I Gotta Quit WoW... Again

I have a lot of things: a dirty apartment, a great head of hair, low self-esteem, an almost-empty can of mineral spirits that I have no idea how to properly dispose of... but of all the things I have, one I've had the longest is an addictive personality.  I've mentioned my issues with alcohol in a few other places, but it's not just that.  I suck at taking anything in moderation.  As a child, my parents would have to pry my white-knuckled-fingers from the television set to get me out of the house and taking my Nintendo away was pretty much the go-to form of punishment throughout my adolescence.  By the time I hit my early twenties, I went from zero to pothead once I got over all my religious posturing and stopped being such a judgmental freak.  I mean, really... it's like magic potpourri that makes your brain shut off.  Who wouldn't want that?

Regardless, my point is this: I don't do anything small.  Go big or go home, man: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right and if I can't either go crazy and freak out/impress somebody or experience some radical change in my mood and/or outlook on life, it's not worth doing.  Given these criteria, the number of things on the "worth doing" list is rather small and one can easily see why drugs and alcohol are a perfect fit.  Or maybe you can't, I don't know.  What I do know is that my brain didn't have an accurate and definitive model for words like "happiness" or "freedom" until the first time I got drunk, and it practically bounded out of the silly closet the first time I got high.  These experiences were intense and liberating in ways I didn't even know existed and on levels I didn't think it was possible to achieve.

But what does it mean to be "drunk?"  How do you define "getting high?"  Does it require a certain substance?  Are there safe ways to do these things?  I understand that there are chemical reactions that take place when alcohol gets into your bloodstream and that there are legal definitions of "driving under the influence," but what does that mean to the individual?  I can tell you from experience that, for an alcoholic, calling a .08% BAC "drunk" is like giving a hungry man a stick of gum and calling it "dinner."

One time after masturbating, I realized that I felt high.  I laid on my bed and felt the room spin as my pulse beat in my eardrums, which is almost exactly the same thing I used to do when I smoked weed all the time.  I mean, there usually would have been some Frank Zappa song going in the background and I didn't have to Febreze my whole apartment to get the smell out, but other than that, it was just like being high.  But who's to say I wasn't?  My heart rate was up, my vision was blurry, my body relaxed... 

I think that to define "drunk" as equivalent to passing out naked in somebody's lawn is to embrace a faulty description, and "being high" isn't necessarily related to just marijuana.  It's not some on/off switch with only two positions where you can say "Okay, I wasn't drunk before, but now I am" or "Well, I was high for a little bit, but now I'm not."  It's a continuum.  It took me a long time to understand this because the spectrum used to talk clinically about drunkenness typically follows a pattern of heart-rates and pupil dilation; things I don't really concern myself with until we get to the parts about "unconsciousness" and "death."  I think if someone had shown me a sliding scale that went from "Making eyes at that one girl you went to high school with who isn't very attractive" to "Puking off the balcony at some stranger's apartment you met in a bar," I probably would have related to it better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make light of addiction or say that it's just in your head and I'm certainly not trying to say that all substances are equal.  I know that there's a physiological component to all addictions: I completely understand that crystal meth is not a substance to be trifled with and there's no such thing as a recreational heroin-user.  But I think it says a lot about the nature of addiction that some people can have two beers and stop with no problem and I can't, even if I were to have two beers and stop.  If I even had one beer, it would open up a whole universe of addictive thoughts and behaviors that I've been, so far, granted victory over.  I can remember a time in my life when I learned that clinical alcoholism is defined as anything over and above two drinks a day, so I spent months orienting my entire life around my two drinks a day.  What would I drink?  Where would I go to drink them?  Would I want to be with friends or alone?  Should I drink them both together or space them out?  Would I drink them fast to make the buzz consistent or space them out so I could savor the taste?  Should I have two of my favorite drinks or two different ones for variety?  And I lived by that, man...  Two drinks.  Every day.  For months on end.  So that I could keep up the lie and keep saying that I didn't have a problem.  And I don't just think it's me.  I think a lot of people are bumbling their way through life with no self-awareness because they have a really skewed definition of what it means to be addicted to something.

In a recent post, I mentioned this idea of "Whatever I spend the next five minutes doing is going to be what I end up doing for the rest of the day," and I think it's true.  But I think the truth of what it looks like is different than what you think I'm saying, because you think I'm saying that if I spend the next five minutes looking at porn, I'm going to do nothing but look at porn for the next eight-to-ten hours straight.  Believe me, it's not to say that I haven't done it before or that I think I'm incapable of doing it ever again, but reality, as it often does, lies deeper than that.  The truth is that if I spend the next five minutes looking at porn, I'm choosing not to engage my life on a meaningful level because I'm afraid of the pain and hardship that comes from confronting areas of brokenness and dealing with sin.  The truth is that I'm embarrassed to say that I started playing computer games at 8 o'clock this morning instead of looking for a job. 

You're probably going to think I'm crazy, but sometimes I think there's a gigantic Ferris wheel in my brain.  I go around and around in circles on this Ferris wheel, and whenever I get to the bottom, the question of "What am I going to do for the next five minutes?" opens the door and asks me if I want off.  Most of the time, the fear of what will happen if I step off and the shame of admitting that I ever bought a ticket for this stupid ride in the first place will take over, and I'll say "No, thank you."  I'll take my chances and go back around again to see if I get any further this time.  But every so often, I get dizzy enough and I stumble off the ride.  I get sick of all the sweet-sounding voices telling me how much fun it's going to be, only to turn into the nagging screams that constantly remind me that I'm only going in circles.  Just when I'm at the tallest point and farthest from the exit, a voice whispers over the heights and the howls that tells me I'm not made for this... this is stupid... I don't have to keep doing this... but then I get to the bottom again and I see everybody on the outside and I worry what they're going to say to me whenever I step out.  I cling to my fears like a nasty old blanket and I go for another spin. 

To date, I have spent at least a combined total of four weeks, six days, one hour, sixteen minutes and fourteen seconds playing World of Warcraft.  I know that most of you aren't going to understand half of this, but I say "at least" because I've created and deleted numerous characters over the years that I have no way of knowing how much time I invested in.  If we assume that I've deleted as many characters as I've kept and that I played them at least as much as I've played the others, that means I've probably spent more like nine weeks, five days, two hours, thirty-two minutes and twenty-eight seconds online.  If you sat down to play a computer game for that long, you would have to start now and not eat, sleep, or get up from your computer until November, 7th at 5:45 in the evening.  And God only knows how much money I've spent on it over the years.  If I had a running tabulation of the time lost to pornography and masturbation in my life, I'd probably cry.

There are a couple of things in the Bible that address these ideas directly, yet I always seem to get distracted and forget them.  God seems to be neither surprised by my failures nor impressed with my excuses.  But the "Go big or go home" thing kinda works in my favor here, because it takes something drastic to get rid of stuff like this.  I understand the idea of unmerited favor, and I know that you don't earn your salvation, but God has some very specific thoughts regarding what's expected of us when we find ourselves trapped by sin.

I'm probably outing myself with a lot of this as sicker/dorkier/way more broken than you realized, but whatever... it's the truth and if you look down on me for it, so be it.  You'll probably have noticed an "Adult Content" warning when you opened this post up.  Don't worry, I'm not going to start dropping f-bombs or posting pictures of naked ladies or anything like that.  I am, however, (in case you haven't already noticed) going to talk about things you probably shouldn't read at work or around little kids; things that will give you a different impression of me than the one you might already have. 

I've also enabled comments again because I think feedback is a good thing, even if I don't like it.  I deleted everything from before for reasons I've already mentioned, but I still feel the same way: if you want to respond to ideas in my 'blog, that's great and I'd love to hear your thoughts, but if you're just going to tell me to cheer up or quit bitching or whatever, you can save it.  I did what I should've done from the outset, anyway, and set-up an approval system for all the comments, so  if I don't think your comment really takes anything I've said into consideration, I won't post it.

But I will get it.  So feel free to send it.  It means a lot to me that all you guys care enough about what I think to keep up with this... all both of you.

See you tomorrow...

You Get What You Pay For...

I don't really feel like 'blogging today.  I don't really have much to 'blog about.  But I said I was gonna, so I guess I need to.

I've been reading a Chuck Klosterman book lately.  I avoided him for a long time because I saw a joke on The Onion in relation to trendy-hipsterism (hippy-trendsterism?) that referenced his writing and I didn't want to invite the comparison.  If there's one thing I want to avoid, it's any sort of fashion statement that gives off an intrinsic "stuck-up a-hole" vibe.  I can take care of that on my own, thank you very much.

In hindsight, though, I'm kinda disappointed I didn't pick his stuff up earlier.  He's a great writer, though I can see where the hipsterism comes through.  He makes really specific references to very detailed aspects of pop culture in order to make seemingly non-existent comparisons between different ideas, and he never stops to fill you in if you aren't up-to-speed with him.  If you're unfamiliar with (or just don't care about) whatever it is he's making reference to, it can seem like he's just showing off how much trivia he knows--a very hipster thing to do.  I had to skip an entire chapter because he was talking about some basketball player I had never heard of and making reference to various basketball strategies.  By the time I was pulling up Wikipedia on my iPhone, I realized that I was working too hard to follow something I don't care about.  Like, at all.

For a writer (or, at least, for someone trying to be a writer), finding a new book/author that you like is similar to making a new friend: it's fun and exciting, but you feel like you're cheating on all your old friends and you're constantly making comparisons the new one.  At first, it's pretty tame.  You start saying things like "Dude, Brennan is going to FREAK when he finds out I've been hanging out with Chuck," or "Man, Don would never say something like that."  But then it gets all weird.  You start wondering what they would think about certain things and trying to mold yourself to fit in with whatever you think they would approve of: "Chuck would never go for that," or "I'm not sure Chuck would be enthusiastic about these shoes."  Everything starts to find itself under the microscope to be examined; to find out whether or not it would be good enough for <fill in the blank with whoever it is this week>.  Eventually, I have to put the book away on a high shelf and promise not to dig it out again, lest I shame myself into burning everything I've ever written and swear never to touch a pen to paper again as long as I live.  I'm not sure why it happens.  In fact, I'm not even sure if it happens to anyone but me.

I think there's an insecurity inherent to every writer that sort of crumbles a little bit in the face of talent.  We all want to be validated as something more than what we feel we are, so we tend to get a little star-struck whenever we run into someone we think has got "it" more than we do.  Bear in mind, I'm certainly not trying to even the playing-field between me and Chuck Klosterman: if authors were comedy films, Chuck Klosterman would be like The Big Lebowski or The Royal Tennenbaums; I'm somewhere between Slam Dunk Ernest and Ernest Goes to Africa.  But I do think there's a part in all of us that's terrified of finding out that our ideas really are as stupid as the voices in our heads said they were.  I doubt that Chuck Klosterman is reading my 'blog and biting his fingernails over whether or not I like his book, but I'm sure that there's someone out there that makes him want to hang up his hat whenever he reads their stuff.

But there's a part of me, too, that thinks Chuck Klosterman does what he does because he feels like he has to; like he'll never get a good night's sleep unless he puts his thoughts down on paper.  I think that maybe it's this way for all writers; I think maybe we're all a little bit crazy.  No, that's too cliché.  I'm not saying that I think Chuck Klosterman is crazy.  But I do think he'd still be writing even if his stuff never got published.  I think there's something inside him that compels him to write because, honestly, what the heck else would he do with it?

I'm really tired and I feel like I'm not making sense.  Maybe I am, but there's no sense of purpose to it.  I don't really have a point with it, and there's no Bible verse for me to wedge in there and tie it all together.  I guess the bottom line is that Chuck Klosterman is a really good writer and if you've never picked up his stuff, you should.  He's what we all wish this was.

Goodnight, everybody.  Hopefully some rest will make tomorrow's better.

Day Off With Grandma

Saturday 'blogs are tough.  For one thing, I really don't want to do them.  I mean, it's Saturday, for crying out loud... who really wants to do anything on a Saturday?  For another, I work 'til midnight most Fridays, so by the time I get home and unwind enough to go to sleep it's usually 1 or 2 in the morning, which makes it tough to get up and get an early start on my day.  For the last couple of weeks, I've 'blogged right up until I had to leave for work, so hopefully I can get this in with plenty of time to still do a couple of other things around the apartment.

I've been thinking a lot about Grandma lately.  I've mentioned her before, but without much explanation, so I thought I'd spend some time writing about/sharing her with you guys.  I had the rare privilege of a great-grandmother up until last November.  She was 92 years old and retained her sanity and relatively good health right up to the very end.  She started having some health problems in January and by the end of the summer, her body was worn out.  As the fall went on, she was in and out of the hospital on a monthly/weekly basis and right before Thanksgiving, she just couldn't go on anymore.

My great-grandmother was born in August of 1917, the same year as Desi Arnaz, Thelonious Monk, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.  She died in November of 2009, the same year as Walter Cronkite, Bea Arthur, and Michael Jackson.  It's weird to think of someone you love in terms of birth and death, especially a parent or grandparent.  You grow up with this person having had no memorable beginning and having no perceivable end, and you get the impression that they'll never go away or change.  You are introduced to this environment as the product of a birth, just like they were a thousand years before.  They become as familiar to you as the settings they occupy, like the position of a piece of furniture or the color of the carpet.  Then, when it changes, you get this disoriented feeling and think in terms of how things ought to be instead of being able to just accept the way they are.  Birth almost never seems to do this.  Death always does this. 

My great-grandmother lived through a lot of births and a lot of death.  She was there for the birth of every member of my family.  She survived the loss of her own parents, her husband, one of her grandchildren and many, many others.  She was born into one world war and built her own family during the second.  She bore witness to the Great Depression, the moon landing, and the Oklahoma City bombing.  She lived through radio, television, computers and cell phones.

There were times, especially toward the end, when it was hard to think this way about Grandma.  She got so frail and weak, it was hard to remember times when she was independent.  But she was.  I remember as a child when she would call my grandparents from Houston to inform them that she had driven down to see my great-uncle Jerry and would be staying there for a few days.  I remember how all the "little old ladies" in town (some were significantly younger than she was) would always ask her to drive them into Dallas-proper because she was the only one among them who knew her way around and wasn't afraid of downtown traffic.  She had been through a lot in her life, and ended up with a lot of strength and wisdom because of it.  She used to wonder out-loud, in the last decade or so of her life, why God had restricted her mobility and why she couldn't get around as much.  I'm curious if it wasn't to force her to slow down and share it with the rest of us.

All said, I don't really miss my grandmother because I miss sharing things with her, or getting my picture taken with her, or getting presents from her, or anything that I really got from being with her.  I just miss her.  I miss stories the I never heard about family I never knew and the stories I've heard a million times before.  I miss the way that time seems to be put in its proper perspective when it's around something old.  I miss the calm assurances that come from 92 years of survival and the tested wisdom that carries someone that well for that long.  I miss her laugh and the lines that creased her smile and carried more stories in them than she could ever tell.  I miss the way we all seemed so small relative to the largeness that occupied her diminished and world-worn frame.  I miss the hope she had of seeing her husband again and getting the Yahtzee and egg salad sandwiches ready for the rest of us when we joined her.

I miss my Grandma.  But only for now...

Get Your Priorities Crooked

Sometimes I amaze myself with how quickly I get distr

Sorry, I just remembered that I needed to change out my Brita filter.  Anyway...

Sometimes I amaze myself with how quickly I get distracted.  It seems like every time I settle on some idea as being important and necessary, ten other things I haven't done this week/month/year pop in to my head and demand my immediate time and attention.  It's kinda like how I'm bad at grocery shopping: I walk in with this overwhelming sense of determination to get milk and eggs and get the heck out of there as fast as I can, but then half an hour later I'm wandering through the aisles with $90 worth of cinnamon rolls, Pop Tarts, Dr. Pepper and ice cream sandwiches, trying to remember why I came here in the first place and where all this other stuff came from.

I think maybe it's because I'm such a sucker for flashy advertising.  I crave to be told what's important.  And I love the idea that all I need to do is acquire something to start being happy or quit having a problem, even if it's a problem I only found I had because some commercial told me I did.  I think maybe that process has screwed up my ability to prioritize things correctly or hold on to one thought for longer than thirty seconds.

In my last post, I talked about coming up with an instruction manual for how to get out of wherever it is I find myself to be, and I think this is where I'm going to have to start.  I think you end up wherever you end up in life because of the desires you choose to follow.  And I think there's a super-practical application for that, too.

I was talking to a friend of mine about how Sunday was kind of a rough day for me in terms of feeling anxious and stressed out and wanting to drink, and I told him that there was this point somewhere in the late afternoon where I realized that whatever I spent the next five minutes doing was going to be what I ended up doing for the rest of the night.  I ended up leaving for Cliff's house an hour and a half before I needed to, because if I sat around and moped because I was mad and wanted to drink, I wasn't going to do anything else all night long.  We talked for a minute about how weird that is, but how true; about all those mornings that we woke up and started drinking or smoking pot before 10 AM, and how the rest of the day was pretty much determined from that point on.  We talked about how weird it is to look back on those times and remember how we lied to ourselves, saying we were just relaxing a little bit before the day started, or how we'd get right on that other thing as soon as we were done.  And then we'd spend the rest of the day drinking or smoking and be totally wasted by noon.  It's stupid, I know... but that's what I used to do.

Change started happening when I ran out of excuses.  You go on like that long enough and eventually you realize you've been telling yourself the same things over and over for days and weeks and months on end without anything actually happening.  I just kinda came to the place where I couldn't help but admit that smoking weed and drinking were choices that I made, and that every time I made those choices, I was essentially choosing to put my life on pause for one more day.  It seems like such a simple thing to talk about now, but I was really messed up back then.  My main goal in life was to not have stress or face hardship and the only way you can ever really do that is to just kinda check out on life.  But even then it doesn't work, because you get new stresses like "What do I do now that I'm out of weed, but I don't get paid 'til Friday?" and "If I go out drinking tonight, I won't be able to pay rent next week."

And I guess that's where it all comes to a head.  Like I said before, you end up wherever you end up in life because of the desires you choose to follow.  You basically decide what's the most important thing for you to do or to have and you just set your priorities around that.  When it's time to change, though, you have to turn those priorities on their head and develop altogether new ones.  And that can be a really difficult thing to do, especially if you've spent the last however long making a mess of everything and killing brain cells.  It makes it difficult to know where to start or how to proceed.

But proceed we must.  Sometimes I end up caught in a vortex of thoughts and feelings that immobilize me and make me want to stop and sort everything out before I take any action.  But I know that doesn't work.  You just have to focus on one thing at a time, something immediate and manageable, and just work on that until it's finished.  It can feel kind of childish because of how simple it is, but it's really the only thing I know that works.  You have to ask yourself "If I could only get one thing done today, what would be the most important thing to do?" and then go do it.  If you start to get distracted, put down whatever it is you chased after and go back to what you were doing.  Make up your mind early about what "done" looks like so that you know to stop once you get there.  Then you can move on to something else and repeat the process.

I think one mistake I've made lately is trying to lean on routine and structure to pull me out of the mess.  Don't get me wrong, I think routine and structure are great, but they're great if you've got a good system going.  If you're trying to fix or get rid of a bad one, putting new routines in place of the old ones can take away from your ability to clean up the mess.  I love riding my bicycle and writing my 'blog and having a smoothie for breakfast, etc. etc. etc. but those things take time and I have other concerns to worry with right now.

I'm going to hold off on riding again until I feel like I can add it back into the mix without taking away from other responsibilities.  I know it's good for me and I really want to keep doing it, but I have a hard time limiting myself to a few laps around the block.  I want to explore and push myself to go farther than I really have the time for right now.  

Don't worry, I'm not giving up the ghost completely... I'm going to continue 'blogging and eating better.  But for now, I've got laundry to do and a bathroom to clean.  I'll figure out what's next when those are done.

Stay gold, Ponyboy...

Step One: Figure Out What Step One Is

One of the reasons I'm such a bad adult, and there are many, is that I don't do housework very well.  I mean, I can mop and sweep and do dishes and stuff, it just feels like there's never enough time to take care of everything all at once and, after I've checked everything off the list, something else is dirty and needs to be cleaned. again  It's like trying to mow a thousand acres with a pair of scissors.

Add to this that I'm the type of person who thinks he deserves a parade and a sandwich just for getting off work for the day.  When I actually do finish all my laundry, I want to celebrate like it's a bank holiday or something.  I don't wanna have to move on to "Item #2" on the list.

But it doesn't really work like that.  I don't ever really "finish" my laundry, I just get a couple loads done here and there.  See, whenever I do laundry, I feel like I need to clean my bathroom, and in order to do that, I need to take the trash out and, since I'm already doing that, I might as well clean my desk off and, if I"m cleaning my desk, I should probably do the dishes and, before I can do the dishes, I should really take a shower, but if I'm gonna take a shower, I should wait until the stuff in the laundry finishes so that I have clean clothes to put on when I get out (and I can wash the dirty ones), so I'll just grab a snack and set up camp here in front of the computer while I wait for my laundry to finish.

That was yesterday.  My clothes are still in the washer.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've been thinking about how to get out of this funk I've been in.  Most of my thinking has drifted back to other times in my life that have been like this: there were a number of break-ups that left me pretty wounded and angry for a long time; some incidents with friends that were kind of a kick in the head; my parents separating was a pretty big one and then when the divorce was finalized, it kinda sucked the wind out of my sails for a few weeks; when my first grandmother died, and then when my great-grandmother died...  In fact, I don't know that I've ever really had a point in my adult life where there wasn't some recent, depressing and/or traumatic event to look back on and be affected by.

I don't think this is a unique experience or that I'm somehow unable to handle it, it's just not something I normally think about, either.  Truth be told, it's not really anything want to think about.  I want things to just happen on their own and not have to make time for them.  I don't want to keep looking back at the clock and deciding whether or not I have enough time to do everything I need to do today.  I hate thinking about what's coming up and what I'm going to have to cut out to make room for other things that I need to do first.  I wish there were an instruction manual for it.

...so I think I'm going to write one.  I heard Anne Lamott say that you should write the kind of thing that you'd like to happen upon in a bookstore because then the thing you're looking for would exist, (approx. 5:30) and I think that's great advice, so I think that's what my 'blog is going to be for a while: just me going through and figuring out how I got from A to B and how to get to whatever's next.  In a certain sense, I've kinda been hoping that's what it would do all along, but I don't think I've really put together the idea as concretely before now.

Still blocking comments.  Still don't really need them.  Still glad you're here, though.  Still gonna keep writing.

See you guys tomorrow.

You Know What...?

Okay... I'm probably going to piss off the only three or four people who actually read this stupid thing, but I'm not sure I really care right now.  I've pretty much had about all I can take with the feedback.  And I know it's just a meaningless attempt at social politeness and I know I'm probably being overly-sensitive and acting like a jerk to make this big of a deal out of it, but whatever... it's my effing 'blog and I can do what I want with it.

I'm starting to think that most people don't stop to process what they read before deciding to pitch in their two cents on the subject matter.  I don't mind people telling me they enjoy reading my 'blog (even though that's not why I'm doing this), and I really wouldn't care if people were correcting my grammar or spelling or punctuation.  It's the "Here's what I think about your ideas and what I think you should do with them" business that's getting to me.  It's the same as telling me that you don't really care what I said, you just want to make sure that I know you're here and that your thoughts are important, too.  It's oneupmanship, pure and simple.

Two posts ago, I just kinda dumped whatever was on my plate into the 'blog grinder and let whatever come out that was going to come out because I was too wrapped up in all that mess to come up with anything else.  I admitted that it was all over the place and probably wouldn't make sense, but also said that I didn't care because sometimes life is messy and we all just have to deal with it however we can.  (At least, that's what I was going for.)

Yesterday, I tried giving myself and whoever else might be reading this a bit of a break by shifting topics to something other than me and my emotional reactions to whatever drama was going on in my life.  I tried getting away from what was happening to me, personally, and talking about something I had read recently.  I know it was only a half-degree away from me-centeredness, but it was an effort nonetheless, and not a bad one, if I do say so myself.

And what did I get for all this?  I got the hug-brigade telling me to cheer up and go back to talking about breakfast and the critics saying I lost steam and quit too early.  Nobody asked a question, nobody suggested an alternative or asked for anything tangible, they just took their pot shots and went on with their day.

So yeah, it pissed me off.  I know it seems like a stupid and pointless thing to get defensive about, but I'm the one setting aside one- and two-hour blocks of time each day to put this stupid thing together, and I don't need you summing up your thoughts on the matter in a blurb that took you three, maybe five minutes, tops, to crank out.  What makes you think I need your judgment to be passed on what is, essentially, my own public journal?

And I know that even asking that question is hypocritical.  I know that I'm accusing others of doing the very thing my 'blog exists to do.  I know that the act of 'blogging, itself, is an exercise in narcissism.  I know that it's obnoxious and soap-boxey and prone to degenerate into the arena of self-reflexivism.  I get that. 

But you know what?  I'M OKAY WITH IT.  I don't need permission from anybody to do this.  I don't need anybody's permission to do it the way I want to do it.  I don't 'blog because you want me to, anyway.  I 'blog for anybody, really.  I do it because I need to develop the discipline of writing every day; of taking an abstract thought or series of thoughts and making it/them tangible in an organized way.  Some days I'm going to do that well.  Some days I won't.  If you appreciate it, great.  I'm glad that other people get something out of it, too.  But if you don't, well, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna sit around and worry about what I did wrong or how I could've helped you like it better.

I hid the comments because I don't want you to go back and look and try to figure out who I'm talking about.  I'm not trying to address one specific person or slam anybody publicly and I didn't write this in the hopes of offending anyone.  If it hurts your feelings for me to have said all this, I'm sorry.  Like I said in the beginning, I know you were just trying to be nice and I'm probably just overreacting out of frustration.  It's no coincidence, though, that the apology comes at the end, because 1. I really did/do want to say all that other stuff because I really did/do feel that way 2. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is my effing 'blog and I can do what I want with it (and nobody's twisting your arm to read it) and 3. if you're not going to read all the way through to the end and pay attention throughout, then I don't have much sympathy for you, anyway.

So stay tuned, true believers... or don't.  Whatever.

:)

Blood and Hair

As I've mentioned before, I've taken up recreational cycling.  It's difficult to make the transition from totally sedentary to anything-but, and I've been looking for ways to motivate myself to get on it and stay with it.  I bought a helmet so I can go on roads with higher traffic and better tires and a more comfortable seat so I can ride for longer periods of time without getting as tired/sore.  I also bought Lance Armstrong's book It's Not About the Bike, because I thought it would be inspirational and I usually try to read someone else's story whenever I start something new so that I can try to love it the way that they do.  I started shaving my legs because he mentioned that he does it, but beyond that, I haven't learned too much from reading it.

It turns out that Lance Armstrong is kind of an ass, which is something I'm sure it's illegal to say about a cancer survivor.  He talks about growing up without a father and the anger and resentment that comes from that just sort of carries throughout his whole story.  He never really seemed to deal with or get rid of the chip on his shoulder, he just got cancer and was forced into a different paradigm of life where his strength and resolve were, ultimately, powerless.  Sure, they had a lot to do with his ability to recover and go on to achieve incredible things in his life after his illness, but he, in and of himself, didn't beat cancer.  He had a skilled team of doctors and some amazing opportunities that ultimately led him through the disease.  He had some of the best people in the country working like mad and using the best resources available in modern medicine to fight the disease.  And, on a certain level, I'm sure that his physical condition and genetics contributed in a way that anybody else's who wasn't a world-class athlete wouldn't have.  But he didn't do anything to beat cancer.  He didn't work toward some incredible goal.  He just endured it.  He was a complete ass before he got cancer and, frankly, he was still kind of an ass even after it.  Just an ass with a wrist-band foundation.

Like I said, I'm sure it's illegal to say stuff like this about someone who's been through such unbelievable circumstances, and I know that there are probably people all over the world would react violently to this idea, but honestly, based on reading his book, nothing about Lance Armstrong's character or self-discipline saved him from his cancer.  He got lucky.

It's probably easy for me to say all this because I've never had to face down a terminal disease.  I mean, I know people who have had cancer and I've known people who died from it, but I, personally, have never had to go through it.  I'm sure I would be writing a very different 'blog if it were a real thing knocking at my doorstep, but on a certain level I don't know... it seems to me like the real issue is learning how to accept the fact that there are two possible outcomes and being willing/able to face your fears in light of that.  And, from the book, it's not something that Lance Armstrong ever seemed to do.  He clung so hard to idea of living that he never really seemed to deal with the idea of dying, because to do so would mean admitting that it was even a possibility.  He never talks about preparing himself for death in any tangible way.  He never sought resolution for anything.  It reads like he never thought he would die.

And I guess maybe that's what's supposed to be so inspirational about the book.  Maybe the will to live is the most important component in struggling through cancer, but as a story, Lance Armstrong remains something of a static character for that precise reason: he never really answered the question "What if I die?"  As a result, his beliefs didn't change, his attitudes didn't change, he never had to give anything up and, with exception of one of his testicles and a microscopic amount of brain tissue (along with his hair, for a while), he didn't really lose anything.  His health recovered.  His career recovered.  He regained his wealth.  He went on to achieve an unheard of level of success in his profession and become an international celebrity.  I'm not saying the guy doesn't have a great life or that he hasn't survived against overwhelming odds.  I'm not even saying he doesn't deserve the fame and recognition he has.  It just seems like the message of his book is the same as every other bit of self-help on the market: "Don't back down and don't give up and, if you make it to the end, you'll succeed."

But where does that leave the rest of us?  What about those of us who weren't born on a bicycle?  What about those of us who weren't on track to be Olympic-level athletes before tragedy struck?  What about those of us who don't have the option to fly to any hospital in the country to get the best help and healing available?  What are we supposed to do?

This is why I'm disappointed with Lance Armstrong's book: he is a very gifted person and he does have amazing abilities... but he never seems to speak to anybody that isn't playing on his level.  He tells his story, and it's an amazing one, but he never seems to have any practical advice for someone struggling along in the trenches.  I mean, I understand that this is probably where the endurance thing comes in--keep working and don't let it kill you--but where does the hope come from?  Are you really trying to convince me that if I just try really hard and give 110% in my life and my crappy job at Home Desperate, I'll win seven Tours de France?  Are really trying to tell me that strong people who fight hard don't still die from cancer?

Before everybody starts trying to explain why I'm stupid or wrong or whatever, let me just say that I'm not mad that I read the book and I don't hate Lance Armstrong.  In fact, I might even like the book better if I wasn't going through all the crap I'm dealing with right now.  But I think there's a difference between having a tangible thing to work toward because of what you hope for and standing naked in your bathroom with a dull, bloody razor and legs that look like you have some sort of infectious skin disease just because Lance Armstrong does it.  In the former, you work through what you really believe and why and, in the end, stand firm on the principles that result from engaging that process.  In the latter, you just institute a new tradition hoping that one day it will take on meaning for you.

But I still enjoy cycling.  And I like having smooth legs.  And I feel like, for now, those are good enough reasons to continue...

I Hate Everything About Everything

...and yes, that includes this stupid effing 'blog.  No funny anecdote or cute diffuser to pull the punch, here.  I mean it.  I hate the weather, I hate grocery shopping, I hate my apartment and people and shoes and my life. I didn't want to wake up this morning and I didn't want to go to work, I don't want to write this stupid thing and I don't want you to read it.  I don't want to hear about how much you've enjoyed it and I don't want you to tell me how much you appreciate my humor or my honesty or whatever.  It makes me want to scream or throw up or both to hear you say that.  I want to be injured and pissed off and have people just leave me alone and let everything take care of itself so I can sleep for a month until maybe I feel like getting out of bed and going outside again.  And I cannot BELIEVE I quit drinking.

I should probably back up and explain all of this, but I don't want to.  I'm tired of repeating the stories and the emotions and being "encouraged" and having people offer themselves up as a sounding board just in case I feel like talking about it, like their sympathetic ear is the magic cure-all that I've been waiting around for.  I don't feel like talking about it.  I don't need your pity or a hug or anything.  I don't want you to tell me that it's all okay or that it's all going to be okay and try and make me feel better.  I hurt.  I'm angry.  I'm sad.  And I just want all it to stop.

See, this is why I started drinking in the first place: I figured out how to make it stop.  I figured out how to flip the off-switch and drown out the big voices in my head.  I figured out how to kick everything into neutral and just coast.  I've done it before and I can do it again.  It's not illegal and you don't need a prescription for the stuff.  They sell it at every effing gas station in town.

Put down the phone and don't bother e-mailing me.  I'm not about to cash in everything I've fought for just to shut my brain up for one evening.  I've worked too hard to get where I am to throw it all away.  Besides, I've done it enough to know that it's only temporary and I can't afford to go back down that path ever again.  I'm just saying (though I'm still not entirely certain to whom), I know it's out there and I could do it if I wanted to.  Call it a control thing.  Whatever.

The stupidest part about this whole thing is that most Christians I know are some of the worst people to turn to in this kind of situation.  They either pat me on the shoulder and say "That sucks, man," and then duck and run because it freaks them out to see me this way and they don't know what else to do or they toss a fistful of piety my way, telling me I should pray about it or read such-and-such a verse or that "You just gotta remember like, how big God is, man," like they're throwing loose change from a moving car at a bum on a street corner without even slowing down.  I know I should be careful saying stuff like that because this is totally public and you never know who's reading it and you're probably wondering if I'm talking about you and blahblahblahblahblah, but it's true.  I've been drive-by'ed with Jesus more times than I care to remember.

And I think that's why it's the stupidest part: the people who should be awesome at this kind of thing totally suck at it.  The whole idea behind who Jesus was and what he came to do was centered around sacrifice and humility and so few of the people who say they follow him get that idea and are willing to do it themselves.  I've seen so many people posture and grand-stand and hide behind what they believe or know about the Bible to try and distance themselves from the all the ugliness and pain and brokenness associated with being human.  It's like they're trying to reason with all the suffering in the world, as if to use words to erase the silence; as if talking could prevent all those people from feeling all that pain.

But the God they keep prattling on about didn't do that.  Think about it -- infinite and invisible God.  Sovereign over all creation.  He was the only person who could've hand-written what his life would look like before he ever lived it and kept anything that even looked like brokenness and suffering away from it.  He could've done anything he wanted.  If helping everybody feel better was what he really cared about, he could've just written us a letter or sent us an e-card to cheer us all up.  He could've given everybody a cat poster and told us to keep our chins up and keep truckin' or whatever and he never would have had to inconvenience himself by leaving heaven and confining himself to a body and getting his hands dirty.  He could've been born in 2010 in Monaco with an awesome house and air conditioning and a sweet car and an iPad.  He could've had rich parents and a hot girlfriend and a billion friends on Facebook and started a huge corporation that made trillions of dollars and then used that money to eradicate social injustice and poverty and and disease and crime and hunger and sex trafficking.  And he never would have had to be homeless or ridiculed or run out of town or nailed to a cross and dumped in a cave to rot.

But he didn't do that.  And I can't, for the life of me, figure out why.  I mean, I understand the theological implications of why, don't get me wrong... I just can't understand how someone would willfully choose to live on the bottom rung of the ladder their whole, entire life.  I can't understand why anybody would choose to suffer.  It doesn't make sense to me.  I guess it's just one more reason why we're all super-lucky that I'm not Jesus, because I wouldn't have done it.

I read recently that what a person cares about is reflected by the choices they make.  I think that's embarrassing but true.  I think it's embarrassing because of how many choices I make that are rooted in an attempt to protect or secure myself somehow.  I think that says a lot about me as a person.  I think that it's true precisely because of what it says about me as a person. 

But at the same time, I think that maybe the fact that Jesus chose to be born in a shit-hole town to poor parents says a lot about him as a person.  I think it makes a strong statement about how he thinks suffering people should be treated.  I think it says that promising to pray for them and moving on with your day is the wrong thing to do.  I think it blows the wheels off of the drive-by change-flinging.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I've been in shock or under anesthesia for years and it's finally starting to wear off.  I feel like a lot of things I've tried to bury are coming to the surface and erupting in ways that I don't think I'm ready for.  I feel like I've gone through hell to get where I am just so I can face what's really wrong with me.  In a lot of ways, I'm sick of it and I'm ready for things to start getting better for a change.  But I think that's a wrong way to think about what's happening in my heart and my life.  I think I need to feel the way I feel right now.  I need to remember what I've done and what's happened to me so that it can remind me that the damage is still there and it's still real and I still need to be healed of it.  I think that the worst of it is probably yet to come.  But I think it would be wrong for me to avoid it or try to act like it isn't going on or hope that I can distract myself with something else that's happy and positive and will somehow make up for this.  And, if you're doing that in your own life, I think it's wrong for you to do it, too.

I doubt that any of this made sense to you and, to be honest, I don't care.  I'm not going to come back and edit this or condense it all down to something that makes sense or reads easier.  I also don't have some lighthearted or upbeat note to end this on.  I'm okay with that.  It's my effing 'blog and I can do what I want with it.  I'm not going to apologize for this, now or ever, so if something I said offended you or it's not your cup of tea, then good.  It probably needed to and you should probably figure out a way to stop lying to yourself and be self-aware (for probably the first time in your life).  Sin is a disgusting reality of life on such a level that "crude language" and temper tantrums barely scratch the surface of how dark and damaging it truly is.  Sorry, friends, but "shoot" and "darn" just don't work for some things.  In fact, if you can't look around you at all the evil in the world and see it for what it truly is and label it as such... well, I don't even know a word to describe that.

And don't you dare tell me that you'll be praying for me.  If prayer was my deepest need, I could do it myself.

So I'm going to go be sad and angry now.  I'm going to throw things and kick things and cry and be mad about the way I feel.  I'm going to say terrible stuff to and about good people and I'm going to say good stuff about terrible people.  I'm going to say things that I've never said out-loud to anybody because I don't want to admit the truth about who I really am and what I really think and feel.  I'm going to be unpleasant and scary and, if you saw it, you would wonder what happened to me and if I've lost my mind.  And I don't care.  I need this.  It's my life and I'm tired of living it this way.

"Succinctly"

I've been thinking about this whole "succinctly" business from a couple posts ago for the last few days now.  For one thing, I've been thinking about how true it is: I'm a lot of things, but I'm not exactly short and to-the-point.  My "style" (for lack of a better word) is something of a meandering sucker-punch: it kinda wanders all over the place but, in the end, I weave it all together to make a powerful close.  Or, at least, that's what I try to do. 

In light of that, I've also been thinking about how I don't really know how to define the word in any practical sense.  I mean, I know what the dictionary would say about how to use it in a sentence, but I don't know what kind of words to use to describe what it looks like except to say "boring," "vague" and "unimaginative."  My personal feeling is that when you cut away the so-called "extraneous" parts of my writing, you lose what ultimately makes the impact.  I know it's not for everybody and, on a certain level, I don't really want it to be.  I like pulling things from different directions and finding ways to connect them all together.  It's one of the main reasons I prefer Facebook to Twitter - I can't/don't wanna have to restrict that process to 140 characters.

But at the same time, I haven't applied for the job yet precisely because I think I need to work on the "succinctly" part before I do.  In some ways, I feel like it's just another excuse to accommodate my insecurities, but I don't want to submit a résumé just to say I did it.  Like I said before, I think it would be good for me to apply for this job in order to engage the process and maybe get a chance to talk to some people about a career in writing, but I also think it would be a good job.  I think that I could learn a lot from it and get some valuable experience in a field that I'm really interested in.  And I can't bring some half-baked effort to the table and expect them to take me seriously. 

I would never apply for a job that I didn't believe was a match with who I am and how I'm wired, nor would I think that anybody else should, either.  Some people aren't cut-out to do certain types of work, and I'm no exception to that.  I admit that sometimes you have to take a less-than-ideal job to pay the bills, but I wasn't made to be a computer programmer or a banker or a home improvement retail employee for the rest of my life.  I need to have work that is challenging and project-oriented, has a specific goal in mind, and requires me to utilize my creativity in order to come up with a solution, as well as adding style.

I guess my challenge is to cut the crap and get to work.  I really wish I were a no-nonsense and focused and driven kind of person; a person for whom "succinctly" functions as a second nature.  I wish I were Greg House.  I wish I could just walk into a room and give an immediate diagnosis based solely on how smart and awesome I am.  But I can't, because I'm not Greg House.  Greg House is a TV character and I'm just a real-life dude that "efficiency" and "finesse" don't describe.  College taught me that. 

But what it also taught me is that I'm the dude who grabs the biggest axe he can find and starts swinging until the thing falls over.  I'm the one to call when you have to make a choice between making the thing pretty and getting it done on time.  In my spare time, I may dawdle and think and relax and mull stuff over, but when the little hand says it's time to rock 'n roll, you either need to keep up or get out of my way. 

So, at the end of it all, can I do "succinctly?"  I don't really know.  "Succinct" is an adjective that doesn't currently (and may never) describe who I am and how I operate.  I don't think I'll ever be able to organize my thoughts in such a way that they come out in a nice, neat, clean, and to-the-point fashion.  What I know I can do is take the garbled mess that does come out and cut it down and shape it into something more palatable and useful.  I can weed things out that don't really fit with what I'm trying to accomplish and find ways to streamline my thoughts and ideas.  And if that doesn't qualify as "succinctly," well then, brother... I ain't got it.

Playing Catch-Up

So I've started writing things down to 'blog about later, but I haven't actually done anything with them yet.  I should probably go ahead and start clearing out my list before it gets any longer.  Here's item number one.

Last week, I went country dancing.

Ugh... I feel like I need to start a new paragraph just to get away from that sentence.  But it's true.  I did.

Now, I should immediately qualify that it wasn't my idea.  Nobody asked me for suggestions as to what we should do for the evening, and there was no voting process involved.  It was just kind of a "Hey, we're going country dancing" thing.  But I liked the people going and I didn't want to be the odd man out.  If you wanna be social, sometimes you just gotta suck it up and go with whatever the group is doing.

And so it was that I found myself at a place called "Midnight Rodeo."  I had never been there before, but I'd heard of it from a number of other people who frequent this establishment with some regularity.  They would always mention it as though it were just a regular part of their day, never explaining what this place was or why they were going there.  It was months of hearing about it before I understood that it was not, in fact, a literal rodeo that took place at midnight, but instead some type of dance hall with drinking involved.  As a matter of transparency, I should confess that one of the primary reasons I had never gone there was because I never wanted to: in my wildest imaginations about what this place was or what went on there, I never got the impression that one might discuss literature or art house films over some really tight jazz or soulful blues music.  In fact, it didn't even seem like the type of establishment that would appeal to my more base interests of fart jokes and World of Warcraft.

I was right.

This place is basically what would happen if you took my high school, filtered it through the movie "Pure Country" and turned what was left into 200 people dancing in a nightclub.

Oh, and then, if you took those people and soaked them in alcohol and rolled them around in sequins and snuff.  In short, it was super-classy.

Don't get me wrong, I had fun.  Like I said, I enjoyed the company of the people I was with and they were of a type with whom I could crack jokes and laugh about how ridiculous this place was.  But still, it was kind of a beating.  Pretty much everything about this place represents everything I come from.  The fashion, the music, the speech patterns... all of it is in some way reminiscent of and/or connected to my childhood and teenage years.  For instance, as I walked to the bathroom, I passed a poster for "The Bart Crow Band."  Now, I'm sure that this would be just another trashy hick garage band to you, but Mr. Crow, himself being a native Maypearlean, actually played baseball with my cousin in high school.  In fact, part of the reason why making a "Pure Country" joke is funny in the first place is that the bulk of the movie was actually filmed in Maypearl.  I can still remember my family members talking about seeing George Straight from a distance as though the president were in town.

But add to that another layer.  Add to that the drunk woman old enough to be my mother giving hickeys to her husband/boyfriend not three feet to my left.  Add to that the husky young squire getting all up ons with his lady-of-size in plain sight of everyone at the bar.  Add to that the frat guy with the sleepy-looking, bloodshot eyes and irritated expression on his face being dragged to the dance floor by his date.  Add to that the fact that I, myself, have been those people, others gawking unabashedly at me, with no concern for my dignity.  You see, it isn't just that it reminds me of where I grew up and what I grew up around... it's a clear picture of what I used to be and who I am always prone to become.

In particular, there was this lady... well, I hesitate to call her a lady, and I know I shouldn't talk this way about her... but there was this short, trollish, pile of a woman wearing what seemed like a dress made out of woven magnetic tape ribbons and a white veil attached to a tiara that had tiny, glow-in-the-dark penises on it. She had a sash across her goblin-like torso (that said "Bride-to-be" as if the veil were too subtle a hint) and she was line dancing with what I assumed were her bridesmaids-to-be, though "maid" might be too strong a term.  The hobgoblin was in the middle, interlocking arms with her bridesthings, obviously having had too much to drink, and not so much "dancing" as "flailing and kicking violently while being dragged around in circles by a group of what look to be transvestites."  Again, I know this is a horrible way to describe the scene, and I'll might feel bad about it later, but I honestly don't know how else to put it.  I just remember standing there, mouth agape, feeling a really twisted sense of awe at how there was simply nothing about their situation that could possibly be more revolting or unattractive.  I just kept trying to picture what sort of lucky guy would get to walk down the aisle with this heap of abject horror.

But then I started thinking about something I'd read in the Bible recently.  Two of the most common analogies that God uses to characterize his relationship with people is 1. a picture of marriage, the holy and beautiful institution that I was watching these ladies trample all over to the tune of "Cotton-Eyed Joe," and 2. the image of a Father with his children.  It occurred to me that my tendency in regard to faith is to try and soften the impact that it has on me; to color myself as being okay or, at least, not as bad-off as "the least of these."  I want to be able to determine my own value and worth based on things that I think I'm good at or that I find attractive.  I want to be independent.  I want to be free.  I don't want to be looked down on or told that I'm insufficient.  I want God to love me because I'm lovable.  I don't want to need him.  And I certainly don't want to be the ugliest bride on the dance floor.

But then I look back on where I came from and what I've been through.  Once you get out of a hole, you can see how far down in it I was.  I can look back on my drinking days through a lens of sobriety and recognize the out-of-control-drunk that lives inside me. I can be the bystander in a crowd of intoxicated hillbillies with an objectivity that you just don't possess when you're the one being dragged around in circles by your friends.  And when I do that, I see how ugly and unappealing I was.

Given what a marriages and parents should be, I can see why God chose to use them to describe what he's like.  Parents are one-sided caregivers and marriage is a one-sided promise.  Parents don't do things beneficial for their children because they stand to gain something from it (or at least they shouldn't).  You take care of your kids because they're yours and you love them.  Period.  Marriage is a promise that says "I promise to remain faithful to you no matter what kind of stupid choices you make and regardless of what an insufferable jerk you act like."  It's a promise that doesn't ask for anything in return.  I know it seems unfair and I know that most of us want it to be, but the next time you're at a wedding, listen to the vows.  They never end anything with the statement "...as long as you promise to keep the house clean and fulfill me sexually and make a bunch of money" or whatever.  It's a commitment that gives.  It doesn't ask for anything in return.

And if I understand grace correctly, that's the essence of it.  It's the purest form of love you can imagine.  It gives up everything in the face of no gain.  It's a statement that says, "You're a drunken mess and I don't have to put up with you, but I love you and I'm going to anyway."  It's a sweet and tender kind of love, not because it's beautiful to look at, but precisely because it's not.  It takes no strength of character whatsoever to sidle up to the bar and knock 'em back 'til you can't feel your nose and end up slobbering all over yourself and some trashy woman.  It takes a supernatural brand of it to look on those exact kinds of people and step down into their messes and see value in them and pursue them with love and kindness.

All told, I think that may be the ugliest thing about me: I see other people and their train wrecks as spectacles to be laughed at rather than crises to be mourned.  I have no compassion or heart for struggles that aren't my own.  I want to be well-put-together and healthy, but only for my own benefit, not so I can turn around and help others.

I just keep on flailing and kicking, and God loves me anyway...

Breakfast at 2 In the Afternoon

"Breakfast is my favorite meal," a coworker told me recently, "because if I'm eating breakfast, it means I'm not working today."

It's easy to understand his sentiment, and on a certain level I agree with him, but my love for breakfast goes deeper than just having the day off.  Breakfast is like your favorite aunt or uncle: you only get to see them every so often, but when you do, it's like everything is right in the world.

Breakfast is such a diverse meal, too.  If you're trying to figure out what you want for lunch, that's work.  It's always a negative process of elimination, too.  "Nah, I had sandwiches yesterday," or "I'm not really up for Asian food."  Not so with breakfast.  Breakfast is about options.  It's always "Whaddaya want for breakfast?  I got eggs, juice, biscuits... you name it."    If it qualifies as a breakfast food, there's no reason not to have it.  In fact, you can even combine your breakfast food WITH OTHER BREAKFAST FOODS.  You feel like having pancakes and a bowl of oatmeal?  Go for it.  Bacon and toast?  Nobody here to stop you.  You could even have pancakes, oatmeal, bacon AND toast and the only thing anybody would say to you is "Man, that's a big breakfast."

Come to think of it, when's the last time you were denied a substitution during breakfast?  Want a soda instead of coffee?  Sure, we can do that.  Hashbrowns instead of fruit?  Fruit instead of hashbrowns?  Extra bacon instead of hashbrowns or fruit?  Comin' right up, boss.

That would never work with lunch.  Imagine all the stares and sideways looks you'd get ordering hamburgers at a pizza restaurant.  No way.

Not with breakfast, though.  Breakfast is so awesome, most places won't even serve it past 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning.  And the places who do?  Man, those are like the radical, free-thinking weirdos of the restaurant community.  They've always got those dudes with the lip-rings and the dreadlocks and the chicks with a bunch of tattoos working there.  It's like walking into a biker-bar, but with waffles.

I think my favorite thing about breakfast is how much work is involved with the payoff being that you get to eat your favorite thing at the end of it. You don't just throw something together for breakfast and get on with your day... breakfast is something that one must make, and it is not so much eaten as savored. And don't try to act like warming up a Pop-Tart or pouring a bowl of cereal is the same as making breakfast.  It's not the same thing.  That's breakfast for chumps.  I'm talking about using skillets and cutting boards and spatulas.  I'm talking about preheating ovens and using good cooking oil and fresh vegetables.  I'm talking about setting the table and putting the coffee on.  THAT, my friends, is breakfast.

And that takes time. 

And it costs money. 

And it makes a huge mess. 

And you spend at least as much time cleaning up after yourself as you did making it in the first place.

But all the best things in life are like that, aren't they?  All the good parties I've thrown, every project I've finished, every time I go for a 15+ mile bike ride, there's always this moment when it's all over where I just lay down on the floor in utter exhaustion and think, "Wow... that just happened... I just did that," and I marvel that God loves me enough to put the world together in such a way as to let me experience some of the best parts of it.

I've said it before and I'll re-state it here: we were made to do great and incredible things.  We were built to experience life in a radical and fulfilling way.  And I've just spent the better part of an hour soliloquizing my egg and mushroom tacos, and that probably makes me crazy, but when's the last time you got that excited over breakfast?  When's the last time you got that excited over anything?  Where does joy come from in your life and how often do you take time to revel in it?  How many times today have you taken a moment to think about where you are and what you're doing and what an incredible word it speaks to the blessings and the triumph that your life is?  That it could be?  Have you told anybody how much they mean to you lately?  Have you sought to share the things that give your life meaning?  Do you even notice the tiny miracles that happen all around you or are you too busy moving on to the next thing on your to-do list?

...and I'm one who's crazy?

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

I kinda like this PM 'blog deal... it gives me a chance to sort of decompress and reflect on the day's events and I like it. I'm gonna try more of a dusk-'blog thing and see how it goes.  Well, except for tomorrow and Saturday, because I have to work from 3:00 to midnight.  And not Sunday, because I'm giving myself (and you) the day off.  And probably not Monday, either, 'cause I think I have to work Monday night, too.  Whatever.  It's 8:30 now, so let's do this thing.

I don't know if you knew this about me or not, but I'm a pretty uptight and neurotic guy.  Just in case the last six posts didn't scream that at you, let me explain why I say that.

1. I care what literally everybody thinks about me.  Even if it's hoping that they think I don't care what they think about me, I want everybody to have a certain perception of me that dictates the way I want them to behave and treat me.  I want all my friends to think I'm awesome so that they want to hang out and be nice to me.  I want girls to think I'm the finest figure of a man they've ever laid eyes on.  I want everyone on my "The List" to think I'm some kind of incandescent meteor-breath who will absolutely demolish them if they ever try to cross me.  I want everyone to know what a huge deal I am, because maybe if they all finally catch on, it'll start being true.

2. I was raised with a legalistic view of God and still carry within me the propensity to believe that being able to justify myself and my behaviors is the single most important aspect of living.  Being right and checking things off the list of "Everything I Do That Deserves Some Freaking Credit Around Here" are probably 65-90% of what consumes my thought life at any given moment (on a good day).  The idea is to constantly be on the look-out for anything and everything that might prop you up a little higher and either a. make sure you either have or are working on getting whatever that thing is, assuming that it's possible for you to achieve, or b. make sure you can explain why it's somehow beneath you to try if you can't.  It's a defensive position that never sleeps because the moment it switches off, you're at risk of being overtaken by someone who's better at playing the game than you are.

3. As if those two things weren't bad enough, you couple those with my past and my propensity for failure and the system almost collapses on itself.  I say "almost" for two reasons.  First, as long as nobody knows the real truth about how broken I am and who used to be (or if I can at least spin it so that it helps me come across as a more well-rounded and down-to-earth kinda guy) then I can still make the public opinion of me work in my favor.  If it seems like I learned something valuable or had some kind of huge epiphany rooted in the bad things that have happened to me and that I've done, I can still try to stand on what other people think of me to validate whatever it is that I don't like about myself or am insecure about.  Second, fuel for the legalistic fire comes from a perceived need for God and everybody else to be indebted to me.  The idea is that if I do the right things and hang out with the right people, then everything is obligated to go my way and nothing bad should happen to me.  If I tithe like I'm supposed to, God's supposed to bless my finances.  If I don't have sex 'til I'm married, then both God and my wife owe it to me to fulfill me through my marriage.  If any one of these things starts to fall apart, I can immediately point to my list and explain all parties concerned how they need to get back in line and pull their weight because I've done my part and it's time for them to start doing theirs.

Sorry if this comes across as a lot of crazy back-and-forthness.  If it seems like a lot of nonsense and circular reasoning and you'd have to work really hard and do a bunch of mental gymnastics to jump through all the hoops to make sense of this and believe it, well... I guess that's probably 'cause it is and you would.

But it amounts to me being an uptight and neurotic person exactly because it's so much work.  The burden of responsibility is on me to figure out how to put all this stuff together and make it work and come up with a new plan (and the strength to go do it) when the old one stops working.  It's an all-consuming mess of what I'm not and what I don't have and how to convince everybody that I don't have as many needs and weaknesses as I actually do.

Perhaps an example is in order.  In my ongoing search for new employment, I found a listing for a company based out of Chicago.  The more I read the description of the job, the more excited I became about the opportunity, until I read the following statement:

"Job Requirements: Excellent writing skills, attention to detail, and bizarre sense of humor.  Experience is a plus, but not necessarily required if you have compelling samples. We'll work with anyone who can write succinctly, persuasively, and intelligently."

Now, here's how I think most of you would react to this, or at least how you would tell me that I should react:

Man, what a great find!  That sounds like something I could do!  I should look into this and see where it goes!

Here's how *I* think about this:

"Succinctly?"  Sonofa...  Well, whatever.  I'm sure something else will turn up...

The primary thought driving this crazy horseless carriage is that if I'm missing something, or if the stars don't align just right on this thing, I'm vulnerable and risk failure and embarrassment at being rejected.  I feel like I'm immediately disqualified because, in my own estimation of my skills and abilities, I don't inherently possess and exude whatever it is that I think they mean by "succinctly."  Never mind that I've spent countless hours whittling down pages and pages of presentation material down to something manageable and easy to communicate in five to ten minute blocks.  Never mind that I've written countless papers tailored to match the precise expectations of the professors in terms of length.  Never mind the number of people I have who can vouch for my ability to put together engaging and informative material that doesn't lose its audience due to boredom or inattentiveness... No, pretty much all I can do is think of all of those times that I've been laughed at or ridiculed for not getting to the point quick enough or spending too much time trying to be funny and not enough time trying to be informative.  The only memories that come up are the confused looks  from audiences or jokes that fell flat or the people who've fallen asleep during my presentations.

"Succinctly..."  God, they might as well have asked me to speak Russian.

I went to my great-grandmother's grave site a month or so ago when I was in Dallas for a few days.  It was the first time I had been in town since Christmas and the first time I had been back to the cemetery since her funeral in November.  I remember feeling sad that she hadn't lived to see me graduate, so I prayed for a minute and thanked God for my grandmother and the encouragement that she was throughout the whole process of me going back to school.  I felt so loved by God through Grandma and, as I started thinking over what an example of godly love she was, I flashed on a few verses of scripture that I felt it would be appropriate to read over her grave.  I ran to my car and grabbed my Bible and went back to read the passage aloud.  I was openly weeping as I read it, but erupted with a bizarre, tear-soaked laughter when I got to the whole "love does not... boast; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful" thing.  

Now, please understand... I loved my great-grandmother more than I think I've ever loved anybody in my whole entire life but, to be completely honest with you, she could be kind of a cranky old bitch from time to time.  Not to me, mind you... I carried the label of "grandson," which was basically a get-out-of-jail-free card for anything.  But with everybody else, Grandma was kinda like dealing with the mafia: if you're "in," you're made and nobody can touch you; if you're "out," you're out for life and there's no getting back "in."  She was as human as the rest of us, she had her good days and her bad ones and, in the end, she had her own faults and flaws that she carried with her to her grave.  She could be so bitter at times, I could hardly stand to listen to her.  Talking on the phone was an hours-long event that involved every detail of family/small-town gossip that she knew.  There a lady who she went to church with for years that she had a long-standing feud with, who came up to my sister at the funeral and said how much she really loved my grandmother and how sorry she was they never buried the hatchet before she passed away.  Like I said, she was always sweet to me, but she could be down-right rotten to other people.  

But I loved her dearly and if I ever knew any one thing at all, I knew that she loved me.  I would never have gone back to UT and graduated if I hadn't had her in my life, speaking truth and love and kindness to me when I needed to hear it most.  When I believed I was worthless, she didn't.  When I had nothing left to offer anybody, she still loved the sound of my voice.  When I was at my lowest and in my deepest need, she was always there to hug my neck and feed me egg salad sandwiches and tell me how much she loved me.  And because of these things, because of the power in them, for all her shortcomings, I can laugh and love her anyway.  I mean, all things considered, twelve out of fifteen is nothing to shake a stick at.

So I think I'm going to go ahead apply for this thing anyway.  I don't really want to because it's easier to accept failure if you never try, but I feel like I should.  I feel like it would be good for me to work on putting together samples of what I can do and maybe be able to talk to some people about what's good about it, what it lacks, how I can improve it, etc.  It seems like something worth sticking my neck out for, despite what the neurotic inside me is screaming.  I think it would be a fitting tribute to a woman who modeled what it means to do the best you can with what you have and let God take care of the rest.  I think there's wisdom in it.

I don't know if this qualifies as "succinct," but I don't think it matters, either.  It's the best I have and I won't apologize for that.

Until tomorrow...

Somebody Owes Me An $8 Pair of Sunglasses

I went for a bike ride today after a 6 o'clock breakfast meeting. It was 7:30 when I got back to my apartment and I really just wanted to go back to bed, but I knew that if I didn't immediately change clothes and head out, I'd never get around to it and end up wasting the day.  I told myself I'd only ride for thirty or forty-five minutes, just to get back in the habit of making it a regular part of my days off.

I ended up biking almost 16 miles.

It took an hour and a half, and I'm still not entirely sure why I did it.  I had a lot on my mind, I guess, and something about punishing myself until my legs felt like jelly was soothing and/or distracting.

I rode all the way from my apartment to Cliff Fritschle's house and back again, ironically the same Cliff Fritschle with whom I had just finished eating breakfast.  We talked about the changes that have taken place in my life over the last year or so since I first met with him and the need for me to continue growing in different directions that don't revolve around meeting with him weekly.  We talked about the ideas of accountability and mentoring and how, although he has been both of those things for me in direct relation to my struggles with alcohol, I'm not where I was a year ago and don't have the same needs I did then.  I need to pursue accountability in terms of more than just whether or not I wanted to drink this week, and on a more peer-oriented level with people who are in a similar/same phase of life as me.  I need mentoring in some areas of my life different from those to which he can speak directly with wisdom and experience and authority.  And that's okay.

I mean, it should be... right?

Cliff will be the first to admit that he isn't Jesus, and I know I shouldn't try to treat him as such, but old habits die hard, I guess.  I really just want to be able to meet with him on Tuesday mornings and have that be enough.  I don't want to have to change; to engage these different issues; to seek out new people who will speak new truth to me in new ways and behave/respond to me such that I can't predict what they'll say if I tell them what a wreck my life is and how tired I am of constantly putting everything in my life under the microscope.

I want things in my life to just work: I want to stop having to crawl out of the ditch and sit across the table from someone with my eyes downcast to tell them about the newest and latest convoluted train wreck I've managed to make of my life.  I want to come home and have a clean apartment and not worry about how long I can wait to pay the student loan people before they start hassling me with phone calls.  I want to be able to go to work with a sense of purpose and pride in what I do and feel like I'm making a difference in the world.  I want to have friendships with people who are easy to love and validate everything about my existence and endorse/justify everything I say and do.  And with obvious exception of the last one, I feel like those are good and healthy wants to have.

To be honest, though, I think the last one is probably the lynch-pin to the problem: I want the people around me to enable me to have all those other things and be the ones who are ultimately responsible for whether or not I'm achieving my goals or feeling alright or having a good day.  I treat life like it's a movie and get really wrapped up in whether or not the main character (me) is going to be happy by the end of it.  I expect everyone I meet to get second- or third-bill credit and not step on my lines, yet meaningfully contribute to moving the plot forward.  I want to have all the cool dialog and wind up with the girl of my dreams and construct some elaborate scheme so that the bad guy to gets what's coming to him.  I want my character defects to be endearing to the audience and have everybody rooting for me to win.

In short, I want to be the most selfish and self-centered prick you've ever met in your life.

I really don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to live within your means and have a clean apartment and a fulfilling career and loving friends.  The problem comes from expecting those wants, in and of themselves, to be the driving force that makes a difference in your life.  Actually, that's incorrect.  *A* problem comes from that, but not *the* problem.

Each of those things comes with a cost.  It takes diligence and self-control to make a budget and hold yourself to it.  It takes making time and skipping out on fun afternoons to be responsible and take care of housework.  You have to work hard and function in circumstances that aren't ideal and hunt for opportunities to move into work that you love and care about.  You have to be honest with people and be willing to be let down by them and not expect them to be perfect and admit your own shortcomings and let them be disappointed or angry or hurt or whatever you think they're going to be, but, ultimately, recognize and affirm the value that they have and trust that they love you enough to not think as poorly of you as you do.

THE problem is that I don't wanna do any of that.

On the way back from Cliff Fritschle's house today, I stopped on a Parmer Lane bridge to look at some turtles in a river/pond thing.  I'm still not entirely sure what it was.  All I know is that on the way to Cliff's house, I really wanted to stop and look over the edge to the water below and see if I could see any fish swimming around, but I felt like that would be a stupid and childish thing to do and, besides... I was kinda on an adrenaline high from the bike ride by that point.  On the way back, I was feeling pretty good about having made it all the way there and as I came back across the opposite side of the bridge, I could see a bunch of turtles swimming around.  There was one that looked about as big as a trashcan lid just floating around and I decided to reward myself for a ride well-done (at least, well-almost-done) by stopping to watch the turtles for a minute.  I took my sunglasses off because a. I couldn't see the turtles as well with them on and b. I have an irrational fear of dropping things from incredible heights.  I don't know if a fifty-foot bridge counts as an incredible height, but it's the tallest thing I've been on in a while, so I took them off.  Regardless, the fear is rooted in a habit I have for dropping things and having sunglasses fall off my face and into a river sounds exactly like something that would happen to me, so it just seemed prudent to take them off and set them delicately on the concrete wall keeping me safely contained on top of the bridge.  Just as the trashcan lid swam away, I turned to see/feel the gust of a large 18-wheeler that happened to be driving by and, in a moment I can only describe like something out of a movie, I watched my sunglasses rattle for a split second before being flung over the edge of the wall, tumbling end over end through the air, into the water below.

Not gonna lie, I was fairly pissed off about the whole thing, but it was one of those situations in life that's so irreversible and funny that you have to laugh about it because there's really nothing else to do.  They weren't even good sunglasses (although they were my only pair) and I had only bought them to go to the river with some friends, and I had gotten the cheapest pair I could find just in case they didn't make it back.  That they had lasted me three months was more than I had originally expected from them and, besides, it seemed like a lot of hassle to try and get down into this nasty pond water and swim around to fish them out.  I peddled on home, replaying the scene over and over in my head, laughing most of the way back.

I've kept thinking about that whole incident, though.  How, if I hadn't stopped to watch the turtles, I would still have my sunglasses.  How, if I hadn't been so restless and disquiet in my thoughts, I probably wouldn't have gone so far.  How, if I'd just stayed in and gone back to bed, I would never have even known those stupid turtles were down there, anyway.  I kept trying to think of some way to relate this incident to the rest of my life; to make some kind of grand analogy out of it, where the pond is my brain and the turtles are my restless thoughts and the sunglasses are... well, they're my sunglasses.  I wanted there to be some reason for why this thing happened and why I have to go buy new sunglasses now.  Like, I wanted to find out that these sunglasses were some kind of defective model that shatter into a million pieces when you expose them to oxygen and they're made with lead-based paint and emit toxic radiation or something.

But I think, after an entire day of dwelling on it, I can honestly say that there's no great analogy to be drawn here.  I think it's just the way life goes.  If you're going to be active and stop to look at turtles, you're going to lose your $8 sunglasses sometimes.  And if they're such a big deal to you, yeah... you probably should just stay home.  There's risk inherent to living that, in trying to insulate yourself and stay safe, you lose the things that make you really alive.  At a certain point, you either have to see value in things that aren't just "stuff" and operate as though the universe doesn't revolve around you or just get used to being the same old, miserable sad-sack you've always been and quit complaining about how hard everything is.

I think this is why the Bible resonates so much with me.  Jesus said, "Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."  I've seen so many instances in my life where the harder I try to hold on to the things I think are valuable, the more trucks keep speeding past to blow them away and the more I realize how worthless the stupid things were in the first place. (Is it bad that I'm still looking for that analogy?)  Rhetorically, I want to believe that the stuff I have and the opinions held of me don't really matter, but it's another thing entirely to actually release it all and trust that God's not just going to hang me out to dry and leave me looking like an idiot.  I'm so afraid of what might happen if someone were mad at me or people stopped liking me or if I lost all the cool stuff I have that makes life so easy and comfortable.  But I know I'm not happy with it either.  Why can't I just let go?

All said, it's been a good day.  It hasn't really felt like it and I'm still in kind of a funk, but that's the way it goes sometimes.  I got my oil changed and folded some laundry and went to the grocery store today, so it's not like I did nothing.  Yeah, I still need to work on my budget and be more intentional about making time for specific people, but in the end, I got some important things checked off my list for this week and I can live with that.  I am not the mess I used to be and God has proven himself more than capable and faithful enough to carry me along this stage of life, too.

Goodnight, all.  See you out on the road tomorrow...

P.S. if you happen to be swimming around the Avery Ranch/Brushy Creek area and find a pair of sunglasses, be a pal, eh?  It's my only pair...