Month: April 2023

I really need to work hard to avoid football coverage. With the draft a week away every sports pundit is taking a shot at being the next Nostradamus. The difference here is that these pundits do it every year, try to say it loud enough that it actually happens, and when it doesn’t they chide the teams that don’t follow their lead. Afterwards, often years later, they do a redraft based on player success and that redraft is never like what they predicted. Yet they chide teams again for making the mistakes they made. So, I tune out.

I’m getting pretty good at tuning out. I live in a space with four boys who are largely self-centered and negative. This is worse when it comes to sports, so much so that I cannot watch basketball with them, as I’ve said before. However, when I do tune in to the sport itself and try to enjoy the game without distractions, I’m reminded of what I love about sports. I love the competition. I love the skill. I am less about the swag and celebrations, which is my chief disappointment in the new crop of 7 on 7 leagues. I’m afraid swag is becoming the point of the thing. Obviously you gotta win, but how you win seems to matter as much. Big flashy plays, deep passes, slick RPOs. It is this mindset that makes running backs next to worthless in today’s game. Case and point, a D-lineman can lock down a 4 year 90 million salary while an RB is lucky to break 12 per. All of this is to suggest that the league is moving further from the ground and more to the air. Heck, look at the premium being put on CBs to catch up with the WRs that have been going first round every year.

I don’t want to predict the draft. I’m past that. I do want to see what happens when the clock hits zero, and the teams have to decide how they want to move forward. I’m bout that action, and that action is on it’s way back to the field.

Turning back to 2756, which is titled Recovery, which is exactly the feeling of what I need right now. I am stressed completely out of my mind right now and am not effective at hardly anything, and I am needing that sense of a break, but it isn’t coming–not for a while. I’m streaming through a lot of negativity all around me and that is hard to deal with when I’m right, but I am suffering from seriously high blood pressure and that has been tough to deal with on its own. It got so bad that I canceled classes today, because my body just wouldn’t work. My mind was fuzz and spinning. This is not my idea of healthy living, and I want so badly to move closer to healthy living, because I want to live a lot longer.

That doesn’t happen with a 160 over 105 BP. One particularly damning article reads, “On the other hand, the life expectancy of someone with controlled high blood pressure can often be well into retirement age.” Well, it isn’t controlled and I retire in 6 years, so I’m just screwed. But I am not ready to give up. The hardest part is seeing that I am trying to do well and seeing that things are getting worse as I try. I have to struggle through this darkness to even have a reasonable chance moving forward.

I find the new season of Picard entirely reductive. I’m going to spoil it for you so, if you don’t want that then don’t scroll….

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That ought to be enough space. Okay, this season of Picard is an incredible trip down memory lane of every single ounce of Trek lore. There are so many name drops and Easter Eggs that I could not keep up. What screws up is, well, season 2. At the end of season 2 we see a newly evolved borg presence that has merged with Dr. Jurati. This borg is from an alternate timeline than the original borg queen, which makes the reveal of the big bad of season 3 as the orginal borg work… from a story perspective. Only, you already JUST did that. So here we are retreading old ground when we could’ve gone so many other places with this story. Instead, we get more Borg, better evolved borg, and, well, that’s it.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m being negative, I know. I think it comes from a conversation I recently had with my partner about watching bad TV. She often makes me rethink my choices and this is one example of how my choices impact her. If I watch bad TV, so does she. Therefore, I save some (most) of my crap for when she is gone.

This is an odd one. I’m not always about the plug, but this particular coach deserves all the plugs. He’s been working with two of my boys and turning them into D1 Talent. His Team Eyeland Mentality is giving them a level of confidence I haven’t seen before, and I am excited to see it continue to grow. So, that’s the plug. Check out the man and his work.

Moving on…

I don’t have a lot to say this evening. I’m stuffed full of pasta and lamenting returning to class over the next few days without having hit my writing goals for the weekend. Life happens. Fortunately, I’ve been fairly solid in my habit building outside of that. The morning walk is taking. I was strongly considering taking tomorrow off, because my leg feels a bit janky, but I won’t. I cannot. It takes 59-70 days to form a good habit according to Psych Central, and that jives with other things I’ve heard and done in the past. I need to keep putting in the work, and by mid June it shouldn’t feel like work anymore. Heck I may even be able to jog a mile!

Well, the sun isn’t down but it is still approaching 7PM. I find myself hoping for summer and the vacation it brings and the cooler weather that brings. I’m not really a hot person or a cold person. Temperature ought to be about 80. This is all. Light breeze, maybe. These are the things that fumble through my mind when the sun gets hot and bright.

I’m going through this strange period of transition where I know I am getting near the end of the semester but not quite there. Also not quite at the point in the summer where I am focused on my summer self and the writing is a 4 hr affair. Once I get moving like that things will go really fast. Honestly, I am excited to get there, because my head is filling with this novel. I see moments and scenes and the main character is living in my thoughts. I love that. I love that moment when I inhabit that character and understand them, the way I need to in order to tell the story. I know this story will be slower and deeper and more well developed in several ways than the last. I know it will be about place and life and the 6th world–what that really means.

Some Thoughts:

1. Building towards better habits. I am doing better than I was yesterday to be sure–though my partner insists I am quite stressed.
2. I’m stressed to be sure, but some of it is really about that Basketball thing. I tried again, you see, and it went just as badly.
3. My mother in law is reading my blog as I am writing my blog for today and she’s surprised about the length… She ought to see the ones when I really go crazy. Sometimes I wish there was a thought to text translator. I need such things.
4. Defrag was stalled today. Moving through other matters on the list.
5. Dang. This one went fast. I’m truly out of things to say…
6. And finally out of time to say them.

I’m going to rant. I’m going to rant not because I think that we have too many people who think they know better about sports, but because yelling at the TV and acting like you know more than the people being paid to perform is becoming a pastime. Maybe it has long been one and I didn’t catch on until I realized how central that action–the action of talking shit–was to how my kids enjoy sports. So, here we go:

I can’t watch basketball with my kids. Football is barely tolerable with half of them but basketball is unwatchable. Why? I’m tired of the shit talk and analysis and abusive commentary on every single call or missed call by an official. This is a reflection of the culture. We expect refs to be perfect, but beyond that we expect things to be called/go exactly the way we think they should. This extends to video games. I’ve watched one of my boys yell at the screen while playing NBA 2K, because he thought the ref blew a call. To me, that’s wild. That’s beyond reason. And if it isn’t the ref, it’s the way the game is coded. There is always some complaint or some excuse that a fan will have if the pendulum isn’t swinging in their favor.

Frankly, it’s making me hate the sports-media universe. I just want to watch the game. I’m not immune. Unfortunately, I’m the kind of person who easily gets bogged down in the environment and does what the environment does, so I really try not to be around it less, in spite of being the parent, I do the same dumb crap they do. Maybe that is why I prefer being on the opposing sideline or off alone in a corner during live games. It keeps me aware of my tendencies.

Some Thoughts:

1. Defrag started. made it through one tiny spiral notebook…
2. And I finally made a list.

Waited a day on this one, because the end of season district meet went down last night and I wanted to include the culmination of my youngest’s pre-high school sports career in this piece. We’ll get to the Barkley stuff if there is time, but this is starting off with the Middle School district championship. My kid’s team won. They were #1 overall in the track meet, narrowly defeating a team that tried to get them disqualified from the 4×400–which if they had done would’ve swung the victory to that team. 11 pt win. It was that close. Track is an interesting team sport. On the one hand it is individual. The second place team scored 122 points and 38 of them came from a single athlete. 64 came from two athletes. Scoring is based on where you come in in the race. First gets you 10. Second, 8, third 6, fourth 4, fifth 2 and sixth 1. My kid came away with a first place finish and set the school record in the 75m hurdles with a 10.78. He presently ranks #1 in the nation in that event for middle school students. He followed that up with a 3rd place finish in the 100, a second in the 4X100 and a 3rd in the 200. That earned the squad 30 points, out of the 133 they collectively scored to take the ‘ship’. Before the race he said, “I’m more hyped for this than anything I’ve ever been a part of.” He looks ready for the next level. His coaches for next year are already talking about getting him ready for the Arcadia Invitiation 4×110 hurdle relay next year. Runs in the family. His brother is top 10 in the state in that event. Not bad for a couple of FB players.

Speaking of which, the Giants RB declined to sign his franchise tender, which means he may not play this year. That is a tough blow to the team, who will likely consider drafting a top RB now–they don’t have a lot of choice there.

Everyone wants to make money off of their ideas–it is the backbone of capitalism (not the blood–the blood is the finance vultures who take you apart bit by bit for a profit but this isn’t about them). I have an idea and I’m putting it down here right now in hopes of developing it further for myself and for profit down the line. I call it Defrag or Defragmentation (or even defragment…all are versions of the same word and idea you dirty thieves..). The idea is built on the principles of computing I learned in High School. Hard drives–the old ones especially would often go through a process of defragmentation in order to realign memory files into clumps in order to make them easier to access. This process would therefore allow them to be reorganized and even more quickly and readily accessible. As an aside this process for me includes the destruction of unwanted junk–be it junk information, ideas, or even emotions/feelings that cloud your process.

Humans are not computers but our memory is clouded by the same conditions. We too need to accomplish a regular defrag in order to clean up ourselves and our lives. This means we need to look deeply into ourselves, our patterns, the things we keep, the things we carry, etc. And sort through those things in a meaningful way. I don’t defrag nearly enough. In fact I have 50+ notebooks stored up of material I need to comb through. I have a list of tasks to complete that are not actually in a list format that if they were listed would be completeable. All of this is about the process. I’ve taken it on myself to devote the next two weeks to a total defragmentation of my life, habits, finances, feelings, goals, language, assessments, etc. I expect through this process I will be able to shift my life towards a more active and healthy way of being.

Some Thoughts:

1. Everybody needs to above process, but I need it MORE. I need it because I live with several dead-enders. This is best described as people with no ambition and tons of complacency. What is important to them above all else is consuming. They couldn’t care less about bettering their environment. So, my partner and I are left to the cleaning, and the caring, and the stress of it all. So, I need to get my shit together, so I am not overly affected by them. Right now I am.

I used to pride myself on patience. I felt that all things would come in and at the time they were meant to be. I allowed myself to fall into a universe that I believed was going to ultimately allow these things to happen. I don’t entirely feel that way anymore. Two things here: in a limitless universe there is nothing to suggest that there is not a purpose and a path for everyone and everything in that universe. On the other hand, the path that is the one the universe most means for you to be upon may not be the one you want. Such is life. So I don’t know if fighting for your path is challenging the universe or if the universe is ultimately guided by choice. Consider the boat in the pond. The natural sway of the pond will eventually move the boat from shore. On the other hand, a push will do the same job the universe would have and the boat would be upon the current longer than it otherwise would have. I have come to believe in that push of self—that actualization of purpose that can only be self determined.

all of this is, I suppose, to say that we have a responsibility to get there under our own power. That’s all.

Mondays… Right?

No, I can’t end it there. I am supposed to have so much more to say on a Monday start to the week. Only, this week we are doing our college Comicon and it has been very up and down. I didn’t get the turnout for my first event that I quite wanted, but I am really proud to see the effort the school is putting into the event. On the other hand, I’m not sure a college is the right environment for some aspects of this. Last week my students in my Game Studies class were playing D&D. This is a game more commonly associated with 3AM, and that type of binging and atmosphere is reflective of the game itself. I think that people take more chances when they are comfortable and D&D has always been about that kind of role play and exploration. I created a classroom environment where that was okay. However, I don’t know that the entire school is that space, so when we talk about inviting people to cosplay we have to start thinking about how we are crossing worlds in the way that Venkman crossed the streams. You’re not supposed to do that. But maybe it will work… maybe.

My panel was focused on black masculinity in super heroes. My co-presentor was a psych professor I’ve known basically since I moved to the Grand Canyon State. We flowed off each other easily and were able to get the small group to have real discussion about their ideas. We talked about, among other things, how the black heroes we love (Black Panther, Black Lightning, Luke Cage, The Falcon etc.) were created and developed by white writers and how that created a disconnect between the audience and the author. I think about that all the time. It is hard not to think about it once you realize that Falcon’s history was once retconned to make him a criminal who fell under the spell of the Red Skull and was molded into a sleeper agent to ruin Captain America. Yeah, the first African-American Super Hero was slaved to a Nazi in an effort to destroy the symbol of America. That’s low key insidious.

More to say about that tomorrow.