November has, and always will be, a crazy month for me.  For one thing, it’s my birthday month.  Thanksgiving happens, the only holiday my family is guaranteed to get together on, which usually involves cross country flights and  … well … family.  Not to mention the big life changes I’ve seen — I’ve quit my job in November, twice; moved in November, four times; house broke a puppy in snowy November Alaska; and even had the only surgery in my life in November.

Yet, I am going to attempt to make enough time available to write a novel this month.

2017 marks my fifth attempt at the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short.  This event has a very simple premise … we all have a novel inside of us, the hard part is getting it from your head to paper.  It has simple rules too … write 50,000 words in the month of November; it doesn’t have to be a complete novel, a good novel, or even a novel – in fact, the point is to not care about the point, just crank out 50,000 words.  Of course, there is nothing simple about any of this, but more on that later.

Like I said, this is my fifth attempt … it will be my third attempt to ‘win’.  Winning isn’t about beating anyone, it’s an ironically poor choice of words to describe what it means to actually complete 50,000 words in a month.  The first attempt I made happened the same month I learned about NaNoWriMo.  It was November 10th, 2013 and I thought “I can still pull this off” … I didn’t … not even close, didn’t log the book into the program.  2014 I thought I was better prepared; even tried meeting with a local group of writers in Boston.  It turned out … I wasn’t prepared … plus I got sick, plus I got overwhelmed by work issues, and slumped my way to just 23,000 words (some of it felt like cheating).

Come 2015, I came in prepared – did my research, scheduled good time to work, and was ready to kick tail from day one.  I was doing pretty well until a prolonged Thanksgiving mixed in with the aforementioned surgery, gave me a week with barely any progress at all.  But with a brilliant end run, I somehow cranked out 11,000 words in the last two days and ‘won’ with all of 5 hours to spare.

With my first win under my belt, and nearly 10 months of planning for the next go, my 2016 should have had me full of confidence … but it was the opposite.  I was sure this would end in failure .. mostly with the start.  I didn’t even think I had content to get me through 15,000 words.  Instead, I cranked!  I had 7000 done on the first day, crossed the 10,000 mark on Day 2, and passed the halfway mark by Nov 10th.  Things slowed considerably, but … I mean … I quit my job, made plans to move to California, and had to pack up a house, so … yeah.  In the end, I actually called it quits early, deciding that 55,000 words in 29 days was good enough.

2017 is going to be tough.  Now granted, there are no planned life changing events coming up.  No new jobs, no new moves, no new dogs – but it’s a heck of a busy month for me.  I am out of the office for work reasons on 5 of the first 7 days of the month, possibly 6.  I have two trips planned; only one of them actually has an overnight somewhere.  My usual Thanksgiving trip home is longer than normal, because airline mile blackout dates were a little more brutal than normal too.

I have to adjust to a new writing region too.  Boston, with all the things I griped about, had a pretty good NaNoWriMo support system.  There were ‘write-ins’ (blocks of time set aside at local libraries to just sit in a room with other WriMos and crank out words) on most nights of the week – and were easy to get to.  This area does have that, but I am worried about getting to those places, since some may require commutes into downtown or West Hollywood or Burbank.  Heck, I am even worried about the high number of Sunday Packer Games going on getting in the way of heavy writing times.

Oddly enough, I am most worried about how confident I am.  I keep thinking … don’t worry, you’ll get typing and it will just happen.  Also, I am continuing a story I wrote for the 2015 NaNoWriMo because 50,000 words didn’t even get me to the good stuff yet.  But … writing is fickle.  Some days, I can focus on putting something out, some days not.  If there is too much in my world, getting the writing breathing space isn’t there.  Want evidence?  Well look at this blog over October.  This has been a crazy month, and my usual 2 blogs a week dipped off to 3 for the whole month.  And today’s blog won’t even crest 1000 words, with me running out of steam.

So, NaNoWriMo looms, and looms heavy.  With luck, time, and creativity, I’ll get through it.  If not, I’ll try to have fun trying.

Then again … I only made it to 855 words here.  Erm … 858.  Okay 859.

I tend to bring out a joke on days like today.  It goes:

A woman comes into work on Monday, and a colleague asks how her weekend was.  She goes on to say: “Fine up until yesterday.  I was out for brunch with the girls, and when I came home, it was like he was in such a horrible state.  He seemed depressed, sad, lost.  I thought I could cheer him with his favorite meal.  It was a steak, with all the fixings.  He pushed it around his plate as if it wasn’t there.  As the night went on, he stared off into the distance like all hope for the future left him.  I found him in bed curled up tight; so I held him, I pulled him close, I did what I could to make him happy.  Afterwords, I could hear him quietly sob into his pillow.  I don’t know what it was that brought him there, and I am sure I will never understand; but I held him close hoping that one day he will open up enough to let me inside.”

Her boyfriend comes into work on Monday; and a colleague asks how was his weekend.  He goes on to say: “Packers lost … got laid though.”

I am a sports fan.  By that, I mean I love nearly all sports.  I love watching sports, love analyzing sports, love getting to know sports.  I paid a fee to get all the Aussie Rules Football games sent to me, cause I didn’t have a good channel for it.  I live for Memorial Days with 10 hours of racing.  I can tell you a lot about professional cycling, the scoring for Irish hurling, and difference between rugby union & rugby league.  I live for a great game, of any type and any sport.  Yet for the most part, I love not being a ‘TRUE’ fan of only one team.

Granted, I jumped on the Milwaukee Brewers bandwagon this year … until August.  I can be called the worst New Jersey Devils fan, because that hockey team is only good when I am not paying attention to them … as soon as they start missing the playoffs, I watch every game.

Oh … I do hate a lot of teams; like if you want to see me fall asleep quick turn on an NBA game.  I am not quiet about the disapproval of Big Ten Football (the lastest hit:  “They should expand the college playoffs to 8 teams so they can let 3 Big Ten Teams in, and they can all lose in the first round together”) — yeah, that includes you UW and your pansy non-conference schedule (I mean … yeah, they schedule those things years in advance, but we all kinda knew where Utah State was gonna be years ago … but I guess they are tougher opponent than Minnesota, Maryland, Rutgers, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern, Purdue, and whatever overrated school that will limp home to the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Bowl).

That all being said there is one exception … one MASSIVE exception.  I am a Green Bay Packer Fan.

I am a BIG Packer Fan.

I am part owner of the Green Bay Packers, have the share of stock to prove it.

Every year for the last 10 years I have bought a new Packer Jersey.  Usually at least two … this year it was the new tight end Martellus Bennett before he dropped every ball thrown to him, then Mike Daniels because there is a chance a co-worker will get to play him in Mario Smash Brothers (which is a whole other story).

Sitting there through the Lynn Dickey, Randy Wright, and Magic Majkowski years – I learned what it means to be committed to a sub-par product.  I learned that the dumbest thing to do in the first play of a Two Minute Drill was to run a draw, because I suffered through Forrest Gregg as a coach.  I got excited like the rest of Packer Nation when we drafted Tony Mandarich who was the only one of the top 5 picks not to be inducted in the NFL Hall of Fame (others were, get ready for this, Derrik Thomas, Troy Aikman, Deion Sanders, and Barry Sanders).   Yet when in Reggie White went looking for a new team in 1993, and Green Bay was included in the possible teams he would play for … I found it laughable.  Yet on January 26, 1997 I sat in utter shock when the team I had loved for so long found stood atop the world with a Super Bowl trophy in their hand.

I grew up watching the Green Bay Packers.  Sunday after Sunday I would plan my world around the games.  Sometimes I would try to stay in bed until noon, just to get up in time for the game … waiting until halftime for a good shower.  I remember the Snow Bowl, when Dad was painting my bedroom while feet of snow fell on us and the way too cold Tampa Bay Bucs.  I remember my Dad in his ‘burnt chicken’ routine, which included grilling chicken every Sunday and every time he checked the grill he would grab a beer … and that period would get longer and longer and longer in between.  But more than ever, I remember sitting with my Dad, Grandpa Julius, and me after I caught a bus from college … and we had time to sit around Grandpa’s house to watch the Packers lose another game (I guess they coulda won, but I don’t remember anything about the game, just that we were there).

If you aren’t a sports fan and want to know what a sports fan can live through, I would dare you to read the poem “Casey At Bat”.  It is a baseball story written in 1888 … and I do mean, the eighteen hundreds.  It is as classic of a sports of a story as they come, where you can feel that great come-from-behind win that comes with any sports, but what makes it a memorable story is that the great winner loses.  Casey, mighty Casey, strikes out.  But that is as much what we hate about sports is what we love.  Greatness sometimes can’t be great.

Yesterday, the Packers Lost.  Not only that, they lost their Superstar, Hall of Famer shoe-win, Possibly Greatest of All Time Quarterback Aaron Rodgers.  These days, the team seems to live and die off of Rodgers.  We were Superbowl caliber, we are running out of years where we are.  So losing Rodgers to what may be a season ending injury was gutting.   Gutting.  It was hard to deal with it.  I mean, usually when the Packers lose I have a hard time watching football for a week.  Yesterday, the pup could feel it, he couldn’t stay more than a few feet away, and wanted to cuddle me through whatever funk I was in.  Today, I didn’t want to know anything about any sport; or for that matter anything to do with collar bones.  Today was a tough day.  A day I wanted nothing more than to crawl into the corner and feel bad.  It’s the kind of feeling that you know only a really really … REALLY … good cry can get you out of it.

But as the day went I realized how amazing sports is.  That it has the ability for us to feel such great feelings.  Maybe it’s more of a male thing, but sometime we need to be reminded of what emotions could lie inside of us.  How much I enjoy breaking down what the impact of strong blind side tackles have on an offense’s success.  How much I can feel excited when a team is down with 1:13 left to play in a game and you know you will still win this.  How horrible you feel because an otherwise random dude breaking a bone could make you feel so hopeless.  How much you miss sitting in a room with your Grandpa and Dad just one more time.

Today, there was no joy in Mudville.  We hope Rodgers recovers, if not this season, but before he can call it a career.  We hope that our backup QB will be everything they say he could be.  We hope the other teams in our division keep stumbling like they are capable of doing.  We Hope!

I guess I may be lucky.  I only live and die over one team.  But I die … and I live … and that is why I love sports.

NOTE — If you want to play along with this blog, it’s fun to pull up Google Maps (or some lesser app) to see what the heck Mitch is talking about … otherwise just assume all these words and numbers are places.

Time to face facts … There is no good way to describe where I live in relation to anything any non-Angelino can understand.  For serious, I’ve tried, and it’s really hard to simplify.  For most people from here, they talk about place names … Crescenta Valley, Van Nuys, Downtown, Riverside, Orange County, etc.

You see, back in my Alaskan days, it was easier … I would start with saying Anchorage was in that pit on the map that looks like a big inlet, aptly named Cook Inlet … Then I can say Anchorage is a big triangle with mountains on one leg to the east, and water on the other two legs.  Then I just said I lived on the south side about a third of the way up from the Southeast tip of that triangle … easy as the cheese.

Boston was easy too, because most people didn’t care.  That conversation went:
“I live in Boston”
To which they accepted it at face value or respond with “I live(d) in Boston” to which I responded, “Okay, I actually live in Dorchester (actually pronounced DAH-chesta)”
If need be, I would describe Boston as a ball in a cup, with the ball being Downtown, and the open mouth pointing out into the Atlantic … and I lived on the lower rim of the cup … kinda.

So then I get to LA.

Back in the day, I used to say LA was a big Rectangle.  But guess what, it isn’t.  I mean, back then I spent much of my time south of Downtown LA or in Orange County, and to be fair, that is a big rectangle, kinda.  The coast that runs along Santa Monica, LAX and Manhattan Beach is basically a north-south line.  The western boarder of that rectangle is basically the Chino Hills and Saddleback mountains running from Irvine through Corona up to Ontario, and the east west lines are the San Gabriel mountains to the north & Long Beach to the south.  But the rest of LA county including the San Fernando Valley and Riverside County’s Inland Empire become the mapping equivalent of a fun house mirror.

Now, if you have a map open, you can do a search for La Crescenta … and that will show you where I live.  You can kind of see that it is on the North side, but not really north anything, and south of much much less.  But it’s also east of a lot, but you wouldn’t say it’s on the east side of anything either.  Regardless, there is nothing rectangular about where it’s at.

What makes everything so wonky is that you have coastlines and mountains that just don’t know how to read a map.  The coast you can’t blame that much, because it has beaches and they are kinda awesome.  The LA metro area basically has a coast that runs at a 45 degree angle from the Northwest to the Southeast – except for a weird nipple shape around Torrance.  It’s the San Gabriel Mountains that do much of the land bullying.  It dominates the landscape running east-west along the North.  These things are so big, they only allow three escape routes — through Ventura county towards Oxnard, up the 5 to Santa Clarita, or way over in Riverside up over the 15 towards Barstow.  So if I was going to go off of those shapes, its like a triangle … kinda.

But the problems really begin when you have to get people from outside the area to realize that LA is not just one flat surface – it is cut up by hills, mountains, and valleys.  They aren’t massive like in Pittsburgh or looming like Seattle … they just get in the way.  If you are looking at a map of LA, you can partially tell this by the … well, okay, you can tell by the green spots that mean hills or mountains … but I want you to look at the interstates.  Los Angeles and Orange county was planned – meaning as the city grew, they knew what they were doing.  As a result, they tried to keep the roads, especially the freeways, straight.  So if you see a freeway that isn’t exactly east-west or north-south; or is going it’s own special brand of direction in general, it is likely taking the easiest route through a hill or valley.

Take a look at the 210 — also known as the Foothill Freeway — that runs for the most part at the northern edge of the LA area.  Starting as a state highway over in San Bernardino, it runs pretty straight until it has to dodge some legs of the San Gabriels around San Dimas and the start of the 57.  It then has to trickle north to try to hug the foothills and dodge some of the reservoirs.  At Pasadena, this go weird.  Sure, you can follow the 135 straight west, but what the map doesn’t show you is that road has to do about 1000 feet of elevations up and down.  Instead, the 210 does a ninety degree turn, head sup the Arroyo Seco Canyon past the Rose Bowl and JPL, and then heads up along the Cresenta Valley where my home is at in a Northwesterly direction. Beyond that valley, it crests the Verdugos on it’s own 1000 foot elevation change, then drops down into “The Valley” before ending at the 5.

Crossing those hills makes things even weirder.  If it weren’t for all the hills, I could sit on my front porch and look directly at the airport LAX.  For me to drive there, I have to head east, then south, then zig-zag southwest, southeast, then southwest again; then park for an hour downtown LA for traffic, then head a ways south until I head due west and then a little north.  Directions on the map look like a backwards fishhook that had been bitten on too many times.

It could all sound confusing, but one thing about all that madness and break-up is that LA for the most part, is less of a single city and more of a bunch of small communities.  Most big cities are, but it’s one thing like Boston where DAHchesta and Southie was only really separated by the F-ing TAHget that always runs out a that stuff that I like.  What separates Downtown LA and Van Nuys is the Hollywood Hills.  What separates Orange County and Riverside are the Chinos.  What separates Crescenta Valley from the rest of the city is the Verdugos.  When you have that degree of separation – you create a community onto yourself that is almost as if it is a small town onto itself.

It probably for that reason people here describe where they are from by those town names … because those places mean more than a location, they mean where they are from.

For the rest of y’all … maybe it’s a recliner with its leg out but tipped on its front?  I don’t know, just look at the map.