Hindsight

For the few die-hards out there who have read every post since the beginning, you know that a good portion of my 'blog has been mostly consumed by a very processing-out-loud brand of content.  I've decided to stop fuss-budgeting about whether or not this is a good thing and just accept it for what it is: an honest attempt to pour myself and my talents into something meaningful to share with others.  After getting an e-mail from Jon Acuff last week, though, I've been thinking a lot about why I have a 'blog at all and how to do it better.  I started re-reading some of my old stuff and decided to compile a quick list of things I feel like I've learned about myself along the way.

1. Talk It Out

When I first started my 'blog, a lot of the content was narcissistic and whiney.  (Truth be told, it probably still is.)  I tended to use it more like a public journal rather than trying to relate to other people at all.  Without really intending to, I feel like I've shifted away from that a bit, and I think it's largely due to my involvement in Celebrate Recovery.  Just having people in my life that I can open up to and be honest with has enabled me to off-load a lot of the burdens that I used to air out here.  It's not to say that I've stopped 'blogging about things that affect me altogether or that I think I should just keep all of my business to myself, but once I started intentionally building relationships with other people in my life and opening up to them, I stopped looking to the act of 'blogging in itself to fix or change things.

2. Keep It Moving

There are a number of posts in my 'blog that are (because of all the whiney narcissism) boring.  When I read back over them and identify with where I was when I wrote them and what I was going through, I see myself like someone sitting on the curb, complaining about being behind and how hard running is rather than discussing what kind of diet is best before a marathon and how to deal with leg soreness.  I think I have a few good ideas here and there or some funny thoughts or phrases, but even those tend to get lost in the deluge of self-pity.  It seems like the times when I 'blog best are when I've been busy taking steps toward making progress in my life and the times when I 'blog worst are when I'm just throwing up my hands and being mad that things aren't already different on their own.

3. Stay On the Bike, Fatty!

I feel like this needs no explanation.

4. Remain Calm and Keep Your Hands Where I Can See Them

I don't know how it is for normal people, but sometimes I feel like "Trouble" is the name of a bird dog and I'm wearing snazzy, new pheasant-pants.  Honestly, I don't even know why I bother worrying about what life is like for other people because it wouldn't make any tangible difference to mine even if I knew.  My point, though, is that I feel like there's always an reason for me to feel frustrated or discouraged, which means there's always a temptation for me to use how I feel as an excuse to do something stupid, and I can see how that attitude comes across in some of my posts.  I think most of the bad decisions I've made over the last year could have been avoided if I'd just kept my wits about me, stepped back from the situation a little, and asked myself if I was really thinking things through.

5. Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

Followthrough is tough for me and I can count on one hand the number of things I said I was going to do in my 'blog that I actually ended up doing.  I tend to get really amped up about the "Next Big Thing" and bring a lot of energy and excitement to the table, but I also tend to lose steam pretty quickly when I meet with resistence.  Part of me feels like I need to be rewarded for my enthusiasm by having everything work out like it's supposed to and I get really frustrated and disappointed when it doesn't.  But I've also noticed that my enthusiasm tends to hold up a lot better whenever I have structure and support in my life and I don't feel like I have to maintain this super-human energy level all the time for things to be successful.  When I get enough sleep at night and have a budget worked out and spend time with people who can support and encourage my ideas, I tend to do better than when I try to take on the world all by myself.

I guess the lesson is that it's good to recognize where you've been so that you can figure out where you're going.  Part of "self-actualization" is not just making the present seem meaningful, but redeeming your past, too, so that it contributes to where you are. 

I dunno.  Does that seem crazy?  Am I the only one who thinks like this?

My Five Greatest Fears In Life

A few months ago, I took part in a constest-type thing being put on by Jon Acuff where he offered to review your 'blog if you bought his new book.  I found out about it late at night after work on the last day of the offer and decided to give it a shot, even though I suspected I was probably too late.  A week or so later, the book arrived, and a few months later I still hadn't heard from him, so I chalked up as yet another a really cool thing in life that I missed out on.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Jon Acuff.  He briefly explained that there were more people interested in the offer than he had thought there would be and ended up swamped with 'blogs to read.  At first I thought it was a form letter he sent to everybody with the same four or five things ("Love the 'blog!" or "Keep up the great work!") but it seemed like he had actually taken at least a few minutes to read through some of my stuff and gave some decent feedback. Here was one of his tidbits:

"I'd like to see you do a couple of posts with lists in them. Blog readers really love to have short, easy to digest content and I personally have really seen community grow with posts that allow specific, list based things to react to. (For instance, 10 ways Jim Henson changed my life)"

So here you go Jon Acuff.  Hope you like it.

My Five Greatest Fears In Life

1. Dropping Stuff Into Toilets - This one actually started before everyone had to buy new cell phones because they dropped theirs while poop-texting.  I've never been a part of that club because I've always been very careful when it comes to keeping my personal belongings secure while going to the bathroom.  I think it stems from the fact that when I was six years old, I accidentally dropped one of my mom's hair curlers into the toilet and then tried to flush it to cover the mistake only to realize that a.) now my mom is short one hair curler and b.) hair curlers don't flush so good. 

2. Getting Pooped On By Birds - I tend to avoid walking under trees for this exact reason.  If I'm in a situation where I have to, I'm generally very nervous and dodgy and I try to walk briskly to get out as quickly as possible.  Watch this video and tell me that it's not a rational fear.  Seriously.

3. Having Things Fly Into My Mouth - Again, I refer you to the previous video, plus one additional for your consideration.  As an amateur cyclist, this is probably the most common problem I run into as a result of my fears.  I've tried wearing a bandana around my face as a preventative measure, but it made my face sweaty and I got a lot of concerned looks from people whose own top-five lists apparently included "Bicycling Cattle Rustlers."

4. Running Out of Toilet Paper - I feel like this one is fairly self-explanatory, but I think it's exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in a family that included two women and was located 30 minutes away from the nearest Wal-Mart.  In short, we were a "high-use" family that could run into a crisis situation fairly quickly.  My parents tended to buy most things frozen and in bulk because of how seldom and out-of-the-way grocery store trips were, but sometimes it still got a little dicey in the Wiggins household.  Suffice it to say, there are some things you should always be prepared for.

5. Turning Into My Parents - Not to undermine the seriousness of any of the others (because, I assure you, they are all serious), but this is the only one I don't have something plucky or light-hearted to say about.  It's also probably the one I feel like I have the least control over because it seems to be happening a little bit more every time I look in the mirror whether I want it to or not.  Please don't misunderstand me, I love my parents and they're not bad people, but I just don't want my life to follow the same paths that theirs did.  And honestly, I think I'm probably more afraid of what a horrible person it makes me to say that than anything else on the list.

Never Before Seen Footage

Last weekend, I went to see "Muppet Fairytales," a special collection put together by the Alamo downtown of different fairytale-themed skits, shorts, and TV specials that Jim Henson had made over the years.  A few of them were sketches I had seen before (for those unaware, I am a HUGE Muppets nerd), but most of them were so old and rare that I'd only read about them or seen pictures in books.  The whole thing was less than an hour and a half, and it was fascinating (for me, anyway) to see such a wide range of different selections from such a vast body of work within a relatively short amount of time.  Kermit was the only persistent character throughout all of the shows, but even he has gone through a number of changes over the years, so it was kinda like going through an old family photo album and seeing how everybody grew up.  I really liked it.

I should pause for a second to explain that Jim Henson is something of a personal hero of mine.  The likability of his creations notwithstanding, the man reached a level of success as an artist that boggles the mind.  His career started in 1954 when he was barely out of high school and evolved into multiple internationally recognized media franchises (The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, etc.) that persist even today, more than twenty years after his death.  I realize that it may seem childish to get so worked up about puppets, but I've come to the conclusion that if you go the rest of your life without watching a single episode of The Muppet Show and can't find joy and humor and goodness in something that doesn't rely on obscenity, toilet humor and drug references for cheap laughs, then I'm not the one with the problem here.  Alas, I digress.

The point is that I walked into the theater with some heavy expectations.  These were cherished gems of a lost era, as far as I was concerned, and I was super-jazzed about being able to experience something that may never see the light of day for a long time to come.  I imagined it being some kind of living childhood memory; like I would get the same feeling I had when my parents took me to see "Follow That Bird" when I was little.

To sum it up, it wasn't and I didn't.  Don't get me wrong, it was cool and I enjoyed it, but honestly... well, some of it was just kinda bad.  Like, it was still creative and interesting and way, way, wayyy more than I would be able to put together on my own, but it was pretty obvious why this stuff didn't really make it out of the archives and onto a special edition DVD.  Kermit was all funky-looking and you could see all the wires and stuff holding things together.  The story itself seemed to drag out, like it hadn't been very well written, and it just felt very stiff compared to all of the things he would do later, like The Muppet Movie and Labyrinth.  In fact, I felt like I needed to go home and watch The Muppet Movie just to wash the bad taste out of my brain.

But the more I thought about it in context of Jim Henson's over-all career, the more I cut the thing a break.  In terms of a time-line, Sesame Street had just barely been on the air for a couple of years and The Muppet Show didn't even exist yet.  The people he had working with him were only a handful of the talent he would come to attract later and, obviously, he wasn't working with a very large budget.  In fact, The Frog Prince (which was the main feature of the collection) was the first time Kermit had even appeared on camera as an honest-to-God frog.  Before that, he was just a lizard-looking sort of thing with no particularly distinct features about him.

Ultimately what I came to realize was that The Frog Prince, though pretty bad in and of itself, was actually a big step for him.  It marked a transition out of fifteen minute sketches into lengthier, more substantive projects with larger sets and more characters.  It was a sort of stepping-stone that would take him away from doing bit parts in commercials or guest appearances on talk shows and serve as a kind of proof that he was able to produce something on his own if given complete creative control.  In short, there would be no Muppet Show if there weren't a Frog Prince.  And I really like that thought.

As an artist, there's a tendency to want to create the one perfect thing that's going to go down in history as the most loved and famous thing ever to exist anywhere.  It's hard to ever feel like you're really "finished" with something because it feels like you're placing some permanent stamp the thing, saying "Please, take this for consideration as to determine my overall worth as a person."  Nobody wants to be judged that way, and in an intellectually honest setting, nobody ever really is, but there's a sense in which everybody feels judged that way.  It's that kind of feeling like, if I die in my sleep tonight, would I be okay with *this* (whatever it is) being the last thing I ever produced?  It seems silly to phrase it that way, but it's a very common feeling among creative-types.  I bet it's pretty common with everybody else, too.

I think the important thing is to realize that nothing exists in a vacuum.  If I create something, it's partially a result of everything else that I've done in the past and partially a sign of something greater yet to come.  There's a saying that keeps coming up in my CR step-study that I really like: "It's about progress, not perfection."  Basically, it means that today may not be my best day and, by the end of it, I'll probably screw something up, but if I can look at where I am now and see it as better than where I was in the past, then I can still consider this to be a good day.  I don't know how revolutionary that idea is for you, but it's working wonders for me.  Everything I was raised to believe screams out against it, but there's a lot of wisdom (and truth) in being able to appreciate where you are and see it as an improvement over yesterday.  Thanks for letting me share that with you guys.

G'night,

- Pairsh -

The Dinosaur Post

Several months ago (November, to be exact) I talked about a post I wanted to write called "Why Jurassic Park is Like Christianity."  The premise of it was derived from one of my late-night Wikipedia excursions where, instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour like a sane human being, I flitted from link to link about random, disjointed subjects; from people who have recently died to string theory to GWAR; like a bumble bee of information, pollinating anything bright and colorful that seemed interesting to look at.  I had landed on the entry for Jurassic Park (the book) and spent some time thinking about what a great book it is and how long it had been since I read it and wondering whether or not I could find it in the avalanche of books and papers strewn about my home due to an extreme lack of sufficient space to organize them all.

The thing that stuck out to me most, though, was a statement that the article made about the idea of Jurassic Park (the fictional place) being "an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system."  Maybe it was due to the fact that I was 10 the first time I read it, or maybe it was because the last time I read it was five years ago when I was high, but I never really thought about that as being a major theme of the book.  I always kinda just read it as a really creative story in which a lot of people get eaten.  In fairness, the novel never explicitly states the "unsustainable" idea in those exact terms and it's difficult to latch onto something so abstract when you're 10 (or high).  But, thinking back on it, I think that's pretty much the whole point of Jurassic Park.  The entire story is a description of a very tightly-controlled and closely monitored operation descending into complete and utter chaos for no other reason than the simple fact that things don't always go according to plan.

I thought about that idea in relation to my faith: "an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system."  I really like that phrase.  I think it's a very accurate description for how I tend to view a lot of things.  I want to have a very "A + B = C" kind of life, where it doesn't take too much brain power to figure out how things add up.  I want to have successful relationships solely through making friends with the right kinds of people who are easy to get along with and add value to my life because of how rich and powerful and generous and kind they are.  I want to be wealthy and comfortable without having to put in more than 40 hours a week or operate outside the boundaries of a dead-end job where I punch a clock and get paid to stand around and look busy.  I want to get all the things I want and give up very little in return and have everything work out for the absolute best in the end, without pain or misery or suffering or loss.  In short, I want everything to function on the terms that I determine to be best and never be outside of my control.

But life doesn't really work that way.  Like, at all.  Nothing cooperates.  Nobody listens.  Every conceivable change I've ever tried to make has met with incalculable, and in some cases unconquerable resistance.  On my best days, I can make it about fifteen minutes without a real problem.  Something always comes up.  There's so-and-so who I was supposed to e-mail back and never did.  There's that thing I've been telling myself I would do for days/weeks/months/years, but continue to put off until later.  There's that one friend who I made plans with that flaked out on me.  There's that other friend who keeps bugging me for time I don't have or money I shouldn't spend or kindness I can't fake.  There are a million other things that, for a million other reasons, are asking for more than I can deliver and stretching me beyond what I can bear.  And that's not even mentioning all the "God stuff."  So I keep going back to my system, keep trying to reduce things back down to my "A + B" way of living, and keep telling myself that one day it'll work.

I've been sticking with the CR stuff and it's been helping a lot.  Not so much in the "I'm a totally different person now who operates in a completely different way than I used to" sense, but more in the sense that I feel like I'm finally starting to get my head wrapped around this idea of accepting my life for what it is, not what I wish it was or what I think it should be.  In the book, the people trying to control Jurassic Park didn't realize that there was a problem because their computers were programmed incorrectly.  Since they assumed that the dinosaurs couldn't breed, they designed a tracking system based on the total number of dinosaurs they were supposed to have, as opposed to tracking the total number of dinosaurs they actually had.  It was only when they calibrated the program without a predetermined limit that they realized that the dinosaurs actually were breeding and the situation was a lot more dire than they originally thought.  The CR stuff has been kinda like that.

I don't really know what all of this means, and I think that's why I never finished the original post.  I really want to resolve everything with the helicopter flying me off the island and away from all of the people-eating craziness.  I believe that one day I'll get to that part of the story, but I won't be around to 'blog about it when I do.  And, given everything that this post is about, I think I'm okay with that.  I don't need to have a neat little story arc that works itself out in a predictable way.  I can exist in the middle, where everything is up in the air and genetically engineered killing machines may jump out of the bushes at any moment.  That's just life, I guess.