10 Minute Rule

I am writing this post from windows 10. I never thought I would be doing this, but my laptop finally arrived (a school aid for the boys) and I decided to use it myself for a bit, acclimating to the new OS. It is as slow as anything in this universe, moving at the speed of turtle. I don’t know that this Acer deck is optimized but it isn’t doing what I want at a speed that feels useful to me. Next step: optimization.

The laptop was an incredible bargain. I picked it up on groupon in lieu of a chromebook hoping that the boys would be able to acclimate to a third operating system, thus giving them an edge in life. We use mac OS at home and the mid kid is learning himself some Ubuntu. Now the 10 deck will show them so-called industry standard. Some of the work computers I deal with have gone the way of 10, so it will help me to gain a better awareness of the OS myself.

Not a lot of excitement in the blog tonight. Just me, some computers, and a whole lot of work to get handled.

I’m not gonna die here.

In The Martian the protagonist, Mark Watney, makes a declaration of life in spite of conditions that all but guarantee death. He decides that fighting is a hell of a lot better than quitting. This, dear reader, is the stuff of motivation. I mean the stuff it is made of–the innards and chemical composition. The character comes upon a moment where he should be giving up and laying down to die and doesn’t. It doesn’t make a difference that this is a fictional sci-fi moment, because it is indeed a moment every one of us faces at some point in our lives. I have never met a person who is without struggle. I have never met another human who hasn’t had to fight for or through something. When I was growing up in NYC I even witnessed the great megalomaniac Donald Trump fight through some horrible business decisions and a very public bankruptcy. All of it points back to the Watney moment–that moment where you say ‘I’m not gonna quit.’

I was reading about the many facets of motivation recently, and though I probably blogged (at least meant to) about some of this last night, I recognized some of the motivational blocks that manifested in my own life. Some of these blocks can be as a result of social rejection or poor physical habits. The social blocks were very evident. I went through a none-too-pretty divorce and lost all the people I called family and watched the majority of people I call friends pull away–especially in the work place. This wasn’t an obvious rejection but more of a subtle shift in my position and standing in the organization. It sucked and hurt and allowed me to recognize some deeper betrayals and manipulations that I probably will never directly confront (because what the heck is the point? Still gotta eat, right?). The fact is I wanted to walk away from these people and situation. I wanted to quit. Some days I still do. Start fresh and focus on the teaching. However, I’m not gonna quit.

All of this bleeds into the daily life and overlaps into other areas of my functional life–parenting, writing, etc. This is only one of several dozen major obstacles life throws at me all the time without having time to really process any of them.

But I’m not gonna quit. I’m not gonna die here at this moment in my life when the possibilities are so powerful. Great things require great action and sacrifice, so game on.

 

I can say as a parent with nearly twelve years of experience we do often try to correct the mistakes of our past through our children. It is, for me at least, instinctual. I failed at football, so I created the conditions for my children to succeed. I hit a wall with motivation and follow through that has lasted for the better part of two decades. I am trying to teach my kids to finish what they start. I over book and thus overwork myself–leaving little time for me and plenty of time for everyone who has need of me. I see that in my children and fight to stamp it out. All of these ‘ills’ that helped shape who I am today I am forcefully redirecting my children away from, thus making them into–not me, but a version of me that I was never capable of becoming myself. It is selfish but maybe it is also a good thing to learn from your mistakes and send some of that learning to your kids.

I’m not yet done growing, learning, writing, failing, succeeding… living. I know that I’ll stumble and I will learn from falling down. Perhaps of all the lessons I carry forward to them, this specifically has merit: Just get back up and learn why you fell down in the first place.

Yesterday marked the last week without professional football in 2016. Sunday the preseason kicks off and I get to show my kids some football. They are all playing now and have significant roles on the teams. At least one of them is interested in watching film and learning more about how to play the sport at a high level. These are the best times to be a coach and a sports dad and I am really excited about having this one great season with all of my boys. There is no guarantee any of them ever play again, so I am going to enjoy this moment to the fullest.

Football means a lot to me and as a result my kids all took it on as a challenge. One of the three begrudgingly took my old number this season (Beckham’s was taken). I’m both excited and proud to see our family name on the back of his jersey right above that number once again. Its a good moment for dad and son both. Meanwhile one of the other two moves closer to the madden version of himself. He was even under center for a while, like his madden counterpart. However, he threw the ball like it was shot out of a gun–also like his madden counterpart. At what point is fiction creating life?

I’ve been asking that question more and more lately and I don’t have a really good answer. I do have an interesting side note though: Apparently most of the things mentioned in the 1985 film Runaway have come true. Drones, Smarthomes, etc. Yep. Fiction might, in some cases, shape reality. Given that statement I shall now proclaim that I will write a fictional piece that mentions the Jets and Giants facing off in the Superbowl.

Do your magic, fiction.

I’m not usually this tired at 10 pm but lately I’ve hit a lethal level of fatigue by then. Some of it has to do with going to bed with the person you love. I’m more interested in that these days. Some of it deals with the drain put on you as a dad. I’ve been thinking a lot more about the latter situation as I move through these last class-free weeks for the kids and myself. I feel like I wasn’t quite prepared for the summer and with it rolling to a close, I am clearly not prepared for what follows.

On the bright side, football begins next week. There are no less than 22 weeks of games every weekend along with the possibility of a Giants superbowl and even a championship for at least one of my boys. Three boys mean three chances at greatness.

Truth be told this is all instinct because my sleeping brain malfunctoined a while ago and I’m mostly powered by need.

I need sleep.

I went to the Bourne movie and it made me think a lot about the nature of sequels. As a writer I feel like a story can encompass more than one book. Some tales work in that fashion for movies as well. Lately I’ve been bantering with my co-teacher about how Alien and Aliens work as a feature together so long as you start the film in the right spot. Other movies are less like that. Bourne is less like that. In truth the nature of the film dictates one film. The remaining stories are circular and add nothing new to the story other than tidbits of information that inform his forgotten past without affecting who the character is at present. In that manner Bourne and the Taken movies are identical. Start with a tried and true formula, add a dose of new tech and roll with it. Perhaps these films are attempting to serve as mirrors for where we are in society and how we react to the same things differently based on where we are as individuals.

I could be giving the film way too much credit.

Was it fun? Yeah. The car chases and fight scenes were tied together with the twine of a plot still old and frayed from overuse. Yet it held and entertained and made all kinds of money. That, after all, is the goal.

I was watching a cerveza modelo commercial and was really impressed to see how quickly and cleanly they drew up a specific idea of masculinity and tied it to their product. The commercial, ‘Work for it’ (seen here) reminds men what you need to do in order to subscribe to what it means to be a hard working American Male. Now these are things that align with classic masculine perceptions: blue collar men than break their backs for a job, speak with manners, and always ask the dad before they ask the gal to marry them. Nowadays men are rarely drawn in these 50’s inks. I liked it. I don’t subscribe at all, but I liked it. The alignment to these values is so obvious and blatant that it, for me, far surpasses the low key nonsense you get from the average Ice Age driven product ad.

These two things may seem disparate but in fact they are both trying to create a sense of unity/belonging among a specific population in a way that reflects their product as a symbolic piece or even signifier of that population. Just food for thought.

Some Thoughts:

1. Chelsea Clinton, despite (rare) appearances still has a lot of political juice.
2. Obama may no longer be able to be our president, but he is still the People’s Champ.

I first discovered Justin Lin back in 2002 when he released (and wrote) Better Luck Tomorrow. I liked what he had to say. It reminded me a lot of the wannabe asian gangsters who I hung around ten years prior. Kinda made me homesick. It also helped me realize how authentic and limited the dude is. Justin Lin is a director capable of saying a great many things according to the strength of script he is presented with, but Lin is only ever telling one slickly published story. It’s Better Luck Tomorrow wherever he goes. This time he went into space. He might’ve left Vin Diesel and the keys to american muscle behind, but he sure as hell brought at least one motorcycle and the same openly stereotypical friendships that made him a millionaire.

In case there is some confusion as to my position here, Star Trek Beyond is terrible. It is the kind of movie that makes you feel like it could be really good and then really falls on its face over and over again–largely in the last 30 minutes. When dealing with space drama the idea of plausibility is always a bit tenuous, but in Lin-land nothing about the antagonists seem remotely plausible or sensible. This includes their motivations which seem to align more closely with the villain from Spectre than any truly relevant angle. There’s even that moment where the bad guy wants to turn good and you’re like, ‘Oh gawd please don’t. Just kill Kirk and be done with this’. He doesn’t, of course. They never do. Instead some deeply rooted friendship nonsense transpires and Kirk is again saved.

Look, maybe I just don’t get these so-called millennials. Maybe I’m fine with that, because an 85% fan rating on Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to have meaning. Hell, even the critics wound up at 83%. I’m sticking to my splat. Star Trek Beyond is a terrible movie and gives me a great swell of concern as the series (and Star Wars as well) moves forward.

 

Today I showed my class Einstein’s God Model. An hour into the film I still haven’t seen a black person. There are Asians and Hispanics but no black people anywhere. I might add that this film is shot in Chicago. I might also add that the protagonist is a doctor who runs in academic circles. All of this adds up to a worldview that has become all too common–a world built of civility and science that is utterly without black people. The media representations of blacks has improved significantly over the course of my existence but the core philosophy of black as lesser or criminal remains. Black people are only treated as token representatives of any stable society of civilized–even advanced–people. The one exception to this is the portrayal of fictional African royalty–namely the fictional nations portrayed in Coming to America and the Wakandans of Marvel lore. The rest of us are barely graduated above animals, and in a dystopic or post apocalyptic future we hardly exist. Consider the basis of shows like the Walking Dead, The Road, etc. Think about the Hunger Games and its ilk. Even Harry Potter treated blacks as marginal/background characters–though JK Rowling made it clear that Hermione is quite likely black yet did not bat an eye at her white portrayal.

I don’t know what all of this means for the continued perception of blacks, but I worry that it means we will always be viewed and treated as something less than we are and whenever we excel it wont be met with a sense of expected success but instead surprise and a collective holding of one’s breath until we eventually go back to our anamalistic ways.

Building off of what I’ve been thinking about this week, I think I am at that point where something has to give. I cannot stay in this state forever. At the start of life you’re given a certain level of opportunity. Most of us work our tales off to get to a better spot. Then most of us stop. I stopped. I stayed in that place treading water and eventually wore myself down and started to sink. I’m older and wiser and better at a lot of things in my life and I just need to get focused and determined in a way that has not been realistic in decades.

Sounds easy enough, right?

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Big shout out to my friend and co-writer Robyn for her Scribe Award nomination. She’s gone far past the level I’m at and I couldn’t be more proud–and maybe a bit jealous too. I want to be up there very soon with my own novel.
2. Was in the tunnel the other day for the Rattlers game and I was instantly reminded of how small the team is–not in stature but in number. This is a tiny roster of dudes who have fought their way to greatness again and again. There are lessons to be learned there.