Day: November 30, 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.