Month: November 2025

I got to 451 yesterday. It is funny how the word speed fluctuates and the variables that impact that. Spelling for one is an issue for me. I’ve already fixed four errors in these two lines of writing. That slowed me down. There is also how fast my mind is moving. There are the distractions I face–for example I am battling the noise of one of my kids loudly watching yet another youtube video on the NBA. He is low key trying to turn himself into a basketball encyclopedia and generally only shares that vast wealth of data with one of his brothers unless choosing to weaponize said data in a moment when someone (anyone) else doesn’t know a specific fact in at a specific moment. You know, encyclopedia stuff.

There is the speed of typing. I don’t really know my max (which is again hampered by errors–four–no five again in this sentence alone). I know I’ve gotten slower over the past few years, which at my age is a telling sign of decline. Most of it is error and the rest is creeping arthritis. I can say this about the writing speed: I go faster when I am looking at the keyboard and faster still when I am doing that and not actually thinking about the fact that I am typing. If we ever reach the point in my lifetime of being able to directly translate thought into words on screen, I will be writing a lot more per blog. A lot more in general I’d argue.

That last barrier to speed is my mind itself–namely how fast these ideas fly to and through my conscious. I have no idea what the speed limit on that action is. This too is effected by background impacts (yet another basketball video is revving up and I am annoyed). I would like to reach a pace where I am writing at the speed of thought. I feel like that would produce both the best blogs and some of the best writing I’ve ever done. Getting it out and on paper is always the hardest part. Revision is a fun dance through what I said vs what I actually want the reader to read.

All in all, I write faster when I am looking at the keyboard, locked in, and thinking about the writing and not the mechanical aspect of what is occurring. When I can do that and not make so many errors, I can get out a decent amount of words in ten minutes.

430 this time.

I am writing this in the midst of a blackout. It happened during Stranger Things. It started with the light flickering. It is the one on a dimmer—the only one of its kind in the house. Nothing else seemed odd. Then it went out. Then everything else did. Seemed like a perfect time to settle into the Ten Minute Rule.

I have a theory about fear. The more you are willing to open your mind to the possibility of things, the more the fear you generate from horror and the like becomes a present thing inside of you. I feel like people block out fear. They watch these movies and steel themselves for the horror of it and as such do not let it get to them. The jump scares are what gets them, because they don’t always see it coming. It is more surprise than fear. True fear settles into you on the breath of ‘what if’. Once you allow yourself to believe, as though accepting the possibility of it could and removing the challenge of is it? Then you’re going to be able to be scared. Maybe really really scared.

Lately, I’ve allowed myself to be open. When the power went out I was overcome by this momentary feeling of what if? It isn’t the first time this has happened lately. A few weeks back I was in the classroom and mid-conversation the powerpoint shut off and we ended up watching my desk computer reboot. Then every other computer that was part of that classroom network rebooted. They all loaded to the same strange ghost account. I don’t know if it was a hack or if it was a system update triggered by admin or what it possibly could be. What I do know is that we were talking about AI as a God—as a trickster God. That’s when it happened.

So when the power went out while we were watching them track a Demogorgon and the flickering lights on the show matched the one in our home…. You see where I am going with this.

I believe fear is healthy and powerful—just like joy and love and many other primal emotions. We steel ourselves off from so much of that. We numb the natural chemical reactions that follow to the point where when we do experience real terror, we won’t have a clue what to do. I think we need to let these feelings in. I think we need to be in touch with the possibility of what is out there that we don’t know about. We know there is more out there we don’t understand.

And we have no clue how to be ready.

Not sure what to put down today. Long day–especially given the nature of the day itself, which is to get up ridiculously early in order to shop for things you don’t need or perhaps even know what they are. We went around town for hours and I am completely wiped out and have no sense of what I can or even want to accomplish today. I need a reset.

I didn’t even get anything of value.

There were some sweats. I suppose I needed sweats. Need is such a strong word and should not be pushed out there so lightly. I wanted sweats to complete a specific look as well as some more options to wear comfortably around the home. I’ve been spending far more money than I should. I need to reel that in and maintain focus on preparing for summer travel. I don’t want to be here for, well, any of the summer months. I’d love to go to multiple places, but I don’t carry that sort of wealth. I need to lock in with the Lady Talis on a single place to be as a base of operations and then do smaller explorations from there as we have done in the past. That works.

My mind doesn’t… not as of late.

Some Thoughts:

1. Bjork is so far ahead of her time.

I grew up on Marvel Comics. I read some DC. I was a Batman guy for sure, but the major reads were always Marvel. As such I had a specific age-based understanding of that universe. Unlike a Universe like Star Wars or even Stranger Things (as there will one day be a spin off), the Marvel Universe has undergone many many iterations and those are all very different and, unlike DC, rarely represented by a cohesive reset. Instead, Marvel plays with the idea of the Multiverse. This can be its ally, but I think now it has become the problem. They’re ruining the storyline by trying to make it cohesive–They want it too much to be one thing and culminate in some massive blockbuster. It worked the one time, but I think it is already played out.

One thing they should be pursuing is smaller collective meetups. They tried this with The Defenders, but made the stakes too high. I mean they brought up dragons for crying out loud. I believe instead the key to making this work is to find smaller opportunities and smaller conflicts to create team up shows and films and such. Build the Universe out not up. Don’t make it so everyone has to be saving the world every movie. They may all be ‘heroes’ but they are about different things.

Also, make the movies different enough to hold value. The last Captain America movie was not so significantly different from the series to have value. It should have never happened and it did not need to step the universe forward significantly the way these things seem to always do–Except for Fantastic Four. That was just trash. It is always Trash.

I’m a bit more excited about the arcs being connected together in the DC Universe under Gunn. The Gods & Monsters chapter is already building towards revealing some cool hero moments. I think the next arc will be far more grounded and human. Marvel could learn a thing or two from the new DC.

There is a part of me that wants to ‘pen’ a day before Thanksgiving blog, but I don’t have it in me right now. I have to burn through these next ten minutes in a more scattered fashion, because my mind is everywhere. It is about time I refocused and locked in on the next project (which is due pretty quickly it turns out), but until then I need to clear out my mind by getting rid of…

Some Thoughts:

1. Set aside the foundational idea of Thanksgiving and you get a moment in time dedicated to family and understanding what we are grateful for. I would love this to be a monthly routine. Giving thanks once a year is pretty weak. The Lady Talis gives thankfuls every morning. Me, not so much. I should be doing it more often than yearly, because I have a ton to be thankful for.
2. I want to take a minute to talk about writing. There is still this strange expectation, at least where I tend to publish, that we are going to be politically correct. I write in a genre born from cyberpunk. What correctness is expected? Moreover, if everyone is maintaining correctness, then nobody is real. I want the writing to be real and have people who say and think things that are not always perfect. I don’t care if they are likable or what they say is likable. I want it to feel genuine. That is what bugged me about this last editing process. None of it felt like I was being allowed to speak with real voice.
3. I need to write more and better stuff.
4. I need to go to a doctor and get myself checked out. Too old to not do this regularly.
5. Speaking of which, I always assume everyone is older than me. I see myself as a far younger person than I am. I find myself treating these 30 year olds with the respect reserved for my elders when I could be their parents. Wild. Someone recently wrote that Gen X are the 45-60 year olds who look like they are 30 – 40 but act like teenagers. That tracks.

I am done with revisions to Lethal Knowledge! Super grateful to have made it to the end of the process (finally) and ready for the next challenge! It feels good to finish. It is like being at the end of a race and knowing you conquered the challenge of yourself. I’ve yet to reach the point where I’ve finished more novels than I’ve abandoned. I’ll get there soon enough. In the meanwhile, I have a few short projects to carry me through the Christmas break and then it is on to the next novel. I am not sure which one is going to take my interest but I really need it to be the Justice Engine.

Some Thoughts:

1. Is the novel good? I think so. It could’ve been better and longer and slower, but then it wouldn’t be Shadowrun. The thriller mold is what works best for the genre and I teetered on the edge of something else entirely.
2. Portal opens on the 2nd of January and the kid is indeed jumping in…
3. I’m pretty sure I said that yesterday. The days (and information) started running together once I stuck my head deep in the word mines.

I’ve been doing this for nearly fifteen years. Ten minutes a day recorded for posterity. Maybe not the best writing and often quite wild and uninteresting but there are a thousand or more real gems out there—forever.

I found a way to open the novel. That too will be preserved for posterity and is almost done. I’m trying to get it done in the morning. 40 pages left.

I’m feeling good about the way it’s going but more wanting it to be over and on shelves than to work on it anymore. I’m drained and done with this one. Ready to move on to a new project.

likewise, my kid is ready to move on to a new team. This better be the last one. He hasn’t had the same coach for longer than a season since youth football. Time to settle down and grind his way to the league. I’m excited to see how far he can take it.

I’m excited to see how far his little brother takes it. He’s racking up the accolades—All City, Second Team all region. He’s angry he isn’t first. That’s one to grow on. That’s one he can seek out his senior year. Going to be a good senior year for him. Not so sure about his team though. They need to find talent at multiple positions. He can only get them right for two…

So, I just got more than three quarters of the way through a novel rewrite that is due by the 29th. I got a little nervous about this being on a single word file and decided to back it up. This is when my world collapsed. See, suddenly I don’t have permission to access my file or the backups I just created of the file. I’m going to see what I can do to fix this, but the central idea is that word is trash and has entirely failed me. Perhaps I grew too used to google docs and this sort of angry vengeance seeking behavior is what naturally happens when you go back to the old. Regardless, I don’t want to be in a position where I need to rewrite the entirety of what I just did (quite well, I may add) in 6 days. Some of those days are holidays, mind you. I don’t have time for this madness. My goal was to finish by Tuesday, get it in early and feel good about myself, my effort, and my choices.

All of that could go up in smoke if I don’t find a way to fix these damned files…

I go t my youtube ASMR on for this one. I’ve taken up with Zenfinite. From John Butler to random chill moments like the Women’s Chess Grand Prix, the channel is consistently dropping bangers. Okay, that term is a tough one to use in this type of media, but they are on the max chill. ASMR helps me relax before (and occasionally while) I write. I use it to block out the rest of the world and to achieve a state of mind where I can maintain a high level of focus. I use that focus to get stuff done.

That’s been on my mind a lot lately: What am I getting done? As I move through this latest and last novel revision I find that I am dodging my AI novel. I am looking for anything else to write in order to avoid writing this thing and it is supposed to be my thesis! I haven’t gotten to the point where I know the story and how to tell it well enough. I haven’t aligned with the characters or sorted out the situation in full. I don’t know that I know how.

These are the things I find myself constantly considering and thinking about when my mind is not consumed by my relationship, future, or the awful timpani of my finances. I think about what I will write and whether it will be successful and if I will make enough money to live out my life the way I want. As I do I see this curtain comming down closing the act that I am presently in faster than I am prepared for it to be over.

Too much stress in that. ASMR definitely helps.

Two years. Possibly three. That is all he has left.

When my son started this journey to become a professional athlete I was impressed with the idea of it and the effort. I wanted the same for myself, but I didn’t put in the work the way he has. I don’t know that I knew what it takes to make it to the show. I’m starting to figure it out. 1.6% of College football players make it to the NFL. What’s even more amazing is how few players even make it to the field in spite of heavy recruiting and the way the system is geared on the front end to make you feel like a superstar. Those are the stories we love to talk about. We love hearing how this high school 5 star turned into a pro champion. We also love hearing the other story–the one about the kid who had zero stars and excelled beyond his supposed ceiling because he worked his ass off. That’s the script my kid is following.

He didn’t have a single star coming out of high school. He was a 16 year old kid with great grades and even better drive playing out of position in a team that didn’t know how to win football games. He’d seen four head coaches in four years and only been a full time starter two of those years–and not consecutively. He’s had to fight for it at every level. He went to Drake and played on an academic scholarship and earned the starting spot. He went to Northern Colorado on a football scholarship and fought his way onto the NIL list and team poster. On a team where the entire story is how they’re doing it with Colorado kids, he’s the transfer from Arizona who is sitting on the poster for the whole school to see.

The season started well. They accumulated 3 wins. By the time the conference games were underway they’d hit a wall. The offense faltered. The defense was on the field far too long, and they started losing close games. Then those games weren’t so close. The kid’s confidence took a hit. Then he got sick; lost 30 lbs. By the time he was back the HC was looking towards the future, moving to a rotation that got almost everyone in the CB room involved. He started, but played less than half the games.

Setbacks are his fuel. It is the last week and he has his mind right. Let’s see how far tomorrow can take him.