appreciate and enjoy. It hasn’t gone so well thus far. I have a ton of formations in my book that I never use, and I see that I need to thin out the book quite a bit. I am going to make a slim version that I hope to be able to use with fewer notes.

Reading Stephen King’s fairy tale is like watching King write a kind of challenge to Neil Gaiman. It is almost like he’s saying, “This is how you do it, Son.” Though I don’t know that famous authors still have those sort of challenges in the air. I always thought I would be the writer to have those, and if I could find my path back to the beam so to speak, I would likely have those again. I’d like to challenge Martin and Erikson and Tolkein to a duel of fantasy world building and storytelling in which my Torathae utters the bark of “That’s how you do it, Son.” Down on through the ages until someone steps forward and challenges my own creation. I’d like to do that, but instead I’ve been sitting on my laurels watching the world move past.

Not doing is a drug.

I am largely composed of low hanging fruit and disappointment and failure to launch. I suppose it sucks so much to see it in my many children, because I largely see it as a reflection on myself. I haven’t shown much beyond a middling novel and a ton of RPG books that do okay. I haven’t bust out and been the shining example of what I’ve long hoped to become.

What will it take to become?

Some Thoughts:

1. My money is on Georgia. Well, not actually. Not yet. I’ve considered spinning up the betting app, but that’s just bad practice.

This has been a very long week and year. So much has happened over the last few months that I am still sort of trying to collect myself and figure out what is heads and what is tails. I took today off almost entirely. Beyond some (overly drawn out) paperwork, all I did was chill and play games. Some video games, some card games. I needed the downtime. Tomorrow I am back to being a writer in full, and putting in those tough hours to get the words the way the ought to be.

I’ve been sending myself emails about stories and about world building, because I know I have stories stored up that need to get out. I also know that I have a serious lazy streak ready to kick in at any possible moment, so I gotta keep these ideas flowing and ready to roll.

More than anything else, I know that this brief lull ought to be as restorative as I need it to be. I have a lot I still want to say as a writer, and the more I experience, the more I want to say. I hope and expect to see my stories in print more and more in the future and to continue to chase that wonderful dream.

Some Thoughts:

1. Remember the I free wrote on Fridays?

Welcome to Thursday. It is early enough that the sun has yet to crease the sky. I’m awake because, well, because I am old or I’ve trained myself to the task of waking up at 4AM each day without any real want or need to do so at the moment. Going to bed before 9PM is certainly a part of that, as is the massive amount of coast to coast travel I’ve been doing (and plan to do more of moving forward). Nevertheless, I am here and awake and trying to find anything constructive to say as I rouse this weary brain.

I’m expecting today to be a good one. I plan to see Black Adam, and teach a class. That’s the morning. The evening is one for chilling with my love and staying relaxed as I roll into the weekend. Sometimes life is just chill.

Some Thoughts:

1. Again, I don’t want to RANT about Josh McDaniels, but I do want to point out that some people are very good at certain things and not so good at others. McDaniels is a wonderful Offensive Coordinator. That is not the same skillset as a head coach. You need a different set of talents to be able to bring the entire thing together, and his record reflects that he isn’t the guy for the job. Joe Judge too was not the guy for the job. Be good at what you’re good at. Try what you aren’t good at. Once you know where your niche is, apply it.
2. Speaking of leadership, I’m facing an interesting slate of candidates in my own collegiate division chair election. The two present very different skillsets and I have to ask, which is going to help me achieve my goals?

So, I slept. When I woke it was Waiver Wednesday!

My jet lag from several days of consecutive flights across the country reminded me of how difficult it can be for a team to travel. That showed in the Giants game. That is a team that needed a break. Most take the bye after a trip overseas. They didn’t and it cost them in the long run. This bye will reset the balance, and they get to reload with all of the people they started this thing with… except Joka. He’s in KC about to try to rewrite his narrative. Hopefully he will. Good luck to him.

Miami is still at work rewriting their narrative. A flurry of trades Tuesday means a rocked up Dolphins squad is ready to beat up on the Bears. Yeah, it will happen. So will PHI over HOU and LAC over ATL, and SEA over AZ. The rest of the matchups don’t feel that easy to me. I want to say Cincy has a win in them, but they looked terrible on Monday night. Las Vegas is another squad that should be good, but struggles. I will say this: Vegas has a coach who cannot win games. He is 12-20 as a head coach. Daboll is 6-2 with a team that lacks half the talent! He isn’t good. So, I see more losses in the Raider’s future.

I’m going to give NE the benefit of the doubt this week and say they win. I won’t say the same for Buffalo. They might fall into the NY trap and get beat.

I don’t plan on doing nanowrimo this year. Thinking back to the year prior, I started something I never finished, and I never hit the 50K mark like I was supposed to. My students have been touting the legend of their friend who is nominated for a national book award for her last year’s nano novel. That’s pretty solid stuff right there. Surfing her website I found that she hasn’t published a ton of work, and it is a wonderful reminder that if you write the right book at the right time, you’ll be solid for life.

I’m not solid for life, but I know I need to keep hacking away at the keys to get my story(s) out there for the world and maybe someone will like them enough to read em. That’s pretty much all a writer needs in the end. The roof over the head is nice too though.

Some Thoughts:

1. Wildly exhausted.

I’m done with planes for a while. Not too long–I’m far from being done traveling in 2022.

I’m dedicating the next few weeks to getting right. I have a ton of work and other situations to handle and get straight, so that is where my mind is at. I want to be at a place where the writing is getting handled on a natural schedule, and I want to get back to feeling good about my body and how I treat it. I suppose how I treat me and the ones I love is the biggest thing I am thinking about now–how I treat my mind, body, soul, and partner. How I treat my kids and neighbors matters as does how I respect my job. these are the things on my mind as I roll into the end stage of 2022 and begin to think about 2023 and what that means to me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Giants game was fantastic in spite of the Loss.
2. I might be a Seahawks fan based on the way they treat the fanbase.