10 Minute Rule

I decided to go back to how version seven started. As with most things in my life it was both without great fanfare and related to sports. The post, 7.1, fell on a waiver Wednesday and I talked about the Giants and about new beginnings, only casually discussing this as a new beginning and why. I’ve delved in deeper since but it is a thing that I believe I do: I say things, let that simmer, then something happens. It is my way but. It always the best way to be meaningful and impactful in the practice of living.

The more I realize how much I have lived the more I feel like the time remaining in this life has value and meaning. I want to do good for myself and others. I want to leave a mark. I want to not be afraid to go when that last call arrives. I am not in the place I want to be. I live my life off balance; always fearful of the home situation erupting into something there is no coming back from or controlling. I live on pins and needles and that makes it hard to think about or do anything positive. Knowing this helps me understand how and when I thrive and how and when I fail.

seven was about starting over but I merely kept going down the same dim path.

I am sitting in, perhaps, the most beautiful writing space I’ve experienced outside of television. It is a simple and calm space. I am looking into a small outdoor area wrapped in a bamboo fence that encases a zen garden. The simplicity and small details give it beauty–as opposed to my own space, which is overrun with books, and swords, and light sabers and so on. Less here is more. This led me to thinking about my partner’s philosophy and core values. Less is indeed more. The less you fill your time and heart with, the more energy and love you have to pour into the things which truly matter. Defining those things is always a matter of choice and perspective, but the idea, as I see it, remains to limit those things to what comes from the natural world. She is an old soul. She believes in having a small number of meaningful relationships and closing herself off form the noise and clutter of life. She is not, therefore, a city person. I mean, hell, we own a farm in the deep woods.

Thinking about this and thinking about this space and our recent travels and our upcoming travels continues to lead me through a self-reflection about what I want and need from this time I have left as a human being. I remain woefully short of real answers. I am able to see clearly through the next few years–get one more kid off to college, get the last established and locked in academically and athletically in high school. See two more graduate from college and start meaningful lives of their own. What she focuses on is what life is meant to become. I struggle with looking too far ahead.

From all this I gather that I need to work on rephrasing my thinking to be able to see the longer road and lock in on the simple things and devote more energy to that and less to noise. That would lead to a healthier relationship and thus a happier life. This is, after all, the way to peaceful living.

Some Thoughts:

1. Tomorrow is a turnback day. I believe it best to turn back to the beginning of this present iteration. I don’t remember what I said or felt 180(1) days ago, but I am curious to discover what that was.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the above term. The idea of the ‘observable distance’ dates back long before me and likely is being used in a plethora of ways. Lately it strikes me as a way to identify the space between the emotions and understandings of people. In my own life the observable distance appears quite vast between the various parties that represent my daily experience of living. How they see and perceive how I feel about them; about myself; about the relationship between the two is often quite a different thing than how I see that same dynamic.

I also am beginning to stretch that term into a form of self-understanding. In this regard the observable distance between who I see myself as and who I physically, socially, mentally, and virtually represent as grows by the day. I am, for one, older in reality than I hold in my own squishy brain. I am less talented in many regards than I hold in my own brain. This is best exemplified by a recent scenario where I, someone who did the boy-band thing twenty some-odd years ago, wound up in a Tokyo karaoke suite with a handful of my children and my partner trying to sing Anime songs and sounded like shit. Observable distance.

In relationships this can also be noted as the space/place where you think you are as a couple as opposed to where your partner sees things. This hard dose of reality can often destabilize the mutually agreed upon hallucination of ‘where things are at’. I’m going to end this post with a quote from one of my favorite films. No context… just distance. Please observe:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

I haven’t written one lick in Tokyo. I haven’t sat down and made the time for it. This is a vacation, so writing does take a backseat, but it is basically hanging on to the roof rack like a bad action movie chase scene. So, I’m left with the connundrum of do I take the laptop on the next leg of this adventure or leave it and the words here in the hotel room. I think…. Therefore I’ll write.

Some Thoughts:

1. The above is an important step/choice to make. It matters to decide that writing is important enough to take time out for no matter where you are. That is core to being a writer. I used to travel alot and I remember many nights coming back to my room after a conference and scrawling out a few solid paragraphs that put me back in the mindset of the story I was channeling. It is healthy and good for me.. and worth of few extra CM of space in my bag.
2. On that note… I’m really considering buying a mac out here. I’d go in for a slim macbook air if I could find the right price. Of course, according to people who look into such things, they cost more here than in the US, so probably not. Maybe an Ipad or other such tiny portable that is workable as a writing device in cramped spaces?
3. That brings me to my final thought: Writing in cramped spaces has become harder for me. I think some of that has to do with the size I’ve grown to be, some of it posture, and some of it is about the reduced spaces on flights. All of that works together to make it more of a challenge, but I gotta stop dodging the challenge.

I’ve been studying the people in the streets of Japan. I love how different and interesting the culture is from what I am used to, and I am surprised by how much of American culture they find interesting, amusing, and often desirable. American fashion is big in places like Harajuku–specifically things related to Hip-hop and American sports. What caught me entirely off guard was the development of American styled and themed suburban enclaves. That isn’t what I expected from a proud and traditional people such as the Japanese, but with the power of the American media, what else should be expected. We are a culture that is infectious in a multitude of ways. Not all of what we spread is going to be postitive.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out I am past the point of wanting to take family vacations. They don’t feel good. They feel thankless and entirely about pleasing the kids without giving any real time or attention to personal want/need. I knew going into this trip it would be like this. It was designed to be like this, but I did not suspect I’d feel so empty and angry throughout.
2. I’m struggling with finding that balance and, especially, with finding that sense of self in any of this lately.

I believe that Science Fiction writers are future-tellers. We speak of possible futures from scientific and social perspectives. I am working on developing a Japanese heavy section of a once-Dutch Netherlands known as Little Roppongi. I’m excited because I am researching the existing Roppongi in person and learning how that transition to a transplant city might occur and why. This is an important part of the process. You cannot do these things happenstance–there always needs to be a reason for growth and change. I have a good one, but it won’t be shared until the new novel drops.

The process of creation is one that stirs me. I feel like when I write I am thinking in terms of what if, and taking that what if, often, in the worst possible direction. That is critical to a style of science fiction. It is not meant to be a cautionary tale, but one driven by the realities of capitalism. I live in an extremely capitalistic culture and that is being repeated in spaces across the globe. Leaving North America shows me the world is not all like that, but it also shows me the lure of USA culture beyond our borders. Why else would there be a Denny’s in Japan?

I am excited to keep traveling and learning and applying this understanding to my future-telling through my work.

Some Thoughts:

1. Going to move the waiver wire back to thursday this week, because it feels like the NBA draft is the thing to talk about and the lottery happens sometime today after this post… I think.

I constantly struggle with rationalizing the concept of turning back the clock with always forward. They cannot successfully coexist, which leads me to a more kernel understanding of aging gracefully. Here are the facts: I’m not going to run a 4.3 forty ever again. I’m not going to be a marathon man ever at all. However, I can see myself in a 5k. I can see myself running a 5.3 forty (heck, Rich Eisen ran a 6.22 at 53 nd he’s not all that athletic looking). I can rationalize growing old and growing into a shape and athleticism that fits being a man in his late forties. I need that. I need to find a way to move forward into who I want to become and not have to abandon the idea of who I was and who I wanted to be. All of those ‘selves’ are stages of life and are impacted by the life that happens across those stages. How many of us actually have the benefit of becoming precisely who we thought we would be. Moreover, how many of us have the ability to roll back to the person we believed we were at the time. Hindsight provides perspective that being in the moment and moving towards the moment never could.

Today I walked alongside the Sumida river thinking about these things and thinking that never once in my life did I think I’d be walking along the Sumida river. Yet here I am, and here I am walking at five in the morning because walking is what I do every morning. Growth is a journey, and I appreciate being on it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Never try to blog after a 12 hr flight… You saw the results.

I’ve been up since 2 AM yesterday and that means I am a bit loopy at present. There used to be a time where, aided by Mountain Dew, I would do this every weekend. We’d play one RPG or another–mostly Marvel Superheroes and structure eleven hour combat sessions I never wanted to end. Well, until I won and then they could end. I miss roleplaying games, which is why I am so excited to go to GenCon this year and roll a few dice. I’m due.

I’m not cut out to be a horror writer. Honestly, I have never tried. I simply don’t think I can do it. I don’t like attempting the creepy in the way horror writers seem to be very good at. Now when I say horror writers I’m not talking screenplay. I feel like there are precious few scripts that scare you and if they do they get ruined by directors. Maybe at one stage Hereditary was good, but you can visibly se the moment the director broke the very thing he wrote. It slips into a kind of kitch that is very predictable and rote. Cheap and easy scares if you will.

I think I’m better suited for action and loss. I’m good at writing about the things I can interpret as opposed to reaching for horror when my own real life experiences with the. So-called supernatural felt so basic and real and terrifying that to cover them with a jump scare would be disgusting. Horror is written with a matter of fact simplicity that makes you at once realize the gravity and terrifying alienness of that moment though the eyes of the victim. I am so impressed when a writer pulls that off.

Some thoughts:

1. Apropos of nothing, the Suns fired their coach.
   
2. I always thought the bidet came from Japan. Not sure that’s true anymore… or how to use the thing.
3. perhaps all good writing comes from pain. We writers must suffer to have the fuel to tell people what suffering is like and why they ought to avoid it.
   
4. thinking this blog may blossom soon. Ought to get better at writing it…

I believe in energy. I believe it moves through us and impacts us in ways we can feel and perhaps even see. I believe we channel it through ourselves; we guide it with emotion and the potency of our words. I am, by will, a happy and positive person—at least I used to be. I’ve struggled to feel good about myself and intend to struggle mightily in negative environments. Often on this blog I speak of the toxic nature of my living environment, of the neediness of half my kids and the laziness that infects them all. These factors and others weigh me down. All of this makes me feel like a bad father and feel bad about myself as an individual. However, all of this negative energy and negative thinking that drives that energy is making me a worse human. I see it. I feel it. I get sick more often, I’m fat. I struggle to pay attention and sustain workflow. I am doing this to myself. I know because I’m the same guy who used to be a beast of production and always happy and always coming up with new ideas.

I used to believe I could do that. Heck, I used to write better and deeper posts. So this one is about the why, and that why is energy. When I finally write the self help book ‘The Ten Minute Rule’ I’ll talk about how we are beholden to control and direct our energy towards the positive. There is no value to negativity beyond understanding how it contrasts with positive and how that contrast impacts you. Each of us have the ability to be our best or worst selves. Most of us vacillate in between because we don’t allow ourselves to control our energy and emotion. I’m going to learn how to do that. Then I’ll show you.’