I'm not going to write much tonight. I say that now, but we'll see where I actually end. I'm really mad right now is all, and all I need to do is spend more time venting. Venting never helped me. It only makes things worse because it convinces me that I am justified in my anger. I really do have an anger management problem though. It's rare that I do get angry, but when I do, it's highly likely that I'll overreact about something or blow up and burn a bridge or two. The only thing is that my bridges are a lot bigger and more important these days than when I was growing up. Sometimes I just wish I didn't care. I wish nothing bothered me and that I didn't care about anyone's feelings. But I do care, and to the point where it's futile. You can't please everyone all of the time, but whenever anyone is displeased with me it drives me out of my mind, so I'm being driven out of my mind a lot.
No amount of writing is going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going to close my door, watch a movie, and go to bed. I just want to be alone for a while.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Full Intangible Circle
This is all jumbled up. I think it flows, but then again, it's late. I hope it makes sense to you.
Sometimes I don't think I appreciate my life enough. God called me out on the carpet today at the church Christmas party. It was just a passing comment, but sometimes passing comments to a broad audience are the ones that can hit you the hardest. "I really have come to appreciate this life God has given me." Randall said as he was proposing a toast of sorts to the gathering.
I find myself complaining or thinking things are unfair or limiting myself. I do that because I only see things as how they are now, now tomorrow, not really yesterday all that much either. Is that how I am supposed to view my life? I know that scripture emphasizes faith like a child, but I didn't really realize what that meant until now. It's actually quite complex. Nothing is as difficult for me as reverse learning and that's just what child-like faith is. It calls for us to let go of the complexities of life and to walk in the confidence of the unseen. How ridiculous that sounds to an educated man! But education can be quite burdensome in itself. It makes apparent to the learner just how backwards the world is, and it is a vast understanding that increases the value of hope almost to an unattainable measure. Ignorance in exchange for hopelessness, one darkness in exchange for another.
I suppose that what we are supposed to do with education is to better this life as best we can, even in the face of the seemingly most hopeless of existences. That is the noble calling, but since when was nobility something admired by our culture? I mean if nobility makes money, then sure, but otherwise it sorta throws a wrench in the fine oiled capitalist machine that our daily lives are founded on.
So all of the darkness of education is tied back in to the difficulty of sharing that with faith, or at least, faith like a child.
Perhaps a child-like faith demands that we see our adversities not in our own educated or uneducated perspectives, but in the perspective of God. In that case, regardless of how large it seems, it is actually very small, and why worry over something very small?
But the educated mind wants to grab a hold of every detail and measure it out, to become involved, to solve problems, to wrestle with Truth. It is very difficult for that same mind to depend on a God who demands our dependency on Him.
But what is the mind for if not for the development of it's fullest potential? What was God's design in giving man a mind? Sometimes it feels like we were set up for failure just with the way our minds work, but this was evidently man's choice made in the beginning and every day since.
Then comes the devil. Because I know the power of my own mind and the passions and desires of the sin within me, I find it hard to believe in Satan's intervention in my personal affairs. Not only is it unspecified as to whether or not the Devil can be omnipresent, but I'm capable of falling just fine on my own. I don't feel spiritually powerful enough to necessitate an entity to waste time setting me up for failure. If I ever did have an encounter with the Devil, I'd consider it more of an encouragement than a moment of fear. I mean, if I could piss off the Devil enough to gain his personal attention, I must be doing something incredibly right and important in the course of God's will. But I don't really know if the Devil has to deal with too many of us Americans. We do a dandy job of falling on our own because we cannot master our minds or our flesh. Turn on the radio, turn on the TV, surf the web, drive your car on the highway. The feeble constitution of our minds and our flesh is not just product of our every-day lives, but a necessity, pulling it all into a full and seemingly inescapable circle. If the poison doesn't work, your children don't eat.
I want freedom from that, but would I be willing to give up everything required to receive it? The rich man and Jesus. To me, that story speaks not to a man, but to a country, and even more intangible than that, an idea.
I'm out for the night folks. Peace and love.
Sometimes I don't think I appreciate my life enough. God called me out on the carpet today at the church Christmas party. It was just a passing comment, but sometimes passing comments to a broad audience are the ones that can hit you the hardest. "I really have come to appreciate this life God has given me." Randall said as he was proposing a toast of sorts to the gathering.
I find myself complaining or thinking things are unfair or limiting myself. I do that because I only see things as how they are now, now tomorrow, not really yesterday all that much either. Is that how I am supposed to view my life? I know that scripture emphasizes faith like a child, but I didn't really realize what that meant until now. It's actually quite complex. Nothing is as difficult for me as reverse learning and that's just what child-like faith is. It calls for us to let go of the complexities of life and to walk in the confidence of the unseen. How ridiculous that sounds to an educated man! But education can be quite burdensome in itself. It makes apparent to the learner just how backwards the world is, and it is a vast understanding that increases the value of hope almost to an unattainable measure. Ignorance in exchange for hopelessness, one darkness in exchange for another.
I suppose that what we are supposed to do with education is to better this life as best we can, even in the face of the seemingly most hopeless of existences. That is the noble calling, but since when was nobility something admired by our culture? I mean if nobility makes money, then sure, but otherwise it sorta throws a wrench in the fine oiled capitalist machine that our daily lives are founded on.
So all of the darkness of education is tied back in to the difficulty of sharing that with faith, or at least, faith like a child.
Perhaps a child-like faith demands that we see our adversities not in our own educated or uneducated perspectives, but in the perspective of God. In that case, regardless of how large it seems, it is actually very small, and why worry over something very small?
But the educated mind wants to grab a hold of every detail and measure it out, to become involved, to solve problems, to wrestle with Truth. It is very difficult for that same mind to depend on a God who demands our dependency on Him.
But what is the mind for if not for the development of it's fullest potential? What was God's design in giving man a mind? Sometimes it feels like we were set up for failure just with the way our minds work, but this was evidently man's choice made in the beginning and every day since.
Then comes the devil. Because I know the power of my own mind and the passions and desires of the sin within me, I find it hard to believe in Satan's intervention in my personal affairs. Not only is it unspecified as to whether or not the Devil can be omnipresent, but I'm capable of falling just fine on my own. I don't feel spiritually powerful enough to necessitate an entity to waste time setting me up for failure. If I ever did have an encounter with the Devil, I'd consider it more of an encouragement than a moment of fear. I mean, if I could piss off the Devil enough to gain his personal attention, I must be doing something incredibly right and important in the course of God's will. But I don't really know if the Devil has to deal with too many of us Americans. We do a dandy job of falling on our own because we cannot master our minds or our flesh. Turn on the radio, turn on the TV, surf the web, drive your car on the highway. The feeble constitution of our minds and our flesh is not just product of our every-day lives, but a necessity, pulling it all into a full and seemingly inescapable circle. If the poison doesn't work, your children don't eat.
I want freedom from that, but would I be willing to give up everything required to receive it? The rich man and Jesus. To me, that story speaks not to a man, but to a country, and even more intangible than that, an idea.
I'm out for the night folks. Peace and love.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Harder Days of Work
Work is getting to the breaking point right now. I worked 92.5 hours last week as of Sunday night. Because we needed it, my coworker and I took the day off yesterday and got some solid R and R. Before that, the other guys here at the local office were grateful that we have been here helping them. Today, however, they could do nothing but harass us about the time off. They haven't had time off in a while, but that is no one's fault but their own. This job is so incredibly screwed up, and all they can seemingly do is try to place blame on anyone but themselves. They're even trying to place blame on us, the one's who volunteered to help them. I regret having volunteered. I will never work to help them again. Any service of mine given to them will only be out of following a direct order from the company. They have no appreciation or respect for those of us who have left our homes to come and pick up their broken pieces.
They have begun to set us up for failure. They look for ways to snare us, so we have to be on our toes. I am liable to break and bite someone's head off. They tend to aim at me because I'm smaller than my coworker, but what they don't realize is that I've been victimized as a small person my entire life and that my temper and sense of vengeance is a great deal more terrible than that of my coworker. I am small, but I will lay into them if they press me too hard. I already let my supervisor at the Nashville office know. He understands and is looking in to the matter. Evidently there haven't been too many wholesome encounters between Memphis and Nashville branches. But it feels good to have bigger and more powerful people in the company standing in my corner.
In fact, today I received an e-mail from the CEO of the company giving me an accolade for a job I did with Ron at Tennessee Tech. The CEO of the company thinks I overachieve the standard and set and example to the rest of the company. That makes me feel pretty good. I think I can use that to endure the rest of the week with diplomacy instead of war. It's really difficult though. I have a hard time refraining, and it burns me that they underestimate me so much. I must be patient though and think of other things. I've been singing when no one is around just to calm my soul. I pray a lot too. I just need the Lord to deliver me from my sense of pride and give me a heart of peace.
I pray for that church too. I feel an unnatural sense of evil when I am there. The spirit of self-indulgence has a foothold under that roof, and I sense the Lord in opposition to the projects completion. He has been merciful to my coworker and I, but the rest of the team is under threat of losing their jobs. The gear is also not coming together as planned. There are freaky things happening that really make you think. For instance, we were installing two $65,000 projectors and they were sitting on their box on the floor. This is a new building mind you. We then moved the projectors into their positions and a few minutes later it began to pour rain. Turns out there was a leak in the new ceiling... just above where the projectors were sitting before we moved them.
I don't know. I feel like I'm in the middle of something that I would rather not be a part of, but I am all the same. I'm tired more than anything, but I only have two more days left to deal with them and this place. Then I am going back to Nashville. I miss Lindsay!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Wires and Zombies
The work has been hard and very demanding for the past four days, but satisfying. My body is finally adapting to the heavy work hours and I'm already at 48 as of the end of the day today. I'll have three more days after this to work, and the hours will be even longer. I might perhaps double that number. But I've been doing my best to stay healthy given the time of year, the weather, and the limited sleep. I'm on vitamins and I am drinking vitamin energy drinks, mostly to keep myself awake, but they also double as immunity boosters. So far so good. I have a bit of a runny nose and an occasional headache, but I'm surviving. I just need to last until Sunday really. That's the most demanding of the workload even though I will be staying in Memphis until next Friday.
I'm documenting the immensity of the job with a disposable camera. I'm doing my best not to piss anyone off while I take pictures, but I think most of them understand my reasoning. It's big and it's messed up. We're working on a five thousands seat church, installing a huge video broadcasting system in for them. So far, very little has gone right with the job. Some of the guys are saying that it is cursed, but I've been on several jobs that were like that. None of those jobs required, however, that I work 12 hour and up days for over a week. I don't know though. Sometimes I wonder if God might be angry at the amount of money being spent to appear "state of the art". It seems that spirituality might have very little to do with millions of dollars worth of technology and more to do with a personal commune with the Lord. I know they are my companies clients, but it is really hard not to judge these people. It just seems like such a squandering of blessing, especially knowing that some of the things that have been installed are more for ego than for utility, but God can use all things to his glory. After all, what do I, a simple young adult, know of the complexities of theology and how to run a church? I'm young, full of passion, and limited in experience. But can't experience also blind you to the truth? The routine of comfortability and the comfortability of routine can often times become an iron circle, never acknowledged by the older more "experienced". It seems to me that the spirit of discerning somehow quietly dies and is replaced by the spirit of deciphering what is and what is not comfortable to one's personal self somewhere along the weary trail of life.
Ah, let me stop bitching. That's all the world needs is another activist bitcher to grumble and complain about things he has no control over.
Anyways, we've pulled so much cable that it's getting in our heads. My coworker and I both had bad dreams last night about pulling cable. I don't know what his was, but mine was that we were pulling cable that ran through a conduit under the building, under ground (which is completely normal). The element of surprise was that the conduit ran through an Indian burial ground, and because of this, the wire that was passed through that conduit came out on the other side with a curse upon it. Anyone who touched that wire would turn into a zombie.
I know I know... WAY too many zombie movies out there, it's been done. But hear me out.
So in the dream a bunch of us started turning into zombies and we were trying to figure out why. Eventually we found out about the wire thing, but it was after we had already pulled a bunch of wire and we didn't know exactly which wires they were because it was something like thirty wires out of a thousand that were infected. I might also note that you could be infected through a biting. Now the number of wires is accurate to our actual job. We have handled close to a thousand individual wires, all of which runs through conduit running both through the ceiling and under ground. Finally we wound up in this cloistered room. There were zombies outside the door trying to get it and it was just me and my sister.
This is where it got way too scary.
We were talking about what we were going to try to do and then all of the sudden I had a sudden urge to try and bite Grace. I snapped out at her, but didn't. I stopped myself and apologized as if it was casual, but then realizing what that must mean. We spent some time freaking out and then I sat down. I told her that I wanted to give her my last wishes before I turned, but that she needed to kill me before I did turn completely. So once I was done saying my peace, she had to kill me (with what, I don't know, the dream wasn't that specific). So I sat against a wall opposite a large mirror and I began to tell Grace to tell everyone that I loved them and to tell Josiah about me when he got old enough and that I was sorry about everything I ever did that may have hurt anyone. As I was going through all of this my skin started to sag and change to a greenish color and my muscles all tightened up. She was trying to hold my hand, but I just couldn't sit still as I saw myself changing faster and faster. I was shaking and crying and scared and then... of course... the alarm clock.
Get up, get dressed, and go run some more wire.
So yes, freaky dream, not much good sleep last night, hard work, getting through it. That's the story. I'll write more if I have time. Peace and love.
I'm documenting the immensity of the job with a disposable camera. I'm doing my best not to piss anyone off while I take pictures, but I think most of them understand my reasoning. It's big and it's messed up. We're working on a five thousands seat church, installing a huge video broadcasting system in for them. So far, very little has gone right with the job. Some of the guys are saying that it is cursed, but I've been on several jobs that were like that. None of those jobs required, however, that I work 12 hour and up days for over a week. I don't know though. Sometimes I wonder if God might be angry at the amount of money being spent to appear "state of the art". It seems that spirituality might have very little to do with millions of dollars worth of technology and more to do with a personal commune with the Lord. I know they are my companies clients, but it is really hard not to judge these people. It just seems like such a squandering of blessing, especially knowing that some of the things that have been installed are more for ego than for utility, but God can use all things to his glory. After all, what do I, a simple young adult, know of the complexities of theology and how to run a church? I'm young, full of passion, and limited in experience. But can't experience also blind you to the truth? The routine of comfortability and the comfortability of routine can often times become an iron circle, never acknowledged by the older more "experienced". It seems to me that the spirit of discerning somehow quietly dies and is replaced by the spirit of deciphering what is and what is not comfortable to one's personal self somewhere along the weary trail of life.
Ah, let me stop bitching. That's all the world needs is another activist bitcher to grumble and complain about things he has no control over.
Anyways, we've pulled so much cable that it's getting in our heads. My coworker and I both had bad dreams last night about pulling cable. I don't know what his was, but mine was that we were pulling cable that ran through a conduit under the building, under ground (which is completely normal). The element of surprise was that the conduit ran through an Indian burial ground, and because of this, the wire that was passed through that conduit came out on the other side with a curse upon it. Anyone who touched that wire would turn into a zombie.
I know I know... WAY too many zombie movies out there, it's been done. But hear me out.
So in the dream a bunch of us started turning into zombies and we were trying to figure out why. Eventually we found out about the wire thing, but it was after we had already pulled a bunch of wire and we didn't know exactly which wires they were because it was something like thirty wires out of a thousand that were infected. I might also note that you could be infected through a biting. Now the number of wires is accurate to our actual job. We have handled close to a thousand individual wires, all of which runs through conduit running both through the ceiling and under ground. Finally we wound up in this cloistered room. There were zombies outside the door trying to get it and it was just me and my sister.
This is where it got way too scary.
We were talking about what we were going to try to do and then all of the sudden I had a sudden urge to try and bite Grace. I snapped out at her, but didn't. I stopped myself and apologized as if it was casual, but then realizing what that must mean. We spent some time freaking out and then I sat down. I told her that I wanted to give her my last wishes before I turned, but that she needed to kill me before I did turn completely. So once I was done saying my peace, she had to kill me (with what, I don't know, the dream wasn't that specific). So I sat against a wall opposite a large mirror and I began to tell Grace to tell everyone that I loved them and to tell Josiah about me when he got old enough and that I was sorry about everything I ever did that may have hurt anyone. As I was going through all of this my skin started to sag and change to a greenish color and my muscles all tightened up. She was trying to hold my hand, but I just couldn't sit still as I saw myself changing faster and faster. I was shaking and crying and scared and then... of course... the alarm clock.
Get up, get dressed, and go run some more wire.
So yes, freaky dream, not much good sleep last night, hard work, getting through it. That's the story. I'll write more if I have time. Peace and love.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Notepad
I leave tomorrow for Memphis. There's a lot I haven't done yet to get ready to go, and I leave at 2. I think I can pull it all together in a few minutes though. I imagine they'll be working us pretty hard this week. I don't know if I'll be taking my computer yet or not either. I'd like to, but then again, it's one more thing to lug around.
I'm really tired right now. Today was a busy day. It was enjoyable too, mainly because we got out and did something beyond the typical. That said, I'm here in my room, knowing that I have to get up early tomorrow, but I'm still here just sitting and writing late at night.
I think I'm going to start carrying a note pad around with me. Stuffy does it a lot, and it's a way for him to write down his thoughts and observations throughout the day, and I think that would be good for me. I just get here on most nights wanting to write something, but I'm fresh out of ideas because I don't really retain my thought throughout the day until night. I just address them one at a time, and then out they go. I'd like to get back into writing music again too. I just suffered too many confidence busters as of late. People really don't like listening to my music that much, but I can't let that stop me or I'd be a liar. I have always said that I write my music for myself. That should be able to stand trial.
I guess I'll be going to bed now. I should try and get a solid night's sleep. Sound in the morning. Blah.
I'm really tired right now. Today was a busy day. It was enjoyable too, mainly because we got out and did something beyond the typical. That said, I'm here in my room, knowing that I have to get up early tomorrow, but I'm still here just sitting and writing late at night.
I think I'm going to start carrying a note pad around with me. Stuffy does it a lot, and it's a way for him to write down his thoughts and observations throughout the day, and I think that would be good for me. I just get here on most nights wanting to write something, but I'm fresh out of ideas because I don't really retain my thought throughout the day until night. I just address them one at a time, and then out they go. I'd like to get back into writing music again too. I just suffered too many confidence busters as of late. People really don't like listening to my music that much, but I can't let that stop me or I'd be a liar. I have always said that I write my music for myself. That should be able to stand trial.
I guess I'll be going to bed now. I should try and get a solid night's sleep. Sound in the morning. Blah.
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