hollow man

It's that feeling when you've stayed up super late and haven't moved for the last three hours. The invention of the computer is weird in that you can do so much without moving anything but your fingers. My mind is telling me that I have just accomplished an amazing task and written someting possibly worthy of being published, yet my body says, "What...uh... you're still awake? Dude, I shut down ages ago. You want me to do what now!!? (do the question marks or exclamations usually go first?? anyone?)"

So here I sit. I'll convince my body to move and go to bed, after I convince it it's not already there.

I'll continue my search for meaning and purpose tomorrow. Now I must sleep.

Feeling Down

I have a complaint to make. It's not acceptable to be sad. Since when is it that? It's like we believe if somebody is sad it's because something is wrong. If something is wrong, it's because there is a problem. If there is a problem, we can and must do everything to fix it. If somebody is sad for longer than, I guess a second, it's because somebody isn't fixing something. Not being able to fix something is wrong. We're American's darn it. We sent people to the moon. We invented light bulbs. We invented penicillin. We can fix anything. Why are you sad? You are not reinforcing the American Dream if you are sad. You are denying our super power to fix everything. STOP BEING SAD!! You're making me uncomfortable. If you were a good person you wouldn't be sad. If you were smarter, you wouldn't be sad. If you just had more faith, you wouldn't be sad.

Maybe if we didn't have a society where the only people who at least pretend to listen charge over $120 an hour, less people would be sad, or at least if they were sad they would feel okay to share it with the group and not fear being an outcast.

remembering

Why is it that whenever I'm trying to think of something I can't remember it: a song I really like and would like to purchase now, a book I'd like to read but the second I entered the library it vanished, what I'd like to get for Christmas or my birthday, which actually is today (although its 1am on what still feels like the 28th), and other things, like how to end a sentence with an actual strong point.

aging

I'm getting older tomorrow. I guess that's how it works. We celebrate birthdays weird here in the west, I guess it's because we disregard the old as useless. Ironic that we are all at a pretty crisp pace heading towards that faithful end towards "uselessness."

I never know what to do for my birthday. Everyone always asks and I never know what to respond. And then they get disappointed if you don't have any good answers. It's like people are disappointed in you for not having planned a huge event and taking advantage of the "Well it's your birthday you should get to do everything you want, right?" clause. Which, by the way, doesn't exist. The moment you invoke it is the moment it disappears.

I'm going to sleep, my writing is starting to stink.

decisions

I realize that I don't really have a process that I follow to make a decision. Well, that's not entirely true; I don't have an intentional process that I follow. All I know is that at some point I'm making a decision and often I don't feel prepared, or worse, I do and I'm still not sure if I'm doing the right thing.

My mom always reminds me of this time when I was a kid. I still remember it as if it were yesterday. I had to choose between going on a week trip with my family that happened every year, one that I really enjoyed, or staying home and going to a friends birthday party and doing some other things. I think it was my first ever big decision. I distinctly remember standing in between our kitchen and the living room and complaining, "Why do I always have to make hard decisions?" I was almost in tears.

Now a decade or more later the only difference is that I don't tear up, at least when anyone is watching. Why do I have to make all the hard decisions? Does it even matter what I do. I won't be crazy, I won't be totally irresponsible, I won't be stupid. Tell me that it really doesn't matter what I do as long as it makes me happy. Tell me that it's okay to just make a decision because God's in control anyway and He's going to make use of you wherever you are. Tell me any of those things and I'll laugh in your face. I don't know. I want to believe that because I thought about something for ten days and then decided something, that that process makes the decision better than if I had decided the same thing with only two days of thought. Now that's crazy.

I'm not smart enough to make big decisions, but I am smart enough, I think, to realize that it's better for me to make them then let somebody else. In the long run, I will be a better person more capable of making hard decisions. My life will be more enjoyable than if I just do whatever the smartest person in the room tells me to do. Maybe the smartest person in the room could tell me and I could just say that's what I was thinking anyway. There I go again wanting my to eat my cake. I want somebody else to live my life, but I want to live it. That's an interesting complex that's got to have some cosmic ramifications. Or I'm just like everybody else.

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.