Art?

I started drawing today. I thought I would put them here so I don't bother more people I know with e-mailing them out.

One to Remember, One to Forget

This Christmas is turning out to be a real treat. Our tree was put up early, albeit in minimalistic fashion. The lights are strewn about our living room. The kids have written Santa with their short but specific lists. The stocking are hung above The Bookcase of a Thousand National Geographics. The wife and I finished our shopping for the kids the week before Thanksgiving.

So far this year we have visited Christmas Tree Farm for holiday biscuits, homemade syrup, and bluegrass. We just got back from seeing Santa on Rudy the KCS Holiday Train. Saturday the kids and wife went to the Christmas street parade, Christmas boat parade, and Christmas fireworks. We even went to the Advent workshop at our church.

We are traveling to the Zoo Holiday Light Safari next week. We are going to the Cajun Village light display. We will be lighting candles in church for the 4th advent Sunday and we are topping it off with a visit to the Star Wars exhibit at the planetarium. Okay so the last thing does not really fit but to 8 and 3 year olds it makes perfect sense. It is the first Christmas the 3 year old will understand and maybe the last one the 8 year old will attribute to Santa. This is a unique year.

As a kid any one of those things would have been the highlight of the year. We always had a big Christmas tree and lots of presents but we never went anywhere. The first not-on-TV Christmas parade I ever saw I was a participant in a JROTC armed drill team. Things and stuff were always supposed to substitute for not being involved in things and the lack of doing stuff. I am just the opposite with our kids. I would rather have experiences with my kids than to buy another gadget.

My soon to be 9 year old has flown in a Vietnam War era "Huey", a Cessna 172 and has camped out on a WWII warship and visited 8 states. I hope to continue to be able to offer him and his little brother opportunities that you just can't replace with plastic toys. He has Legos and other toys but we value experiences and exploration over toys.

All of this points to the fact that 13 years ago was the worst Christmas I have ever experienced. Death and Christmas don't go together well at all. The pictures from that year tell the tale better than I could write it. Maybe this year will start new and happy traditions that my boys can carry forward for years to come.

Turkey time

I just passed by the Bestbuy and there were people huddled in the rain at 9pm. They had collected the shopping carts and set them on end and attached a fema blue tarp to form a black Friday bargain shanty. There are very few things in that store that I would want on a normal day but absolutely nothing in there I would want bad enough to camp out for. It is not for me. I hope those people get what they are looking for.

I realize that I am going down the lifestyle road that many people would never consider. I want to be debt free and unencumbered by clutter. It is like the sculptor describing his process as one of taking away any stone that did not look like the statue he had in his mind. I have an idea of what I want things to look like and I am trying to rid myself of the things that don't fit there.

I have spent the day talking to people that want to upgrades in their life. They want complexity and insanity all around them. I want as few internal combustion engines in my life as I can get away with. My span of control has been shrunk by my experiences of the last 18 months and I don't know if I will recover to normal again. The spinning, thrashing, whirling knobs and whistles of the Jone's society deter me from keeping up with them and in fact make me feel sorry for them a little.

I don't judge the stuff loving masses. It doesn't hurt me. They likely see me as some sort of uncluttering zealot unsuccessfully looking for internal peace by calming my physical surroundings. Everyone needs a hobby.

The Next Sound You Hear

I am shedding the weight of the worthless years. I am shredding and throwing out what is left here in my home office. I need to use a big commercial shredder. I have loads of hard drives to destroy.

I am looking at the objects around me in a new light. I don't want anyone to have to go through these boxes of old bills and legal pads trying to apply meaning to my random stacks of paper when I am done. I want to shed and or shred all but what I have to have. The noise you'll hear is the crashing down of hollow years and a small shredder.

I am letting go of more than just doo-dads and papers. I am letting go of the organizations and side projects that have defined my adult life. The days of me completing my BA degree, working a full time day job, working a side job 4 nights a week, and volunteering in multiple capacities at multiple echelons of command are dead and gone. Work obligations and my immediate family duties are what will remain after the purge.

I never thought that I would be here at this place so soon. I thought I had a few more years left in me. All of the projects and plans left jagged and failed. I have wasted so much for so long.

I can't really say I saw this ending any differently. Random instances of all-to-brief and utterly irrelevant success define my last 13 years. I once thought that my experiences were shaping me into a leader or perhaps guiding me to fulfill my potential but... nope. Not at all. Nothing of the sort. As it turns out I was mistaken.

That double trash can investment is really paying off here lately.

Questions of Representation

What do you represent? What do people know about you when you enter a room? Not what they think of you but what do they have faith in when you appear? Are they afraid or are they excited? Do they know that you are here to do something of worth or something that will simply end badly?

Thinking that you can savor a good response or alter a poor one is foolish. The same is true of our understandings of people we meet and deal with. They may not be in the same place you left them last. You have to accept that there are variables at work that fall beyond our scope of knowledge.

Lately I have found myself stepping left or right of where I would normally have stood metaphorically. I suck at chess because my ability to project beyond the here and now is very poor. Lately I have found myself trying to think beyond my next move. Don't get me wrong, if I were a strategist and not an idealist I would have more success in the material world. I am trying to see past the next moves to the end game. I suck at this too.

I am not a strategist. I keep thinking that if I were to plot and plan, map out my path, I would be able to walk with more certainty. The fact is that if I were to look too far ahead I'm afraid I would not like what I saw there. It may stop me altogether.

When does faith become an excuse? What or who is worthy of our faith? When do we finally get to see our sphere of influence from beyond our own perspective. Would we want to? It may be horrible.

The next thing

If all goes well I will have an office to call my own in a week or so. I plan to take all that does not make me happy out of my house and put it in the office. What will I do with all of this space?

I have a feeling that my joy about this space will soon fade away and it will become another brick in the wall.

I sold some old textbooks online tonight. I have been putting off that task for days for now good reason. I posted and sold two out of the three in less than 2 hours. I should say 2 and 1/2 episodes of Heros. I am now officially a Netflix junkie!

Clutter and Debris

I am letting go of the junk that surrounds me at home. I have two trash cans now and they are both full every week. I am finally moving in to this house. We have 5 years, 2 hurricanes, and 1 strike, in this house. The neighbors on both sides are the same as when we moved in. This is the most stable I have been in 15 years of living on my own.

I have not watched hoarders. I am not going through a 12 step program. I am not going through a mid-life crisis. The closest thing I can relate this to is perhaps waking up knowing that I am not likely to ever move out of this house. Some people would kill for this type of security. I feel suffocated by it. The things that don't change in my life are usually intangible and idealistic. My physical world used to be in constant motion but it is settling down now.

We will go to Ikea in the morning to buy some organization stuff. Nothing to fix my storage issues mind you but to fix kid storage issues.

I am waiting for the right opportunity to present itself for me to get moved into a "workshop". There are few rental opportunities that offer the type of security, access, and price that I am looking for. This is a fight for another day.