Author: Matthew Groff

  • Need to Stay Focused

    I do have issues with staying focused when I should be working.

    Case in point…

    So, I have been sitting here on the couch as the kid watches her afternoon cartoons. This is an hour that I can get a blog completed and even get some work done in the novel. It’s in the schedule, and we all know that is what I do for this hour.

    Now, what I have been doing is reading up on Hamilton’s home, The Grange. I went by it the other day when I was walking the dog, and when I opened up my computer to work, The Grange popped into my head.

    Well, I thought, I could take a minute to look it up real quick. I mean, I did hear that where The Grange house is today is not the original location. I wonder if I could find a map that showed where the original location was.

    Sure enough, I did.

    But that made me wonder if I could find a map that showed the plot of land that Hamilton used to own. That was a little tougher to find, and to be honest, I never really found what I was looking for but I did find a map of upper Manhattan that had the house circled.

    And that’s when I saw that my hour had slipped by and I hadn’t written a blog or worked on the novel.

    Oops…

  • Well-Read and Books on the Shelf

    Okay, one last thought that I had about the FaceBook argument. That guy kept asking me what conservative media I read, and I knew full well that it was a set-up question. No matter how many sources I named, he would say he read more, and hence was an expert, and thus my opinion was uninformed and invalid. I knew better than to play that game, but it did make me think about at what point does a person cross the threshold and become “well read?”

    There is the Malcom Gladwell rule/guideline of 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. Does that apply to reading? Not reading up on a subject, because if you spent 10,000 reading about plumbing, you might not be an expert, but you would, or at least should, be very knowledgeable on the subject. But if you spent 10,000 hours reading, anything and everything, does that makes you an expert at reading?

    I don’t know where I was going with that…

    Being well read.

    Anyway…

    With all of the news interviews in people’s homes, the performance space in demand clearly has been a wall of books in an office setting. That is the “classic” sign of a well-read person. Some offices are a little too conspicuously clean and well organized, like the books are never touched. The offices I have enjoyed looking at are the ones where the books and papers are sort of stacked all over the place. Those are usually the offices of research doctors, and I want to believe that they just threw their books on the shelf when they are done reading it.

    I can admit that, since moving back from California, I only have about half of my books in the apartment, with the other half still in storage. We have one wall in the apartment that all the housed books live on. They are in no order, and just got thrown up there. It’s not author ordered, or even in some sort style of size of book color. We just them up there with the plan of coming back and put some order to it. That was seven months ago.

  • New Lease on Social Media Life

    I think I’m detoxing from FaceBook right now.

    As the handful of you know, I got it an online argument with a friend on FaceBook about voting and the Postal Service. I posted on here what I had said to the guy, and I knew full well that after the last post I was done with it, but he would post something trying to egg me on in some way. But I was done, I had said my peace, and I didn’t want to play anymore. To hold to that commitment, I couldn’t go back on FaceBook, read his response, and then, basically, state the vicious cycle all over again.

    So, I haven’t been on FaceBook for two days now.

    I have no idea what is going on in people’s lives, and I think I am okay with that. The pandemic has given me too much free time, and I have wasted a great deal of it looking online to see how other people were using their time, and most of them appeared to be very productive. (I know everyone lies on the internet.) It created a feeling in me that I wasn’t doing enough, which wasn’t helpful, and in and return, I let myself get discouraged making it more difficult to motivate myself. But I know fully that I was letting this happen, and choosing to be discouraged.

    And also, in strange way, getting my dander up about an issue, taking time to think out my response, and being honest that I am passionate about something that affects others, did make me feel more connected to the world. I’m not saying that I’m about to turn into a social media activist, because action in the real world is needed, not posting on a feed, but I need to get off my ass and help out in this world again.

  • Comedy, Inside Jokes, and a First Draft

    When I was in college, and I was a theatre major, I had a running debate with a good friend, which was, are Shakespeare’ comedies funny? He said yes, and me, to be a jerk, said no. My main reason for the stance I took is that comedies are full of inside jokes that the audience never notices, and what Elizabethans found funny, no one gets anymore. Yes, the puns survived, but puns aren’t funny.

    Also, for comedy to work it needs context and surprise; context established the frame work for a surprise to be funny, and the surprise is funny because context says the surprise shouldn’t be there. Hence, if we don’t understand the context, how can the surprise be funny, or even to be understood as a surprise in the first place.

    Then there are inside jokes, which no one gets except a handful of people, having been orchestrated by the writer. I had a friend who recently had their screenplay produced and released. He had put several inside jokes in the screenplay, most of them honoring quirks his wife has which he loves. All writers do this, which is why I say that Shakespeare’ comedies are full of jokes we will never understand.

    I bring all of this up because I am trying to hammer away at a first draft of my novel. I know full well that my first draft will not be good, and I am really trying to get it down so I have a starting point to begin crafting the story. So, as I rush through it, I am seriously cramming it full of inside jokes, to the point that I started to get self-conscious about it. I know my wife will read the draft, and most likely roll her eyes at me. Most of it will find its way out of the story, as the characters start to stand in their own, and not need the crutch of me anymore.

    But, I always wonder when I read a novel, if the name of the street that a character lives on is actually an homage to author’s mother’s maiden name.

  • I Am Still in a Facebook Argument, And I am Ashamed

    I responded to the guy, and should not have, here is what I said:
    That’s twice now you have asked me what conservative news I read, and I must say that I don’t see the relevance of that information to this discussion. What if I read more conservative news than you; does that make my argument more valid and therefore correct? If you read more liberal news than me, does that now make your argument the right one? Besides, you just provided a list, not proof, that you read liberal publications. For all we know, you just googled a list and reprinted it. And I’m calling you out on this trick, as I have seen you do it other times to other people, to somehow prove that you are more well read. Come on, mate! Get some new material! Why don’t we just measure our hands to see whose is bigger? But to answer your question, my father helped found The National Review, and I spent summers with William F Buckley Jr. on the Cape sailing and discussing the need for a cohesive conservative political philosophy that is big tent, and also encourages individualism through free markets and personal responsibility.
    All joking aside, the tactic you are trying to use here is to keep the discussion as micro as possible (Any fraud in a systems renders that system invalid and must be discontinued as it no longer can be trusted), but when it comes to voting in the United States, it has to be a macro, context-based discussion. Such as, 749 cases of voter fraud is not a good thing, but if you compare 749 cases of voter fraud to the 500+ million votes cast in the United States since 1948, which is the date range the Heritage database used, then you are looking at way less than one percent, right? (I’m not the math guy, I’ll leave that to you.) It would seem to me that would be akin to saying that if one murder was committed in a city of 10 million, that you have to scrap all the homicide departments in the police force, because murder could be rampant. Now, I would view that as, wow, that police department is doing an amazing job!
    Also, in human history, when a political party is in power and it starts to try and limit access to people’s ability to vote, does that result in more or less enfranchisement?
    And that’s what leads me to believe that you are lacking an understanding of the history of the United States when it comes to voting rights. Here is a nice primer for you:
    Sadly, the language and argument of the possibility of voter fraud with mail-in ballots, which currently is being pushed hard by many conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, are not new, and goes well back 150 years. I ask you to educate yourself on the Jim Crow south, the Red Summer of 1919, Operation Eagle Eye (and how it has continued to this day,) and the language used in the opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Did you even take a moment and wonder why so many of these Republican voter laws came about after repeal of part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013? What part of the country are they focused? Who does these laws affect? Why did it only become a national issues after 2013?
    Dude, I know that I am not going to convince you of my position through a Facebook post, and you still wouldn’t believe me if I was right in front of you. But, I’m not asking you to believe in what I know, but I am asking you to question everything you think you know. Is that not the way we become more intelligent?