10 Minute Rule

Nothing resembling a coherent blog post today. I am sitting in bed writing between episodes of invincible and thinking long and hard about, well, nothing. Sometimes the brain needs a night to reload. So, let’s jump into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Been reading Cupid Coffee. Nice.
2. Toiletpaper nerdness: I realized that the stuff that feels like cotton is like something out of heaven. I’ll get brand info to you when I figure out what it is, but man…
3. Also, a man so obsessed with how nice his toilet paper is probably doesn’t have real world problems.
4. I invested in Nvidia at the right time. I didn’t invest nearly enough for the profit to be worthwhile.
5. Getting back to Invincible: the series got a bit meta about the shortcuts and difficulties of animation and then proceeded to use bad animation for the rest of the episode…
6. In thinking about the things I write and care about I find that there is a predilection towards sports, writing, relationships, and bad tv. Is this all I am?
7. I don’t have much else to say…
8. There is the one thing: I think I may have a medical issue with my right hand. There is pain in the palm on and around the finger joints of the index and middle finger. Not sure of the cause.
9. I also have a computer that is very angry at all the windows I keep open. It’s yelling right now… or maybe that is just the fan.
10. Now it’s getting really hot. Good thing ten minutes are up…

In this house the talk is all basketball–most of it negative of course, because this is the house of trash talk (and I know more than these players about the situation they are in and what they should have done in the moment). It is typical of the age and the generation, but this is not about why they are the way they are. This is about the crazy that happened earlier in the day. Stefon Diggs is going to Houston… for a 2nd rounder. I have no idea how this came to be fact, but unless the Bills know he’s washed, they just added a crazy weapon to the Houston Arsenal and that team is going to be wild.

One stat that told the tale was the incredibly high percentage of catches that Diggs is able to bring down vs. zone coverage. Pair that with Stroud’s league best success rate vs. zone and you have a Madden-esque cheat code in play. It changes the dynamic in that division–especially when you add in Joe Mixon who is not washed. I’m really excited to see the Texans operate this season. I don’t necessarily see myself as a fan, but man they will be a joy in motion.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a moment to reframe my thinking about sports watching. I love watching certain players play basketball. I don’t like the teams persay. but I love the player. I say this now because I will be watching the Eagles play this season. I am NOT a fan of the franchise. I actively dislike that organization. However, they got Saqoun, so imma route for my guy and watch him work.
2. Giants? Nah they trash. Still watching as a fan, but they are really testing my limits of likability. I disagree with the concept of loyalty, because liking a team is a choice and occasionally a geographical burden. I don’t even live in the city anymore and besides, I can be a Jet fan vocally again so…

I’m taking us back to the summer of 2015. The post was 1876. The title, “Tipped too far and back again”. I was talking about relationship balance–something I have struggled with my entire life. In this instance I was discussing the balance of the relationship between myself and my boys. It is funny to look back on ’15 when I was deep into the coaching and turning them in to everything I wanted them to be only to see them become some version of that combined with who they want to be.

So what then is the necessary balance? I think in all relationships there has to be a basic understanding of needs of and from all parties concerned. For me there is an inherent need to please, so a lot of this stuff I do can be self-gratifying. On the other hand I need to feel like the things I do for people are appreciated in a way that I recognize as appreciation. This is made difficult in a parental relationship (though perhaps no harder than in a marital one) because the kids don’t fully understand my expectations of appreciation unless I explain it to them.

This was, as I put it, the rub and crux of the blog. I was troubled by my boys not knowing how to act, but I didn’t look at myself and how I acted and occasionally continue to act. Children are sponges. Partners are mirrors. You give yourself to your kids and that shapes them. You see your wants and needs in your partner and that shapes how you behave. I hold these truths to be self-evident if you are willing to look at yourself and your actions.

Some Thoughts:

1. My wifi is a lot slower than it should be given how much we pay per month. Unacceptable.

I’m feeling that Monday feel again. The day is by far the toughest of my weekly schedule. It requires a lot from me and I find myself behind on everything. At this point I still have two classes to post and two more to prep for tomorrow. All of that being said I at least feel good about the writing. I struggle with these early days of the week in terms of staying on point with the writing but I have been strong today. Now I’m drained, tired, and ready to chill for the rest of the evening. I don’t have a lot to say this post other than, it feels really good to be productive.

Some Thoughts:

1. Thinking about Tunguska… It makes me curious that a meteor that large would be destroyed in the air.
2. Also thinking about the fact that the Maya were forced to flee their civilization because of drought and hunger… Where did they go though?

Ernie Hudson is basically 30 years older than me and looks my age.

If I’m being honest, he looks better than me. That, dear readers, is wild. It is also a bit of a wakeup call. On the one hand I could look at this revelation and say, well I can look good way into my last stand and I don’t have to worry about getting right for a while. Or I could see this as an opportunity to turn things towards the healthy. The Lady Talis is focused on getting me right and my resistance has been… noted. I can do more things to be better and healthier and thanks to seeing this dude above, I think there is a chance I get good again.

What will it take? Honestly, I tried to hard too often to go hard daily. I need to start with three strong days a week and something doable for those days. I need to develop a habit as opposed to forcing one. Getting going on the words is always a slow process. Getting going on the body and soul is even slower.

I didn’t fall asleep till 4 Am, which means my day is effectively ruined. I am not in the right mindspace to be productive as a writer. Still, I find these wild thoughts coursing through my head. For instance: What if I structured every single lesson in a class as a story and made that story an argument or a mystery or something of that nature–what if the solving of it is how they learn? I think it would take a bunch of work on the front end, but it sounds like something that could be super engaging and exciting and straight up different for a basic ENG 101 or 102 class. It would have to start with a disclaimer along the lines of ‘join me on this journey that will be different than your normal learning experiences’ or some odd crap.

The idea being that learning is storytelling–its getting the learner to invest in what is taught. This is especially cumbersome in an english class, because the students do not care and do not see the value of what is being taught to them. So, yeah. I intend to restructure the entirety of my ENG 101 experience as an immersive story that the players (read: students) are involved in as both independent and collaborative investigators shaping the narrative as we proceed throughout the semester. This could be new and groundbreaking and fun and engaging. I could also poop the bed. That is the beauty of trying new things.

Alena Long

People are complicated. We come from a long schema of wants and needs that often begin way before we become verbal. Once we can speak we can verbalize the needs we’ve had all along, but the lack remains or is overindulged or becomes central to that which we crave in our lives. Alena Long was breastfed for six days. On the seventh day her mother set her down in a clear locker at a Fire station a hundred miles from where she was born and everything she should or could have known. For seventeen years she moved through a system that didn’t want her, shifting from house to house and family to family of people who ultimately did not want her. She did everything she could to be wanted. Her actions and need only pushed people further away. Little by little the need shifted from something she wanted to something she hated in any possible form. She stopped believing in what she could have, and started accepting what she could get from people who had needs of their own.

She was twenty three when she became a mother for the first time. Her second daughter arrived a short ten months after. It wasn’t her intention to transit that need to them. It just developed naturally out of finally and for the first time feeling what she’d lost six days into her own life. She became a mother first, a wife second, and nothing existed beyond that.

It took her a while to realize she had her own beliefs and feelings and needs that were outside that fundamental push. It took twelve years in fact, when her first born realized that she wanted a life of her own and it didn’t involve mom being there every waking moment–throwing her life into her daughters as though everything else were secondary. Now Alena is at a crossroads. She can’t be all about these kids who need more space and she doesn’t have a sense of mooring beyond that. All she knows–all she wants is to be there and to be available and to be ready when they need her.

I think I figured out what it is that bothers me about this place. The other day I came across this meme:

It turns out here is exactly where I live and exactly the sad existence I watch the people I love meet with day in and day out and they are entirely complacent and complicit in the act of it. Binge watching the same old TV shows over and over again while eating the same frozen pizza day in and day out is no way to live, yet it is a life that appears to be the way here. It is in fact ideal, or at least I’m told it is. This is a complacency born of not having hard times or any real difficulties in their lives. This ideal life is what the Lady Talis and I have created by working hard and being strong and recognizing that we need to rise above what we were into what we want to become.

Yet what we have created is little more than a breeding ground for laziness where there is not a care in the world–even for the conditions of the space in which they live, because they know we are going to fix it eventually. This is what people fear when they fear a safety net, but this, what we’ve created, is more than a safety net. It is a black hole from which they have no will, need, or desire to ever emerge from.

I refuse to be sad of whatI have created for myself and what the Lady Talis and I have created for ourselves and for each other. Unfortunately, what we made is what is abused by those who’ve earned nothing. This is parenthood.

I’m writing this with a belly full of Ruffles so forgive me for the hangover. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about Caitlin Clark. She’s America’s media darling. She’s the greatest to ever play the sport, breaking scoring records that haven’t been touched since–wait… 2013?! That is a bit odd. It turns out that…wait… Okay. This scoring record business is a bit confusing now. Dyaisha Fair ended with 3403 points in 2024–this year as she fell short of the tournament. That puts her 427 behind Clark. To be fair (PUN!) she did it in 5 whereas Clark only has played 4. Plum played 4 years of guard at Washington and scored 3527–the previous record. She played 4 more games than Clark’s (running?) total of 3830. Of course none of the broke Pistol Pete’s three year LSU total of 3,664 until Clark did it… in 4.

So why all the hype about Clark when we barely heard about Plum (a WNBA all-star) back in the day? Well, I think it comes down to cultural race and the stories we want to be able to tell. Clark is a white girl in a sport that is culturally black. She is constantly presented as a contrast to players like Angel Reese, whose mostly black and indigenous team is seen by many as rowdy and, un lady like. Hype begets hype and as her story and icon-image grows she is getting offers of 10M to play intramural 3 on 3 hoops with dudes. Articles are out there about how she played boys AAU and won ‘ships–or a ‘ship. Sure, it happened. However, let’s be real about this: Juju Watkins is on a pace to outscore Clark and she is only an 18 yr old freshman. So, why aren’t we hearing about her as much? Well, I think it comes down to cultural race and the stories we want to be able to tell.

It is 6pm and these are the last ten minutes I’ll be writing tonight. My turnback is not an actual date today, but more of an idea; a bookmark in time of understanding the idea of balance. I cannot work all the time, though I have more than enough work to do so. There needs to be a fine balance between the writing and the living (and the loving). That balance is formed by being aware of the needs of the people around me and using that as a basis from which to establish how much I work, when I work, and how I can handle the deadlines. I failed a bit at that over the last six months. It caused projects to go a lot longer than they should, and now I find myself behind and trying to get it all done before the summer–before it is too late.

I have to admit that though the work is long hours and stressful, I’m extremely productive and feel really good about the projects I am developing. It is a learning process for me now and I am getting better as a writer day by day. This is the future I want for myself. I want to do it with the balance that makes it worthwhile for the most important people in my life… Finally that list includes myself.