Too Many Mind or (En)forcing My Inner Peace

Dear Readers,

I thought airing my grievances in story time for you would help me cope with some news I got today. It turns out that as I went on, I wanted to dip into further and further detail on the situation. As I went into detail, I knew how deeply it would hurt someone I dearly care for if I were to be so blunt or so flippant about dropping personal experiences and months of observations into the open.

I deleted it. It wasn't worth reading. Raw truth rarely is.



Some battles are worth fighting.
Some battles you must lose
So you don't lose
A much more worthwhile asset.
Tactical retreat,
If only for the sake
Of not burning bridges
Which would never be salvaged.

Sometimes I wish I weren't so observant.
I wish I could ignore facts.
Let things pass while
Everything in me wants to stand.
Wants to fight.
Wants to point out the unbound truth,
The things that neither my wrath
Nor their obsession can deny.

But I am just another number now.
I'm outside of the equation,
An imaginary variable,
Irrational and squared.
A now scribbled over line on a neglected page,
Crumpled up long ago,
Left to be stepped on occasionally
While the old clutter gathers dust.



Ugh, I'm so not in this mood. This mood is invading my space. I want so much to have this not bother me. It just came at me sideways today. I was neither expecting it, nor expecting my reaction. Which to me is weird, because I think of myself as deeply and tragically predictable.

My unimpeded, true feeling is gladness. My Love is coming to town in a week. I get to have her to myself for the following week. I'm really, truly happy with this upcoming time in my life.

Sleep now.

Renew tomorrow.

No mind.

Are You Watching Closely?

And I Thought Two Weeks Was Bad... or Life, Life Always Changes

I'm noticing a rhythm in my life. A constant beat. A cadence of phrase I cannot escape, no matter how hard or far I've run.

"You are better then this."

I always know when my life takes a turn for the not-as-good. I've never yet had my life go "bad." I've (almost) always had power and indoor plumbing, and I've always-always-always had a roof over my head. My life has always been some degree of better-than-most, whether I have realized it or not. But with my first world problems comes the question of "Now what? You're already on top of the world. This is as good as it gets." I let myself become complacent. I drop into this stupor of thinking that I'm not good enough to deserve more than what I have. I have enough. I am enough. I don't need to push further.

But then I hear the call again.

"You are better than this."

And then I try to be better. I resolve to do school or learn a new programming language or something else to make myself better. And then I remember how hard it is to push. That I'm not a beautiful and unique snowflake. That I've always been Jack's complete lack of surprise. Complacency, like a warm blanket, wraps me up again and I feel like it's all a waste of time. Punch in, keep pedaling that stationary bike, punch out, pay bills, repeat. It's enough. It's low-risk, low impact, low geared, and it keeps me afloat. It's enough.

And life, the repetitive little sod, calls again.

"You are better than this."

So we keep repeating the same dance in different places, with different vocations, in different schools, at different times, with different friends, and different lovers, but all (sometimes painfully) reminding me of life's little catchphrase.

"You are better than this."

But why? I'm tired. It's hard. And I don't know how. And what if I fail? I'm afraid of failing. And everything around me says successful people suck.

I'm better than this.

So I'm at it again.

But what's different?

I'm not being told.

I want.

I desire.

I crave.

Sadly, this is new again. I've not had a true impelling drive for a long time. I guess that means I've been broken for a long time. The things I learn about myself when I write... This is better than therapy.

At least somewhat cheaper.

I'm better than this.

Don't forget this time.

There may not be another.

There's so much better than this.

The world is so much better than this.

The universe is so much better than this.

There is no end to what's better than this.

Are You Watching Closely?

I Really Don't Always Write About People or Disguised Love Notes

I haven't written in two weeks.

Not just here. Nowhere.

I've had all of these thoughts racing through my head and not time and nowhere to put them. As soon as I have just the tiniest second to breathe, I just want to pass out or escape things for a few minutes before life, the universe, and everything picks right back up for it's next barrage.

I dream so many things that have yet to be and, sadder still, cannot be for far too long. I, weary traveler, must be trapped on the slower path. For the sake of my Angel, I tread it without guile.

All the while, the days soldier on while I recover from nights that I sell to survive, but it seems in the end I will have neither day nor night. Only trapped with the things that never were because I was never man enough to step out to make them real.

To all the songs I've missed recording, to all of the verses I missed writing, to the ideas left to rot on the floor of my prison and the Angel who tarries with me, if only in spirit for now...

I'm sorry I'm not always attentive. I miss you. When you are with me again, oh the magic we will create. Until then, I will do everything I can to earn the privilege you are to have in my life. You connect me to the universe in a very singular way. You make me feel alive.


I miss creating.

Not everything is what is seems.

Are You Watching Closely?

This Star Won't Go Out or A Week Later Than It Started

Why are there people in our lives?

I've read about these pre-schools where they're trying to discourage kids from making a "best friend" so that when that friendship inevitably goes sour, the kids will not have such a hard detachment from that friend. Is this scary to anyone else?

I've been pondering the meaning of people and the roles we assign them in our lives. How an ex-wife can turn into a pretty decent friend, how a lover can turn into a distant memory, how a missed opportunity can turn into the most important thing in your life...

My thought processes started last week, with it having been August 5th. This year makes it seven years since my father died. I hate the term "passed away". It's so.... soft and politically correct. Honestly, it's as if there is a shame in death. Some offense to be taken for being human. Everyone does it. From Jesus to Hitler, the good, the bad and the in between all die. So call it death. Give it some dignity. But back to topic.

I miss my father every single day. In his last year, he evolved beyond mentor and father and really became my best friend. I shared the most of myself with him. I learned the most from him. I found out his humanity beyond the visage of fatherhood. I found myself realizing how much of me was him, and how glad I was for it. Losing him, especially the timing and abruptness of it, was like being shot. I felt it too. When he actually died. It brought me to my knees in tears. I was in a private corner of the ER waiting room. I couldn't hear them working on him. I couldn't hear Mom or my brother, who were in the back where the action was. I just knew. And I cried more in that 5 minutes, alone in a darkened corner, than I had in my whole life previous. I begged God not to do what He had already done. And I knew it. And it wasn't fair. He had already stripped dreams from me that year. Dad was off limits. Sacred. Why was I the one who got less than two decades? Right when I was getting to know the man behind the title. I hadn't even found a wife yet! He was supposed to school me on being a husband. A dad. He was supposed to be here. It wasn't FAIR!

These days, years and years later, I have pictures of him around my house. It would be so easy to remove those reminders. Like splinters in my heart. Just get them out.

And then I remember that my heart didn't stop beating. Wounded, weary, but not done. This splinter was his lesson on walking on when you're bone tired and finishing the race. This one, his smile when things weren't great, but he survived. And kept the rest of us surviving. And here's the one where he made me come up with ideas to find what would make me happy with life. It's too bad that so much of what I love to do is so... free-of-charge in the real world.

But he taught me so many lessons. I can't say they all sank in. But I recognize them. Each splinter sticking out of my heart. And everyone leaves them. Little lessons we learn from the people we let close enough to our hearts to stab or tattoo their wisdom on it. Like a living pegboard.



But that was where my thoughts began. Then I was reminded (after the fact) by the brothers Green (of VlogBrothers notoriety) about Esther Day. Esther Day, for the uninitiated, is a new yearly celebration on August 3rd of the love we have in our lives. Not just romantic stuff, though that is supremely important. It's to remind us to say I Love You to people who matter. Whom you might feel uncomfortable saying it to. But you should say it to. Because you do love them. And they deserve to hear it, at least sometimes, no matter how weird it may be to say it out loud.

Oh yeah, on of the main caveats is to say it *out loud.* The scariness of it all!

Many of the Nerdfighter community (if you don't know, Google it for heaven's sake) take the opportunity to donate to the This Star Won't Go Out Foundation, established in honor of the namesake of Esther Day, Esther Grace Earl. The short story is that she was a 16-year-old girl with cancer. Her real story, and her legacy, is so much more. Read up thusly, and return:

http://tswgo.org/esthers-story/

...and welcome back.

Esther's reality was about being okay with herself, her trials, and taking advantage of whatever life she could have however long she could have it. If you have the time to research the VlogBrothers videos, it's inspiring to go through and realize how one girl helped shape literal thousands of people just by being an unquenchable spirit. The brothers Green are also very good, inspiring philosphs of their own. So just go get addicted to them.


But my main point today, if I ever had one, is that without risking ourselves, without love and loss, without best friends and sudden death, what are we but fragile shells? Without being hurt by that crush I had in 3rd grade, or dumped twice by the same girl in the same summer, losing my dad, or my other pains I would never understand the love I have for my daughter, how much I appreciate my friends, or how hard and worth it is to open my life to Love again.

It is so hard.

And so worth it.

This is a Call.

Are You Watching Closely?

I (probably) Love You.

Good Grief.

Strange and Stranger Still or Love, Actually, and Out Loud

For those of you who don't know, there are many forms of love. Even the levels of romantic love are not just "in love" or "in lust."

It is in that spirit that I say, I've been in love with a particular woman for most of my 20's.

It's been absurd, the things I've been willing to do for her. Even knowing her heart was with this man or that boy or whatever stopped me from trying to be more to her, I've made a point to, if at all possible, be able to support her in anything -- I dare say everything -- she wants to do (including going after guys who are wrong for her). She is beauty and creativity and awkward and searching and unsure... basically everything I relate to.

And still, I let things go. I continued on, being her friend as if nothing I wanted mattered. But inside I died every time she kissed her flavor of the year. Every time I knew she went home with -- or without -- someone else there. It killed me so hard so much so long I just let it go numb for a while. A long while. I moved on and went about my life. I remained her friend on and off and life was as life always is with her. I became her best friend. Her confidante. Her push to do what she liked like write and create.

Skip to several years later to a period where she's single and I'm single and we're both heart-hurt and I just blurt out that I like her. How I've cared about her for so long. How I wished I could help heal her hurt.
You could have heard a pin pull from a grenade.
All of the sudden our relationship is complicated, she doesn't know how to act with me or talk to me now that she knows what I've occasionally screamed to the Heavens in blind frustration. All of the sudden, her comfort zone is breached and being within arm's reach of me is a dangerous place because the feelings that have lived there for years are now are finally visible.

I was broken. The pieces that fell from me could have toppled nations, were I anyone that mattered to anyone. I was alone. Left in my shell. And ready to go numb again, banishing myself to observe and adore without caring. Without hope.


And now we switch the possessor of the name "she," and all of the rights hitherto imbued.


She has been an acquaintance for quite some time. So long, I'm almost embarrassed to really find out how long. Ashamed, really, because she is everything I am. Apparently, she has always been. Nerd of the ways I nerd, seeker of things I seek, reader and watcher, awkward and awesome, kind and innocent in so many ways I wish I were again.

And I had no idea what I was missing. I thought I was alone. I peered out and saw reflections on the horizon and gave chase, hoping it could be real. But she is a flowing stream at my feet, over and under, taking from my hands and feet the callouses and burns of so many wandered deserts.


I feel almost ashamed that the lion's share of my verbose, disillusioned musings tonight are about a woman who could never love me. But I'm so well versed in pain, feelings of relief are so foreign to my fingertips, I just don't know how to continue. So I will end here, dear friends. Know that today was an astoundingly good day. So good, in fact, I actually want to sleep to discover what tomorrow has.


You Probably Think This Is About You.

This Is Amalgam.

Good Things are not Vestigial.


Are You Watching Closely?!

Fears. or Existence Beyond Comprehension

I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of not being good enough.
Not being smart enough.
Not making enough.
Failing my daughter.
Being left in the herd.
Not being heard.
Misunderstanding.
Being misunderstood.
Standing up.
Being stood up.
Loving.
Being loved.
And throughout them all
I see a fear of being.
I want to be so much more than I am.
But until then, I am still just a human being.
I am a man.
I am man.
We are man.
We fear being.
We cannot open to being loved
Without the possibility of being hurt.
And sometimes the fear of that pain,
That soul-wretching impaling,
Is worse than the pain itself.
The first time.
And the second.
And even the third and fourth,
But soon, all we have is the horrible fear that
We'll stop feeling if we let the pain stop.


/end


So I don't fully know where that came from. I've been a closed book for so long, sometimes I have old feelings that need venting. Old demons that need rending. Memories that I wish had a 'hidden' feature and others an "unblock".


But we aren't simple computers. Those who don't see a Divinity in our complexity and a uniqueness in our faults that brings us above simple animalia confuse me. We are not stardust conglomerated, matter unorganized turning into matter organized without some intelligent guidance. Though we are basic mammals on the surface, we take to thought. We can communicate those thoughts over unfathomable distances. We ponder our own existence is such depth that we argue over it. We war over it. We need to be right. We want control over everything we can see. If you have never thought about how deeply odd all of that is among the millions of genome that exist, just within our own sphere of Earth, then do. Think about it for hours. For days on end if you have to.


Then ponder the vastness of all creation that we can see. Billions of trillions of tiny dots out there in the darkness, any tiny percent of which could hold another habitable planet with other beings who question and fight and stare into the darkness looking at their billions of distant lights.


Then look within yourself. Not even at your hopes and dreams, which have their own special qualities, but at your cells. The bosons holding protons, neutrons, and electrons together, then coming together in just the right self-replicating combination to hold homeostasis within each of your nuclei. Your cell walls all communicating together, neurons firing in just the right combination, white blood cells disrupting those who would intrude on your balance.


Do you see yet? I will say it again. We are not simply stardust conglomerated. We cannot -- can. not. -- be matter unorganized turning into matter organized randomly. From the complexity of the atom to superstructure of the galaxies, there is balance and order that is so far beyond what's even possible at random. Viruses, fungi, animals, humans. Plants for goodness sake! They take sunlight and minerals and sustain themselves, with their own reproduction and unique cells!




My point, if there ever was just one, is that no matter if you like to acknowledge it, there is a divine order to natural order. Divine. Supernatural. Metaphysical. Beyond these dimensions of matter and time. The arrogance it takes to deny order, directly in the face of order, is equally beyond natural order.


Take some intuitive leaps. Maybe some intuitive free-running. If you made it this far, you have the mental strength.


Don't be fooled.


This is just a test.


Are. You. Watching. Closely?

Professional Project Conceiver Seeks Permanent Web Address

I have been writing for so long, and over so many mediums, sometimes it feels like an eternity of tumbling through the universe, spilling my thoughts wherever on whomever they will stick. Other times it feels like a grain of sand in an hourglass balanced on a pencil tip. But eventually and always, the one sand grain lands that breaks the fragile balance of my hourglass, sending it end-over-end in a world shattering finale that leaves so much left to give. So much left unsaid.
That hourglass gets left where it lies to blow away in the winds of server upgrades and account deletions while I move on with real life. Be it getting a "real" job or trying to get the educational shingles to patch my leaking roof or relationships and failing at any combination of all of them time after time after time, I still pontificate to the open web space and pray to that God I love so very much in real space that I can find some way to balance the overflowing thoughts and ideas in my attention deficient brain with the fatherhood and responsibility I was thrust into by a woman who, as it turns out, really did just marry me for my genetic code [Post-posting fact check: There was love. But so it goes, love is not all you need.] (A sad realization I had when recently pondering all of the faults I had back then and comparing them to the faults I maintain today).*breathing or grammatical soundness?*


If it has not become apparent, my thoughts leap constantly. They ebb and flow like ocean water would if given less gravity to fight with. If you are okay with occasionally trite diatribes concocted in the moment, with no real beginning or end or structure, I invite you to stay with me here. I will write right here, I talk out some of the current events that matter to me 5 Days-a-Week on this YouTube channel, and I bang on guitars and grunt out melodies once a week-ish on another YouTube channel. If any of these sound good to you, keep up with them too.


I have a terrible feeling I will wake up and everything will be the same as it was before. My habits will have stayed locked and nothing I'm trying to change will have budged. But as someone once said, you can always look into the future. But the future changes as soon as you look at it. Because you've looked at it.


Are you watching closely?