less net/more gross

there just aren't enough hours in the day.

if i have learned one lesson in this my 27th year of life it is that the older i get, the shorter the days become.

i have so much in my head that i'd like to accomplish everyday. i make lists while i'm at work. i run them over and over in my mind. but when i finally have time to get to said lists, the sun has already fallen behind the hills. it's time to rest and reset. time to do it all over again tomorrow.

i'm coming up on 28 in a couple weeks. and i can't help but feel...well, old. i know, i know...i'm still young. i get it. but old is just around the corner. the reality that i'm not going to live forever is finally setting in. you know what i'm talking about, right? the fact that we all know that we're temporal creatures but we don't all believe it. that is, until we're staring at 30 from arm's length. 30! geesh, i was supposed to have everything figured out by then.

i'm running out of time.

which brings us back to where i started this stream-of-consciousness post: time. i've never been a very good manager of it. i do a real bang-up job of managing just about everything else. but time? time has always been elusive. for some reason, my mind has always been able to trick me into thinking i have so much of it available. it's probably why i push things off like there's no tomorrow, or--more correctly--like there are many of them. i just haven't been able to convince myself that there are limits to the length of each day.

about a year ago i began living on a budget. it was a struggle at first, but i feel like i've truly gotten to a place where i've reigned in my finances. i keep track of every single purchase i make, so thus, i have to think about every purchase i make. and mentally note how much money i could've saved rather than spent.

i'm declaring that 28 is the year that i start budgeting my time. taking note of where i could be investing time instead of wasting it. using it for constructive and creative things, rather than things i can't remember at the end of the day.

example: one activity that wastes a good bit of my time during the week is working out in my parent's basement. i don't enjoy it but i do it because i sit on my arse for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 230 some-odd working days a year (that's about how many there are, if you ever wondered). so running on the elliptical is my equalizer. recently, i decided i kind of hated being trapped in the basement on beautiful fall & summer days. so i started running outside. my knees, however, decided they did not like running outside. so i decided to turn to a more "knee-friendly" option: cycling.

first i started on a schwinn i bought at walmart last year ("you think that's a schwinn?!?" sorry, movie quote). well, that wasn't so fun. i made it probably 10 miles each time before i realized that the schwinn wasn't going to do the trick. so i figured i might as well just dive in head first and i wound up buying a legit all carbon fiber road bike, to the tune of about $1000 (not that much for a good road bike, by the way). it was a purchase that didn't sit so well with my aforementioned squeaky budget, but did sit well with my aforementioned squeaky knees. so, i deemed it a worthy investment.

next, i bought a helmet and some gloves. then some pedals. and then a tire pump. and then, the kicker...bike shorts. which, i guess, makes it officially official. but i don't mind since it's something i'm doing that's not a complete waste of time. i'm not cooped up in a basement working out. i'm not at home on the weekends watching the browns implode, or building up a parallel universe browns team on xbox, or venting frustration at the epic failures of my weekly fantasy football matchup. no, i'm out in nature, usually with friends, enjoying creation and getting in shape at the same time.

of course, winter is coming. and with it, not much cycling. but i've started making more lists of things that i can do to budget my time wisely. here are a few:

• get back to writing & recording music
• learn how to actually play guitar (instead of cleverly guessing every week)
• spend more time reading/less time surfing
• write thought-provoking things (maybe in a blog post now & again)
• spend quality time with quality people
• become my niece's favorite uncle
• always find time to help friends (and strangers)
• figure out what the heck i'm doing with my life before 30

i suppose if i've learned one thing in my 27 years, it's that i still have a whole lot left to learn.

maybe i'm not so old after all.

a new adventure in blogging

in the hopes of keeping things fresh(er) on this site, i'm launching a new little page on here i'm calling "notes to self" (see top bar for the page conveniently titled, "notes").

in it will be short blurbs that i think of throughout the day that aren't quite 1,000 word post worthy. some might be funny, others might attempt to be funny but fall horrifyingly short. i guess you'll be the judge.

until my next ridiculously long entry...

a new carbon footprint

confession: i'm one of those wierdies who goes grocery shopping once every week.

what can i say? i like my fruit and milk fresh. so sue me.

i usually go on a set day (monday or wednesday) and i normally get the same list of things. the folks at buehlers probably think i'm a little off. and that's always what i'm thinking that they're thinking as i'm unloading those same few items onto the conveyor every week.

one particular week, the particular high school guy bagging my particularly random food items remarked at the hip, enviro-friendly cloth grocery bags i had just so recently purchased. he asked if i got them for the environment. "yea," i said, "just trying to do my part, ya know." he gave me some props and i went on my merry way.

well, as it turns out, i wasn't done with this kid yet since he was also the grocery-loading-guy outside as well (it was right before closing time). so as he was setting down a case of water bottles in my backseat, he asked if i recycled them too. "absolutely," i answered, "i drive by that disgusting landfill everyday and i can't imagine not at least attempting to limit the amount of crap i personally contribute to it's stench". "yea, me too," he replied, "it's weird though, because my parents don't even care. their generation just doesn't seem to get it." hmm, i had never thought about that before. i began to drive away and then suddenly realized that i had just talked about environmental responsibility with a high schooler.

a high schooler.

wow, so apparently this generation really is different. i'm still evaluating whether i am actually included in the same generation as that kid. but he was right, our parents really don't seem to get it. and the unfortunate truth is, we are going to pay for their mistakes, just as they paid for their parent's mistakes, and their parents before them. right now we are dealing with the consequences of the decisions our parents' and grandparents' generations have made. decisions that are ultimately harming this planet. and now we will be accountable to our children--and even to God, i believe--for how we will live while we we've been given this short span of time here on earth.

alright, well that's not even the main point of this post, lest you think i am careening into tree-hugging territory. maybe another day. this whole business of our carbon footprint, though, got me thinking in another direction. see, when you make an actual footprint in the dirt, you are displacing the earth around you. the ground moves out of the way until it has successfully equalled your weight (or density, i suppose) and pushes back. it's like buoyancy, if something floats it's because the water has put enough force on the object it's surrounding that it essentially allows that object to "carve out it's space" within it. if something sinks, it's because the water doesn't have a significant enough reciprocating force to even out the object's weight. follow?

since we humans are "carbon-based" (18.5% carbon, to be exact), i began to think about how each one of us has the ability to leave impressions in those around us (to complete my little analogy). some are positive, some negative. which made me realize, it's not just an ability. it's actually a responsibility.

and so, this is where i probably need to make another confession: lately i've felt like i've been a fairly significant non-force on those people around me. it started a few years ago, i suppose. i had this nice little string of setbacks that i felt like God could have handled a little better. i mean, c'mon God, get with the program, right? so, layer by layer, i started to remove myself from responsibility. i was burnt out and needed a break, and i didn't feel that worthy to be displacing any part of myself into other people anyways. i felt like i didn't have any significant forces lifting me up, so how could i reciprocate that in someone else?

all the while, the years kept ticking off and that significant force still hadn't made itself known. i kept praying that i would come back around like i always tended to do. or that God would himself lift me from the depths my little stone of a life sunk to. i kept waiting. and kept sinking.

then i remembered there's this other property to buoyancy. see, water has a tendency of making heavy objects feel lighter. even if a rock sinks, that rock has become lighter just by the simple fact that it's immersed in water. so while i don't feel all fancy free and floating above life's troubles all the time, i do feel lighter. each new day, i discover a little more of God's grace and as a result i discover a little bit more that i can impress onto another person.

it was then i realized that i was going to have to be the one to take that first step. i had to make that initial push before there could be reciprocation. the dirt can only push up against the sole of the shoe after the shoe has pushed into it. after that, it's just nature. it's just physics and dirt. it works itself out.

to live unto yourself is to not really live at all. so then, what are we doing if we're not displacing ourselves on those who surround us everyday? if we're not impressing our very souls on a new and coming generation, then we're not really changing anything. but if we do our part, the rest will take care of itself. we don't have to change the whole world, after all. we just have to change our own.

sometimes i wonder if recycling my plastic bottles and using my new little grocery bags really makes that much of a difference in such a big, big world. but then i think about that high school kid.

and then i think about footprints.

p.s. - this was my "hurry-and-get-a-post-in-before-the-end-of-the-month" entry, in case you were wondering.

leaving/staying

sometimes you just need to go where nobody knows your name.

recently for me, that place was southern california.

california, that lovely land where the humidity stays thin but the dreams are thick enough you can cut them with a knife. it's an enchanting place. like a siren on the beach, drawing you in closer and closer only to leave you dashed across her shores.

los angeles is a maddening city. this is my fourth trip to so-cal and the only time i've rented a car. if the cost of living didn't keep me away from LA, the traffic definitely would. my main reason for braving the insanity this time was to visit my good friend joe who is trying to have a go of this whole "making it big" thing in hollywood. we both agreed that if you weren't pursuing a dream in this crazy city, you'd be right mad to only subsist here.

so, in the interest of being true to our country-boy roots, we absconded and headed north up the coast in search of inner reflection and a few worthy tales to tell. we straddled the PCH for several hundred miles and touched down in malibu, ventura, san luis obispo and a few other exotic locales (to us, anyways). it was refreshing and dare i say, enlightening. i think the pacific coast has a way of engendering such notions in we common, landlocked folk.

before i left, i started reading donald miller's through painted deserts. at one point he talks about the need to leave what is familiar before you can truly see your situation in life for what it is.

It's interesting how you somtimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal.

i've found that i need these little retrospectives now and again. it reestablishes my place in life. it re-formats my mind and resets my defaults back to zero. back to where they no doubt should be. life is too big and too fast for us to let it slip by without absorption.

i think we could all use a good trip up the coast when we start to feel ourselves losing grip on things. just a simple excursion where you don't give a thought to where you're going or when you get there. a chance to just appreciate the journey for what it is and let the destination figure itself out.

just don't get any funny ideas about actually staying there.

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pictures from my aformentioned california adventure are available for viewing here.

i'm a mac.

i've officially converted.

last week i became the proud owner of a 24" iMac. this screen is larger than life, friends. i don't even know how i'll begin to find things to fill up it's 2,304,000 pixels of glorious color.

i've got a few ideas, though.

i know i'm several years behind in the mac fad. i've historically lagged behind the trends. i got a super nintendo when nintendo 64 came out, for instance. i didn't get an ipod until 2006 (yes, that is in the current century). and i still don't have an iphone. get with the program, eh? well, my contract is up next year.

one apple at a time, folks, one at a time.

i'm 27 years old...and i am now a mac.