Month: June 2023

Weak post yesterday–It is clear when I am drained vs. when I have enough energy left to power through ten minutes. There is a lesson in that: Figure out when you have the mental energy to create and be creative and that should be the time you leave for yourself to be a writer. I have yet to really figure out when that time is for me other than knowing it is earlier in the day rather than later. Being a writer is about finding that time, sticking to that time, and putting your butt in the chair to be productive each and every day. Moreover, it is about wanting to do it. I want to write every day. There is not a day I say, man, I don’t want to be creative today. I am always searching for ways to be creative, and I am always getting sidetracked by randomness. For example, I have Baywatch on right now. Why? Because I was aiming to put on Bob Ross as background, but Baywatch was on and I really do enjoy me some David Hasselhoff, so… This is my weakness–a failure to focus.

You can see that lack of real focus in yesterday’s blog.

Some Thoughts:

1. The thought I was attempting to finish last night is about my freshman not being moved up. The way I figure, the coach moved up another freshman to play that same position. That other freshman is as good or better than mine at the spot, and is an outstanding WR. He brought up a kid who can contribute (as a starter) both ways. So, bringing up my kid means that my kid loses reps and doesn’t get to develop on field. So, he left him where he was with the option to pull him up whenever he needs him. Personally, I think the kid should move to JV where he actually gets challenged. My concern is that he won’t get challenged at present level and get lazy. However, I haven’t even seen him practice this summer, so what do I know?

I recently learned that one of my three fantasy leagues is not returning this year. That brings me down to two–both of which I’ve been pretty solid in over the last few years. It means I can use this opportunity change up my strategy to one where I build different squads as opposed to gravitating towards the same players time and again. Later in the season I can move towards players who are going to be sure things, but the way to get there is to have a healthy understanding of at least two different sets of players. Coaches also have to have a healthy understanding of players, which is why I think this new HS football season is so interesting for my kids.

Some Thoughts:

1. Got accused of trolling in my last Apex match because they couldn’t believe I was so bad. I’m just lucky enough to get on good squads. I’m almost Gold rank and that is entirely why. I never carry, but I do revive.

I feel close to the next chapter of life. My partner and I are beholden to our present home state for the next year, but beyond that there is a lot of wiggle room. Of course any wiggling requires a job as leaving the state means surrendering retirement with five more years left on the clock. Is retirement worth staying? That remains to be seen. In truth we will see. We’ve been taking trips around this beautiful planet in an effort to figure out where we ultimately fit in. So far the consensus is somewhere that isn’t terribly hot but boasts fairly mild winters and a crap ton of deciduous trees. I’m a firm believer in the indoor/outdoor life plan—moreso since my blood pressure took center focus in my health plan.

I like Vancouver Island. I also like places I can travel within our budget. That’s proving to be harder than expected, but a good problem to unravel.

I want a life post kids that is focused on exploring and writing and having fun (read: games… lots of games). We just need to figure out where that life is best lived.

Some Thoughts:

1. Looking forward to the Wednesday wire. I have thoughts.
   
2. almost done with my first class of the summer. Lots of work to be done this week to get them where they need to be. Maybe we can get a few of these stories published!
3. wondering aloud what next summer will bring…

Partner just broke down how male writers need to get out of the male fantasy mindset. She’s right too. Presently she’s reading a Dean Koontz novel in which the narrator breaks down the first two characters in contrasts–the male is a struggling author. The female is incredibly beautiful and struggling with the turmoil that she is not as wonderful as her mother. Yeah, I can see the contrasts already too. I worry about that when describing my characters. In my last novel the ‘face’ of the team was in fact a beautiful asian elf with a troubled past. That past? Yeah… she’d been victimized and needed to be rescued by a man who put his life in jeopardy to save her. So, I do it too. I didn’t plan to do it that way, and as the sequel story develops I need to be mindful of who she is and how I tell her story as part of the larger narrative. So far I’ve managed to describe her only in terms of her tattoos–giving the reader no real sense of her appearance beyond that, which probably isn’t so great either.

The truth is, it is hard to write what you don’t know. Once, I thought I’d be slick and write the opposite of how I see people as a way to offer a different perspective, but that wasn’t very effective either. Writing is learning and growing, and from what my partner says, all of us male writers have a lot more writing and growing to do.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out I was dead wrong about the Paolo Bonchero kid. He was rookie of the year. Respect then.
2. To expand, I wasn’t saying Wemby wouldn’t be great. I was saying, quit making people great before they actually play an NBA game. Lewt hype happen in the proper time and way.

Not a ton of coherent energy today, so I will focus on…

Some Thoughts:

1. Didn’t get back to Unwind. Bit burned out from all the novel work today. I’m on that steady grind. I estimate it takes up to four days to get a clean draft on a chapter at this point in the process. That means this presumably 32 chapter novel is going to take me another four months to get to editing. That puts it at October. That is roughly on schedule. It won’t make the November release window I was hoping for but I can get it out before 24. Nice.
2. Mid kid received his first D1 offer last week and that information was retweeted by some of the biggest names in the AZHS sports scene, which means that people are noticing the offer. Notice means opportunity. The plan is shaping up.
3. Draft happened. Yay? I don’t know that I really care about basketball all that much. One thing I do find interesting from a relationship perspective is the plight of Daren Waller. He recently married a player from the Las Vegas Aces and was immediately traded to NYC, where he will be living for the regular season. She’s also traveling. How are they going to make that work?
4. Not a ton to say today. Drained. Bit backsore from over aggressive workouts. I think I’ll just go walk around and explore this weird city. Maybe find a Walmart.

Cooper sat very still. He knew if he twitched even a millimeter during onboarding, the RealScan system would pick it up as either a facial tick or dither entirely, turning his face into a weird mesh of cheek and too-wide nose. He knew this because he’d been in the arcade the day Axon Ruggs onboarded and a house fly got locked into the suite with him. The system scanned the fly onto his simulant like a facial tatoo. People called him brundlefly for the next two months, though Cooper had to admit he didn’t get the reference. Like Axon, Cooper didn’t have the funds to write another simulant if things went squirrelly. Unlike Axon, he wasn’t cool enough to turn the look into a some kind of battle scar, wearing it proudly in his matches.

Cooper really wanted to sneeze though. He imagined what it must’ve been like for all of those people who had to sit for paintings like a thousand years ago or whatever. Then he thought about how cool he was going to feel taking his simulant out for the first time in the matrix. He couldn’t go far or do too much until next month’s paycheck, but he’d at least get to interact with the starters mall and maybe skill upload a few of the classes he’d been taking to level his simulant.

Some Thoughts:

1. This is less a story than the beginning of what could be an interesting story. I don’t know where it came from or why. I know I was in the shower thinking, “I gotta blog still” and the line, “Cooper sat very still” popped into my head. I held on to it until I got out of the shower and the rest started forming slowly. I stopped where I did because, with the time as it were, I wasn’t ready for more. Perhaps Saturday brings the promise of a second… verse?

I want to get to a point in my life where, a la Jay-Z, I can say “What’s fifty grand to a motherfucker like me? Can you please remind me?” Think about it. What does it mean to be so rich that you drop $50,000 without even thinking about the impact it could have on your life. Kanye (in his medicated era) goes on to say, “What’s Gucci, my nigga? What’s Louis, my killer? What’s drugs, my dealer? What’s that jacket, Margiela?” That last bit is a Haute Coutre fashion house in Paris that makes $800 pants. I’m not even getting into Jacket prices here. All I am saying is that there is a ridiculous disparity in wealth between those at the bottom and even those in the upper part (not even the TOP) of the ladder. Heck, I’m not poor. I’m educated and make a decent bit of money, but what’s 50 grand to a motherfucker like me? Still life changing. I cannot begin to explain how much that sort of money would impact my life on a permanent basis.

In sum: Jay-Z does in fact ball so hard. Kanye does too. This is all coming from a writer who is spending the summer in Canada because, well, I can. Still I ball little to none in comparison, and that is what it all comes down to in American life isn’t it? Comparisons. We compare ourselves and our lives and our choices to everyone around us, and the favorable comparisons are supposed to make us happy. We measure ourselves by who we support and if who we support is cool or good, we are somehow elevated by our support thereof. Ask any fan of a winning team how they feel being a fan of that team and they will tell you they feel like champs (despite having never played a moment for the team). Ask any fan of a perenially losing team (read: Knicks. Also see: Mets post 1986) and they will tell you they feel like a part of something about to be wonderful. Or they feel like there is companionship in that misery as shown below:

So, yeah. This is how the world works in my mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Proud to announce that my mid-kid received his first D1 scholarship offer for football. Drake University offered today, putting him at two total offers for a scholarship to go to college playing the game he loves. I wasn’t a scholarship athlete. I walked on and it didn’t really go anywhere. He’s already surpassed me and that is wonderful. Next step is to accrue more offers and have the opportunity to decide where he goes. This process is an interesting one, because in order to be seen you have to have coaches that are putting you out there (he does), perform in the camps (he does), and often have a school with serious viewership (he does not). He plays CB, which is not often the best position to be seen unless you are playing other top talent and following their best guy around the field. If that isn’t the case then QBs can do what they often do to him: throw it to the other side where somebody is more likely to be open. So, it has been a struggle to get noticed. He’s looking to pop this season though, and I wish him all the best. I want to see him achieve his goals, because that is what love is between a father and son. You want them to be happy and do well. So here’s hoping he has a masterful season and collects more offers along the way.

Some Thoughts:

1. Victor Wembanyama is about the be the first pick in the NBA draft tomorrow. He’s already been anointed a basketball legend at 19 without even stepping foot on an NBA court.
2. The second pick is interesting. Scoot Henderson is a kid who left high school early to join the G-league and make his living getting better at basketball. Some folks think he’s better than Wemby will be. I don’t know enough to say any of that. All I know is that draft season = hype season. Paolo Banchero and Cade Cunnigham aren’t exactly household names and they both went first in the draft respectively over the past two years.

I’ve had a great day in the word mines. Funny how tuning in on the right project in the right space can really fire up the motivation. I made solid progress and that got me thinking about ideal days and life and age (getting old, I am). That got me looking back to the 2.0 version of the blog. I landed on 2.22 quite randomly and discovered that the person I was 6 years ago is, well, that same dude thinking about getting old and what that means as well. I am struggling with the weight loss and I do believe it is a process. I’m on that process. I’m taking it day by day and I am actually learning to enjoy it. That is a key change.

One other key change: I’m not really afraid of death anymore. In some ways the approach of it is more terrifying than the actuality of it. The halting state (thanks for that Charles Stross) is not something I can control or feel, and I have come to believe that the life we live is replayed in our death state. The existence we have experienced is our ‘heaven’ and our ‘hell’. However, this is philosophy for another time. It does explain how I am living life now, day by day, and trying to find wonderful experiences throughout. So what is a good day? Experiencing something. Connecting with the people I love. Telling stories. Playing games. This is what life should be. This to me, is a good day and I am having one.

It hasn’t started out the best. I tried to use the Legislative library as a cool place to kick back and write, but was denied entry. That being plan A, B, and, unfortunately, C, I wound up at the nearest local library, which despite looking grand was a quite small one room affair (backed by a thousand empty offices just beyond my grasp). Whew… That was a long sentence to convey the frantic energy of the last hour. I started late with hopes of digging in and doing good work, but now I find myself reaching for anything that isn’t the project I was planning to work on. Facts being what they are, it is a loser project. It isn’t going to sell very well, the premise is flawed to the core, and it points what we are doing in a very bad direction. NDAs being what they are, I cannot and will not say more. I will try to write this thing to the best of my ability and turn it into at least a small slice of worthwhile.

And I’ll do it in the smallest and loudest library ever made.

I’ve been lauding and applauding Canada for their niceness. The library still is nice, but the people aren’t library sorts as I am used to or expect. The space also isn’t much on books even. I suppose this is the new way… Despite the sign hanging steps away that shows young Grogu with a print book and says ‘this is the way’. There is as much digital (read: Video) content here as text, which I find odd. I suppose I am a bit of a library snob at heart. I don’t go in for people talking loudly, and half as many racks of DVDs as books. Yet, here I am. Ranting as it were.

Still, there is wonder in every space and there is the possibility of creation in every place. I will make this work and I will make this project work in this space. This is, in fact, the way.

Some Thoughts:

1. I like Canada.
2. There is something about a city that is mindful that makes me want to be mindful in my own right.