Month: July 2025

It is hard to think that we’ve only been in Canada for four days. In those days I feel like I’ve done so much more in life than I did in the weeks prior. Today marked another chapter done. That puts me down to seven left. There is a chance I score one more tomorrow. My secret: The beach. The internet free beach. I go down to the water each morning and write my butt off for as long as I can. I do it while listening to the waves and not checking my phone or some random web rabbit hole or any of the things that can distract me. This feels impossible at home. All there is at home is the constant noise. I can count on one hand how many times I experience silence over the course of a week there.

Here is better.

Here has always been better, but this is the best iteration so far. We are right on the beach so I can take my chair down there and work and enjoy the space. The other day I even saw a dog chasing a deer across the sand. Weird lives at this beach, Today I witnessed a silent rave further down the shore. It was… a lot. Yet it was not a total distraction. I continued to work and enjoy and create. I was in the zone and in the end I was able to push through another chapter.

I hope to do the same tomorrow and the day after. I want this to be my every day, all the way until the book is done and I am on to the next one. I love this mode I am in. Lets keep it going till the wheels fall off.

Two chapters!

I know these last few (9) are going to be 1500 word range chapters, but to lock in two in one day is quite nice. I’m feeling really good about the speed of the writing and the tempo of the storytelling at the end. It is all about tying up arcs and having some fun on the run itself. The buildup has been HUGE. Again, this ain’t you’re daddy’s SR Novel. Well, maybe it’s your grandaddy’s. This is about emotions and depth, and I’ve had a ton of fun doing the rewrite. It was a struggle at times but now those good times they be rolling. Aiming for one chapter tomorrow, as it is a busy day overall. We will see if I can pull it off.

Some Thoughts:

1. Canada is simply chiller.
2. Headline of the Day: Man Dies After Heavy Weight Training Chain Pulls Him into MRI Machine.
3. Yes, of course that happened in Long Island.
4. Runner up: Japan’s PM to use slightly radioactive Fukushima soil to prove its safety.
5. If I made this stuff up, nobody would believe me.

Not feeling the best today.

I try to manifest the best version of myself every day and it doesn’t always work. Today I had a great morning. The afternoon fell apart. The stress of the day caught up with me and I was not the best to the Lady, and I internalized a lot of garbage. That is no way to live. I am really tired of these halfway days where it feels like it is a trap to feel like things are going well. Not only does it make me gun shy to relax, it makes me fearful that every day is going to be progressively worst than the last. It’s like that old military saying: The only easy day was yesterday. Maybe its the only good day was yesterday. Well, yesterday was a good day, so I am hoping this was only a brief downhill, because I cannot do all downhill from here. I simply do not have it in me.

I came here for a moment of what this life could look like, and how happy we could be in it. This is the experience I aim to have, though not the one I am having. It isn’t all about the day. It is a cascade of noise slowly filling my head. Want to hear more? Well, I’ll share in…

Some Thoughts:

1. Planned a daytrip to see the kid play in Colorado. Wound up with a stressful fit. We land at 11. Game is at 12…. 53 minutes away. Still need to get off the plane, get to the rental (big airport) get the rental, and then hightail it to the stadium where we will find our tickets waiting. Definitely missing the first quarter. Only to have to get back on the road by 5:00 to make an 8:55 flight home. That leaves us four, four and a half hours MAX to enjoy this moment. This wasn’t the best plan.
2. Did nothing on the novel. Not a good start.
3. Did nothing on the grading, so that is piling up.
4. Time to time it feels like there is a hill directly ahead of my own making. Each time this happens the hill gets bigger and harder to climb. One day I will not be able to climb it.
5. Or maybe I’m just crazy maudlin today.
6. Maybe both are true…

So we left. Made our way to Canada. Life is better here. This weekend we head to the forests where they filmed several Star Wars scenes. It is just like that. This will be the kind of trip that wipes the political stink off my body… and my blog. This is also the endgame for the novel. 8 chapters left in the book and the writing is ramping up. I’m generating entirely new material for these chapters, with only a few paragraphs being preserved in the last scene. The new direction is wiz, and I think the fanbase will enjoy it. Enough to buy copies? We’ll see. There is a lot of literary elements in this one. It is heavy on dialogue and light on action, so I don’t know what they’ll think. However, if they want a story about how people in these situations might actually think and clash, this is that book.

Bit of a make or break scenario. I’ll be needing to do things different if it is the break side.

Regardless, I need to do other stories before the world moves on. The Justice Engine is about past its expiration date. It is also the focus of the grad thesis, so it needs to happen and be very very good. I’m talking peak Talislegger levels. I still have that in me, so this is the time to show it.

Today I showed that I can still grind out ten miles in a day and not die. This is no Long Walk, mind you. I’m trying to flip the switch and get back to a healthy routine. Great start, as I walked more miles today than I have in the past three. Tomorrow we start to design the new family routine. I’m excited to see how it all pans out.

I can find a thousand different version of this gif. Some even come with morphed faces indicating present members of our government. None of it holds the impact of the reality we are witnessing day to day. Trump is effectively destroying US credibility for the next few decades. It get’s worse. Now the folks on Fox News are batting around the idea of ‘reclaiming’ the word Nazi like we black folks did with the N-word. The absurdity of the comment cannot be explained–only witnessed. Behold:

Nah, son.

They are fully tripping. Of course, this will be spun into a joke and the burden placed on the viewer for not seeing it as such. Regardless. I saw what I saw. I know what I know. We are entirely losing the shape of this thing. Be it these ridiculous comparisons or Trump’s now weekly threats ranging from Tariffs to firing the fed chair that destabilize the stock market every single time we are losing it. Some people are profiting from it greatly.

Some are profiting from the quick destruction of the country I was raised in. All of this only further proves that we are down to a situation where every four to eight years the country will be remade. At the very least the following period of 4-8 will be spent undoing the damage of the last administration. This is the definition of spinning our wheels. Only we are spinning them in mud and only getting deeper. We cannot get out of this without help.

There is no other country capable of helping.

I’m not leaving yet. I have much to do, both professionally and in terms of family. When that is done the Lady and I will either find some small less-impacted corner of the USA or we will move on entirely. The world is moving on, so perhaps we should as well.

Trump’s Gestapo are performing raids on California farms in what is certainly retribution for California being a Democratic state. Why? Because Cali is far from the only state with a massive number of immigrant farm hands. We haven’t heard of such raids in Texas, Oklahoma, and the likes though we know the workers are there. The entire immigrant conversation is dressed in politics, as it has always been around this world. Human existence is constantly reduced to who does and doesn’t belong to be in a particular place at a particular time.

Moreover, it comes down to who is making these decisions.

Some Thoughts:

1. Slow rolled this ten. I’m deep in thought about the last section of the novel. This is a complete rewrite from here until about the last chapter. The story has changed dramatically. I love that. I love that I can feel like these things are written and re-written to give the characters different lives and endings.
2. Also deep in thought about the upcoming FB season. I want these boys to excel. I hate having to sit around waiting for it to be time to roll, but that is what it is.
3. Of course, there is a wedding before that happens. I’m geeked about that and the run up to it. Gotta get the novel done and get my mind back on the real prize…

it is a curious thing to be a fan of something or perhaps someone and be resigned to that entities utter futility. It is at once an occupation and a curse. You cheer and follow but you do not believe, like praying to a dead God. It often feels like being the butt of a joke or the object of coming ridicule. It’s like being a fan of Richard Bachman but not Stephen King. You’re actively making the choice to believe in a thing when there is a better thing to believe in right there Why do people do that? Why do people build comrade die and community around random names and colors and, over time, dig in hard enough to call it culture regardless of having no control over the course or shape of the thing? Why do I?

There is no good reason that I do it beyond Sunken Cost. Once you’ve invested so much it is hard to imagine letting it all go. We don’t have a good mechanism for letting stuff go. We hold on, dig in hard enough to make it a part of our self-worth. If this country is insulted then I’m insulted. This state, this city, this block, this team, this player. We don’t see enough in ourselves to be the topic of discussion—the rally point—so we get behind something that is. We settle in. We draft behind it with a thousand other people and feel safe in the wake of the group we are in.

We feel immortal because the thing, the idea, we follow is immortal and will outlast us. It will exist after we do not and we will exist because our allegiance to it. We make these Gods of things and people over which we have no control and the more we stake ourselves to it the more control that stake has over us over who we are seen as and how we see ourselves.

I still do it. I don’t know how to stop.

I drank for the first time in a while last night. I wanted the drink. I wanted to taste an Old Fashioned and enjoy a moment having one. The first one was wrong. Twice as much mix as needed. Half the required rye. It was sipped, spat, and dumped. The second was better, but by then the joy of the engagement had fled and I kept thinking about how it could possibly help me sleep through the night.

It didn’t. I experienced the worst series of dreams in some time. Each built off the last and was awful and degrading, even occasionally violent. No more drinks late at night… Except maybe red wine. It’s been a while since I tried that particular beverage.

All of this comes at a time of transition. I’m winding through the final 12 chapters of this novel and preparing for a wedding and preparing for a new semester. All the while the summer work is ending/shifting to another session. I have so much change transpiring that it is easy to get displaced. The one constant is the routine of waking, spending time with the love of my life, walking, writing, and eventually, lunch. We plan to keep that going throughout. There will be minor tweaks to when the words happen vs when the walking goes down. All of it is process. We are trying to be healthy and happy in these routines.

I watched Superman tonight.

As I was walking through the theater parking lot watching roaches scurry from my path, I found myself thinking about how strange the movie was. I waited till I got home to write about it. I’m sitting down with a (badly sitrred) Old Fashioned, trying to figure out what the hell I just saw.

It was good. In truth, Mr. Terrific hijacked the movie. He was a G and had possibly the coolest fight sequence in the film (hard tie with Guy Gardner). The over-sexualization is what threw me. I was talking it out with my kid and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t sexy Superman so much as it was sexy everybody else. Jimmy Olson was hot for days. Well, not the actor, but the character. At one point Lois asks him how he is always surrounded by such beautiful women. I’m not even getting into Cat Grant. Suffice to say, choices were made. With her, with Luthor’s very specific girlfriends.. The list doth go on.

Still, this was vintage Gunn. He did an excellent job of putting together a fun cast and rewriting the darkness of the previous DCverse into something else entirely. We don’t even have a Justice League anymore. What are they? Well, you’ll have to see for yourself.

It was fun. It was very wild and weird. I haven’t seen a movie on my own in some time and this was definitely one to do that with. I enjoyed it. There was a message there. It was not buried at all.

Another day, another blog. I thought about going back to the conversation about college FB–especially after spending most of yesterday playing the video game. I’m not going to do that. I did learn that it is not really about college football for me. It’s about my son’s journey. I told him today that I was missing him and worried about him having a good life. He’s having a blast doing the FB thing in college and trying to take his talents further. It makes me happy.

What doesn’t make me happy is the inability to maintain steady relationships over the phone. I’m not a great phone dad. I don’t call often and often don’t know what to say. Better on text, to be sure, but that isn’t enough. I need to be better as a dad. If this were ten years ago, I’d read a book about it. No reason I can’t do that now…

Some Thoughts:

1. It is taking me two days to do the really tough chapters.
2. I locked in on the summer class and finished with a shot at an A and a 4.0. Love to see it..
3. It is wild how fast and terribly this present government is reshaping the United States. We are quite literally falling back into the 50s in some ways. We are advancing in no ways. This will change the country for decades to come, and the richest will benefit while the poorest–the ones who voted these people into office–will suffer greatly. It’s okay though. At least they can rest their laurels on the fact that they are doing something about the real threats to Americans.
4. The shift of ICE to a near Gestapo-level force is terrifying. These people want to do this.
5. The High Schooler’s FB team held their summer camp at the school. That is just lazy. Add it to the list of reasons they’ve gone downhill.