At times I wish I was a better anthropologist; that I could slip into different societies with the calm and practiced routine of a native. I’m not. I’m the guy on the beach in the bright blue dryfit, a stark contrast to the muted colors of the locals. Not an outcast but an outsider, unfamiliar with how to look and how to behave in the environment. There is good in that. On the one hand I maintain my sense of self, because I am always some muted form of me on these occasions. There is also the opportunity to learn, should I allow myself the time and space to sink in and do so.

This post comes from Pacific Beach. I’m sitting steps away from the ocean writing and observing. I’m drinking in the social order. I am relearning what is acceptable, what is expected, what is beautiful, and ugly, and wanted, and abhorred. I am only here for a few hours, which is not nearly enough time to become a native. It is enough time to sink into the idea of the people and to watch and to enjoy and to recognize the nexus of tourists and locals and daytrippers such as myself and start to tell the difference.

All of that is important to me as a writer and as a person in general. As a writer it is how I learn to sculpt worlds. As a person it helps me to recognize more about who I am, how I am seen, and how I see other people.

Some Thoughts:

1. Overheard quote of the day, “I would want a pool so we wouldn’t have to do anything.” I get it. I want a pool for that exact reason. I want a non-digital activity for my kids that doesn’t require me to drive or do anything that takes away my own time. It used to feel selfish, but kids are selfish by nature and if you don’t carve out the opportunities for yourself you are going to get swept up in their universe.
2. I am grateful to be here with the woman I love.

On the eve of an epic daytrip I don’t really have a lot of cohesive thoughts to string together. I can say that I’m super excited about planning a fun few days with my boys. I can say a handful of other things that are best collected as…

Some Thoughts:

1. This is the first time in the new iteration of the blog that I have not had a bunch to say at once. By bunch I mean a single ten-minute worthy thought.
2. I am in the earliest stages of designing a new fantasy realm from the ground up and writing it’s stories. I plan to go the Hugh Howey route on this and publish through Amazon. However, that is a long way off as all I have now is a small section of the world formed in my head. I have the idea of a city that divides two rival kingdoms. Or at least that is what I see right now.
3. Love is complicated and draining. Passion is less complicated but feels more temporary lately. One is the long burning ember and the other the blue flame. Maybe it is all in my head. That’s a dangerous place these days.
4. I am overexcited for football. Even on the youth level I’m looking forward to the intricacies of the sport.
5. I am far less excited to start the fall semester. It isn’t about the students.
6. At the core of what I think and do is a singular personality and one that remains in flux as of late. Me being me is something I don’t always know how to do because I don’t always know what it is.
7. People take a long time to heal…

“That’s why Monday flares up like an oil-slick,
when it sees me up close, with the face of a jailbird,
or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes,
stepping hot-blooded into the night.”

Pablo Neruda was not a fan of Mondays. While this isn’t my favorite translation of the violent passage from his poem, Walking Around, it does capture the anger and lust of the day. It encompasses that feeling that Monday is a different kind of beast–an awakening of sorts or perhaps a descent into madness. Though I lacked the potent command of words with which to express my disdain. Monday was long a pressure filled arrival that brought disappointment and the realization of my own shortcomings. I tried to alter that trajectory recently by erasing Monday as a workday. This fall I’m rebranding Mondays as no-class Monday and turning the day into a time where I can fall slowly into the work week and patiently develop the fortitude with which to deal with the horrors of midweek.

Midweek is the new boogey monster then. It is that space between awkward beginnings and long-awaited ends where everything seems its furthest point from completion. Of course, I suppose I will rebrand that at some point too, learning to look forward to every day as a new possibility as opposed to some dark beast slouching towards me waiting to be born.

Some Thoughts:

1. For better than 4 decades I’ve been less than an organized human. I suppose it can happen if I really work at it, but I don’t know exactly what is going to work for me or be comfortable. It is largely a habit of mind, and what I have been doing has not worked or made me a better version of myself in any way. If anything it has continuously held me back. I gotta get better at this.

I am in the midsts of a golden opportunity here and I might be blowing it.

Getting children to appreciate physics is a science all of its own. Yet here I sit surrounded by boys who are really really into Beyblade. The game is about designing small plastic and metal tops that you spin using a gear-based machine called a ‘ripper’ which accelerates the top and launches it into a circular arena. Here centripetal force takes control–or doesn’t–and the beys spin around the arena smashing into each other until one of them flys out, falls down, or explodes. The surviving bey is the winner.

Despite my half-sciency description, the game is all kids of fun. Still it does have a strong science backing. You select parts based on size and weight and shape and even spin direction. Each choice you make helps to form a beyblade that is capable of different things in the arena. Some are called ‘defense types’ meaning they can take a lot of hits. Balance types are designed to spin longer and hold angular momentum to maintain torque. Attack types are designed around the concept of torque and linear momentum. Their main task is to fire out in a straight line or zig zag pattern, striking the opposing bey with enough force to knock it off its path and angle, possibly even creating a situation where the loosely connected components explode apart. This is called the burst condition.

Basically, I have a chance to teach them physics on at least a basic level to the point where they understand how the STEM knowledge makes them better in their play. This then translates from play to the classroom and eventually to the workforce, shaping the way they think and interact with our universe.

I could do all of that. Yet I haven’t.

Yet.

Some Thoughts:

1. I recently heard the term Narrowcasting (vs. Broadcasting) on a TedTalk and I am smitten.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A person calls 911 and when cops arrive on scene an overzealous officer mistakes the caller for a perpetrator and kills the caller. The website copblock has dozens of these stories, with victims ranging from 7 to 70. This particular story doesn’t come from copblock.org. It comes from CNN and, apparently exclusively from CNN in terms of the major 3 American news outlets. However, this story is different than most and those differences might be why the story cannot gain traction.

The specifics of this Minnesota horror story remain a little murky, but here is what we know: Justine Ruszczyk, a 40 year old Australian-American woman, called 911 and reported a possible assault/rape in an alley. Cops arrived on scene quickly and quietly. They drove up to alley with the car lights, headlights, and sirens off. Officers heard a loud sound near the car window. Ruszczyk approached the window and officer Mohammed Noor, a Somali-American, shot her. She was in her pajamas. She was not armed. From what I can gather the officer was startled by her appearance at the window and reacted. He has refused to comment on the shooting.

If you want to break this down in racial terms, because ultimately people have begun to look at police shootings in this fashion, a black cop shot a white woman. Or in ‘Dateline and 20/20 terms’ a black cop from a predominantly muslim nation shot a pretty white woman engaged to be married. The adjectives (or circumstances) matter in many ways. I believe they are responsible for why the story isn’t gaining traction. I completely admit that I thought these conditions would be exactly why the story got a lot of attention. However, I understand completely why I was wrong. If you break this down in racial terms, it destroys the predominant ideological viewpoint of the story and makes the story about the one thing we aren’t actually willing to address.

The media is largely ignoring this story. A search of msnbc reveals no mention of the story, even using keywords. Fox doesn’t have any mention of the story either, and in fact their biggest Minnesota story is “Fish attack at Minnesota lake leaves girl, 11, with deep lacerations to her foot, leg” which makes all the sense in the world because their FoxTech page leads with the headline “BIRTH OF ‘DEMON GOAT’ TERRIFIES TOWN; POLICE ARE CALLED” Yeah, I’m adding the pic.

1. Why are sex terms so violent? Smash? Really?
2. Why am I constantly thinking about sex? You betray me, Lizard brain!
3. Why is thinking about sex a bad thing?

I closed the door on the crazy gaggle of kids outside, aware of the power of 4th child. I didn’t have 4 children but often a 4th (and 5th, 6th, 7th, even 8th) shows up. The volume effectively doubles with each kid. After a while you can hear them down the block. After a while you can hear them in the afterlife. The thing that brings forth the most squeals of joy and disappointment is a game called BeyBlade. I enjoy playing it with them to a point. That point breaks off when the screams get out of control and or when it gets to the point where one kid is totally dominating every match over and again. We are at the point now where the kids are largely even. Mid kid has an advantage with one particular beyblade, but overall there is not a clear superstar. Well, maybe me. Of course last night I was utterly destroyed to the point where I was eliminated outright in the first round. New experience right there. It is all part of getting old or older. As they age and I age the sweet spot shifts away from me and towards them. Good for them. Not for me.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Check out James Harrison, a professional football player who is in one of the most physically demanding and thus youngest skewing positions in the league.

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/888078038021419008/video/1

Yep, that is an 1800 lb sled going backwards. Below he and his far younger group of teammates and friends are playing catch over a volleyball net. With a 100 lb medicine ball. 

http://www.nfl.com/videos/pittsburgh-steelers/0ap3000000820790/James-Harrison-s-IMPRESSIVE-medicine-ball-throw

Yeah, that happened. I’m planning on putting that game into play with my boys. Six pound variety though.

While I am on the subject of kids, I am in a strange place with the school situation. I realized recently that my eldest son has his heart set on a High School, but I don’t have any real desire to live within the boundary of that school. All three are in that district, leading me to recognize that I may be called upon to live in that district. Or drive.

Weak sauce.

Some Thoughts:

1. Call. Coffee. Write.
2. Funny how kids decide not to eat breakfast the moment you decide not to cook it. What ever happened to making cereal? Pop Tarts? Why does every morning require me to don the smile and apron of dear Aunt Jemima?

I write from this odd little rectangular office that is partially painted and filled with the sort of bric-a-brac meant to inspire writers such as myself. Whether or not this is effective is highly debatable and largely irrelevant at this stage, because it is also filled with piles of mess of the sort that makes any form of concentration exceedingly difficult.

Still I write.

Yesterday I wrote at a slick bar/coffee shop called Grand Central, which was built out of a old train facility in downtown Phoenix. I don’t think slick is even right. It lives in that space between hipster and genuine cool. The people that were there spanned multiple generations. There were groups of white hairs and groups of 18 year olds and everything–including me–in between. I liked it. I liked the dim lights and the music and the ‘just out of the way’ big screens projecting landscapes. This place felt good to write in, and I want to feel that way whenever I sit down to write.

The place you write needs to help your mood and energy, not distract from it. If your focus is on dealing with the place you are at then you aren’t accessing the stream. You aren’t joining with the idea of story and pulling the truth and message from that. Last night I was watching ‘Her’ at an indie theater and the seat I sat in was just below the AC vent. By mid movie I was completely frozen and had to get up and walk out several times to warm myself. It hindered the experience. I didn’t want to look for another seat in the crowded theater. Where I was afforded an easier and less disruptive opportunity to just walk out. However, the spot did make it hard for me to be fully in the film. This is the same way in which a space that is less than ideal prevents you from being fully in the writer’s mindset. In order to truly achieve excellence you ought to be fully in the writer’s mindset. The place you write ought to allow for that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Here is some insider info: This is my new teeshirt connect: www.teepublic.com

I think the toughest and most dread-filled moment a writer has is the moment s/he stares at a blank page. In that moment is all the joy and possibility of being a writer but also all of the fear. We take this frightful step in the divided way people tear off a bandaid. For a time I was the hesitant one, anxious and frightened by that brief burst of pain sure to come at first tug, yet ignorant of the truth of the lasting pain of tearing it off slowly no matter how many times I completed the ritual.

Over time I came to rip it off quickly. I would sit without gathering my thoughts in full and write. What spilled from my imagination was more curdled milk than sweet milk, but the act was done and I could finally dig into the real of the story.

Over time that confidence (or was it lack of concern or fear) faded and the slow tear away rose in my mind. This is when writing resembled chore more than pleasurable work. Even then I would have occasional nights of sitting at the laptop and being tickled by a turn of phrase or excited to see the words of a conflict unfurl themselves in slow pecking succession.

My love for writing dimmed darkest at the height of my success. It isn’t that I told stories purely to be published but that I expected each story to top the last, and that is not a realistic goal. Each story is its own thing and not each will be superior to the former, the way each child will be different than yet not superior to the one birthed before him. I could not square that reality with my expectations and everything in me eroded.

That expectation isn’t gone entirely, but I am also not the carefree writer just excited to tell cool stories–not yet at least. What I am doing is falling back in love with cool stories and reading the truly shaping and meaningful ones with the person I pour my love into so that together we might find new understanding and renewed faith in what is possible in story.

And beyond.

Some Thoughts:

1. I recently learned that it takes 6,693 reps (give or take) to form a muscle habit. I expect I’ll be testing that theory.
2. My coffee maker is stuck on the clean cycle. No wonder they dropped the price. Folks knew it was messed up.
3. There I go thinking the very worst of people. I often behave as though I am in the world of the walking dead or that of Roland the Gunslinger where I know the world is full of harriers and I and my ka-tet are the only ones I can trust to be reliable.
4. My ka-tet is very small and doesn’t include most who would be called blood kin.

In my efforts to get a little more ‘loosey goosey’ with the way this blog works I’ve stayed away from formalized days for certain ideas. No Waiver Wednesday, in other words. No fantasy football at all, in fact. I started to feel like the fantasy aspect of the game was changing my relationship with the game. I recognized that I was routing for statistics and individual achievements, often to the detriment of the team I enjoyed watching. Imagine watching your favorite team and hoping beyond hope that someone scores on them. No, that sucks. However, that is the conundrum of fantasy, because you are pretending to be a GM and managing players outside of the actual context of their responsibility.

This is not a knock on fantasy football. I enjoyed it for many years. Now I am taking time off. Instead I am going to enjoy the game in the classic sense. For me that means watching two games at once while I play Madden on a 3rd monitor. Yeah, that’s happening. Happening August 18th, actually.

In the meanwhile I do love the hype and buildup of the preseason and the training camps. I treat these things as important to the sport as the game itself. Pre-season camp is where bonds are made and rookies show out and under performing vets have a chance to show that they still have what it takes to be in the show.  That kind of drama doesn’t often translate outside of football. There is no training camp for office work or even teaching. The ability to touch that tension gives me access to more story and a wider breadth of what I understand. Given my brief relationship with collegiate athletics I completely understand a great number of the tensions and storylines and needs and wants, etc. In the end, that understanding adds to my enjoyment and builds up more firewood for story.

Turns out everything in my life boils down to story. Even the characters in the Madden fantasy are more than just code. They too have imaginary lives and tensions and familial relationships and needs…

Basically what I’m revealing here is that I am a big weird nerd. Or maybe a geek. I took a quiz recently, and it said I am fairy normal which indicates being geek or nerd (or dork) is somehow abnormal. Fuck that quiz.

A while back now, in that space when the blog died, I made a decision to limit my responsibilities to as little as I can possibly do and still be happy with the amount of ‘life’ in my life. I felt that the limitations allowed me to place more energy and time into the things that matter. I wouldn’t be scrambling for time to accomplish X,Y,Z, Z3, etc. One of the hardest choices I made was the choice to continue coaching for one last season. I felt I owed it to my eldest boy to be his tackle football coach at least once. He’s played multiple seasons of tackle–twice on championship teams and once on a team that couldn’t win a single game. This latest defeating season pushed him out of football for a while. It wasn’t the losing as much as it was the awareness that the coaches didn’t really have a plan or sense of cooperative spirit–basically anything going on that made the season feel like something worth participating in.

I don’t even think he took his trophy.

That season I coached the mid-kid and later I coached the ‘baby’. Now, despite understanding the workload, I decided to coach him. It is going to be a herculean task to coach a squad of 19+ 12 year olds, most of whom have no tackle experience. Somehow I need to turn that situation into success.

My role in the endeavor is as offensive coordinator. I teach the plays, mostly call the plays, and work with the HC on a system to get the plays on the field. This is my first time in that role and I decided to play it smart and use a pre-developed offensive system that has been ‘grass-tested’ enough to work for kids like the ones I am dealing with. It is going to be quite a challenge.

I hope I am ready.

Some Thoughts:

1. I used to wonder how I would handle the blog once it got up into the high thousands. It is cumbersome to say 10,083. I can’t use the stardate-esque 1.634 anymore given the reboot. I may just go with the ‘k’ shorthand.
2. At least I’m expecting the blog to get there. After last night I just appreciate the fact that I’m here to blog at all. I woke several times shaking with fear and convinced that someone was tugging on my blanket. Hard. Fortunately there was nobody there–not physically and it didn’t feel like there was anything else present in the space either. I’m going with ‘it was just a bad dream’
3. I will not be able to make the solar eclipse. Next one is in 2024. I’m extremely hurt by this, especially given that the love of my life will be there.