10 Minute Rule

I spent some time today listening to Trump’s violently divisive speech meant to energize his base and send out the word that ‘Old America’ will not go silently into the night. It made me fear how far we’ve come in the past three years and especially in the past year. I began 4 a full year ago. It felt like this was going to be a big year for me in terms of relationship and career and it has been exactly that. It also has been a departure from anything I thought my life could possibly look like.

We live in a world so different–so vastly different–from where we were 365 days ago that the two don’t even feel like they were headed to the same place. One year ago I didn’t even know what social distancing was, though I know the term has been around for much longer. I didn’t see working from home as a real possibility, let alone a lifestyle I would revel in. I didn’t think aging would hit me as hard as it did; that I would be on a freaking pill and having to develop ways to trick my body into living just a little bit longer (It’s called exercise and healthier eating, btw).

I do not have a plan for how to live in this new world. I am learning as we all are. I feel like I might be better in this space; better operating from my own home/cave and getting things on track as a writer.

I need a proper 365 review, but this was a good start.

Been slowly sinking into the internet world of paranormal activity. Most of what is out there can be clearly explained away as mundane or a hoax. I am mystified by the paranormal and equally engaged and curious about writing about these phenomena. In truth all scary stories intrigue me. I haven’t ever been good at horror. My one and only attempt was a screenplay that failed on too many levels to explain. What intrigues me about horror is the same thing that intrigues me about romance and mystery. These are formulaic genres that, like the basic structure of story itself, find meaning in form. I find that form can be important in all types of fiction. Some would argue poetry is fiction and is itself a form (containing multitudes).

Horror and mystery are built similarly, though I feel horror relies on psychological embeddedness more than mystery. In mystery we are trying to unravel. In horror we are trying to descend. We are tearing away our personal layers of safety and suspension of disbelief in an effort to let ourselves be scared. In mystery we are focused on solving the issue. There is a difference there to be sure.

Spent the morning emptying out the stuff the old owners left behind. The left us a note when they moved out. It said, ‘Sorry, we did our best.’ But they didn’t do their best. They gave up at some point. They took all the stuff they wanted and left us a ton of trash. It made me think about how comfortable people get in their lives and how the normal we create may not be normal to other people.

Often I walk into other peoples homes and see dirty bathrooms and think, “how can you live like this?’ or ‘How could you not clean knowing you have people coming over?’ Then I look at my own bathroom and recognize that I am the person I am talking about. Glass houses indeed.

This goes beyond a difference in lifestyle. This gets into cobwebs across the ceiling, live spiders living in the corners, and carpeting so stained by pet urine that the smell lingers a full week after we’ve had those carpets removed. I fear it is in the walls. Or at least the popcorn ceilings.

There is much work to be done before the home is livable, and the way the space is built doesn’t fully reflect the way we’ve lived to this point. We have less space, yet more spaces. I am excited to see how that unfolds.

Some Thoughts:

1. I wrote to the sounds of falling rain tonight. It offered me inspiration on a night where I was unusually flat. I’ve been coming out strong each day on these projects and today I felt like I had nothing. The rain offered a little something–enough to make it into the chapter.
2. Picked up J.Thorn’s Three Story Method. I’ll let you know what I think.
3. Distracted today. I think it is largely fatigue.

Youth Football Must Go On!

At least that is what they are acting like here in AZ. While restaurants shut their doors, teams prepare for the largest season on record. The 11u grouping alone is 23-44 teams deep divided into Division I and Division II. We are going to be in Division I and challenging a handful of teams that believe themselves to be unstoppable. Among those are the 4 time defending champion Chandler Bears who not only win but hardly ever get scored on until the national championship.

The Bears are our nemesis team this year alongside a new squad called the Badgers. This new team is formed off the smoking corpse of the Savages organization with help from one of our coaches, our top DE and starting running back, the backing of the Bandits organization, and cherry picked players from across the league. The Bears have already spoken out against this team, wondering why super-teams need to be formed just to go against them. The problem with super teams is that most of the time you are talking about a clash of cultures in terms of coaching and in terms of parents who really just want to see their kid get the ball more. I brought my kids to the Argonauts organization for the opposite reason. I wanted them to be surrounded by players as good or better than them so their egos would get bruised and their work ethic would get a boost. It worked. Now we are part of a culture of learning about the sport in a pipeline of players that terminate with the Arizona Cardinals who presently boast three former Argos players on their roster. It helps. It helps because the kids get to see what is possible with hard work.

So, will we have a season? That remains to be seen. AZ is locked up right now, and while the orglist for the league has swelled over the past week to 93 organizations and over 280 different teams, we really ought to be pausing to recognize that we are talking about youth sports in a time where the hospital ICUs are filled with sick people who are all contagious. I am starting to get a grip on my the band kept playing on the Titanic. After all, here I am writing about this on the wire–namely because there isn’t real football to talk about and there is a part of me that wants to see how my Argos stack up against the competition.

Two hours from my first tele-meeting of the day I find myself in a reflective mode. I am looking at myself. I am looking at the professional and the personal. I am looking at the failures and seeking out the bright moments of success. This is not coming from a place of sadness or anger, and that itself is an evolution. I am finally approaching these thoughts from the doorway of ‘what can be done’. So, accomplishment.

Beyond mindset I am deep in the struggle of creating (and curing) a healthy personal life. One tough thing about being a writer is that if you have deep personal stuff to write about it means you are or have gone through deep personal stuff. Let’s say that I haven’t ever stopped. My old stuff impacts my new stuff and all of it just rolls down the hill of bad things until I am overcome and can no longer function. I am still functional, and that is a plus. I can’t say the same for the people I care most about and watching that situation erode is absolutely terrifying. I realize that I am a huge part of the problem and have no way to quickly solve the problem in a space where it feels like some light at the end of the tunnel is needed less everything collapse into darkness.

Also, I am bad at vagueness.

I am good at writing once I hit that flow. There have been moments of that in the two new (NDA) projects I’m working on. What I can say is that I am writing two novellas scheduled to be completed by mid August. Both are on track. I’ve had moments of falling into both, and that is really good. It is a huge step up for me to be writing two of these projects at once and I am excited for the outcome. I also am writing them in a rough draft fashion, which means I am going to be able to make time at the end to polish and lord knows I rarely do that. Hopefully that turns out for the best.

In short, things are rough and there is a mess of darkness and change swirling, but in holding on to the promise of story, I am holding on to the light for myself.

We are slipping back into this pandemic. As of today the governor has shutdown gyms, bars, and movie theaters in an attempt to limit the spread of Covid 19. We were here a month ago, hoping to move away from the problems brought on by the growing pandemic, but we failed to maintain what is being called ‘social distance’ and even more people came down with the virus than before. It feels bleak.

I am surprised to live through a situation such as this, but not so surprised that I don’t recognize the role that bad leadership plays in all of this. I don’t blame the governor entirely. I blame him for wanting to please the president and trying to open the state too fast in order to show that we are especially good at overcoming this problem. We are not. This is proven by the at or near capacity hospitals across the state and the people who, in spite of this all, are continuing to behave as though nothing is terribly wrong or are actively fighting against the call to wear masks.

It is at times like these that science fiction fails me–as though the warnings of writers of generations failed to actually see what was coming and how people might choose to react.

Of course, how can I blame people for not predicting or understanding reactions when I have never been so clear to even gauge the reactions of the people closest to me?

Some Thoughts:

1. I have lasting doubts that the state will be able to have sports this fall.
2. I am beginning to believe this pandemic will last into the new year.

I am exhausted.

I am tired of walking on eggshells. I am tired of every word feeling like a probe into the darkness, guiding the way to someone else’s right path because I don’t know my own right path and I know that the path I am on isn’t right for anyone–even me–and doesn’t lead anywhere except to loneliness and an empty life at the end of a quickly shortening road.

I am exhausted with the act of choosing. I am drained even in success when every moment of success met with a flash of joy followed by a continuing deluge of fears and i told you so’s. I am tired of feeling like nothing I find value in in my life has value to anyone else and feeling that all my choices wind up in failures and dead ends.

I am tired of being told that I am a good person, but to the one person that I need to believe in that, I am not good in the way I need to be in order for them to be happy, successful, healthy, and bright.

I am tired of being other people’s darkness and that shadow dimming my own light to the point where it is hardly even there anymore and, in most ways, I am hardly even there anymore; a function of depressed keys, graded papers, empty kisses, and stories that move through me but don’t take any bit of me with them when they leave.

No, this is not the ‘God, take the wheel’ moment. I would not be so bold. I believe in listening to the universe and leaning into fate as well as other energies that fluctuate through our universe, however that is part of what got me to this point.

I don’t know what to do. Giving up is not an option. Surrendering control to anyone doesn’t work for anyone involved. I am stuck in a change or die circumstance where I don’t actually understand how to change fast enough and, well, even enough to save what I expected to be the rest of my life.

This is not a mid-life crisis or empty nester stuff. I had a plan for what things would look like until my kids left the house. Then I got divorced, and the plan kept evolving; changing to fit the circumstances but always preserving the core idea of what I wanted to give my sons in terms of a life. It has worked to a point at the cost of everything else that comprises my life. This dogged defiance to change –fundamental change– has destroyed everything that I felt was the after.

So, what was that after? Travel. Exploration. Possibility. I didn’t have a plan short of whatever my partner wanted. All I wanted was to be a part of it and have a laptop at the ready. I still want that. I don’t know if it, or anything is possible anymore.

I’m at zero again and I am so much more tired than the last time I was here.

and I am shook.

The idea (in my head) was to expand the space so that we had room for all of the kids under one… complex? Indeed the entirety of the thing has become quite complex, because it exposed some deep rot in the familial relationship. In short, I am a very bad partner. I have driven all of the choices and lifestyle of my relationship basically since the beginning. My partner, loyal as she is, has been a passenger forced to change so much about her life and goals as I blindly pursue the tenets of my own happiness. This purchase feels like yet another thing I have done for the furtherment of my goals without and lasting consideration of her personage in all of it.

I was trying to blend a family, but I never stopped to ask anyone if they wanted to be blended. In fact, I still haven’t. That talk will come tomorrow and will start from the top with she and I. As a result of my bullheadedness, I have exposed the deeper truths of who I am and the relationship I torpedoed.

Here’s the thing: I don’t litigate these things on the web. I don’t offer up the deep personal stuff about anyone but myself because I don’t feel I have permission to speak to their stuff. So, this winds up feeling like it is once again about me. It is, to an extent. It is about what I’ve failed at. I already failed at a relationship with one of my partner’s kids. We have not spoken six words to each other for weeks and based on the way I am treated as though I do not exist, it feels like we will never speak again. So, that’s another one in the column of world’s worst Dad. It sucks more because I feel like it drives more space between my partner and I at a time where I’m already exposed as being truly trash.

I am less worried about it ending with her than I am about it staying this terrible way forever. We are both too much in love to let go and I am grateful for that, because it gives me space to improve. That is part of what commitment is about. The other part is improving for your partner and really being there to listen and to, well, be a partner. It all sounds like platitudes until I actually do it.

This is trash. Don’t watch it.

Or do.

Be aware that Bautista is a stiff actor who works hard at comedy in this film and it often comes up short. I enjoyed moments of this film and felt the little girl carried it. While I won’t watch it ever again, I don’t feel like I wasted those hours. I watched it with the kids and that was the redeeming quality inherent in the entire thing. If you watch it alone that quality vanishes.. as does the time.

Some Thoughts:

1. A lot of discussions about tik tok and youtube and social media influencers and creators lately. In the absence of traditional tv shows and sports these influencers are seeing mainstream boosts to their success and crossing platforms faster than they otherwise would. I do not see it sticking, but I am perfectly aware that I didn’t see it getting this far in the first place.
2. Okay, if I separate what I feel from the reality around me then I have to say that these youtubers are always going to drive the social media conversation. I also believe they will phase out like other shows and new ones will replace them. People get bored.

In a better mindset today. I feel like the words have been coming fairly easily and as a result I am getting stuff down and getting stuff done. This is important, because I have a slew of due dates stacking up and I am absolutely on top of it. That is one unfamiliar and satisfying feeling.

My partner says I need to keep the momentum. I feel I need to set a real schedule for myself that is a little flexible but demands the time for the words and survives the oft ugly transition between houses. Fortunately, I don’t need to worry about that much longer. That transition will be smoothed out a bit and I will feel far more stable in my environment.

Nevertheless, I do need a schedule. Coming to the page (and doing other important roles) at a specific time conditions me to do these things on a regular basis and when my mind is fresh vs. faded. Tonight I am writing late and fortunately I am still fresh. I should’ve started earlier.

Some Thoughts:

1. The day my kids get back they have a really tough time giving me personal space. That is flattering and difficult.
2. As I write this I am listening to Mr. Nightmare offering up three baby monitor horror stories. What makes this ironic and funny is that there was a commercial on the front end of it for baby monitors. Google Algorithms gone wrong…