10 Minute Rule

I promised myself I wouldn’t rant, despite every fiber of my being telling me it is absolutely time to let all that shit fly. Still, no. I’m going to be vaguely professional. I am going to do so for as many days-weeks-months as I can, before I go full Moo. I see you Jane Smiley.

Instead I’m going back to the Waiver Wednesday I wanted to write last night after the finals. Forget about LeBron for a minute. That game was about the clutch play of Kyrie Irving and the even more epic clutch of a very title-hungry Kevin Durant. Someone trademarked Durantula before he could, so I’m going to stick with the (probably better) Slim Assassin. Late in the game Durant sealed it with a killer three point shot, but earlier Kyrie couldn’t be stopped. In fact the only person who stopped Kyrie was LeBron. He insisted on having the ball late and missed multiple layups. Kyrie did not miss but 1 and that one he sprang for the rebound to create a second shot. Kyrie showed up in a game where the Big 2 needed to score 40 apiece and fell a combined 3 points short. This following an 0-8 late game performance by the collective Cavs roster.

Speaking of that Roster, what happened to Kyle Korver? He ought to be on a Milk Carton somewhere–or at least his shot should. He has been trash from three-point-land, and that is precisely why they brought him in.

I think next year the team will add either Kyle Lowry or Russell Westbrook. Why? Because it is about superpowers now. Money matters, but a year only making a few million in salary is worth it for the title.

I’m thankful I’m a writer because…

I believe in my heart that writers experience the world differently. I believe that writers, through the act of chronicling and the act of imagination have a connection to life that makes it different somehow, like being able to see the patterns in things and thus understand why things happen and appreciate it.

I’m thankful I am a writer because it kept me company while I was a latchkey kid. I was always alone but I was never alone. I could create entire worlds and people to fill them. I would imagine great battles and love stories and a million versions of myself growing up into different lives.

I’m thankful I’m a writer because of that sensation I get when I see my work in print. Those words, first formed between my ears and now thrust out into the world to be examined, appreciated, even ridiculed.

I am thankful I am a writer because it taught me to recognize bad storytelling and to appreciate that for what it is. A well told story is a waterfall. A poorly told story is a drainage ditch and each have their purpose.

I am thankful I’m a writer because it allows me to experience other writers in a way most readers do not. I see them at their mot vulnerable–before the words have been carefully placed and polished. That experience–the taking part in the building of such things–is perhaps the most valuable of all.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. If pets are truly reflections of their owners, I wonder how much of me is reflected in my old and lazy dog?
2. Writers who drank heavily include: F. Scott Fitzgerald.

After this I am probably going to go to Culvers and eat more food than I should. As a result I will pass out and sleep through the night. This is significant, because I only have two nights left after this one. Then my kids come back. Then everything gets crazy. And Expensive.

I’ve learned this vacation that there is a painful cycle to my writing that needs to come to an end. I start to write and the feeling is like breaking up scar tissue. I write and write and eventually start to feel that awesome sense of energy and one-with-the-universe-ness I feel when I’m on a good story run. I finish and, exhausted, I kick into a refractory period. Then I do nothing for a long time. The scar tissue hardens, often coming back stronger than before. Then I get the call to write again and the process repeats.

I might have the worst process in the history of craft. All I am missing at this point is opium. I’m not talking the Bukowski/Hemingway sort of get loaded and go write. I’m talking the David Sedaris, ‘I’ve been taught this is how it ought to be done’ sort of get loaded and go write. I was taught not to alter my state to get to the words. In fact, I’ve always believed I need to be in the most sober state–tuned in–to get the words.

Lately I cannot tune in all that well and what comes happens in spurts, the way you’ll turn an old radio knob and hear something clearly for just a moment and then it is gone and you spend an hour trying to find it again. I might need to face the possibility that I am writing the wrong stories and that I’ve evolved as a storyteller to an entirely different genre of writing, though I don’t know what that genre is.

I might also have to face the fact that I have a lot of stuff happening in my life that ought to be fuel but is instead the wall I’m not allowing myself to clumsily scale in order to get to the words that breathe faintly on the other side.

Or maybe its as my muse, the love of my life suggests: maybe I’m jut being awfully lazy. After all, when you spend more time on minecraft than on a blank page, your words are not being properly served.

But that is neither here nor there right now, because ten minutes is about up and there is a burger out there waiting. Once it finds me sleep will soon follow.

Perhaps the best part of being away from the kids and work for a spell has been the opportunity to reconnect with video games in a deep and tireless way. I’ve been playing a lot of games. In fact, there is a good chance I’ll be up most of tonight straight up gaming. I have been doing so over the last few days with much glee and much relief. I’m a gamer. I was afraid I’d come to a point in my life where I had neither the skills nor time to continue that most hallowed endeavor. This was, at least in part, a result of depression and the inability to effectively organize my schedule. Gaming lived on the backburner for the most part. Every now and again I’d drop the world for a game (see Mass Effect: Andromeda) and lose footing with everything else going on. Like most things gaming requires a certain level of precision and balance.

So here I am on a once-in-a-year vacation and the gaming is going down. Sadly, there are not many special games to play, but I have been splitting time between Minecraft, Mass Effect (Multiplayer), and The Crew. Mass Effect is all me, but the other two are games I play with the boys. So, this is still at least a little about them. I also plan to take a stab at NBA 2K17… maybe. That’s a lot of time needed on task and I have never personally made it though a season playing every game.

What have I learned from all this? Gaming makes me very happy and I need to devote more time to the happy parts of my life. In truth, I need to be a better arbiter of my minutes in general. I made a goal today to sit down and write a list of all the stuff happening in my life and compare that to hours in a day/week/year and decide how much time I can devote to things and what things genuinely need to go. My problem tends to be over committing to one task to the exclusion of others. It is a problem I’ve yet to lick.

Today my sister (from another mother) is being confirmed as Jewish. She is going through the traditional ceremony and the Mikveh bath ritual–one that reminds me quite a bit of a  baptism. I’m proud of her. This is one of her largest life goals and she has worked tirelessly to achieve it. The goal is so profound that it pours into much of her writing, bleeding through scenarios and touching every possible subject matter. This massive change of lifestyle not only makes me proud, but in a way makes me jealous. She wanted this, so she went out and did it.

Sounds so simple on the surface.

Why then do so few people ever reach their dreams? Are the dreams too big, they too lazy, or is there a more nuanced truth somewhere in between the extremes, which accounts for the many possibilities of personal failure. I’ve watched people fail again and again. I’ve failed countless times and continue to do so, and therefore success feels very powerful to me. When you make it, you deserve to be shown how amazing you are.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m basically through my ASMR phase. It was fun while it lasted. While I am a fan of strange sounds and whispers, the over sexualization of the casts broke me. I didn’t come here to see your bikini. Hell, I’m not even here to watch. I’m here to listen. But the sex stuff makes it weird.
2. That being said, cats purring are about the most relaxing sounds I can think of. Well, cat grooming is pretty chill too. Yes, I accept my strangeness completely. You should too. #Diversity
3. The entire sound thing is about relaxation and background chill noise. Some writers prefer metal, some classical, I prefer whispers, clicks and other distractions that trigger my autonomous sensory meridian response. In that chill state I can write and feel far less tired and more focused while doing so.

Having time–real time–to refresh and reload your mind is an amazing opportunity. I’ve had that and found that I still do have a modicum of creativity left lingering in my mind. In fact, I still believe that small bit of the writer I intended to become lurks in me, hoping to reemerge like a particularly virulent strain of special. We are all special–writers or not. What I live for (beyond the woman I love and the kids I love) is the ability to share story with people and create through that a community of understanding if not excitement.

I’ve truly enjoyed this time ‘in hiding’ and while I am not quite done, I am moving forward in my life, gathering strength beneath me, and becoming a better version of myself every day.

How’s that for positive thinking?

Some Thoughts:

1. Sens8 was cancelled. I hate when shows I watch get cancelled prior to completing the meat of their story arc. Often the arc is trash, but in this case this was a quite interesting if over the top in its efforts to draw out connections to real world ails.
2. I’m still trying to figure out my coaching future for the next year, but it looks like I’ll be coaching 12u offense. Ought to be fun to coach the eldest Talis.

A man ought to find fear when he stops having De ja vu. You see, time folds the way you fold a towel or a bedsheet. It collapses upon itself over and over again, condensing to the point where memory can bleed with what is happening and what is going to happen. In these folds a person can believe he’s been somewhere before, though he’s never been. In these folds a person can see a bit of themselves in the future.

But when you fold something imperfect there is always a bit left over. There might be a little bit of fabric left–not enough to make it to the crease. It’s that space, I guess, when a man can no longer see the crease–can no longer experience De ja vu–when you know your time is close to running out.

So you ought to be scared. You ought to worry and take note of those last few days/weeks/years you have left of living. You see, nobody knows how wide those folds are. Nobody knows how much space lives between the creases. I used to think it was a year, maybe two. I used to feel like that de ja vu came over and over again. I’d feel it when I was walking down the street, minding my own. I’d feel it and I’d find a comfort in it, knowing I’d be doing something like this again.

It stopped for me two year ago. I know, because that last one done come round finally. I was in a Walmart–what people back in the day called a 5 and dime. I grabbed a package of soap off the shelf and remembered doing that same thing before. Only this wasn’t no memory. I was feeling the other end of de ja vu I’d had two years prior. Felt like hearing the crack of a rifle long after you’d seen the puff of smoke letting you know it went off or thunder trailing behind lightning like a fat kid red faced and sweating to keep up.

Once I felt that memory slide into me I realized I hadn’t felt anything like that since two years prior. I knew then I didn’t have no creases left. So now I wait and I wonder and I hope I’m ready when my time runs out.

Ten minutes on a Windows based laptop is a form of hell. I should’ve gone to the garage to retrieve the laptop, but it is dark down there, and I am home alone, and I have been listening to a lot of  Stephen King. So instead I sit in my kids’ room swirling with nostalgia and a growing sense of disappointment as I watch the words I typed moments ago slowly take shape across this tiny screen.

It turns out I’m a mac guy.

I guess it started back in college when the mac was still a rectangular box with a cathode face and a mouth you could insert mini floppy disks into. I fed the school mac disk after disk, always making sure I had a fresh disk less my files get corrupted and I lose all my writing. It only happened once, but that once was lesson enough to make sure it never happened again. Back then the English department was spread across two buildings–the oldest ones on that part of campus. Even then I knew there was a stigma about English. It was a dead-end area–something that bore no connection to the real world job market. Hell, even acting had a public face to it. We’d walk across the street and watch movies and know that the musicians and the actors all had somewhere they could dream to go and go big! We writer’s didn’t have any of that. The Lit and Comp-Rhet people had it worse. I could, at least marginally, say I could be the next Neal Stephenson. They could say they would get a job somewhere in Academia.

The knowledge that our profession was to stay behind the walls of academia bonded us all in a way. We settled into the idea of the college life and dreamt it would be like this even when we were old. The professors were in on the joke too. They sometimes threw parties or had one of us house sit, all leading to a sense of place and belonging within the collegiate system. I think that is why I ended up teaching in the end. It just felt familiar and expected.

Wednesday is sports day. Normally I reserve this space for (marginally) useful conversations about football, but there is nothing of relevance really going on in football. OTA’s are not relevant. What is relevant is the showdown brewing in the Golden State. For the first time in NBA history the same two teams are meeting in the finals for the 3rd straight year. This is the rubber match. It is unlikely that both will be back next year (though the argument that Lowry is trying to get to Cleveland does change that conversation–if true), so this is the own where we learn who is the mightiest.

Only, that is not the whole story.

Today we discovered that Lebron James’ L.A. Mansion was vandalized with a racial epitaph. He responded by saying that no matter how much money and power you have, in the end you remain a black dude in America and that is a terrifying thing. In other words, despite his status he is still being subjected to this type of stuff. Will this affect his play? Nope. One has nothing to do with the other, IMHO. What will affect his play? Draymond Green.

Here is my guess for the finals: Golden State in 7. The real factor here is the play of the secondary guys–guys like Kyle Korver on the CLE side and Javale McGee on the GS side. These are the guys they brought in that were not the big names, but are going to be the impact players who create opportunities for the big 3 on each squad. And how about those big 3? Honestly, I think Cleveland has the edge, because Kyrie Irving is balling out of his mind. Everyone is talking about Kevin Love finally putting in legitimate work in this offense (and not sucking too bad on D) but Kyrie is that guy.