10 Minute Rule

I’m terrified by college and I teach at one. I’m terrified by the responsibility I have to both inform students of what they are capable of and simultaneously make it clear to them what their limitations presently are. You see, so many incoming students enter college full of life but devoid of purpose and so many of those same students leave broken and uncertain about what possibilities await for them in the coming future.

This is something that is done intentionally by colleges across the globe. There is no malice intend in the act. What we do is expose students to reality, to hard work, and to experiences that are not necessarily designed neatly or with a clear answer at the end. This is new for them and generally difficult. It is so difficult in fact that almost 40% of students who start at any college don’t finish in six years.

Everyone wants to have that easy good life but few are interested in working as hard as they can in order to get there. So college is that point where they discover what it takes to get the life they desire and often decide not to have that life at all.

 

At a party with some friends the guys and I wound up talking about the odd stuff our kids say. We came around to the phrase, “Bye, Felicia.” which appeared most recently during a one of the better sequences in Straight Outta Compton. The kids have been saying it over and again, mostly out of context with, well, everything. We shared a laugh and talked about the scene and what it means and how they came around to even knowing about the phrase (thanks, Internet!)

It took me until I was out the door and in the car to actually remember that the line came from Friday and not from Straight Outta Compton. That’s the joke right there. Bye, Felicia is a kiss off line meant to disregard someone coldly and casually–someone who doesn’t know they don’t matter.

Here’s where it gets weird: All these kids saying it are below the age of 12 and have never ever seen friday and most haven’t seen straight out of Compton beyond a handful of clips on the inter webs.

So now the term exists wholly on its own as a social meme that has disconnected from its original generation and reconnected with a generation who have no idea of the historical relevance.

That makes me wonder how many memes have already moved through time and been separated from meaning and intent only to be co-opted by those who have the power to dictate language and trend…

Some Thoughts:

1. For all the talk about the Warriors amazing season and record, people are overlooking the fact that the Spurs are very quietly three games behind them. Lets not forget the Spurs have been this good since the days of David Robinson. That comes down to some amazing coaching–clearly a situation I have yet to achieve, but I at least realize what that means, finally.
2. It means making your players better, helping them learn to work together, and building sportsmanship and skill in tandem. I’m on it.
3. Something I hate: When people smile to your face but actually dislike you behind your back. I’m thinking about that at this moment, which means I am still living with anger I most recently tried to rid myself of.

I spent today being angry a lot. I wasn’t angry at my players. I was angry at myself and at a handful of coaches and parents. The tipping point was when a coach from my boys’ former team explained that they put my 68 lb son on the o-line and d-line so he would know what he’d be doing when he got older. My son is  a sprinter–a rail thin speedster who wants to run. He isn’t a lineman.

I don’t know why that hurt me so much but it did.

The fact remains it is so easy to get caught up in the anger and the ego and the mess of our own failures that we neglect to see that we are playing out these home movies on the screens of our children and they are learning from us. They are learning our pride, our wishes, our egos. And in teaching them our needs we all too often make these things a part of their DNA. We all too often, as a result of this, push them and put them in situations that are more about us than about them. We all too often find value in their victories as a reflection of our victories. They are not so.

The other day I was watching my kids run around the house playing games. The eldest would make up rules and use those things to his advantage. After a while the others caught on to the rules and started using them against him. This he did not appreciate and promptly changed the rules and the tone of the game to make it in his favor once more–even going so far as complaining and belittling the rules he once so loudly railed about in order to maintain an advantage.

I think you see where I’m gong here.

The modern political process is a high-priced kids game gone awry. Back during Obama’s first run we saw a great deal of yelling and screaming about how he wasn’t American because he was supposedly born in Kenya. Now nobody at this time (or ever after) bothered to mention that he would still be an American because his mother is an American citizen.

Fast-forward to the new ‘birther’ debate. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. This makes him Canadian. Now this fact on its own makes him ineligible as a candidate because he isn’t a natural born citizen, except all of a sudden everyone is talking about the fact that he has an American born parent, which automatically gives him dual citizenship and makes him an American.

Funny how this fact didn’t sway the anti-obama crowd but now we are supposed to not only know this but accept it so quickly that this issue shouldn’t even be tackled by the media.

There is a double standard–a growing double standard as those who have long been seen as the norm and the power group are losing power. We see those people flailing about and reaching out for any way to hold on, much like kids do when they sense things tipping. Things have already tipped.

I have really been struggling as a writer lately. The issue is not an unwillingness or lack of desire to write but instead the inability to conjure a significant schedule in the absence of a concrete work schedule. The problem could solve itself–I go back to teaching in a matter of days–but the problem could also be complicated by the additional work.

As deadlines loom close I wonder why it has come down to deadlines lately. I used to be able to churn out material long before the due date. Lately I beat a path up to the minute work is due. This is a problem that needs to be corrected.

I’ll be spending a lot of my thought processes in the coming months trying to figure it out…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Finishing up my reading list for Mythology 251 I discovered that I needed to add a last piece: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. The way King weaves a wealth of myth and folktale in and out of his own mono myth is breathtaking.
2. I was thinking about the name Hitler the other day. I’ve never ever met anyone or heard about anyone with that last name. Think about that. The actions of one man destroyed an entire surname. I mean, even the Mussolini line continues on.
3. Ready for the semester–psychologically. That is the one part that matters. Good timing too. I need the money.
4. I think I’ll dress better this semester, because why the heck not.
5. Getting sick. Not a fan of that. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

I’ve heard and read a lot of people talk about the best way to develop the writer’s life. There are some basic commonalities between the talks:

1. You must write everyday
2. You must find a place where you feel comfortable writing
3. You must set aside a specific time to write
4. You must inform those in your life that this is writing time and don’t allow yourself to be interrupted.

There are more of course, but I am supremely concerned with number three for this post. I recognize that this specific one is a debatable point. A lot of great writers manage to write well without finding a set hour to do so. On the other hand, a lot of great writers do need a set time. Stephen King likes to get in his words before lunch. Others follow suit with the morning ritual and other still speak of the late evening and the witching hour as the best time to write.

I don’t have a specific time and I really don’t think time is the point at all. I think this is more about creating the habit of writing. The Ten Minute Rule is a habit of writing. I do this every day. When I began it used to be at a very specific time because that is what I needed to do in order to ensure that I would write at all. This is not because I don’t love writing. This was more a function of the fact that writing can be really hard to start/fall into especially if you have something you want to write well and are even the slightest bit nervous or concerned about completing; more still if you have nothing to say at all.

My best suggestion to writers is to indeed set a specific time. Not a lot at first. Set a manageable goal and allow that time to be sacred time, i.e. time that kids, work, etc. cannot infringe upon. To that end, I suggest the early morning. I’m writing this before the sun and the kids get up, because I know I’ll have the minutes where nobody is going to get in my way. It also is a way to start the day of right and with creativity. With that I say ‘Right on!’ and my ten minutes is about up.

Some Thoughts:

1. Ever notice how fake the political process has become? A dramaturgical analysis of the entire interplay might reveal that these people are acting not as if they are politicians, but as if they are caricatures of political characters played on TV. The synchronous standing and sitting and clapping based on party affiliation is stupid, devise, and rather juvenile. We get it, you’re part of the president’s gang or you are not. How is it you people don’t understand gang violence? I mean you live in in your gilded offices.

The officer was parked one house away from my own as I pulled up. I drove by, noticing him as I pulled into my own driveway. I knew him. Not a good sort of ‘know’ either. This was the man who’d pulled me over and basically read me the riot act (hand on sidearm) for changing lanes too close to the vehicle in front of me. Now it was my turn to approach him. See, he wasn’t the first officer I’d seen on my block recently. They’ve been on the block a lot lately–every week there is a cop sitting by. A lot of it stems from some domestic issues across from my home but the rest is pure mystery. I decided it was time to unravel the mystery.

I walked up to the officer, approaching him from the front, hands open and palms upturned. The irony of possibly being shot by a black cop for no reason whatsoever was not lost on me. He didn’t react at all to my approach, choosing to ignore me and continue the paperwork her was diligently scribbling out. I said hello and asked him what was going on. He blew me off. I asked him if there was an issue in the neighborhood and he finally said that he was writing a parking ticket and if there was an issue he’d evacuate the neighborhood.

That sat in my heart for days until I listned to a Ted talk from Melvin Russell, a former Baltimore police officer. Russell believes police have really stopped being a part of the community and become occupiers in the community. They’ve focused on the protect and forgotten the serve part of the oath. He doesn’t think it is all on the cops. He says, “we have surrendered so much of our responsibility to the police” that it creates that occupier mentality.

I feel like this is a real thing, and is a problem on both sides of the blue wall. The idea that an officer would evacuate my area is better suited for wartime Iraq than small town Maricopa. Yet, here we are.

The only question left is what do we want to do about it?

I have an overwhelming desire to stay up all night and grind through my latest project and finish planning and building all of my classes for the coming semester (hello, next Tuesday). However, my body is not interested. It feels like Bizarro World R.Kelly “My minds telling me yes, but my body, my body is telling me no!”

Tomorrow I really get back to the work of my life. Vacation time is officially over, and a writer’s gotta write and a teacher’s gotta teach, and a coach has gotta coach. As for the last part of that bit, I have a great deal of work to do with my teams. 6-7 is in need of a lot of teaching. 8-9 needs a starting qb, so I must now create one from whole cloth, and 10-12 has to practice clean routes and spacing.

Some Thoughts:

1. I just finished watching the national championship and watched a tight end own the day. On the Clemson end, this QB is legit and his wide receivers are something special. Y’know who isn’t that special? The Heisman Trophy winner. He has been wack throughout the entire playoff process. Regardless, the Tide rolled.
2. How great would it be to see Iowa State have a legit program again. The Big 12 isn’t what it was…
3. Meanwhile, Scott Van Pelt just talked smack about the entire bowl season, stating honestly that nobody watched and most of the games sucked. I mean, honesty isn’t smack talk but dang, man.

 

Ever notice how talking about doing something often leads to doing a whole lot of nothing? I often think about this around the new year when everyone is making promises/resolutions to alter their lives in some meaningful way. This is the time when we are most concerned with how/who we are as opposed to what we are doing.

A number of us conjure the motivation to get started on doing whatever we promised. Unfortunately that often fades by February; all those gym membership receding into dusty bills and forgotten promises.

Focusing on how we are feeling and how we are living is dangerous, because so long as we are gripped by how, we will never be able to truly get down to what we are doing.

I could’ve also titled this post thinking vs. doing. The what is simply what we actually do. The what is stepping outside of your head and doing something–even if it is something small. Short of superheroes, nobody gets anywhere in life just thinking about getting there.

Some Thoughts:

1. Watched the Golden Globes for the first time ever. It wasn’t spectacular but there were several fun moments. I enjoyed Ricky Gervais and his honest yet brutal approach. What I found sad was that while people were having fun it was clear that this wasn’t being taken as seriously as the Academy Awards.

This is going to be fragmented. In fact, I think I’ll just organize these thoughts by number:

1. Super long day. I am becoming increasingly aware that flag football day is a full day event. It is time to start packing a wagon full of goodies and activities to help soothe the beasts between games.
2. Speaking of games, 2 wins and a loss. The loss actually comes courtesy of the refs who took points off the board for us and put them on the board for the other squad with a slew of bad calls. We rematch this team valentines weekend. Yep, St. Valentine’s massacre revisited.
3. The undefeated team is no longer so. That happened.
4. Golden Globes are happening tomorrow. I’m new to the game, but it totally sounds like fun. Ricky Gervais is hosting…
5. Check out The Weeknd (sic). Worth the listen.
6. I saw the Revenant and was in the only full theater in the joint. Turns out there is a specific demographic for that film and it ain’t Natives.
7. I’m tired. Good night.