10 Minute Rule

The older I get the more I think about how much of the writer’s life I’ve missed out on and truly long for now. I am reminded of the years past when I joyfully played Shadowrun and D&D with my friends and we built lives out of our imaginations and sat around a table telling stories. These days and nights and long weekends were the cornerstone of my writing career. They represent that core energy that powered me to write and made me feel like there would always be stories to tell.

There are still more stories to be told and I feel like I need to sink further into that world of writers in order to do so. More than just being about talking to different writers, this is about creating a lifestyle of story where I spend the largest parts of my day thinking about story–not wondering what kind of offense I would run for a particular set of kids should I have the opportunity to do so. Fragmentation of energy and initiative makes for a bad (and by bad I mean unfocused and unfinishing) writer. I am that dude at present, though I should not be and I have so many many many stories I feel I can tell.

No, I will not list them all here. All I can say is that I used to reach into my mind and pull out characters and follow the silver thread from those voices and faces back to their lives and their worlds, chasing down the rabbit holes of limitless universes.

I bound myself up in the world of Shadowrun, and I love that world. Still, being bound by but one world or one genre is not who I am. I need to expand in all directions, stretching and spreading my stories out across the fabric of known space and coating it in the unknown.

I am a writer first. I’ve known for my entire life that I can be anything I put my mind to, but all I’ve ever really wanted to be was a writer. The rest was a financial and research means to the ends of writing. The rest was always hustle. While I’ve spent years forgetting that small (large) fact, I am starting to remember. I am starting to shake of the rust and disappointment of decades and move towards a reality where the pen and my voice become one and move forward.

The time of words is near.

Some Thoughts:

1. My, that was heavy handed.
2. World Cup. Yep. Nobody here really cares, because America didn’t make the cup. It is a noted fact of exceptionalism that where we are weak we are also forgetful of the substance of what makes us weak.

I am having an impressively hard time being a human right now. It is more than being a dad. It is being a boyfriend and being productive and feeling like all of it is making some greater impact on the world. I call it writing fuel. I suppose all writers at one time had this bottomless pit of pain to feed from and at this point I feel like I too have this pit of anxiety and malcontent from which to draw characters that will be painted on the page.

Or maybe I’m just sad.

Either way it isn’t about the feeling so much as it is about what I choose to do with it and how i respond. When I was scrolling through hundreds of quotes looking for something epic to lay upon my office plaque I found one that said, ” it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” That little gem is courtesy of the 2006 Rocky Balboa film. Never saw it. I still would like to see it, because I think it has moments. It won’t be good, but these days moments matter. If you can string together enough little moments, maybe you have something. Maybe you have a life.

So, I am going to take that quote and that creed (moments) with me down this road I am on right now and try to deal with some of the crap that is piling up on my psyche. It is all fuel. It is all the kind of stuff that keeps me moving forward.

Always Forward.

I’ve been a wreck over the last few days. The problem started when I got back from vacation. No, actually it started that last day of vacation–the Sunday we spent quietly flipping through channels and too burned out to do much more than that. If you need proof look no further than the Monday Morning reflection this week that I wrote on a Tuesday. I had no idea what day of the week it was. I only discovered the oversight when I sat to blog a few minutes ago.

Like I said, I’ve been a wreck.

There is a great deal going on, from the recognition that I haven’t been the best version of myself as a professor for quite a few years, to the multitude of financial and living arrangement issues currently plaguing my tortured psyche. It is a lot to deal with in the few weeks I am supposed to be recharging before I dive headlong into teaching almost every day for the next 6 months.

Let me say this: The drama and stress is absolutely worth the reward. That reward is spending every day with the woman I love. That reward is, one day, a happy home and life where everything just feels right and ours.

In the meanwhile it is a lot of me trying to gain my footing after a long and wonderful vacation that helped me to forget that there is a world out there which doesn’t start with a walk along the beach, great coffee, and maybe a dip in the hot tub.

I’m looking for a new home. It terrifies me that the decision of whether or not I can have one in this society is pre-determined by a set of financial circumstances and ideas based on a history of bad choices. Indeed, one’s history is important in determining one’s future. Still the algorithms that tell people credit rating and whether or not you’ll make a good rentor or whether or not you should ever be allowed to buy a home are based on numbers and data that are provided without any context or any interest in the character of the person. In truth the character is in many ways determined by these numbers.

For the record: My numbers suck.

They have for some time and it is not a thing I find I tell anyone. Yet here we are. I am sharing this information because it plays such a crucial role in what happens next in my life and while I respect that and understand that, I remain terrified by it. I don’t know that anyone will look past the algorithm to take on the opportunity that is me because it means taking a chance. We live in a society that eschews chances. Instead we rely on data and numbers that assure the greatest potential for success.

I worry I will be stuck in my present situation until I can right the wrongs of my algorithmic data and remake myself into the kind of person the system loves and is willing to give these things that I, and all of us, desire. I want a home. I want a comfortable and wonderful place to continue raising my kids.

I don’t know if I will get it.

Back in the familiar cradle and routine of my life I find myself adjusting to new elements to the routine. I’m back to early morning drop offs, for example, giving me time to think and write and eat hastily pulled together Village Inn breakfasts. I’m not mad about that. I’m not really mad at all these days. I’ve sunken into observer mode instead. So when I watch the commercial for the Superfly remake by Director X I do not fall into straight up anger. Instead I shake my head, pause, and remember that the original film was in fact a blaxploitation film, despite how it reflected iconic cool.

Taking a moment to think vs. be angry reminds me that ‘the culture’ doesn’t exactly belong to me. Director X, the Canadian auteur responsible for ‘hotline bling’ is riffing on the culture. He is remaking it in the way he sees it the way Sergio Leone riffed on western culture to provide us with the spaghetti western. This is Poutine Blackness at it’s loudest; the idea of the culture that becomes the ideal of the culture.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It took me a good 40 yrs to put this together… Robbie Dupree’s ‘Steal Away’ is a straight up rip from the ‘What a fool believes’ which happens to be one of my all time favorite songs. I don’t think I’ve heard ‘Steal away’ (note the ironic title) since the early 80’s, so I can be forgiven at least a little. Less so, because the internet clearly knew.
2. Our American President is still running the nation like a reality TV show as opposed to any form of serious government. While the rest of the planet is basically losing their shit (and respect for us) over this, a sizable portion of our 300 million plus simply don’t care or absolutely approve of this.

Surprisingly, this is the first time I’ve felt in any way alone in the last few days. That is one of the untold secrets of vacation. There is little actual downtime in terms of collecting yourself and having moments of private reflection. I wondered aloud why I could not write more than 10 minutes at any point during this vacation and the answer was the same as the one for why I was looking forward to getting back home today.

Vacations are wonderful and afford me a chance to get away from the routine of it all. Vacations also arrive with hidden pressure and expectation. This is not the straightforward ‘I need you to do this now’ but instead the subtle and oft self-generated pressure of wants. I wanted to spend time as a united family. I wanted to have one on one time with my partner and fall deeper into her. I wanted to spend time with three (dem franchise!) boys. I wanted to play card games long into the night and grill and walk on the beach and dig beach forts (man’s last outpost against the waves). I wanted to take walks to my coffee shop. All of these things–these wants–vanish in the simplicity of daily routine. As I recently discovered, when there is nothing going on there is plenty of time to think about why and just as much time to figure out what to do about it.

I have a very happy and healthy home life with my family. It could be much better. There are routines and restrictions that should be embedded to ensure that fun is effortless yet all of our responsibilities are well met. We should be growing, not stagnant. Here in the last hour and a half of vacation home space I recognize that vacation puts all of that on pause and throws us together in a way that presents entirely new demands which are themselves exhausting. Here, hours past dawn, my kids are sound asleep. This never happens at home. We have done as much as we can. We’ve had as much fun as we can take.

It is time to come home.

In the story, A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid riffs on the idea of seeing Antigua from a tourist’s eyes. It is in essence a guided tour through that world from that perspective. She leads you unerringly through the good and bad, the real and the unwanted. She writes, “The thing you’ve always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not ugly all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day. From day to day, you are a nice person. From day to day, all the people who are supposed to love you on the whole, do.”

All of these words swirl around my thinking the days I spend on vacation. It hits me less in the beginning than in the end as I prepare to go home and return to my daily life and routine. I find myself realizing that the person I’ve been and those who are with me have been while on vacation is not necessarily great. I just walked into a situation where my boys (two by blood one by relation) were digging holes in the sand and waiting for someone to fall into the hole. It was originally explained to me as a small prank where their brother would step into a small depression that couldn’t hurt him, but I soon realized they’d made other holes that were not small. I immediately required them to seal these up.

What makes a person think its okay to set up someone like that? What is it about being away from home with the freedom to be anyone that leads many people to be the worst version of themselves? I worry about my kids when they are like this and I worry that it is more than just them.

The best way to be a writer is to be around writers–good or just raw. The truth is we are all learning as we write. Even the prolific writers like Stephen King learn new tricks and new ways to reinvest in their work as a result of being around other writers. Many writers I know spend a wealth of time around other writers and traveling to conventions either as speakers or as participants in an effort to embed themselves into the writer’s community.

I’m talking about immersion here. I believe this is the most important thing that a writer can do outside of butt in chair. BIC matters, don’t get me wrong. BIC alone means you’re producing worlds full of words, but it is happening in isolation. That first part of writing–the planning and drafting stages–often are done in isolation, but there are important stages that follow. For me I find so much inspiration from my writing group and as much inspiration from the students I work with every day. Just like an athlete gets better at a sport by being around it we writers develop a sort of writer IQ that allows us to be even more successful as we work towards being masters of our craft.

I’ve seen the difference between myself and other writers of my ilk at conventions. They are immersed in the culture of writing while I am a single dad immersed in the culture of sports who happens to be a not-too-shabby writer. There is a huge difference in terms of level of success that stems purely from that thread. Immersion matters.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve been happy these past few days. That matters.

There is a history of people sitting on rooftops. It goes beyond the superhero history of Batman and his ilk sitting atop a roof peering across a darkened city. The history of rooftop sits clearly predates that and my own knowledge of said history, but I get why it is cool.

I grew up in an apartment building. Half the time I was on the 16th floor leaning off a terrace and staring down into concrete mass of New York City. There is a calmness at the higher altitudes. There is a sense that everything below you is separate from your own existence and you, quiet watcher, are Uatu–carefully observing but never interfering. I feel the same on rooftops now as I did up high in the apartments. I feel separate, safe, even intimately connected with the webwork of lives spiraling outward from the points of my vision.

This is a powerful feeling.

Some Thoughts:

1. My kids are slowly (and resistantly) learning to respect my boundaries when I am writing. I already forced two off this rooftop, but it wasn’t three! This must be progress.
2. Tonight marks the last gasp of Lebron as a Cav. Even if I am wrong about that, I know for certain they cannot win a game on the road to bring the series back to Cleveland. I also recognize that Cleveland traded for a number of players which they can ‘money ball’ a franchise around until their cheapskate, racist, unapologetic, and above all else entitled owner can draft a player with the number one pick a la Philly. I don’t trust that process and no self respecting fan should. Cleveland had their moment. Akron’s favorite son did his duty and now he’s off to… hell, I don’t know where he is going. He loves him some Cp3, so maybe he goes to Houston and helps get another title. If the Rockets had Lebron in a passing role (Harden is best with the ball in his hands) they would rip down the Warriors–no question. Lebron already said he has nothing left to prove and I believe him. I believe the world believes him. I believe he believes it too. At this point, he’s playing for fun.

I don’t have a regularly scheduled gaming column, but a few days ago Trevor Noah dropped a Fortnite joke on one of the most celebrated daily comedy shows in the nation and I thought, ‘okay, I gotta say something.’

This is that something.

Fortnite represents the latest reach from the realms of cyberspace into the meatspace mainstream. In the gamer world youtube and twitch replace CNN and Fox News. Game Informer is the NYT of it’s genre. Channels like Syfy are already reaching out by airing reality tv shows centered around gamers and occasionally dropping one-off airings of Street fighter tournaments. Gaming is here. Gaming has always been here, but it has been avoidable, fringe, even juvenile. It is no less these things for the majority of mainstreamers, but the so-called fringe is getting bigger. At this exact moment there are close to 94,000 viewers watching livestreams of Fortnite battles. There are even more, 147,000+ watching livestreams of Realms Royale–a game I never even heard of until this moment (it looks pretty dope though). 105,000 of those people are watching one guy, Ninja, play the game.

Ninja is their Lebron. The 27 year old Tyler Blevins has captured the hearts and streams of most gamers out there. He topped out at 667,000 concurrent viewers once. They were watching him play a freaking video game! So, he has all the sponsorships and even has the prefunctory trophy wife. Yes, that line sounds sexist, but it is meant to showcase the similarities between the gaming world and the sports world. They are plentiful. In truth, the gaming world might be more sponsor friendly, because the gamers are watching and listening for tips. The gamers think they can be Ninja. The sports buffs know they are not Lebron.