Football and Infidelity

I commented in another place why I have had so much trouble following football lately, but here's yet another reason why I am giving up on the sport.

Football owners and GMs are perhaps the most fickle people on the planet. Take the Phildelphia Eagles, for example. There was a report earlier today that head coach Andy Reid was going to be fired after 14 years with the team. Did the Eagles have a rough year? Yes, they went 4-12, one of the worst records in the NFL. They have been struggling for a while, in fact. But I fail to see how that is one man's fault. Michael Vick and the faith the team had placed in him is also a big reason for this failure. It was known that Vick was a high risk player before he was even signed with the Eagles in 2009. He took over the starting position in 2010 and had a 10-6 record.

2011 was a bit worse at 8-8 and Reid received a lot of pressure then. He knew that if he wanted to keep his job he needed to do better. 4-12 is not better. So did he expect his firing to come? Probably.

But look at Reid's entire record over the last 14 years. The Eagles made the postseason 9 times in those 14 years and had one Super Bowl appearance in 2004 which they barely lost.

The NFL is notorious for having ridiculous standards for their coaches. Reid has shown us though that he has a talent for motivating his players. One mediocre season (2011) and one bad season (2012) before getting the ax basically shows how short sighted NFL owners and GMs are.

Success is important, and if a coach is not successful they don't deserve to have a position in the NFL. But the NFL has such a high amount of variance associated with it, one or two bad seasons should not be used as a definite litmus test, especially with a coach that has shown his worth in the past.

There's no easy solution here, however. Bad coaches need to be weeded out as quickly as possible in order to give teams as good of a chance as possible. Good coaches need to be given the right settings to capitalize on their strengths, though. Relying on a high risk player like Vick can have good rewards, but obviously it can have bad results, too.

Is it Reid's fault that Vick had so much playing time? Partly. It needs to be noted that this is not only Reid's fault. Other participants in management play a huge role too. If owner Jeffrey Lurie didn't want Vick to play, he could have easily made this happen.

Reid had a tough year. His son died early on and this must have had a huge impact upon him.

The point I'm trying to make is that owners are so quick to make managerial changes and it shouldn't be like this. As a fan, it really makes me mad to see things like this happen. I like watching football, but moves like this make me furious and I have absolutely no interest in watching the postseason this year. Good job, NFL.

Twitter, or the lack thereof

I deactivated my Twitter account today. Before I get messages telling me that this was stupid, let me explain why.

I had 55ish followers. I think 1 of them was someone I actually knew in real life. The others were sports figures and a couple literary agents I didn't know. I can't pretend that I am really concerned about what Drew Brees or LeBron James has to say in 160 characters.

I never use Twitter for anything worthwhile. I put links to things I've written every once in a while, but I don't think I've ever tracked an incoming click to my blog from Twitter. Obviously my followers do not care much about what I'm blogging about. I'm assuming that other links I've put up have had slightly better results (they definitely cannot be worse). I don't run my own site anymore and the precious few clicks I was getting on the sites I ran before didn't come from Twitter, either.

I don't ever update it. When I update Twitter, it's ALWAYS as an afterthought. I really don't like the medium and everything on it seems awkward to me.

Twitter might be worthwhile to some people, but I really saw no benefits from the site. I am not saying that this will apply to every person, the Pope and Justin Bieber probably get a lot of web traffic because of it, but I saw no sense in continuing the facade of remembering to put stuff there. One less site I have to worry about.

Disclaimer: I am still using Twitter for my client's web sites. This is not my personal writing, but rather a Twitter page dedicated to helping health and senior care professionals get more information. 

Lazy. But not really.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, but I've had some good reasons. Well, maybe not good reasons, but they were reasons. I have been writing constantly, both for myself and for my clients, struggling to meet deadlines. You know, the usual work stuff.

But I've had a lot of excitement. For NaNo, I made a serious effort and finishing my first novel. I made a lot of headway: 40,800 words. About 2/3 of a complete manuscript. But maybe 10K of those words were forced and the story didn't flow right to me. With a week left in November, I gave up on it. It was a cool concept; a mafia/fantasy thriller with a few really unique twists. I like the overall concept a lot, and might use it in the future, but for now it isn't working.

That leads me to my December project. I started outlining a short story at the beginning of the month. Then I realized that this was a really complex suspense novel that I could easily stretch into 20k words. It wasn't going to be a short story, then. It was a novella. But the more I wrote of it, the more I realized that it wasn't a novella, either. I cannibalized a few fragmented ideas and stories I had written, including the main plot of my Annuity novel, and threw them all together. I have a full blown novel on my hands now, I figure this out about 4 days ago and I already have 1/4 of a novel down on paper.

So have I been lazy when it comes to blogging? For sure. But that's about it. I'm really happy with this story and if I keep working at this pace, I will have a completed first draft in a few weeks. Pretty exciting.

I've never actually completed a whole novel. Right after college, I attempted an epic fantasy, and I got it up to about 45k words. It was a good story, actually, but it wasn't a good novel, if that makes sense. It had an exciting plot, but the characters were lifeless and the main character was so unlikable by the end of the book that it disgusted me. There's some stuff in it that I've included in the graphic novel I'm working on, but that story is long gone. It was good  practice, but it wasn't good, if that makes sense.

I've rambled a bit here, but my point is this: writing something good requires a lot of time and a lot of false starts. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting better and learning every day. You can't expect to write a good novel on your first try. It's like training for a race. The only way you can become a better runner is by running. The only way you can become a better writer is by writing. Will you win your first race ever? Probably not. There's always a few freaks with the natural talent to excel on little training, but the vast majority of us need time to develop the skills to be successful.