Month: September 2025

If I’m honest with myself I want to get this done now because I don’t want to deal with it later. My longest teaching day is also my worst. It begins with a deeply disinterested 7AM class that would rather stare at me and react with disgust when asked to respond than actually take the mental energy to learn something. Then I get a break to have office hours. By 10 AM I am back in the saddle with a late start class. Late start is a situation generally reserved for students who enrolled at the last minute or had other issues. The population can be riddled with problems. This is a class that started two weeks after the semester began. Problems galore.

I need the second office hour after this one to get right and ready for the 3rd class, which is also a late start but not as late or problematic. The day generally ends well with this bunch. Better engagement and I’ve already had a week to prepare and prototype the lesson. It feels more and more like I am getting near to the end of it as I get to the end of that class. I’ll have a pair more the next day and a ton of online work, but the 10 AM is the hump.

All in all, I’m quite burned out. I came into the semester out of breath and haven’t caught my breath yet. It doesn’t help that I am fed up with things outside of the work life. Grown kid stuff, health issues, writing issues… the list goes on.

I’m a married man again. Happily so. They (whomever they are) say third times the charm, but I got it in two. I certainly didn’t get it in one. I think I knew that from start. I remember sitting with a friend of mine prior to the wedding and she telling me she didn’t think I wanted to do this. I acted like she was crazy, but after all of it–after the best man begging off and all of the drama that followed–I knew deep down that this wasn’t the best thing for me but merely the right thing at the right time.

I won’t say that I didn’t get anything out of being married the first time. I got three great boys. For a while I got to have great parents (in-law).However, none of that was about me growing as a human. In fact, it was the opposite. The one thing I learned in the nearly decade and a half I was married is that a person can whither even while they look like they are thriving. A person can wither from the inside while doing everything possible to look the part of the happy human on the outside. I knew this, at least in part, from my wok as a counselor. I should’ve been able to put the pieces together for myself. I didn’t. I hid behind activity and urgency, diving into the lives of these boys with fury. I became the coach as much as the dad. I became the top worker. I was all of those things on the outside shell, and hollowed out within. I had nothing to nourish me.

So then I suppose I learned two lessons. The second, more powerful one is this: You have to be nourished from the inside. The human soul, whatever you conceive of that to be, needs to be nourished. Mind, Body, and Soul gets the order entirely wrong. Soul ought to be at the forefront, because where the Chakras lay is how the mind and body must stay.

Over the past decade I’ve come to realize that true soul nourishment means finding that person who is entwined with your soul. This is the concept of a soul-mate. To me that means one that is your ride or die–the person that gets you and you get. The person you want to get up in the morning for. The person who ignites the desire to protect the body and the mind. I found that and I am blessed by her. Everyone needs a Lady Talis, but very few are fortunate enough to find that counterbalance in their life.

Found mine. Not letting go.

There is a particular type of person who sees the change needed in their life and makes those changes immediately. They slam on the breaks, turn the car around and drive hard and fast in the other direction. I’m not that person. I slow down. I make minor corrections. When the cliff arrives, I wonder why I am still going over it. I am too old to make the changes I should’ve made thirty years ago.

I remember when I was in college and trying to put on weight for football. It wasn’t like it is now. I was a walk on without all of the fancy meal plans the other kids who were full scholarship were entitled to. That excuse empowered me to work less. I wound up falling off the team like falling off that cliff and it shows. I still talk about being a walk on in spite of never really reaching the level of success my kid is experiencing now at the college level. I suppose that makes me all bluster and no work.

I suppose I can say the same about the writing. All this effort being made… is it really effort at all to be someone who has survived in a niche market publishing under a handful of labels and only one (supposedly two) novels to his name? At some point a person needs to accept they’ve failed–to truly recognize what that failure looks like and in that acceptance decide where to go from there as opposed to lying to themselves about where they are. The only way to move forward is to see the road your on and understand if you are the kind of person who can change lanes, or if you expect to creep forward towards your eventual doom.

Thus begins a chronical of a very long and draining road trip. Maybe not incredibly long, but it sure did wipe me out. Let’s start with the travel portion–two planes, two cars. Crazy delays. We traveled to and from Colorado to watch the boy play. We barely made it by halftime because the Frontier flight was delayed twice. First time flying Frontier. Last time flying Frontier. I knew it was trending in the wrong direction when we were waiting for take off and smoke rose from the vents and nobody seemed bothered. This is, apparently, ordinary.

The trip wasn’t ordinary. The ex wife was there alongside her sisters. My mom was there. Drama was high. I came to see a game and wound up in an episode of Dallas. I suppose it’s Yellowstone now. I’m tired of drama and sadness. My life appears to orbit such things. I am truly done with the mess of it all. There is so much more to life than what small people find themselves consumed by. I want–nay, NEED, a more complex dopamine hit. Perhaps not even that. Perhaps I just need my dopamine to come in a form that feels healthy.

I so rarely see that in this world I live in.

Just a late night edition of …

Some Thoughts:

1. I think some people thought the return of Kimmel was going to have a larger boom than it did. In fact, Kimmel is just okay. His removal wasn’t the removal of a pillar of comedy. If Trump came after Chapelle, that would be different. The strike back would go massively hard.
2. A lot of school stuff accomplished today. Here’s hoping I get back on track this week. I’m headed in the right direction.
3. First major rainstorms of the season. Felt good to feel cool air in the desert.
4. Headed to see the kid play in the morning. Flight was pushed back an hour so we won’t make kickoff. Quick trip. Harried even.
5. The whole thing has me thinking about how I do travel. I feel like there is a world in which I can do a day trip like this more often. Maybe even one day trips like I used to do to San Diego… Quick flight to Seattle for a dinner and a breakfast?
6. I need to get my brain back to where I can produce some good blogs. This background count is ruinous. Especially in the stagnancy of my kid-infested home.
7. The Trumpian madness is definitely raising the background count. Now we’re arresting and firing FBI agents on some mad revenge campaign? USA has gone off the deep end with the racism.
8. The end is in fact, nigh…
9. That being said, it won’t happen in my lifetime. The ‘end’ as it were is never abrupt. It took well over a thousand years for the Roman Empire to collapse. It will happen ten times as fast for the USA.

A Background Count is a direct reference to the baseline of detected signals of any sort. Yesterday I used the term to indicate the level of chaos seen in our world during this administration as opposed to, say, Obama. The background count here is much higher. The amount of noise and chaos that we hear on a daily basis–the level of baseline cognitive dissonance is innately higher. It is in fact so much higher that I am stressed out before diving into my own stuff. I do have stuff–we all do. However, I cannot focus on my stuff as much as I want to, because I’m stuck in this media loop of needing to worry if I’m safe as a black man in my own country and if that country is about to go to war. Just today the Fox News Reporter turned head of the US Military, Hegseth, called a meeting of all the top military commanders. Meanwhile, Iran is testing missiles, and Russia or some other unknown force is buzzing Denmark airports with hostile drones.

This is not okay.

I’m entirely stressed out in life. I’m trying to work through it.

Some Thoughts:

I didn’t write the waiver yesterday and I’m not considering it today. My mind is on other problems. Overload, actually. Bad AC units, being behind on projects and similar issues. The main issue is an inability to get on track. I need the formality and routine that I found on the beach, and it doesn’t exist here. Perhaps it never has. Instead the ‘routine’ is a slowly increasing list of responsibilities meeting with a quickly receding pool of time. I do my best to maintain enough free time to get my mind right because I cannot burn out and shut down completely. However, that feels like it is constantly on the verge of happening. It already happened once this very month.

I’m stressed. I’m not dealing well with the situations of the space nor with the challenges of the schedule and the challenges both my partner and I are facing individually. It isn’t going well and it is going to hell in a handbasket. This is no way to live. It is merely survival amidst a rising background count of stress and chaos.

I need to find a way to be still and reset.

Better, I need to find a way to thrive as opposed to barely surviving.

Ever wonder why I do the waiver wire on Wednesday? Probably not. I’ve done it like this for years so that a kid or other competitor of mine in fantasy wouldn’t snake the players I’m talking about being hot in the coming week. I’m going to forego that, as I am in the midsts of yet another losing season in both leagues. I am much like my beloved Raspberry Racers. I get you hyped up for success and then immediately let you down. My fantasy football skills have eroded dramatically. I thought it was about attention to detail, and that may be somewhat true, but that cannot be the entire story. No, its an erosion. That’s just how it be.

So, I will be considering moving the wire earlier in the week as a way to improve the research aspect of the fantasy game. Not today, because I spent my time writing this out and I am fully unprepared to hit the wire, but I am ready to share what (little) I know.

ChatGPT launched 3 years ago. Back then the model was clunky and could be detected. In five years it will be indistinguishable from human thinking. This is the age we are living in–one where human thinking is quickly becoming obsolete. Instead the value of people will be linked and graded based on Network Capital, which is “a concept in sociology and economics that refers to the value created by social connections and relationships. It represents the resources, opportunities, and advantages you can access because of who you know and how well you are connected.” That definition is courtesy of ChatGPT. That definition argues for a return to a very old model of human connection not seen since the invention of the telephone. It is going to be about who you know and it already is about how long you can keep someone’s eyes on a screen.

We’re headed in this direction and it is too late to stop it. This is not me being negative, but me being a realist. So the question is this: How do we survive this wave? Well, if you’re in an industry where cognitive process is at the core–especially in the public sector–get out while you can. If you need to ride it out till your retirement, better hope to retire in ten years or less. The world moves faster than it used to and we’ve raised several generations of simplistic bottom line thinkers. School teachers are already being replaced by AI, because the reliance on testing is beginning to fade in many sectors. The idea that you won’t have access to these tools while doing anything is fading into myth. Doctors are going to have the assistance of AI and robotics in all phases of the job. So will lawyers. Brokers already rely on these tools. Look at the commercials on TV. What is being preached is how to have seamless integration. These are the steps forward people are waiting for. We have the software and need better hardware for integration.

Listen to Emad Mostaque. He’s worried we’ll lose what we call reality in 1000 days. I fear he may be on to something. Look what’s happened in the first 1000 days of the technology being publically available.

I proposed the idea of buying a 175,000 bit of property to the Lady Talis. A discussion will follow. If it ends up being a positive and we do get such a spot it will certainly entail cleaning up a spot or at least making it the right spot for us to chill out over a longer period of time. The spot feels like a getaway, but the price feels like a hoax. The pure truth of it is that I’m thinking about the way forward. That way means closing the door on here in the near future (maybe up to four years) and looking towards… where?

Moving is not as simple as getting up and saying “I live here now.” I need a job and a place to live. I need to find a place where we both can be happy as a couple and perhaps with land to build out so our kids may have homes nearby. All of these things I want. I don’t even know what country to want them in. This is the fundamental problem of trying to find the way forward.

At least I’m starting to understand the concerns.