Month: May 2023

I thought this was going to be a Waiver Wednesday post, which is further evidence of Gibson’s soul delay. Despite having returned from Japan days ago, my soul is still at least a half day ahead. That makes it Wednesday in a weird kind of way. I’ve yet to catch up with it or even get a proper night’s sleep. It is hard to imagine living this way. I had a conversation with a guy who works crew for these types of long haul flights and he seemed entirely fine with the transfer back and forth between days. I suppose it is a thing that takes practice as well as a shifting state of mind.

What has been effective for me over the last few days is finding a time and space to write. I’m not doing four hours a day yet, but I am ramping up considerably and planning out my days and weeks and setting goals and getting ready for a highly productive summer. I’m excited to be back to writing more or less full time. I am working on three major projects–two of which are novel length and third is a 15,000 word project I picked up to write with two other authors. I’m hoping that will be the easiest of the three, because it is entirely right up my alley. With good scheduling I’ll have time to do all of these things, get my 110 levels in Apex and participate in the Madden 24 beta (more on that tomorrow). These are the solo things in my life. The rest is entirely about living life well with my partner. After all, it is her summer too.

I don’t alway remember my dreams, but occasionally I have some crazy whoppers. Last night, as I continue recovering from what William Gibson described as ‘Soul Delay’ I dreamed a weird little dream about, well, everything. It started out normal. I was on a city street in an Asian country that may have been in Japan (but wasn’t primarily Japanese in any real way). My partner and I walked into a store in order to do some light shopping. We weren’t there for more than a minute before the place was robbed by a crew toting AR-15 style assault rifles. This is where it gets strange. We hop behind a counter and the tiles below it give way, causing the people around us to plummet into darkness, but land on a narrow bridge far below ground with nothing but more darkness to either side. There are people on that bridge clawing their way up towards the new arrivals and the new light as if they’ve been seeking that light their entire lives. However, they are on some sort of conveyor on this bridge that keeps them moving forward towards… I don’t know.. We didn’t fall.

So, it keeps getting weirder. The heist is foiled by some kind of shape shifters who kill the gun-toting folks and then try to kill everyone in the store. We escape. We find ourselves on the streets of this country trying to blend in, which we do not, and running from the shapeshifters. All the while I feel like the key to everything is whatever was going on way below ground that we saw–that we were never ever supposed to see.

My mind is a mess of story. I think that I’ve done myself a disservice by not writing–freewriting–every single day to get these stories out and make some sort of sense of the world as I interact with it. That is what dreams are: Windows into our personal confusion. I’m not sure there is a great story in what I posted above, but I can guarantee I could turn it into a decent run of Secret Wars/Skrull Wars. I’m not yet 50, and I have a crap ton of good story left to tell. I ought to be letting myself tell it–even if nobody pays me upfront.

This is a blog about spaces–writing spaces to be specific. I’ve watched my (side of the) office deteriorate into a messy collection of papers and books that should be attended to at some point in the distant future, but always should be attended to at some point in the distant future. Clutter is chaos. For some there is order to their own chaos but for me there is not. I feel like my desk is a constant representation of my mind, which is to say, sloppy and bearing only the slightest hint of organization. As is one’s space is one’s writing and writing life, so I find that it is important to share this tidbit.

Clean your spaces, people. Seriously. The one surefire way to be productive is to be organized. I’ve long talked on having the right tools for the job, well an organized space can be your greatest tool and ally. Know where everything is. Have a clear sense of a schedule and a plan of attack for how long it will take to do what you need to do as a writer. Most major market novelists operate on a 6-12 month schedule, which requires BIC (butt in chair) on a daily basis and a daily schedule that you keep to unerringly.

That’s all for the ranting. I’m about ready to go back to writing ten minute fiction for a while.

Home.

When I stepped on that plane I knew I wasn’t going to be satisfied being back here. My kids are here. My job is here. That’s all there is for me. I lack the friendships to lock me to a place. I am, and have always been, quite portable. Unfortunately, being here causes a fair amount of drag on my life, love, and happiness. I blog constantly about being unhappy in the home life, and after every trip that hard wall comes down faster and faster. Heck, we didn’t even get to adjust to time differential before everyone around us slipped back into their normal and made it feel like we were both the help, and extra people hanging around their space.

Oh to feel comfortable in your own home.

Some Thoughts:

1. People make a huge deal about LeBron being 39. Well, Udonis Haslem is about to turn 43 and has played in the league for 20 years. Man is still going… unless he finally retires.
2. Forever Companion may be the creepiest lonely person tool outside of the movies. I’m going to need to have an AI blog, but now is not the time.
3. Time to start thinking about the next iteration of tech upgrades, and what I need out the tech a well as what are the needs of the family including what can be passed on.

I am writing this blog from my newly acquired iPad and very slick) keyboard. While in Japan I realized that I needed an IPad. Specifically, I realized that an IPad fit neatly in the remaining space I had in these planes. I do not know why planes appear to be offering less space, but I annoy operate a `3 inch MacBook in the space provided. Yet with the iPad and the keyboard I am use fine. 

The keyboard is slick. I bought a foldable keyboard at a place called Bic camera an it makes me feel like a hacker. It sits neatly on the space in front of the iPad and folds away neatly and sleekly when not in use. 

 On the other hand, the IPad was a miss. I should have either waited and purchased used on amazon or forked out the additional hundred or two for a newer model airpad. As it stands, I overpaid badly for an IPad 9, because of a language barrier and me not realizing that the sweet model I had all picked out was actually a SoftBank product that, acoriding to them, wouldn’t be fully functional in the USA. So I took it on the chin and bought a fallback model because I was already too deep into the process to want to to back out. There are a lot of words for what this is, but I will settle on stubborn. 

Obviously, this is a first effort. If the rig proves worthwhile, I might upgrade and hand it down to a kid next year—but I am pretty sure the only way I move on from the keyboard is if I find a backlit model. Heck, maybe this one IS backlit and I

Be yet to unlock that secret… 

The moral is this: Enjoy the things you have, and do not dwell on how you might have gotten them cheaper. Every bit of life is story and this bit of tech has an interesting one now.

Technology in my opinion is about advancing human ease and shifting reality to a state where we are more productive, powerful, and exploratory as a species. It is meant to accompany and accelerate humanity. I feel like Tokyo does a wonderful job integrating tech into daily lives in a seamless way, which looks and feels nearly invisible in its application.

in short, Tokyo tech is subtly cool and makes life easier. Case in point in my argument is the technology for the blind. All of the sidewalks contain yellow textured bumpers that are easy for blind residents to follow. Additionally the street corners and tops and bottoms of escalators are loaded with tech that makes a specific sound — often a bird call that isn’t like any other bird. These indicators mean that you can navigate the city without sight. Furthermore the trains all contain displays which share station information in up to 5 different written languages in addition to speaking in both Japanese and English. This is not hard to do, but requires a desire to use tech in this way—to use tech to make the world more accessible. Isn’t that what we should want?

I want to start this one by saying that my mid-kid (11th grade) got his first college football offer. It is a big moment for him and the start of really good things moving forward. I see more offers in his future–especially if he is able to excel in camps this summer against premium talent. He’s 16 now and coming full into his confidence and athleticism following the setback of a knee injury. Big things ahead.

Moving on.. Let’s talk about the NFL. We can start with the upcoming (likely) sale of the Washington Commanders from a scumbag owner to someone more in line with the outwardly suggested values and ideals of the NFL, but I don’t want to go there yet. Instead I want to speak on the topic of hype. It is the hallmark of professional sports. We build fanbases with hype, we use hype to fill stadiums, and we get very loud about it in the preseason when every team has a chance to be the team. Now is the time where the sportswriters are talking from a positional of supposed knowing (read: opinion) about how teams ought to be ranked. Mind you, we haven’t really even started pre-season OTAs. However, these writers are in the know about which teams are gonna be fantastic and which will not. I can tell you from a coaching perspective, until you put the pads on–until you are staring across the field at the opposing squad with the final seconds of week three trickling away, you know nothing.

Week 3 is a specific statement, because we’ve seen teams interact with various other teams and can get a gauge of how they are built and how they are playcalling and how that all adds up to a level of ability. Late season surges are almost always a result of schedule or people returning from injury. Generally you see that stuff pan out early on.

I’m running out of time here so I’ll sum up with this: It is way too early to crown division champions. Here is what we know: Some very good teams stayed intact while others got even better. The schedule is going to make this specific season more competitive than last and for the NFC East especially, it is going to be a much tougher road. But I don’t know… I’ll tell you in week 4.

I decided to go back to how version seven started. As with most things in my life it was both without great fanfare and related to sports. The post, 7.1, fell on a waiver Wednesday and I talked about the Giants and about new beginnings, only casually discussing this as a new beginning and why. I’ve delved in deeper since but it is a thing that I believe I do: I say things, let that simmer, then something happens. It is my way but. It always the best way to be meaningful and impactful in the practice of living.

The more I realize how much I have lived the more I feel like the time remaining in this life has value and meaning. I want to do good for myself and others. I want to leave a mark. I want to not be afraid to go when that last call arrives. I am not in the place I want to be. I live my life off balance; always fearful of the home situation erupting into something there is no coming back from or controlling. I live on pins and needles and that makes it hard to think about or do anything positive. Knowing this helps me understand how and when I thrive and how and when I fail.

seven was about starting over but I merely kept going down the same dim path.

I am sitting in, perhaps, the most beautiful writing space I’ve experienced outside of television. It is a simple and calm space. I am looking into a small outdoor area wrapped in a bamboo fence that encases a zen garden. The simplicity and small details give it beauty–as opposed to my own space, which is overrun with books, and swords, and light sabers and so on. Less here is more. This led me to thinking about my partner’s philosophy and core values. Less is indeed more. The less you fill your time and heart with, the more energy and love you have to pour into the things which truly matter. Defining those things is always a matter of choice and perspective, but the idea, as I see it, remains to limit those things to what comes from the natural world. She is an old soul. She believes in having a small number of meaningful relationships and closing herself off form the noise and clutter of life. She is not, therefore, a city person. I mean, hell, we own a farm in the deep woods.

Thinking about this and thinking about this space and our recent travels and our upcoming travels continues to lead me through a self-reflection about what I want and need from this time I have left as a human being. I remain woefully short of real answers. I am able to see clearly through the next few years–get one more kid off to college, get the last established and locked in academically and athletically in high school. See two more graduate from college and start meaningful lives of their own. What she focuses on is what life is meant to become. I struggle with looking too far ahead.

From all this I gather that I need to work on rephrasing my thinking to be able to see the longer road and lock in on the simple things and devote more energy to that and less to noise. That would lead to a healthier relationship and thus a happier life. This is, after all, the way to peaceful living.

Some Thoughts:

1. Tomorrow is a turnback day. I believe it best to turn back to the beginning of this present iteration. I don’t remember what I said or felt 180(1) days ago, but I am curious to discover what that was.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the above term. The idea of the ‘observable distance’ dates back long before me and likely is being used in a plethora of ways. Lately it strikes me as a way to identify the space between the emotions and understandings of people. In my own life the observable distance appears quite vast between the various parties that represent my daily experience of living. How they see and perceive how I feel about them; about myself; about the relationship between the two is often quite a different thing than how I see that same dynamic.

I also am beginning to stretch that term into a form of self-understanding. In this regard the observable distance between who I see myself as and who I physically, socially, mentally, and virtually represent as grows by the day. I am, for one, older in reality than I hold in my own squishy brain. I am less talented in many regards than I hold in my own brain. This is best exemplified by a recent scenario where I, someone who did the boy-band thing twenty some-odd years ago, wound up in a Tokyo karaoke suite with a handful of my children and my partner trying to sing Anime songs and sounded like shit. Observable distance.

In relationships this can also be noted as the space/place where you think you are as a couple as opposed to where your partner sees things. This hard dose of reality can often destabilize the mutually agreed upon hallucination of ‘where things are at’. I’m going to end this post with a quote from one of my favorite films. No context… just distance. Please observe:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller