Month: August 2024

I didn’t sleep much last night. I like to think I have a semi-routine. I try to stay up to a certain time of night and then settle into the routine of curling up with the love of my life. I started it way earlier than usual and my mind responded poorly. By 2 AM I was up. It is 4 now and I am not only awake but at the computer typing out these words before I get to work on planning a semester of learning for perhaps a handful of kids who care among scores who really don’t.

Early mornings bring out my inner cynic. Still, I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom and discovering what that space is going to be like over the next few months. I can say that I am especially looking forward to teaching novel writing again. It is one of my true joys.

Still the cynic lives on. He says, for example, what about the other classes? What about ChatGPT? The other day I queried the AI to create an assignment that it would find difficult to complete. The response was… interesting. It also allowed me to start refining ideas for what a classroom space could look like for a modern composition class where apps of this nature are basically how students move through the system. We have, at this point, reached a level of computer aid where younger people don’t have basic understanding or skills and instead have new skills–the skills to interact with and manipulate the tools that do the (what I am forever referring to as) first level work and first level thinking. This frees them to do the second level and higher level thinking, which many of them do. However, the foundations are built upon and reliant upon tools they simply do not understand.

I learned how to build computers when I was in High School. Now everything is black box. Nobody knows what happens inside and if it breaks down, they just wait for it to get working again. Half my kids couldn’t put up a wireless network without a video to explain it to them. Of course, the videos exist they are available, so to them, they do not need to store the knowledge in their personal memory and understanding. It is readily available online.

So, that is the thinking I am dealing with in terms of being a teacher. That is what the cynic in me is trying to respond to.

Last night the blog got pushed to the end of the night. Again tonight it is moving past 7pm and, with a head weary of work, I write.

This is not the path I want to choose or continue down, but here I am. It tends to get like this at the start of a new semester, largely because I don’t plan for all of the factors. I know what classes I could be teaching and I should be preparing for them, but it is often in those last days that I actually sit down and prep. Why? Because I enjoy free time. I especially enjoy it with my lady.

I had an odd conversation with two of my older boys where they acted like I had as much time as they did each day and it was simply about how I chose to use that time. I get their perspective–that of 20 year olds who don’t have hardly any responsibility. It has to feel like you have all the time in the world if you’re them. However, being 25+ years older and (i’m just gonna say it) wisened by those years, I understand that there is time you must allocate to taking care of the things that 20 yr olds of this generation don’t think about. They don’t wake up in the morning and clean up the house. They don’t do the daily maintenance items to keep the place from falling into disarray. We do. They don’t work full time jobs and have to task hours to that. So when they talk about choice allocation of time, these things, and the interstitial hours they create, are not factored in. They just see what they see and call it reality.

I must sound bitter, but it is actually a sadness. I’m not mad at their freedom. As I argued at the time, I’m a bit jealous I didn’t do more with mine when I was at that age. I did exactly what they were doing (albeit for far fewer years) and enjoyed the hell out of it. I am glad they had the chance to do just that.

The reality train is pulling into the station for all of us. It is time to work. Time to go back to school. Time to prepare for success in our next endeavor. For me, that is having good classes, and writing this next project… and the one after that, and the novel to come after that. The year ends in a few months. I want to know I did all I could in this one. Tomorrow, it starts.

Tomorrow marks the start of a new semester. I’m not quite prepared for it. I’ve made the turn, started the process of creating this classes—some from the ground up again. It is part of my own iterative process to consider what works and revise. Unfortunately each new class feels like a first draft at times—especially in the era of chatGPT where the students are no longer even faking the effort to get work done or attempting to learn.

This being the start of something new makes me feel like something else must be ending. Summer is ending. A type of freedoms and fee time is winding down. The work of school and long hours are returning and that means a change of lifestyle I’m not quite sure I want to make anymore. Yet, here we are.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want lately. I’ve been watching a few of my kids move through life with ease and no real hurry, braced by the certainty they can stay home and live rent free for a while longer. This generational way of life is not how I came up but to them it is normal. At least we’ve allowed it to be. My hard work is mirrored in their lack thereof and I am constantly reminded that part of why I do so is to ensure that don’t need to. I’m not quite good with that anymore. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, especially when I realize that none of them will be taking care of us when we get old. That too feels generational.

The other day I read an article about Drake Maye. It was largely about an incompletion the QB threw and how that amazing throw proves he is going to be great. Heck, people were getting pumped about him handing the ball off. Basically, the article was me being gaslit. I am so tired of being gaslit. I’m tired of people pushing a particular narrative and being unwilling to accept that narrative as wrong. People don’t ever want to be wrong. Instead we continue to make excuses for the people we’ve supported in order to maximize our cognitive ease. In other words, we make excuses for other people so we can keep feeling like we are right. This isn’t about football, this is about life. The Trump situation is no different. He was terrible as a President. His response to the Covid pandemic was criminal. His handling of the Zelensky situation (basically trying to get the guy to lie about Hunter Biden in exchange for weapons and support from the US). Jan 6th? I could go on, but it doesn’t matter, because believers believe. I fear we are moving deeper into a period in which belief is the real currency and truth is sidelined and siloed for as long as possible.

Some Thoughts:

1. Coach Prime is a polarizing figure. Being such allows us to see particular reporters for how hateful they can be. There are a few reporters who constantly write hit pieces and op-eds begging the college to dump him. I don’t get that. I don’t understand negative investment at that level. All I can guess is that at some point early in this cycle they tied themselves to the idea of his failure in a reverse of the Maye situation above and are determined to be right and or prove they’ve won. What’s worse is that they do so in such a self-righteous manner that ignores every other coach who has been problematic in any way in the past. Sadly, the biggest ones seem to have a beef that is more personal or race based than anything resembling journalism. Still journalists are quick to defend guys like Sean Keeler, who write nothing but negative pieces that often are posted as op-eds because they avoid any hint of facts and stray largely into opinion and insult. Why the defense of bad writing?
2. Speaking of writing, I hit the freewrite yesterday for the first time in a while and it felt good. It felt like I was just writing a story. It felt like the words were leading me down a road. I had a generalized feeling of what could come next but I wasn’t in control. The story just emerged slowly, forming itself as I typed. I used to write like that. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get back to and it felt good to have a moment of that at long last.

It was on the fourth day of June, 2024 in the early morning hours before the sun burned through the clouds and made the roads shimmer that Terrence realized how to be the writer he dreamed of being. He hadn’t slept well for weeks. Each night grew shorter and more restless, his wife stirring more and more in agitation as he went from sleeping, to awake, to playing on his phone and casting bright light across the night-blackened bedroom.

He didn’t know why he couldn’t sleep. He thought it was the heat at first. They never set the thermostat below 80, but the fan in their room, which kept temperature all by itself, clicked lazily between 83 and 84. The sheets were damp around his neck and shoulders and he had what he believed to be flop sweat. Yet through all that an image continued to pulsate in his minds eye. It was so vivid, so realistic that he thought he could see it in his bedroom, just beyond the reach of the cellphone’s screenlight. He turned the phone in this direction and that, searching for something that couldn’t be there–something that could not be at all. Then he went back to the screen and typed in these six words: What to do about going crazy. There were a lot of results. Quora popped up just below the Ai inspired answer that google provided. He swiped up, scrolling the screen downward towards the multicolored Google symbol with an inconsiderate number of ‘o’s and clicked on the number 10, situated just below the last of the ‘o’s.

This was common practice for Terrance by now. He wiped sweat from his head with his empty right hand and flicked it further down the bed. The first two results on any page were always sponsored hits, but he’d come to learn that by page ten the listed results got interesting. Here he found a blog called Tiny Buddha that talked about how pain could cause us to act crazy in relationships. Further down the list was posts about Trump making all of us crazy and something called the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors bracketed by even more sponsored results. Still nothing about what he saw in his minds eye, or perhaps just beyond the light this very bedroom.

He put the phone down on his chest. It glowed against the dingy gray sheets. His wife stirred again. He stared into the darkness across the room, thinking. Waiting. It the hints of the dream from which he’d emerged there’d been an answer. There’d been something. When he’d opened his eeyes he’d seen it, or at least thought he’d seen it. Now, as the fog of sleep lifted, he couldn’t quite remember what it had been. It’d been an answer, he knew that much. But how?

I have this mental checklist of things that need doing before Monday. The list keeps getting longer or shorter and I am not writing any of it down. That is my first mistake. The second is thinking that a list can ensure the things that need getting done, get done. In reality they only get done by way of prioritizing and dedicating mental energy. A list does a little of that work, but not so much of the heavy lifting. That comes down to accepting that your time needs to be allocated to the things you need to do in order to make time for the things you want to do.

This has always been my problem–wanting to do more than my mind or body is capable of doing at once and trying to do all of it nonetheless. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried multiple ways to make it work, but it does not. After a while you decide to stop putting energy to certain things, putting more energy to others and the result winds up being success in the things that get the most of your attention.

So, if this blog teaches you anything it ought to be to determine your (corp buzzword coming) capacity and create space to maximize that. You want to be successful? Focus on one thing you want to be successful at, and do it the best of your capabilities. Then it is on to the next thing.

My kids have been asking when we draft for the beachborn league. It has to happen sooner than later. Still I am hesitant to draft early, because pre-season is a bitch. We’ve already seen JJ McCarthy go down for the season, the Giants are basically an ER ward at this point, and who knows who will be playing end for the Jets? All of these register as minor concerns, but it begs the question: how long should one wait before committing to the fantasy talent. I believe for my part we will go the weekend of the 31st. It gives me another clean week to decide a strategy for this year, and to review the scoring rules so my player strategy better aligns with the points and how they are obtained. I didn’t do that last year, effectively confusing my leagues and loosing both of them. I lost the BeachBorn so badly that I am assured the first pick… and the resulting toilet seat trophy to wear to the draft. I haven’t set up the trophy for this year, but I am planning on getting a nice one for… myself.. because I am expecting to hoist in at the end of the season, like I always expect I will do before the first pick is in.

The 17 yr old college CB is expecting to get some playing time. He may be right. He’s shifted back and forth between 2nd and 4th string based on play and injuries. Still he’s steals reps with the ones whenever he can. His little brother is also capturing some first team reps, often as a result of injury to other players. He’s a sophomore and expectations are high. He’s shown himself to be a Kyle Hamilton style utility player, moving all over the secondary filling in admirably wherever the need arises. As for his personal desires? He’d like to fill the Travis Hunter role. The opportunities are there on both sides of the ball, but he needs to have sharper play.

Some Thoughts:

1. After being word-shamed yesterday I got back on the horse and cranked out 2k of good stuff. It isn’t 10–not yet. Tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the project and layout the next. Friday is an official day off. Saturday we grind.

Day two went better than day 1, from discovering the project is only 6500 words to putting 2500 good ones on paper, this has been a bit of a leap from yesterday. Yet I am not where I need to be. A colleague of mine is much better at this kind of grind. He recently posted about an oops situation involving a 10k word story he’d forgotten to write. He did it overnight. That’s way beyond my can at present. I used to be that guy, but as I’ve stated multiple times, I just ain’t got that flow right now. I need to get it back and I need to figure out how to get it back. It is more than just getting older (my guy and I are the same age). It is about how I live my life and how I spend my time and definitely about the energy around me which is often not the least be creative outside of the inspirational Lady Talis, but even that inspiration which she provides is not that of watching a working author grind and realizing I need to get my game right.

I want to be better. Part of that is the time on task and how well I use it. I expect to get back to solid business hours in terms of the writing, and the more I hold court, the better and more refined that time will become. I’ve done this all my life. This transitioning back towards that after a very lazy summer is going a lot slower than I planned.

First day back on the grind for real, and man is my mind not ready for the challenge. I’m 2k into an 8.5 k project due in three days. I can honestly say that 500wds of what I have is pretty good. The rest is going to get culled or expanded–hopefully tomorrow, because today I’m bent. I need to get past this revv up stage faster than I normally tend to do, because I lack the time to properly start my engine. Heck, I should’ve never let it go dormant, but I needed the break both mentally and, as discussed, physically. But I am back now, and I am working as hard as I can. I switch between tasks, burning through the inability to do one by diving into another. If I can not write, I work on developing the classes that start next week. This semester is getting closer and closer and I intend to be ready for that work.

Some Thoughts:

1. I suppose this entire thing could have been some thoughts, because I don’t have enough of a singular thought to pen a ten minute blog.
2. The room project is still coming along. I spent too much time (and money) taking steps forward with that today. I admit to using it as a distraction from work. It filled in those blanks between the school work and the writing and the seven rounds of pokemon online and the one game of College Football 25.
3. And the nap… and the hanging out with the Lady Talis…
4. Tomorrow has to be more locked in and organized than this mess of today has turned out to be.
5. More coffee, perhaps?

another day of writing from the phone and letting the hands heal as we move into the last week before classes begin. I slept in to the tune of 8 am, which is unheard of here for me. It’s back to 4:30 tomorrow before I settle into a ‘natural’ 5 am week day routine.

it is hard to shift back onto the idea of a semester’s worth of teaching. Summer teaching feels different because it is more money (by way of being spread across less time) and fewer courses. I have a better focus on the work, which is largely due to the shorter time frame.

yet here I am trying to get going and lock into a work routine that is going to find me some success. Here’s hoping I can create that. It all starts tomorrow.