10 Minute Rule

Many people have asked why I chose to go public with this. There are two reasons. One is about my soul. I’m a writer. I write about the experiences in my life and what I see around me in order to share those experiences with anyone who will listen, so they know that these things happen, we aren’t alone in our struggles, and that people react to things in different ways. Science tells us that stories are how people see the world. Even though this is a deeply personal story and one with moving parts, I felt that it was important to be open and honest about it for my own self reflection.

The second reason I put it out there is to maintain an honest narrative about what really went on. One day when the kids read this I hope they can understand that all of this came out of love. It was not, as suggested, ‘Daddy ran out of love for mommy’. I don’t believe divorce is about fault. If it is about fault then I take full responsibility. I enabled behaviors and conditions that ultimately lead to my own dissatisfaction. I’ve spent a great deal of time accepting the role of the bad guy–the Decepticon, the Sith, the one who pulled the trigger. Still, it is important to note that I aimed with my heart and truly sought to create conditions that were best for everyone.

It is nearly impossible to remember that you are doing something out of love when your seven year old is clutching you and bawling, ‘Now I won’t get a hug and kiss every night.’ There is that moment then when you consider sacrificing everything to keep them safe and maintain the conditions of life they’ve grown accustomed to. Afterwards is the realization that the conditions they’ve grown accustomed to aren’t necessarily healthy.

I have been deeply and, to the boys, obviously unhappy for some time. A great deal of that has to do with the conditions of my life. So, I needed to ask myself if I wanted to maintain those conditions for the sake of the kids’ stability, or if I wanted to change my conditions and show my three boys what it looks like for a man to lead a happy and fruitful life.

This wasn’t totally for them. I felt I could be happier and in a better mental space if I wasn’t in the space I created. Of course, the obvious question is: why not stay and grow and change together. Well, people don’t really change. All I can do and all she can do is become the best possible versions of ourselves. We still wind up being ourselves, and there is a basic incompatibility there that I spent ten years fully believing I could change/fix and three years recognizing I could not.

I’m sure I’ll blog about this again when my headspace allows for it. I’m sure I’ll blog about the road out of divorce and what it is like to be a single dad and a plethora of other related topics. For now I hope these words provide some clarity and some small measure of understanding.

There are no words profound enough to profess the night’s sadness. I hope I am in a better headspace tomorrow to share. Tonight I ripped apart my family. That’s what they don’t really warn you about when they warn you about divorce. They say it is painful, but the words don’t match the profundity.

 

Not even close.

Last night I found myself in bed thinking, quite feverishly, about death. Here’s a simple truth: I have no proof of what happens after we die. I have my beliefs, which have everything to do with energy and reincarnation but nothing about memory. I fully believe that when I pass, my memories will cease and the energy (spirit) that is me will inhabit another physical form. It could be a cockroach. It could be a human baby. The wheel of reincarnation spins on and on. Now, that wasn’t as terrible of a waking fantasy as I make it seem. While it is true I have a dark feeling that death lingers close, I am not at all scared or fearful of it. Instead I’m introspective about such things. I’m not wishing for it. I’m not waiting for it. Instead I’m considering all that I can do with my life while I have it.

This could be the opening volley of a midlife crisis, or it could be the chemicals and tissue that compose my body telling me that I’m not taking care of myself and need to fix this problem before something does indeed go horribly wrong. I’m leaning towards that explanation, because along with fever dreams have come some clear and honest revelations.

I’m aware that I gained 20 lbs over the past year. Stress goes right to my belly. However, it isn’t just about the stress. It is about the habits I’ve formed over the last 4 years or more. I’ve reached the point where I eat perhaps a meal a day. This is a sure formula to being fat. One of the revelations was my body telling me that the metabolism is slowing down to compensate for lack of eating. As a result I find myself eating one really big meal and storing it away to be released as energy over the course of the next day. Too bad I don’t do enough activity to release that energy that is being stored up as fat. So, as a result I just get fat. The revelation showed me the way to get back to a healthy weight. Another showed me about healthy lifestyle.

Writing is the core of my being. I’m a storyteller who has cut himself off from free flowing creativity. Dumb, I know, but worse is how I did it. I stopped allowing myself to write badly. I became enamored with the pursuit of flawless first drafts. I wanted everything that wasn’t under the guise of blog to be genius. I got too caught up in being liked to actually be good and grow. This, like the fat situation, is a fixable condition.

The key for me is to decide what I want out of this life I have left. I have to make the effort to follow my dreams and stop waiting for things to happen on their own. They don’t. Nothing in my life has merely happened, no matter how much I want to believe it has. I put myself in the path of asteroids. Now I need to remember how to mine them for diamond.

So, the whole scheduling plan for this semester didn’t work out. Apparently Helmuth Von Moltke knew his stuff. No plan does survive contact with the enemy. In this case the enemy is reality. I came into the semester with a specific set of expectations and a strategy carefully devised to meet those expectations head on. Now I might as well Floop the Pig. It seems the best way to exist and be successful with the universe casually flicks in my general direction. No, that’s being egotistical. It is more accurate that I place myself in the path of asteroids.

This is not often a conscious decision–not in the direct manner. I have a tendency to make big choices and, as with anything in life, the bigger the choice the larger the ripples in every given direction. So, when I decide to take on any new opportunity or challenge, it creates a gravitational field that, well, ripples.

Now I gotta reimagine the schedule and game plan to account for what the universe offered me for the semester. This is a good thing and a difficult but really important and ultimately good time in my life where opportunity is face slapping me again and again and I must find the time and space to respond appropriately. Life is good if you let it be. It sucks if you dwell on the darkness and let those asteroids get the better of you.

When I coach, I spend time talking to the kids about the things they can control in a game. Attitude and Effort are sublimely self-reliant. Unfortunately, that self reliance is based on a curious concept called Headspace. I first found the term through meditation, but have seen it used in all walks of life from sports, to yoga, to pornography. Everyone required to maintain a level of mental control and toughness refers to the ability to get in their ‘proper headspace’ in order to be successful.

Here’s a fact: Though headspace is the embodiment of attitude and effort, finding that elusive space (zone) is extremely difficult and affected by numerous factors including (but not limited to) outside environment, people, time, and the condition of your own body.

I bring this up as I have discovered that it is near impossible to get into the proper headspace inside my own home. That’s the thing with headspace, the number of factors fighting against you make it hard to find what you need. At home I have little working in my favor. The mood here is always extremely high energy (frantic) or straight up negative, which means I am fighting through that to reach the proper headspace. There is also the matter of responsibilities. When in my writing headspace I need to know that the words are all that matters. At home I can sustain that for 10 minutes, but much more requires an escape.

Selma

The ring hanging from her neck spoke of love lost. She was young enough that Jack wondered if she’d seen her 20th birthday. She’d seen tragedy too. The lines on her wrist spoke to that. He wondered how she came to be here in this cafeteria, scarred hands touching at the small gold ring on her neck.

 

Bette

After a moment she came to realize the runs in Bette’s stockings were meant to be there. The stretches and tears formed a lattice that crawled up her legs ending at the hem of her blue skirt. Not high fashion, but something different. Bette was like that. She tried to pull away from the mundane and into that place that Melanie hated–that place where every move she made was scrutinized and immediately judged.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Starts and fits as usual, but the flow of things is bubbling to the surface in a way that gives me hope. I think I’m on the right track here. Now can I get everything done in the timeframe needed?
2. I wondered if I’d lost the joy of writing. Nope. I’m all in and 100% looking forward to getting to a place where writing is part of the rhythm and not something that requires me to create a rhythm.

There are several things I wanted to say last night that I didn’t. Fatugue robbed me of my sensibilities and dragged me, kicking and screaming, towards the doldrums. No, I wanted to talk about the GoDaddy commercial. I wanted to reflect on how quickly they tapped that sore spot of ours and reminded us of how more important the perceptions of dogs and the importance of their handlers are than the role of parents, perceptions of women, or anything else. Moreover, I wanted to talk about how quickly public entities cave in the face of even a sprinkle of public pressure.

 

This all started with the misogyny of the NFL.

Because of the recent media storm regarding abuse towards women by a handful of players, commercials had to be designed in a way that reflected the NFL’s new attitude towards femininity. In other words, GoDaddy couldn’t treat women like objects this year. So, in lieu of women, they turned to the other major source of American pathos: Dogs.

 

The commercial itself is a satirical take on the lost dog trope. A puppy is separated from its home and walks across the world, encountering challenges and making friends along the way. In the end we get the awaited punch line. Turns out home is a breeder and as the puppy happily leaps into its owner’s embrace it is coldly shipped off to a new home.

 

That’s funny stuff right there. Wait, can I say that? Am I supposed to consider the feelings of the dog? I’m not going to in this instance. In fact, I’m going to offer a second interpretation altogether. What if the puppy was complicit in the ‘crime’ What if the puppy’s role was to be bought and then ‘lost’ only to be bought and ‘lost’ again. The commercial certainly lends itself to that.

 

Still, the real issue is how quickly backlash exploded and the very powerful animal rights contingent cried about lack of sensitivity. They haven’t trotted out Mike Vick yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

 

I’m starting to wonder about all these stories—these distractions—from the game itself. I hear more about the world happening around the game (the meta game) than the game itself. It all leads to one question: How much of the Super Bowl is really about the football anymore?

Here are some things I think I think.

1. Wilmore’s Nightly show is a nuanced slice of black-american humor that might not have the audience base to sustain it, but since it is brought to you by the network that kept the Kroll Show going for so long.
2. CNN is running a special called ‘Finding Jesus’ in March. It revisits the question of the man who was Jesus vs. the very powerful myth conjured around the possibility of the man.
3. Speaking of which, there is a guy who spends his days walking around Maricopa, AZ lugging a cross big enough to crucify himself on.
4. segway: Comcast sent a bill to someone and called them ‘Asshole Brown’ in the name area. Wow.
5. ISIS is kinda limited. We really feel they’re a threat here based on their media savvy–which is also limited. I’m not impressed. Heck, their recent ‘Ranson’ (sic) demand is proof of a failure of savvy–unless that mispelling was less ISIS and more CNN.
6. 24 hour news does more harm than good…
7. Here’s what I don’t get: 500k fine for wearing the wrong hat on media day and 50k fine for purposely hurting another player? WTF? what matters more to the NFL. Time for a new commish, folks.
8. My kids’ games may be rained out this weekend. Sad sauce.
9. The amount of plastic surgery and fake ass people in AZ is far sadder sauce.
10. Seahawk fans are starting to be as bad as Cowboy fans. I wonder if Cubs fans will suck once the Cubbies get good again…

The day is almost upon us. The 49th annual Super Bowl. Patriots vs. Seahawks. Who is going to win? Patriots, of course.

This comes down to coaching vs. momentum. The Seahawks are perhaps the most dominant and physical defense in the NFL, but they rarely face teams prepared to run a bruising RB right at them a la Beast Mode or a la Blount–a cast away from the Steelers. So, I see reflections of the Seahawks loss to the Cowboys and their loss to the Chiefs all wrapped into one. The Patriots don’t have the backs of that calibre but with the threat of Gronk holding Chancellor at bay, what they have can work and Brady can work the slot picking on the weakest parts of the secondary.

The Seahawks are a legit ball club with a QB who can hold his own and, well, Beast Mode. However, the interior defense of the Patriots is crazy underrated and capable of slowing down if not outright stopping Lynch. Once that happens, the game is over. All that madness we saw against the Packers doesn’t go down here.

There’s a college hidden in the hills of some unheralded state that offers only one degree: Experience Architecture. All the Leagues and legends go there. I didn’t realize this until I walked through the gates of the NFL experience with my boys. Though we didn’t bother with all-access passes (worth the price if you’re into meeting famous people), it was clear from the check in that this was going to be a good time. I watched the boys go through several drills, each time vying to beat the others time. I watched my five year old snatching punts out of the air that were fired from a jugs machine, far exceeding what I thought him capable of.

I was in the moment, surrounded by fans and professional athletes and watching my little guys take it all in. We were even fortunate enough to catch the U15 flag football championship game. The Tucson Turf took the win in OT. What I noticed about the team was how fast and crisp and practiced everything was–which is amazing for a group that only trains once a week.

Here’s what I learned: Its not about the skills they have when they come into a thing. It is about the effort and the attitude they bring to the table. It is about being willing to push yourself beyond what you think you can do and evolving to the next level of success. That’s what good coaching and even good parenting does. That’s what I haven’t yet done for the boys and girls under my watch and what I intend to do moving forward.

The NFL experience was a great experience and a kick in the butt to boot.