10 Minute Rule

Back with another 10 minutes of fantasy football… and it isn’t even Wednesday! Tonight’s post is about the defensive options. I don’t play leagues with individual D positions, so I won’t speak about players–just units. The pundits will have you believing your top five choices are as follows:

1. San Fransico
2. Philly
3. Buffalo
4. Dallas
5. New England

I don’t buy the hype. Take New England for example: They play the Jets twice, Dolphins twice, Dallas, KC, and Philly. All of those squads are known to be built to run it up this season. NE will be giving up points. Instead I like to approach things holistically–not just from a who you play perspective, but also a ‘how much is it worth to you?’ point of view. I look at defenses who have players about to cash in on a new contract and players who play in schemes that generate turnovers and offenses that cannot generate a safe amount of points. This is why I think the Seahawks, Giants, and Commanders are going to have solid defensive performances this season. They fall into my top 5 alongside San Fransisco and…wait for it.. Jacksonville. I do not want to believe in the Jaguars’ QB, but I do believe the D will create opportunities and surprise people.

There are enough other solid D’s that I respect not prioritizing defense as draft pick. Most of the teams I mentioned can be grabbed week to week until the opposition catches on to your scheme. However, if you are picking just one, pick San Fran. They can be trusted to generate points each week.

If I had to define my downfall it would be that I’m easily knocked off my game. I am great when in the zone but once that zone is broken it is hard to find my way back. Breaking the zone is about emotional distress. If I let the world (specifically the home and the relationships therein) leak in, then I’m done. I might not write well that day. I might not write at all. I got knocked out the zone this morning and now I am trying to figure a way back in. There is much to be done, and even more that I want to do with my writing today, but I cannot even complete a sentence without an error every third word at least. It is difficult to be in this headspace and understand how to break back into a more positive one. Instead I linger on all the problems of home and all of the anger and stress and insecurity that this space creates for me. Sometimes leaving works, but that comes with a price tag of its own. Sooner or later you need to account for what you are running away from.

If it feels like more and more of these posts are about the difficult home space, they are. This is at the forefront of my thinking more and more and I still lack a viable solution. I’ll figure it out one day and that too will go in the book on writing.

Yesterday was a sleepy post. I didn’t have it in me to rundown all the players of any specific position. Today I am fresh and loaded on caffeine, so let’s get straight into it. The Receiver position is one of particular note in fantasy format. In truth, most leagues are either Points Per Reception or no. The PPR leagues heavily favor certain kinds of WRs, whereas in a non-PPR league you can focus on low volume/big play or Red Zone kind of options. I mostly play PPR, so I will start the rundown there. In this case there is little doubt who lives at the top of the charts. The big 5 are going to be gone in the first round. They are as follows (no real order in these… it remains a matter of choice IMHO).

Top 5 PPR Wideouts

1. Cooper Kupp
2. Justin Jefferson
3. Davante Adams
4. Nuk Hopkins
5. Stefon Diggs

After these five, the world absolutely opens up to a number of options. In fact, the 5 slot is highly debatable given who lives right below that controversial pick. Here are the next 5 must grab (again in no real order).

Next Tier WR Options

1. Ja’Marr Chase
2. Tyreek Hill
3. Aj Brown
4. Ceedee Lamb
5. Calvin Ridley

Again, 5 hits different. I could’ve gone with Amon’Ra St. Brown or Jerry Juedy or any number of #1 options. Here is the real skinny. Top WR production is not about the WR themselves. It is about the QB and the supporting players around them. ‘Reek gonna get his, but those numbers are going to be siphoned by Jaylen Waddle (when and if healthy). What about Garett Wilson? Yeah, he is going to be a dog. We all remember what happened in Green Bay late last season, and we can see already that there is a huge connection between Rodgers and ‘New Devante’. So, my thought is honestly this: Skip the Tier One WR. Go to someone in the next five and the five after that–especially if you’re a late picker in a snake draft. Odds are you will need 3 WR. Take two 2nd tier guys and a 3rd vs. wasting your pick on a higher guy who is going to get as much production as the 2nd tier folks. My Moonshot WR this year is Calvin Ridley. I think he makes the Jags a much more dangerous organization. Meanwhile, Drake London (from his old team) is perfect as your #3.

Football. Ahh. Feels good to be ready to get back to the game. The injury bug is already circulating through the league. Case and point: The AZ Cards signed Marlon Mack on Friday. He tore his ACL today. Done for the season. Here we are trying to run a draft next week (and the other one a week later. I’m going to spend a few days breaking down the positions and getting closer to being ready for the drafts. I’m excited to see it go down and for the season to get going.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m going back in the lab with the boys. The youngest is struggling with a case of the yips and I am going to be working with him to push his receiver skills to the next level. I’m going to spend some time putting together a program that is bound to get him right for the upcoming season. This is going to be a work in progress, because the season starts on the 22nd. I’m going Rocky level old school on this one. He’s getting right.

I get depressed the same day I come home. I know what it is about now. Everything is exactly as we left it–except dirtier. Nothing happens when we leave. Nothing changes here. Ever. The days are a sad cycle of video games, anime, video games, videos, video games, anime. Occasionally they’ll trot out a new game, but mostly it is the same stuff on repeat and nothing ever evolves. It is a very hard way to live for me, and a very easy way to live for them, because there is no desire for forward progress. This is what teens and people in their 20s do. Its Seinfeld but in real time.

So why does it make me sad? I want so much more for them and to see them settle into nothingness makes me sad. Beyond that, being a person that sees that they have potential to be more, it is sad to see them be so much less. Be creators! Don’t just be consumers and especially ones who are driven to consume anything that flits past their eyes. The Instagram era is toxic.

It is also so easy to do as the crowd does, so when I am here I am fighting against that noise and nonsense. I don’t want to become that. I want to be more. It is hard to do so when you are surrounded by so many who don’t want to be more and fill the air with the noise and anger of less.

Some people believe a week starts on Sunday. Others day Monday. I don’t have any real preference on the official start of the week for others, but for me Sunday is largely about football (fall/winter), writing, and getting a plan together for the week. That is to say that Monday is when I get the grinding going in full. I’ve developed a schedule where I don’t have to teach on Monday, which allows me to post all the online work needed and get deep into the grading as well as writing. I write this now as I am developing my personal schedule for the year. As yesterday indicated, writing is going to be a large chunk of my daily work existence. I am working to develop a ‘normal’ time for writing up to six days a week. Tuesday is a particularly busy school day, so I won’t be doing too much on the words there–consider it a reset. However, the rest of the week I am working to have a specific time and place to put my butt in a chair so I can be prolific.

Meanwhile, I am home without internet. I’m tethering to my phone at present, because the service I use informed my it would be shutting down today in order to upgrade services. Scheduled outage is no way to start your working week.

Some Thoughts:

1. Speaking of scheduling, both of my fantasy drafts are now scheduled. With only two teams this year I have less to think about in regards to the strangeness of ‘stat gambling’. I will post some Wednesday stuff about that leading up to the draft.
2. Reading modiphus’ Five Parsecs from Home game. Interesting. Solo gaming is new to me, and this system is very rules heavy. I want rules lite!
3. Still researching various story forms. Finding a lot out there that I never considered before. Perhaps I am old enough to not be stuck in my ways…

Do you ever feel like you’re just killing it? Locked in? On a roll? I often wonder what moves people in and out of that zone. After returning from GenCon I find myself super excited to get back to work and get all of these projects done so I can get more. It is an incredible sensation to want to work in order to get more work. The closest parallel I can find is that feeling of busting your butt in practice in order to earn more reps—I.e. more practice and the opportunity to play more.

in the sense of writing, the ‘play more’ translates to more books and better chances to create solid fiction that sells. It is a wonderful feeling to see someone pick up a book you wrote (or wrote in) and enjoy it. You can only get there by writing your ass off though.

The parallels between sport and writing are not lost on me. This is largely because I seek out this framework to organize ideas in my head. My playing days are long over but I still think that way and still recognize the urgency that Play creates. When you write with urgency you are more likely to be successful.

I feel that now. I feel like I need to get this done and get ‘more reps’ in order to improve and be able to put out a product that people enjoy. I cannot speak to why all writers write, but I write to be read. The more I put out increases the chances that my worlds and my words reach someone.

Some Thoughts:

1. Working on multiple and very different kinds of projects at once has me thinking a lot about structure.
2. I know shit about structure. I thought I did. I don’t. That is a great first step.
   

Well, the best 4 days in gaming is over for me. Indeed I did have 4 as we started on Wednesday, and are unfortunately missing the splendor of Saturday night. Next time. Definitely next time. GenCon is a community. It is a friendly place that wants everyone to be included and everyone to have a genuinely good time. In fact, when I was waiting in a lobby for a meeting last night a family called me over and asked me to join a game. They wanted a fifth and I was nearby. This morning a couple offered to drive my partner and I to the convention, because we were standing there waiting for an uber. These are the kind of people that populate the GenCon community. These are the people who are there to play games, have fun, and make connections.

I was fortunate enough to make a ton of connections this time around. I managed to meet several of the writers I’ve worked with or admired over the years and they are all super chill and cool. I felt like one of them. Heck, we even did signings together. I’m not ready to say I am in their class (I am not prolific enough by far) but I am ready to say that I need to take the next step and put real focus on my words and be the writer I’ve been saying I want to be for decades now.

The truth is time is sand slipping through your fingers. It took me half my life to get back to GenCon. The things that happened in between constitute an entire existence. The journey to get back here was incredibly hard and full of moments that define me. However, I’m here now. I am at the table and I want to eat. I want to write more and more. I believe I have stories to tell. The connection to that storyverse is real and it will ascend again.

Some Thoughts:

1. In the process of enjoying the con, I have rediscovered my joy of RPGs. Next year I’m going to get some game time in alongside the wonderful time I will spend with the writers and the happiness of inviting my partner deeper into this world.
2. Meanwhile, it felt good to be a part of a world that was not entirely focused on anime and football. That daily reality does not nourish me in the least. It is in fact harder to be creative in such a dead space.
3. On the other hand, I do have an office where I can occasionally hide…

There may be major changes coming to this website. For starters, it is likely to become less ten-minute rule forward. In my efforts to expand my writing (I’ll tell you about the meet cute later), I am considering reforming this site into a proper writer’s site. In this I mean the front page should be a landing page focused on work and releases and resume. There ought to be a reasonable headshot somewhere. The ‘main’ blog should be focused on the writer and writing and not the personal stuff, though being honest with the audience is core to what I do. So, I am thinking about reforming the blog in light of being closer to releasing this second novel and having to have somewhere that people can see what I do as a freelancer.

What I do clearly is not enough to support the team and I can do more. Today I watched the lead editor of the novel line and a NYT best selling author both pull door duty at the convention booth. It blew me away to see these guys just helping out. I can do that–heck it is who I am, and I told them that I would be chipping in quite a bit more next year. Then they asked me to do a signing this Saturday, and I was blown away again, because I’ve never done a signing and that is just really cool.

One thing I did do that I never have before is have a solid meet cute with an editor. My partner and I were out in the city waiting for an Uber. Turns out you have to walk a bit away from the convention for the prices of Uber transit to go down. If you get picked up right there it is going to be $20 extra. So we walked a few blocks. When we were crossing the street to get to where we would meet the driver, we were struggling to find the button to trigger the walk sign. Finally we gave up and made a run for it. Moments later we noticed a lady having the same struggle. She saw us noticed and we explained we had just done the same thing. She was wearing a Con badge, which led to us striking up a conversation. She explained she was an editor who developed adventures for Dungeons and Dragons. I explained I was a freelancer who wanted to write for Dungeons and Dragons. We exchanged cards. All very cute. So, I will be sending samples next week.

I haven’t ventured far from the hotel room this morning. It is already nearing noon and I know I should be finding an Uber to take us to the convention center. I’m excited. I’m especially excited to see what the vibe is like here. I do not do many gaming conventions outside of Arizona, and to jump into one that brings 50,000+ is a huge leap. The sheer gravity of the thing is overwhelming. It also shows me where I am in the so-called pecking order and what I need to do in order to raise my profile.

I am ready to raise my profile. My partner and I discussed that yesterday. She wondered at first if I was really ready. We looked at the work of some of the other writers I’m connected to and how much more prolific they’ve been over the last few years. Those writers do this full time. They quit the day job and focused on writing as a means of primary income. That is not what my budget sheet looks like. However, writing is extremely important to me–moreso than the handful of projects or novel a year that I currently crank out. I experience as much lull as I do grind, which means that I’m still dealing with that long ramp up to get going writing. When I have a flow of projects, that ramp up period is behind me and I keep going and flowing steady until the work runs out. I do not want the work to run out. I do want to be the guy who is always getting published and writing bigger and better and more engaging projects. That means raising my profile to the point where people want me to write stuff for them and (or?) being able to write without an organization behind me.

How do I raise my profile? That is part of why I am here. I want the team to know that I am ready and I am hands on and I am willing to pitch in and show up and develop those relationships required to better my standing. It is a step forward. It is one of many I need to take to get to where I want to be as an author and contributor.