10 Minute Rule

A downside of posting from the iPad is the inability of the software to record a blog until it is actually posted online. I wrote this post much earlier in the day and a child took hold of the device before the post went to print. What followed was ten minutes of writing lost. I suppose tonight is the 20 minute rule. I also suppose the loss is fitting, because it echoes what I want to share.

What is a life well lived? According to Kobe Bryant it is a life that is about triumphing over adversity and achieving the dream. What happens to most of us is not the Kobe story, but a sadder refrain in which we constantly devolve our dreams until that are shallow husks of what we thought could be. Yet somehow we cling to these husks and attempt to call them a life well lived. Perhaps we she call them the chance not taken. This has been marinating for some time as an emerging theme in my coming fantasy novel (coming when I release it from the prison of my subconscious to run across the pages free). The revision of dreams and life happiness to something more manageable and reachable is nothing shy of an acceptable cop out.

I don’t mean to see the world die unhappy, but I wish people fought harder to become who they are truly meant to be. That fight, I believe, is a life well lived.

8:33 on a saturday sleepover night. I am quietly debating the virtues of being a shut in. The truth is If you have a big enough house and access to amazon.com the need to leave your house is greatly reduced. I have several friends who telecommute and I myself practice that lifestyle in the summer months. I realize this conversation is triggered by the sleepover. Having 4 boys in place makes one consider the life of a hermit. There was even a moment when I shoved them outside towards the evening sun, shut the door, and observed a very brief moment of silence.

My wife is searching online for weed killer. In her summer mode she turns into this green-thumbed goddess driven to make her house a better place. Now that summer is, in the work sense, a bemusing memory I wonder how long it will take for her to shift back into that hard charging student mode that also makes me smile.

Seriously, I am out of words tonight. I think this many kids in one space is damaging to the ability to think.

 

When I was a kid I used to play this game called ‘Who Are You?’ The goal of the game was to decide what superhero you most wanted/intended to be like. It is a common game; almost a meme in the way it moves from generation to generation. My kids play the game without ever being prompted by me or my wife to do so. When I played I wanted to be Batman. Over time I wanted to be Robin. Now? I don’t know. The difference has to do with a deeper understanding of what the game means to me now. It ties into that idea of potential and how I view myself.

I have a problem with the word potential. It feels like an empty promise. Everyone is born with potential, and as we age that potential ticks towards empty like the minutes of our lives. Just the other day I watched an excellent commercial by Nike that showed a very overweight boy running to the point where his body dripped with sweat. That is potential in its raw form. That is the realization that our bodies are molded by ourselves and we must put in the required effort in order to achieve the goals we wish for ourselves. This is where the general understanding of potential fails.

We, at least in this iteration of American society, place caps on potential. It is pervasive. We compare everyone to someone who came before. Usain Bolt is trying to be Carl Lewis, Lebron James is trying to be Jordan, every female astronaut is trying to be Sally Ride. This may be true, but it should not be. Potential, as a capping mechanism, weakens our individual ability to grow beyond the boundaries of someone else’s imagination. When I started writing I wanted to be the next Stephen King. I didn’t want to rule his genre, but I wanted to be that big. This was the cap of my imagination. Then, as I grew and saw the walls of opportunity closing in, I wanted to be the next Nigel Findley, the next Kenson, the list goes on.

What I didn’t want to be was the first me. I did not recognize what that could mean, because there was no roadmap to get there, which is what potential unfortunately creates. Potential allows one to craft a path by someone else’s history. It tells you how to get somewhere, which is in the vicinity of where you thought you wanted to go, but is unlikely to be anywhere near where you are meant or capable of going on your own. I am not saying in makes you wish for more than you can be or even less, but it makes you wish for someone else’s experience when all we should ever wish for is what we ourselves are capable of becoming.

I don’t talk about my kids in terms of potential. I talk about them in terms of ability and preparedness. I give them the skills and the tools to learn what they want to be. They need to build their own roads to get there.

Some Thoughts:

1. I know this is waiver wednesday, but I wanted to put it on hold for a very special wednesday next week once the pre-season is in full swing.

2. Writing. Yeah, I’m back at it. Nothing I can say right now other than there is some GREAT stuff in the pipe. Stay tuned.

How many more posts can I make? Will we see 8465. Waiver Wednesday? Or will I have decided to move on by then? When is enough enough? I have been thinking about time a lot lately as the school year quickly approaches. I started the blog in a time of great need; when my writing no longer spoke to me and the rest of my life followed suit. I needed it then, like a lifeline to my own soul. Since that time the need waned and I struggled to find topics to converse about. Several times I talked, Seinfeld-like, about absolutely nothing. In recent months I have found patterns and conversations to follow, but they don’t strike me with the necessary regularity to make the columns valuable to potential readers. Of course, this didn’t start out about the readers, nor are there enough to significantly impact the direction. No, this all comes back to time.

When will it be time to break the rule?

The rule was about finding that time to write in spite of the world around me. That challenge still exists, perhaps to a greater extent than it previously did, because the writing demands are pacing the personal demands and there are still only 24hrs in a day. Two years ago I found myself trying to parcel out time according to a set schedule. This hour is four tv, is for gym, this for kids. That strategy is useless unless you control the elements demanding your time. So, now I go with it and squeeze in my writing time as I can, and that still is not enough.

I hope to write 4000 words tomorrow. It is the first day I have to write without any responsibility over a 7 hr block. Out of that time, I will likely write for 4 hours, with the rest going to the nubile up stage and other odds and ends. I wish I had that chunk every day, but normally I have a tenth of it. That tells me this: it is not time for the rule to be broken.

So long as I still struggle to write, I will have need of the ten minute rule. Besides, where else will I Talk about football on wednesdays?

That tightness in my chest is probably driven by e over abundance of coffee in my system coupled with the crowds of people pressed into the narrow aisles of Gateway CC’s new enrollment services area. It is the first day of school for my youngest two, which means my wife, child #1, and I get to go to wifey’s school and help her register for her final semester of nursing. “Help” in this context means sitting around and waiting for her to do whatever drawn out process is required for her to be able to walk into class that first day.

Calling the process foolish would be like calling government cumbersome. Like government, the process is so entrenched that nobody is willing to make the sacrifices required in order to rebuild it from the ground up. Like government, the cost of doing such would be monumental. So, here I sit with my son trying to find a way to cut through the boredom of it all.

At least I have an iPad.

I also have a job starting soon. That means summer is nearly over and I am largely unfulfilled in my need for some rest and relaxation. Sure, I lounged around and played games, but I really wanted to hide away for a week and do nothing but write. In my perfect world, the kids wander off to the grandparents or something and I wander off for a week to do nothing but write. Dream on, eh?

I get it. The public school system is broken. Administration is bloated and likely overpaid. School teachers are not getting the job done. Worst still is the plight of the government grunt. Government workers are amongst the most hated groups in the world. They are generally rude (largely as a result of being overworked) and in situations where their roles are redundant they are fiercely protective of their unnecessary jobs. So, when the GOP launches into an attack about how government needs to be downsized, I understand. But here is what I don’t understand: How does firing people help the job market?

The fact is, it doesn’t. Yes, government needs reform. However, in order to do that level of reform will require firing more people in one day than the country hires in its best month. We could easily add a percent to the jobless rate and in the process destroy a number of lives. Of course, you never hear about what is going to happen to all the people put out of work. You won’t because it isn’t popular to talk about what happens to hard working Americans when they are stripped of the jobs they invested their lives in. No, instead we talk about firing the people it is easiest to hate.

Scapegoating is about hiding the truth and the root cause of the problem. We we let it happen we only make the problem worse.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The difference between good cgi and bad cgi is no longer the processing power. Quite flawless CGI can and has been done by amateurs using readily available and affordable software. There is no better indication of this than in recent movies and fabricated paranormal footage. The stuff looks great. I think the real difference is the talent of the programmers involved–as it should be.

First, apologies on the rather intermittent service. On occasion this blog disappears. It always comes back, but it does lapse into these periodic silences as do I–at least in terms of physical improvement. The good news is I’ve come alive at last. I’m back in the gym and slowly working to put my body on the path to stay alive a lot longer. I am exceedingly sore. I did a short upper body workout preceded by a few minutes of light cardio. It wasn’t a super workout, but it was a breakthrough. Now I know I am back on track to be a healthy and it feels right.

What feels wrong is the incredible amount of money I spend on fast food for the family. Did You know that it cost $24 to feed a family of five at McDonalds, $24 at Sonic, nearly $30 at Chick-Fil-A, and only $20 at Panda Express. The fact is, fast food is quick and super costly.

This lesson was brought to my attention after realizing my kids spent the last few days living off that stuff. Call it the storm before the calm, or rage before the start of school. By whatever name it is a lot of bad eating. Well, it all stops now and the kids are going on the same diet we are on. Everyone should be healthy and fit.