I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head. The wife had it on a playlist that I listened to this weekend, which was cool. It reminded me that I saw Beck live on the Midnite Vultures tour.
Category: Life
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My Least Favorite Part
One of the goals that I set for myself this year was to submit my work to more magazines. I sent out a bunch in 2023, and sort of fell off the wagon in 2024, and that is why I am hitting the ground running in 2025. Well, at least relative to my situation. My goal was to send out to ten different magazines this month, and today, I accomplished it. Not an enormous step, but a step none the less.
And as I was reading issues and guidelines from new magazines and journals, I started to feel like I did when I was acting, and going out on auditions – which was nervous, a little anxious, and also a touch of faked confidence. I mean I got work, but like all actors, I struck out more often than not. I accepted that it was part of the business, but I never learned to enjoy it. I have friends who love to audition – get in the room, try stuff out, see what works. They like the challenge of it all.
For me, auditioning was the necessary evil that I had to go through to get what I wanted, and that was rehearsal. I loved every part of rehearsal. The table read, getting there early, making new friends in the cast and crew, learning how each other works, the discovery of the process, the bad days, and the good days, and that feeling of at any moment it could all go off the rails but somehow always magically came together. Not always, but most of the time. Performance was extra, the icing on the cake. Rehearsal was the fun of work. And I really do miss that.
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Soccer Travel Team and Sports in General
So, over the weekend, the kid got an invitation to tryout for a youth travel soccer team. This is something that she has wanted for some time, and was excited that the club had kept her in mind. I mean, who doesn’t like being asked to dance, right? There was a flurry in our home of making sure we had all the right equipment, and socks, and shin guards. Not that you need to have perfect equipment to be good at a sport, (Is it not the bad carpenter who complains about their tools?) but having the right stuff sure can boost your confidence.
In my parenting philosophy, I believe that kids should play a sport, up to the age of sixteen. It was the way my parents raised me, and I have to say that it did me good. I played baseball up until twelve, and then I switched over to tennis. No real surprise here, but baseball taught me the importance of teamwork, and working toward a common goal. I loved tennis because, I was all on my own to make it happen; just me versus the other guy – which left no room to blame anyone for a mistake, other than yourself. Both sports don’t use a clock, which I guess is why I enjoy taking my time at things?
I hope that the kid makes the team, but I also know that it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t work out. There are plenty of other sports and teams in the City, so she will get the experience of being on a team and all the joy, excitement and disappointment that comes along with it.
Because learning to lose and not giving up is the biggest lesson one can learn. And there is also something wonderful about being on a truly awful team. And still showing up week after week, hoping that this is the day that your fortunes change, and you win just one.
Maybe that was my experience…
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It’s Cold and My Mind Wandered
Man, is it cold here. Woke up and it was ten degrees. As of this afternoon, it’s only nineteen, and we are going to bottom out at fourteen tonight.
Pretty cold alright.
Not that I mind. You know, last night I had a sweater on, and then a cardigan over that. I was pretty warm. At the moment I am writing this, I have a flannel shirt on with cable knit sweater over that. I am comfy and toasty at the same time.
It is seventy degrees in my apartment, but it feels way colder than that. It’s because two of our walls face the outside, and that cold just penetrates through the bricks. Oh, and the steam pipes and radiator come and go like an unwanted family guest. Believe it or not, it used to be worse in this building.
When I get to experience days like today, I imagine that one day I will have a nice thick and soft tweed suit to put on. And I’m not talking some stylish American tweed suit. No sir! I’m taking about an old wrinkly Irish tweed suit; one that looks like it’s been handed down for a hundred years. The type of suit that is perfect to wear a bowler hat with. It would be my cold weather tweed suit that I would put on when it was particularly cold out, and then just sit around the apartment in it. Maybe drink some tea, see where the day took me.
Anyway… It’s cold and I feel like taking a nap. Maybe reading a book. Or I could play the wife in Mario Kart.
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What a World, Right?
Say! Is it me or does 2025 suck a whole lot?
I’m trying to stay positive, but three weeks into this year, and I feel like I have been hit by several body blows.
The L.A. fires and its aftermath continue to be nothing but awful. I had one friend and his partner lose their house, which is just gut wrenching to one’s core. Come to find out that I have way more friends in Los Angles than I thought. Some close to the fires, some way out of harm’s way, but all of them chipping in and trying to help out those in need.
Then I have been dealing with several friends who all lost a parent in the past month; one which I wrote about last week. In all of those situations, my heart breaks for each one of them. Some were close with their parent, others weren’t, but in all of their situations, it has become a stark moment of change and reflection. How I wish I give them each a hug.
And then there was Trump yesterday, doing all his Trump things. Nothing he did surprised me, and though I tried to ignore it all, I allowed a low-grade simmer of infuriation to start burning in me. (I am still unsure if that is a good or bad thing.) I hope I am wrong, and I hope am over reacting, and Trump doesn’t do anything awful, or maybe even makes things better. But I don’t trust him, especially after the J6 pardons. No, this will be four years (PLEASE GOD, LET IT ONLY BE FOUR YEARS!!!) of having to push back, and stand our ground. Because, “The struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.” – A. Lincoln
It’s still early yet. There is a whole lot of this year left to go. Things could change – as things always change. I try not to forget that when things get bad, really awful, that people do show up to help. People do care, and know what the right thing to do is. Darkness can seem encompassing, never ending even, but it only takes the slightest bit of the light of hope to dissipate what once felt overwhelming.
