10 Minute Rule

You have to write a lot. That’s the first thing everyone says. You have to take it upon yourself to write as much as possible, dragging yourself to the well of creativity and patience each day and scooping out everything you can in order to make your soul swell with the words. For a while there I thought that drinking from the cup would empty me out. I watched King and the others fall victim to this emptiness of story, a hollow canting of something already told. I felt they’d run dry and were no longer laden with words.

I was wrong of course. Consider it a misinterpretation of the situation by someone who, until that point, had lived outside the walls of the published. It wasn’t that the old greats had fallen silent, but that the old greats had so much to do outside of produce that producing anything of significant substance was a maddening and impossible challenge. When I found myself in that same place, battling stress in the slender moments before fatigue took me utterly, I did not understand how I’d arrived or what it even meant. I wrote for months about Writer’s block, the loss of the soul-story, even this idea of giving up the written word. Heck, I quit Shadowrun altogether. None of it made me a brighter spirit or even quelled that heavy desire to put finger to key and hack out story.

It turns out that I was struggling with life outside of the words, and instead of seeing that and diving headlong into the words for a chance to reflect and perhaps even escape, I blamed the words for my stress and my rough intention. I know now that the words are what keeps me going and it is only through keeping going that one can write well.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve had many thoughts of my grandmother lately. I don’t know what that means, except for maybe as a foreshadow to the loss of her last sister–my great aunt. In the Bayou they talk about blood as a spirit thing and you know sometimes when your blood has thinned. You can feel the soul of your lost loved one drifting away from you. I hope that isn’t the case, the way my family is so small and so nearly and terribly forgotten. 

I’m writing this while watching a very strange TruTV show called Jokers. More disappointingly, I am watching TruTV. This is one of those nights where the fatigue caught up with me and there is little I  can do productively. I thought about writing some more, but I can’t even bring myself to pull up the file. Too much energy needed and not enough available.

The upside is I’ve fallen into a solid routine of waking (not sleeping) at a set time and climbing right into the writing. A few months at this pace and I will reach a level of constant production I have never seen. In the meanwhile, I am totally drained and only marginally interested in remaining conscious much longer than these ten minutes..

 

1. An uninspired second half of offense left me feeling flatter than I did after the boy’s one loss of the season. At least then I could blame three missing QB’s, a late 4th QB and a dearth of safeties. No, this offensive blackout was 100% lack of effort on our part along with an unwillingness to pay attention and throw the ball where I told them.
2. The Giants have apparently released Ahmad Bradshaw and Michael Boley, two of my favorite G-man players. This has serious implications. In fact, it means the Giants are comfortable with letting emotionally leaders go in order to clear cap space and give some of the younger guys a chance. Nobody is safe. Well, nobody except Eli. He’s all the way safe I’d bet.
3. One of those potential releases is Osi. His agent is already chatting up the Jets as a way to keep the big O in the Bigger Apple. Now I am okay with that, but I do wonder if Osi is going to be okay with still being a situational back. His style of game seems less suited for the 3-4. Of course, the Jets are in patchwork mode and could be taking several G-man casualties. I fully expect to see Ahmad Bradshaw in green as part of a backfield that could also include Reggie Bush.
4. Getting back to the sadness over the win, I am worried that the offense I put together is totally flaming out. I have a few players who are struggling with focus and others who are just physically unable to live up to the demands of the game in the way I coach it. Now we are going into the game of the season on a two-game win streak but really flat on offense. I need to find a spark right away, but I don’t know for sure what that spark is. I may need to move my own kid to the other squad as a way to add the spark. No matter the call, it is going to be an interesting weekend.

Seems like everything is turning to the zeros these days. My car–born in 2008–is now at 100050 miles while the blog is at 1005. I want to find symmetry in the numbers, the way the arronovsky painted hidden meaning in the sequences of Pi. It probably isn’t that deep, instead being a random coincidence of events all stemming from a causal point. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about causal points lately and whether or not the choices I made in life were the best choices for me. The same friend who convinced me to start this blog is convinced that the majority of my life choices are selfless, meaning that they are for other people.

Maybe.

I am selfish about my writing when i actually have time to do it. That is about me and my own escape from this sometimes torturous reality. I am slipping more and more into these other realms, building to a crescendo of writing and maybe, just maybe, growing my legend a bit more.

Oh how the fates do conspire for me. I suppose it is egotistical to suggests that it is anything more than coincidence that my TV remote disappears on a night that I need to be writing more and watching TV less. I use Direct TV, which is notoriously difficult to operate sans remote control. So I managed to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother and then retired to the couch to pound the keys for a few hours.

Truthfully, 40 minutes plus went to surfing the web, but I got in a good chunk of actual writing and made headway in a project that vexes me. It isn’t a project I am bored with or anything, but instead it is something that feels like a heavier responsibility/challenge than it should. Some work is just that way while other stuff flies out of me like literary projectile vomit. I suppose it is the delicate balance between time, place, and mindset that turns one into the other–sometimes between paragraphs of the same assignment.

Regardless, I have a huge need to get the work done and move forward with my working life. There is a great deal more I hope to accomplish as a writer this year. Perhaps the most important thing is establishing a writing routine I can live with.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am not the best dad I can be. I know my kids want to work hard, especially when it comes to running and learning sports. I don’t provide them with enough opportunity to do so. I could do more and often promise myself I will, but a intoxicating mixture of responsibility and laziness always seems to get in the way. Story of my life.

Over the next few weeks my online writing students are trying to uncover the reasoning behind why we values some things over others. Their conversation starts with  simple question: Why do sports matter? I know that for me sports matter because of the story they tell about the individuals who play the game.

Football is not just about being hungry for recognition and accolades. It is about individuals hungry to prove themselves through perhaps the only medium they’ve known in their life and by that become greater than themselves and even find greater in themselves. That is the story of Ray Lewis as I see it. Tonight he won his second Superbowl title on the last game of his storied career. This is the way a champion should go out.

Many people are talking about the murder allegations in Ray’s past. That coincides with the belief that our athletes should also be our saints off the field. I don’t know what 52’s involvement was in the double homicide back in 2000, but I do know how much his words and present actions inspire me. That is his legacy.

Congratulations 2012-13 Ravens. Congratulations Mr. Ray Lewis. This one is well earned.

Today was a three game day and I am proud to say we took two out of three. The one loss is perhaps the one I never saw coming. My middle son lost his first flag football game of the season and perhaps his 3rd all time. This was largely a result of being outclassed by the opposing team. They were bigger, faster, stronger, and rougher than my 7 boys and it showed. The truth of the matter is I have maybe 5 kids who are legitimately competitive and two who haven’t matured enough to be competitive. Of those 5, only 3 can be counted on for both sides of the ball. That core wasn’t strong enough to overcome the athletic advantage of the other team along with bad reffing. I’m not one to complain about the refs all the time, but this guy let the kids score with flag guarding. He let em tackle my smaller kids and continued to grant them opportunities we did not receive.

In the end, the game came down to my kids being more interested in arguing than in playing. They all wanted the ball every play, but nobody wanted to listen. We blew a few possessions almost solely because I failed to maintain control of the offense. On defense we just did not do a great job tackling kids who can cut and weave. This is something I need to work on in practice–once I figure out how.

8-9 is going well. We played an incredibly tough Niner’s team and won 20-18. Good ball movement, but I need to get the ball in the hands of a couple more kids in order to feel good about how we spread it around. Kids are getting the routes and the offensive sets. This team is going to be great.

I’ve mentioned before that printers are a hustle. They are the medium through which the drug is produced, the wrapping paper for the weed. The drug itself is the ink and without the ink the printer is useless. This is a fact often made clear to me when an form of ink vanishes from its shallow coffer. Presently my Canon printer is certain it needs yellow ink to print a black and white document. It is so certain, in fact, that it won’t follow any commands until I race out to the store and get some more expensive ink.

I cannot do that for a few reasons. One, if I leave the garage will wake the kids. 2) F#$k that printer and the companies that make similar products that get you on the comeback. Now I gotta run out to the store in the morning, making my day all jacked up and out of whack.

I made it this far.

Some nights, like tonight, are harder than others. I reach a point where I am so tired and so drained from the hour, day, week, I just suffered through that I have no desire to sit in front of a glowing screen and pour myself out into a tiny white prompt box. Still, that is why I started this thing 1,000 days ago.

1,000. Take a moment to suck in the majesty of that number. It is a handful of years slipping between wet fingers. It is a lifetime. It is a heart-stopping fright to realize how long I’ve been doing one thing.

I suppose we know this: The blog worked!