10 Minute Rule

My desk is a mess; a sad reflection of the chaos permeating my mind. Perhaps the only thing I have together right now it my Madden Season, because I just built a new one from the ground up, and at least–in just starting–I kind of know what is going on. Otherwise, I am a mess. I need a calendar. I need a mooring perhaps beyond a vague date of my next trip. I need a true north beyond the start of school, which has slipped into a lower niche in my mental calculations. I need a thing to be about, but one that is manageable and joyous. At present what I have is a vague notion of what I want to write, and I am working on that, but beyond that… crickets.

So, here is the thing: Life is a countdown. You have an unspecified amount of time to do things that make your heart sing and make you feel like you did what you were supposed to. At the end of the countdown, you time out–you end. Perhaps you spend eternity reflected in your own memories, and perhaps not, but I like to think that you end satisfied by what you did, and I am not satisfied by what I’ve done.

I need to look forward and do better.

Twas the Night before Christmas,
Before presents unwrapped
Before laughter and joy fills the house to it’s cap.
I’m thinking of the future and of the past
I’m grateful its Xmas here at last.

There are so few times when all are in glee
Mostly its me in my room while they watch TV
But tomorrow we are together and will all be as one
Tomorrow is the rare day that we all have fun.

Family, I think, is a hard path to take
You love them and hate them from the moment you’re awake.

I’m stopping there. Not really feeling the rhyme this year (unintended). Not feeling able to pull this off with any warmth. I’m working into the xmas spirit. I need it. I need that moment of happy in my family way.

I do not feel ready for Christmas. I’m watching Love Hard and feeling already like they miscast Jimmy Yang, because it really feels like they give away a major plot piece immediately. The lead lady, Nina Dobrev looks quite a bit like Linda Carter, but much skinnier and better styled. I’m not entirely sure she is able to carry this film yet, but I hope she will. I’d rather not waste another near two hours. We tend to spend xmas watching xmas movies and cooking. We work at discovering stuff we haven’t seen before and mixing it with the classics. That leads to a lot of fun times and a solid tradition.

We haven’t gotten to all the good stuff yet.

The Jets v. Jags game is on in the background and the Jets look terrible with Zach Wilson. He might be good in a few years, but right now he is terrible and he is not at all built for a NYC crowd. Thank goodness for the Jets Defense keeping things close… but not close enough to compensate for that awful offense. Well, give them time. Lots of time. Lots more time.

I think time is the key to a lot of learning and development. I also think the problem with time is waking up and finding yourself old and, in my case, somewhat decrepit. That is a part of why I get sick of watching my boys sit around watching YouTube clips and playing video games and not even waiting for anything to happen but being content with what they have to distract them. Only, it isn’t a distraction from anything. It simply is the life they’ve chosen, and it isn’t going to be more than that. Eventually they may get partners and what not, but they don’t want more. This isn’t all of the kids, but most of them to varying degrees.

I’m not like that. I’m just a really slow cooker. I also get sucked into a lot of random noise. I guess I’m more like these Jets than I realized up till now. So, time… Lots more time needed.

Well, I’m out of one league and extending into the final four in another two. In my coaches’ league, I sold the bag against the two seed. I made major mistakes, but the overall score indicates that I wouldn’t have won anyhow. Though I would have made it closer. Close doesn’t count in fantasy. You lose and you go home. I went home.

In the Beach Born League–the family league–I play one of my boys who posted his season best 178 pts last week. He’s feeling it. Hopefully his team is not feeling it this week. We only have 7 players, so a Bot account plays the 8th spot and holds the 3 seed. It plays my partner this week. She may lose this one.

The Louisiana league is an interesting situation. I was invited in to fill a spot of a guy who left, and I sucked badly last year. This year I’m a 6 seed who knocked off a 3 and holds a shot to move forward again. I need to pick the right guys here, and that includes relying on some players who are BARELY in playoff contention as well as others who are already locked in. It is a long season, and this week’s slate of games is sure to show the wear and tear on the players. I’m leaning on a Niner’s team that has a chance to earn the bye still–providing the Eagles fall. Still, are they more interested in healing up and squeaking out wins? I don’t know. I think the fact that Purdy is a new QB means the guys will still be out there building in-game chemistry and rolling hard towards the playoffs. One can hope.

Finally, predictions. I don’t want to make any. All I will say is that the Giants pass rush has been stepping up big and the line is getting healthy. This makes me excited for what is possible against a Vikes team that might be scamming the league and might be hitting a wall. We just have to stop the run and force Jay Jettus to command the game. I think we scheme well enough that he won’t get his usual buck fifty yards. Good luck, Gints. Good hunting.

Some Thoughts:

1. Marble League is over for the season. My Raspberry Racers came in 7th overall in the standings. Really great finish getting the silver in the final event. Marble league is just good clean fun. I am considering Marble One next…

The truth is, life is better away. Love is bonded stronger–perhaps by the virtue of fewer distractions, perhaps because we have better routines. I’m writing from my phone before the plane touches down in Phoenix because I want to remember this feeling. I want to remember how the trip was and learn how to translate that to daily life. This is where I struggle the most–I get caught up in stuff but not so much that I get stuff done –just so much that the surface of my life is covered by all that I need to do. I also want to remember that it isn’t all on me. I forget that sometimes too. I forget that I deserve to have the thoughts and feelings about things that I do as well. Both are necessary. I don’t seek to preserve myself but to not lose my self in everything.

Typing this while Gladiator plays in the background. I do not think you can go to the Colosseum and not have an immediate hankering for this film. Yes, it got many things wrong, but it got things right too. That is how fiction works. It is about the idea of who we are and who we want to become. I look forward to creating more fiction that honors that idea and honors what it means to be a writer. I have not fully done that in my writings as of yet, but I am not yet 50 and have so much more to give.

In the meanwhile I am seeing this wide world I often write of. I see it and love and appreciate it. Tonight I am in London and tomorrow I will be home, happy that I’ve spent so much time abroad and learned so much more from the experience than I ever expected.

Some Thoughts:

1. I slept through the Giants game, but I woke up to a win!
2. Watched Love Actually again. Quite wonderful. It reaffirms my thoughts of love and romance in the xmas holiday. Less than a week to go until Xmas is upon us!

I’ve had an amazing day. I wandered into a castle, ate fresh made pasta, and toured this ancient city on foot. Now I’m home in my hotel room and there ought to be a realistic opportunity to watch football as I chill, but it turns out all of my services will not work outside of the USA. I don’t want to be the guy who relies solely on illegal streams like ’98 me or any modern teen, but the truth is, they won’t let me get what I need on my system. So, do I just not watch or even try to tune into media like I’ve done the entire trip or do I step back and take advantage of available options in order to peek in on my Giants and even my Jets?

The world is corporate and still about the dollar. That is what I was thinking as I toured the Capuchin Crypts this afternoon. The sort of breathtaking and utterly shocking beauty that they provide could not exist anywhere else. I also thought, USA is simply a meme to the rest of the world. That appears to be a theme to the trip thus far. Others make fun of us by diving into their hand chosen pieces of our culture and simply ignoring the rest. Maybe make fun is too harsh though.

I’m happy and I’ve had an amazing trip and I do in fact want to see my Giants game I fully expected to miss. Is that wrong? Maybe. I don’t know. And knowing is half the battle.

One of the central parts of the world I am developing is a long history of gladiatorial arenas. In preparation I spent some time at the Colosseum, which I learned is actually not the name of the arena. It is actually called the Flavian Amphitheater, which begs the question: If a thing is known more by its nickname than its name, is the nickname thin simply the new name? Anyhow, I wanted to get a sense of the place and the horrors that occurred there. A simple truth of the Amphitheater, the gladiatorial sport, and all modern counterparts is that these things were used to sate the masses. The goal was to keep the people happy and keep them off the local or state leader’s back. I often argue that modern sports serve the same purpose, though they have embraced additional roles over time. Gladiatorial combat, in its purest form, gives the people something to watch while reinforcing the idea of what happens to you if you step out of line. The fighters, you see, were slaves. They were largely fighting for their freedom. The handful of elective gladiators were so down on their luck that they chose that life.

How can I put that into play in a story? From what I have so far, the combat is outlawed in some regions but welcomed in others, creating socio-political lines of distinction and giving rise to underground combat rings. It isn’t much, but it is the start of a larger slave trade network and a larger conversation about power and relations among nations.

Some Thoughts:

1. Reading an interesting article published a few years back that does a deeper analysis of the Madden platform. Specifically, it dives into the problems of quarter length. I’m definitely one for the realistic stats and gameplay shortcuts make it easy to break that–especially with longer quarters, but the number of plays you get to run in a game is so far less than NFL standard to be unfair and unrealistic to the stat need. Turns out I want to work on the Madden team.

For the past few years I’ve been toying with the idea of truly giving time to developing a fantasy world and campaign setting tied to a series of novels and short stories that establish the central conflict inherent in this world. That conflict, I believe, is in place. There is a lot of history that forms this core conflict, one piece of which involves a religion that has been militarized over the years. The religion, one of if not the primary religion of the world, is seen as law in only two regions. One of those regions is an ever-expanding militaristic empire run by factions friendly to the church but not entirely of the cloth who use the word of their God to promote their expansion and violence as the way to free the people. The other is a Pius region that acts as a counterbalance to the first and also houses the main and oldest churches of the faith. These churches are all constructed around a walled area. Outside of this area a city is growing filled with peasants and patrons and all of those who wish to curry favor with the leaders of the faith, but realize they have no power or opportunity to operate within the walls of the faith’s domain. It is in that sense a city in a city, and in that a tale of two cities–one of power and corruption and the other of a much older and officious style of power and corruption masked by faith.

I want to spend more time thinking and writing about this specific place, and about the very reason it was formed on these lands. That is why I’ve elected to focus this free write on the subject. I suspect I’ll be writing even more about the subject over the next few days.