10 Minute Rule

Governor Ducey of Arizona has decided that it is okay to for youth sports to happen. This is a big step forward that probably shouldn’t even be happening. As a coach I am curious about how to maintain social distance in youth football where the entire point of the sport is contact. As a dad I have to be able to trust a lot of stuff to go right in order to feel my kid is safe in this circumstance. Some teams are already practicing. Our skill kids have been at it for a few weeks without my kid, because we have some serious questions about whether or not this is a good idea. Numbers are rising in AZ, and based on what I’ve seen from the High School team my other two boys are on, there is not a terrible amount of safety protocol that can be put in place and keep the practices useful at the same time.

High School practice looks like 80’s Jazzercise. The boys tell me they are all spaced out across the field and doing calisthenics. They just call it working out. There are no footballs involved because throwing and catch are a form of transmission. At least they are putting more thought into it than the 7on7 leagues are. I caught a few clips of the weekend tournament and all of those parents and children were stacked on top of each other huddling under canopies to shield themselves from the brutal AZ heat. In other words, nobody is thinking about this virus as the problem it is.

I believe it is a problem. I don’t see this as a hoax. That leaves me very torn in regards to what to do about my kid. I let the high school kids go to practice, so why not the middle schooler?

When you think about it (and I have) this blog has been home to a lot of darkness. I have spent a number of hours here in despair, doubting my choices, talents, and more. I have poured my heart into this digital space looking for little more than a chance to be heard. I think that is what all of us writers want at the basic level. We want to be heard. We’d all love it if we could be paid enough for our words that this is all we need to do, but that is not the reality for most of us. Instead reality interferes with our ability to get the words out. There are great stories lost in the every day chaos of our lives.

This is going somewhere, folks.

I believe the ten minute rule saved my life. If I didn’t write for 10 every single day I would’ve lost connection to the words long ago. I lapse into periods of disconnection from the words and the 10 remain my lifeline. However, I believe I have been very short sighted in my understanding of this most basic formula. What if I apply the rule to reading? To exercise? Most importantly, what if I applied the rule to reflection on the things that matter most to me. I can honestly say that I don’t spend ten consecutive minutes each day just sitting and thinking about my partner. I think if I did I would have a better relationship than I do now.

The more I add the more scheduled and disciplined my life becomes, and I don’t want that. However, there are things in my life that truly matter and they deserve at least the ten minutes I know from thousands of days of experience that I can devote each and every single day.

It shouldn’t have to be a challenge. It should just be how it is. But it isn’t, and that disturbs me. That demands change. So, change I must. 10 minutes at a time.

Some Thoughts:

1. I thought I might close by sharing a rather stark impression of Trump by noted Republican campaign manager Steve Schmidt:

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

Amani finally understood what people meant when they said walking on eggshells. The first time he heard it was in kindergarten. His teacher said it at a parent teacher’s thing. He didn’t remember the rest of the conversation, only that he immediately thought about Jones beach. He thought about chickens running on the beach and cutting his feet on a mixture of broken sea shells and the eggs with the blue stamps his mother said were the best.

It didn’t make sense then. It didn’t make sense later when this virus stuff spun up and Marsha was pissed about her job, because she couldn’t say what she wanted to say about what was going on. Marsha worked dispatch for an ambulance company in midtown. She came home to him every night those first two weeks complaining about the kind of calls she was getting and how all of it was just a hoax because people needed to be distracted from what the government was actually trying to do to them. She said the eggshells line and this time he thought about weight displacement and saw in his mind dozens of half shells spread out across the floor so tightly packed that you could run across the surface of them and not one would break. They’d just bought a new king-sized bed and the advertisements showed people throwing eggs onto the bed and they’d bounce a few times and be okay. He wanted to try it the day they got the bed but she wasn’t having it. So he waited until she went to work one day and he did it himself. It wasn’t nearly as interesting to do it alone. And the third egg broke anyway.

It was another few months before Amani had his moment of clarity. She’d been on the warpath again. It was hard not to be when they’d been cooped up together for so long. He thought all the good things about their relationship had been trampled flat like the fibers of an old rug, because they hadn’t had any actual time apart and, despite how much they loved each other, they were getting on each others nerves. He said as much, and she said, “if that’s how you feel,”

That was it. She hadn’t said another word to him for what was going on three days now. When he thought about how it felt he thought of that eggshell phrase. He got it now. He got that he didn’t know what to say to her or how to act because they were still in this space together, and his last few words had lead to the lasting silence. What would happen when he opened his mouth again?

So he didn’t. Maybe he’d get used to silence.

A friend from the Rez made a post on the Facebook and I just couldn’t hold my tongue. He said All Lives Matter. So I dedicated ten minutes…

All lives can’t matter unless black lives also matter, and its pretty clear from the way we shape our media narratives, to the way we turn the majority of tv criminals into black folk, to the long-standing history of slavery that morphed into systemic racism and policies designed to keep black people down, to the way the we had to wait longer than every other social or racial group in America to get a national museum, to the continued disavowment of the very statement ‘Black lives matter’ that black lives don’t in fact matter as much as everyone else.

Black and brown women are murdered at a horrific rate in our country but do we see those stories on tv? Turn on dateline any Friday and you’ll see a sad tale about a pretty white girl who was murdered. She’s usually blonde and that image usually attracts a lot of viewers.

People don’t care nearly as much about the loss of black folk. Black folk like me don’t matter hardly at all to the average person unless we can tackle, dance, sing, shoot baskets, or make people laugh. Black beauty is even secondary to white beauty.

There is truth in the line that all lives matter. All live SHOULD matter but all lives clearly don’t matter equally, and that is the argument that BLM is putting out there. Black Lives Need To Be Treated As Having Value.

We have to stop with the blaming. We have to stop seeing dead black men and saying, well he must have done something to deserve it. That right there is the default. That right there is what we’ve been conditioned to believe the same way we are conditioned to believe that every Hispanic person you see in Arizona is an illegal Mexican immigrant or every Native American is a drunk. Those statements—those stereotypes condition us to think of those groups as less than and devalue those people the way blacks have been devalued and commoditized since We showed up here in chains.

This movement; this energy; this crisis is not a joke. Every time I get pulled over I know my life could end, and I’ve never been arrested or committed a crime. Yet I’ve had cops pull guns on me for as little as not using a turn signal. This has happened multiple times. In multiple states. Am I that much of a threat?

Or do I just look like someone they need to worry about? Do I look like someone who doesn’t matter as much as another color or creed? Or do I just look like someone who has been criminalized; Somebody who shouldn’t have nothing in life and should be questioned if he does, because he probably stole it?

Do all lives actually matter? Do we care about all people? Or do we ignore some and treat others as less than? Do we see the poor and homeless at the strip mall entrances and highway exits and turn out heads so we don’t have to face that interaction? Do those lives matter as much as our neighbors? Would we want those people in our neighborhood? And when we see them in our neighborhoods how many of us have the thought to get rid of them, to call the police, to feel nervous that they are around our families?

I was born into that. I was born less than. I didn’t tell myself that. I don’t feel that way about myself. Teachers told me that. Co workers told me I got hired because I was black, as if to say my skills weren’t enough to be there and I needed the government to fight my battles and force them to hire me/treat me as an equal.

How can all that be true and black lives not have less value—especially in America?

Look, I want all lives to matter. I wish this movement could be seen as us as a collective humanity recognizing some real messed up tendencies. It isn’t that. It’s folks trying to belittle a life and death struggle that some of us are having because it doesn’t impact you negatively and in some cases makes you uncomfortable. We should all be uncomfortable. We should all be flat out pissed off that we need laws to remind us not to crap on people just because of the color of their skin, the name of their God, or who they choose to love and marry. Yet, here we are.

Wake up folks. All lives don’t matter. The statement is a meaningless whitewash. That’s just an easy way of saying we don’t want to be forced to look at our own behaviors and we want to act like everything is all good.

It isn’t. It never has been.

The most difficult process in my life is my relationship. I do not talk much about the relationship on the blog. I often feel like speaking to that private, sacred connection in the pubic space is a betrayal. However, the more I talk about the blog with her the more it feels like not talking about her is a betrayal; as though I am relegating her to secret status. It is confusing, because I go into the choice thinking I am doing what is right and I emerge feeling both ‘less than’ and profoundly uncertain how to behave.

Here’s the thing: It is hard to be in a relationship. It means putting the other person’s needs before your own at times and making decisions together most of the time. I suspect that my partner would call my assessment of relationships incomplete, and it is. There are aspects of a relationship I cannot translate into words that paint beautiful images in a reader’s mind. It is about knowing each other and anticipating each other. It is about all the things in the world I have come to recognize I am inherently terrible at. Realizing this makes me feel like a terrible person. There are times I feel I don’t even know who my partner is. I consider my words and actions and predict reaction and I am constantly wrong. I am wrong on a scale that leads to two conclusions:

1. I am probably an insensitive self-centered asshole
2. The way I am and the thoughts and ideas I hold onto creates a lifestyle for my partner that is slowly killing her.

There is a scene in the movie Falling Down that springs to mind more and more these days:

I have to ask myself that question constantly. If I am the bad guy (or a bad guy) How did it happen? What did I do to get myself so far away from the sort of partner I wanted to be? I think it started with failed expectations and always trying to play catch up and always then winding up three steps beyond the every day reality. There’s more to it, but I only have these ten to share.

Up at 5 AM, it is a reminder of the life I used to live and the life that used to be. I got up this early in order to shuffle my kid off to In other odd news, since I made that post about all the possible teams in the AYF/NYS collab in AZ, the post where I got that listing has been removed. I wonder what it going on?

I am Moving. I keep on saying it, because the feeling of it is really settling in. I’ve been in this small town in AZ for nearly all of my time in AZ and I’ve watched it grow into a really warm and inviting place to live. Now I gratefully say goodbye and thank you to all that exists out here. It isn’t the kind of town you really come to visit–not unless you’re headed out to San Diego. So, this move is a farewell to a lifestyle of sorts. It is one which has run its course.

Back to writing Novellas. Should be signing paperwork for two in the coming weeks. I am excited about developing these characters. The best part about writing for me are the moments where I connect to the character and I can see them in their element and doing what defines who they are as a person. I love the ability to watch that unfold as a close quarters passenger. I am ready to make that happen again.

Back to wondering about my one true story. I am starting to wonder if I have more than one of those in me. I question if a writer’s one true story is actually a subconscious reflection of the culmination of their life experience. My life has been many things, and as I crest into this “second half” I feel like the first story is less relevant and the second story is starting to take shape.

These are not just some thoughts. In fact there is a connective tissue through all of it that I am starting to recognize in myself. I am a creature who does and thinks a number of different things at once. My thoughts are like a net cast far and reeled back in to capture what I can of the reality around me. All the parts are linked together to form the thing, but much slips through the netting.

I have quietly been working on a fantasy world. I haven’t looked at the greater world–not in the way the George RR Martin dreamed up the world beyond Westeros. I do know the central city state and region of the story and have been hard at work dreaming up the physics of the thing. What I find more interesting than those physics (needed in order to make the world make sense) are the history and politics. I am informed by our own oft deleted history. For example, I was never taught about the Red Summer of 1919 when White Supremacists murdered nearly 1000 black people across the country in what was as close as possible to an uprising responding to the growing pressure for black rights. I learned about that last month. I did hear often about Nat Turner and often as a tale of what not to do–to not rebel and kill the white folks. This is the history I was taught.

In places all over the south a different history is taught to this day. In these alternative histories the slaves were just employees or plantations were great places to work where everyone was treated well. It is all very Gone with the Wind, but those of us who have common sense know Gone is fiction. The history books thrust in front of children are not considered fiction and kids in some places are growing up not understanding what slavery was and thus not understanding why Black Lives Matter exists.

This story is going to tackle some of those issues with a relative distance that allows me to examine them and dissect them and tell stories about how we choose to remember and what we choose to accept, and of course, who has the power to determine these things. It is not all about money either.

Some Thoughts:

1. Here’s a simple way to respond to all lives matter: All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.
2. I say this because a writer friend posted a photo of the back of someone’s car where they had scribbled , “All lives matter xcept (sic) black ones.” Yeah, folks be like that.

I don’t think I am really saying anything new here. I am saying what I always say this time of year (and in the process buying ten minutes because I do not have anything I am ready to say right now). I’m saying there is a chance.

There is a chance the Giants will field a good football team this year. There is a chance Daniel Jones is good (though he may just be new Darnold… I’m just saying). There is a chance this could wind up being the beginning of a really good stretch of sports life in New York City.

There is a chance.

As we know chance is mitigated by a host of factors. One factor is the arrest of our starting corner for robbery and assault. There is a chance that those charges will be dropped and he is going to be just fine. Aldrick Rosas, our all star kicker on the make or break year of his deal is very much not okay. He got picked up on a hit and run. Who knows if he gets suspended or what?

Or what? is the theme here. The new roster is full of hopefuls and maybes who replaced a slew of has been and could’ve beens. We have a squad to cheer for that is rippling with possibilities, but that same squad has to come together in a really difficult time for a city that needs a banner to unite under. It may be too much for a bunch of, well, boys, who might not want that responsibility. These are not Strahan’s Giants. We have Barkley, who already showed his media mettle coming out strong to support BLM, but who else?

All of these factors play a role in the games that get played on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday all in the hopes of getting a Saturday date to apply for a Sunday showdown. The people are watching and how the players hold up to the pressure is a part of how they play and ultimately whether or not they succeed. Beckham couldn’t–not in the harsh NYC spotlight–not for long. Can the rest?

I heard a quote today: If I die then I know that I lived. I learned it in the context of a show called Humans. I was watching it as a way to check out and avoid thinking about my feelings. Instead it made me reflect on how I was feeling about everything, as I am sure the show is intended to do. It is not high art, but it is relevant. It is constructed as an analogy to how we treat each other, but I am in a strange state of mind where I am thinking about purpose and how we treat ourselves and the conditions that make us who we are thus who I am.

So, what have my conditions made of me? Perhaps the answer is what powers my words.

I just want to talk sports. I haven’t had a good Waiver Wire in weeks and that just wears on a dude. Part of it is that there are no sports–not any that I love. I mean the marble stuff is fun and I very much want the marble merch, but nah. I miss sports. I miss football. I miss talking trash about certain teams. I miss talking trash about the Jets and all the bad choices they’ve made on the way to just being mediocre. So, here we are… and here I go.

Let’s start with the Jets. They suck. It brings me joy. The best predictions for them have them as an 8-8 team including a season sweep of the Patriots, which I find nonsensical. The Patriots are still the Patriots and people are about to remember how many games they won over the years without Brady and how many of his backups wound up as bonafide starters in the league. So, let’s say 7-9 should they split the difference. So, yeah, suck. Darnold is part of the problem, but the failure to get a solid receiving corps doesn’t help.

Now lets slide into the unheralded world of youth sports. We are talking about a ridiculously massive league this year. My boy and the team I assistant coach are slotted in the 11u (and perhaps 11 weighted?) category. Below is the list of teams signed up that I pulled from Facebook:

1. Argonauts
2. Jr Huskies
3. AZ Longhorns
4. Raiders AZ
5. Arizona Buffs
6. Force Football Academy
7. Red Mountain Devils
8. AZ Suns
9. Casa Grande Scorpions
10. Maricopa Militia
11. AZ Bandits
12. Arcadia Titans
13. Jaguar Youth Football
14. LYFA Kingz
15. AZ Predators
16. Mesa Toros
17. Devilbacks
18. Lightning
19. East Valley Bulldogs
20. Mesa Rebels
21. AZ Krush
22. Outcast
23. SW Stampede
24. CWS Soldiers
25. CWS Jr Eagles
26. Maricopa Juggernauts
27. Maricopa Jr Rams
28. Maricopa Mambas
29. AZ Ravens
30. Gilbert Coyotes
31. Phoenix Storm
32. AZ Rattlers
33. WV Kingz
34. Scottsdale Firebirds
35. WV Titans
36. Chandler Wolves
37. Chandler Lobos
38. Chandler Bears
39. Cave Creek Falcons
40. AZ Fire Dawgs
41. Central Jr Bobcats
42. Top Flight
43. AZ Jaguars
44. East Valley Trojans
45. PHX Grizzlies
46. Scottsdale Outlaws
47. Reapers Elite
48. Warhawks
49. WV Cardinals
50. East Valley YF
51. CGYF
52. SEV
53. Phoenix Dragons
54. O’Connor Jr Eagles
55. Gilbert Dawgs
56. Union Youth Football
57. Laveen Champions
58. AZ Sun Devils
59. OTB U
60. AZ Saints
61. AZ Blackhawks
62. AZ Badgers
63. AZ Tide
64. TOA
65. Canyon View Jr Jaguars
66. WV Spartans
67. Demon District
68. Mustangs Football Academy
69. Crimson Tide
70. South Phoenix Fire
71. Outlaws Elite
72. A.J. Prospectors
73. AZ Hurricanes
74. ALA Eagles
75. Ruff Ryders
76. Sequoia Stallions
77. Dem Boyz
78. Chandler Stingers
79. Jr Lions
80. Action Football Academy
81. Laveen Lobos
82. X-Factor Eagles
83. Phantoms
84. Ridge Army
85. Peoria Jr Panthers
86. Mavericks
87. Tucson Scorpions
88. Coolidge Bears
89. WV Vipers

89 teams and counting with at least 30 sporting 11u teams. This is going to be crazy massive. I don’t have a clue how this is going to be organized/coordinated. In truth it sounds like a wild but fun ride with most teams not ever crossing paths until the playoffs. We have a Division I & II structure to ensure that teams are playing teams of similar skill. We are likely to be a DI team after sweeping DII and beating one of the top 2 DI teams head to head in a shutout they remain pissed off about. So, we have a lot going on with the new season and it is kind of exciting.

That is all for now. It felt good to talk sports. I will likely talk NY Giants on Wednesday.