10 Minute Rule

There are a handful of conventions that are common tread for stories. One such convention is Checkov’s gun–the premise that any item introduced must offer value later in the film. There is another, the MacGuffin, that argues that an item itself is not important but the desire to have it is. Both of these conventions create the expectations for Ant Man and the Wasp. In fact the movie relies on these two things in order to make the plot make any kind of sense. Even more interesting is the fact that it doesn’t even matter. The plot is as thin as waxpaper and that hardly impacts the film. I wasn’t even there for plot. I wanted to see Paul Rudd be, well, Paul Rudd. I wasn’t disappointed.

Ant Man and the Wasp unsurprisingly focuses on the rescue of the missing Mrs. Pym. She went into the quantum dimension and we know that people can actually come back from that because Lang (Rudd) did it. Thus sets the stage for part 2. What I found interesting about the film is that it was affected by the actions of the MCU. Lang is on house arrest because of his actions in Civil War. As the movie takes place between Civil War and Infinity War (Lots of wars out there in the world of supers) it remains largely unaffected by the events of Infinity War. It also makes no real effort to explain the world at large and how every day people deal with supers. It left me longing for a return of the Agents of Shield show in the way it could’ve been done–with all of the movies being linked to it.

As for the story itself, meh. I just loved watching Rudd be funny and having fun on screen as a hero. Ant Man, like Spiderman, is comic relief and the movie allows itself to be that while telling a fast paced story that is less about the pseudo science and the world at large than it is about chase scenes and poignant father-daughter moments.

Some Thoughts:

1. Life is good. 5 days of good.

If left to their own devices, boys will behave very badly. They don’t seem to know when to stop–as though the testosterone pulsing through their veins says ‘let’s go! never stop!’ some small measure of common sense might help mitigate the ‘going’ but boys don’t seem to have any of that on tap. Instead they have parents. I’m a parent. I’m a single parent–especially when my partner is not around–and they think I’m just another boy without the restrictor plates.

I don’t watch a lot of NASCAR. Basically none. Still, I was engaged by the idea of restrictor plates. These plates are affixed to a car to limit the intake of air and thus speed of the vehicle. It is meant to make things more competitive. In kids a restrictor plate is basically any set of boundaries that exist in a given space. My boys spent the entire day trying to push mine. They thought that because I wanted to hang out with them for a while it meant they could do as they pleased and expect me to cater to that.

Nope.

Just nope.

It was a hard but necessary day to see how they are with new eyes.

I am staying true to my plan three days in. Of course, three days is barely a factor of the 90 it takes to successfully form a habit–for me at least. I am trying hard to find a real sense of balance in my day and my life and also trying to relax, budget, etc. At some point writing needs to become a focal part of that daily structure, but it has not. It ought to very soon.

Writing and grading.

It is extremely hard to sit down and devote real energy to either. Yet both require and deserve so much energy that I have to ask myself why I am not spending more hours on the job. Probably because it is hard and the rewards seem so distant. I’d rather the quick stim of a video game than the slow and patient plodding of an assignment sheet. Even the reward of a completed story–that effervescent high–feels like it takes too long of a journey as compared to the short dirty pique of a video game win.

Part of my journey is really identifying the problems I face in these last years (this second half) of my life. Instant gratification is foremost amongst them.

Some Thoughts:

1. Just spent the last 4 hours trying to assemble a mount for a TV. It left me feeling very tired and very very stupid. I still believe in the old adage about preparation. I also believe that next time I am going to make sure I know everything about a project before I take one step.

I gave my boys a ten minute warning. In reality it was meant to give me time to write out this post before we launch into what promises to be a very busy day. It is the 4th, Independence Day, and the day I am helping my partner get settled into her new home.

This too is part of the path–us being separated in a sense and growing together in a sense as we rediscover basic wants and needs. I personally am learning day by day what matters most in my universe. These are all lessons that should have been learned long ago. These are the kinds of things that people argue, “If I had it all to do over again…” Indeed I wish I’d known these things earlier and made different choices, but I am not long on regret. I am long on learning from what is. Right now what is is an opportunity still dangling out there like a brick of gold on a ledge. I need to go out of my comfort zone to get what I want in life, but I know the risk promises the satisfaction of having written that novel, of having made the family I want, of living the kind of life I aspired to live.

For a while the question has been, ‘do I really want those things?’ The question should have been. ‘am I going to put in the effort for those things?’ That feels like a more fundamental human question. They are linked, but not as people often suggest. It isn’t so much that you don’t want what you don’t fight for. It is a matter of comfort and the cobwebs that stretch across your body and the belly that rises like hot dough, and mental joints that creak from disuse. What Maslow never told us was that once you ascend the pyramid, it is very hard to look back down even a step. To displace oneself from comfort and routine is far more difficult and overlooked than I would have ever suspected.

Here we are now in this year of my rebuilding and I am learning how high I’ve sat, guarded by my fragile white picket fence in this house of cards that so easily tumbles. Here I am learning how rare and strange it is to want it to fall down.

The road begins with new experiences, routines, and challenges. I’ve made vows to read (actual print) every day. I’m working towards the re-exploration of my bookcases and beyond just reorganizing, I intend to revisit many of the novels and short story collections as well as spend a good chunk of time reading the couple dozen books I never did read. Meanwhile I have adopted this theory of exploration. I believe that we live to learn and explore. We are all dying in the physical sense but it is the spirit and the mind that enable us to endure. I intend to endure and to do so by learning and trying new things at every opportunity, and by breaking from the old routines to discover new ones.

Today I went to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert. It is the first time I’ve seen them and my first Ska since the Dropkick Murphy’s wandered through Ames, IA back in the college days. The concert was loud and driven and dressed in meaning and metaphor. The band was smaller than usual but their sound filled the space. It was my first ska with my partner and my first time taking any of my kids to a show. I intended to blog out a review, but that isn’t really want I want to do with this time and space. I want to reflect on having had the opportunity and having seized that opportunity when I might not have done so a year ago.

This road is about growth and change, and I am already making good on the promises of yesterday while healing the wounds of yesteryear. No big proclamations here. It is just another day on the long road and preparing for every tomorrow.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is not lost on me how the days add up. It stands to reason that on Day 1 of the return to the regularly scheduled numbering system (in a year). I will be in a new home with my partner and we will have completed the absolute merger of lives.

It has been a year since the blog broke; since I broke. I didn’t spend that year healing. I spent it treading water and trying to find some small peace to hold on to. I found that. I reconnected with love. I learned about how hard that can be and how fragile humans can be in general. I learned about my limitations emotionally and the things that weigh me down both literally and otherwise. In short I didn’t spend the last year living but instead trying to figure out a way to live and making sense of what little there was to hold on to while hoping for more.

It was not the best year.

It was not the worst year. There were moments of pure anguish and darkness that pushed me past my limits. I need both hands to count the number of whole days I wanted to be my last. It brought back the shades of that 12-14 gap of time where I truly believe much of my life was decided and much much more of my passion and promise were squandered. I remember being thirteen and opening my bedroom window eight floors up and thinking how easy it would be to step through head first. I wouldn’t have met my partner then. I wouldn’t have had these amazing kids or these memories–both good and bad–or the understanding that in each life there is darkness and light and we exist in both as we exist in day and night. We cannot have all of one and none of the other at either end of the spectrum. We may believe it to be such. I spent a number of weeks out of the last 52 believing it to be such, but it is not the case. It is melodramatic and short-sighted to only see the awful or the good and believe that this is what life is.

I’ve matured. I learned about the issues I face both as an individual and as a part of this growing family. I learned that I need friends to talk to outside of my relationship, because a singular perspective doesn’t grant much perspective. I learned that I am happiest cuddled up. I learned that video games aren’t my only escape. I flee into story and screens just as often. I learned that the thing I am running from is exactly what I am running towards–self realization of what I am capable of for better or worse.

I’ve learned that I have a lot more learning and healing to do over this next year and unless I commit to the endeavor fully, I will fail a great deal more than myself.

I like to be poetic. I started with the idea of ‘before the dawn’ but that felt more appropriate for day 365. This works well for 364. Today is about looking forward and deciding what forward is going to look like. Tomorrow is about looking backwards and understanding how I got to the place I am at.

I decided that Tuesday will mark version 3.0 of this blog. This is not a permanent change. I will mark the next 365 days of the blog with a clear purpose in mind. Each day over the next year is dedicated to personal growth and healing. I am making mental time for myself. Each day is about how I change and how I get to a place where I am healthy and feel good about myself. Each day is a mile marker on that incredibly long journey back to a place where I can be productive and happy. The blog will reflect that journey. 10 minutes will remind me and share with the world how I did for the day and how that day carries me forward into the next.

For a long time now I did not expect to be alive by Christmas. I know it sounds melodramatic, but the truth of the matter is I’ve felt as unhealthy as I am unhappy, and while I’ve talked aloud about fixing that, the problem only worsens on all levels–physical, mental, and even social. It reached the point where I totally alienated my partner and made a reality of that feeling of solitude every writer talks about but never actually wants.

But that is a conversation for tomorrow.

Today is about goals and moving forward. I plan to make time and space for my health, my happiness, my words, and my heart–in reverse order. It all starts with the heart and the happiness that comes from lasting human connections. We are a social species, so I must repair the bonds that nurture me. Next, my words are suffering from a serious lack of seat time. For starters I need a new seat and a new schedule to place my butt in said seat. I must be diligent and make the time required to find my way back to the well of words.

Last is happiness. Lasting happiness is a function of the above. I find happiness in peace and order as well, so I must create an environment (or at least restore one) where I feel some lasting peace. I’m considering the creation of a ‘wild hour’ where we focus on pure crazy, because in balance we must have all things.

That’s it for now. That is what I’ve come up with.

I am finding that I have precious little to say this morning save for a rant on the state of video games. I’m talking Fortnite. I’m troubled that the present state of the video game industry is totally controlled by the ‘cool’ of Fortnite. I don’t believe the company is very good or has wonderful ideas. They fell into this by copying a mode from others and making it fast and meme-driven. Still, the coding is weak and the gameplay is ordinary. They try new game modes long enough to get us interested and then pull them to make us want it back. Then they bring it back as a classic.

My boys wake up every day and play all day the way I used to do with Madden. There are similarities there, but this is no Madden. I want to believe this is a lightening strike. I want to believe that this too shall pass.

Some Thoughts:

1. Almost a year later and where am I really?
2. I’ve been devoting a lot of thought to the next iteration of the blog. I am not there yet. I am not the man I expected to be or even on the path towards creation/revival/growth. I think this year of healing has led to a year of growth for real.

Great early morning discussion about the blog before the blog began this morning. My partner and I talked about the negative affects of writing this–especially at night. I tend to check out on writing once the blog is checked off my list. I do that largely at night, because the responsibility is off my back. Of course, when I am struggling to find ten minutes worth of energy and substance to write about at the end of the night for so many days and weeks, it makes sense that having it done earlier puts me at peace. However, this only reaffirms her point: It is an excuse to no longer write that day. So, yes there is truth in the allegation. So now what?

It falls to a reevaluation of the circumstances. I need to get back to writing first thing in the morning. No matter how uncomfortable it is at first. No matter how much it constitutes a change a circumstance in my life, I need to make writing a temporal priority. That is more than merely blogging for ten in the morning. I ought to write.

Some Thoughts:

1. Still watching The Staircase. I won’t give anything away except to say that the documentary is very interesting and engaging and teaches me a lot about how to keep a reader on the edge with the introduction of new information. What I find the most engaging is the idea of who people think you are vs. who you actually are once the layers of obfuscation are peeled away. Yet still, people are still salves to believing in what they believe.
2. Also getting back to the basics of words. In other words, I am back to reading. I have a backlog of texts sitting on my desk, but the opening act here in the ‘back to basics’ is to read a number of myths. I want to do one thing at a time in terms of reading. I think I got myself in a bad habit of reading multiple books at once, which led to me reading no books at all.

The struggle is real.

I am trying to get going and get my energy level up and firing forward. All I wind up doing is hanging out with family. There is a large place for that, but I also need a place for getting my work done too. This is my lifelong struggle. This is my Waterloo. This is my moment to decide how the next forty or so years go. I gotta get it right. I gotta get me right.

Let’s look at the tale of the tape: I’m low on ideas, big on excess fat and gluttony. Any good writer starts a project hungry. I believe the hunger is what keeps us motivated for lack of other motivations. I have stories–some good–but I also have a life that drains away a lot of the attention that ought to go to writing. Just moments before I touched finger to keyboard my mid kid wandered in to let me know how bored he was. My little always needs attention and my big is so locked into a world of video games that I feel bad not spending more time prying him away. This is without bringing up the coaching stuff (and the failures and hunger to be good at that). This is without looking into my own love of gaming and how much that has faded due to inability to put any real time and thus excitement behind the endeavor.

All of these reductions and I’m still struggling with getting going. In truth I feel like I am fading–finding less and less joy in the things that once drove me and finding less and less time to fix the problem. Instead I fall into TV show after TV show. Some are worth the time. Some are simply escape routes from what is real and what needs doing.