Night Mayer

I had a pretty intense night mayer last night, one that kept me tossing, turning, waking up, sweating, all the works. I don't know where it came from. I was thinking on it all day and I just couldn't figure it out.

It was about a virus. If you got infected by this virus you would die in a matter of minutes unless cared for. In a summary, people around me were dropping like flies. The virus would super dehydrate you and you would be left a wrinkly green sack of skin and bones. I was curious as to how it was all connected so I investigated at the hospital and I found a crazy lady in the basement who sacrificed an animal every day and put the carcass in a pile of dead animals, poured something over it and then would go about her business. When I found it she was coming in behind me, so I hid in the pile of dead animals until she was gone. I went home and showered and the next morning when I woke up I had all of these veins visible in my arms that were turning forest green and my eyes were bleeding. I had my dad rush me to the hospital but I was trying to tell him how to get to Baptist so I didn't have to go to Vanderbilt where the infection was spreading from. When I was in the car I flipped down the visor to look in the mirror and my face was turning green and my eyes were brown and wrinkling with large cataracts forming over my pupils. When we go to the hospital they were actually trying to process me through triage... I was so pissed off that I woke up.

I had over slept my first alarm, but I set my other one and it woke me up on time. I need to get more rest. I'm so tired in the mornings.

I have a good bit I could talk about right now, but I'm too tired. I think I'm just going to go to bed for now. Peace and love.

Deeper Dreams

I'm enjoying a hot cup of tea right now. It's been several months since I've had a hot cup of tea. I just felt like it might be a good way to end the day. Seems to be a little bit more chilly than what has been common for the past week or so. It rained as soon as I got off of work, but I didn't really mind too much. I wasn't really expecting to be outside for any reason other than riding, and I rode my motorcycle enough this past weekend to subside the bug, so again, no bother. I've been feeling happy for several days now, and as I tell Paul, it seems to be a rather irrational happiness. I have a lot I could be upset about. I still think about Lindsay and what she is doing and experiencing without me, especially at night, but it hasn't been having the same drastic effect on me as it usually does. I can only account for her memory as a fading aroma, something that will dramatically dissipate once I move out of this apartment in a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to that, though it is no permanent fix. I'm moving in with Matt in a house at Sylvin Park on the west side of town. It's a rougher neighborhood, but the house itself looks out over a beautiful golf course that I really enjoy walking on at night. I've written journals on it before. I think that side of town better fits me in general. I mean I suppose where I live now has its ups and downs. Lots of my friends live around this area, and in the warm season, when you drive down the street, there is never a shortage of beautiful women out jogging for miles and miles. I'll miss those things, but there are also plenty of good things to be said about West Nashville too. I actually hope I can find a place over in that area when I have to move out of the house in October.

Paul has been helping me dig deep into my head about the issues I've been having with women lately. We talk about it for at least a little bit every time we go to the gym, and he's very observant and insightful on how I behave. I can see the road I'm on now going nowhere good. I have begun to understand to a small degree the objectification of women to men and men to women. It comes from pain and numbness. A lot of my "confidence" which has gotten me a good bit of attention lately, is in all honestly a sense of apathy and my thinking that these women couldn't possibly hurt me because I don't care about them, therefore, why would I not have confidence around them? Women love confidence, but confidence has several faces. And then Melissa called me out. She saw some things in me that didn't quite add up. She and I have both been hurt in a similar way, so I think that's what tipped her off. But she really knew how to drive it home, and so I've been spending a fair amount of time every day since Friday thinking on that.

Ah, but here's the kicker. Saturday night I had a dream that reminded me, along with Melissa, that I'm really not as cold as I make myself out to be. I've seen down that road, but that's not who I really am. So the dream, yeah.

I have a friend who I really care about and who I've been interested in before, but I just didn't get the feel that the interest was returned. Anyways, she paints, and in the dream she painted this beautiful picture for an art exhibit. I mean it was really vivid and I remember what it looks like and I'm trying to draw it out even though I have no drawing talent at all. But she finished it and turned it in and for some stupid reason that had nothing to do with the visual integrity of the picture, they wouldn't accept it. She was really hurt and she just cried really hard and I held her and legitimately and unselfishly felt pain for her and wanted to comfort her. The whole time she was crying I was just holding her and looking at the picture in awe of what she was able to create.

Now in a way that dream was a little unfair. It was vivid and seemingly real, so when I woke up the emotions didn't die off. I spent a good part of the day very concerned for her and hoping she was okay, even though nothing actually happened. A part of me hoped that she had the dream too, but that's stupid, a lot of our interaction in the dream wasn't even her personality. The important thing to remember is that these dreams aren't real, they just show us things that our subconscious realizes that we wouldn't necessarily recognize on the surface, especially about ourselves. What this particular dream told me is that I still have the capacity, buried somewhere under all of this failure and pain, to love someone genuinely and without hesitation. I didn't even have that with Lindsay. Every interaction between us was compromised by doubt in my mind. She knew it too, which made things rather awkward.

So why am I happy? I've realized that I have the ability to control what it is that I dwell on during the day. I don't have to dwell on such serious things all of the time. I can just think of the good things and smile, and I can do that whenever I feel like it. It's going to take some practice to get started, but I like that direction. It has really lightened my load.

Blunt Truth

Through this weekend I feel like I've really come to an amazing place in my heart. I feel a bit different and a bit more aware of the changes that have taken place in me over the past year. What I see in myself laying here on my bed right now isn't perfect, nor is it close, but I'm happy with it.

Friday night I spent some time with Melissa, and she told me something that she saw in me that threw her off a little bit. It caught me off guard because of the way she worded it, but I realized that there was some truth to it and that I had let it go unnoticed. She's the first girl that's ever pointed it out in me, and she really hasn't known me that long. I was hurt when she said it, but after a little while I started to have a peace come over me about it. It opened a few doors in me that needed to be explored and until then hadn't been available.

I realize that I've been a bit vague as to what "it" is, and I think for now that "it" shall be sufficient to remain just that.

I've gotten the rest I think I need to get this week started off right. I've still been consistent in working out and as of now I've put on one more pound of muscle this week. I think with a fluctuation of water weight in consideration that I'm somewhere around 9lbs heavier than I was last month. I smiled today when I put on my sports jacket and it felt a little tight. My motorcycle jacket is also starting to get a little tight, which is not good. That thing cost $250! I don't know, I doubt I'll get THAT big, but we'll see. I'm going to keep this up for a while.

I wrote this whole long paragraph about politics here. I looked it over and I decided that I should end this weekend on a high note. I'll do that by not talking about politics at all.

Failure Free

When we attach to ourselves the identity of being a failure, that is when we truly start failing the most. I've been rather hard on myself (big surprise) about my recent failures. I don't tell a lot of people about them because I'm afraid of hurting them. Lots of people have these preconceived ideas about who I am, and some of those notions are a bit unfair in my opinion. I am not above failure, I am not above stupid mistakes. If anything, people should expect me to fail often because I am one who is prone to learning from his mistakes and not taking advice for law. But with many people, sometimes the closest people to me, I don't feel like I can share my failures because they are too caught up in worrying, regretting, or having a sense of failure to me to actually sit, listen to, and help me. The one thing that they should know about me if they know me at all is that I am resilient and hopeful to learn and not make the same mistakes twice. I am not a lost cause. But it starts with my own opinion of myself. It starts with me being able to forgive myself for failing and not confuse my failure as the end.

Otherwise, today has been nice. Work went a little slower than usual, but I don't really mind all too much. I have no reason to be off work early. I don't have anything other than working out that I would be doing with my time, even though if I had the time I could probably figure something out with little difficulty that would be constructive. I don't know, I'm kinda plain right now, not very exciting, but I'm planning mostly. The excitement will begin sooner than later. I'm getting more and more brave.

Riding my bike has been amazing lately. I won't talk about all the close calls I have because there is no use worrying all of you. It's safe to say, though, that every time you get on a bike, you should realize that you are going to have to stay far more alert than if you were in a car. I love the air though. I just went on a night ride, and it was amazing.

I'm going to bed now. Meeting at work tomorrow morning extra early.

Don't Read, This is just the Same Ol Thing

I'm figuring out what it means to believe in something even if you don't necessarily feel it. I believe in love, but I can't feel it right now. I know people love me, but I'm being honest in my pain. I can't engage in a man to woman love right now at all. It just feels empty and unreal even though I know it exists. And I could try to cover my feelings with petty things, but I can't do that either. I have to feel the pain of not feeling.

If my life were a book, I would gladly rip out that part of it by the pages. I see nothing anymore that is worth remembering because all memory does, even what might be considered as good, is remind me of failure, loss, and suffering.

"Don't embrace the past." I heard in a song today. That's hard for me. To think that I would let such a small fraction of my life dictate so much of my emotion. I have so much more to build off of, so much that wasn't even touched by her. When it comes down to it, she didn't even really know me all that well because I kept so much of myself hidden from her. Why can't I see it in that light. There is a great deal of worthwhile me left to be salvaged from this wreckage.

Gains

I'm really excited about my results in the gym today. I have gained one more pound of muscle in the last week and I bench pressed my high school max four times without a spot. That means that I'm now stronger than I've ever been. In college, I wasn't even close to as strong as I was my senior year in high school, even when I was working out regularly. So that means that this diet I have been on is working. I did 14 pull-ups when a month ago I couldn't even do one. My cloths are getting too small now... which I thought would never happen. I feel great all the time, plenty of energy, I sleep better, I think more clearly. All around, I feel better. I'm determined to not stop here though. My short-term goal is to reach 150lbs. For my body type, that is a big deal considering that on the new year I weighed 135lbs. I'm already 10lbs heavier at 145. I'm going to have to work even harder, and be even more disciplined to get to my goal though, but it's great. I love doing it. Paul comes with me every other day, and Catherine might start coming with me too. We don't do the same things, of course, but it is good to have company and good conversation in the gym. I can get so lost when I'm there sometimes, so captivated by my struggle that I get really intense and seemingly angry. I'm not, but I know people have not come up to me before when they see me working out because they are too worried. Haha, to imagine me worrying someone else with my intensity in the gym! Silly. I'm not that kind of person at all.

So I'm looking forward to going to NC in a couple of weeks to visit family and friends in Asheville on a men's retreat from my old church. That should be pretty fun and an incredible change from the normal weekend. I look forward to that. I also will be taking my motorcycle which should prove interesting.

Peace and love.

The Shot

I wanted to take some time to write down the details of the realization of my pain today. It wasn't a brutal hopeless pain. It was more of a pain of a realization. In all of the intimacy and depth that Lindsay and I shared, I fell to my knees and cried so hard for her when she turned and walked away with complete indifference after all we had been through together. My realization was that this is how God must have felt about me this year when I chose to make all of my own decisions, completely disregarding all we had been through together. I'm not trying to say that Lindsay was wrong in what she did. We can't break things apart and wish that they be handled better than they were because they can't be. What is done is done. In all practicality, had she not left, perhaps things would have been much much worse. That is the best I can do to settle my heart over what happened, to be able to move on knowing that someone I shared so much with is no longer a part of a picture that I can see. It is the ultimate feeling of rejection, the ultimate feeling of pain, worse than death because death is greater than man's desire to stay or leave. Death choses for us. But this is a unique and deep scarring pain because it was by choice, by not being good enough, by not trying hard enough. It comes about by human error, whether in the scope of reason or outside of it.

Life will continue to be difficult and painful, and I will continue to grow more strong, more brave, and more wise. I am sorry that I fell so far away from what the Lord had planned for me. I have wasted so much time chasing my own desires. I knew from the very start, but I did it anyways. But the Lord knows how to break me for the best in me. I am reminded of my phobia of shots when I was a kid. It used to take several nurses to hold me down in order for the doctor to give me a shot. I tied myself to the waiting room chair once to get out of it, and it worked, but it wasn't for the best. The pain is going to come, but it can be such a good thing. It wasn't until I got really sick that I understood this. I remember being so sick that I begged for the shot. I wanted the pain because I knew what was going to come after it, relief. I can see Jesus in this. For my entire life he has had to hold me down to give me something for the best in me, and though I know this, I am too shallow to understand. But in great sickness I have begged for it. During the dusk of my relationship with Lindsay, I begged for it. I knew I was so far away from who I have always been, even if she and I stayed together, the man she knew was not me. She could have never known me, and I knew that more and more each day. We had no communion there.

So the pain has come. It lasts much longer than just a shot from a doctor, and it will scar to be a constant reminder, but it will heal. I will be strong again. I will be restored in believing that love does exist again. Perhaps now I can accept these trials as a gift instead of kicking and screaming.

Keep Your Faceshiled Down

Dear Nathan,

This is your right eyeball. I was writing to you in regards to tonights motorcycle ride. I enjoy it just as much as you do, I mean it really is great. But... this is awkward... how do I say this without upsetting you... You know the face shield on your helmet? Well, you know how sometimes you like to open it while you ride because you like the feel of the wind on your face? That's cool and all, but tonight I got nailed by a bug, and it got lodged under the eyelid. I'm your right eye, man. You gotta treat me with more respect than that. You know that opening your face shield during bug season is a dumb idea. Think about how hard those bugs hit your windshield when you are driving your car. Yeah, that was your right eye this time. Be smart.

Love,

Your Right Eyeball


Pretty much true. Taking a bug to the bare eyeball really hurts.

Anyways

Today was nice and all. Work went well and I got a lot accomplished on the job I was working, not to mention I got off at a normal time. That's amazing in itself. But while I was working I heard a few songs on my new ipod that brought my current state back into the picture. I felt hurt again and it took the breath out of me, but I told you it would happen this way. It happens in harmonics that get farther and farther apart from the actual explosion. I miss being missed mostly.

Second. There's still some completely insane drama surrounding my life that is kinda getting... well... dumb. Frankly, I expect it and I'm completely uninterested and unaltered, mostly because I don't think it has anything to do with me. I've changed. Of course I have. That doesn't mean anyone has to like it, but that's the way things are. Sometimes there are people in your life though that are always surrounded by a form of drama. Sometimes that's me, but speaking from experience, it's because of an addiction. At the very heart of it, most of the time it has nothing to do with the people around you. It's you yourself.

But I'm not worried. Very soon I will be out of the picture and that torch will pass to someone else. It always has and it always will. Can't think of a time where there wasn't someone on the enemy list.

I know that sounds cold. That's my problem if anything. I am very cold in these circumstances. It is rare that someone has a problem with me that I feel completely innocent from, but when I do, I am very cold and uninterested. That is a problem that I need to deal with in myself. I am aware of it, and it will be actively worked on. But this is where I am right now. Hah, I also find myself to be passive-aggressive enough to post a journal about it online. Blogfu, as I have heard it called, is meant to sneak attack the person it is directed at without alerting other readers. Stupid stuff, but I just did it. I guess I have even more changing to do.

Peace and love.

Don't Do It, It'll Make You Dumber

Interesting day. I got a traffic ticket first thing this morning because I went down a one way street the wrong way. Now I wasn't just sailing down completely unaware. I knew it was the wrong way, but the driveway I needed was just a few yards up that street and so I took the change. But... there was an officer sitting right there just delighted to pull out his magic pen and write me a traffic violation ticket. I wasn't mad. I just smiled, took it, and went on with my day.

I have great friends though. After church was over they gathered round and gave me a card for my birthday. It was on the seventh, but I was glad to just have something. My birthday isn't usually a big deal to me, but with the card and the ipod that they all chipped in to buy me, it was just a nice surprise. It made me feel special. I don't really feel special all that often.

After lunch and all that good stuff, I went to catch up with the guys who were at the park watching the larpers. Larpers are guys and girls who dress up in medieval garb and take foam swords, spears, whatever weapon, and have mock battles with rules. It looks pretty fun and the people were really great. I just watched though. Funny thing, this guy from VH1 was there and he was casting for the show "Pickup Artist". It's all about getting girls to go on dates with you. I as intrigued because he said you could win $50,000. Half way into the interview I realized what I was doing and I kinda threw it out the door. I just made myself seem very average and that was that. I don't think being on a show like that would be very becoming of my character. I don't want to "pick up" girls. I want to meet, get to know, and slowly form a relationship with a girl. And right now, I don't even know if I'm all that eager to do that. I'm still kinda on the mend.

But on the same token, I don't really feel like I need help. I'm getting plenty of attention as of late, not too sure why, but I am. I guess I just carry myself differently. Take, for example, this girl at the park. She sent her guy friend up to tell me that she was "into" me. It was kinda middleschoolish. I told him that I thought she was attractive, but that it's not really a good time for me. So he left and went to sit down. Then a few minutes later she came up to me and introduced herself and sat down trying to make small talk. I was nice to her and she was extremely attractive, but it's just not a good time for me, and that's not my style anyways. I don't know, I was thinking about it recently and all I really want is a loving, Godly woman, and I want it slow and steady. I'm in no hurry. I can wait now as long as it takes. But all that aside, I feel kind of weird having tried out for that show. Just not my style.

So right now I'm trying to get things in order. I want to establish some sense of organization before I start the week. I'm looking forward to this week being a little bit different than usual. I would like to see a few small changes on my day-to-day. I'll let you know what I'll be doing in order to make that happen.

Disconnect

100th post on this journal, and already so much has happened. You can read about it, I don't need to recap.

My heart has been extraordinarily restless this weekend. I know why. Whenever I write these kinds of journals I tend to continue such an opening statement with all of my uncertainties as to why I feel this way. I just don't know why. But I learn more and more that this is a lie that I tell myself to feel justified and content with my feelings of restlessness, like nothing I have done or has happened to me could be a valid excuse as to why. But I know, perhaps not in an entirety, but to a fuller extent than I lead on.

I'm not going to talk about all of it tonight because some of it is a secret I hold close to myself, and some of it would just bore you.

But I've changed a lot over the past few years, and I'm a realist. I think that some changes we can be proud of and some we can be rightly ashamed of. Just because you change, that doesn't make it positive. That being said, I feel that I have not changed in a positive way, in fact, I feel pretty lowly. I'm coming to grips with the fact that my last relationship was probably really unhealthy for me and it repressed me in ways that nearly extinguished the deeper passions of my heart. I almost would use the word "ruined" if I didn't believe that I could be redeemed from it all. But I have definitely ventured down a road that was by my own choosing. I know some positive things came out of it. The UN came out of World War II. But for the most part I feel incredibly distanced from who I was, and I realize the things about myself that I took for granted that I wish I could have back.

I'm dancing on a slippery slope by writing this down right now. I think I might just switch over to my private journal if I really want to express what I feel. That would be best for everyone.

Honest Answers to Why

I feel that over the past few weeks I have been capable of quiet self honesty. It is distinguishable from the usual self-slandering brokenness that I usually feel, but it is a difficult feeling to describe. Denial is the key indicator. When I deny that it is a problem, that usually means that it is a legitimate problem. Being crabby at work has been a catalyst for all forms of inner analysis. The best questions we can start with is "Why?", but you have to ask with the understanding that in order to answer that question honestly, more than likely you are going to have to delve deep beneath the surface and uncover things that you might not be cognitively aware of. So Why? I asked that question last night in my journal and thought about it for a good part of the day. What it led to was my self-centered nature. I don't care that other people are having to work hard. I care about me and my time. I want to do what I want to do, and the fact that sometimes my freedom can come into question by an entity that, in all reality, serves as a vehicle to those things that I want, well... I get frustrated and it grows like a looping signal until it peaks and I have no rational mind anymore. I only have stress, anxiety, and rage. At this place I am liable to say and do things that I would normally refrain from. It's like being an angry drunk.

But I also realize that there is a legitimate threshold for what is acceptable for a company to require of its workers, and I don't have to be trampled on. But what I find difficult to balance is my identity as a Christian in the workplace. Everyone wants to immediately reference your testimony as a believer as soon as you show backbone and say "no" to anything, the dreaded profanities of profanities. Why? I think it's because Christians are either expected to be hypocrites or total push-overs. But I reference the verse that tells you to love your neighbor as yourself, and in order to love yourself, you can't neglect yourself. Should I feel like a hypocrite if I say no? Should I say yes? I think it goes a little more personal than just a "rule of thumb". In my heart I say no because I don't want to give up on me. I have passions that aren't tied to the companies every whim. My coworker said that he did it because he thought of it as helping someone out. He sacrifices a great deal to work over-time but he likes doing it. I explained to him that I think that's fine, but in my life, in order to help one person out, I have to let down someone else. How do you make those decisions? But in all fairness, I don't think I would want to work overtime even if I weren't helping anyone out. I just want some time from day-to-day for myself.

I'm still not really sure what is fair, but there is certainly some clarity to a previously clouded picture. I think helping out when you can is great, but there are times when you should say no because you have to care for yourself and others that might not necessarily be tied to your work. I am not a work-consumed man. I don't have the capacity for it. I respect those who are, but I also respect myself.

What I Want to Do. (?)

I don't know why work is eating me up on the inside so much. I feel cheated out of my time, like working is the most unjust thing that could happen to me. I've always felt that way though, even at a young age. My mentality is that work is that thing that keeps you from doing what you really want to do. The only problem is that I don't know what it is that I really want to do. I mean I might, but right now it's mixed in with a whole bunch of other ideas. I think I just set a few too many goals for myself, and I can't possibly achieve them all. That kind of loosely focused ambition can create a quitter's mentality if you're not careful.

So, what is it that I want to do?

I want to engineer way more than I am right now, make a profession out of it, have fun doing it. Mostly I would like to do live front of house engineering. Studio work would suffice, but it can get a little cramped from day to day, not to mention that the hours are a lot more than I'm working now.

I would like to concentrate more on my art. I've been trying to write more, to express myself, to see if there is anything worth expressing artistically in my mind. I want my music to be disciplined and good, but I also don't want to veer too far from my own style. I feel a lot of pressure sometimes to be something different because I know a lot of people aren't really into my music, but if I were to stray away, then I would also potentially lose being "into" my music.

I want to work out regularly and stay healthy. I want to try and maintain a high caloric diet and get the rest I need so that I can build more muscle. I've already put on 5 pounds in the past two weeks. That's great, but I know I can do better, it's just going to take a lot of work.

I would like to discipline myself into reading more books. I find that my mind doesn't get the creative exercise it needs because, quite frankly, I don't exercise it. Who would have thought? So I would like to pick out fun books that I might be drawn to and start there. I'm reading the Life of Pi right now, but I might dumb it down a little bit. I think that I don't read so much because the books that I do read are very serious and challenging to my personal disposition.

I want to enjoy the outdoors more than I do. I want to go on weekends and hike, camp, fish, canoe, something outside. I stay in too much, and when I do go out, all I do is play frisbee. That's fun, but not exactly what I have in mind.

Over all, I just want to be more disciplined and reliable not just to myself, but to others as well. I'm working on it, but I tend to cater to myself way too much, and that's a habit hard to break.

Peace and love.

Gray Lives

Sometimes simple words in passing can really dig deep inside my mind where they amplify in meaning and I dwell on them. Or maybe they spark other thoughts that lead me down an entire chain of branching ideas and revelations. This is important because it prevents me from resting in the commonplace of mediocre thought, and it inspires me to do more with myself. The only real difficulty is maintaining a love for one's self when dissecting every self-defining characteristic in the pursuit of finding individual meaning and identity and then relaying that back to the Universal Truth, God.

I feel an incredible amount of tension when I am alone because my thoughts have a voluminous presence. I can quickly become my own accuser, turn around, and objectify even myself. It is bad enough to objectify someone else. None of us are that trivial. There is always something seemingly convincing about us that makes us do the things we do because we have the aptitude for building up a case around ourselves as to sell the rest of the world the idea that what we do is completely legitimate. In short, we live gray lives. Nothing anyone does is black and white. It is a complex formula.

If I am alone, I can get lost in this formula. It's like swallowing your own head in a way, only it is more absurd than difficult. What I desire is peace of mind. The ability to still maintain a deep level of focus and thought without objectifying and getting lost in my own condition. I desire to not feel sorry for myself either. I want to believe in myself and what I want. I want to know what I want, and I want the focus and depth to reach after it. I want to live a satisfying and selfless life. To many people such an ideal is a waste of time, but to me it is still possible.

I'm dozing off right now. I need my sleep. Goodnight.

Letting Go

It's hard for me to get rid of some of the little things I keep lying around my room, in drawers, closets, under my bed etc. It is hard because I tend to equate or assign everything with a memory, and if I get rid of that particular item, I am getting rid of the memory. I must just need a reminder. Maybe I'm afraid that if I don't have these things there, I will forget everything. How much do I value my memory?

But then there lies the question, "What would actually happen if I got rid of those things?" And because I have such a curious nature, I itch to find out. Perhaps I will only get rid of a few items in question, or maybe more. I just need to learn to let go sometimes. That, as we all know, is hard for me.

I was able to let go of Becca after five years. Sometimes I still think about her, where she is and what she is doing, and I hope she is doing well. But I don't long for her like I used to. It was hard to rid myself of the ideal of what I thought love should be, and unfortunately it carried her face. Nothing about it was realistic or even close to true about who she was as a person, but for some reason I attached that struggle to her.

Letting go of Catherine a few years back was a violent time for me emotionally. But we were never that intimate to begin with, and when she went to France for a year, I was able to heal quickly. Now I couldn't be happier that she is marrying Matt this October. I see their love and I know that it is real, and I will be by them whenever they need me.

There are going to be certain parts of me that are really going to have a hard time letting go of Lindsay, but there are certain things that I have moved completely beyond. Trying not to attach her to an ideal is a current struggle. I have to keep reminding myself that she wasn't a shining emblem of what a girlfriend should be when in a relationship with a despicable man like myself. That's not true. I wasn't all that bad, and she wasn't on the verge of perfection. As far as the comfort of having her around, that feeling is quickly fading to a close. I must be honest when I say that I've been using that to fuel my drive in the gym. I've already gained a few pounds, and I'm going for more. But there are worse things I could be doing with my time. Working out makes me think more clearly and it puts me in a better mood. But I'm proud of myself thus far. Amidst the fact that she was the closest woman to my heart, when she left me like that, I didn't retaliate. I didn't try to make her feel miserable. I didn't try to hurt her and destroy her like all of the previous girls. Instead I stood there and let her ease the knife in. It hurt a lot worse, standing still like that, but pick your poison. Do you want the healing to be quick or slow?

So if you know me, if you have known me for many years and you know how my heart works, it wouldn't make much sense for you to expect me to be healed by now. I'm far too screwed up for that, but I also love that about myself. I love that I have problems and that I think to the point of losing touch with reality, and I'm ready for what is next.

Laid Out

I've got it all laid out in front of me. All I have to do is decide if I want it or not. I have people around me waiting, wanting for me to succeed. I can get it if I want it. I'm capable. I just lack the focus. If I could discipline myself to focus on one thing, I know I could achieve greatness. I know I could accomplish my dreams. So I'm in the face of discipline as we speak. I just got back from training my body to lift weight heavier than I thought possible. If I can discipline myself in that way, what is to stop me from the other fields.

I have been blessed. I have never wanted for anything. I have always achieved what I set my eyes towards, and I have overcome a great deal of opposition in my life. Most of it comes from myself, my failure to act, my desire for comfort. Some of it has come from other people but in more subtle forms. Sometimes even people who are close to you don't want you to succeed because it will change things. I've even been guilty of that myself.

What is success? In my opinion it has nothing to do with more money, moving up, whatever. It mostly deals with your ability to grasp that which makes you truly happy. And what is happiness? I know I said I wouldn't go into it the other day, but I can tell you what it isn't, or at least what Aristotle thought it wasn't. He believed that happiness wasn't a moment of excitement or joy, but a lifestyle, lived out every day. I tend to agree with him. Happiness has got to be a lifestyle, not a fleeting human emotion based on immediate circumstances.

But figuring out what makes you truly happy takes a large chunk of your life to figure out, and once you have figured it out, then comes the sacrifice. You can't have one thing without sacrificing another. You can't serve two masters.

I think that what makes us happy is our calling on this earth. I know that such an opinion can't be held to a universal standard because a good portion of the world doesn't even believe in a "calling." But I feel like I'm on the verge of mine. It's down to just a few more things... then again, maybe I'm way off. I'll find out soon thought, either way.

Low Appeal

Wouldn't be a night in my life if I went to bed without doing all the things I set out to do this morning. I'm not down or anything, way too many endorphins in my blood for that, but I'm under the gun right now. Uncle Sam and The Man both want my ass right now, and they don't want to share.

But I have small joys going all around me. I'm trying my best to get in shape again, and I'm having huge gains and alterations in my body. It's great, but it hurts. I'm going to work out harder and more intently than I ever have before. I'm eating more, I'm gaining weight, I'm going to work out my legs just so my ass is a little bit bigger for Sam and The Man. My body is starting to produce more testosterone from all of the growing, so I'm getting more hair on my face and I have to shave more often. Good times. I love to see (good) changes in my body.

Confidence wise, I'm having a hard time. I'm not so worried about the ladies because I'm getting more attention, especially now that I'm single, but I'm not playing with it really. I have no desire to as of now. I have met a few new girls though and I'm really enjoying getting to know them. But at work I'm getting pretty frustrated. I feel like no matter how hard I work or how good of a job I do, I've always got someone breathing down my neck, someone unsatisfied, and someone wanting me to do more work. I flat out told someone "No" today and I was pretty blunt about it. I told them that I was putting in enough over time and that I had no interest in putting in anymore. I'm also getting a bit testy with the guys that are breathing down my neck. I've snapped at a few of them just to let them know that they can't push me around just because I'm the youngest guy there. My eyes are starting to wander too. I'm doing a great deal of thinking as to how I might switch careers if need be. It's always good to have a back up plan.

But I've been thinking more on the extremes. I was looking at the Peace Corp, thinking that I might enjoy doing that. I either want in the music business or I want to go abroad. I'm young and I'm experienced with travel, so I feel pretty confident that I could do it. It's just that working for Corporate America has no appeal to me. Making lots of money has no appeal either. I want to make enough money and that's about it. People just seem so thirsty for more, and I have started coming out of that. I was there when I got out of college, but the past several months have shown me that there's so much more than just "more". Lots of it doesn't really involve money either. I want to travel and see the world, but not as a tourist. That's lame. I want to be underneath it all. But there are some financial things that I have to take care of first, and I feel confident that I'll find a way to do that. I've become a lot more conscious of my spending as of late, and I've been making more money. So all in all, I'm keeping more. My goal is to pay my way out of all of my debt, and then unleash my dreams.

It'll be a while, but a good while, spent in meditation and discerning over the things that really drive me. I don't feel bound to anything anymore. I could walk out tomorrow and not look back, and it's great.

Persuit of Passion

I'm faced with so many options right now, none of which are very practical, but what if I made them practical? What I struggle with is expectation, and it doesn't seem to jive with what I see as happiness. I'm not going to go into the philosophical rabbit hole of what happiness is other than to say that I don't know if it could be defined as one thing if defined at all, but we all want it, and we spend every waking hour trying to find it.

The mixed signals come from every-day immersion. Our economy thrives off of the hunt for happiness. Everyone is trying to sell you the next fix, whatever works, what makes you happy. If you can work harder then you might be able to make more money to be able to afford the things that will make you feel secure and complete.

Bullshit.

But I eat it every day. Can I really help it if I was born into it? My high school principle used to favor group punishment because he said "We all live in the same world." To me that means that we're all a part of it and we're all responsible in some way, shape, or form. As a Christian, I am forgiven for being a part of it. The way we treat other people that we may not know, our lack of compassion, all of the safety that we build up around ourselves. God wants us to be safe, right? I don't know. I mean most of the disciples were crucified themselves, Paul was imprisoned, I just don't see how being a Christian means you should be careful. And what part of Christianity isn't radical? I'm not saying it's everyone's calling to see what I see, but I see it none the less. What pisses me off to near violence is when people write my passion off as youthful vigor. As true as that may be, maybe this world could use some of it. It makes some people bitter and angry. I suspect that's because radicalism throws their entire life into question. I know I get mad when someone comes up to me after I've worked hard on something, only to question it. But I'm not doing that, other than writing in my journal and trying to live my life. I make people angry with what I care about, and that makes me angry. Randy was observing people's reaction to realistic magic from guys like David Blane, the kind of magic that really asks the question "How did that happen?!?" with no seemingly reasonable answer. He said that people freak out because when they can't explain something, when they can't come up for a reason as to how the laws of their existence were broken, it turns their entire world upside-down and rains inquiry over everything they thought was concrete. So you get a bunch of Ben Franklins running around. Ben Franklin took the Bible and cut out all of the miracles that Jesus performed because they were too radical to believe. That's how I feel about the people that piss on my parade. They do it because they don't want my passions to upset what they know about themselves and their successes and shortcomings.

I talk a lot though. I think that's where my scoffers gain the credibility to say what they say and belittle me. I talk a lot. Perhaps I should do something about what I believe. Perhaps I should stop marching with the thousands of malcontents of my generation and actually do something instead of bitching about how it should be done.

But what I don't want to be is bitter. I know that our natural tendency is to be a professional on everyone else but ourselves. I do it all the time. I make broad generalizations and I objectify people as if they were bugs kept in a jar on the desk of a curious child. I feel safe when my bugs are in my jars. But I don't even know myself. How could I know the inner workings of others? I can only do that by degrading them into a simplicity that I can master. We make people predictable and simple. You can't do that and love at the same time. It won't work. But I know people objectify me. Every day I am subject to the criticism and mastery of someone else's wisdom and understanding of how I approach my life. Granted, we all have our own insight in certain areas, but few are the times when our true insight is what we base our judgment on. It is much easier to base judgment off of bitterness, envy, anger, insecurity, sadness, pain, depression, personal fear, shame, and disbelief. And what is more, it brings a shameful and secret sense of joy when we can stop someone else from chasing and potentially reaching the passions that we once tried to find but failed to discover. We do it because it makes us feel normal, like we haven't failed at all.

And perhaps I will fail. Many of us feel a calling for something that we just can't reach in all practicality, but my failure to reach my goals and dreams will not be because I listened to the reasoning of old and bitter men. I will only stop when God Himself makes it impossible.

So I'm going to dwell on that for a while. I'm going to go into a season of meditation and prayer on what I should do, because what I am currently doing is dissatisfying as hell only because I know I was made with a much higher purpose. I know this about myself and I believe it about everyone else. But for whatever reason, we tone those fires down in our hearts because we have so little as it is. What if we were to even lose that?


The sun was out today and I spent time in it. I am ignited again.

What Will I Sell Myself To?

I was encroaching upon new questions today in my head inspired by a movie I saw yesterday. "Into the Wild" has to be one of the most inspirational movies I've seen in a long time. It challenged me with ideas pertaining to the imposed importance of my being here where I am now. I'm trying to ask my self all sorts of new questions in my private journal, answering them to the best of my ability. They are simple sounding questions, but they take a lot of honesty and effort to answer accurately. I guess you can't be too terribly accurate with "Who am I", "What do I want", and "Where am I going". It's a deep pit that you can get lost in as it continuously changes and warps and consistently remains utterly inconsistent, so much as to limit not just your understanding of your surroundings, but of yourself.

Perhaps it isn't like that for everyone, but it certainly feels that way for me. I think maybe God is just trying to break my pride in that, to get me to depend more on Him. But what I want to know right now is, beyond all of those things, what would make me happy, my "call" if you will?
Right now I just get frustrated when I look to others because they have that glint of the desire for freedom in their eyes, but they were sucked in by social responsibility. What am I to make of that? Should I just give up, give in, and jump in line? Such huge questions to ask, all at the same time, during the same phase of life that so many other people are asking the same questions. Life gets exponentially shorter as time goes on. What do we do with that?

Everyone will be a slave to something. We're a slave to physics at the very least, no matter what we believe. What will I be a slave to? I'm selling myself right now, putting myself up on the blocks.

Saying No to Fast Food

I'm in a bad place. My diet is not good at all. I watched "Supersize Me" last night and it really had a big impact on how I view fast food, which is what I eat a lot of being that I go out to eat with coworkers almost every day. So I went to the grocery store today and bought a bunch of healthy things, but some of that was TV dinners. It's healthy TV dinners, so it's okay, but still... TV dinners.

I think they had something when they pointed out that fatty diets can cause depression and anxiety. I felt a lot of that today probably because I was overworked again, and I just hate it. I want to have a life when I get home. I want to be able to do stuff. And people are always like "well you're making more money." I don't care! I've never associated work with making money. Work is that thing I do that keeps me from doing the things that I really feel passionate about. That's work. I remember in school when it was summer and all of my friends just had fun all of the time and I had a job. I hated that. I'm still bitter about that I guess.

There's a random clanking noise going on behind my wall... and it is going to drive me crazy.

So here are the things I need to do in the next couple of days. Taxes, look for a new place to live, start throwing out crap that I've been keeping for no reason at all... I'd also like to pick up some methods of stress management. I've been listening to a lot of Bob Marley lately. He's got a lot of uplifting stuff. I think I might burn my Cake album to a CD too, just to have one more thing that is bright and cheery in my car while I drive to and from places.

Need to get my hair trimmed just to keep it manageable.

Good night.