10 Minute Rule

I’ve been thinking about the concept of Garbage in/Garbage out as it applies to multiple aspects of life. I’ve heard it most commonly applied to diet–capitalizing on the thought that you cannot have a great physique if you live on terrible foods. It is not hard to apply that theorem to writing. You cannot write well if all you consume is terrible writing. This would account for the high percentage of fan fiction that follows poorly written books. I am no literature snob. I’ll spend as much time between the pages of a Drew Karpyshyn fantasy or video game-based novel as often as I dive into anything considered classic literature. What I do focus on is good writing. Less garbage in = Less Garbage out.

Can we apply that theorem to personal relationships and the development of a social life. I am convinced that the majority of people fall into their friendships out of convenience and a general avoidance of awkwardness. Some people, though hard to be around, persist and create that sense of ‘man I wish he’d would go away’. I’ve been wanting to write a story about bad neighbors for a while now, but haven’t found the voice to tell that story. The way I see it the protagonist falls into an ever deepening series of personal relationships based on a connection to a specific neighbor and in doing so manages to step back from spending time with that neighbor–the guy who won’t go away–only to discover that he himself is that guy for everyone else in his deepening social network. It could be fun.

The last time I just had fun writing a story was one I published in World of Shadows about a worker who tries to solve the mystery of a theft that is pinned on him before it costs him his job. I’m freely streaming between ideas right now, so what I am really saying is it is important to have fun with your writing.

Maybe I should’ve just called this post Weird Writing Tips from the TalisFiles.

 

I’ve been up since 4:45 and on the road since 5:30. The first game required us there by 6:30 and the last ended slightly before 10. I’m a mess. The culprit: Bad planning abilities, but for the purpose of this 10 minute rule I’ll blame sports.

My three boys play many sports. Presently they are on 3 different age-level teams collected under the same Rams football banner. The games are in different places throughout the valley. This means on any given saturday I may drive between three games one hundred miles from each other. That leads to things like this: A post I can barely stay awake in order to complete.

I’ve been giving mindful consideration to how and why people are linked. Specifically I wonder what people are rooted to. I started thinking about this the more I traveled to San Diego for respite. Some of my extended family is there now and one in particular is quite fond of the look and style of the place, even going so far as to limit her shopping to Cali stores only. This is where the ‘real stuff’ is. This is what I mean in terms of roots.

I believe we attach ourselves primarily to place. This place becomes symbolic of the larger group or type we believe ourselves to be representative of. For me my home was once representative of my family and that shared understanding of who we are. It no longer feels that way or reasons I’m unprepared to share and I no longer wish to remain here. For others I feel like place can be a state or city. I myself find New York to be the one true home and very representative of who I am as a human. Sadly, I feel far less productive outside the city. Inside the city I am unstoppable.

We are anchored to place the way a ship is Anchored to the sea floor and though we may sway and drift in our understanding of who we are, place never lets us go and never allows us to forget.

Some Thoughts:

1. Yep, I ended quite a few sentences in a preposition. It was purposeful.

As I write this post I have no idea what happened in football tonight. This is a good thing. It means my hunger for the sport has sated. It could also have to do with the fact that I actually played ball tonight, participating in my (5th?) Maricopa High Alumni game. I didn’t go to MHS, but I play for the city team and get a lot of joy out of it. So, I write this with sprained fingers–a trademark of all of my play as of late–and a smile. We lost. We generally lose, but it felt good to be physically active again in a way I enjoy as opposed to the slogging nightmare of the gym.

I hate the gym. Maybe I’ll like it when the boys are old enough to lift with me. Probably not. I never liked the gym. I tolerated it in the way I tolerate a great many things in my life that keep my life slowly rolling forward towards true happiness.

I like being outside and running with a purpose.

The big red ‘Breaking News’ box on NFL.com reads, ‘Dez Bryant has hairline fracture in knee’. I suppose that qualifies as breaking news for the NFL. Bryant is king of the Cowboys and we of the fantasy and betting worlds lay out a lot of faith based on what he can do on any given Sunday (Monday or Thursday). It is a stark reminder that football does not matter. It is an entertaining game through which people put their lives at risk and, often slowly, deplete the number of quality years they have left in exchange for vast sums of money. This is not to say I don’t care about ball. I care quite a bit. Too much, probably. I care enough to have three fantasy teams (albeit with losing records) and to come here once a week to drop knowledge on the game.

mmm… drop.

CIN over MIA
The wheels won’t fall off the Cincy train until the Patriots arrive. Then things will go very badly for the next few weeks as part of a phenomenon I call post Patriot crash. Ask The Cardinals about that.

IND over Jax
Nothing much to say here save that Jax is till wack. They need to prove a lot before I invest a pick in their direction.

CAR over ATL
The Panthers are erratic and the Falcons are coming off a big win, but there is also this thing called post N’awlins let down. Ask the Giants about that.

OAK over BAL
Oakland is legit. They continue to ball so hard and perform at a level generally reserved for other scions of the west. I think it has something to do with a new team in town… Young talent might play a factor too.

NE over BUF
Sorry, Rex. Even if Edelman goes as the starter this is a win. Belicheck runs the best system in football. Even Madden knows his playbook cannot be stopped. Add to this a defense that is legit and we got problems.

NYJ over SEA
Jets are in disarray but they are not as nearly as bad as Fitz looked last week. I’m counting on the run game and a Fitz resurgence to power through this one. I also see Revis getting back on track here.

NYG over MIN
Despite a really surprisingly resilient and deep Vikings squad, NYG needs this more and they damn well know it. Beckham’s hype train on the sideline only means more passion for play and more urgency to win.

Quick Picks
DET over CHI
CLE over WAS
DEN over TB
AZ over LA
SD over NO
SF over DAL
PIT over KC

 

I really should be asleep. If not for that 3 PM nap with a seven year old curled up against my back I probably would be. I earned the fatigue by spending a good amount of time working on my novel and a bit more time sifting through a backlog of grading. It feels like I am always behind on grading, which is probably because I am. I have 140+ students and give them a ton of work. Heck, I’m upset with myself for not providing enough work. I’m more upset with myself for not figuring out a streamlined way to grade it.

I’m smarter than that.

I am also going into the midway point of a long youth tackle season with three teams worth of games to attend. It isn’t easy. I actively lobbied to get my youngest moved up to the mid-kid’s team in order to allow me to see more games (and have more time to breathe). No such luck. He is where he ought to be, and even though he isn’t happy with his situation all of the time, he is learning and growing from the experience.

By situation I mean losing season. They have not won a single game and it shows. It hurts. It is a pride-scarring thing for a kid who has only lost maybe 5 games in 3 years of playing year round sports. Losing is foreign but also necessary. I am just not a fan of doing it quite so much. The eldest is in the same boat. His team isn’t winning, but I’ve already told that tale in this pages. He is still ridiculously happy and loving life and sport and all things goofy. I hope he stays this carefree and engaged for a very long time. I hope they all do.

What I want is many more years of Taco Tuesday and kids who want to be around and hang out and watch shows and talk and play. I want to have a relationship with my kids now and later when they become men. I want to remain a part of their lives and I want them to remain a part of mine. Big asks, but I’m willing to put in the work to see it through.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a solid family night with all six of the kiddos. I needed it. I need more of it in order to really get a sense of things moving forward.

Trump is a jerk. He’s the kind of dude I’d kick out of class. This isn’t about his politics at all. He just isn’t a great person. The way he behaved in that debate showed a man who felt that he was above everyone else in the room and could talk down to and talk over them. I really wanted to tell him to shut up and let someone else speak. His manner is juvenile and drips with privilege.

You govern the way you act. He acts like an ass.

I’m watching CNN try to break down the debate and it is making me sick. Why? It is so sadly clear that the station is painted in stereotypes. Here is their token republican:

She fits right in with the Fox News bunch below:

 

Here is the token democrat:

Need I say more? I will. The blonde, Kayleigh, sounds a lot like Tomi Lahren of the Blaze and fits a rather specific stereotype of the forceful rightwing blonde. It is as if they are recruiting versions of people in order to create the illusion of diversity.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m tired of people who have never ever had to worry about being stopped and frisked tell me how effective it was. Effective for who? For what? Effective for those who feel like the problem is young minorities? Because the effect it had on people like me is to further alienate us and harken back to a day of Jim Crow Laws.
2. If you call it a ‘Spin Room’ then you are openly admitting that everything spoken within those walls is bullshit.

six interceptions is the tagline you’ll see following Fitzpatrick for the next few weeks. In reality he threw closer to 12, but the rest were dropped. He had the worst QB performance recorded in my lifetime. He was so bad that in trying to throw that many picks in Madden 17 I failed. repeatedly. There is no chance the Jets plan to keep Geno Smith less they would have put him in to stop the bleeding. Fitz couldn’t find a Jets receiver if he were outlined in neon, but the KC folks ate just fine.

The Giants didn’t eat. They tried and even got to the point where they broke Josh Norman, but it didn’t matter. See, the G-men caught a case of the Fitz too. Eli was rifling it to the other team and the score reflected it.

Here are your blue skies: Both games were in a position where they could have been one. I mean the Giants  the Jets had a chance to win after all those dang TOs. That to me says that both teams have a program that is working, but didn’t work at all today. This is the new face of utter failure.

What say we hope he become the face of success next week, eh?

Meanwhile, embattles coach Rex Ryan won big in his tilt. He was—is—on the hot seat but that doesn’t change the fact that he is the only one of the NY teams to win a game.

Young Black Men are dangerous.

There, I said it. That is what generations of media socialized people have been thinking, right? Young black men–hell black men in general–are dangerous. Black women are brash and loud and believe themselves to be queens. I’m not making this up. Someone is making this up. No matter how you personally feel about back people it is difficult to deny the optics of an entire century. Only in the last twenty years are we seeing black men seen on screen as leading men and heroes nearly as often as they are portrayed as gang bangers and thieves. Back in 1996 the top film was Independence Day, in which Will Smith played on the stereotype of the street smart black man done good to help spawn a new generation of black heroes who were at once black and only moderately stereotyped (note: He played the same exact dude in Suicide Squad). Down at #17 on that list (imdb) is the next time you even see a black person on screen and that is in the film A Time to kill where, “A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the K.K.K.”

Yep, a film where a dude avenges the rape of his daughter sparks the rebirth of the K.K.K. Nowadays we call that trope ‘Taken” and we don’t have the gravitas and racial discussion. We just say, oh he handled what he had to handle.

I don’t think black men are as dangerous as the myth perpetuates. Yeah, I am a black man and yeah I can walk through the hood and not expect to get shot straight away. But I can’t walk through a small town in the south and not expect to get shot straight away. The difference is we call the people in the hood predators.

All people are dangerous. We just spend our time focused on the black ones.

Building a life is tricky work. This is made all the more difficult when you realize you don’t even know what that term means. If you define a life as a routine during which you form long-lasting relationships, interact with people outside the home, and grow, I don’t know that I have really had ‘a life’ since college. I was married for 14 years, most of which were spent under the haze of childrearing and commuting. I suppose that was a life of sorts, but not of any sort that meets the definition of what I think I am looking for now. I am told that this is supposed to be sad information. To live the last two decades without actually having a life or more than a handful of genuine friendships to show for it does seem a bit odd.

I have Facebook friends, some of whom read this blog. I have work friends. I think. There be daggers in several smiles. I don’t have a great deal of neighborhood friends. Once I tried to make a friend–a guy I thought was pretty cool, but I got divorced and suddenly I was the guy people thought was a bad guy or a quitter or just didn’t know how to deal with. I watched the sympathy card pop up for the ex and the majority of my female friends abandon me, replacing genuine warmth with toothy smiles and empty talk. Most of the husbands came around, but there is still a distance there–the space that builds when you know you aren’t going to be invited to any of the get togethers.

Beyond the one, I don’t have what you would call ‘daily friends’. I have a woman in my life who is like a sister to me and a man who, blood not withstanding, is my brother. These are not daily friends. They are family. One I try to see weekly and the other must realize by now I am allergic to phone calls.

What all of this adds up to is a lack of life. What I do on a daily basis is hang with my kids. I coach, I play video games (often alone and after they’ve gone to bed). I form bad habits, stay up too late, and get ready for the next day. It is a was of existing without actually moving forward. It should both terrify and depress me, but it doesn’t. I have never thought long term–not even sure I know how. Instead I live in the moment, mindful and joyful of where I am at.

It isn’t a life, actually. It is a collection of happy seconds strung together like a flip book of a good life. It is what I have and I want more. Trouble is figuring out how to do that and what it looks like.