10 Minute Rule

Here’s something most close friends don’t think to tell you–probably because they are close.

At some point you are going to fuck up. Then you are going to do it again. This may continue over and again in a radiant pattern that the people in your life can see, shake their head at, and say, “there s/he goes again.” The people who love you will try and point it out, but the problem is that you are blind to it by now and moreover you probably see it as ‘a part of who you are’

This is a mistake.

Like the fucking up, we are often mistaken in accepting or blaming the fucking up. This allows us to bury the bad action and continue to fuck up–if sporadically. Odds are you are not able to fix the problem on your own. Psychologists and Psychiatrists exist for a reason, in spite of the waning social stigma surrounding the profession. The problem is embedded deep in you, and try as you might to root it out, you cannot because you have another problem.

Your partner sees the problem and doesn’t understand why you keep doing it.

So, every time you dig to the root of the problem your also trying to have an entirely different conversation with your partner. In other words, you are speaking in two different languages at once and nothing is making sense anywhere. So, it continues. And things get worse. And things break down. And then you realize that the entire thing was always your fault and the best solution is to leave, because there is no way another human can still feel good about you being in their lives if you are such a fuck up.

So you leave.

But you don’t leave. Not on a slab and not out the door.

You stay. What happens next?

Hot Take is defined as “a piece of commentary, typically produced quickly in response to a recent event, whose primary purpose is to attract attention.” according to dictionary.com. I started the game rundown section by saying that the Thursday Night game would be a high-scoring affair and that Herbert would not keep up. Hot take. 17-7 Bolts in the third.

Seems like a trend as of late.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back to writing about writing starting tomorrow. I have thoughts about developing a mythos here on the blog. Ten minutes of world building?
2. My dog gets wildly excited when he sees specific people. He go crazy. I don’t get it. Afterwards he lays on the tile fighting to catch his breath. Just wow.

I won two out of three matchups this week. The strange part is, the one I thought I had the best chances of winning ended up being where I was absolutely crushed. This being my strange QB heavy league that I never figured out, I don’t quite know what I ought to be doing differently. Get better players, I suppose. I went out and did a bit of that by securing Taysom Hill as a TE/Flex. Nice to have a QB at flex where he can do serious damage if given the snaps. His team won last week–if barely. My team won last week by an equally bare margin. They go into a week 2 matchup with an 0-1 Panthers team that is hungry, growing, and dangerous.

Still, I think the Giants win this.

Some other matchups:

Chiefs over Chargers
This is a major battle for years to come, but PattyMo is entirely on fire right now, and I don’t know that Herbert has enough weapons to keep up in this shootout.

Ravens over Dolphins
Dolphins have an explosive offense and they still could not score 3 TDs on the Patriots. The Ravens ought to be able to pull away in this one

Browns over Jets
These two AFC divisions are going to be banging all season. I don’t see any East team outside of the Bills taking a single game.

Some Thoughts:

1. I imagine a world where gender stratification is deeply lessened. However, I don’t live in that world. I am supposed to conform to the role I am given as a man–especially when under pressure. I am not allowed to break. I am not supposed to get enraged. I am left to merely be. I need to go back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings and find in that my pathway to inner peace. I say I because in order to be part of something more, you have to first be secure in self.

Here is a peculiar truth about real estate: It attracts the worst kind of people. From renting to owning, the people on the side of buying and renting are generally awful humans. I am speaking on the investors–purveyors of human misery and those who can reduce a person to a series of numbers. I tried to sell my house to an investor and they played the old wait and drop game on me. Wait till the closing date, demand I sell for less. I lost 35,000 in potential revenue before I decided enough was enough and quit. I presently am aiming to sell the house through more traditional means and I hope it goes better. It does mean I have to ‘tee it up’ as the realtor says. That means I need to make it look a thousand times better than it does right now only to have it be nit picked to hell and the buyer try to talk me down again.

I am not going to make half of what I expected. I do have a number I am comfortable with from a profit standpoint, and if I cannot get there I am going to sit on it and wait until I can make some real money. In the meanwhile, maybe I can rent it out to someone who needs a home. I’m good with that part of it, at least. It is a pretty nice home and it will sell for a decent profit sooner or later. I wanted it sooner so I could travel and do some special things for my partner and the kids. That isn’t a realistic plan anymore, so right now I’m trying to figure a way to simply survive the disappointment of a failed sale.

I am extremely stressed out. I’m in the midsts of moving out of the house and while the sale is supposed to close on Wednesday, the people I am selling to are giving me the runaround. This is why you use your real estate agent. The peace of mind is worth the cost of the agent. I’d tell Lamar Jackson the same, but he is a different type of commodity. He will certainly get his regardless. Meanwhile, I am stressed, I have 10,000 words due in 30 days, and I have yet to dig into the new opportunities presented to me. Oh, I’m also supposed to be in plotting for the novel. Yeah. Oh, there is school stuff too–only an issue because I cannot access canvas on the computer I am using right now.

Yesterday I stressed enjoying life and living in the moments because they are all you get. I’m not doing a very fine job of that myself. I will finish moving tomorrow. I will make a moment of it. I will enjoy it both alone and with my partner, because it is about us as much or more than it is about me. She gets a new space out of it. The kids get a new space out of it. I get a peace of mind out of it and that is worth the stress of the entire thing.

Some Thoughts:

1. Hoping to cross the finish line with the move here in a few days. If it doesn’t go well, I still have my realtor and he will get us something.
2. Geno Smith is having the game of his career right now. Russell Wilson is not.
3. Happiness is transitory. It has to be in order to hold its value.
4. Five hours left of D.O.D.O…. almost through it…

1. Giants are back! The win vs. The Titans was in line with my predictions, but let’s be honest: I always think they have a chance. It wasn’t until saw Barkley back at strength that I knew we had a season cooking. Still belongs to the Eagles tho. It’s going to be tough to stop them out of the east.
2. I am worn down and a bit peeved about the home sale. What law says you have to have the house empty and clean–especially if you get screwed out of 35K of the asking price?
3. Madden is fun. I’m not very good tho.
4. I like the word tho as an abbreviation of though. It feels chill to me.
5. Haven’t been working out at all and that shows. I’m fat and old and it is likely killing me. I need the gym more than cake. That being said, I bought pie.
6. Will I die well off? I don’t know. I hope I leave this life in a moment of having money–not to have it but to be happy in living and able to do things I want to do.
7. All this death talk is a sad reminder that life is temporary. Enjoy what you have while you have it. Don’t waste it on anger and despair and being mad because things are not the way you want them. Find happiness in what is and what you can make happen.

Streaming the Southern Heritage Classic (Sanders’ Jackson State team is playing) as I blog. I’m not having the best of days. Weaknesses/flaws in my character have been again exposed as they are on a monthly basis at this point and it continues to sap the joy from daily living. I’m also reading DODO still, and the level of bureaucracy being discussed ad nauseam in the text is hurting my soul. In general, my soul is weary. This move continues unabated and unassisted beyond my partner. The kids lift when told, but nobody else is driving this thing. We aren’t all rowing together.

I’m hitting a personal wall of the type where I am no longer certain I intend to move another item. I might be prepared to dump all of it as I did in Maricopa not so long ago. I’m worn thin and nothing feels like it is getting better.

Not a lot to speak on persay, so I’ll just dive into…

Some Thoughts:

1. First home game of the year was rough. My boy missed a lot of practice this week with an injury, and that was a large part of the reason he didn’t see the field but on two plays. His team was destroyed both actually and morally. A 28-7 loss where there were 15+ dropped passes and the offense looked like they didn’t even know how to play. The D held up mostly. They blew a few, but mostly it was the result of second half demoralization. I’m trying to believe in this new coach, but it is hard when you see him up and down the sidelines yelling and screaming like he doesn’t have control of the situation. He’s struggling early.
2. Reading Stamped for work. More on that when I have more to say on that.
3. Blake Masters Sucks. Politics suck in general. I feel like there is a new breed of politician rising and they are those who capitalize on the pain and suffering of others–like megachurch preachers.
4. And Talk Show Hosts.
5. Too many things going on around me. Feeling very disorganized and, as a result, overwhelmed. Shouldn’t be this way but it is. I need to write stuff down and get organized.
6. I also need to get in better shape. I see myself in windows and mirrors and cringe.

Neal Stephenson’s The Rise and fall of D.O.D.O fails in one critical aspect. Pertaining to post 6.981, he didn’t write believable women yet chose to narrate the story from primarily female perspectives. It doesn’t work if the women don’t seem to function as women, but instead as men perceive women would function. This is the underlying argument of the writing out of race conversation I was hinting at when I broached the subject of writing women. If you haven’t lived the experience of a particular race/class/etc, it is hard to approximate that experience. I cannot pretend I know what it feels like to have a relationship with the law that isn’t, on the onset, confrontational. I work hard at making it not so. I’m amazingly cordial to officers. However, that does not change the facts of my life. Fact: I’ve been pulled over a lot while obeying the traffic laws. The reasons range from fitting the description, to ‘following too close’ to unusual driving patterns (i.e. going speed limit or slightly below when I see a cop) to plate registration needs to be renewed this month (I seriously got pulled over for that one time when the registration was still good. They ran my plates and looked for a reason to see what was in my Xb). These experiences color the emotional entanglement. You cannot fake that.

At one point in the DODO story, an academic offers herself as a sexual favor. In fact, she does this multiple times with multiple men in spite of every other aspect of her character suggesting she would not be someone inclined to do so. That leap felt false, and that made the story feel false. I can stretch my mind around all manner of fantasy and science fiction, but if the people do not act within the reason established by themselves and there is no accounting for that, it is not good writing. Yet this always happens when men write women.

That being said, I’m going to write a female character as my next co-lead… Sigh.

So here we are again Another NFL season about to kick into gear. I am hopeful but guarded about my Giants. In truth I am looking two years down the road at them being a competitive team. I think the Patriots are finally headed away from being competitive. The offense is a hot mess and the WR corps doesn’t have a standout dude who can run Kupp-esque routes to free up the others to do what they do. Also–no TE. All of that being said, I am going to be making some predictions over the next ten minutes that are reflective of where my mind is at regarding the 22-23 season.

The Giants will WIN week 1. How? They are decent against the run. They play aggressively against the pass and the QB for the Titans is a guy who needs play action to get the ball downfield. He won’t have that option in man-based blitz coverage. The CB’s don’t care about the run at all. They know there are 8 in the box to do the work.

The opening game of the week features an upgraded Rams team and a Bills team that is about the same. The Rams have it, IMHO. They’re too tough on both sides of the rock for the Bills to stay with them. Untill the Bills run game becomes legit, I’m not ready to crown them AFC anything. Not even division champs.

Some Thoughts:

1. My son is quitting on himself. Not so much himself I suppose as his coaching staff. He has it in his mind that the HC likes a player more than him therefore no matter what he does he will not start or get much playing time. Yet he played half of the first game. He was 3rd leading tackler based on the final stats. So, this is mental and about practice and about how he perceives the coach talking to him vs. others. However, I talked to coach. I know what he wants and I know exactly what my kid is missing. It is about aggressive coverage–especially in man coverage. He isn’t being physical, so the coach sees that as him being scared. That is not what it is though. He’s baiting the QB and also watching the QB–which is another problem. So my kid’s mindset is “there is nothing I can do” and now he’s back to wanting to transfer. We don’t run. He shouldn’t make the same mistakes I did, but I watch him do it and I am powerless to change his mindset. I hope he’s better than me and comes to understand his situation properly before it is too late.