10 Minute Rule

I decided to take an hour to myself in order to get in the right headspace. FAIL. See, I discovered this unusual game called Bejeweled and quickly decided that this is the cause of my soul…

I’m being dramatic, of course, but I was drawn to this game. Spatial awareness is a skill I’ve neglected for some time now and Bejeweled is a low-impact way to work on the ability to see and make visual connections. It is crazy addictive. I played for the better part of 30 minutes and gained the awesome level of ‘Beginner’. Needless to say I have a lot of work to do on the game. I gotta say that I truly enjoy learning–especially when it comes in the form of a game.

Experiences like this serve as distractions from the every day world, but they can also be valuable learning experiences. I’ve redesigned my classes following this principle of fun and distraction. As always, it is about the skills you learn more than it is about the classical classroom experience of ‘Sage on the Stage’. I want the students loud, rowdy, hard working, and driven to be the best in class.

What you see above totally describes the Bejeweled experience. I’m learning something new. I’m being challenged in a way that shows me that I’m making gradual improvement without feeling shamed by the experience–maybe frustrated a bit. Still, its a great way to learn and the way all learning should be — fun and rewarding.

What do you do when the pot runs empty? Every writer has heard of writer’s block. Some believe it exists while others deny it. I’ve become a denier as of late. My denial is part of a deeper understanding of the way my creativity works. It is not endless. It is a subconscious way of rationalizing all of my desires with all of the experiences I have over the course of a day, week, my life. From time to time life itself can become overwhelming and during those times I lose that ability to connect my creative side with the rational understanding of what is happening. I get backed up, and don’t produce new ideas. It isn’t a block in the traditional sense of having nothing to write, but a disconnect between the craziness of the world and the part of my brain that makes sense of all that.

Sometimes there isn’t enough time to let your mind sort things out. You do the day to day routine, living the part of an automaton more than a thinking, feeling being. When this happens it becomes difficult to generate new ideas and to go to that place where your true self exists–that place where the writing comes alive and explodes unto the page.

I could use a vacation…

Some Thoughts:

1. TLC’s obsession with polygamy and dwarfism is getting old. Of course, a show about  little people polygamists might be interesting, but I’m more interested in seeing a little bit of polygyny. What will the media say about a show where a woman has five husbands?

Some of you may remember a time long ago when there was a country called the U.S.S.R. for a time we were the foil for that country, and we sat atop the world as a superpower constantly sharpening our blades in a cold war. This was an incredible time for both media and politics, but the power of both was so concentrated that precious few got fat off the stories. In today’s poli-media mine field there are so many channels and stories and entities looking to cash in that every story is exploded to the point where it is made to seem like the most important story in the world. Likewise, every pundit wants you to hang on their every word, so they say unreasonable things just to get airplay.

Recently Ted Nugent caused a stir because he called our president a mongrel, and was then brought on the campaign trail by a fellow running for office. Nugent is a mouthy prick, but giving him airtime over what was obviously an angry racist blowing off steam is counterproductive and foolish. The same can be said about Al Sharpton or Sarah Palin. These are pundits: individuals who exist to say, ‘I told you so’ and to try to maneuver those in power into making stupid decisions, just to call off the media hounds. Our president is dealing with that in regards to the Crimea situation. All the pundits on the ‘other side of the aisle’ are demanding he play hardball and aren’t considering the fact that hardball leads to war.

The Russians are dealing with the same stuff we are, but it isn’t the media that is pushing them. Instead, the power elite of Russia are looking to sink their teeth into the parts of the U.S.S.R. their parents lost and a few screams from the Americans about the ‘consequences’ only serve to beat the drums of war. I hope to never experience a world war in my lifetime. I don’t think we are remotely near that point, but the media keeps trying to convince me it is a distant possibility.

 

Imagine if everything you learned led to the job you wanted. Imagine now that the job you wanted were no longer available or became obsolete. What would your hard fought education be worth then?

More and more I am seeing commercials for schools like University of Phoenix that advise students to only take courses that lead directly to the job they want. Perhaps I’m from another generation (or even planet), one that believes in a well-rounded education and learning that promotes understanding of what you want to do and what you are capable of as a human being. The system is geared less and less for that sort of person anymore.

The majority of college systems and legislation–especially in the community college sector–are geared towards degree completion in a field that will lead to immediate employment. I’m not troubled by this, but I am troubled by the limited criteria of those tracks. More and more the track system guides us to take only the courses some entity deems absolutely necessary to a specific job line. Wanna be a secretary? There’s a degree for that. Wanna be an HR Specialist? There’s a degree for that too. However, where in all of these degree paths is the idea of becoming a strong learner and critical thinker?

The difficulty I have with track programs is that they train us to do one thing. These programs fail to recognize that society is ever-evolving and that evolution requires critical thinking and a varied skillset. It isn’t about learning the specific set of skills required to do a job so much as it is learning how to be a learner, a team player, and a critical thinker.

Been giving renewed thought to the end of the football season. There is clearly a lot I could have done better and there are lessons I can take from that in order to improve as a coach for the upcoming soccer season. Here are some takeaways:

• More fun
• Focus on having fortitude and courage
• Greater focus on team work
• Greater focus on timing
• Use players to their strengths

The last one is especially important. We lost 2 out of our last 3 because we didn’t–I didn’t have kids who can step up and perform different roles that build off their strengths. We also lost because when the going got tough, we got despondent. I should’ve rethought the starters and began to run more plays with two halfbacks, because I had 2 and I had 1 every down wideout left. I didn’t, because I stubbornly believed all the others would step up and emerge as stars. Becoming a trusted wideout takes time and takes forming a relationship with the QBs. We didn’t have any of that at the end and it showed.

So, in order to improve I need to work on being a better teacher of what is listed above. Teamwork is the starting point. My players didn’t believe they could fill certain roles and I didn’t teach them the timing to be effective in the long run. This is also something I can improve on next year.

A way to build camaraderie is team specific high fives, chants, and other team building rituals. That is something I’ve always been poor at and need to really improve on for soccer. When it comes to soccer we are already going into the season with two underaged  kids, so we are already looking at being an undersized team. We gotta believe and we gotta play smarter than anyone else in the league in order to be successful. With any luck we can pull together some of the players from last year and continue to grow together.

What is lost in this debate over SB 1062 is how far reaching this bill actually is. The bill serves to redefine the individual as a paper corporation and it extends all the protections and freedoms of the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States to non-carbon based lifeforms.

I kid you not.

The material capitalized is marked in blue–indicating amendment or other significant change to the existing 1999 law on the books. “”Exercise of religion” means the PRACTICE OR OBSERVANCE OF RELIGION, INCLUDING THE ability to act or refusal to act in a manner substantially motivated by a religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.”The bill goes on to add, “”Person” includes a religious assembly or institution ANY INDIVIDUAL, ASSOCIATION, PARTNERSHIP, CORPORATION, CHURCH, RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLY OR INSTITUTION OR OTHER BUSINESS ORGANIZATION.”

While the media storm focuses on the idea of this being a Gay Rights bill, the facts as they are laid out above are far more sinister. This is a bill that enhances religious freedom or, in a sense, enables people to impose their religion on others in a significant way. It allows individuals to use their corporations as a tool to advance their ideology. I could, for example, decide to purchase a mall and then decide that allowing persons of a faith not aligned with my own are to be excluded from that mall. I can do that same thing with land, or schools, etc.

Here is the key: anything deemed to be “practice or observation of religion” would be protected–not just for individuals but for companies as well. It does what several other laws as of late have done: It confers humanity on corporations. Yep, here in 2014 we are just a few steps from turning into a full blown Shadowrun society, minus the magic (maybe).

I love that I am free to have any faith I choose, however, I don’t agree that I should be free to segregate others as it serves my faith. In truth, faith should be a deeply personal thing that you impose/embrace yourself as opposed to imposing on others. In a state where the majority of people are part of a highly organized and powerful (and somewhat secretive) religious group, a law that makes any business they control reflective of the religious individual is scary. This particular group had restrictive racial policies until 1978 and still has very restrictive gender policies, as most religions do. So while we are concerned about the sexual rights of some, we should also be concerned about the rights of women who, largely repressed by religion, may quickly discover that businesses now have the right to treat them as the bible sometimes does: Badly.

I’ve had to take a step back and evaluate my life and my responsibilities. Having the flu (or symptoms thereof) leaves one in a vulnerable and reflective state. Been considering different patterns of organization–ways in which to rationalize the workload that doesn’t overwhelm me. I’ve yet to find that magic bullet. I’m still talking about it here…

When I’m not trying to be a better person, I’m thinking about this fundamental difference in my life–the fact that I have kids. I think that having kids is much like growing another limb. Driving past their school today I realized that I am always thinking about them in some ‘background process’ way. My boys are of me and I want to make sure their experiences in life are the best they can possibly encounter.

Another short blog is what I’m encountering now… being sick is hell.

Late at night when the house is quiet is when I miss my cat the most. She’d skulk out of the near darkness and climb into my lap or unto my shoulder in hopes I would settle soon, so she could curl up on me and go back to sleep. I would listen to her purr and my mind would relax to the point I could harvest new ideas. Part of the change–this shift away from coaching–is a recognition of how much has really changed in my late night routine.

Without kitty I’ve begun to fill that uncomfortable silence with the chomp chomp of potato chips. It is grief eating more than stress eating. By any name it is a behavior that is likely to hurt my health.

 

It feels like a weight lifted from my shoulders to be done with the flag football season. 3 teams means 5 or more practices a week, 3 separate game plans and personalities a plenty. The expectations for this season were mixed. For the 8-9 Giants nothing short of a perfect season would do. The 6-7 Ravens were filled with kids who never played the game before, and the 4-5 Cardinals were too young for expectation. In the end, the results were as varied as the expectations, and hardly anything went according to plan.

My Giants started the season a perfect 5-0, but on the 5th game our top receiver broke his arm. From that point forward we went to producing 45 points a game to 11. We couldn’t stretch the field, so the opposing D could key in on our running backs and force our other receivers to step up. They didn’t. We dropped 2 of our last 3 and recorded more drops in those games than we had the entire season prior. It goes to show that one player really can make all the difference.

The Ravens weren’t very good from the start. We knew this was a learning year where the kids were largely playing together for the first time–playing football at all for the first time–and adjusting to an older and more competitive age bracket. I blogged about the rough start and decided then to Belichick the thing–focusing on designing a playbook that would take advantage of their skills and particular nuances of the game. The problem there was that the Belichick way requires players that listen and follow precise instruction. That isn’t a thing 6-7 yr olds typically do. Still, it worked well enough to earn us 4 wins in 7 games. The three we lost were to older, bigger, and more experienced teams. What I learned most of all from that experience is that I have my own weakness as a coach–Once team morale breaks down, I’m not terribly good at bringing it back up–at least not as fast as needed. When we lost, the kids got down on themselves and never got back up. That happened at the 8-9 level as well.

The Cardinals were outstanding, winning all of their games–most in convincing fashion. What stood out to me was how a lot of these 4 yr old players developed over the course of the season. With this young group we have a solid core of kids who can move up together through the years, staying friends and becoming wonderful athletes.

I enjoyed the season, but the end represents a chance to refocus on writing and personal growth. My basketball season is over (for me) as well, so now I can give my time to other important things.

I believe in freedom, I just don’t believe in the interpretation of freedom as many western and southern states interpret it. I live in Arizona, a state that is at the center of the ‘freedom’ question. The state legislature recently passed a bill that allows businesses to refuse service to homosexuals on the grounds that it is against their religion. In other words, the bill legalizes discrimination as religious freedom.

I wonder if people realize the weapon they wield in religion. Since its inception, the concept of faith has been used to wage war and design restrictions around the way we live our lives. The truth and beauty of religion, in my humble opinion, is that we all speak to our higher power in our own way and those who choose not to follow our way are not a threat, but instead an opportunity to see faith from a different angle and to learn new ways of seeing reality or, at the very least, deepen our resolve that what we believe to be true is in fact true.

I’m terrified by this new development because it weaponizes religion in a way it hasn’t been in quite a long time. In the cause of freedom we are suddenly prepared to justify homosexual discrimination. What next? Racism?