10 Minute Rule

I don’t want to talk about the upcoming semester, or the slate of playoff games, or the son that is feet away hacking up a lung behind his closed bedroom door as he’s been doing for the last few nights. Not the B.S. of Washington politics. Not the poor news coverage of cable news. Not Charlie Hebdo. Actually, I want to talk about food and neighborhood.

I spent a little time in Gilbert’s new Zinburger location, located on the same block as the upcoming Lolo’s Chicken and Waffles. When I told my friends I wasn’t exactly a fan, they scoffed. I get it. The location represents a shift towards mature, fancy, and somewhat commercial flare reminiscent of well-known Scottsdale. That’s exactly why I don’t like it.

Gilbert has always been a small town vibe. The food may not always be locally sourced but the cooking and the service feels very Gilbert and doesn’t feel like it is trying too hard to be something else. These new places opening bring with them a level of haughtiness and fakeness I’m quite uncomfortable with. On the other hand, maybe this is just evolution.

 

 

 

10:11 pm: There is a real chance I get to go to bed at a time not normally reserved for vampires. It is these late evenings that I haunt, hoping to find moments of clarity to fill the white space with words and thoughts and ideas. It hasn’t worked as planned. I think it is important to form a lasting relationship–partnership even–between your physical, emotional, and intellectual selves. I need to understand the rhythms of all three in order to stay energized, productive, and effective in all aspects of my life.

Headed towards forty, I’ve figured out a few things about how I work (or don’t), including the things that motivate me, the ways I can be effective, how I work (which tends to be contrary to the aforementioned effectiveness), and why I work. What isn’t in question is the application of my hours. Clearly I spend more time doing things I should not vs. things that I should. Its funny, I spend hours every week teaching students how to wake up into their lives yet I struggle daily with how to exist in my own…

Some Thoughts:

1. Arizona doesn’t care about elementary education. I’m not speaking from a political standpoint, but actual bonds and the ability to pay enough teachers to man the schools in a way that promotes education. 36 school bonds were up for vote in this last election and 12 failed. That means that a lot of teachers are losing their jobs come summer, and a lot of students are going to be put in a position to be unsuccessful in the coming year. I wonder if this is a facet of being a so-called retirement state?

Football, be it flag or fantasy, pro tackle or college or kids, is a central component of my life during the fall and winter months. It can be mood effecting in a sun-deprivation-like way. Take this weekend for example: The wins and losses as a coach and as a fan really stuck with me. Watching my 10 yr old destroyed by what will hereafter be referred to as ‘grown ass men’ was unpleasant. Watching several players struggle (including my own boys) in wins was unpleasant. Watching Ohio State dominate was unpleasant. Watching the Broncos be dominated was unpleasant. In short, little felt good this weekend. On the other hand, it gives me hope and direction for this weekend.

Practices start tonight and I’m invigorated by ideas and a certainty that despite the fact that the level of competition goes way up for all the teams I coach and watch, this will be the weekend of pure success.

 

It better be, or I’ll be pissed.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m back to writing pen and paper lists. A friend bequeathed me a handful of small notebooks, which triggered a certain level of nostalgia, leading me back into the realm of notebook writing. The immediacy of it is appealing. It is still faster for me to write than to type—though not by much these days. I’m still vying to be thoughtwired so nothing ever has to leave me through my hands or lips.

Today at the gym I went through a set of stomach exercises. Afterwards pain rippled through my belly fat like lightning. That was the moment I recognized that I needed to start with the deep core muscles. I’ve been quietly exercising, nibbling away at the lethargy that dominates my life. Healthy body healthy mind is a good motto to follow, and starting at the core is the way to clear up a lot of things.

This started with belly fat. I was looking at pictures that are half  decade old and realized I had a bunch of belly fat even back then. It infects you–a disease that eats away at every part of you from creativity on down through self esteem. The physical aspects are equally damaging. I have knee pain, a sharp reduction in cardiovascular fitness, and steeply reduced speed. All in all, I’m a mess. So how to fix it?

Patience, courage, determination. The beauty of this still-young internet is that there is a wealth of free information out there on everything. I found plenty of sites to help me understand how to exercise and eat, but the execution of these things is in my court.

Lets see how it goes.

That’s a lot better than saying rant.

I’m not in a place where I have terribly much to rant about. The truth is the obstacles, situations, and challenges in my life are all extremely manageable so long as I step up to the task and manage it. This even extends to my peculiar and seemingly unmanageable football problem. That problem is having a very young and small 10-12 yr old team when the people we are going up against are older, faster, more physically developed, and on occasion, better coached.

I feel like Rex Ryan.

Still, even that is manageable. A friend reminded me that coaching shouldn’t be the thing that brings me down. In another unrelated conversation we waxed philosophically about focusing on the experience instead of the outcome. Everything is related though, isn’t it? The day after we lost our first regular season game (2^nd game overall) all my attention was on devising a scheme to win. At some point this morning I connected with that past conversation and decided that I wasn’t going to worry about winning games anymore. I was going to focus on the experience—on going into practice and into games with the mindset of creating situations that teach my players how to be better, mentally tougher, and more resistant to tidal nature of self confidence.

Now I gotta figure out how to do that in my own daily life. The best teachers are the ones who translate their own life experience in a way that vibes and jives with what the students understand. I’ve ebbed and flowed in my ability to do that, leaving me with a sense of understanding of how to get better (and thus happier) as a teacher of all. Part of it is about learning, part about writing, and part about taking that conversational advice: focusing on the experience of daily life.

1. Turns out that insecurity leads one to believe that if people are laughing, they’re laughing at you. It usually takes me a second to remember that I’m not that important. Or comical.
2. Sadly, I am going to have to start taking a couple of teams seriously. First among them: The Dallas Cowboys. Okay, they’re clearly a legit team. Three quarters into the playoff game and the unstoppable Packers look unable to start, let alone sustain, a drive. Tony Romo is a tough SOB. He’s getting shot up with painkillers before every game and fighting through the pain of the numerous crushing hits he takes to make some truly amazing plays.
3. Another interesting thing about Tony Romo: He’s Hispanic. Its interesting because when the sports stations talk about the breaking of the color barrier at QB, they only talk about the black QBs and fail to significantly address Romo’s civil rights role. Of course, I could have missed all that because when I hear the name Romo I tend to grimace and shut off the TV. We Giants fans can and should only pity Romo for toiling away his life with the second (or third) best team in the NFC east (current playoff standings notwithstanding, of course.)
4. One more point about Football—I find myself drawn to teams not because of the team and the legacy of that franchise, but because of players and coaches. That is why I enjoy watching the Broncos and Patriots these days and why I will at least make an effort to enjoy the Bills if they sign ‘Sexy Rexy’ Ryan.
5. Blonde remains the default hair setting for American hotness. I remain not a fan of that default. At what point did we decide that Norwegian beauty was the end all? That constant quest for blonde beauty does a great disservice to all of the other shapes and shades of beauty. Then again, I’ve noticed that the typical ‘blonde beauty’ is on default setting in more than looks. Step out of the stereotype, sister! Perhaps many of them cannot because the stereotype often becomes the aspiration/goal.
6. I’m not saying it is time to hang up my cleats, but it is long past time to stop lamenting over what sort of atheletic career I could have lead had I not been a motivational fail and start to live a life designed around healthful living and actually being the best version of myself.
7. Swanky-looking Wendy’s are rare and weird but also represent a wonderful location to escape and disappear into the feeling of the pads of my fingers against the keyboard. Writing is life.

There was that moment, brief and fleeting, where I thought to myself, ‘my kid can’t hang with these guys’. When I say guys I mean guys. One kid was about 5’9-5’10 and 165 claiming to be 12 years old. Maybe he was. Maybe not. I know one thing: my kid is 4 feet and around 60 lbs and seriously lucky they were just pulling flags. The 10-12 range is rife with growth spurts creating inequalities of skill and size. While my other boys can play above their age range (playing 6-7 and 8-9 FB respectively), the 10-12 wall presents an obstacle that makes the age range untenable for most younger 10 year olds and raises the question: Can we compete.

If the first two games are any indication, the answer is no. We lost the scrimmage by two touchdowns and were thoroughly stomped in our first game today against super-size boy  34-6. Still we learned and we grew and I grew as a coach, recognizing what I need to do to make these boys at least competitive. Losing seasons are a new concept to me, one which I didn’t much enjoy. Turns out my kids aren’t much for the losing either. They are for the learning, though.

Some Thoughts:

1. Early criticism on Empire: no depth beyond the stereotyping or the ultra obvious and referenced King Lear elements. Still, its good to hear some decent sounding (if also appropriately shallow) r&b. Thanks, Timbaland. Oh and thanks (sarcastically) for the non-diegetics. They just suck. Are you new?

I can say for certain that going to school and dealing with the daily rigor therein really affects children. After they’ve been off for a few weeks and thrust back into the routine, their behaviors may drop of precipitously. I can say this because I’ve watched it happen with my kids time and again. It results in punishment for the kids on top the exhaustion that led them to the crappy behaviors in the first place.

Dealing with wild kids is draining.

Some Thoughts:

1. Learned about a dude named Richard Copeland who saw a dude speeding in El Mirage, AZ and decided to arm himself and chase the speeder (speeding himself ironically). Once he caught the speeder he shot out the speeder’s back tire. Fortunately this vigilante was arrested. Only in AZ.

Its funny how the national conversation determines good vs. evil. Nowadays (and for some time in fact), dependence on foreign oil is seen as a great problem. It gets us into wars and is allegedly a central factor in terrorism. Of course, not all foreign oil is bad. The republican party has been fighting for years to expand the Keystone pipeline, a pipeline that runs foreign (Canadian) oil through the US down to Texas where it is refined. Whats the difference? This project is seen as American and very pro-american, despite the fact that it is entirely Canadian and has only limited benefits to the U.S.

The Keystone pipeline already exists. The Keystone XL project represents phase 4 of a decades long project to bridge America with a super pipeline that brings the oil sands down from the north to the plants that refine and distribute it in Texas. I openly question why the refinement cannot happen in Canada or closer to where the oil is extracted. The only logical answer I’ve been given is that once the oil is refined in Texas it is often exported to other countries. So, we’re putting a pipeline through our country to export oil to other countries while all the while importing oil from other countries. On the surface this doesn’t make much sense. In financial terms it makes a lot more sense if you consider who owns what oil and who they have contracts with. However, none of it is constructed in a fashion to benefit the U.S.A. The ‘people’ who benefit are the multi-national corporations that stand to make a profit off of the endeavor. Meanwhile, politicians who are lining their pockets off of the endeavor open claim that Keystone XL will result in significant jobs and boost the U.S. economy. However, an independent report by Cornell University states that, “KXL will not be a major source of US jobs”

Lies upon lies upon propaganda.

The fact is KXL is about a handful of people getting very rich doing something that doesn’t advance our country at all. I have no right to be upset about that however, because as I’ve come to understand, doing things for the benefit of you at all costs is the American way.