Tuesday 5/2/23
Woke up to see that the Celtics lost. After five hours of sleep in two days, I had to go to bed. Losing at home to start the series when the opposition is missing the player who may well be the MVP of the league isn't good. Looking at the box score, one thing is apparent above everything else: The Celtics played no defense. Or if they did, it didn't work at all.
But the Red Sox won and the Yankees lost, which means that the Red Sox aren't in last place in the AL East. A Corey Klueber start is a rough affair, though.
Things change quickly in sports and they're never the same again, but still: five years ago he won 20 games. Took home the second of his Cy Youngs the year before that. Now he has an ERA over 6 and it seems much more likely than not that he'll be good again.
Something happened to me when I woke up this morning that gave me an idea for a story.
I'm working on a book called God's Little Garden: Chimes at Midnight and the Heart of Orson Welles.
Wrote an op-ed this AM about choking and failure in sports and in life.
Also worked more on "Finder of Views." Quite a bit more. In the interest of documenting--in some part--what was done when, for when readers venture to these pages after reading the story: the whole cocoon and steam part was written this morning. There had been no previous thought to any of that. It was invented during a partial readback.
I was going to do this big Bruins entry on here, but I don't know if it's going to get done. I made notes. I might just cover all of it instead on the radio later today and that can serve as the sum of my thoughts on the matter.
Upset (it was one of the reasons I didn't sleep at all the other night) that this excellent op-ed I wrote before the playoffs wasn't published, on account of just how hateful these people are towards me, coupled with their ineptitude when it comes to do their jobs. Had that piece been published on the eve of the NHL playoffs, it would have been the best piece of sports writing that day in the country. I don't believe there is anyone who can read it and honestly dispute the claim.
What I wrote that I thought would happen is what ended up happening. What I wrote before the series, after Game 1, and all along the way.
These people are so incompetent--so plain bad at their jobs, which is like an extended, zombie-like exercise in quiet quitting, never thinking how anything can be better than what is already there--and hateful towards me--it's a combo--that they preferred to behave poorly towards someone rather than run the outstanding work. To do the whole "I'll show him for that greatness thing!" routine. You're almost always dealing with evil, broken children.
An excellent work, further, that it looks as if its author had a time machine, because he was spot on about what happened and what is happening and why things are as they now are.
You can't write a better sports opinion piece. Or better reveal what these people are truly all about simply by showing what was offered to them, which makes it obvious that the issue was almost entirely who it was offered to them by, with a little bit left over for their incompetence.
A couple of those people need to go up on here. I've been putting it off. One of them has a new boss, and I will make her aware of this individual's behavior.
(This is such a malevolent child of a man that they walked down the hall to someone else and said, "I don't like him, I don't want you to like him either," and that person said, "Okay, I'm sufficiently pathetic myself that I will behave as you wish towards this person who has done me--or you, for that matter--nothing wrong, and I'll be as unprofessional and cowardly as possible. Sure. No problem." And I'll document that, too.)
I'll be thorough on here. This guy is boorish in the extreme. Uneducated, petty, rude, immature. It is truly surprising, I think, to any outsider or third party person what this guy doesn't know, and what he's said he has no clue about in emails. The same about which can be said regarding how he's talked to me in the past in emails.
I've let what has been going on now go on for a year and a half. I have conversations with people about people like this, which involves the asking of questions like the following, and then the subsequent back and forth, in an attempt to determine the best course: "When do I document him on the blog?" "How much longer do I let this go on?" "What more needs to be seen?" "When is enough enough?"
Nothing is put up lightly or emotionally. It has all been weighted and vetted for a goodly stretch of time, and often a very long period of time. Typically years.
What, if anything, will come of that right now, really doesn't matter. These things don't matter so much individually--though they can--as they do collectively. (At the very least, it follows one around on Google for now, before it blows up into something else later.)
What matters is accountability and me doing the right thing and not giving in to these people, because that practice, in the aggregate, coupled with the work, is what is going to bring the change.
But I know all that I need to know about these two particular individuals at these two separate venues. it's not possible that this is anything else other than what I just said it is.
As someone said to me today, "It's criminal. It's obvious. It's as plain as anything could be what is happening."
Not what I want to be doing. Ever. I think that's abundantly obvious, too. But when my two choices are to do nothing and allow myself to be discriminated against, or abused, or whatever it is, or do the right thing, I am doing to do the latter every time. I always get around to it. It's just really not what I want to be doing.
Time for stairs and push-ups.
***
Later now. Ran 3000 stairs, did 100 push-ups. Had also gone back out on Monday and walked three miles and done another fifty push-ups. Still just trying to master the proper form and have it come naturally.
