Month: January 2024

Well, it is settled then. My love for Daboll is basically gone. Now I stand nearby and hope he can fix this mess he’s made of an organization and I wonder how much of that mess is actually fixable. The Giants let Daboll undercut Wink Martindale to the point where Wink decided to resign. Daboll fired the guys under him that Wink brought with him and that forced ‘ol W to be loyal and announce that he was leaving too. In other words, the defense that led the league in turnovers and single handedly kept the Giants in most games. We are talking about a team that is 9th in the league in 3rd down percentage–THE key stat in terms of defense that is not impacted by offensive turnovers or (to a point) starting field position. This article by SI goes more in depth on how impactful the defense was on the team as a whole, but if you want to know about Wink, just listen to the player-leaders who are praising him in the locker room.

All that is gone now.

The Giants will be starting from scratch on defense with a bunch of players they signed and recruited based on a Wink scheme. Now to a point there are 29 players who are not signed and many of those are on defense, but if we are talking about moving to a different scheme and you already invested in a nose and a certain type of edge, and a man corner, you gotta stick with the kind of scheme you got. You gotta let them cook! But all that, as I said, is over. So, it is now on Daboll to find a guy to get them right. I expect he is going to go with someone he knows and has worked with who he likes, because the Wink thing was established to be a personality issue (as it was in Baltimore).

Another personality issue that doesn’t get press is the Witness Protection assignment of Mike Kafka. Seriously. He hasn’t had a quote in 12 weeks. He is just MIA. He is also likely to lose play calling to Daboll. I find it odd that nobody is blaming Kafka for the mess of an offense. It is partially his fault and the fault of the whoe administration for holding on to Jones when you KNEW he had slow decision making skills and an injury history that would be put to the test with what is the 2nd worse o-line in the HISTORY of football.

What is the way forward? I don’t know for sure. More O-Line talent? adding a second talented powerback to spell Barkley and allow him to play more in the slot? Not sure where to go from here, but I do want some success. I believe in the Giants as an org. That is my team.

Some Thoughts:

1. By resigning, Wink lost his right to sign with any other pro team he wants as a DC. So… how about you and your crew roll down to Colorado for a year and snatch a Natty?!

For today’s stroll down memory lane we are going back to August 2018, post 3.43. I called this one Writer’s Day, because it was about finding the mind and space to write every day for two hours. Looking back, that was a good thought but one that was doomed to personal failure. It actually took another two years to get to a two hours a day plan and even then it has continued to be riddled with fits and starts. I wrote then, “I have no expectation of living and not writing. I don’t believe I could or would exist peacefully in such a state. Even now when the ideas seem like the lone protozoa in an ocean of vapid thought” Yet the other day I questioned if I was going to continue writing, purely based on the how it impacts my life. It seems there is life without writing, and that life consists of basking in the presence of my lover… and video games. The thought that there is two hours of the day I can set aside daily that doesn’t include one of those two things feels tough. I don’t know that it actually exists at present, though I am fortunate enough to have a partner who wants to make that a reality at least four to five days of the week.

Maybe the real of my life is compromise. Writing seven days a week is soothing in the sense of having a routine, yet draining in the sense of never having a real chance to refresh. The lack of refresh has hounded me over the past few years and I have, honestly, struggled to stay creative as a result. Perhaps in my search for compromise, I find two days where I don’t write, and lock in more time and consistency on the days that I do.

Back on the official grind.

Monday marks the beginning of the Lady ‘legger’s semester, which put me back in a work mindset. I want to be through some of these projects and back in the rhythm of the novel and novel writing in general. I have a lot of writing on the docket, which is ideal. I also have a semester to start, which is less ideal, but pays the bills as I attempt to rise into the next career. I am excited about this semester because it is my favorite season. Spring semester is all the good and quite little of the not as good. I get to play in a sandbox of classes that are both enjoyable and challenging. We have a Comic Con happening on campus which feeds directly into what I am teaching. All of that adds up to good time for me. However, it also adds up to a lot of things I need to be doing outside the general home life routine. In short, this all means I need to properly schedule and account for my hours.

I’m not saying this is easy. I am saying this is the hardest thing for me to do. In truth, the one thing I always find time for outside of this blog is time for at least one game. I play and write every single day, and I make sure each of those two things happen. Other things need to be as routine this semester or the whole mess falls apart. That is going to be the hard part. It requires making a schedule and developing the willpower to stick to it regardless of what else may be going on in my local universe. It will mean LESS gaming, which I dislike, and more butt in chair (which I also dislike).

In short, it is time to get down to business, because right now business is booming.

Yesterday was, by any definition of the term, a work fail. I did not get a single thing done. Instead I wallowed in the anger of realizing that my kids are quite lazy and largely happy with that state of being. It pissed me off. It made me not want to work so hard because why? It all too often feels like I am busting my hump to fall deeper in debt in order to make their lives all that easier so they can be utterly sustained in doing nothing.

I think this is what a lot of modern parents think and feel–save for the ones who are totally okay with their kids being lumps. Moreover, there is little to be done about it. We aren’t kicking anyone out and we aren’t imposing any rules that would change anything. So, I need to shift my focus away from the things I cannot change and get back to the real truth–which is me not doing my thing and letting the outside (no matter how close) influences be the issue.

I don’t know when I became the person who let the world win. At some point I lost my motivation and allowed myself to be ground down. None of that is helpful for a man this late in life who still has major goals yet to be achieved. More and more I am realizing my humanity, and how little time I may actually have here to get anything accomplished. I developed a serious tremor in my right hand that argues there is something fundamentally wrong with me that goes beyond controlling my weight. I will eventually seek medical help, but in the meanwhile I need to get unmoored from this idea of aimlessness and lock in on what I want to do in order to be successful. Writing this first thing in the morning, well, that’s a step. Now I need more.

Not a lot to post on this morning, so I will just share…

Some Thoughts:

1. 7 on 7 season started. I wandered past to watch my boy work. He did okay.
2. Picked up the calendar, which means I get to fill it out and make a solid plan moving forward.
3. I will also be filling out a job app as a video game writer, because there are some solid sci-fi IPs popping and I could stand to make some money.
4. Yeah, this feels like a day off blog, because I really don’t have much to converse about here…
5. There is some coffeenerdness. I started a gift subscription to Drinktrade.com, a service offering small batch coffees from around the.. states? My first bag is called Huckleberry (Bom Senso). It comes in from Denver, Colorado. I’ll be providing details once it arrives.
6. That reminds me of just how influential Peter King’s ten things I think remains on this posting. While I haven’t read his work much since he moved behind a paywall, I still find occasion to slip past the digital guardians (with or without $$) and get a taste of a writer who has been in the game most of my life. Still manages to impress. By now the writing is simply his voice, but the stories are always on point.
7. I didn’t even get to ten. I am no Peter King.

Five days in I finally started thinking about a calendar. It should’ve come up before, but nothing before that felt actionable. In fact, the first five days of the new year felt more like a reflection of the past year: We have a bunch of stuff happening with the kids, we find some brief escape after, and we spend a few days recovering and looking for a new rhythm post escape’s return. It didn’t take long last year for me to realize how all that kept me off balance, but I convinced myself that being off balance was itself a type of balance, because I could predict what it would be like and adjust week to week. As I mentioned yesterday (or the day before) that quickly spiraled into a recognition of me not being centered at all in my life while half the people around me were completely rooted–be it in a nonsensical cycle or not.

So came the realization that I need a calendar. I need a way to moor myself to the dates and realize what is due and what is important and what I need to be focusing on day in and day out. I have what amounts to a daily organizational list, but it isn’t very good. It isn’t something I’ve locked into and decided that this i going to be my life. It also doesn’t reflect anything beyond the work I have to do or even the mental shifting required to handle each of those tasks. It is, however, a starting point–a jumping off moment from which I can actually build a day and from that day a week and from that week a month and so on. All of this can and should flower from the simple principle of what matters the most and what is it I am making time for and, what am I moving towards.

I finally have the answer to that last one. In 5 years time I want to begin publishing a series on Amazon. It will likely be a fantasy series, regardless of the honest fact that fantasy appears to be waning. I still have always wanted to publish these stories. So, I shall. Along with the five year plan, I will also be writing and pitching a science fiction novel that has mass commercial appeal. All of my plans moving forward will include these two major projects. So, I have a personal goal. Now I need to add to my familial ones…

I’m down to 236, which is 12 from when we began this journey yet roughly +1 since late last week. That tells me I’ve hit a plateau. This is the most dangerous time of the process–when you feel like you’ve been cooking but suddenly you’re not moving or worse going in the wrong direction. I have to hit a solid series of workouts over the next seven in order to break through and fight my way down to 34. I need 34 because I need 32 and so on. I need to keep the 2 a week going for as long as possible, because I am woefully unhealthy, and the longer I stay in this condition, the shorter my life becomes. This is mission critical stuff.

I spent a few blogs outlining the horrors of being overweight. I should point out that being over my weight is specific to me. I’m someone who is not good when I am at such a high BMI. My body and mind and already failing heart react poorly to the situation. I’ve been struggling as a writer since this has come to pass. I’ve lost so much creativity that I am nearly certain I don’t have the talent I used to have, and I hope to move back towards a level of where I was before. I have serious writing goals, but it all starts with being healthy.

My mid kid is committing to Drake University today. It’s a verbal, because he missed the signing day. He should’ve done the verbal earlier, but that would’ve forced him to early sign, which he wasn’t prepared to do with BYU still in the running. Since they’ve fallen back, he’s gotten to the point where he is ready to lock in with the Bulldogs and find his future in Iowa. The business of recruitment and NIL has changed college football in ways I had not seen coming. It has always been a business. In fact, College Football make more money than the NFL. There are more teams and less per capita income, but the fact remains that players at good schools can expect $300,000 a year easy. My kid wasn’t put in that position to be successful. I have one more coming down the line who ought to be able to achieve at that level. If so, I want to make sure I am there to be helpful in a business sense as his agent, because, I don’t trust anyone else to do right by him.

Sports is money and it is starting earlier and earlier. Unfortunately, the hype machine aspect of it is built around things that are not real football. Reading an off the record interview with several recently signed players (posted in the athletic) served to confirm suspicions that they earned their star status playing 7 on 7 for notable teams. That is part of the business. Holding your kid back so he is older and more developed is part of the business. I did the opposite. My senior is only 16. If he had two more years he’d be an All American. Heck, he’s one year removed from being all state, having just missed the cut to a 4-star player who played with him a year ago and, by that players and players family’s own admission got his stars and offers from 7 on 7 play.

The system is broken, but that doesn’t mean we cannot play the system.

And on the 2nd day we left.

Left entirely I mean. We pulled up stakes and disappeared into the frozen north. Three hours north to be exact. Decided to get out and get reset and get away from kids and the clockwork routine of a house that resembles a frat house more and more each day. For me I wanted to get out and get some space to clear my head and be a writer, but neither of those things have yet come to pass. The blog represents my first effort of putting fingers to keyboard and efforting to create anything that is greater and longer lasting than myself. I feel like it matters to look at things that way–I am writing to put out stories that make people think and care and feel. It has to be done with some level of mattering. It has to happen with a degree of purpose.

First is the clearing of the cobwebs and burned out gray matter that defines the past year or three. I’ve been on a steady decline since Covid. It isn’t that I never recovered, it is that the outbreak happened at a time when I was largely in transition and nothing ever settled for me to the point that I was able to feel like I was safe or healthy or settled entirely. I’ve watched everyone else around me settle into where they are and form routines and be able to hold on to something whereas the one thing I’ve held onto since the start of it all is this laptop. Even that feels transitional at this stage.

Time to find my center. Time to own this year.

Some Thoughts:

1. The next 100 posts will be the first 100 days of 2024. (401-500)

The first thing I thought about when I started considering how to work on the problem of my failing creativity was how to attack the problem. As I write this I am watching previews of the movies of 2024 and thinking about the stuff that is coming out and what that means about what sells and what people supposedly want and what, above all else, are the standard narratives. I think the first step for me is to avoid falling into expectations and to think about the stories I write as natural things again and, as such, begin to create narratives that are linked to a space and place that is real vs. expected.

I am working on being a better version of myself, so I need to be thinking about what it means to write a better version of a story.