Richard Geib's Personal Website

I wrote over two months ago about how Donald Trump and the “burn it all down” faction from the GOP in the House of Representatives sought to derail any foreign aid measures to Ukraine. For we...

https://www.rjgeib.com/a-bucket-of-water-and-hope-for-the-future/

I have been coaching high school tennis for four years now. I do this because my daughter was on the team, and I wanted her team experience to go well. So I became the coach. “If you want a job...

https://www.rjgeib.com/what-is-important-and-unimportant/

Some eighteen months ago someone stole my road bike out of my garage. My older daughter came in late at night and failed to close our garage door, and the next morning my road bike and my wife’...

https://www.rjgeib.com/back-in-the-saddle-again/

My daughter turns 17-years of age today. I am a bit dumbfounded. Last year she turned 16-years old, and that date is very much wrapped up in her gaining a driver’s license. Here she was 14 mont...

https://www.rjgeib.com/happy-17th-birthday-beloved-daughter/

In his biography Open the tennis champion Andre Agassi said the following, “A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even cl...

https://www.rjgeib.com/using-self-talk-to-self-manage/

I apologize in advance, dear reader, for bringing politics at length into one of my posts. Most Americans, myself included, are exhausted by recent political and cultural strife. A deeply polariz...

https://www.rjgeib.com/chaos-donald-trump-wants-chaos/

NOTE: A good tennis buddy Julio Cabral and I are both approaching retirement age as public school teachers. We are trying to help each other transition from the world of work to the mindset of th...

https://www.rjgeib.com/yesterday-today-and-tomorrow-who-am-i/

Back in 2017 I was with my friend Chris Prewitt at the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament with our ten year old daughters. We had just entered the sprawling complex, and there were people everywhere....

https://www.rjgeib.com/ask-a-woman-not-a-man/

What to do in the summer of 2024? Two summers ago I traveled to Costa Rica with my family: Last summer I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with my older daughter: What about next summer? What shoul...

https://www.rjgeib.com/el-verano-de-2024-preguntas/

Or, Many Questions and Few Answers I read yesterday about how the landscape outside of Avdiivka was just littered with the Russian war dead. Ukrainian intelligence recorded phone intercepts of Ru...

https://www.rjgeib.com/the-docile-people-of-russia-50000-dead-and-counting/

Or, Time for a USTA Tennis Sabbatical? Almost exactly two years ago I received the totally unexpected news that I would be re-ranked as a 5.0 tennis player in USTA tennis leagues. My world was ro...

https://www.rjgeib.com/glumly-waiting-for-the-verdict/

I don’t know why. And I am not sure when it happened. But I ask my peers – parents with children still at home – if they spend more time, energy, and money parenting than their parents did....

https://www.rjgeib.com/how-did-parenting-become-like-this/

Or, “Turning to Cannabis to Help Relieve Anxiety“ I read this article the other day and it highlighted an aspect of American life I have always disliked. I find it hard to believe that my fel...

https://www.rjgeib.com/a-quick-and-easy-solution-to-complicated-problems/

My older daughter last week won her high school league finals match with her doubles partner in girls tennis. It was a tight match against quality competition, and it could have gone either way. ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/mushin-a-legacy-to-my-daughter/

Yesterday had been a day almost completely taken up by tiresome parenting duties, and I was exhausted. By ten pm I was ready to crawl into bed, read for twenty minutes, and fall blissfully asleep...

https://www.rjgeib.com/when-the-wolf-arrives-at-your-door/

I woke up seven days ago to see the awful news of the Hamas attacks on Israel.  The deaths of some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, was celebrated by some, but I was horrified. But I would not ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/hamas-gunmen-kill-them-up/

This is far from the first time I have written about my unease over social media piped into my daughter’s brains. I forswore TV for decades, not wanting it in my house. But by the time my kids ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/the-fight-for-my-daughters-soul/

I came across this giant sign along the walls of a martial arts dojang last spring, and I was so taken aback by it that I snapped this quick photo: I was impressed by the message on the sign, but...

https://www.rjgeib.com/iron-sharpens-iron-and-one-man-sharpens-another/

My father is elderly and in decline; my sister, brother, and I brace for difficult decisions going forward. Father Time is undefeated, and my everyone looks their mortality in the face, sooner or...

https://www.rjgeib.com/breathing-freely-via-moving-meditation/

There is the concept of what some job might – or should – be. There is the noble idea of a vocation – or a calling to do some job professionally and help make the world a better place. Thro...

https://www.rjgeib.com/there-it-the-theory-and-then-the-reality/

I am the proud owner of a cat. Our family cat, Dixie, came into our lives some five years ago. It took us some time to find the right family pet, with several misfires before we found Dixie. My w...

https://www.rjgeib.com/my-cat-dixie-cuddly-inscrutable/

A year and a half ago I agonized over the approaching Dobbs v. Jackson decision by the Supreme Court. I had no problem seeing the flimsy legal parapets of Roe v. Wade torn down: that decision had...

https://www.rjgeib.com/affirmative-action-goes-bye-bye/

I am currently watching the Friday Night Lights TV series with my younger daughter. I don’t really want to watch it, but my daughter loves having a show we can watch together. So each night we ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/3816-sepulveda-blvd-culver-city/

“Daddy, she is a social media influencer! Wow! She has millions of followers!” In 4th grade my daughter told me this, making a person with millions of followers on social media out to look li...

https://www.rjgeib.com/if-they-actually-knew-who-i-was-would-they-really-like-me/

So the House of Representatives this morning passed a bipartisan bill to suspend the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling and avert a government default while cutting federal spending. A compromise was co...

https://www.rjgeib.com/suck-on-this-hard-left-and-far-right/

It is both a weakness and a strength that I am not always the most attuned to the opinions that others have of me. In college, in retrospect, there were times young women were coming on to me and...

https://www.rjgeib.com/people-need-to-chill-out/

My father ages, slowly but surely. Next week he turns 84-years old. The changes in his physical health, and the decline in his critical faculties, are glacial. But they are also cumulative. Like ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/ayudanos-mama/

My daughter surprised me today on the way to school with this fun fact: our family account with Audible, a company selling audiobooks, has accumulated 19 months 9 days 13 hours and 27 minutes of ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/audible-audibooks-family-biography/

I spend a lot of time looking at young people and sizing them up. My children and their friends, my students former and current – I get a good look at so many. And some of them struggle. Well, ...

https://www.rjgeib.com/if-you-have-a-sport-or-some-passion-project-you-are-ahead-of-the-game/

Is this blog of mine a diary of sorts? An online space where I can process what happens to me? A place to work out the psychic and emotional issues of my day? A sort of therapeutic tool? CBT in p...

https://www.rjgeib.com/que-sais-je/