Month: July 2024

Not the very last, to be sure, but the last in Italy. I am headed back to the states with the Lady Talis. headed back into all the heat and stillness and nonsense that awaits… I don’t want to say I hate home–there are good things there like the kids and the pets. There is also an ex-wife and insects and, i will say it again, stillness. Nothing changes there. In truth, the house will be in a degraded version of how we left it, in spite of it being lived in every single day. The kids will be doing the same things they always do–quite literally in the same place and state as we left them 30 days ago. Nothing changes. Nothing happens. We survive a semester and then we get to leave again for a while.

All of this is to say that the existence as it is no longer works for me. It gets less and less sustainable each time I get away for a month to a thriving community. I need to not be stuck the way the space lends itself to being stuck. I just have yet to figure out how to not be stuck.

The stupid people are winning. They are winning because of a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that they are louder and do not seem to care (or know) they are stupid and should be quiet. This is happening all over what I call reality–from the classroom to the boardroom to the White House and every step in between. For example, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted recently about the average ages of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. She went on to list the ages of eight people she claimed to be signees. Only two were. Her awareness of basic history is abysmal, but to make matters worse after being repeatedly checked she refuses to take the post down. Remember folks, alternative facts became a thing less than a decade ago and it seems to have taken hold.

Stupid is painful and everywhere. I have students who ask me stupid questions all the time. Yes, I know there should be no stupid questions in learning, but if you read the instructions and then ask me a question that was specific bolded and answered in a form that you could not miss that this is the answer to your potential question… stupid.

I guess it is not only okay to be stupid anymore but it is okay to feel good about being stupid because the filter bubble allows you to reshape your reality to the point where you are never wrong and never need to learn anything, because Google tells all, and if it isn’t easily accessible there then what is even the point of knowing it? I mean, like how does it really effect my life?

I worry for my future grandchildren. I fear we have one good generation left in us and then that’s the game right there. No, AI isn’t going to kill us. This is more of a Wall-E situation. We may not all grow fat, but the lazy is certainly going to win out. More than anything, being stupid is about being lazy. It is about not reaching and instead yelling, like the commercial of the fat kid yelling to his grandma for a grape soda…

I blog, therefore I am.

Seriously, it feels that way. These ten minutes of writing are connected to my identity the way football players are defined by the fact that they play football. I am a writer and this is my most present expression of writing, therefore blogging is who I am. I am of course more than ten minutes. This is a pebble in very deep waters, but it is emblematic of what I do. But back to that earlier thought: Is it who I am?

I want to believe no. I am many things. I was once a player of the football, and I defined myself as such through action and behavior and followings. Yet as one professor defined me more as a samurai poet (as I wrote and I played) I allowed for a multi-faceted approach to self. I guess this is less about self and self awareness than it is about external identity. How people see me is a type of definition. I cannot control that definition, but it does in part arrive as a result of what I put out there. So, when I say I blog, therefore I am, that is what I refer to. I didn’t even tell my kids I was an author till they were 10+. I doubt any has read my work or this blog. What they see me as is quite different as a result.

I believe I am a writer to the building blocks of my soul. Regardless of who I tell or what I put out, I want the writing to be how I am remembered.

Some Thoughts:

1. If I had it to do all over again, I would have been a better father to all 6. I would have been a better coach to 3. Maybe they’d be further along on their paths. Maybe I would be feeling better about mine.

My apple watch calls for me to exercise for 60 minutes a day, the reward being a closed green circle. It isn’t much, but it does get my mind sprinting forward about how to live a life of closed circles. I think I have taken another step forward in uncovering what that means for me. It starts with being out wandering about. I do not spend enough time exercising or being outdoors. The latter is harder in AZ, especially in the summer. Evenings mean bugs out in the streets and parks (gross, right?) and the days are way too hot to be out for any serious length of time. So there are things in this equation yet to be solved. That being said, being out for 3 hrs a day sounds right. Add the writing to that (4), add the gaming (2), that’s a 9 hour day right there. Then give me 2 hrs of pure chillax. 11.

Yes, I have a job. It factors in to be sure, so I have to be thinking about that as well. There are always going to be things that take a hit. Yet it is a dream and in that dream I can factor in the times where and when I work. I can make a bit of magic if l allow it.

Orvieto could be a great place to grow old. Only recently have I given any real thought to the idea of growing old. I rarely paise to consider my withered future self in the timeline. I think that is not a thing most people think to do. We who are fortunate to grow old never see ourselves as such until it is unmistakable. I’m nearly 50 and that’s already very old. I feel enough of it in my back and bones to know I’m no longer young. But I have a long way to go. Many years and many nights filled with blogs like this one that trace into the past like signposts on the road of a life lived and loved.

I do tend towards the dramatic and the poetic late at night in beautiful places. That is another reason I could grow old here. Wherever I land will be a place to grow with and grow from. The Lady Talia and I will set roots against some distant shore and sprout a life seeded by dreams.

this is my promise to the future.

I was forced to activate my cellular service this morning in a rush of panic that can best be described as overwhelming anxiety triggered by overwhelming anxiety. If I’d been relaxed and forward thinking earlier I would not have made the mistakes leading to this costly activation and thus not be writing this blog right now.

I’m on a train (of the moderate speed local variety) headed for a return dalliance with the beautiful and medieval hillside town of Orvieto. It is market day, and the Lady Talis and I wanted to experience that one time before we go. The plan is to collect supplies for a romantic picnic and spend the day roaming the city before returning by train in the early evening.

Orvieto is likely to be our last trip that far outside of Rome on this journey. We inch ever closer to a return to AZ and the incumbent heat and still-life nature of the space. I think life is better outside of AZ in a lot of ways. That being said I remain in support of my kids and their pursuits. If only those pursuits didn’t require me to be in AZ…

Ten is coming to a close so as a parting word I will say this: Intentionality is a powerful tool. I intend to live a better life in AZ this year than I did the last.

I spent one of my many sick hours in bed this morning watching Hard Knocks. The Giants are up, and the show is glamorizing Schoen and his approach to developing a team. I was at once sad and understanding of the process that led to them failing to retain Barkley. They are not a running team. They spent a ton of money on a QB and, to paraphrase the GM, they didn’t do it so he could hand the ball off. Basically this is the make or break season for Daniel Jones. They’ve gone all in on the right people around the QB and now they get to see if he is the one, or he is simply the next domino to fall. Personally, I think he is gone. The injury history is a problem, but the larger issue is that he was outplayed by his backup in the same situations. He is not the guy. Maybe Sanders next year, maybe someone else. Management’s obsession with tall white guys will ultimately prove to be their downfall if they let it.

Meanwhile other sports are taking place all over the world. I am in Italy where the passion for soccer is high and though the Italians are done (terrible copa) many are still watching and cheering other teams on to see how it ends. We have a small Irish bar at the end of our alley that plays the games and you know when one is one from 200 meters and 5 stories away. It is just like that out here. Sports are a rallying cry for people. They allow us to gather and share belief in something outside of ourselves with actual stakes involved. It isn’t like religion where there is not a zero sum philosophy. In sports your team may win and they may lose. You are merely along for the ride.

In Duma Key King’s lead character jokes, “If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.” I feel the truth of that has been written throughout human history. We rally around our athletes. We ride high on their success. We cry and spark anger at their failures. They become extensions of our joy and our pain, our success and our failures, our conceit. Not sure anyone actively chose it to be this way, but it is the way and one that I find myself entrenched in always. Perhaps it too becomes a focal aspect of the stories I tell.

I find myself on a bullet train to Venice in search of another perspective on Italy. As I do so I am writing furiously, constructing more Shadowrun glee. The work is collaborative and makes me think of how I got to this point. I’ve been writing Shadowrun for several decades now. I cannot even remember when I started, but that first book I got to be a part of was called Street Magic, and since then I’ve been entrenched in the writing multiple times a year. I’ve written so many words and in so many books that I have lost track of exactly how many. This is all good. This is all growth. I say this as I consider how long I have left in this particular realm and what comes after.

I don’t know that I will write in the shadows forever. There are a few more novels lined up to be sure, and several years of sourcebooks as well. Beyond that, who knows? I want to develop a fantasy realm with the depth and reach of Westeros, but I have done little over the past few years to really develop that. I have always wanted to create a space legacy as well, but I haven’t even dipped my fingers into that realm besides of a failed RPG experiment called RimWorlds.

These are the things that keep me going. As I sit here writing, I am also (and always) thinking of what I will write next.

Where I come from the day is just getting started. Where I live most are fast asleep. Where I am it is nearing the hour that food places shut down for a slow afternoon chill in 87 degree heat and humidity. My day here has been going for hours, though I only recently left the house for the first time. My leaving saw me to the laundry and to pick up water and gatorade, core staples in this oppressive humidity. The Lady Talis was worried that the humidity would destroy her, but it is me who is destroyed daily. I sweat more now than I have in decades. Perhaps this is a good thing as the good Lady also reminds me that sweat conveys the toxins from your body. If only there were some way to cleanse the mind as we do the body.

My mind is a dark trap of ideas and sharp places. I hide from it as of late in the world of games. Starfield is my present escape, and I have sunken in too deeply. I play it with a regularity only matched by the long walks and outings we take on the daily. Thus as the body is purged and renewed, the mind avoids such ventures.