Getting Over With Kickoff Thursday

The game wasn’t really all that exciting. Neither the Saints nor the Vikings were in anywhere close to top form. Dropped passes were the norm for both teams. Garrett Hartley was missing field goals like he had money on Minnesota. Even the final score was ho-hum. 14-9 just seems boring; especially since it wasn’t like both defenses were playing lights out football.

But thankfully, football is football and that’s all that really mattered today. The start of football season is always something that can be counted down all day long whether you are on the road, working outside or sitting in an office. Every hour you get closer to the coin toss. It makes the day go faster. Typically mundane tasks are less irritating and the minor annoyances in life are tuned out. Because once the return man opens the game none of the minutia from the day will matter anyway. The kickoff of the NFL season is all about getting over. For me, for you and for the league.

Strategic Life Analysis Has Moved

First of all thank you for stopping by. Secondly, I have to mention that Strategic Life Analysis has grown and moved on to its own web site. That doesn’t mean that I am done writing here though. In fact, this move marks the perfect time for. . . you guessed it, another redesign. So right now what you are looking at, is “Getting Over”.

Getting Over is my way of getting out all of the things that help me make it through a day. Thoughts that sometimes would probably be best left alone but that I give the proper room to breathe.

We’ll see how this goes.

The Dawn of Fantasy Football

Like most of the rest of America I spend from August until January participating in Fantasy Football. It really isn’t so much that I love the game itself. In fact, the reason that I play isn’t about love at all.It’s about hate.

Every reason I play fantasy football revolves around hatred. I hate losing to my friends, so I am sure to include them in my game. I hate certain teams so I don’t draft any players from them. I hate specific players so I avoid them as well.

I hate math. So it is only right that I sit down at my desk and calculate the statistics of individual players from the past three years in order to project future fantasy awesomeness.

Fantasy football combines all of the things that I hate extraordinarily well and makes a game I love. I can’t wait for the season to start.

Dreams Deferred

Langston Hughes was wrong.

I never thought that until recently but he really was. He was definitely a smart man but he spent an entire poem trying to figure out what happens to a dream deferred. Dreams deferred do not dry up, fester or run. They do not stink, crust over or sag. And they certainly do not explode.

What happens to dreams deferred is that they breed contempt and disillusionment.

I have had many a dream deferred. Only they are never really deferred. They are filed away under things not yet accomplished and wait for me to one day pull them out to complete them. As the cabinet gets more and more filled you feel worse and worse and no longer know what to think about life.

That is what happens. If I could tell the man myself. I would give him a piece of my mind.

Dear Langston Hughes, dreams deferred do not themselves explode, but they make the people who have them do so with ease. Rest in peace, your question has been answered.

Life Renewal

I have messed up many times throughout my life. Most people have. Many of my screw ups have been public in nature and some of them have caused me great shame. A select few mistakes have even led to disappointing people that I wish I would never disappoint because I care for them too much to wish the feeling of disappointment upon them especially by my hand.

What has made each and every mistake I have made stand out to me is the realization that I knew better each time I simply just said to myself, “well, watch me do it anyway”.

Now I have zero idea why I have operated like that for the majority of my life but now that I realize that it was happening I am willing to correct the problem.

All it takes is to approach every situation as though it were the last decision you would ever be known for. If every decision makes or breaks life then the right decision will always be made.

I am not sure if this new way of thinking will indeed alter the path of my life or the lives of anyone else should they try it but it sure does seem like it will do something.

Here’s hoping.

Sectioning Life

Life can prove to be a task best left to others. Wondering what to do with life as a whole is a daunting task which seems to have zero correct solutions. But it only appears as though there are no solutions if life is looked upon broadly.

At its simplest life is a collection of moments pieced together to create a final image. Life is a puzzle. If you do not have the box with the final image on it, it seems impossible to complete. And even with the final picture known it can still be a hell of a hard time to get the pieces to fit together correctly. Sometimes pieces look the exact same. At other times colors seem to match but really don’t. Life can be frustrating.

Frustration in life is inevitable but it can be minimized. Life can be sectioned just as a puzzle is. Group all of the similar colors, focus on one section of the puzzle at a time. Instead of trying to put life together all at once perhaps it is better to take it piece by piece, section by section, in order to achieve.

As parts of life begin to make sense, it becomes clear where those sections belong and how they fit into the picture as a whole.

So start small. Determine a manageable sized section of life that you can put together and go for it. Piece by piece things will start to make sense. The more sections you complete the faster you will get at fitting pieces together. Eventually the overall picture will start to make sense and you will cobble together the life that you want.

One moment, one piece, one section at a time.

White House Race Relations

President Barack Obama simply cannot avoid the issue of race.

For years now, maybe even his entire life, Obama has been attempting to shake questions of race. I don’t blame him one bit. In fact I can’t even believe that any American would wonder why the President seeks to avoid the subject.

HE IS BI-RACIAL AT THE VERY LEAST

Speaking as someone who comes from a situation that closely resembles that of the President I understand his avoidance technique. Some people think he is Latin, some people think he is black. In random cases he is portrayed as a  middle easterner. He is always something else to someone else. It is this fact that is his greatest asset and his greatest liability.

Just like the President I was born to a white parent and a black parent. I also lived with my white grandmother during my formative years. And at age 3 I declared to my entire family that the one thing I wanted to be was President of the United States. As I grew older my family would remind me of my goal often. By the time I graduated college I still believed he job was within my reach.

President Obama proved to me that it was possible for me. He reminds me of myself. He also reminds me that race is always a subject that people who share a similar background to him wish would just go away. It isn’t that Obama does not have a stance on the matter, it is that he just wishes it would all go away because he has better things to do with his time.

Unfortunately the rest of the country doesn’t quite get it and his term has been filled with racially charged incidents. And years from now when Obama hopes to be remember as just the 44th president he will instead be known as the black president. And he will still wish it would all just go away.

When Does it Pay to Die?

Apparently the only way to get money from the government during a recession is to die first.

This news didn’t exactly come as a shock to me since I have known this was the case for years now. The government takes my money every paycheck, they place it in the reserve, they use it to pay down their debts, and they use it to dole out money to those receiving social security. It’s only right dead people get a taste too. After all, caskets are a great place to store money, just watch Bad Boys 2.

But how does anyone give $180 million to dead people? Shouldn’t the self appointed “Leading Nation in the World” be a little more aware of what it is doing with its money? I’m guessing that the nation should have an idea where the money is headed and then stop it  from heading there. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen for countless reasons.

There are too many disparate technologies that don’t talk to one another. There are entirely too many databases housing personal information. Humans are responsible for making technology and inputting data, and as we all are aware, people make mistakes from time to time.

However, the main problem is simply that the American government is run by Americans. Americans have budget problems on a personal level, it is no wonder the country has them on a grand scale.

Every week or so I log into my bank account online and I wonder, where did my money go? If I only conducted that audit as often as the United States government I would probably be wondering where a hell of a lot more of my money went. I would probably come to find out that I was spending thirty bucks a week on a girlfriend I hadn’t had in six months, my friends would find out, and I would come out looking like an idiot.

After learning that my government has the same problems I do,  I feel more patriotic than ever. Now I just need to find out where all that money got buried.

Google Eulogizes….Well….ME

Dante Willerton lived an amazing life. In fact, it is incredibly difficult to believe that he even lived his life at all. He spent hours on his computer each day.

He was fascinated by Fantasy Sports. He simply could not get enough of them. He was in leagues with former high school and college friends. He played in office leagues. His team names were always the best. Who could forget the time he won a fantasy football championship playing as Tom Cable’s Fists?

His thirst for  knowledge was unparalleled. He yearned to be a renaissance man of the highest order. He read about everything under the sun in the hopes that someday he would be able to own more knowledge than any living human being.

Unfortunately as we can all see by noticing his nice threads. Dante spent entirely too much time reading about fashion and assembling his wardrobe. Gilt lived in his wallet.

It turns out that Dante also had quite the career. He worked at E.Republic, he worked at the Sacramento Bee, and he ran a ton of track and field events.

Sadly hardly any of this is completely on the record because he was extremely camera shy. The only thing most people will be able to confirm is that he drank on occasion and once upon a time he was a decent athlete.

A small town man who moved into the bigger cities of the world, Dante was always trying to disappear.

He often talked with his friends for hours at a time detailing plans for improving manhood and making people better than they currently are. As he grew older he became more insane and embraced love and all of the misfortunes that it came with. But forever the rolling stone, he was frustrated with this outcome.

He will be missed. I am not sure by how many. But some of you certainly cared for him a great deal. I wish him the best up there in that heaven he barely believed in.

The Google Eulogy

After reading about a new Firefox add-on that allows you to witness each time Google receives information from you, I began to think about the abundance of information the company maintains about nearly every person in the world.

Many people hide themselves quite well throughout their day to day lives. They wake up in the morning and their significant other lies next to them asleep unable to ask questions. They drive to work alone, then they sit at a desk only to stare into what amounts to a television screen for the next eight hours. During that time most people engage in some form of small talk or provide others with a glimpse into what the rest of life looks like for them. They outline what their weekend plans may include and occasionally they give indications of what their past was like.

After they get home, they sit through dinner, they discuss what happened at work as well as the day of their significant other. Once dinner is finished, dishes are washed and television enters the picture. A few hours pass and it is time for bed.

Everyday people learn disturbingly little about their peers.

Yet one day, we will all die, and someone will need to stand up an deliver the eulogy.

This is where Google comes in. They collect tremendous amounts of data about our lives. Google knows peoples likes, what they focus most of their energy on. It knows their vices. It knows their indiscretions. It knows them exactly as they know themselves, only it knows them better because it will not lie.

As a result. Google can put together the truest, funniest, most significant eulogy for most of the population. Tears would flow. People would howl out of laughter. Everyone attending the funeral would leave with a better understanding of who their friend was for better or for worse.

Come on Google. There is a fortune to be made here. Start putting together eulogies that would please the masses. . . . Even if they are only used as gag gifts.