Month: December 2022

I’m in Paris and I’m having a blast. 

Here is the thing: Paris is a very old city and filled with beautiful architecture that inspired buildings around the world. However, the thing that stands out to me the most thus far is scale. The sheer scale of these buildings is unbelievable. The Louvre can fit the MET and Natural History inside of it. Probably would have room to eat the Guggenheim. Seriously, the scale of these places is beyond what I first imagined and leaves me breathless.

And cold. Paris is very cold. This is probably an exaggeration given my lack of recent familiarity with cold weather locales. At the very least it is a prudent observation of a place that requires a hat and or scarf as a basic survival tool in the winter. 

The other thing I learned about France is that it is a passionate city. I happened upon the place the night of the world cup game vs. England. The streets were filled with fans chanting the national anthem and cheering all the way to the victory. Then they danced through the streets in celebration. 

This is France. This is day one. Crazy to try and imagine what comes next.

This is a bit of a strange one. I’m losing a day. Not entirely but I’m dying towards tomorrow, each stop pushing me closer to the time meridian. As such this blog on a plane is taking place sometime before tomorrow but the next one… well this may be a two on one situation. I’m headed to France and I’m geeked about it. The classes have ended and now I’m out in the world resetting myself in a very romantic place with my very romantic partner. I’m going to write some stuff too. I need to. I’m excited about diving in and exploring and being romantic and even about braving the cold. All of it is definitely different from the daily meh and its those meh rituals that are killing me.

This is living.

It turns out I am not one of those authors who languishes in old novels and spends his hours reading up on how writers of the past lived. I am also not one to sit about and read books all day. Or one to experience the world on a daily basis. No, it seems I am just a guy who is also a dad who is also a professor who likes games and likes food and sits on his haunches a lot waiting for something to happen when not much actually does.

To whit, I am quite passive. I’ve been like this forever. I let life come to me as opposed to pursuing it or getting really deeply invested in what I love. I ought to dive deeper, but as soon as I am knee deep, I bail. I didn’t go too deep in on teaching, or counseling before that. I treated engineering as a surface level hobby. Heck, I don’t even do the required research to be top shelf at gaming (though being old hurts my skill level as well). I am a dabbler, with a dabblers mentality of experiencing everything I can up to a point and then doing other stuff with the mindset of how good I could have been at any of it. I did that with football for sure. I let opportunity walk up into my arms and said, “meh.” More than once.

This has me thinking about what it is I truly want, and why I act like this place is what is holding me back. Perhaps the place is yet another excuse.

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to use my Commodore 64 as a Keyboard.
2. Micah Parsons just fell ass first into the statement we’ve all been trying to make–We don’t like Trump, but we aren’t a fan of Biden either…

8, 9, 7. My wins respectively in three different leagues. While the 9 would be good enough for 1st in two of the three leagues, My 8 and 7’s put me in 5th and 6th in my 12 person leagues. That is, by definition, mid. This week I play the #1 team in the league where I am 5th, and the other three teams ahead of me have easy matches. I could fall to 6th or 7th or I could keep my spot and make a statement leading up to the playoffs. The projected points have me losing by 15, so I don’t know how much of a statement I will be making, but I still believe there is a chance to pull out a win. This might be one of those weeks where I get 3 wins and secure a nice position leading into the playoffs.

The goal for the other 12 man league is to secure the 4-5 matchup. That keeps me out of the sights of the one seed for as long as possible. If I can make it to the finals, I can secure cash, and that is a win enough for me. The family league is a bit different. I’ve been on top the entire season and I really want to stay that way. Quite a bit depends on Barkley. If he can hold a bit of that early season form over these last few games, the Giants will be in the playoffs and I will win the league. I’m excited for the chance for both things to happen there.

A part of me is looking ahead to next season. I tend to be a year ahead on breakout players. I knew that Rhamondre S. would be huge for the Patriots… but I thought it would happen last year. This year I didn’t have a true breakout that I followed, which makes me hesitate on who to grab as a ‘sleeper’ in the next draft. I shouldn’t be looking that far ahead, but the Madden Player in me knows that the season to come has already started in the season you have now.

Speaking of Madden… Still playing and enjoying with the family. Good stuff there.

That’s about ten for me, so…

I dialed back one iteration to 6.14. It starts with: “Willpower. That is what it is going to take to avoid wandering back into youth football this fall. I want the boy to do it deep down. I want to be out there enjoying watching, but that should not happen. He’s gone through football nonstop for a few seasons now, and with the idea still being to have him represent the state in both February and June/July, having a few months off is simply a no brainer. This won’t stop the coaches from asking and me from wanting to cave, but I cannot do it. Instead I need to view this off season as what it truly is: an off season. A chance to pursue other things both athletically and otherwise. This is Waiver Wednesday, so we will focus on the athlete stuff.”

Given yesterday’s admission, not much has changed. I’m struggling here. I get to the point where I get so tired of the every day of how things are here that I’m defeated by it. It crushes my creativity to be surrounded by an air of let’s do nothing. I fall into it too easily and I am quite good at it… for a while. I cannot say football stuff has anything to do with that–my addiction to the youth cycle is more tied to wanting to be a good dad than any of the rest of it. Except, I work in a week on week off cycle now where I have the time to fall into other things if they existed. Instead I am trapped in the cycle and dying oh so slowly from it.

Vacation cannot come soon enough.

Blogging from my phone and it’s hard to see the letters. The nights and early mornings are like this, and it makes me nervous about diabetes. Who knows what is really wrong with me. It could just be too much screen time but it still sucks. Odd day. I’ve come to recognize the connection I have with youth football as an addiction and as a missed opportunity in life. I say this as I recently became aware that the team my kid left was just on TV during the Raiders game. This is not the first second or even fifth time this has happened. He’s adjacent to talent but, like me, teams get noticed once he leaves. I hope it is just that he’s at a level of talent that puts him in that conversation as opposed to it being about his inability to capitalize on the talent he has (me) or that talent not being enough (also me) which is the story of my life thus far.

but this is 7 and lucky number 7 is about growth and change and finding a way to be your greater self as opposed to the other guy. This is about accepting that the youth football period of my life is over and done and I did as good as I did as a coach and a dad in that. No sense in regrets. Time for this last kid to take the torch and find his way to success on his own terms. Failure is a choice but it is not my choice to make. I made mine and did my thing and it went how it went and I made connections in that world and now they don’t know or want to know me and that’s okay too. I’m on to the next thing… once I settle into whatever that is.

maybe that’s the real issue here/ I haven’t moved on because I haven’t decided what to move on to. I’m still here in the space and not filling it with the new.

Deion hit a new milestone, becoming the coach of the Colorado Buffs. I’m really happy for him. I’m happy to see what he can do with the squad and now I have to support that team in some fashion. Weird, right? A Cyclone going pro buff? Well, they aren’t even Big 12 anymore. They went pac 12. People move on and grow and change. I gotta grow and move on and change. I think I’m doing that the way Coach Prime is doing that, but I am not there yet. I haven’t left my legacy at my school. I’m trying to get there. I don’t really have the locked in focus I need for it just yet, but it will arrive… After the vacation.

Some Thoughts:

1. I could really really really use a lotto win. It would be great for my family. I don’t make enough money to bail everyone out, and there are people in trouble that I cannot help out. I know I’m spending money on self right now, but it is too late to take that back.
2. Cowboys out here looking like a Madden team. 47 on the Colts with 5 minutes left to play.
3. Talking about Deion makes me want to teach there.

Big football day around the nation. There are local high school games in contention tonight, and championships around the country. Upsets abound. USC was whipped by Utah… Again. Kansas State edged out TCU, Michigan and Purdue are locked in a 7 to 7 match, and Georgia put 50 on LSU. What that means is that several of the top 4 are in contentious games. two lost, opening the door for others to slip in. Personally, I think the USC loss, while sad, is meaningless. They have two losses and both are to Utah. So, unless you plan to put Utah (rank 12) in the top 4, then it shouldn’t upset the balance at all. TCU lost to #13 K-State. Rough, but excusable. TCU is a one loss team. Allow their body of work to speak for itself.

Meanwhile in the SWAC, Jackson State wrecked Southern, cementing a 27-5 three year run with Sanders as the coach. They are well coached and loaded with talent. Now here is the question: If Deion goes to Colorado, how many of his dudes can come with him? How many will? He certainly brings a ton of flare and he has the connections to bring the top assistants with him. I think the kids will come. Colorado, if it is the squad, becomes Swag-U instantly. It will take a few for them to be a powerhouse, but they will win a lot more games.

Derek clicked the side button on his phone to shut off the video feed. A thin white cordless headphone still hung from one ear. What he’d been listening to wasn’t music. It was his favorite musician talking on a web show he knew very little about. He knew what it was. Everyone knew who Alex Jones was. He pushed that story about the school shooting being fake and they got him for it. Derek didn’t think the shooting was fake–he knew a half dozen kids who carried to school. He just didn’t care about it. A smirk flitted across his lips as he remembered the meme, “Niggas get shot every day, B.”

Derek shoved his hands in his pockets and started the short walk to school. He lived less than a mile away, but his city wasn’t shaped right. It coiled like a snake. You couldn’t just find a main road in this part of town. As he walked he felt the weight of his mother’s pistol shift in his waist band. He used his left hand to put it back in place. He wished he had one of those under the shirt holsters like he saw in videos. It would be so much easier to carry the piece around that way. Of course he’d have to move it back to his waistband to flash it, but that was fine. He wouldn’t be moving around so much when he did that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Part of what we need to do as writers is inhabit the minds of the characters involved, and realize that they won’t necessarily make the same choices we would or even the best choices for themselves. They will do things based on personal motivations and personal history. You as a writer might not share that history. Yet you are beholden to it.
2. I don’t have any direction to this one either. I was thinking about Kanye on Alex Jones and about how much publicity that moment is getting and how it trickles down to the kids who worship his beats. I wanted to know what one of those kids was like.

Lately Thursdays have felt like a time to sit back and think, ‘WTF happened this week?!’ or something to that effect. Reflections in general are important and doing so at a time when you’re feeling like you’ve moved to a point of transition is even better. Here I am sliding into the weekend and towards my last week of classes and I feel relief. Not entirely, I’ve been on edge all day, but I am feeling a level of relief overall. I am ready for this to be over and to move towards a vacation that has been a long time coming. I’m ready for the 23′ reset and all that comes with that. I’m ready for change, and for growth, and to start getting the last kid ready for high school, and for writing new things and for going new places and for going places more often.

I’m ready for a new dawn. I suppose that is the best way to describe what I am looking for.

Some Thoughts:

1. I hate being on edge.
2. Madden has been a wreck. About to be fired as a Franchise owner because of debt. I suppose we ought to switch to coaches in order to avoid this straight up madness. Perhaps then the being in debt part won’t matter so much.
3. Or maybe it is time to start a new league.