discipline

I don't have it. I simply can't seem to squelch my desire to be spontaneous, especially when it requires less planning and organization. I have a hard time believing that all my personality traits are inherently "okay." So what do I accept as "that's just the way I am" and when do I say "I don't care if you've been like that your whole life, it sucks and you should change.?" Is conviction really conviction if you don't do anything about it? Is that the difference between knowledge and understanding?

Does it matter that I can't consistently update a blog? Does it matter that I again started something only to let it slip away because it no longer was appealing because it went from spontaneous to organized? If it's just a web site I say, in the words of a great man, "Blow it off." But what if in my quest for spontaneity (motivated by laziness?) I inadvertently become consistently idle. How does somebody change? Is it through discipline? What if you aren't disciplined?

I'm afraid that if I decide to attack a certain characteristic by becoming mechanically disciplined I'll loose all sense of spontaneity and deny my adventurous nature. Ultimately, I'll afraid of being bored. Which, ironically, due to lack of planning and organization, I am currently suffering from boredom during the holidays which has driven me to write this post. It's like a self-defense mechanism that always throws me back into the game, even if I don't get to handle the ball. There some ridiculously merciless force that won't allow me to get out of the game, even when I don't want to play. At this point I'll stop before I loose myself in the obscure land of analogy and allegory. I was being redundant for the sake of alliteration, is that okay even if the words are used entirely with correctness? Who cares, happy freakin' New Year.

Art and Fear

I just started reading a book that I randomly selected at a library titled Art and Fear. I also randomly picked up another book at a different library and read it. It was really short. It was the English translation of the speech that Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave when he received the Nobel Prize. It was quite fascinating. Both talked a lot about Art...sure, with a capital "A". Alex said art will save humanity. I suppose that has a lot to do with how you define art and humanity.

There can't be anything artistic about me sitting here writing this while there are plenty of other things that need to get done. I must get them done. I'll leave you with this quote:

"'Artist' has gradually become a form of identity which (as every artist knows) often carries with it as many drawbacks as benefits. Consider that if artist equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all!"

Perhaps this is why I hesitate to call myself an artist.

(I'm going to attempt to not use the word "perhaps" for at least 5 posts.)

Renewal

There is such a huge need for renewal. I've decided that I care much more about renewal than something new. I'd much rather see someone who has had a whole lot of crap in their life go through a renewal process than just turn into something new. Well, part of me does. Maybe my theology starts to add some Symantec problems with that statement, but definitional arguments aside, I believe that I prefer redemption to restarting. The whole idea of a second chance is pathetic. A second chance is just another opportunity to experience the failure that's inevitable. Redemption is much more real to me...much more authentic. Deep down that's what I want life to be. I want it to be total recognition of everything that I am and then enough care and love for my identity to be made perfect. I want to be perfect. That's not too much to ask is it?

Be careful what you ask for...

So it's been said many times in the past and aparently for good reason. A couple of days ago I said, "Gee, I wish there was more to what's going on here. I want more than just the normal." Now what I meant to make clear was that I was sick of all the mundane stuff and wanted there to be some greater cause, so greater vision, some greater call for me to follow. Let me be involved with greater things I asked.

Somewhere things got fouled up and what I got was just more crap to do. So why I get what I say and not what I mean frustrates me. Why I get anything at all baffles me.

Today somebody told me that Rome has the longest peroid of peace the world has ever known, it was 200 years. I wonder what it was like.

It's Over

Technically, it's just beginning - However, the prideful resistance to remain separate from the blog world has come to an end, a rather anti-climatic end, which I guess is the end that most, if not all, prideful resistances most enevitably come.

I do admit however that I really appreciate the whole idea of a blog, if anything, the simple concept that hopefully I'll be validating in some form my way of thinking and expression. I love to journal and perhaps the thought that maybe somebody somewhere is finding what I write interesting enough to look at than I'll be more encouraged to write it. I assume that at least for the first few months or years of a blog only close friends will check to read, but maybe that's what I secretly want, is for my close friends to read my thoughts, and then it saves me the effort to do it face to face and be misunderstood.

I wish I wasn't the kind of person who started their first post on a blog talking about blogs and why they are created or what's so great about them. I wish I was cool enough to be able to just start writing something random and be that confident about it. But I prefer honesty over appearance, or at least I'm supposed to and I think that most of the time I really do, so in order to support that I'll make a rule that I'll never delete something that I have written, or decide after thinking twice about what I have said that I shouldn't post it.

Rule 2: Please do the same.

Oh....why sign each blog as "son"? I'm not sure...I guess it's the identity that is one of the most accurate telling who I am, but that I know the least about what it actually means. I'd like to explore more what does it mean that I am somebody's son, so signing each post as that will help me remember.

I just remembered that you will be able to post stuff too, hmm....

A happy congratulations to two of my favorite people as they celebrate a very special occation today. You made the first post.