Bad Joke of the Month

What do dyslexic atheists who have insomnia spend their nights doing? 

Wondering if there really is a dog.

Fail Safe Comedy

Why every joke is safe if it's labeled as a bad joke... because then if no one laughs your judgement wont be questioned, and if they do laugh, then you've not only made a funny, but you're also ironically extra witty.  Of coarse, no matter how many bad jokes I try and make, I still haven't heard a peep from any of my stuffed animals.

The farce of growing up

The older I get the more I realize growing up is a myth.  We get older and more responsible, we learn new conditioning and explore the findings of new found awareness and opportunity.  We grow in resilience and understanding, and we may get wrinkled and grey, but the idea of growing up, It's not us but only our actions that change.  The moment we lose our inner child is the moment we've become disconnected with who we are and our ability to simply grow.

I suppose the distinction really lies between growing up and growing out.  We need not grow out of our true self to simply grow up, for growing up is an illusion.  I have seen this demonstrated best when I heard author, Sherman Alexie, speak.  He was able to be the most immature yet wisest man in a packed room of about 2,000 people.  So distinctly, that it was one of the first questions someone in the audience asked- "how can you be so wisely well spoken while simultaneously acting like a 5 year old?"
"FAAAART" noise, I think was the first thing that came out of Sherman's mouth.  Then he got quiet for a minute and thought, and he said, "I think I'm the same age now as any age I have ever been."

Wary of OK

I've always been wary of OK jobs.  I've always wanted heart or harvest without having to be someones else's cog in between.  The heart-filled starving artist allure lessens as I grow older; the more the reality of adult hood scrambles over me.  The river of mediocrity is a harry & scary blunder to jump, but accessible as ever in our technological age.   Eventually I'll have to jump the river no matter what, at least try.  I think maturity is being OK with not making it, really wanting to, but realizing it's not what really matters, when you grow up.

Like Suckers

As I grow older I am becoming more aware of my uniqueness... my lack of tolerance for domineering types.  My passive self just can't seem to co-exist with out spoken jabber jaws.  They leave me selfless in a pool of nothingness. 

The worst part is, despite my identifying this problem, I still haven't figured out how to break free of these moments with good form.  If someone is presenting to me directly, as opposed to conversing, where I would normally be able to get a word in and be heard, how can I break free in the middle of their their life sucking rant?  Do I owe them the courtesy of informing them of the discomfort they breed?  Or do I try and do a patch job and pretend like I need to use the restroom, or something? 

Whatever the case, I typically can't think well when I'm in fire breathing range anyway.  Maybe I need to invent a button on the cell phone you can push that will make it start ringing..

Serious Breakfast Conversation

Had a serious conversation about jokes over breakfast this morning.  How many good jokes do you know?  When is the last time you told or heard one?  The funny thought raised serious concern, when I realized how joke starved the world around me seems to be.  Not to say this funny matter in of itself is all the serious, but what it represents unnerves me.  If I haven't learned to make people laugh, then what have I learned?

Reflection on making a PB&J Sandwich

A knife done spreading
oozed with the red & butter,
pressure applied
from the facet.

The red runs
like fresh blood,
the butter sticks
resiliently-

Pressured better
by the mouths rudder
tastes so good,
as it should..

Close to the edge
of sharpness,
under pressure,
effectively changed

Back to normal.
No waste,
but the blood,
down the drain.

Observation of the day

Learning guitar is like mastering a tongue twister with your fingers.

Race Lies

Words with friends
words with.. self
from self
true
bold
& brave
greivances
from the soul
of our
grave
turning
easy
hiding quietly
grace filled riots
dance inside of me
quiet storm
warnless
& warrantless
happlessness
disguised in
blessed forgetfulness
sea surges
urchin splurges
like claw hands
on Christmas
reached with prayer
stunting grace
ambiguity drowns
another unsung face
again
& again
searching for bumpers
in this soulless
race
searching for a finish line
to take our place.

Talk is cheap... as is technology

Technology is kind of like "talk", it's often cheap on its own accord.  I share this thought from a position of defense; upon reflecting on my recent actions...  I did my first round of mail out marketing for my business this week, and a friend made a comment about the fact that I was wasting paper.  Was I?

I see the argument, for certain.  It would make more logical sense to just email my material, save the paper, save the $.45 stamp, save the $.25 color printing cost, save all the time hand addressing each envelope and having to take a trip to the post office, that would make logical sense.  Unfortunately, if everything we did was purely for logic's sake, then why would we ever even interact with one another face to face other than to reproduce?  Why meet when we can talk on the phone, or even better, email, or text, or video chat?  Why acknowledge the fact that we have hearts and souls and that life means anything if none of it makes logical sense?  Why even reproduce? 

Life's purpose isn't logic, logic is more like life's anti-purpose.  If you ask me, (which you haven't, but you're reading this, so tough,) life's about engagement, connection, and growth.  Things like technology and logic, simple tools for a complex world filled with layered lives worth spending $.70 on attempting to connect with. 

Advice of the week

"Don't worry about what you do, just make sure THAT you do"; is a tidbit of wisdom a friend recently bestowed upon me.  I don't think it applies to all areas of life, but certainly many.  How easily we can get hung up on details and lose our momentum.  Many ideas never find fruition due to lack of action.  Worrying, obsessing, or perfecting what to do is easy.  Simply doing it, that's when life can start living. 

Remembering MLK

"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."

              -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Protecting what is Pure

When I used to live in Long Beach, CA., there was a neighbor that would always stop by our apartment and everything that he thought that was cool or righteous he would exclaim, "Pure, man!  PURE!"  I have no idea what his name was, but I'll always hear that exclamatory in my head, "PURE!".

I think when we love something righteously, it's important to protect it, but I think protection viewed maturely involves more than simply safe guarding or hiding something away; it also implies vulnerable sharing... when we're ready.  & when we're really strong in ourselves, by Gods good grace, we should exclaim it to the world, "PURE!"

Sustainable Pure Vocation

I've often found action that comes from a pure place is tough to sustain.  When I find something pure I enjoy doing that excites me, I want to keep doing it and turn it into a living.  Equally so, I've found that monetizing something pure I enjoyed doing takes the joy out of it, rendering is unsustainable.  I think we can love our work, it just needs to be work that can work for us.  I loved filming skateboarding as a kid, and thought I was meant to do that for a living, but it involved me living 2 states from home and frankly wasn't very enjoyable once it became a real business.  That work, at the end of the day, just didn't work for me.

My new policy is- like your job as much as it will let you love your life... Love what you do; without over doing it, and protect what is pure, always.

Good right, err

A couple close friends have recently told me they think I am a good writer... which, don't worry, was a compliment that would be lucky to make it to my toes, let alone my head. 

I started thinking about what a good writer looks like; do they often times spell words twice twice on accident, and write things no one else can comprehend, and use spell check and thesauruses and dictionaries?  Are they afraid to write due to what others may think?  Is their mission ambiguous, and do they change the sub-title of their blog more than once a week?

If so, then maybe I am a good writer... like your Mom thinks your good at sports.  Either way, I think my tactic to being a "good writer", is simply subjecting myself to the process of: right?  err...  Which is to say, my thoughts are formed like a blind man collecting rocks.  I'm inquisitive of my conscientious self as I record the meanderings of my mind; like, "errr", should I change that, again?  right?  err...

Delivery

A new habit I've been working on is hand written letters.   One of my goals this year is to mail 3 per week.  A lost art I value, I'm hoping these unexpected notes of simplicity will somehow bring simple blessing to others.  A question I often find myself asking myself while walking to the mail box, especially if I am walking passed the persons house I am mailing the letter to, is why not save the stamp and hand it to them?  The answer of coarse, is that the cheapest delivery, is not always the best.  Especially when it comes to art.

"The Blessed Life" = Toilet flusher

A friend recently lent me a copy of this book, and although the subject matter interested me, the delivery felt like a sham.  An entire tract on obligatory giving, rules, and regulations.  My 10% isn't good enough if I pay my cell phone bill first?  Wait, it's not the heart anymore?  It's literally the order that the world views our actions in which we're judged?  And we're supposed to give with the idea that financial blessings are guaranteed back to us?  Give me a break.

God knows the first fruits of our heart, and there's no such thing as a fruitful giver whom has expectation on his return.  Giving isn't an investment, it's an acknowledgment of our position before God.  Some people may be able to benefit from this book if the goodness of giving is a hurdle for them.  It all felt like an unnecessary anecdote to me, though.  It's a pretty slippery subject for one as potentially biased as a pastor to write on.  I doubt his motives were impure, I just know Jesus said, "it is better to give than to receive", and that's enough said, in my book. 

Reference Points

I think reference points are going to be a theme for me this year.
Do you ever have those topics or ideas that all of a sudden continue toppling atop your radar?

Reference points are the latest game changer to enter my paradigm.
Being well aware of how our environment shapes us, I've realized the importance of objectively identifying my minds reference points. 

If I aim to be grounded in the truest possible reality, I think it a necessary exploration.  What are my reference points, how have they effected me, and what do I want them to be? 

What's the point of life, really, without understanding the foundations of the points, and layers, and perplexities, in which we choose as our references... to stand on, and believe?

Invigorate

Invigorate the...  Invigorate my...  I need to invigorate...
When was the last time your life partnered with invigoration?
What a word.
It just came to me, like a brick to the cheek.
Leaving me drooling with mind meandering profundity;
this crucial life ingredient-
where, what, how,
does it fit in to my life?
Like euphoria and spice,
these highs we chase,
just waiting for their stitching to be recognized & remembered that's already sewn into our life.

While you were watching football

I laid on my teddy bear blanket, played guitar, drank coffee, wrote poems, & thought about nothing & how to change the world.  Nothing significant like dog piles of guys in tights, but until I understand the hype, somehow I'll manage to continue to get by.

What to "be"

"Expect the unexpected, and when you can, be, the unexpected."  -Unknown

Debatable.  I was listening to a podcast with the Twitter boss, Jack Dorsey, this morning, and he said the above was his favorite quote.  I think we COULD almost always, "be the unexpected", but then if we always are trying do that, people will expect unexpected things from us, and then it would just be contrived, disingenuous, and meaningless.

How about, "...and when you can, be, unblushingly, yourself."  Cause damn it, that's often hard enough.  We got enough show boats in this world, what we really need, are real people, and the more real we are, the more different and "unexpected" I expect us to often be; in a genuine fashion of coarse.

Why I hate loving Dave Ramsey

I have grown to love Dave Ramsey, which I hate.  It has taken me a long time to acquire this attitude, because his no debt program makes me assume that he assumes that I'm an idiot who can't manage my money. 

I do realize, though, that the ridiculous simplicity of his program DOES and CAN apply to every single person, and I DO think most people need it..  There is a reason why credit card companies are so darned successful and why they can afford all these "cash back" and incentive programs; they ALWAYS win more than man. 

Just because the credit card companies always win more though, doesn't mean that there aren't undefeated men.  My qualm has always been in the narrow minded mind-set that all debt is entirely evil.  Ramsey's contrarian (in my mind), Robert Kiyosaki, advocates leveraging debt as a wise tactic, namely through Real Estate. 

Real Estate is the bread and butter of practical investing, in my book.  Yes you can have hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgage debts, millions for that matter, but if you have a good cash flow on your rents, even in a bad market, how is this debt evil?  Not only do my rents satisfy the debt, not only do my rents build equity and my net worth, but once the mortgage is paid, I'm still getting paid all the more.  This does not seem evil, in my book.  It seems more like the epitome of practical wisdom, even if you have a student loan or a car payment. 

I'm not saying by any means leveraging debt is a wise route for everyone, I'm just pointing out the mere fact that not everyone has a problem paying bills on time and buying too much impractical crap.

Loud Silence

My house is silent right now, which is actually, quite profound. 
There has been "white noise" from a water pump thingamajig running in the basement for the last week straight. 
When I first heard the noise last week, I thought it was odd, but after a while, even though the noise was still there, I couldn't even hear it.
Now that the noise has seemed to cease, the quietness of my house seems so profound to me. 
The silence is so loud, I can feel the peace.

I wonder what else is in my life that I cannot hear that is keeping me from hearing..

Balancing Balance

So many seemingly meaningful issues in life seem to resolve with needing to be viewed with "balance".  Sometimes this is frustrating as such a resolution is so inconclusive.  I feel like this balance is wise, but can often make one feel they are sitting on the sidelines of life while the unbalanced players have something to fight for.  I suppose a good way to think of it is that if every coin has 2 sides, if you can see both sides, you've got the whole coin; that is, until you have REALLY got something worth fighting for, then it's time to cash in.