This time of year has always meant a lot to me, and held a lot for me. The transition back into school for so many years, the end of a club sports season for so many years, later. The bright sun into the melancholy gray. This year, it has kept me moving and hustling: working two jobs, coaching a sports team, inviting a family member and their cat to live with my partner and I, and all the while this page on the internet you find yourself on right now politely waiting for their turn, like a Portlander at a four-way stop. There’s an excitement and an energy to the balancing of your life, in the busy times, but we can’t expend energy forever.
When I am at my busiest, I turn to podcasts to occupy my downtime, and I have been crushing tape the last several weeks. Filling my brain with other people’s conversations is an amazing placebo for having them yourself. The most recent addition to my collection, Pablo Torre Finds Out, is a show created by Pablo Torre, a long-time bounce-arounder of ESPN and other sporting news outlets, and he attempts to answer a question that he, or anyone else, is interested in. It was immediately a successful production, in my mind, and his thoughts and processes have been fun to take in. A specific thought and self-reflection the titular host has talked about is his “content brain”, the endless translation his mind is doing to turn whatever just happened to him, whatever anyone just said to him, into ammunition for his creative outlets. He doesn’t think this is a healthy way to live. Neither do I.
And yet, I have recently found myself moving beyond an itch to produce more “stuff” here. I worry, and I grow frustrated, and worst yet, I start to turn on the material I draw from to be productive. “Give me a thesis”, I wordlessly command my 1978 novel; “fit into this idea I already have for you” I unilaterally ask someone else’s artistic vision; “solve my problem” I tell a movie made for teenagers. Gosh, what an awful way to live.
I’m glad I caught myself before slipping too far down this slope. This writing you’re reading now is the external processing and admitting of a problem I don’t want to make for myself. I set out to share things, whatever they are, as I find them. If I don’t have the time necessary to share them, it’s not the thing’s fault. It’s not even my fault. This is just how it goes, sometimes.
So this isn’t a promise to finish that big piece I have cooking by next week. It’s a promise to stay true to the simple search of impactful art, and to share it, when I can.
What I’ve enjoyed recently, in my Busy Times:
THE LAND, THE WATER, THE SKY - Black Belt Eagle Scout
This is the one, y’all. I wish I had the capacity to reflect all the things packed into this record, but I certainly don’t. I’ve spent a lot of time with it, and it has given me a lot. Please check it out.
I saw TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR in a theater with my friend and exactly two other movie-goers. It was weird, and fun.
I saw SHAUN OF THE DEAD in a theater with my partner and a sold out crowd. It was weird, and fun.
I’ve mostly been reading news sources – very specifically not Twitter/X – about our ailing world. In a sea of horrifying stories, The Press Box podcast continues to question and poke fun at the way journalism and sports coverage and political coverage operate in this bizarre time we live in. I’m thankful for their insights and their lightness of being.
I’ll see you when I see you.
TTFN,
B