Month: November 2025

I want to talk about our inability to have patience. In a more targeted sense, I want to talk about the high expectations that are destroying the sporting world. I feel that it is an example of what is going on with the larger argument, and I feel it is the one that is the most dangerous, as it forms our expectations and continues to push the narrative of impatience.

I am a fan of Coach Prime. He has his flaws to be clear. He has his drawbacks–one of which is the amount of attention he gets. That in of itself is an engine of division. The more that is said, the more eyes are one him. So, he instantly becomes an example of the larger phenomena. Before we talk about him, let’s talk about Tulsa and Tre Lamb. Tulsa’s new coach took the job after Tulsa went 12-24 over the past three years. He’s 2-7 this season. Nobody is calling for his job. Sanders took over a program that was equally poor and had fewer eyes on it than Tulsa, as the dog of the Pac12. Prime’s record is 16-19. His team has been ranked as high as 16th in the nation in that time. So, what is the difference? Well, I can pull the black card here (Just ask the Jets new coach!) but the real issue is eyes on the program and the larger expectations and polarizations towards what people talk about. If we are talking about them, we expect perfection. Think about Penn State. They had one of the best coaches in football. He got fired for losing 3 games.

The more in the public eye you are, the more money is spent on your program, the larger the expectations of absolute success. I remember earlier this year all eyes were on Arch Manning. He was expected to be the greatest thing since color TV. He stumbled on the big stage and people immediately called for his head. Heck, I did. He didn’t live of to expectations. I hate that the word has such negative connotations, but there it is. Expectations appear to only be good when you exceed them. That should not be how it works.

Sundays are wearing me out. I live for the days where I am enjoying the outdoors and also getting time to enjoy the things I love indoors. Sundays are working out in that fashion but it leaves me a little brain drained. That’s where this piece starts. Brain drain means few longform coherent thoughts. Which means…

Some Thoughts:

1. I have way too many things to remember on a daily basis. I gotta break this stuff down and eliminate the things I don’t really need to do.
2. Also need to get my life together faster–especially in terms of having teaching stuff ready way before semester.
3. I checked my numbers for the spring. I need to get them up–especially in the creative writing classes.
4. Everything now is about building a longform resume for the next stage. I need to be able to prove that I am a good teacher, because the next stage is about people who don’t know me when I, eventually, move and start over.
5. Starting over is very exciting–at least at first. Finding a new routine is an adventure. Settling into a new space when you lack the funds to do it right is a straight up pain.
6. Sports have dominated my life for a while now. It is a strange feeling to know the last kid is nearing ‘drive himself’ age and opportunity, which means my role will be super limited. I love that idea. I love how it will change my daily routine. Excited for it.

wish in one hand… I think you know the rest. This week was filled with the rest in terms of competitive performance. 3 boys, one win. Losses on mock trial and college football—blowouts on both accounts. The worst part is not seeing the kid play the kind of minutes that he earned. Instead a lot of the backups were in, as though Coach is looking to the future and that future means deciding who is up next on the roster. They were blown out by NAU after last weeks rough blowout. That is the kind of thing that breaks a competitive culture. A defense that was top 20 nationally wound up giving up over 100 points over two tough weeks. There is no coming back from that.

I don’t know what practice will look like next week, but I know there will be fewer eyes on the program. I know some players are done fighting. I know my kid isn’t and I hope he gets a real chance to show that and show out in the next two weeks. After, we will se what happens. They could be a 5 win team and they could be less than that. They will still be better than they were and worse than they expected and intended to be.

That brings me to the other Colorado team. They broke in a new qb and lost another game. It’s past the point of being able to get to bowls. Ow. More people are calling for Prone to quit or be fired.

I think they’re in a tough rebuild but I also think they’re as good as can be expected right now based on how they built the thing. The money wasn’t there and the local talent wasn’t there. That luggage done left without achieving the dream so it is time to go shopping and get more coaches who can make the offense sing.

I am not doing a good job being a writer. I want and need to do a heck of a lot better. As I go through this latest work and see how I am being bullied into reforming it as a ‘woke’ version of itself, I am also thinking that I need to get to a space where I can say the things I want to say and portray different types of characters–some of whom are not necessarily good people. I think that I have put myself in a situation to be disrespected and misrepresented by an editor whose vision comes from a place far different than my own and thus lends itself to a style of writing and a narrative different from what I am wanting to produce.

I gotta move beyond Shadowrun. It isn’t what it was or even should be. We’ve stripped away a lot of the darker and punk aspects of the genre in favor of a funner, lighter, more giddy and anime-esque atmosphere that isn’t what I want to be writing about. Cyberpunk 2077’s entire body of work from stories to the show to the game itself would not have passed to the public under this administration. It isn’t that kind of dark, but I truly feel more comfortable writing things that show the frayed edges of human nature and showing that not everyone is PC–even the so-called good guys.

But they publish me. I want to be published. If I was better, more people would publish me. So, I gotta get better.

Consistency. There’s a word/term I am surpassingly good at executing. I am consistently inconsistent. In fact, if I was consistent, I would be 7 novels deep as opposed to two. I would not again be rewriting the second one and would also not be stuck on the breakout one or anything at all, because when you do a thin enough, there are more days you’re good at doing it than there are days that you are bad at doing it. Take this bog for example. I’ve missed eight days over the past decade and a half. So, in that sense, I am a lot better at doing it than not. In fact, the last time I missed a post was 241 days ago. A Monday, apparently. March 10th 2025. It feels like I’ve lived an entire life since that day. I don’t know what I was doing back then at all. I can tell you what I wrote the day after…

It took 828 days for me to fail. A slow burn that led me from the excitement and remorsefulness of the change from 6-7 to the fall into 8. The 8th iteration of this blog–this moment of writing every single day–is going to be a different moment for me. It is a new beginning in many ways. I need to make this time meaningful to myself and to whatever audience I possess. I didn’t always do that. I often walked ass-backwards into a last minute post that was meaningful to nobody–not even me. I was mailing it in to get through that day to the next. I did this several times over the last 828. I didn’t, therefore, create a lasting and meaningful space for writing or for personal reflections.

I did not get it done, and that reflects on who I have been over these nearly three years. I’ve been a man at his wits end. I’ve been a man unmoored in some ways; A man who doesn’t lock in and focus on the things that matter. I have let myself down over this period. I have let down the most important people in my life as well–primarily as a result of being lax in communication, private and not up front with information, not firm in parenting, and checked out on the things that are most important to them. All of this is bad. All of this is in need of change.

It is time for me to begin again.

Each year feels like I am living an entire life as of late. Each year is a cycle of madness and wonder and my own inconsistency. I don’t remember the man who missed a blog after 828 days and only ten days before his 50th. Heck, I’ve been married and toured the planet since then. What I haven’t done is write enough. So, that is the thing to consider. What we are consistent in is what we are defined by. I am defined by my inconsistency. I am defined by the lapses and restarts as opposed to steady production.

The beauty of life is that we get to redefine ourselves within a window of reason. I can be consistent in my habits and health, though I have not. It will be hard to do, but it will be worth it. I just need to have the courage and the will to follow through. Thus far, I have not. So, what is it going to take? Knowing my life is shorter ahead than it is behind hasn’t done that for me. So, what will? How do I convince my spirit to sing in tune? I suppose if I knew the answer, my financial woes would be gone.

Some Thoughts:

1. What’s crazy about the financial woes is that it would not take much to clear the deck of all of it. Unfortunately, that extra little bit we need to be where we want to be always is just beyond our financial reach.

This is the fifth of November and the 36th day of the government shutdown, I believe. Trump is screaming for the Republicans to kill the filibuster in order to put the government back in business and pass all kinds of legislation. “They won’t be able to stop us” he says, but this is terrifying to Republicans, because they won’t be able to stop democrats once things swing the other way. IF things ever swing the other way. We got the first signs that they might with a series of elections that went the democratic way. The Mamdani election in particular pointed to a people more interested in issues than party. As a native New Yorker, I was proud to see the city raise up and try to move towards affordability. Trump, predictably, threatened the man post victory.

Politics, right? That was the entire argument of V for Vendetta. That film is very punk, and I’ve been trying to clearly understand how to write punk characters for a while now. I’m not sure I’ve done a good job of it. As I am passing through the latest novel of mine, I am reading for punk, and wondering if I got it right. Maybe punk is changing. More likely, my understanding of it is changing.

My understanding of a lot of this world is changing and growing as the weeks and days and years slide by. As I grow, I learn and that learning rebuilds my internal writing compass. It makes me a better storyteller to see how the world works and how it doesn’t.

I dang near blew it this week. I nearly lost both matches thanks to choices made. In one I was going to bench the Giants TE, and didn’t. His 9 points made the difference. In the other league I did bench Rico Dowdle. I’ll never do it again. Fortunately, my opponent’s entire team sold and saved me. He was projected 150. He landed on 132. I landed on 137. I lost 20 points over the choice to bench Dowdle. I won both matches.

That’s luck. This post is about strategy.

In a standard 12-man league you need to dig really deeply in order to find players worth starting. Now that we’re deep in the Byes, every week is about finding a streamer who can make a few points. The Athletic by the NYT has a solid grasp of this fact. They’re harping on Trey Benson of AZ as being a catch. They also think Devin Singletary is worth a pick up. He isn’t. I haven’t respected the dude since he took Barkley’s number. You let 26 sit a year. Maybe two. That’s how it ought to be. He took it before the free agency period was cold. He earned my disrespect that day. Oh, and he’s kinda washed too.

Devin Neal isn’t washed, but Alvin Kamara might be. The lack of points over the past few games has been telling. The Saints are not doing well as a team. They don’t appear to have a plan. Tyler Shough is not the plan. Don’t get him as a bye option. There’s a chance he isn’t the option for the rest of the season.

Back to my mistake. Troy Franklin was my mistake. I had the idea he was going to outscore Dowdle. In my twelve man league, I am desperate for WR help. I have two different Bucs wr’s and cannot rely on both of them. So, look to the Tennessee Wr’s if you can. Dike, in particular. If you’re lucky, Shaheed (traded to Seattle) is going to be available. Snatch him up.

Well, I got things done. I can sleep well tonight knowing that I did some of the things I needed to do. What’s going to keep me up (or wake me in the dead of night) is what did not get done and continues not to get done. The writing for one. I’m living at a negative in terms of getting through all of the stuff I want and need to do, and it has a lot to do with how I spend my hours. I ought to be grading right now, but I am not. I’m learning more and more about what is required at work, as well as the time needed to accomplish this and it creates a block of time needed. The more blocks that form, the more my life is squished into the margins.

What is that life, anyhow?

I am not sure. I suppose the writing and the research that goes around the writing alongside watching shows and doing projects would constitute a life. My life with the Lady Talis is an entirely separate matter, as one cannot have a life together composed of things that you do alone. I believe there is a set of things people do for self and that is a compartment of a larger life. In this matter I am talking about that compartment. It grows tiny as I find there is more and more to be done, and I have less and less energy to do such things that bring me joy.

“It’s easy to clap when it’s going well, but when all hell breaks loose, ain’t nobody there but the criticism and the negativity on social. I’m trying to do a great job of being a good steward of my relationship with these young men and helping them progress the right way.” ~ Deion Sanders

I’m not one of those people waiting for Prime to fail. I can be a Monday Morning QB at times–I tend to look at my kid’s High School team and think, “this is a badly coached team” and I’ve worked to step back from that. It is easy to be on the outside of something and decide that you know the root cause of the bad. In terms of the Colorado Football team, there is a lot of bad. There is also a lot of good. For starters, he took full responsibility for what happened. He shielded his coordinators and his players from dealing with the press.

The game sucked. Last week sucked. They’ve been sliding, and while he takes responsibility for it, a lot of it is on these players. Prime said, “thinking that you’re doing the right things, and you’re not.” I found that idea particularly on point and particularly damning. It is something that can be seen from the outside at times. When Ray Lewis went into that locker room he said that it wasn’t a team. My own son, who’ve I asked about the culture of that team, says he sees what it going on from connections he has in state, and it is about that locker room. It is about that respect and trust and relationships.

There is something going on in Boulder and it isn’t good. Those who hate are rejoicing in the moment. They want to see him gone and that will make them feel better–the way it has for other operations this season. There is a ton of turnover out there. What crushes me is how the hate (and the media is often an amplifier for that hate–especially the unchecked social media) pushes people to make decisions. I don’t know what will happen in Colorado, but I do know that there will be a lot of noise and a lot of clamoring for Prime to get fired. Two huge losses on top of a losing season. This is year 3–usually the turn around year or progress year in a program. However, for this org, it is clearly a fresh rebuild. They haven’t found the answer at QB. The secondary is terrible. This team needs to come together now more than ever. Unfortunately, I see them falling apart.

What I want to see is who is left after the fall. Those are the Dogs who will determine the future.

Watching your kids play football can be tough. On the one hand I am proud and grateful that my boys have the opportunity to play on a high level. One at the High School level and one at the FCS d1 level. I believe these kids are both capable of power 4 football and, eventually, the league. I’m a dad, so I am supposed to believe in them. I am also supposed to be a realist. That part of me says that one needs to play faster and both need to get bigger. When I look at what happened over the past two days, It makes me realize only more that teams are smart and they aren’t going to do the things that are needed to highlight my boys. In the case of the High schooler, he gets opportunities. He doesn’t get many so he needs to hunt his down. He needs to play faster to get there. He has one game left this season before he goes off into the spring of 7s (and track) and summer of camps. He’s running out of time.

The college kid does not get targeted very often. He’s a very good coverage corner, so he doesn’t get picked on by QBs who know they can attack the middle or the other side of the field. They attacked one guy this week and it shows. That guy wasn’t him.