10 Minute Rule

I’m good tired–the kind of fatigue that comes from doing something you think is useful. I’m helping the father-in-law shape a space to have his 75th. We’re putting up lights and cleaning out lots and making sure everything lines up nice for the horde of people to come pay service to his aging. I’m quite impressed with the life the man has led thus far. I’m quite impressed he’s been able to do so much and remain as healthy as he seems while I’m feeling pangs in my heart from the little bit I’ve done thus far. Some folks are born to be old. Others are born to die young. Others still fall along that spectrum. I don’t know when my time is supposed to be up, but when it is I want to know I’ve done as much as I could as well as I could and loved with every ounce of my soul.

I also want a lot more time. I can’t say that I deserve it. I can’t say if any of us do, but the want is there. The desire to do more and make more resonates. With any luck I will continue to be able to pay it forward to those who will come after and those who are here now. I suppose I am beginning to understand just how old I actually am and as such, just how long I might have left. There is sadness in that. There is a sense of displeasure in realizing there is less life in front of you than there is behind, like you’ve been on the rollercoaster and you know that next big loop is the last one. You still want to appreciate the loop, but you know there isn’t a chance you get to ride again.

I find myself feeling terribly maudlin lately. I find that I am unsettled by the burgeoning reality of the now and am I unprepared for what this next step is supposed to be. I am grateful I have a partner to go forward with. I am grateful for a number of things. I am grateful for playing a role in all of our kids’ lives, even if half of them would rather be elsewhere when it comes time to celebrate family and give thanks. I accept that the way I accept all thing–with the understanding that you cannot change the things you cannot change. Yet we must maintain the courage to change the things we can. I mean to do such. This is, after all, the eve of the next act. I intend to live that act out to the best of my ability.

I don’t know how to start this because I do not have a ton to say. It’s another day in this space between things. I am on the farm and, somewhat, getting the writing in. I am slowly moving through these final editing notes in order to pull together this mess of a novel into something I can be proud of putting on shelves. It is not what I wanted it to be. I’ve learned through these experiences that I do not end stories well. I need to go back to stronger outlining, because pantsing it is not for me. The last one — make that the last three were pantsers and not a one was meant to be. They started as well scripted beginnings, which devolved into hastily concluded stories that tried too hard to wrap too much up while, at the same time, seeking to grow beyond the original parameters.

This is the kind of thing that does not happen when you’re tightly scripting a plot. Perhaps that is what is making me really nervous about my Justice Engine. I have a vision of the last chapter and what I think could be a strong beginning… and nothing in between. I was hoping the general real-life structure of such things would give me a format to work with, but I realize that I am fooling myself to that extent. I need to think it through more. In truth, I need to script it through more. I should be writing out each chapter over and over again, adding a few lines each pass the way I’ve been doing with the one novel sitting on the shelf that I ought to get back to in this 26′ rotation.

First, let’s finish the one I am supposed to submit in the next few weeks. Fourteen days–that is exactly how long I have in order to get this thing done, and then it is back to waiting for the people on the editing side to do what they do. So, back to the word mines for me. I have a lot to do and a lot more to think about doing. The work is piling up and the time is winding down.

Sounds like a regular November for the Talislegger.

Some Thoughts:

1. I love the idea of coming out here a few times a year and getting reset. It feels like a reset every time I am here, because this world is small and the requirements are very specific and measurable and doable. That leaves me a good amount of time to do me and do writing. I love the balance I strike out here. I don’t fall terribly far off kilter the way I do in the desert.
2. If only it had a spa bath…

I love it out here in the Tennessee backwoods. The more time I spend out here, the more curious facts I learn about the state. For example, I did not know that Vanderbilt University was in state. In Nashville in fact. So much ballyhoo is raised about U of Tennessee that it is easy to forget that there are other schools in the state. It’s like “The” Ohio State University, when there are several other academic icons in the state.. Oberlin, Bowling Green… Ohio State gets all the love. Tennessee gets all the love. That of course traces back to sports. Football, mainly. I never stop being surprised at how much money that sport generates on every level.

Here in the woods the only sport I’ve been watching is pig races. Which pig gets to the new feed first? There’s also the squirrel fights. Once they see that nut all bets are off. Things are slower here and that gives me more time to focus on what I care about–spending time with people I love, and writing. The big two. I’ve yet to fall into the second one, but I realize that it needs to happen today and onward. Once I get back to the desert the distractions will flood in.

Maybe that is the most important take away. I rarely sit in my office and lock in anymore. There isn’t silence outside, so I seek distraction inside. That always results in a slower and less productive version of myself. I spent 7 hours working Monday and produced a dribble of schoolwork. How many of those hours were spent chasing some youtube rabbit hole?

I aim to make the best of my time here. It might be smart to start scheduling more time here. The Lady Talislegger loves the place and it gives us more time to spend with pop. On my end, I write more and feel better and more centered as a human. These things are tougher in the desert.

More and more I realize this blog is a respite. Ten minutes during which I can do what I want and the only responsibility in life I have is to write out the ten minute limit. That is freedom. Like all freedom, it is contextual–it exists within a small window of rules. I have to sit for ten minutes and write. That’s enough for me. It reminds me how much I love the Butt in Chair aspect of simply sitting here and doing the thing I’ve been doing my entire life–since I wrote that silly Choose Your Own Adventure book about Russia in early elementary school. I knew then I loved the vocation. I knew I wanted to write always and that I would write for as long as I could. I didn’t know whether or not I would be great at it, but I was always someone who believed he was ‘the best at what I did’.

I am not. In truth, I’m not even a top ten dude. I learned that with football, baseball, coaching, romance, teaching, leadership…. man the list goes on. I have always been more of a Jack of all Trades. However, I think that of all the things I am capable of doing, writing is the one thing that leaps above the rest. These ten minutes of reflection are grounding. The time and space, while sometimes grating, reminds me of what I believe I was meant to do in life. I am here to love my people and write kick ass lore. I’m getting good at one of those things.. it ain’t the lore.

What I need to be doing is locking in. There are so many things in my life I want to be very good at, but the one thing I am really good at–the one thing I can get top 25 ranking in–I’m neglecting. I need to turn up. This might be the week for that action.

I want to talk about our inability to have patience. In a more targeted sense, I want to talk about the high expectations that are destroying the sporting world. I feel that it is an example of what is going on with the larger argument, and I feel it is the one that is the most dangerous, as it forms our expectations and continues to push the narrative of impatience.

I am a fan of Coach Prime. He has his flaws to be clear. He has his drawbacks–one of which is the amount of attention he gets. That in of itself is an engine of division. The more that is said, the more eyes are one him. So, he instantly becomes an example of the larger phenomena. Before we talk about him, let’s talk about Tulsa and Tre Lamb. Tulsa’s new coach took the job after Tulsa went 12-24 over the past three years. He’s 2-7 this season. Nobody is calling for his job. Sanders took over a program that was equally poor and had fewer eyes on it than Tulsa, as the dog of the Pac12. Prime’s record is 16-19. His team has been ranked as high as 16th in the nation in that time. So, what is the difference? Well, I can pull the black card here (Just ask the Jets new coach!) but the real issue is eyes on the program and the larger expectations and polarizations towards what people talk about. If we are talking about them, we expect perfection. Think about Penn State. They had one of the best coaches in football. He got fired for losing 3 games.

The more in the public eye you are, the more money is spent on your program, the larger the expectations of absolute success. I remember earlier this year all eyes were on Arch Manning. He was expected to be the greatest thing since color TV. He stumbled on the big stage and people immediately called for his head. Heck, I did. He didn’t live of to expectations. I hate that the word has such negative connotations, but there it is. Expectations appear to only be good when you exceed them. That should not be how it works.

Sundays are wearing me out. I live for the days where I am enjoying the outdoors and also getting time to enjoy the things I love indoors. Sundays are working out in that fashion but it leaves me a little brain drained. That’s where this piece starts. Brain drain means few longform coherent thoughts. Which means…

Some Thoughts:

1. I have way too many things to remember on a daily basis. I gotta break this stuff down and eliminate the things I don’t really need to do.
2. Also need to get my life together faster–especially in terms of having teaching stuff ready way before semester.
3. I checked my numbers for the spring. I need to get them up–especially in the creative writing classes.
4. Everything now is about building a longform resume for the next stage. I need to be able to prove that I am a good teacher, because the next stage is about people who don’t know me when I, eventually, move and start over.
5. Starting over is very exciting–at least at first. Finding a new routine is an adventure. Settling into a new space when you lack the funds to do it right is a straight up pain.
6. Sports have dominated my life for a while now. It is a strange feeling to know the last kid is nearing ‘drive himself’ age and opportunity, which means my role will be super limited. I love that idea. I love how it will change my daily routine. Excited for it.

wish in one hand… I think you know the rest. This week was filled with the rest in terms of competitive performance. 3 boys, one win. Losses on mock trial and college football—blowouts on both accounts. The worst part is not seeing the kid play the kind of minutes that he earned. Instead a lot of the backups were in, as though Coach is looking to the future and that future means deciding who is up next on the roster. They were blown out by NAU after last weeks rough blowout. That is the kind of thing that breaks a competitive culture. A defense that was top 20 nationally wound up giving up over 100 points over two tough weeks. There is no coming back from that.

I don’t know what practice will look like next week, but I know there will be fewer eyes on the program. I know some players are done fighting. I know my kid isn’t and I hope he gets a real chance to show that and show out in the next two weeks. After, we will se what happens. They could be a 5 win team and they could be less than that. They will still be better than they were and worse than they expected and intended to be.

That brings me to the other Colorado team. They broke in a new qb and lost another game. It’s past the point of being able to get to bowls. Ow. More people are calling for Prone to quit or be fired.

I think they’re in a tough rebuild but I also think they’re as good as can be expected right now based on how they built the thing. The money wasn’t there and the local talent wasn’t there. That luggage done left without achieving the dream so it is time to go shopping and get more coaches who can make the offense sing.

I am not doing a good job being a writer. I want and need to do a heck of a lot better. As I go through this latest work and see how I am being bullied into reforming it as a ‘woke’ version of itself, I am also thinking that I need to get to a space where I can say the things I want to say and portray different types of characters–some of whom are not necessarily good people. I think that I have put myself in a situation to be disrespected and misrepresented by an editor whose vision comes from a place far different than my own and thus lends itself to a style of writing and a narrative different from what I am wanting to produce.

I gotta move beyond Shadowrun. It isn’t what it was or even should be. We’ve stripped away a lot of the darker and punk aspects of the genre in favor of a funner, lighter, more giddy and anime-esque atmosphere that isn’t what I want to be writing about. Cyberpunk 2077’s entire body of work from stories to the show to the game itself would not have passed to the public under this administration. It isn’t that kind of dark, but I truly feel more comfortable writing things that show the frayed edges of human nature and showing that not everyone is PC–even the so-called good guys.

But they publish me. I want to be published. If I was better, more people would publish me. So, I gotta get better.

Consistency. There’s a word/term I am surpassingly good at executing. I am consistently inconsistent. In fact, if I was consistent, I would be 7 novels deep as opposed to two. I would not again be rewriting the second one and would also not be stuck on the breakout one or anything at all, because when you do a thin enough, there are more days you’re good at doing it than there are days that you are bad at doing it. Take this bog for example. I’ve missed eight days over the past decade and a half. So, in that sense, I am a lot better at doing it than not. In fact, the last time I missed a post was 241 days ago. A Monday, apparently. March 10th 2025. It feels like I’ve lived an entire life since that day. I don’t know what I was doing back then at all. I can tell you what I wrote the day after…

It took 828 days for me to fail. A slow burn that led me from the excitement and remorsefulness of the change from 6-7 to the fall into 8. The 8th iteration of this blog–this moment of writing every single day–is going to be a different moment for me. It is a new beginning in many ways. I need to make this time meaningful to myself and to whatever audience I possess. I didn’t always do that. I often walked ass-backwards into a last minute post that was meaningful to nobody–not even me. I was mailing it in to get through that day to the next. I did this several times over the last 828. I didn’t, therefore, create a lasting and meaningful space for writing or for personal reflections.

I did not get it done, and that reflects on who I have been over these nearly three years. I’ve been a man at his wits end. I’ve been a man unmoored in some ways; A man who doesn’t lock in and focus on the things that matter. I have let myself down over this period. I have let down the most important people in my life as well–primarily as a result of being lax in communication, private and not up front with information, not firm in parenting, and checked out on the things that are most important to them. All of this is bad. All of this is in need of change.

It is time for me to begin again.

Each year feels like I am living an entire life as of late. Each year is a cycle of madness and wonder and my own inconsistency. I don’t remember the man who missed a blog after 828 days and only ten days before his 50th. Heck, I’ve been married and toured the planet since then. What I haven’t done is write enough. So, that is the thing to consider. What we are consistent in is what we are defined by. I am defined by my inconsistency. I am defined by the lapses and restarts as opposed to steady production.

The beauty of life is that we get to redefine ourselves within a window of reason. I can be consistent in my habits and health, though I have not. It will be hard to do, but it will be worth it. I just need to have the courage and the will to follow through. Thus far, I have not. So, what is it going to take? Knowing my life is shorter ahead than it is behind hasn’t done that for me. So, what will? How do I convince my spirit to sing in tune? I suppose if I knew the answer, my financial woes would be gone.

Some Thoughts:

1. What’s crazy about the financial woes is that it would not take much to clear the deck of all of it. Unfortunately, that extra little bit we need to be where we want to be always is just beyond our financial reach.

This is the fifth of November and the 36th day of the government shutdown, I believe. Trump is screaming for the Republicans to kill the filibuster in order to put the government back in business and pass all kinds of legislation. “They won’t be able to stop us” he says, but this is terrifying to Republicans, because they won’t be able to stop democrats once things swing the other way. IF things ever swing the other way. We got the first signs that they might with a series of elections that went the democratic way. The Mamdani election in particular pointed to a people more interested in issues than party. As a native New Yorker, I was proud to see the city raise up and try to move towards affordability. Trump, predictably, threatened the man post victory.

Politics, right? That was the entire argument of V for Vendetta. That film is very punk, and I’ve been trying to clearly understand how to write punk characters for a while now. I’m not sure I’ve done a good job of it. As I am passing through the latest novel of mine, I am reading for punk, and wondering if I got it right. Maybe punk is changing. More likely, my understanding of it is changing.

My understanding of a lot of this world is changing and growing as the weeks and days and years slide by. As I grow, I learn and that learning rebuilds my internal writing compass. It makes me a better storyteller to see how the world works and how it doesn’t.