Three Things

Thing 1: This post is gonna be quick (at least in the writing, and probably not very good) because I have neither the time nor the energy to bullshit around about it.  I haven't showered in three days, I've eaten nothing but pudding and cereal today and, to be blatantly honest with you, I wasted most of my morning sleeping in, playing World of Warcraft, and downloading porn for what I hope will be the last time in my life.  It's stupid and pointless and empty and I hate it and if I had a time machine, I would go back to 1995 and kick my 13 year-old ass before he ever got it in his head to regard the internet as one big jukebox of filth.  Of course, I've been saying that for the better part of fifteen years, so who knows how much weight that statement can really hold.

I didn't really want to 'blog today for all the same reasons I never want to 'blog... because I feel like all I do is complain about the things that frustrate me and how difficult it is for me to write anything of substance.  I started 'blogging in the hopes that it would get me somewhere, that I would improve and connect better with people, and that, somehow, it would be something I'd look back on later as the best decision I ever made.  To be fair, it's done some good and I don't regret starting it.  It just seems like I've written myself into a hole that I don't know how to get out of.  I feel like my whole life is just one stupid hurdle after another and for every good and encouraging thing that happens, there are three other things to get and/or be frustrated with or discouraged about.  I really do want to have an awesome 'blog that attracts a lot of people who love it and say that it's impacted them so profoundly that it changed the way they live their life. 

Okay, maybe that's overstating it a bit.  But I do want to produce good writing and make a dent in the way people think.  I want you think about something funny I said and laugh about it later.  I want it to brighten your day or encourage you to be more active or positive or determined not to get sucked in by all the crap that everybody has to deal with everyday.  And if I'm really, really point-blank honest, I want that for you because it want it for myself.

One of my recurring aspirations in life (in a sort of, "Hey, wouldn't that be awesome?" kind of way) is to be successful Christian author somewhere between Donald Miller and C.S. Lewis.  There are a number of problems with this, not least of which is the extreme lack of talent needed to stand in the gap between those two, but chief among them is that I don't have my life or my theology in any semblance of order enough to write the way that they do.  In fact, I don't even have my life/theology in order enough to write about the things that they do.  I'm not as creative or academic as C.S. Lewis and I don't have whatever it is about Donald Miller that makes people gravitate toward him as the kind of person they'd all like to be friends with.  I'm too stuck on all the juvenile things that I imagine most people put behind them in their late teens and early twenties.  

It took me nine years to get through college because going to class and studying and doing my homework on a consistent basis were too hard.  I've been done since May and I'm still selling my dignity to big-box retail for $9.67 an hour.  At the end of the day, I don't even have the wherewithal to make a plan of what I'm going to do with my day and then get down to business.  I hate that these things are true and that they consume my thoughts, but they are and they do and I don't have it in me to put up a front and act like everything's fine and I'm really getting out there and making it happen.  It's funny, I always thought the people I'd be most afraid of running into were those who didn't share my faith and expected me to explain why I believe what I believe.  As it turns out, I'm an even bigger coward to the people who do because I always feel like they have a better handle on it than me and I don't have any excuse for struggling so hard and failing so miserably.

Thing 2: If you haven't seen or heard about it, there's a Zach Galifianakis movie called "Visioneers" that was produced sometime before The Hangover and it never got any funding, so it just sort of disappeared from the Hollywood map.  It envisions a sort of dystopian future/alternate reality where everything gets hedged in by corporate America and has a canned laugh track to tell you when to laugh and how to feel.  It's super-weird and probably not your cup of tea, but it's also a really great movie that captures the essence of what I'm talking about.  I don't really have any sort of landing point for it, but I figured it would be enough to share it with you.  You can find it on Hulu here.  Or not.  In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter and I don't really care anyway.

Thing 3: I don't remember what Thing 3 was supposed to be.  I'd apologize, but I'm not really sorry.  I'm gonna go take a shower now.  I'll talk at you later.  I'm gonna go take a shower now.