So the other day I went down towards Campbell. For those of you that don’t know, I graduated from Campbell a small University south of Raleigh. Anyways, so I when I got there the roads were slightly differnt than I had last recalled. Things are always changing like crazy down there. Every time I go, they have riped up some road, only to put more bricks down. The brick makers of the world should be so happy because of Campbell. I ran into my good friend Billy. Billy is a Romantic. He has ideas of granture in his head. Billy seems to affect everyone he is around for the good. I know he affected me. From hear on out i will refer to billy as Beatnik Billy. I know its a little cheezy but it helps keep things in perspective. One day Beatnik Billy and I will start a church together. It will be a beautiful thing. It was so good to see him thou. I was laying in bed last night and thinking about my life and how God brought differnt people across my paths at different times. And how each one of those people have affected me for the better. Billy is one of those guys. We don’t always keep in touch but when we do it’s like we just left off from the day before.

I’m thankful for people like Beatnik Billy, the world needs more romantics!

It’s amazing what an easy going night of Indy film watching with your girlfriend, prefaced by a good coffee and sandwich at a great little coffee shop can do for your spirits.  This week has been such a mixture of emotions.  A lot of which have been felt all at once.  It’s almost surreal.  I know that my Vintage work has suffered a bit this week, but I just really had to get a lot of my personal baggage straight this week before I could move on and do my job.  It’s amazing how functionless you can become from baggage in your life.  Some people can just keep right on trucking as if nothing were going on, but not me.  I am basically rendered useless if something is going wrong in another area of my life.

The past can be a beautiful thing, but it can also be destructive when left unattended for too long.  (On a side note.  My advice is to make sure you don’t leave your problems alone and think…Oh that will take care of itself.  It won’t and it will probably come back to bite you.)

It’s amazing how much better I feel mentally thou right now.  I mean I certainly think this may be the most healthy I have felt in a good long while. I still don’t have all the answers that’s for sure.  I am taking my friend Darrel’s advice about taking life as it come, and sort of slowing and stepping back a little bit.  I always try to rush through things and then I get to this point where I freak out and want to end everything and start over again.  It’s very unhealthy and destructive in my life, so I’m definitely trying to step away from that and move towards more thought out decisions.

Only time will tell…

It’s amazing what a good mid-day way will do for your soul. Since comming back to North Carolina from NYC every day when I go outside I have to convince myself that I am in this extremly urban setting and it just so happens that my house really lies in the middle of central park and thats why there are so many trees and squirls. I have nothing against the squirls or the trees for that matter, it’s just that I found myself to be so happy while i was walking from block to block trying to figure out which way is east and west after getting off a subway.

Life is a lot like getting off a subway for me and not being a native new yorker. I come out into the light and then I’m confused at my bearings, so I stand on the sidewalk for fifteen minutes looking at my map and squinting to see if i can read the next street sign. Really the only way sometimes to figure it out if you can’t see the sun is to literally start walking. Most of the time I finally see the sign, say a few choice words and then head back the other way but every once in a while you get this strange air of confidence. “Of course I knew this was the right way!” I pat myself on the back and keep walking with my head head high.

I had my bible in the checkout line today with me as I was trying to buy a calzone for lunch as well as one of those Naked Drinks.  The self checkout lane was backed up as usual.  Finally I get my chance and then it acts all screwy when I go to check out.  So I have to show my Visa card to the cashier.

The lady that looked at my card asked me what i was reading and i said sheepishly my bible and she put her hand up in the air and motioned for me to give her a high five. As I told her to have a good day she shouted out “You did my soul good today!” This made me smile as I waved and turned to walk back to my apartment.

Evidently carying around your bible can make people very happy.  At least I made that ladys day…

For three years in a row I worked on a version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  It was a great show done by some of my close friends, most of which are not close any more.  It’s quite sad actally how we all scattered about after schoo and don’t ever seem to have the time to catch up.

I found out a few weeks ago that one of my best friends from that time period is now engaged.  It seems sort of strange to me almost that I have been asleep for a few years while life progressed on without me, even thou I know it hasn’t.  Really its more like I passed by life without even waving to it.  It’s amazing how we get wraped up into our “daily routine” and loose sight of the big picture.  I don’t know that I will ever be close to all those guys again, I hope so, but as my dad always says “You can spit in one hand and wish in the other and see what you come up with.”  I don’t really know what that means… Sometimes southern sayings (for example) that one have a strange way of putting things.  Anyways, I’ve said all this really to bring across one point and that is that God for me is sometimes like the Ghost of Christmas Past, Presant, and Future in that, sometimes He just pops out of nowhere and then says, “surpirse, now its time to re-live all those painfull memories of yours and lets fix them while where at it.”

Currently, I must say, I feel sorta sideswiped by the emotions and my past mistakes.  And its in these moments that I come to grips with my own Ebinezer Scrooge.  Playing Jacob Marly for three years straight does have it’s advantages, but when I’m confronted by my own Scrooge, I still find it tough to move past the present and look towards the future.

This is why I love Donald Miller.  When I read Miller, I see the pain and the hurt in his life.  It’s exposed for all the world to see.  Some people that read books such as Blue Like Jazz by him would probably say that he is in fact CRAZY for showing so much of himself through his words, myself on the other had, I feel like its probably one of the most amazing peices of christan writing I have ever read.  As life moves on and I am confronted with issues, I seem to find comfort in the fact that someone out there, who has a similar job as mine, struggles with the same thing as myself.

I was having my weekly meeting with my Supervisor Matt today and I told him how amazing I was that it’s so strange that I have trouble listening to people talk and relating to them sometimes, but for some reason there is something magical about knowing that someone else feels your pain, and not only was it important to wor through the situation, but also a great place to know that other people have as well and it was importnat enough for them to share it with everyone.

So here goes. I’ve decided that a lot of things need to change in my life and over the next few months a lot of new stuff will be going on from work to personal to private.

so i’m really having a hard time deciding between blogspot and wordpress thou i think it may end up being wordpress. we’ll see. anyways a week or so back i posted the following on blogspot. thought id’ share.

1. start a writers collective with jeff lail and billy boyce.
2. get my vintage21 work done on time.
3. listen to at least 5 sermon podcasts a week.
4. start blogging regurly.
5. start podcasting.
6. think of lots of new and great things to do with vintage21
7. talk jeff into living with me and helping out with booking and publicity for v21 concerts.
8. work on a strategic plan for how to start Large v21 concert series as well as birth v21 records.
9. incorperate my personal recording into v21 records
10. pass off feedback mixing to someone else.
11. talk matt into having a design team person (revamp all power point slides. backgrounds and all and take that over as a deacon.
12. get our band music way more organized.
13. help v21 get into a new space and make it extremely apealing to families, college kids, 20 somethings and bands.
14. book bands like roman candle, iron and wine, copeland, and mae for shows.
15. make my time with god more deep.
16. read at least 10 pages a day. (12 books a year at minimal)
17. read books on the list for eldership. (get those from matt)
18. read specificly (new kind of christian, mere christianity)
19. go to new years in nyc
20. visit st. louis with billy boyce.
21. seatle with jeff in december of 07
22. plan out new v21 space from a tech side.
23. talk to jason jones or jesse about what we can do as far as a v21 computer network.
24. get v21 songs and powerppoint and music all up to date on everyone’s computer
25. go to a canes game.
26. become financially stable from vintage21 pay.
27. knock out credit card debit.
28. figure out other ways to make money on the side witout killing myself to knock the debit out.
29. become more decisive
30. ncsu football game.
31. ncsu basketball game.
32. see snow this year
33. clean my room
34. get my laundry under control

the three year plan has begun
more to come later…