10 Minute Rule

I told my students to write a chapter a week. I wasn’t expecting final draft level stuff. I wanted something slightly above word vomit–the core of the story put to page with room to improve in rewrite. I think I sealed the deal, because they all seemed like they were willing to try and because I promised I’d write a chapter a week myself. This is of course easier said than done. I know I have the core story in my head and ready to commit to paper. I just have to get my butt in the chair and get to a place where I am using the little time I have in a more productive fashion. A good deal of my time is lost to side projects and video games and video games serving as side projects. I want to limit those things and start taking better care of my mental health so I have the energy to create the worlds and landscapes I imagine.

The old quote suggests ‘may we live in interesting times’ and we do live in such times. Here I sit in an era where big business is poised to make (and likely keep) ridiculous amounts of money. After all, these are some of the same political leaders that made buying an SUV all but free in America–so long as you did so for business purposes. Which brings me to my point: It is high time to start a business. Sure, the economy is going to sag for a very large financial demographic, but if you’re putting your time and (borrowed) capital into the right kind of business then you are in a really good spot to profit. What, might you ask, is that business? Schools.

This is the prime time to open a charter school. Should she get nominated, the incoming education secretary is highly interested in privatizing (read: monetizing) the public school system. If you take tax dollars off the register then, in this political climate, you look like you are doing something. So, when those funds go towards increasing other areas of note such as private business you look like you are doing even more. Add it all up and building a charter program is all about the bucks. Why not? Teacher salaries are ebbing towards a low in most states, and with little limitations on how charters operate it is simple enough to fortify your numbers through partnerships with colleges and other areas where teachers are being trained and retrained. So long as the student grades meet the often arbitrary state numbers you can be very successful and personally profitable.

Which leads me to this: I want to open a school. Sarcasm aside, I have a lot of ideas on how to make it work and I have very little need for mass profiteering. I want enough to have a little house and feed my boys, but the bulk of money ought to be invested in the school itself and providing the best education and programs outside of the basic areas that any school is directed to provide. I want to offer coding, pottery, advanced music and dance, a relationship with the museums, creative writing that links students to a publishing track, a robust sports program that draws the eye of local high schools, etc.

I want it all. I think I can get it now.

I might have just uncovered one of the most accurate superbowl predictors in recent history: Me. I’m not making a joke here. In the all too unpredictable world of guessing who is going to the show I am 5 for 6 in the last six years. How do I do it, you ask? By being a flag football coach.

Follow me for a moment. Seven years ago I started picking which teams my kids played for. I took the advice of a good friend and tried to give them a new team as much as possible. I often had one kid be the Giants, because they are the best football franchise ever. Still the others were subject to this new opportunity. In that first year, 2009, I picked the Packers. They went to the Superbowl in feb of 2011. The next year we were the Giants, then the Ravens, then the Seahawks, then the Broncos… I was also spot on with the Saints when they took it, but I didn’t choose that team name.

Three guesses who all my kids played as last year:

Yep, the Falcons.

This is spooky accurate and somewhat sad now, because I did not coach this year and the one kid who played is playing as an LA Ram. Meanwhile his brother has been helping the Texans during their practices. It would stand to reason that one or both will be in the championship next year.

I always had this idea that I would have the ‘kids house’ meaning the one all the kids would want to hang at, which also meant a modicum of control over who my boys spent time with. Lately it has been that way, but lately it has been too much.

The old saying, ‘be careful what you wish for’ proves itself true everyday. Kids are kids. They want to get into everything and eat everything and milk your time. They want to play constantly and have zero regard for the work you need to do–even if they are your own kids. Today was much the same, with eight kids roaming the halls of the TalisSpace. We played games and had fun, but as always the younger kids (not mine) completely forgot about the rules and spent their moments digging around in the pantry and touching a bunch of stuff that they should not. Perhaps the lesson here is to be prepared that if you’re going to have that many kids over you are going to need to be ready to watch them with eight eyes, because two never seems to be enough. My eldest gets it. He prefers when we all play outside where none of our belongings are at risk. At times he even suggests the friends not be allowed inside.

He isn’t wrong.

After my brief and guilty love affair with Sense8, I have fallen into the arms of the OA. This is a better category of distraction, if only moderately. It is not a book. I have not picked up a book in pleasure since the summer when I curled up around a copy of Amped. I used to act like I don’t know why, but that isn’t possible anymore. I know the reasons. I remain stunningly disappointed in the quality of material I am producing, which is to say none. Moreover I know that the reasons for not writing stem from being torn between the fear of not being able to write the story I actually want to tell and writing stuff that I continue to be provided contracts for and not be paid for.

I think it all comes back to the archive. I used to keep a public archive of ideas–sharing what I thought and imagined for those who were in need of such things. It kept me creative and active. I built characters and plots and relationships. Short scenarios welled up in my mind to burst forth unto the internet every Wednesday night. It died, as all things do. I did not kill it. I allowed it to pass away gracefully.

Now, when I am most frazzled from the hectic start of the semester and parenting and loads of responsibility and choices needing to be made, I find myself thinking about that archive and what it meant. I find myself thinking about the simpler times when I did put butt in chair for an hour at least each day. I wish for those times. I know I have the power to bring them back. I just don’t understand why I haven’t.

I’m fed up with youth sports. My girlfriend says it is really about my inability to have much control in a situation where my kids end up in a bad spot. She isn’t wrong. I dislike putting the boys in a bad situation and time and again this is exactly where they end up. My 5th grader went from starting on the Jr. High Basketball team to earning a minute of playing time per game following some concerns I voiced to the Athletic Director. I still don’t think I was wrong for speaking out. The coach cussed out the team during half time of the game, he failed to provide any substantive training, and he refused to coach both during the warmups and the majority of actual games. Yeah, I had cause to be pissed. Still, when did I become the dad who bitches every time a kid is in a less than perfect situation?

I bitched about that coach. I bitched about previous coaches in other sports. After a time the common denominator looks to be me. The latest situation has me feeling like I’m seen as the bad guy when in reality I’m trying to be a stand up dad. Here’s what happened: Due to unforeseen league circumstances, my 9 and seven year olds are required to play in the same division. The head coach of the team I coach with doesn’t want both boys. He wants the kid he had and to let the other kid play for a different team in the division. I don’t want to do that. See, I’m a single dad and, for all intents and purposes, the only parent who regularly attends game. So, the real choice I’m being asked to make is to put the kids on separate teams and leave one kid without parents to support him for the season. That’s a really crappy choice. In fact it is no choice at all.

At this age siblings ought to be a package deal, but that is not always the case. As a result I am left to either pull the one kid off his team to join the other on a new (and likely lesser) team or split and leave one kid dangling. It is not worth the drama and mental stress. It also isn’t like I’m forcing a terrible athlete down the coaches throat. I’m giving him a solid young athlete who led his team in the previous season.

This brings us back to the control part.  If I had more control I wouldn’t be asked to choose between my kids. In reality, I am not going to. It might mean both kids play for the lesser team or it could mean leaving the organization entirely. One thing is for certain, I’m not going to break up dem franchise boys.

There is a dearth of really good science fiction these days, so when I heard the Wachowskis teamed with Micheal Straczynski of b5 fame, I was hooked. I tried to see it as a new look at humanity through the eyes of masters but wound up seeing it as the Wachowskis trying to work out a few things surrounding lana’s sex change.

Sense8 is supposed to be about a new stage of human evolution where people are linked mentally in clusters of 8. The non. Clustered are trying hard to hold them down. In reality it is a soap opera delving into the romantic lives of multiple characters suddenly faced with the situation where they have other people linked to them.

Want to know the hardest part of the show? The show lives in the edge of retardation and it is so very easy to slide off. The 8 alternate between failing to acknowledge the cluster to acting like they’ve always known. The opposition is driven by unthinking fear. And that hasn’t worked well to establish motivation. The protagonists feel disparate and lack appeal as a collective beyond a few episodes. Sleep is closing too fast. More tomorrow

 

Note: This was written via text messages to my email and published tonight prior to the new blog.

My latest undertaking is a passion project called 2626east.com. The site is a magazine of sorts published and populated by student work. I picked the name as a nod to the college located at 2626 East Pecos Rd. The idea for the magazine is one i’ve taken stabs at my entire career. I feel like this could, finally, be the culmination of that idea and something that, once I fully breathe life into, will maintain a life of its own.

There are but a handful of articles already up on the site. It uses the familiar wordpress backbone as a GUI and images of the campus or freestock gathered from the internet. The site is nascent, but I feel like this is the semester it really becomes a thing of value for the students. I have access to far more students this semester and they will be able to interact with the site to let me know if it is viable.

I lack a certain amount of knowledge about this endeavor and find that I am passionate to learn more.

Decided to ‘pen’ tonight’s blog from an iPad. This was much harder than first envisioned as not much seems functional in terms of writing text unless you are wired into the internet. This is an oversight from the folks at apple or another click in the mechanism moving us towards ubiquitous internet. I worry about that ubiquity right now because there is a real push from the corp world to further monetize the net, even so far as to limit how much non proprietary data moves across private wires. In other words, how can Netflix hope to cast on an ATT service?

I was alive when Ma bell got broken up and it feels like those days are long gone. In truth and in Trumps triumph it feels like we are moving towards corporate extraterritoriality. I.e. Corporate states. In such a world, fictionalized by myself and others, the corporations have all the power. We the people live on their land and follow their laws which supersede the liberties of the USA. Now this fiction edges closer to reality each day. Anyone who rents knows that you are basically living in such a world. Your recourse for civil rights violations is the courts and perhaps the media, but nobody tells the stories of redlining and far worse grievances anymore. With real estate president I can only imagine that his personal business interests will be improved by his political actions.

Regardless of what president hands us off to the corps, it is going to happen. I can only hope that I’ve gained a corporate foothold by then. Of course, I am not even trying to do so. Instead I am trying to open a Charter School and deliver next gen education to an audience that absolutely needs to be taught in a way more aligned with the world they live in.

I took a break from the matrix and the dog, making my way toward the nearest Starbucks. The blustery Arizona evening delivered all of the unfamiliar cold without the promise of stars, so I sat indoors, taking stock of the customers and the ambiance. I needed to get out and write somewhere I hadn’t in a while. Familiarity can be a writer’s nemesis if what is familiar is not also stimulating. I’d almost bought a Bonsai tree earlier in the day. I was seeking to add a little extra to my environment. I needed something to get me going and engaged in the overlapping practices of writing and zen. Lately it has been hard to eek out a moment of either.

 

So for almost ten minutes I’ve been sitting here trying to strike accords with the writing force (like the speed force but slower), sacrificing word after word to this blog in search of story and seeing my actions pass into that void to return as a sprinkle of inspiration the way minecraft mobs are distilled into tiny green globules of experience.

 

It is a work in progress, but my patience is near an end. I need to be more productive and more driven right now. Opportunity abounds and I seize very little of it these days.

 

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Ran into a former student working at the ‘bucks (and yes, I am going to call it that). Conversation was good and light until I asked him about how he was doing. That was the moment his smile withered. He didn’t say it but he still seeks more than what he is presently doing with his life. I can empathize. In the space between being with my partner and my kids I feel exactly as he does.