Month: November 2023

The season is over. Heck, the ‘seasons’ may be over. I lost in both leagues despite moments where I thought I could win in both. The loss in the money league dropped me to 8^th. Only the top six make the playoffs, which begin week 16. In the beach born league the playoffs begin week 15, which means, at 2-10, I am officially out. That is a hard fail for the season. Again only the top 6 make it and I am hard 8.

I thought I would do better this year. I thought I would do significant research once the season got closer, but as it did, I did little but purchase one magazine that I never actually opened until post draft. I didn’t put in the work and the results are telling. Sure, injuries could’ve compounded the situation, but they did not. I just sold the bag. Kinda like the Giants for the first two months of football. They’ve won 4 in recent weeks, and that may be enough to shift the conversation from ‘let’s draft a new QB’ to ‘Let’s get some linemen!’ where it belongs. I don’t think Jones is the guy anymore. I was on the fence and fell right off when I realized how timid he (or the playcalling) is in terms of playing to the team strengths of taking shots downfield. Don’t even get me started on that TE room.

Unlike the Jets, there is no aging hero waiting in the wings to make it all okay. These guys are rebuilding. They may need to rebuild with a new playcaller on offense or at least straighten things out between Daboll and Kafka. There’s a lot in the news about the Wink tension, but that D is cooking. What isn’t cooking is the O. They’ve yet to go full Deion and pull people, but who knows what is coming down the pipe…

Some Thoughts:

1. Jelle’s Marble Run is still the purest form of sport. I can’t even get mad when my Rasberry Racers lose. I mean, well I DO get mad but there is no one to blame but circumstance. Better luck next season.. unless they can score big in these next two events.

Once upon a time I worked at a college hours from home and far away from the main pulse of the city. I cared. I cared about the students. I cared about my co-workers. I cared about the perception of me. That last bit is what got me in so much trouble. I spent a long time caring about what people thought of me. I was shocked, disheartened, and to be honest, angered and nearly destroyed by outside impressions of me that fell short of reality. For example, I once spent time fending off a discrimination charge because an LGBTQ co-worker with a hard grudge decided to bring charges against me (with no evidence, which is apparently okay) while I was the faculty co-advisor of the LGBTQ club. I was mad enough at the attempt that it played a large role in my leaving that place. Save for one specific outcome, leaving was in fact most regrettable–as I was told it would be by my then advisor.

Regardless, I found a home in my new job and got a little better about caring less about what people thought about me. Well, I thought I did. Yesterday I faced a tough emotional challenge when I learned that perceptions of me were out there both in my work and personal lives that were contrary to reality. The personal stuff is promoted by the ex-wife, which is to be expected. Someone who once memorably said, “I wish I wasn’t married to you so I could take advantage of you.” is going to be awful enough to make said attempt on anyone. What hackled me there was twofold: 1. She has her family convinced that I am selfish and do the bare minimum for my kids, which is laughable. 2. She is promoting these lies to my kids, which is dangerous given the relationship that some of them have with her. The other shoe to drop was a faculty member questioning my qualification to teach creative writing. That is as absurd as the selfish bare minimum dad stuff. However, the confluence of such things during a time where I feel overwhelmed was just too much.

I need to not care about what people think. I need to focus on what I think. That is where the truth of self comes from.

Part of my work as a professor is to observe other professors teaching in the dual enrollment environment. I’m often assigned locations on the fringes of the sprawl where people have moved to create/recreate idealized versions of what they think utopia should look like. In fact, on the way to the school today I saw a personalized license plate that read ‘Lvnnoz’. The thought that some dusty part of Arizona on the edge of a recently opened freeway built in the shadow of a retired military base could be Oz is, well, silly. That being said, that is being done.

What I notice most about these makeshift Oz’s are the homogeneity of the space (mostly white with a smattering of Asian) and the prevalence of corporate run ‘public’ schools. I’m in one such school as I speak, though it is of a smaller corporate footprint than most. Within that are high-standards built around structures that favor a particular type of teaching and learning meant to simulate AP standards in all classes. In other words, these students are treated like they are in specialized high schools, and every high school is treated like a specialized high school when none really really are.

As I watch I am watched. These students are curious about me—a black man sent in to observe them and the environment they’ve had created and have created for themselves in a false utopia at the edge of the desert. I am, as an observer, an intruder and that makes them curious. I’m curious. How these lives are so different than my own only 10 miles away is interesting. It reminds me of New York in a way, where the differences are far more condensed, but also far more disparate. Here, we are dancing through the many different shades of middle class and going nowhere.

Some Thoughts:

1. Honestly, just being outside of the normal drone of my daily space was so invigorating that, as you can see, even the blog is impacted in a positive way. Dang. I need to get out more…
2.  

238.8 lbs.

I need to find a way to get back to a healthy weight, because where I am now is impacting every aspect of my life. I am not healthy , thus I am not mentally 100% and I am not as creative and I am not as balanced, etc. It all comes back to making healthy choices and finding ways to be healthier as a person. I took the first step towards that by pulling back on a project, which means I only have two solid projects I am working on at the moment and one of the two will be getting the full attention over the next 11 days. Then 4 days of vacation, and then I am back on the grind full time for the novel. I need to be the best version of myself as I have said, and the way that happens is by putting myself in a place of balance. That is key. Of course, understanding what that actually looks like is as much of a start as any.

Some Thoughts:

1. Merry Xmas season begins…
2. I am going back to the calendar mode. Daily writings of what is to be done is the key to getting myself in position to be balanced and successful.
3. Football this week was pretty good. Solid games to watch and found a spot of happiness in seeing the Giants win another. The offense continues to be garbage, which more and more appears to be a result of play calling. The team swings so sharply in that regard from week to week. They play too safe and need to take more shots more often and do something more with the screen game to counter what has become the worst o-line in the game. Another 6+ sacks allowed today. Still, a win is a win. Looking forward to watching the Seahawks/Cowboys game with my son on Thursday Night.
4. No, we aren’t going to see it live. I wish.

This is going to be one of those blogs that sound like a cry for help. Hell, maybe it is.

I’m not feeling particularly pleasant these last few days. I have struggled over and again trying to find my way to and through a schedule that is stable and I regret to inform the public that it is not working. Blame the break, perhaps or the lack of real will and motivation to do much of anything. Tis translates loudly to the blog where I find myself staring at a screen for the better part of ten minutes or going back and deleting words that I mispelled and realizing that I don’t know what I want to say as I move forward. I do not feel like this is burn out so much as it is outside life stress impeding my movement as a human. The stress mounts and the humanity dies. Thus the world ends in fire. Thus begins…

Some Thoughts:

1. I am very bad at typing. I am fairly ‘ok’ when I stare at the keyboard, but less so when I try to just type and not look.
2. Sighing might be good for the soul. Hell, I hope something I do winds up being good for the soul.

I’m into the xmas hunt now.

I find the act of gift giving super fun to the point that I am fighting to host a white elephant party (and losing that fight). I want to see their glee on the day of the event and think, “I made that happen for them.” That fills me with joy perhaps more than getting gifts myself. This is not to say I don’t want gifts. I do. What I don’t know but I want to feel good about myself, so I want whatever aids that feeling. Perhaps the best gift is to work out and eat better and be able to enjoy these next 30 years in a way that makes my life sing. Honestly, 30 is about all that I can really see at this point as being healthy living. I recently spent time with a few men in their mid and early 70’s and it is clear decline happens steeply at that point. You crash based on what condition you are in leading up to the point and I am worsening by the day. So, I gotta find that drive to survive.

But this was supposed to be about xmas, right?

Some Thoughts:

1. I recently stumbled upon the base outline for a series of cyberpunk novels set outside of the Shadowrun world called the Corporate Commandments. I think I will make them my first major foray into the Amazon sales space.
2. Have not spent a lot of time working this week. Wednesday night through today was pure holiday, but I need to head back over to grind land soon…
3. My office is filled with notices of spring break like something is gonna happen. Except on don’t think that is real anymore. I really want to have it be a thing, because my first born is leaving the nest (potentially) for Japan. We shall see what can happen…
4. Hopped back on Madden to play franchise mode. Been fun but tough. I’m really not good anymore. I need to get back into study mode. Perhaps 30 minutes of planning and playbook work a day?

It is the most wonderful time of the year. We are moving into the holiday season with time to give thanks as a start. I’m very happy with the people who are in my life–as much as I talk about the negatives. I am grateful to have all of them and to see them all develop into individuals who have their own sense of right and wrong and good and bad. It doesn’t always hit the way I want it to, and that is an important part of being your own person as well.

This year I give thanks for family. I give thanks for employment. I give thanks for being mostly in control of my debt. I give thanks for being in love, which is part of family but is always to be seen as its own thing. I have a partner in life that loves me and looks out for me the way I look out for her. She makes me happy and lives with my good and bad. I am happy to have the writing opportunities that I have. I feel that I am going to be losing some in the near future but also gaming some as well. My writing will grow as with all things, and I am preparing myself to move to that next level.

I have a lot to be thankful for and it makes me feel like life is going well and is only going to get better in the coming year-not because of magical thinking, but because I am going to make it happen. I am going to make sure it happens.

Family means so much to me. I really feel like it is important to raise my kids and move them forward and towards their own goals and destinies outside of the nest. This is, of course, why I am so frustrated by the two who aren’t likely to leave the coop before I do. I’m thinking about the next step. I’m thinking about what life looks like when I am not in Arizona and not teaching and not living this specific existence. I am working on changing that existence on a day to day basis and I plan to take even larger steps once the semester ends. I want to be a writer–more than I am right now. I want to do as I did this summer and languish in coffee shops creating fiction and writing wonderful tales. It is about learning and deciding what is important in your life.

So much of my life has been centered on football and kids. I tried to shape an identity around those things. I enjoyed being a coach and I was starting to develop a deeper understanding of the X and Y side of it when I stepped away. I’ve failed to translate this to anything else. I thought I ought to translate it to teaching but it never developed the way it should.

Some Thoughts:

1. Stopping it short there, because I wanted to add a thought about tomorrow. It is Thanksgiving and I (might) be playing basketball for the first time in a year at least. I haven’t run in a year. I haven’t done anything strenuous to that level. It feels dangerous. Not trying to have a heart attack, but we will see what shakes out.

I am writing this on a word doc in order to be published at a later date. The issue is terribly slow web response to the server. I cannot explain it, but I do admit it had happened in the past. Sometimes the server is just junk. Fortunately, the junkiness of the server is not the point of tonight’s post. I want to talk about the Hunger Games

Specifically I want to talk about the movie I just watched—A Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds (I may have that order backwards but I don’t much care enough to check). It was a movie that, based on what I hear from my partner, did not do justice to the book. Honestly, I could tell you that without her firsthand knowledge of the written version. There were far too many moments that seemed to cut away from what was deep story and relationship building in exchange for drawn out moments of near touching and a high level of focus on the violence. Several characters in the game portion were reduced to utter stereotypes (See: Reaper, the black powerhouse). That didn’t improve the narrative.

Despite these moments it was still enjoyable and held on to enough of the book narrative to be a good story… until the end. That wasn’t so good in my opinion.

Tomorrow is more or less my last long teaching day. I have a few more weeks but the time is devoted to meeting with students and getting into the weeds with them on their final essays. I think they need that more than what passes for lecture in my universe of English instruction. The thing of it is, I’m not stoked to go. I don’t have that energy for it that I usually do. I think I’m winding down for the season–needing a real break for a month or so and then time to climb back into it. I don’t take summers off. I need the money, so I teach several summer classes. I haven’t not taught for about 19 years. During all of it I continue to take numerous writing projects including the novel and other projects I am working to complete right now. All of this is to say, damn I need some rest.

I worry about this idea of not being creative and having lost the juice for generating truly new and interesting fiction. If so, it is because I don’t ever stop and reload. I don’t have a real plan to work that into my system. Its like I have FOMO in regards to writing projects–like if I don’t jump on every one then they will dry up. The truth is I need to let a few go by me. several even. I need to take a break and do entirely different types of writing for a while to get back to that place of being able to tell honest and deep stories.

Maybe that happens next year.