What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we’ve learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There’s so much more to life than words.

– Over the Rhine, Good Dog, Bad Dog, “Latter Days”

Kari notes that fall makes her melancholy and that it makes her husband, Mike, introspective. It does a little of both to me, I think.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately—and with all that’s going on, you’d be surprised if I wasn’t. I’ve been working at getting more things done, and the attitude of action allows my mind to work on a higher plane and sort things out. I’m one of those people who gets lots of good thinking done subconsciously while doing mundane tasks—driving is a favorite activity of mine purely for that reason. [Unless, that is, I'm tired; then it's a chore, because if I spend time thinking, I slip into dreamland very, very easily.]

I’ve been working on “healthy apathy” by forcing myself to let go a little more. Part of that comes from, actually, being more productive less often. As Anthony often says, “Engineers like efficiency because we’re essentially lazy.” I’ve been forcing myself to take time off to do other things, and that’s been a good thing for me to do. I know that I’m a lot happier as a result.

There’s so much more going on in my head, but there really is so much more to life than words.

There is a me you would not recognize, dear. Call it the shadow of myself.
And if the music starts before I get there dance without me. You dance so gracefully.
I really think I’ll be o.k. They’ve taken their toll these latter days.

– Ibid.

The shadow of myself is likely cast from changing light. I’ve gone from seeing myself as a temporary engineer to seeing myself permanently in this gig—well, as permanently as I ever do anything in my life. You know what? I’ve totally accepted it without really trying, and I have a great peace because of it.

I won’t say, though, that coming to that stage of acceptance hasn’t come without some pain and some frustration. You don’t change the way you image yourself without some amount of heartache, while I wasn’t trying to accept a shift in life priorities, I wasn’t fighting it, either. I was, if you will, going with the flow.

Nothin’ like sleepin’ on a bed of nails. Nothin’ much here but our broken dreams.
Ah, but baby if all else fails, nothin’ is ever quite what it seems.
And I’m dyin’ inside to leave you with more than just cliches.

– Ibid.

Even as I sit here, I feel that this whole entry is clichéd, especially snagging little pieces of “Latter Days” in order to help me focus and tell the story. Consider this my apology for being a hack.

But tell them it’s real. Tell them it’s really real.
I just don’t have much left to say.
They’ve taken their toll these latter days.
They’ve taken their toll these latter days.

– Ibid.

It’s really real. I’m staying here for now. I’m even going back to graduate school.

Last night, I got to 3rd & Lindsley before Sandra was to play—with a full band!!!—so I got to have a little hang-out time with Derek. I’d seen him a week and a half prior, but since he was in and out of town so fast, we didn’t have much time at all to talk.

We talked about his new record—which I have, and I like, and am beginning to grok—and then we talked a little about my job. When you tell people that you work in the space program, you usually see a sense of wonderment on their faces. Frankly, I find it to be not all that wonderful at times—I see all the wonder stripped away by the details of the job. I’ll admit that I had fanciful notions of the way this job would be before I got into it.

I vividly remember a day in my old office across the way when I was between contracts and very much bummed out. That’s when I began to decide that this career wasn’t for me. I think that, on the balance, I was wrong. As I explained what I’d spent my weekend doing to Derek, he shook his head in amazement. “I guess I know that all that stuff goes on without me knowing about it,” he said, “but it’s still crazy to think about what all is involved.” I replied, “Yeah, but then I have no idea what goes into making a record.”

That sorta stopped him cold. “It’s a lot of the same things, really, I guess,” he replied. “We build pieces, assemble it …” As he trailed off, no more really needed to be said. I think we both realized at that moment—I know I did—that we both have been given unique talents by our Creator. Regardless of what I think about my abilities as an engineer, my employer thinks highly of them. They seem to think that I have even more potential within me. Who am I to say that they are wrong?

I’ve felt more at peace about things this week since I finally admitted to myself that it might be okay to reconsider my place within God’s Will. I know that sounds arrogant, but it’s not so much me trying to figure out what I want to do as to discern where God’s Will for my life is leading me. The more time I spend meditating on it, the more I begin to realize that, for now, my place is here, doing what I am doing.

It might be time to actually put down some roots. [Stop cheering, Rick. You're bothering your co-workers.]

I got a phone call today that confirmed something I’d been thinking was happening even before I was promoted: I have been asked to take TBE’s internal program management training course.

I’ve felt for some time that my boss has been training me to be his … successor isn’t the right word, because that implies that he’s leaving. Anyhow, either way … work wants me to consider jumping into management.

I turn 26 a week from Friday.

Now, Mark thinks I’m overreacting here a bit, but I recognize this: it’s been my stated consideration that my avocation—church ministry—would truly become a vocation. I’ve felt this way for some time, largely due to the perception that I have been called.

Despite many people urging me towards full-time vocational ministry, I’ve never made “the leap”. I’ve often said that now isn’t the time; I’m beginning to wonder if my perception of those events wasn’t right in the first place. I’ve had barriers—I don’t really want to get into it—thrown in my way at times in terms of pursuing this conception.

I’m really trying to figure out if what I’ve been doing inside the church—being a solid member of the laity, teaching Sunday school, working with UMYF, singing in chancel choir, and soon working on the church Web site—is what has been asked of me. My discernment is … unclear.

I’m trying to decide if this leaning towards vocational ministry was just some cooky, selfish idea. I have no doubt that I’ve been called, but as you can read from the linkage, I wasn’t really called to anything quite specific.

Why is this a huge thing? If I stick here at work, it’s time to put roots down in Huntsville: buy a house, look for a wife, again consider graduate school at UAH. That takes me from the assumption that I’ve always had with my life—that I’d stay an itinerant—and shatters it completely.

I’ll be honest … I’d appreciate prayer for discernment. This has been building for too long, and I’ve been working with a set of assumptions that might be wholly artificial.

I just awoke from a strange dream. I somehow was the lead prosecutor in a trial seeking to convict the killer of Medgar Evers. Far from reality, Medgar’s brother, Charles, was frail and ill and near death at the time of the trial. I remember hugging a diabetic and now blind Charles—played by Morgan Freeman—and whispering quietly to him, “Hold on, Charles … we’ll bring him to judgement. Stay with me.” I remember asking him, “You’re so weak, Charles. Sit down.” He replied, “If I sit, I won’t stand up again.”

Then I awoke, dazed and quite confused.

Of course, it didn’t happen like this at all; Byron de la Beckwith, the racist sonofabitch who killed Medgar Evers and crowed about it in his racist circles for decades, was notoriously re-tried and convicted of Evers’s murder in 1994. Charles Evers wasn’t weak and frail at that trial; as best as I can tell from a Google search, he’s still alive today. Beckwith lived for seven years in prison until he died in 2001.

The Beckwith trial was fascinating for me. I was a Midwestern boy thrust into the Deep South just before I hit puberty, a boy who was fairly well ashamed to say, “My father is from Mississippi, and my mother is from Alabama,” in the time that we still lived “up North”, for fear that I’d be seen as a redneck, a racist, an idiot, or all three. I feared strongly that I was moving back into the 1950s, socially and racially, when we moved to Mississippi in 1991.

Since I’d moved from a very good Ohio school district [Beavercreek] to a better-than-average Mississippi one [Forest], I ended up repeating a lot of schoolwork because of the varied expectations of students of the same age. One of the very few classes that interested me at all was Mississippi history, a state-required course that was the only one that held any interest for me since it seemed that it was the only new things to be learned in my new environment. As such, I attacked it with zeal.

My class was taught by a Mr. James Watts, a tall, skinny black man with a rich, deep skin tone. He was a Vietnam veteran–a member of the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division of the United States Army. Mr. Watts wasn’t what liberal Northerners might think of when they think of a black man teaching a mixed-race group of students about Mississippi history. Many would think—or so I conceive of it—of a loud-spoken man teaching passionately about the ills that existed in the 1950s and 1960s, railing against the wrongness of it all and laying it all at the feat of the dirty white man.

Maybe they’d think he was as Charles Evers really was—Charles, too, had served in the Army, but his service was in War Two. Charles was from our part of Mississippi, being born in Decatur, and he was the first black mayor of Fayette since Reconstruction. I remember Charles as being a fiery man. As his Wikipedia entry says, “Admired by some, he alienated others with his inflexible stands on various town issues [in Fayette, Miss., as Mayor]. Evers did not like to share or delegate power.”

No, James Watts was a quiet, passionate man, honest and fair, one who realized that all sides in the racial fight of his youth were largely born into their ignorance and distrust of each other. I think that he learned the true equality and brotherhood of man when he served in Nam. Mr. Watts worked some nights and most weekends at the local Wal*Mart in the sporting goods section, selling firearms and ammunition and making keys. Dad, an inveterate Wal*Mart shopper, quickly realized that he had a colleague and a brother in arms in Mr. Watts. I always flew pretty straight and level in school at that age, but I flew even straighter and more level in Mr. Watts’s class.

A couple years later, armed with the knowledge of my new home’s inglorious and shameful past, Beckwith came to justice. I was enraptured by it all—probably the most notorious of all the Klan killings, Medgar Evers’s assassination was an open wound that just wouldn’t ever heal as long as Beckwith was a free man. All the newsclips from WLBT-TV, Channel 3 in Jackson, are shown in Ghosts of Mississippi as I remember them in real life—except, of course, for the interview scene with James Woods’ powerful portrayal of Beckwith as Ed Bryson interviewed him. [I can't remember now how close that scene was to the truth; someone with a better memory than I would have to chime in.]

Here I was, a boy ashamed of my family’s home state, seeing a man brought to justice quite late, but not too late. Ghosts of Mississippi, despite its many faults, is still a powerful movie for me because of all the memories it evokes of my 15th and 16th years, seeing that racist old man finally being brought down.

Who knows why I had that crazy-ass dream. Maybe I’m still living with those ghosts.

I’ve forgotten what I need the most
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
I’ve forgotten what I love the most
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

– Andrew Osenga, “If I Had Wings …”, Souvenirs and Postcards

Rick asked me this past weekend how things were going with getting up early and having some quiet time before starting my day. I told him that it was going okay, but that was only partially true.

On the days when I was focused on the reasons for getting up early—to take time for that relationship that should be #1 in my life, but, unfortunately, doesn’t always get that exalted status—I would have a great day. On the days when I groaned at the alarm clock and listened to my body’s grumbles for sleep, I would have a lousy day.

I’m fully aware that I’ve put a shock to the system in getting up as early as I have. I went from 0645 or so to a good two hours earlier, and that’s a big change, not unlike going from LA to NYC. I had some issues adapting, but I’m just about there now.

Of course, I’m stupid and I focus on that change instead of the larger and more important change.

The lesson, as always, is that I’m stupid.

Maybe if I write that on my forehead, I’ll remember it.

‘Cause this room is so peaceful and this room is so quiet.
And I hate the silence

– “Center Aisle“, Caedmon’s Call, Caedmon’s Call

First off, let me say this entry is not about my depression, even if the song quote is from a song about suicide.

No, this is about changing a weird behavioral pattern of mine: hating silence.

Let me be clear: I have Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder, or NADD. NADD sufferers seem to crave lots of sensory input; I know that I do.

Check it out: seven open windows—although two are of the same program, Firefox—and a nice docked window of Trillian on the right-hand side of the screen. I’ve opened and closed two other windows since I took that screenshot, and I’ve had a couple other programs running at various times this morning as I’ve been getting stuff squared away for my work week. If that weren’t enough, I’ve got MP3s playing in the background while I’m writing.

Frankly, I crave sensory input so much that it’s a detriment. When I get home, I can’t work in silence, so I fire up das TiVo and see what it’s recorded for me that day … and time goes POOF!

…

[There is a slight delay while I answer a small comment from Rick ... where "slight" = "five-minute derail, causing me to drop back and punt and re-rail the thought train".]

…

One of the biggest cases where I’ve “needed” sensory input is in my bedroom while I sleep at night. For the last year or so, I’ve had a radio tuned to ESPN 1450 during the overnight hours. This supplanted years of having a TV on with the volume down in my bedroom, a nasty habit I picked up long ago from Mom. I don’t know if it’s a response to tinnitus; it’s been so long that I don’t really remember. All I know is that complete silence has long been tough for me to deal with as I sleep.

Sometime yesterday, I decided to cut out the noise as I contemplated changing a bunch of things about my daily routine, including showering in the evening rather than the morning. [I've used the "I need a shower to wake up in the morning" crutch for far too long now.] I put the plan into effect last night, setting the first—CD—alarm for 0400. [For the record, the CD was Andrew Osenga's Souvenirs and Postcards. A quiet CD, it's a great choice for early-morning music.] I then used the “Sounds” option to give a windy background at 0435, followed by bringing in the local National Public Radio affilliate in time for the first hour of Morning Edition. Interspersed with the three quiet alarms were two louder ones—one at 0435, another at 0440.

The whole idea is to turn my schedule on its ear, to wake me up while the apartment is still asleep. I won’t turn on the TV for fear of waking up my roommates; I can have a leisurely breakfast while I’m alone with my thoughts and my God. Honestly, a quiet time for faithful contemplation and prayer is the linchpin for this exercise. [Brief pause while I look up "linchpin" to see if I spelled and used it correctly; indeed: "one that serves to hold together the elements of a complex".]

It was hard to go to sleep without noise; rather than focusing on the words of Bob Valvano, I dealt with the silence. The lack of sensory input was startling, but it let me focus on a few things, like breathing. I long ago learned a couple cheap breathing tricks to settle myself into sleep, and when I remember to use them, they rock my world.

The end result was five-and-a-half hours of Really Good Sleep™, which is all I ever need. I’m more chipper this morning than I have been in some time, and I am ready for my workday to really begin, now that my co-workers have shown up.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been recording Northern Exposure for my friend Mark Traphagen. Mark’s headed off to seminary, and he and his wife, Karyn, will both be in school at the same time. Two full-time graduate students + tuition at Westminster == minute entertainment budget. Knowing that Mark loves Northern Exposure, and having come across the word that Hallmark Channel is airing it nightly quite by happenstance, I set a Season Pass on my TiVo before even asking Mark if he wanted me to tape him copies.

When I first started this little venture, I thought that it was solely just one of those things that you do for your friends whenever you can, but I find that I’m being enriched by the experience as well. I watch each episode as I’m taping it, fast-forwarding through the commercials so that I can fit more episodes on each tape. [Let's ignore that I'm only gaining one episode per tape---my engineering side demands efficiency!] In watching them, I’m revisiting the show with a worldview far more capable of digesting the show than I had when it originally aired. I know that my parents enjoyed the show when it was first running; now I’m beginning to understand why.

There are essences of the show that give it a veneer of the absurd—a Jewish, Columbia-trained doctor from the Upper West Side brought to rural Alaska by the town’s rich mayor? A 19-year-old world-unwise floozy shacking up with a 63-year-old barkeep?—but the moral and ethical undertones of the show are deeply moving.

I’m perhaps most drawn to John Corbett’s character, Chris Stevens. The plot device of having Chris playing music and reading from the great thinkers of our world seems a bit hokey at first, but it only serves to underscore the thread that ties each episode’s seemingly-divergent stories together.

Last night, I watched “Things Become Extinct“, where Holling finds out that his 110-year-old uncle has passed and Joel realizes that he’s the only Jew in his entire county. The entire episode is about finding one’s place in the world, something that any viewer can certainly relate to on some level. That set me to thinking about my continuing wanderlust.

Then I was hit with a line from the second episode I recorded, “Lost and Found“. Joel finds out that a man committed suicide in his cabin some 40 years previous; obsessed by the finding and paralyzed with fear, he studies the man’s life and begins to identify with him. Joel’s self-denial about his loner tendencies is smashed apart by an exasperated one-liner from Maggie: “For God’s sake, Fleischman, you’re still in boxes!”

I don’t know if there’s a psychological profile for it, but I am what I think of as an extroverted loner. I have a ton of acquaintances and a goodly number of friends, but I have this strong central tendency towards being alone. I remember once when my friend Alisa asked me how many people had ridden with me in my truck. I counted it out, and in nearly eight years of driving it, the number was scarcely more than the number of digits on my hands and feet. Nine miles out of ten, the right seat holds a pile of junk rather than a passenger.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I began to throw post-hockey-game parties at my apartment three or four years ago, I was doing just as Joel did at the end of “Lost and Found”: I was breaking through that tendency to be by myself and opening up my place to having people whose company I enjoyed around me. Those experiences were highly beneficial to me; I gained at least one very good friend—my former roommate, Todd—out of that time in my life, and if Jennifer Fox hadn’t moved from Huntsville, that would make two.

I think this need to break through my introversive tendencies—mind you, every personality profile I’ve ever taken has me leaning towards extroversion, and anyone who sees me in public knows that I fit the profile—explains why I spend so much time on the [rocksmyfaceoff.net] project. At a time in my life when my routine has me seeing the same people most every day, I’m able to break outside of that and share experiences and live vicariously through the people I know there.

…

At some point, I was going somewhere with all of this, but I find that I’m completely losing focus on the subject as my mind chases tangents. [Common in my mind, I assure you!] Comment as you will, and perhaps you will spark further discussion–or chase me down a tangent.

In the past couple of days, I’ve had reason to consider that I’ve suddenly been thrust into adulthood.

For example, Monday marked the one-year anniversary of Rick and Jessica’s wedding. That day also marked seven [!] years since I’d graduated from MSMS, where I’d first met Rick.

Before I went to lunch with the Kings yesterday, I got a call from my closest friend from college, PJ. He and I talked about many things, including his wife’s pregnancy and another mutual friend becoming a father sometime this week. We also talked about PJ’s little sister, who is now 21 [!].

“Every time I see that AVO Wedding commercial on local TV, PJ, I say to myself, ‘Wow, that wedding was a long time ago.’ ”

“It’ll be three years this year.”

Mom and Dad will have been married 35 years on Sunday.

My brother is getting married next May.

I’ve been working here at TBE full-time for two years, and counting my co-op time, it’ll be five years in August.

The next birthday puts me closer to 30 than 20, closer to 50 than birth.

I’ve been going through life oblivious to much of this. Well, oblivious really isn’t the right word—I have been cognizant of all the changes, but I’d never really stopped back and put a frame around it all.

So last night, I did something uncharacteristic for me—I called people. I picked up the phone and called friends who’ve just moved, friends whose husbands are out of town, family who needed to hear my voice on the phone.

I guess the ever quickening march of time has me realizing that I have to keep a hold of whatever I have.

Addendum: Jeff Holland wrote a similar reverie this morning, and he alluded to Andrew Osenga’s “I Miss Those Days” from Souvenirs and Postcards. I thought that was worth noting.

People—myself very, very much included—are very protective and particular about their music. Diss it, and, well, you’re itching for a fight!

I’ve been reminded of this many times recently, and I remembered something Bill Simmons recently wrote:

See, this is why I never write about music — you can have strong opinions about sports and movies, but when you bring music into it, people go bonkers when they don’t agree with you. That’s why I usually avoid opening that can of worms. But in this case, I’m right and nobody else can convince me otherwise. So there.

For many of us, it’s how we feel about the music that well and truly moves us. We probably all have varying degrees of affinity for music, but I’d argue that most of us have one or two artists that well and truly have a hold on our ears–so tight a hold that, when those artists are criticized, our attack response is pretty darn Pavlovic.

I’ve not been a fan of Over the Rhine for very long, but they would come in second place for me these days; first is and probably long will be Caedmon’s Call. [I'm cheating here, because the Caedmon's Call umbrella, for me, extends to both former-CC'er Derek Webb and current-CC'er Andrew Osenga. Please don't make me choose more than that, because I'd hate to choose Andy over Derek.]

It’s funny to me that, five years ago, this list would have been Blues Traveler and Eric Clapton; go back another five years and it would be Clapton and Billy Joel. It’s interesting how that, as time passes, we start to look back and see the faults and failings of our old musical interests. They age, and so do we.

So I ask you: which one or two artists are so essential to the way that you understand and consider music that negative words about them spring forth a violent reaction, expressed or hidden, from you? I’d be curious to hear my brother’s answer to this question … for the life of me, I just don’t know.

I’ve only ever gotten very close to suicide once. I’ve thought about it more than once, mainly because the one time I got close made it a spiritual issue [as if it's not], and, well, I believe in spiritual warfare. Our weaknesses are exploited by the one who tempts.

This is one of mine, I guess.

The closest I came was in October of 1996. It was my senior year of high school. I knew where I’d be going to college [and I really did--I graduated five years later, having never changed my major]. I was in all the classes that I wanted to be. Things were going good.

Then they weren’t. I can’t even remember what it all was, but I know that two seminal events kicked it: the death of our longtime family pet, Buttons [hey, it was my brother who named her, not me!], and the death of a high school friend in a car accident. Those two events happened within, oh, a couple weeks of each other, and for whatever reason, they sent me into a spiral.

I did the typical “What is my place in this world, and where do I find strength?” bit. Of course, the funny thing is that my time at MSMS saw me go away from church almost completely, mainly in a desire to get some sleep sometime. One could draw some parallels to my recent situation, and I think they’d be fair.

I mean, what life is worth living if Christ is not in it?

Anyhow.

I have been listening lately to Over the Rhine a lot lately, if you haven’t noticed. After finally getting enough of a deep drink of Ohio to last me for a while, I finally delved into Good Dog, Bad Dog. It’s also just excellent.

Sonically, I quickly fell in love with “Poughkeepsie”. Then, this morning, I read the lyrics.

Poughkeepsie

I thought I’d go up Poughkeepsie,
look out o’er the Hudson,
and I’d throw my body down on the river.
And I’d know no more sorrow,
I’d fly like the sparrow
and I’d ride on the backs of the angels tonight.

I’d ride on the backs of the angels tonight.
I’d take to the sky with all my might.
No more drowning in my sorrow,
no more drowning in my fright,
I’d just ride on the backs of the angels tonight.

There are those who know sorrow
and those who must borrow
and those whose lot in life is sweet.
Well I’m drunk on self-pity,
scorned all that’s been given me,
I would drink from a bottle labeled Sure Defeat.

I’d ride on the backs of the angels tonight.
I’d take to the sky with all my might.
No more drowning in my sorrow,
no more drowning in my fright,
I’d just ride on the backs of the angels tonight.

Then the skies, they fell open
and my eyes were opened
to a world of hope falling at my feet.
Now I’ve no more or less
than anyone else has,
what I have is a gift of life I can’t repeat.

So I go up Poughkeepsie,
look out o’er the Hudson
and I cast my worries to the sky.
Now I still know sorrow,
but I can fly like the sparrow
’cause I ride on the backs of the angels tonight.

I ride on the backs of the angels tonight.
I take to the sky with all their might.
No more drowning in my sorrow,
no more drowning in my fright,
I’ll just ride on the backs of the angels each night.

That says it all. I am not drowning. I might just be treading water, but it’s not drowning. Not at all.

I think that we all have regrets in our lives with regard to presence. If you feel like sharing some, please do so.

I’ll be avoiding one this weekend, as I go to see my grandmother in the hospital. She had colon surgery a couple weeks ago, and was in a nursing home to convalesce. [Okay, so it's more complicated than that, but that's all the detail that I want to go into here.] The other day, she had a seizure and was taken to the local hospital. At present, she’s unresponsive, though it’s unclear as to whether that her unresponsiveness is due to the seizure or the anti-seizure medications. She doesn’t even recognize her daughter.

The regret that I’d be avoiding? I do not want the last time that I saw my maternal grandmother to have been at my paternal grandfather’s funeral.

Now, I might be taking this unresponsive bit too far, and she might be back to her normal, nagging self in another couple weeks. But then she might not.

To be honest, I never was real convinced of the mortality of either of my grandfathers before they died. With my mother’s dad, he’d battled cancer for 11 years in a time much earlier than the present day; it seemed that no loss of body parts much fazed him. I was honestly in disbelief that he would die when he did. With my father’s dad, he’d had so many strokes that we’d lost count, and frankly none of them had ever been that stout.

I was wrong on both counts.

Never put yourself in a situation to regret not having seen loved ones, unless you absolutely cannot avoid it. Hopefully that’s a lesson that you can learn from my words, rather than having to touch that hot burner for yourself.

When I find a problem and really come to grips with it, I always have this urge to charge headlong at it like a crazed strong safety who sees the running play developing in front of his eyes. Like that safety, I want to charge headfirst into the hole, elude the blockers, and knock the problem’s mouthpiece into his uvula.

This is a noble thing, to be sure, but it makes you look really, really stupid when you bite on a play fake and the tight end floats into the zone you would have covered if you hadn’t been ready to slobber-knock the piss out of the issue.

I’ve been unhappy with the way some things are going in my life of late, and I’ve been wanting to change everything at once. I have a pattern of doing this, and it never really seems to work. I’ve chucked away my old sportswriting gigs, dropped student government, and otherwise done a lot of rash things that, while they made sense, may not have been executed well. I think the greatest indication of that is to know the regret that I feel.

I don’t like regret–it’s an indication to me that I made a bad decision. Anyone who’s ever watched me take on the CPU in any PS2 sports game knows that I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE to lose. It’s just my nature; it’s not anything that my parents did in nurturing. Honestly, I think that in a couple of places in life they wanted me to get into situations where I would experience failure, purely for the experience of it.

It’s dichotomous, though; I hate failure, but I know it well. I’m a broken, poor wretch of a sinner, as we all are. I think my boy Derek has it quite right:

My life looks good I do confess
You can ask anyone
Just don’t ask my real good friends
‘Cause they will lie to you
Or worse they’ll tell the truth

‘Cause there are things you would not believe
That travel into my mind
I swear I try and capture them
But I always set them free
It seems bad things comfort me ’cause

Good lord I’m crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
Good lord I’m crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
(Everyone is crooked deep down)

There was a girl she was made for me
But stood me up our wedding day
And now that girl runs around on me
And she’s drunk all the time
But I died to make her mine

Good lord she’s crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
That girl is crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down

But I’m not water and I’m not wine
You could say I’m just here for the party
With one thing on my mind
Squeezing me and my camel through the needle’s eye

The other issue that I have with tackling problems and failure is the desire to go back and fix regrets. I went back to writing and editing TOTK.com Sports at least twice, if not three times, after quitting. I knew that it was a waste of my time, but it was such a wonderful outlet for my writing. [If I'd had a Weblog back then, I'd probably have never gone back, honestly.] Writing is a drug, and the feedback is wonderful.

Of late, I’ve been wanting to go back to being involved with the broadcasts of Charger Hockey on the radio. Stupid! Nonetheless, my ego wants the recognition that goes with it, and I also purely enjoyed getting to know the guys. It was wonderful to feel like a part of the organization.

It’s know what I need to do, though. Knowing what problems I have, I need to plan how to tackle those. I need to divert my energies into coming up with a coherent plan for things and working on executing that plan, rather than just charging off willynilly. I need to make a stop on this set of downs, but I don’t have to do it on the first play with a big loss that ends up causing the offense to punt.

Patience.

Today, I made it to church. Unlike so many times in the last quarter—as I think of it, I don’t think I’d attended worship services at all in my home church in 2004—I not only taught Sunday school but attended worship. Yeah, it’s pretty ludicrous to be at church on a Sunday morning and not go to worship services.

As I walked across the parking lot from the Disciple Center to the main church building, I began to ponder on this some, wondering where I de-railed. This is a question with a two-part answer. One part of the answer goes back to 2001, when Mom had just had her stroke and I spent many a weekend in that fall in Tennessee. Sunday mornings were often spent at the hospital, and then I’d come back that afternoon because I’d need to be there for UMYF that night. That, or I would have school stuff that took precedence over more time with Mom and time at church.

At that point, I started to strip my church experience down to my service, which I felt compelled to do, and worship, which I didn’t feel compelled to do. That’s silly; corporate worship is pretty clearly laid out as a solid part of the faith in the Bible, and it’s not as if the UMC chooses not to affirm it.

Anyhow, I guess that’s where I got into the habit of not going, or at least not seeing it as a big thing. Before, if school had me too busy or something and I’d miss, I’d get a phone call from church. Yeah, they actually check the attendance at Aldersgate, and if you miss a bunch, they call—not as a guilt trip, but to find out if something’s wrong. Has your job changed? Are you sick? Is someone in your family sick? Have you just fallen away? Wesleyan theology discounts the Calvinist notion of perseverance of the saints, so we do try to help each other muddle through. Presence is important.

As for where else I’ve gotten away from church, I guess the hockey trips I took last season got me out of the habit as well. Sunday was often our travel day, leaving as we would on Saturday night after the game to start traveling home. I often made it to youth on Sunday night, but I routinely missed morning worship.

Some small part of me wants to toss this at the feet of the church and ask, “Why have you not called to ask about me?” That silly part of me is working under the false pretense that this is their job or obligation, which is wrong. It’s their choice as well as a vocational ministry. To be honest, I’m not sure if we’re doing that anymore; perhaps I’m off the list because it was understood that my schedule was kinda wacky.

Either way, somewhere in the midst of all that, I got the silly-ass notion in my head that equated corporate worship with practicing a musical instrument. Where that came into the picture, I don’t know … but it did. :shrug: I really began to see it as some wacky obligation that wasn’t necessary to being a good Christian or a good person. Did I need to be there?

I think this was slightly compounded by the fact that the chancel choir really wants me to be a part of their number; they want me to be an active part of their part of worship because I have God-given talent. Okay, I guess … but what if I just want to absorb it all for a while? Rather than confront the situation, I guess I ducked it.

If I wasn’t in our traditional worship services, our contemporary service would still want me there, serving my butt off. Video, audio, greeting, maybe some occasional vocals … something. The ego appreciated the offering, but … just not sure it was for me.

…

It was quite interesting to go over to church today; one of my co-workers, Dave, was greeting churchgoers at the door, along with his wife. Funny how I can’t ever seem to get away from work?

So I found myself in a pew today with Lynn. Lynn’s probably in her late 50’s; she had her granddaughters with her today. Lynn’s husband “doesn’t do church”, best as I know, so I often get paired up with her for the things I do at church [including service of communion]. Lynn’s also a tenor, and in the times I’ve been a tenor in the chancel choir, I’ve sat next to her frequently. It was good to have a familiar face in the pew next to me today, one who didn’t judge with a look.

After the children went forward and then off to children’s church, Lynn left the pew, donned a choir robe, and went up to the choir. That left me alone … on the front pew … to the preacher’s right side. I hadn’t felt exposed and alone like that in a while.

It didn’t help that Larry spent about 20% of his time looking dead at me as he preached.

But I need to be exposed.

We all need exposition; we all need to know that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Only with that humbling knowledge can we honestly and forthrightly accept the free grace that was purchased with the death of Christ, the resurrection of whom we celebrate on this, an Easter Sunday.

As I sat there, I realized that I’d turned into a Christmas-and-Easter Christian. The last time I’d been to a worship service was at my parents’ church before Christmas.

That simply exposed me to myself—a fraud. This nice sheen of having it all together … crushed under the weight of the truth of how far I’d slipped.

Thankfully, I’d been willing to admit that much in a prayer request slip—folded, so that only the ordained ministers will see it—that I’m struggling right now and need their support in prayer. What comes of that, I’m unsure.

But we must be broken to be made new, and I’m unconvinced that our breaking is a single event. I think it’s far more of a process–which doesn’t make me a process theologian, but does make me a pragmatist. I’m being broken here again, and this breaking is largely my own [un]doing.

…

You’re makin’ a mess
Somethin’ I can’t fix
This time you’re on your own

I’d make it alright
But I wouldn’t get it right
I’m leavin’ it alone

For cryin’ outloud
Cryin’ outloud
Cryin’ out
You’re cryin’ out

Yeah

You’re makin’ a mess
Is that what you do best?
Is madness just a hand-me-down?

It’s anyone’s guess
But I must confess
The performance isn’t that profound

Yeah

I’m waiting for the end
Waiting to begin again

You’re makin’ a mess
Somethin’ you can’t hide
A slow suicide
Just one bite at a time

I should love you less
But I can’t I guess
Only God can save us now

Cryin’ out

Yeah

–Over the Rhine’s “B.P.D” from Ohio

Listening to Karin sing the opening song on Ohio, it’s as if she’s singing directly to me. I’d dearly love OtR at any time in my life, but right now, it’s hitting at a great time, smacking me sonically.

…

I’m feeling more positive right now than I have in weeks. I can’t really pinpoint when I started being frustrated and, well, depressed about everything. The conscious mind wants to point to my grandfather’s death, but I know full well that it was before that.

I don’t know how much that matters; I seem to have figured most of the root cause, and I’ve made small steps towards ensuring that it doesn’t happen again. The temptation is to think that, in admitting it, I’ve licked it … I got a bit euphoric yesterday simply from feeling freed by having said something. I don’t want to confuse euphoria with joy, or even joy with happiness. This isn’t something to be fixed with a couple emails, a couple handwritten prayer requests, and a couple long, drawn-out ramblings on the ol’ site. Far from it.

But these are all a start … a foundation, and a reminder.

…

Lastly, I was reminded of the joy of singing and serving at the end of our service. The choir performed Handel’s Messiah for the Easter season, and they rightly sang the “Hallelujah Chorus” as a benediction today. In a bit of a switch, they offered to have congregation members join the choir if they felt led. For whatever reason—pride? belonging? vocation?—I went up and joined the choir. I’ve sung the Chorus a number of times, and I scarcely need the sheet music at this point. I can sing either the bass or the tenor line, and frankly, I wanted to sing both. I forced myself to settle down and sing the bass part, where I foibled only once. [I'd probably have more issues with the tenor part, mainly for its range.]

But the text had greater and richer meaning today.

He shall reign forever and ever … and that includes my life, which certainly hasn’t been lorded by the Lord of late.

Of that, I repent.

[Again, this entry was originally published as a pass-protected entry. My apologies for not publishing it openly when written; at present, I'm still worried that shouting this from the mountaintops would be counterproductive. You might be mad with me, and you probably have reason. I ask your forgiveness.]

I admitted to myself on Wednesday that I was worried that I was getting depressed. I said that I left work because I had a migraine; that was neither totally true nor totally false. I did have a bitch of a headache, but it wasn’t crippling. It was getting there.

But I did realize that I needed to get away from work–right then. So, I did.

I spent Wednesday either sleeping or solemnly playing MVP Baseball 2004 while letting my mind just wander. To my knowledge, I’ve really only been depressed once–and that simply the confluence of a bunch of saddening events: my dog dying, a high school friend dying, and the frustrations of my senior year at MSMS really beginning to weigh upon me. I can’t remember whether this was before or after my ill-fated rafting trip with Rick where we spent more time in the water after wiping out than we did in the canoe. I haven’t told that story here, but it’s riotously funny if you can get past the Geof-almost-drowned bit.

Anyhow, though, Wednesday night I was wholly unable to sleep. I guess my issue was that I could not vocalize the problem. I inherently knew that I was becoming depressed, but I guess my mind was more focused on the probable causes and solutions than simply acknowledging the problem.

That’s pretty typical for me. I was an engineer before I was academically and vocationally trained to be one; seeing a problem, I’ll jump to a solution pretty quick. The problem was, frankly, that I wouldn’t admit the problem.

I spent all day Thursday mulling that, wondering how to say it, or where to say it, or what to say. I spent Thursday at home from work, again with a “migraine”. If I’d gone in at 9:00 a.m., I’d have been fine to work that day, even with the sleepless night–by then, I’d gotten enough sleep to get me through.

I came in yesterday and pretended as if nothing was wrong. It worked for a while. It stopped working around 10:30 a.m. Why, I don’t know.

I then spent 15 minutes figuring out how to say it. Post it on my site in public? No; my parents have enough to deal with right now. They are strong, and I really hate to exclude them from this, but I don’t need to send them into orbit right now. I don’t admit this readily, but they’ve both had issues with depression in their adult lives. Why I thought I’d be immune is a question I cannot well answer.

But at 10:45, I broke and sent the following email to Stephen, Misty, and Rick:

Hey guys.

I think Misty twigged to it the other night, but couldn’t say it, not in a group.

I’m worried that I’m slipping into depression.

Admitting it is what I need, even though it makes me feel weak, and I never want to feel weak.

But I can’t deny it.

I’ve been here once before, but it’s been a long time. Rick sorta knew me then, but not really.

I promise that I won’t do anything stupid, but … damn, most days I feel like I’m about to just lose it.

And I need to say that to someone, and even though y’all have enough burdens …

Love y’all.

Geof

The penultimate sentence is paramount, to my reading. I am someone who is sought out for advice. I am a source of strength to others. But where is my source of strength?

I’ll be honest and note that my own faithfulness in terms of attending worship at church and honestly working through a prayerful consideration of my own life is, well, nowhere right now. I can’t begin to tell you why it’s not, but I think that this is the root of most of my problems right now.

Yes, in admitting the problem, I’ve now stared to seek a solution. That solution is to seek out the underlying causes and deal with them on an individual basis. The next problem is pretty clear, even though I’ve not said it anywhere until now–I’m just not being faithful by works.

The United Methodist Church asks four things of its members: their prayers, their presence, their gifts, and their service. At best, I’ve been getting the last two done in my work with the church; however, I’ve not been doing well with the first two. I need to pray for my church, and to be honest, I need to have them praying for me. It is not enough to rely upon three friends, even if they are strong ones who love me deeply and are there for me when I need them.

Knowing this allows me to work on solving the problem of presence. I think that’s the easiest to solve–for without presence, I can’t ask for prayers.

Small steps. I’m already feeling myself coming out of the deep hole. It’s a slow road up, but at least it’s not going down.

[A note to the reader: this entry was originally published as a private entry on my site. At some point, I'll make these public. Please understand that it's been hard not to make these public, but I have my reasons for not doing so now, where now is the time of posting. In publishing these when things are better, I am not only providing a trail of my own path for others who might find themselves there, but I'm providing myself breadcrumbs as a reminder in case I get stupid and do this again.]

I’m so tired, I said what I came to say
I don’t want to go again,
but just lay here and dream the world away
You can have all that I offered,
but I’m keeping what I must
and it’s not that I don’t love you
No, it’s time I do not trust.

It’s funny how lyrics can end up taking on different meanings when you hit them at odd times in life. Sitting here staring at my CRT past 6:00 p.m., I hear Andrew Osenga’s voice begin, “I’m so tired …” in a way that fits how I feel right now … at the end of a long work day where I was here before 8:00 a.m., and where lunch was a 2:20 p.m. afterthought—or would have been if my stomach hadn’t demanded sustenance.

So take a photograph,
caust this ain’t going to last,
and I will make the best I can,
but God, I’m praying it’s about to end.

So what if this is the mutable-words chorus of the song … should we not take photos during the bad times? All the photo albums that we see are of smiling faces, full of hope. No one [save news magazines and artists] take photos of the downtrodden. It’s a thought.

Tomorrow will be wonderful,
and it’s sweet promise is in sight,
but right now I don’t want to hear it,
cause I’m still down here tonight.

I know that tomorrow will be better than today, merely because of the groundwork that I’ve laid today. Our tomorrows build on our yesterdays, especially when we’re building new organizations with new [and old] knowledgebases. Right now, though, I’m frustrated and tired.

So take a photograph,
if your’e wanting this to last,
cause you can try the best you can,
but God knows, it’s about to end.

Even the good stuff ends—and that’s why we should take those happy photographs, those glorious spots of glee captured by little bits of glass.

Sleep it comes so easy
and faith it fights so hard,
so come to me please, Jesus,
before I waste another night, my Lord,

Why am I still here? Why am I not in seminary? Why, after an urge to be Somewhere Else, am I now hearing a still, small voice saying, “Stay here a while”? What the?! Come on, God!

and take that photograph,
and throw it in the trash,
cause I have tried the best I can
and thank God that’s about to end.

and I don’t know where I’m going,
but I know that you’ll be there.

I’ll be real honest: don’t know where this job leads me, but it has me here, and so does God.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I know that He’ll be there.

:shrug:

Lyrics courtesy of Andrew Osenga’s “Photograph” from Photographs, ©2002 Andrew Osenga wrote these songs. I guess I could have Andy read this and tell me what he thinks. This isn’t a review at all, but it is a reflection. The theme of taking a photograph as a snapshot in time is a wonderful one—it’s one that Andy did himself with Souvenirs and Postcards, which certainly sounds like a sonic tribute to his Fall, 2003.