10 Minute Rule

Friday marks the last flag football tournament my eldest will probably play for some time. He’s moving into high school and in addition to trying to play tackle for a well known and ranked team, he’s already looking ahead to a complex slate of freshman classes and even to next summer when he plans to take Spanish (to get it out of the way). It feels like times are changing for all of us. We are moving into different realms of enjoyment and responsibility. I’m happy and excited to watch them grow into men. I am also terrified to see who they become. A lot of who men are is dependent on the things they are exposed to as kids and, as importantly, how they are talked through those events. I don’t know how good I am at such things. I know I could definitely use some work in the communication department as a dad. It is really odd that a dad who is a professional writer is often so trash at talking to his own kids.

In other news, I am taking a few days to get my life in order. Life maintenance, they call it. That work begins this coming week as I prepare for classes…

Yes, that was a joke. I would love to have a moment to do such things, but the way life works for me is more like a California roll than a stop to collect myself. I do know that I’m slowly compiling things to read and watch so that once summer is full upon me I will be able to slip into fantastic worlds and use the excitement of that writing and viewing to create magic of my own.

It is a relief to talk about sports. Maybe that is why people do it so much. Sports is so far removed from my life and I have such a wealth of data that I can successfully chat about sports for hours. In that time I can successfully ignore all of the drama going on in my own life. So, yay sports!

Tonight I caught a glimpse of the Houston Rockets unleashing a beatdown on the Warriors. Good. I’m not a fan of the Warriors. I’m largely past the stacked team hate and more on to the wasting good talent hate as I consider all of the solid players who have been relegated to role players on that squad. I’m talking to you, Klay Thompson! The Rockets won 127-105 and it really wasn’t that close. The late stages of the 4th quarter was largely garbage minutes after the 2nd Q largely determined the outcome.

Meanwhile in the Eastern Conference, the LeBron show is not enough. 2-0 go the Celtics and that is without the help of Kyrie. I’m left to believe that Irving will not be part of the program next year, which gives me such high hopes that he could wind up on the Knicks–a team about to launch into a new offense, and one that could be cut from the 2-player cloth of the Stockton-Malone era.

Some Thoughts:

1. That was slightly cathartic

A common slogan in sports these days is ‘I’m built for this.’ The slogan is meant to indicate one’s specialization and skillset as it applies to a specific task. In other words, you’re born to be that kind of athlete. Sitting here in a workshop for my college I recognize that I am not built for this. In fact, the business side of teaching is absolutely contrary to my personal nature. I’m not one for categorizations (sociology background not withstanding) but I am what you would call a ‘creative’ and a non-linear thinker for the most part. Now that means a lot of different things to different people but for me it means I have a lot of stuff up in the air and I pluck at it with the grace and skill of a juggler…

who happens to be in a low gravity environment.

In plain language, I constantly have a number of projects happening and peck at them all slowly as opposed to focusing my attention on each one to its completion then moving on to the next. I also almost never write out the guidelines and rubrics (in essence the after action report) of what I just did. I just don’t roll like that. I don’t like it and I don’t feel it works terribly well for my brain or especially my time. In essence, I do not care about such things.

Such things are the backbone of teaching and absolutely aren’t me.

The TV show Atlanta reminds me of what life would’ve been like if people had been slightly crazier than it was. Dj Khalid reminds me of what life actually is like for people who are seen as scions of the culture (if only by those outside of the culture). I’m learning that everything is spectrum.

Some Thoughts:

1. Still have not fixed the site. It is low on the priority list right now.
2. Cavs got blown out game 1. We will discuss this more Wednesday.
3. Warriors put in work as well… (see above)
4. Late nights are really not working out for me with the writing. I find myself struggling to put together words in a coherent way at any length. So the blogs get shorter and shorter and about less. I expect to blog earlier tomorrow.
5. And more coherently to boot.

As a great believer in speculative fiction I find it astoundingly interesting that the human population only reached a billion people in 1804. It took about a hundred years to hit the next billion. It took 30 years to get the next billion and… 14 more to get the next billion. Between 1804 and 2018 we jumped to 7.8 billion people on this planet. Yet we are slowing down. We are moving from the maddening 2% growth rate of the 60’s to 1.09% growth rate of 2018. This has some analysts thinking that we are in continuing decline as a species. It suggests that we are shifting towards the baseline .25% rate of the early evolution of man. This theory does not, however, speak to what is going to happen once we get there. What if the cycle of humanity is one that continues to turn. What if once we bottom out again, we breed at a high level? What are the conditions that, sociologically, would allow that? When I consider writing deep science fiction novels, those are the sorts of things I am looking at.

In this specific context I am thinking of space exploration. The numbers we are at right now don’t really make us uncomfortable. In places like Bangladesh where population density is 1,278 people per sq kilometer, the idea of space is a constant. However, even in India the p/km2 is only 455. China is 151. Both are large enough and have the size of population to be fairly comfortable with this. In contrast, the p/km2 for New York City is 11,000. Imagine if that was everywhere. 

We would be desperate to get off this planet. However, we are not. In the United States we are absolutely not. Instead with our number at 36 we’ve gone in a different direction. We have gotten so used to having a ton of space we are now trying to prevent more people from coming in and upsetting the balance. Yet here they come-to the tune of 900,000 a year. We are still in the Qin Dynasty stages of building walls vs. rockets. We still see this planet and our personal space as something that can be maintained.

What if we didn’t? And it is here that speculative fiction begins.

I spent part of my evening listening to a conversation between Barrack Obama and Dave Letterman. I was reminded throughout how different it feels to have a President who is in that role because he about his country and not because he is about himself. I’m not making a move to relitigate the election. Instead I am reflecting on the demeanor and the very nature of the men in power.

We are in many ways a reflection of those who lead us. We are a reflection of those we see as the seat of power. We try to emulate these interesting people and as a result we become a form of them and they of us. This is why I have such grave concerns about what is very quickly happening to us under the present administration.

This is not only a fear, but this is a strange certainty where I know that the situation is bound to get far worse before it gets any better. It is an absolute struggle and I struggle with knowing my personal role in all of this.

 

This is a celebration week. I’m celebrating the bday of one of my franchise boys. While he is not getting a super-sized party and gift situation, he is getting a special gift in the form of my old iphone 6 plus, and I am delivering it in a cinematic way. I’ve staged a series of balloons leading from his room to our largest beyblade stadium where it waits surrounded by balloons and buried beneath his favorite candies and a batman. Often the delivery is what makes a thing special.

I intend to celebrate with a special meal and a good amount of pool time. I’m learning more and more that the things that matter are the things that help the people I love to be happy. That in turn furthers my own happiness. Call it selfish, but only in a good way.

Some Thoughts:

1. Working on a half dozen projects right now and I am super excited about all of them.
2. Looking forward to a wonderful mother’s day with the woman I love.
3. A lot of positive stuff happening in my current reality. All I am missing is sleep.

Long before we reached the point of White House officials openly joking about sitting senators dying, we had already lost all sense of decorum. I recall hearing a journalist note that Trump is not the cause of such things but more likely the result. In truth I think it goes deeper. I think it goes to a corporate-driven social order more concerned with gaming the system than adhering to anything resembling finding shared ideals and culture amongst us all. Instead we fall victim to the same nonsense that plagues every nation. We crawl to our corners and regroup with those who are more like us than not and in that we forget our individuality in the face of what we see as a threat.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is not lost on me that the days I spend with my partner are infinitely happier in tone and substance.
2. Today is case and point as I am writing this blog without her near and the blog is not, IMHO, sufficient. This is not to place a burden upon her closeness but instead to reflect upon it. If you open your heart wide enough, you will be affected by who you let in. I am affected by her.

Sitting poolside early in the afternoon with a pitcher of Mojito, I forgot it was even Wednesday. This is the sort of thing that happens in Scottsdale. It is a version of the Vegas effect when time slips into that chasm between the chairs and you decide it is not at all worth retrieving. We showed up well before noon. It was 4:30 PM before we even realized what time it actually was. This is the kind of thing that doesn’t happen if you work a 9-5. This is the reason I will never work a 9-5. I lack the stamina for such things. I can (and have) sit and write until the sun falls behind the horizon, but it is something I love. I cannot (yet I have had occasion to) sit in an office for 8 hours and process the detritus of the modern world.

I want to live a life where research means laying under a canopy reading books or locked away in a colorful office where a half dozen flatscreens are casting the latest and greatest in science and fiction and literary wonder. I live a version of that life. Less flatscreens and color, but I am blessed with a ‘day job’ that permits me (rewards me even) to live the life I have desired since I was a little kid lining up baseball cards on the living room floor and wondering what sort of batting average I needed in order to have enough cash to make my dreams come to life.

Batting average never got me there. Yards per catch didn’t even get me close. I found the route to my dreams through a classroom and in the spaces between the lines of a novel where I best imagined what was not said and should be; where I considered what I would say if I could.

I know now that I won’t live forever. That childhood dream slipped behind the horizon. I do know now that I can live. I can live the life I dreamed of and love and languish and have the things that make me happy. All I have to do is reach.

Spent the evening making a balloon-powered car with one of my kids while the other two played much Fortnite. I’m enjoying this moment in time as the kids do interesting and fun science and math projects. I’m excited for the solid writing projects, where I can start to teach them about story design and help them explore my writing lab.

Yep, I’m officially calling it that now.

The project is not quite a dud, but it isn’t really that successful either. I need to start brushing up on my science and math. I haven’t used any of those skills in quite some time, and I recognize now how much I need them–if only to teach them to my kids and be able to be of service in the HW department.

Some Thoughts:

1. My bookshelves need to be arranged properly. This place is a mess.
2. And it smells like cat in here.
3. That is exactly what I get for working in the sitting room. I’m going to have to spend more time here, so the cat spends less.. or just clean it more than once every lunar cycle.