Hm.  

It's raining today.  It always makes it hard to get up when it is raining, and yet there is something very cleansing about the rain.  I know everyone says that, but hey, it's true.  The rain, the changing seasons, the changing clothes that go with the changing seasons; it seems sometimes that life is just a whirlwind of events and sudden calms.  For a while I felt like I was in the doldrums, now I feel as if I'm in the midst of a tempest.  During a tempest there are two kinds of people, those that go below to the relative dryness and those who take the wheel, or a rope, or a lookout and revel in the storm.  Even though the rain stings the face and it seems as though the wind is going to blow them right off the ship some people live for these tense moments.

About three weeks ago a friend of mine called me and asked me to help him out.  He works at Benedictine college and one of his faculty members had had some health problems and he needed someone to take on a class for a semester.  I naturally snapped up the opportunity.  So in less that five days I found myself in a whole different place on the other side of the state.  I plopped down in the chair in my shared office and looked at what I had to do.  Write a new syllabus, have a lesson plan ready for the next day, since I have some experience in the shop they asked me to help out in there and act at T.D. so I dropped in two weeks before opening night.  I've been running around constantly ever since, just trying to find my grove in this new situation.

I find more and more I live for these stressful times where I feel needed, or at least feel like I'm filling a purpose somewhere, somehow.  Even though the rain hurts and the wind is about to cast me overboard, I relish every moment I'm on deck.  The students here are fun and eager.  They don't know hardly anything, and they know it, but can't wait to fill those gaps and are ready to listen, watch, and do.

I am once again getting to work with lights and build sets and develop ideas of how to overcome obstacles.  After this show is over (Antigone) I get to design the set for Pride and Prejudice.  I'm just getting to add to my portfolio left and right.  My class is progressing pretty brilliantly (I have no idea what I'm going to do today because I accidentally left today blank in the syllabus) and life is all around just plain good.  If I ever had time I could go for a run along the Missouri River or take a walk past some of the most beautiful homes you've ever seen, or sit on a bluff and look over miles and miles of countryside.

"Blow, Blow thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind"

Yoga Lessons From God

Light plots, floor plans, lesson plans, study plans, books, notes, outlines, daily planners, laundry on Tuesdays:  My life is one of order (most of the time) and consistencies.  It's my way of controlling the world around me.  Eat at eleven, get up a seven, go to bed at ten thirty so that I can read for half an hour before going to sleep.  I like it.  It hems things in.  

Naturally, then, God must tear it apart.  I am learning to be flexible; that the best laid plans of mice and men mean nothing to God.  I look at my friends and how they have taken big and bold steps and are terribly happy.  Some have picked up and moved to far away lands doing things they have never done before, others have gotten married, others are having children, others are continuing their education.  All these big steps help lay out to me that if I desire to do what I want to do and be who I hope to be, then I must allow God to spring some surprises on me without complaining about how I would have to rearrange too much to do whatever he is asking.  God never makes me do things.  He always just provides me with opportunities.  I feel as though I have let too many slide past me because I had to help someone do this or be here for that or maintain my commitment here.

So, as it is with all workouts, I have just become aware of my problem (despite obvious signs and dear friends saying it plainly to me) and now I am beginning to do the exercises...and they hurt.  Sometimes I feel as though I'm letting people down.  I will almost call it off, but then I think of God's desires for me and press on only to find out that the people I thought I would be hurting are my biggest allies in the matter.

So as I acquiesce to all the things I never thought possible, the impossible is starting to take shape.  As muscles tear, they heal and allow me to bend a little further.  It will take time, but God continues to form me.  

Here's to the adventures that await me.  The pain that will be born from them.  The growth that will be apart of them.  The joy that is inherent in them.

A journey can only be judged a success or failure at its end.  My journey is not over yet.

Of Music and the Soul

"Because I dearly love music."  That was a statement I made to my Grandmother over dinner tonight.  It was in response to a statement that she liked to listen to music on the record player sometimes.  I wanted her to know that if she wanted to listen to music, it was ok with me anytime.  After which I felt compelled to explain myself.  My explanation was plainly and suddenly, "Because I dearly love music."

It occurs to me the desperate importance of music.  It educates, inspires, challenges, breaks, heals, comforts, over joys, teaches, depresses, molds, and shapes.  It is truly the expression of our very souls, a revelation of the light and the dark within us.  There are many different genres of music and each has its very particular and very important place in not only society, but in something much bigger.

We have been a musical race since time began.  Several books in the Bible are even thought to have originally been songs sung to express a story.  How interesting it would be to hear Job sung, what nuances do we miss now that we are only able to read it?  Without music I begin to literally die inside.  It has to come out in one form or another.  Whether that is listening to it, playing something on my guitar or harmonica or baritone, or just singing or whistling.  

When everything else seems wrong or dark, I can change the whole world just by putting on a John Denver record, or turning on Canuckteach Crooners swing radio station.  I am moved and my very essence is changed.  When I am angry or sad a song can either purge these feelings from me, let me steep in them, or change them from darkness to light.  A sad song can make a sunny day feel cold.  Or it may make it feel even warmer due to the blessings that I feel.  In the midst of an angry group of people on a train several posts ago I explained how music calmed me and put me at peace and shut out the poison around me. 

I do not believe we always realize the important role music plays in our very existence.  Is it possible to exist without music?  Well, as for me, I believe I would exist, survive, but I would not live.  My soul would be poisoned and withered, and dead.

Anyway, the point being turn on the radio, cd player, or record player.  Put a tape in that you haven't listened to in a while.  Go for a walk and plug in your ipod and let the music wash over you, complete you, heal you.  

I can't help but think someone is going to read this (even though I'm pretty sure only one person reads this, hey hatewaslegend!) and say, "Jesus should heal you and complete your soul".  True and yet it is God who says to sing praises and hymns and songs of worship.  Music is from God and is therefore a part of God.  Think of it like this, when you listen to music, you are feeling a bit of God in a very real and direct manner.  Sometimes it is the lyrics, but mostly is it just the chords, the triads, the harmony, the rhythm, the rests, and the beat.  Allow God to bless us and how will that change the world?  Bring God's blessing to others and how will that change the world?  I know people have changed me by bringing me such a blessing (Thanks hatewaslegend!).  

Just some food for thought, "Because I dearly love music."

There is a lot that happens in our lives, and I'm told that all of these moments and events shape us and make us who we are.  They build character and teach us about ourselves or about the human race in general.  I have found this to be true, but it simply does not make living life any easier.  I find that I am given hope only to have it destroyed.  The repetition of this brings me low, to a point where I don't dare to hope.  Then I remind myself that, "These three remain:  faith, hope, and love..."  Yet I fear to hope only to be let down again.  Maybe if I don't hope for something, the thing I hope for will happen.  It's weird and confusing, but there it is.  There are some possibilities for my future, I have recently been given reason to hope, but I am scared to hope.  Scared because I don't want my hope or confidence or whatever to destroy my chances. Living where I am I have been given much more than I've had for the past two years.  I find that I grow very comfortable, but I am very aware that I need to start pulling my weight.  It'll happen, I grow impatient, but as my mother always says, "God is seldom early, but He is never late."  Ack, it is hard to hear sometimes when I am anxious, but true.  I also must remind myself that I cannot say, "God, here are my plans, now bless them."  Rather I must make a conscious effort to say, "God, your will be done in my life according to your great wisdom."  Very difficult for me to do regularly, and even harder when I do not see a clear path.  Everything will work out, no worries, I'm just unloading.  "We're all lost in the woods, even the Captain.  The only difference is he likes it there."  "No, the only difference is that's the only place I can see a clear path."

More Time on the Train

There are things in this world that cause me to shift my focus.  I think that part of what makes me me is the fact that I usually make the choice for that shift to be for the positive.  Over the years I have found myself in some disappointing, difficult, and not altogether proud moments.  In a couple of weeks I will be moving in with my Grandmother.  Why?  Two fold.  Partially because I would like to spend some time with my Grandma while I can, but also because I have no where else to go.  No job (though a handful of prospects), no home, nothing else to shoot for other than getting a job.  I’m at a stage in life where I can’t move anywhere else until I have a job.  I would really like the opportunity to teach, to do theatre, to grow myself and my resume in that direction.  I’m not sure that I will be given that opportunity, but perhaps.  It will take time to tell but it could certainly still happen.  There is a large part of me that is anxious about what my future holds, but there is another part of me that is excited, terribly excited, to see where things will go.  I’m desperate for the opportunity to teach, to show my ability and my prowess in a real situation.  A situation where people can’t say, “Oh, but you’re just a substitute, that’s different” or, “You were just a student and that makes a difference”.  The biggest frustration for me is the knowledge that if I were given the chance, oh what a difference I could make.  For some reason though, I am having an awful time getting people to give me the chance.  Other people fall into situations, and I have fallen into my fair share, but it seems sometimes that I can work and work for a chance but am never given the opportunity for whatever reason.  In the past I’ve had some very erroneous ideas about how jobs work and what jobs I was qualified for.  I have a much better understanding of the market I’m in now (though not a total understanding I must admit) and feel very confident, no not confident, very energized about what I can do and about what I will learn to do.  My whole life has been on lesson after another, perhaps the greatest of which was to recognize a lesson from life when it presents itself and to pay attention.  In a very unsure stage in my life I find the definites and hold on to them.  God is a definite, my love for theatre, and my passion for teaching are also definites.  I am so thankful for these assurances.  I do sometimes doubt my chances of getting a job in what I want, my ability to get into a doctoral program not to mention whether I will be able to handle the work or not.  Long hours of studying and reading and writing.  No matter what though, I know where I need to end up and that is in the classroom teaching theatre.  I know it may not happen now or next year, but someday, whether its in high school or college, I know that’s where I need to be.  That’s where I was made to be.

Cuppa Joe

So, I love coffee.  I didn't always.  I actually used to despise coffee.  Then one day I moved near some old friends.  One of these friends loved coffee dearly and he would make coffee every time I came to visit.  He would answer the door when I knocked and say, "No pressure, you don't have to if you don't want to, but I made some coffee!"  He might as well have been offering me a million dollars in his eyes.  I couldn't say no.  So the first couple of visits I chocked down the coffee, then before I knew it, when he offered me coffee I was every bit as excited about it as he was!  Now I love it just for the taste, I don't need it, I just really want it.

I say I don't need it, but there are some days when I really do just need a cup of coffee.  Regular and black.  This past Sunday was one of those days.  I woke up to go to church and I was dead on my feet.  I just didn't sleep well the night before.  I decided not to make any at home since there would be plenty at church and it would only be a bit.  I ended up falling asleep several times that morning before church.  I finally drug myself out the door and into the car.  I stumble (literally) into the church and my pastor starts bombarding me with questions that I just don't care about at this stage in the day, all I can think about is getting to the kitchen.  I finally get away from him (since he was interpreting my lack of focus as dislike for what he was saying) and make it into the church kitchen.  The glorious pot stands before me, I swear a halo appears around it, I approach, and just before I grab the handle one of the ladies of the church utters the most horrible words I have ever heard, "It's decaf, we're out of regular." 

I can't tell you how much I just wanted to cry.  Seriously.  I felt stupid, but I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.  So, I poured myself an cup of decaf hoping to glean any residual caffein from the black muck that now stood in my styrofoam container.  One taste and I knew it was a fruitless endeavor.  And once again I felt the overwhelming desire to cry.  I didn't, but nor did I accomplish much in teaching Sunday school, and church was an enormous struggle to stay awake.

I got home and had a small lunch and went to sleep.  I awoke feeling even worse.  I just didn't want to move, but I had to, I had a rehearsal for an in class scene in less than an hour.  Then it hit me...I had instant coffee in my fridge.  Not my preferred coffee, but it would do.  I struggled to make the coffee.  But the first sip and I knew everything was going to be alright.  

I got up this morning and did my normal routine.  Filled the coffee pot with water, scooped out the coffee, pushed the on button and prepared my cereal.  I sat down and ate a couple spoon fulls of cereal then took a sip of coffee.  I felt like crying again.  It was so good.  So much better than the instant.  I just sat and relished it a while.  When I finally got back to my cereal it was soggy.  But I was ok with it, I had my coffee and life was good.

Fail

Ever feel like you fail at everything you do even though you don't really?  Why is it we as humans tend to focus on the negative in life?  We can have ten successes in a day and one failure can ruin everything, even if it's minimal.  Then, after that first failure we begin to note and expand every other failure in our lives.  What is wrong with us?  Or is it just me and I should be asking what's wrong with me?  Anyway, I'm out.  Rock on.

Then With Alcoholic Talkativeness.

"You've just told me some high spots in your memories.  Want to hear mine?  They're all connected with the sea.  Here's one.  When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires.  Full moon in the Trades.  The old hooker driving fourteen knots.  I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me.  I became drunk with the beauty and sining rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself--actually lost my life.  I was set free!  I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky!  I belonged, without past or further, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!  To God, if you want to put it that way.  Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch.  A calm sea, that time.  Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship.  The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight.  No sound of man.  Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me.  Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together.  Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came.  The peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams!  And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience.  Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide.  Like a saint's vision of beatitude.  Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand.  For a second you see--and seeing the secret, are the secret.  For a second there is meaning!  Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!

He grins wryly.

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish.  As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!"

A Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

Chickaboowa

The sun is shinning today, and that is wonderful.  I love the spring, not because of the beautiful weather, but rather because of the promise of summer it brings.  Right now all that seems so far away.  There is too much between me and that end right now.  So much to do, and absolutely not time in which to do it.  Almost makes me feel sick.  When I say there is not time, there is of course time, I just have such a propensity to waste that time that is so graciously given to me.  I try to remember why I'm here and what that means, but then I just get overwhelmed.  That's not to say that I don't do any work, cause I do, a lot of work.  It's just that I don't feel like I'm getting enough done.  Oh well.  This is what I signed up for, here we go!

I'm discovering the beautiful world of Pandora.com and loving it.  What a wonderful thing.  I've got all my favorite forms of music separate stations so I can listen to whatever mood I'm in.  Next I think I'll try combining genres and see what happens there.  Terribly exciting.

A lot to think about these days.  Just here at school and in the world.  I feel like my head is going to explode.  I often don't even know where to start.  I definitely miss the days of living in my small hometown where there were so many stars, and song birds, and clear skies, and just a real and different sense of freedom.  Things were odd because life ended there at 5 pm, but it was wonderful because there are different ways to be alive other than staying up late.  Going for a walk in the woods.  Helping to cut some wood.  Cut some grass.  Drink a cup of coffee with the early sunlight pouring in the windows.  Cooking some breakfast and enjoying it with friends and family.  

I will never have such a relaxed way of life as I do right now, and I feel like I'm wasting it.  All I ever do is stress out.  When I should be doing something I sit around and stress about how it's not done.  

Bleh.  I'm done.  I don't write this so I can dump on everyone.  I should save these thoughts for my personal journal.  It is a beautiful day today and I'm loving every ray of sunlight that makes it's way down to me.  I think I might go home and take some time there in my house.  I can work there rather than try to work here and fail.  I look forward to the walk home.  Wiedersehen!

Brother, can you spare a dime?

What a fascinating modern age we live in.  It seems as though everything we as Americans once knew is coming to an end.  With the economy in complete turmoil everything seems to be topsy turvy.  We all have questions on our mind.  What will happen?  Will I still have a job in three months?  Will I still have a home in four?  Will the stimulus package work?  What will happen if it doesn’t?  We see our hopes and dreams dangling delicately in the balance.  As painful as that is, I cannot help but hear my grandmother’s voice in my head saying, “I told you so.”  

The worst part is, she is right.  For generations now, since the end of the Great Depression, credit has been a way of life.  Credit card, loan, and interest are household words.  My grandmother always said, “You can’t spend money you don’t have.”  Well, as it turns out, she seems to be right.  As I watch the Dow Jones slide further and further down, though perhaps not as fast as in October, my financial mistakes, and the mistakes of society in general come into prime focus.  

I owe a lot of money.  I owe on a credit card for this laptop, but mostly I owe for student loans.  Without these loans I never would have been able to go to college.  This is how I justified them.  I would go to college, get an education and then make enough money to pay them back in a timely manner.  Now I see this may have been erroneous, and as the economic climate grows darker (though not nearly as bad as we’d like to think) I’m having to face a painful reality that maybe I will not be making the big bucks as I had hoped ... as I had counted on.  So what do I do?  I keep doing what I do.  I love to teach, and one way or the other that is what I will do.

The main question that resounds in everybody’s head is, “Could we have prevented this, can we stop it?”  The answers, respectively, are no and no.  We could not have prevented this, though we could have made it less painful, and we cannot stop it, though we can help each other and make it less disastrous.  Due to the fact we all have, or rather many of us have, debt, our economy is in crisis.  President Obama says, to fix this we must be able to borrow more money on credit from the banks.  I firmly assert that this is an awful mistake.  Borrowing will help us now perhaps, but what happens in ten years, when we are even more in debt, and the economy takes another down turn?  Are we going to look to the federal government to make it possible for us to borrow more money?

We should have listened to my grandma.  Right from the start.  With credit and loans we get things we want, things the neighbors have, things our parents never dreamt of having.  However, when a recession hits, it hits us hard because we have nothing to fall back on.  No savings, at least none after creditors have their way with you, no bonds, no stocks worth mentioning, nothing but the hands of those who want to be paid.  When I asked my grandma if she remembered the stock market crash of 1929 she said, “Yes.  I remember it in the newspaper.”  I was so excited to hear about people jumping off of buildings and the like, however she went on to say, “But we didn’t notice.  We were poor before, and we were poor after.”

Perhaps she was onto something there.  It is true, our economy has never been higher than it was in the last few years, but maybe that just sets us up for failure.  Maybe we need to live with less, deal with not as much, learn to live without those products we get from China.  Maybe if we just lived with what we need instead of what we want, when the next recession comes, we won’t feel it as much.  Maybe it will be like my grandma says.  Maybe we won’t be poor before, we’ll just be living like it, but the point is we won’t be poor after either.  At least not destitute.  If something must have money we could pay in cash, instead of relying on credit.  

This idea definitely would change how we run our lives.  First off, I would not be in college.  I would be somewhere else, doing something else.  Who knows what.  I would not be writing this on my lap top, but rather on a piece of paper, or on the computer at the public library.  Are these sacrifices I would be willing to give up?  Apparently not, cause I am still in school, I still have this lap top, and I have no plans to pawn it.  But maybe we should teach our children to live without credit.  Get out of debt now, and live a life free of loans.

It is true that this would change everything we know.  Perhaps we cannot do it.  I don’t know if I can, but it is just a thought.  Something worth considering, and something certainly worth trying.  Who knows how things will turn out.

Hope

Just a few thoughts regarding what freedom is.  Freedom is being able to think for yourself.  To make decisions according to what you believe.  Freedom is being able to do what you want to do, without anyone telling you what is best for your life.  Freedom is knowing that you are in charge of your life, that nobody else has a say in how you conduct your life.  Freedom is knowing that hope lies in being free, maintaining the rights of yourself as well as the rights of others from being corrupted by rulers, authorities, governments, lobbyists, or other people.

I feel that freedom, in this sense, is being tested due to the current president.  That is not to say that it is because of President Obama.  Rather it is to say that people have forgotten what it means to be free and have placed their hopes, dreams, confidence, desires, needs, and their all on a man.  This is neither effective nor fair to President Obama.  Freedom is not a man.  It is an idea.  To place hope in a man will surely end in failure of the man, or failure of freedom.  Freedom must remain an idea.  Something we all strive for together.

We cannot say that Obama is our hope, when truly our hope is in the constitution and the rights and responsibilities it places before us.  It is wrong to state that the president, the person or the office, has any influence over our inalienable rights.  At least I hope that we have not come so far that the Bill of Rights is now not subject to basic human rights, but rather the whim of congress, the president, or the supreme court.  Let’s have a quick civics lesson.

We the people, of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.

Wow.  Some awesome stuff there that seems to have gone by the wayside.  First off, and I stress, “We the people”.  That means us.  Not congress, not the president, but every one of us that call ourselves American citizens.  We decided to form a more perfect union (just closer to perfection, not perfect).  The supreme court, which represents justice, yeah, we established that.  It’s ours.  Everyone has a constitutional right to domestic tranquility, that is peace in our home towns, not disturbed by the government.  Stop looking to the CIA, FBI, Army, Navy, Air force, and Marines to make decisions for you, cause it’s our call.  Not a general’s.  But it doesn’t stop there.  We’re also responsible for promoting the general welfare.  That means that we must take care of each other.  We aren’t to let the government do it for us, but rather we are to do it ourselves.  Cause we’re Americans.  It’s what we do.  Help each other to become stronger.  Secure the blessings of liberty.  Make sure that liberty is around so that everyone in America can benefit from it.  And not just this generation, but make sure that it’s around for the next and the next.  We the people, do ordain and establish.  We wrote the constitution.  It’s very clear.  We don’t need a judge telling us what it means, or congress making rules to keep us in line with it, or a president to decide which direction we should take it.  Those positions are just a generalized face on a big nation.  They are at the service of the people (not to be confused with being at the whim of the people).  They have the authority they have not to guide us, for we exist to guide them, but rather to provide balance between each branch of that generalization of America.

All this to say, if you are hoping in a president, a member of congress, or a supreme court justice to make things better, you’ve missed the point of being an American.  If you want others to make decisions for you there are plenty of other forms of government we can live under.  But democracy, for all its imperfections, is the only form of government which lives under the people.  It is a delicate position.  One that requires constant vigilance.  Our fore fathers tried to make that clear in the preamble of the constitution.  It seems, though, we have either changed our minds, or forgotten.  I suppose if we have changed our minds that is all right, that is what democracy is about.  Just make sure that you have changed your mind and that someone else hasn’t changed it for you.

Freedom is free.  There will always be those who desire to take it from you, under all kinds of pretenses, which is why it must be upheld, guarded, and most of all exercised.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!

I find myself longing deeply for a simpler life.  One uncomplicated by television, bureaucracy, electronics.  We are a social race, we need to laugh, play, dace, and sing with friends and family.  Some how we are defying nature and becoming more and more secluded.  I find a lot of damage in our society due to this odd condition.  We will all sit in a movie and wish we had a group of friends to hang out with daily just like those actors do on the screen, we will watch Christmas specials on tv and lament the fact that Christmas is too commercial and has lost that special spark like what is exhibited on the television, but we will not focus on bringing Christmas to others.  Once upon a time, not so very long ago, people danced, laughed and listened to music in such a way that was respectful and fun to each other.  This may have come in the form of square dancing, swing dancing, jitter bugging, or even the mashed potato.  I think we have lost a definate grasp on life.  The objects we cling to so desperate have spun us out of control.  Naturally we do the only thing we know to do, we look right back at those objects, but instead of comfort we find confusion and keep running and spinning.  

I would like to challenge everyone to take a day and do something just for fun, something you don’t normally do, and see how much fun it is.  The other day I was walking home and saw the painted bars on the crosswalk.  Remembering the movie Elf I chuckled to myself and thought, “That crazy elf, jumping from one bar to the other.  It looked like fun, I wish I could do that.”  Then I thought, why the heck don’t I?  And that’s exactly what I did, and I had so much fun, I did it at two other cross walks on the way home.  This did not involve anything much except that I had to take the time to walk home, and then realize that I really had nothing to hurry home to, and then realize that it wouldn’t take any time away anyway and would be a blast!

Funny how we rationalize things.  I’m too grown up, too dignified, too important, too unimportant.  Really what we are is scared and lonely.  We are social creatures.  We feel safe in numbers, we have fun with others, we find joy in the joy of those around us.  A video game is so much more fun with a partner than it is alone.  Even more fun than playing tennis on Wii, take a chance and go to a court with a friend and try to learn to play, even if you hate it, it will be a blast.  Why stay in?  Because you don’t have to get dressed up?  Because you can be a little lazier?  Because you can save money?  Is it really worth it though?  Not at all.  So invite some people over and dance!  Put on a tie or a skirt (whatever is appropriate...or makes you comfortable) and discover the world and how joyful it is once you separate yourself from what you own, and join yourself to what nature has blessed us with.  A communal spirit, a joyful heart, a mind that can discover new ways to have fun, and hands and feet to accomplish it all.

If any of you want to get together and dance, sing, play a terrible game of tennis, or just have a cup of coffee and laugh at how silly our lives are, please give me a call.  I’m tired to spending my time with my television and my lap top.