There Is No Tomorrow

It can be the simplest of concepts or the most important aspect of mankind, but when one discovers the correct answer, it’s quite rewarding. The further up the matter latter it goes, the more rewarding it is.

You might smile a little wider, get a pat on the back from your own alter ego, or you could be awarded something material or tangible that makes it worth while.

But there’s no trophy, no reward and no prize money that can replace the bliss that comes with the knowledge that you are lucky enough to have found the person you are meant to spend the rest of your life with. What’s more, it’s insanely wonderful to get a second chance to make it all work out in the end.

At least once or twice a day I think to myself “It’s just… unbelievable, and I couldn’t be happier.” My problem now is that I have to let it happen, and stop trying to battle every little issue that pops into my head.

Six months ago I wasn’t okay with being me. So the actions and reactions of everyone around me, and especially my own, went second-guessed and over-analyzed to the up-teenth degree. So why on earth would I go back to such a detrimental process?

Better decisions, simplify, allow things to be, but live with passion and don’t forget about yourself; words I need to remember more often.

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She’s not difficult, she’s just not a pushover. She’s challenging, and won’t allow the B.S. to be shoved in her face. She’s not tough to read, unless I’m looking for something that just isn’t there.

She’s got these eyes that seem to have no end, and a smile that’s just as beautiful from its initial frame as anything I have ever seen. Her mind is creative, advanced and as strong as the gravity on the fifth planet from the sun.

Her heart is as big as that planet, too, and while all of the above sets her apart from any other human being in the world, it’s her heart that this universe can’t survive without. She cares about the right things - people. And she doesn’t sit idly by and just wish she could do something to help others in need. She’s emotional about the genocide in Africa. She hurts when she sees a hungry child on television commercials, and would jump in a fiery pit to feed and put clothes on the back of her own son.

Really.

I couldn’t possibly love another person more, and every day I fall deeper and deeper. With her hand in mine and another gripping life’s panoramic menu, I know that I absolutely cannot go wrong.

There’s bliss in knowing, yes there is.

Seattle Seahawks fans are already looking ahead. No, not to next week’s game at San Francisco. The Seahawks fans I have talked with are looking ahead to the draft.

Yeah, the one in April. The one that takes place 11 weeks after the Super Bowl that succeeds the playoffs that succeed the regular season that is currently just seven weeks old.

But the Hawks, at 1-5, have looked as bad as any team in football and with the possibility - quickly becoming probability - of picking in the top five and getting the impact talent that typically falls into that range, those prospects might be the most exciting thing surrounding the 2005 NFC Champions.

So instead of talking about the slim chances that the Hawks get healthy and win eight or nine of their next 10 games and ramble into the playoffs again, let’s take a look at the top talents that may be available come the draft six months from now, as well as what the Hawks should be and could be targeting when the time comes.

In some order, most scouting services rank three quarterbacks in the top 15, three defensive backs, one running back, four defensive lineman, two wide receivers and one offensive lineman.

Quarterback -

Unless GM Tim Ruskell sees a rebuild necessary, the Hawks aren’t likely to draft a signal caller in the first round in 2009. Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, Georgia’s Matt Stafford and USC’s Mark Sanchez are the top three QBs according to just about every respectable name in the draft scouting business.

Running Back -

Julius Jones and T.J. Duckett haven’t lit the world on fire in ‘08, though Jones has been impressive and is running hard. The above duo and Maurice Morris are hardly to blame for the Seahawks woes this season, and might be the lone bright spot.

Knowshawn Moreno of Georgia is the only back ranked in the top 15 by Scouts Inc.

Wide Receiver -

Even with the injuries and the aging that is occuring amongst the Hawks receiving corps, selecting a receiver in the top 10 or so is usually a bad decision unless the team doing so has another choice in the top half of the draft to fill needs.

Jeremy Maclin at Missouri and Texas Tech’s Michael Crabtree are the elite of the 2009 receivers, and while both could prove to be impact targets, the 2009 Seattle Seahawks are probably going to end up looking in other areas if they indeed draft in the top five or 10.

Offensive Line -

This is certainly an area of need for the Hawks, but there’s only two tackles ranked among Scouts Inc.’s top 20 prospects - Mississippi’s Michael Oher and Andre Smith of Alabama, who is ranked No. 3 overall.

Either player could ultimately step in replace the aging and fading future Hall of Famer Walter Jones at left tackle.

Defensive Back -

The Hawks drafted Kelly Jennings in round one, Marcus Trufant in round one and Josh Wilson in round two, and still need two capable corners. Trufant is still worthy of a starting job, but Jennings has been torched this season and Wilson is probably never going to be more than a nickel or dime back and special teams return specialist.

The safety position may need addressing as well, with Brian Russell struggling in coverage.

Illinois corner Vontae Davis is rated as high as No. 2 on draft boards, and Ohio State’s Malcolm Jenkins is in most top 10s. At safety, USC’s Taylor Mays may be the best safety to come out in 10 years.

Linebacker -

Julian Peterson needs to be replaced and some depth is necessary, but Lofa Tatupu and Leroy Hill are in their prime and simply need better support from the second OLB and the line to be as effective as they can be.

The top linebacker in the draft appears to be USC’s Ray Maualuga, Ohio State’s James Laurinaitis or Wake Forest’s Aaron Curry. Of the three, Curry is the only outside backer and would be the only true fit in the Hawks defense.

Defensive Line -

This is another huige area of need, despite the Hawks spending a first and third rounder on an end - Laurence Jackson - and a tackle - Red Bryant. Patrick Kearney isn’t a youngster so going after a great pass rusher at end makes a lot of sense.

Greg Hardy at Mississippi and Michael Johnson at Georgia Tech are both potential 15-sack defensive ends who also excel in run defense, and Texas’ Geno Atkins is skyrocketing up the draft rankings as a speed rusher wish size.

Alabama tackle Terrence Cody is generally ranked in the top 10 and Auburn’s Sen’Derrick Marks is considered a top 25 selection, but isn’t ranked higher than 17th on any list I could find.

The Hawks may have a chance to make a little San Antonio Spurs kind of move if they get the right impact player in the draft. Not one soul in football thinks Seattle is a 1-5 team in terms of talent, but there are major holes to fill and free agency is not the route to take.

When it’s younger, more vibrant talent you need… draft ‘em.

Saturday at about 1:20, I’ll be on with Dick Fain to talk about the prospects of the Seattle Mariners “earning” the No. 1 pick in next June’s draft, and potentially selecting right-handed starting pitcher Steven Strasburg.

There are questions surrounding the idea, such as…

1. With the strained negotiations between the club and this past summer’s first rounder Josh Fields, will Scott Boras, the agent for both Fields and Strasburg, force the Mariners to think twice about selecting the best player in the draft?

2. Come June, will Strasburg be the top talent? Kyle Gibson and Alex White, and possibly Aaron Crow, may vow for the top spot, as could Dustin Ackley, should he prove he can play center field regularly after surgery on his throwing elbow.

3. Will slotting and money in general be an issue for the M’s, who have a history of staying very close to slot in the draft?

Again, 1:20, Saturday afternoon on KJR 950 AM.

Yes, Prospect Insider is going to return, and I thought I’d catch everyone up on how things are going, design wise.

Alex is handling the design - he’s fantastic, for one, and is doing it at a mucho discounted rate, for sure. Alex has his own site rolling over at All DLC where gamers can learn about more than 1,500 pieces of downloadable content for all three of the main game consoles, PS3, 360 and Wii.

Some of the new features that will be included at Prospect Insider include a new visual design, less intrusive ads, and fewer as well, searchable database of prospects, photos, videos, etc, and a few other cool things that will probably be added after we go love sometime in October.

There will still be 100 percent free content, thanks to those who have Donated to the cause over the past few weeks, and the freedom to do just about anything and everything will finally be at the disposal of the soon-to-be former one-man staff, yours truly, and the additions that will named at a later date.

I’d prefer not to give away every little new morsel, but to rid the site of the obstacles that wordpress limited PI to is very exciting and will allow me to bring the site up to where I think it needs to be in order for it to be worth all of our time and energy.

The option to discuss each post and anything else going on will remain, but there will simply be more static, reference-style content to come back to on a regular basis, which is something I was unable to do before due to restrictions with how the wordpress software handles web pages.

I will be heading to Peoria in mid-October for the Arizona Fall League and will certainly report that somewhere, if PI is not up and running. Note: The reason things are going to take longer than what seems to be reasonable is that Alex has about 28 projects on his plate right now. So there is no launch date or even a target date at this time. He’s working way too hard on it as it is.

The AFL is a lot of fun to cover and I’ll be sure and find a place to publish something on each of the Mariners’ representatives, and some thoughts from scouts and the players themselves. Maybe I’ll post that at Lookout Landing.

If anyone has suggestions on what they’d like to see the redesign include, feel free to Shoot me an email.

And we’re still hundreds of dollars short on the design fund goal, though I will cover any sort of overruns or unexpected costs - which may ultimately take place post-launch anyway - so drop a few bucks in the bucket and let’s get this done.

Thanks again to everyone for everything, and I’ll be talking to all of you again next month.

- Jason A. Churchill

I can’t really explain it in detail right now, but Monday turned out to be an absolutely terrific day. A day when more seems right in the universe than in a long, long time.

More to come…

I was recently asked whether I prefered the season of spring or fall, and I immediately, without hesitation or a moment’s thought, respond “the fall, easy.” Not really sure why I was able to quip as quickly as I was, but I think I might be starting to figure that out.

Everyone revels in the memories of good times. I’m certainly no different and if I was putting forth my own memoirs of yesteryear, the only seasons that would come up in the process start with base and end with ball. But I’ve long yearned for winters to scurry along into their holes so the spring could bring my favorite game back to me after a hibernatorial break.

Spring also represents the end of the school year, the brink of warmer weather, and, in essence, the promise of new and better things to come. So what is it about autumn that makes me so sure it’s truly my most prized time of year?

Maybe it’s the cool, crisp wind that claws its way through the lukewarm air left over from summer and tames the skin as one sneaks a peak at the fading, dying blue sky.

It could be the dawn of a fresh schedule of students, football and network television. Or the fascination might derive from the excitement of October baseball, my mother’s birthday or another installment of SAW.

Nostalgia is absolutely a large part of it all for me. I remember my first day of high school like it was yesterday. I remember listening to the 1988 World Series on the radio in the courtyard between fourth and fifth period. I remember the feeling I had when Edgar’s double plated Junior to complete the greatest moment in Seattle baseball history.

There are many reasons to like the fall, many of them meaningful and memorable, just as they are in March when Hope Springs Eternal.

But I think for me it’s just much, much simpler than that.

I just love Fair Scones, man. Jason Churchill loves the fall because of the Thrill of the… the scones.

[palms out and up.]

How the Little Things Mean Everything

It matters none that life has been difficult to this point. Your house is burning down before you and there’s precious little time to decide what to save.
Clinging to inquiries from a stranger, yet believing in the fatum-like drive of the ancient Greeks, I race up the inflamed stairs into the kitchen to grab a memento.

Then to the bathroom for another before snatching one more item from the laundry room.

The firemen arrive and glance at me, puzzled with the look of a soap opera star prior to commercial, wondering why.

Why I saved the dog treat, the flour sifter and the hairspray.

As I look at the NFC, I see two teams that took actions this summer that I just don’t get. First, Green Bay, a team one step from the Super Bowl a year ago, passes on allowing Brett Favre return to the team. Instead, Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy decide that the risk of losing Aaron Rodgers, who has waited for a shot since the Packers made him their first round pick three years ago, wasn’t worth a Super Bowl shot.

On the other hand, the Arizona Cardinals named 84-year-old Kurt Warner as their starter, rather than third-year man Matt Leinart. Warner might give the Cards a better chance to win week in and week out, but the rest of their roster is mediocre and that team has virtually no chance of breaking .500 unless everything falls their way.

Green Bay and Arizona made contrary choices that tell me something else, something the the public isn’t aware of, is going on behind the scenes. Maybe Leinart’s work ethic is in question as far as head coach Ken Whisenhut is concerned. Perhaps Favre simply wore out his welcome and his refusal to mentor Rodgers may have pushed McCarthy and Thompson over the edge.

Either way, neither team is likely to do much damage in that conference.

I’m not all over Dallas like everyone else, I see a surprise team coming to the forefront again, perhaps a Tampa Bay or Philadelphia, but the Cowboys are loaded and have the most gifted roster in football this side of Odessa, Texas.

But parts of that roster are named Terrell and Adam, better known as Pac-man, and Tony Romo is a wild card every time he steps on the field. Romo was awful over the final four weeks of the season including the divisional loss to the Giants, throwing just two touchdown passes versus six interceptions.

Has the league found a hole in Romo’s armor?

NFC Rookie of the Year

Desean Jackson, WR - Philadelphia

NFC Coach of the Year

John Fox, Carolina

NFC Offensive Player of the Year

Bryan Westbrook, RB - Philadelphia

NFC Defensive Player of the Year

Demarcus Ware, LB - Dallas

NFC Champion

Philadelphia

AFC Rookie of the Year

Darren McFadden RB – Oakland

AFC Coach of the Year

Jeff Fischer, Tennessee

AFC Offensive Player of the Year

Peyton Manning, QB - Indianapolis

AFC Defensive Player of the Year

Antonio Cromartie, CB – San Diego

AFC Champion

Pittsburgh

NFL Most Valuable Player

Donovan McNabb, QB - Philadelphia

Super Bowl Champion

Philadelphia

Fighting it is futile, I have to move on. I’m trying to, she certainly has, and I really have no choice but to give it a shot.  Giving myself a chance at happiness is my own responsibility, and if I ever want to be someone who doesn’t let others down, I can’t let myself down in the meantime.

While I don’t believe the whole “things happen for a reason,” crap, I can’t ignore the signs that tell me I’m selling myself short if I am not putting forth every last bit of energy into moving forward with my life.

I’m finished waiting around for something to happen, for something to make me feel better. I have to do that on my own. But first, I have to try and put my past behind me.

So if anyone is ever wondering what Churchill is up to, that’s it. I’m trying to move forward, leaving the past where it belongs and doing everything I can to be happy.

There was a time when I had no idea how to do that, and I’m still not completely sure. But continuing to push the pain away is a good start, and I think the next step is to block the return of such agonizing feelings.

This direction, this goal, it’s about protecting myself from going back to where I was mentally and emotionally last month. I can’t afford to go there again. My soul won’t live through it.

But I will remember… I hope those that matter to me most know that.

It’s the most difficult thing I have ever gone through, and for one reason or the other the feeling just won’t go away. As much as I wanted to fix it, I was unable to, mostly due to my own failure to recognize the dire nature of the situation in the first place.

When I finally figured it out and was prepared to go to the ends of the Earth to find bliss with the one person I was meant to find such emotions with, I was basically told it was too late, in not so many - or kind, for that matter - words.

I had it coming, so no sympathy please.

Needless to say, I was crushed to the core, and have not recovered. And I realized something this week - I’m not going to recover. She was my best friend. The best friend I ever had. The one person in my life that I ever cared about more than myself. I would have done anything for her - but I didn’t, hence the situation I find myself in as I bleed this out.

Love is not something that comes and goes. If you contend that it has done so in your life, then it wasn’t love in the first place. And I’m not talking about the kind of love that you feel for your closest friends and family. I’m speaking of the kind of love that would push you to do the craziest things, regardless of what the repercussions might be.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus once said “If you wish of your greatest desires to progress, you must be content with being thought of as foolish.”

Well, color me a fool, because I just don’t care about anything else.

If it mattered and would do any good at all, I’d undoubtedly be traipsing all over the north end of the Sound professing my love for the one that I had let get away. Setting afoot a plan to make all involved ridiculously happy day after day after day until time stopped dead in its tracks. A plan that included nothing but the best a good human being has to offer. Everything I had, and more, a never-ending reach for the smile on her face.

The ends of the Earth are pretty far, but a small distance to travel to re-discover your soul mate once and for all.

At this point, however, such a task is fruitless, for reasons that shall go unmentioned, but I cannot help it. I believe so deep in my heart that the most beautiful human being on Earth was meant for me - and I can’t let go, even though aforementioned circumstances have had me attempting just that.

Seeing her name at the top of my inbox or her name on my caller ID sends my pulse to the races, which is exactly what happened recently. But I remain in the same place I have been in, and that’s lost, in love, and searching for whatever it is I can find that aligns the stars.

No obstacle or distance can ever get in the way of true love. All I can hope for now is that destiny is on my side this time. If she ever finds it in her heart to believe in me, there will never be another spirit broken, another painful tear, and never, ever any more goodbyes.

Until then, or the end of time, whichever comes first, I’ll simply wish upon those mis-aligned constellations and hope the universe treats her like the angel that she truly is.

That was my plan all along, anyway.