the death of the shopping list

one month felt like six.
nothing lasts forever. except for things that last forever.
what I'm getting at - I'm in a whole new place than I was in December.
it-is-unreal.

jilted/colored/speechless/dry/wide-eyed/new set of tracks.

I'm taking this one step at a time. Very slow baby steps.
The future starts now, congratulations. You won't even believe it - because I don't even know it either.

And it's just like me in perfect fashion to expect somewhere else without stepping in faith.
I need to trust God, a lot more. A lot.

Not even one whole month and my world is dramatically changed.
God moves in mysterious, sometimes swift, ways.

I had a dream that I wrote a song, and I woke up and played it, and it sounded great.
Writing music while I'm not doing anything is the most productive I've been with music in a while.

To my discredit, I had an old sea captain's heart, because I thought my world was flat. My eyelids twitch and roll heavily, but pressing hard for a good kind of tired is so worth it. I'm spending my life doing the things I want to do, that are meaningful and life changing.

My life is changing. God is doing it. I'm witnessing it. The magnifying glass is now turned on, and I've got to give all my cracks to God.

it's that thing where your eyebrows scrunch up in surprise, and your heart starts to patter swiftly.
it's a game changing year.

a little bit specific, a little bit selfish

i know precisely how i would like something to go. where my problem lies, is in accurately communicating said finish line. i'm also willing to bow really really really low for the sake of getting something done, even if it's not a preferential thing. i'll do it, to be the clark kent of everyone's life.

learning to carefully leave my hands open has been a good process for me. trying and difficult, but good.

i'm getting to a point of knowing what's good for me, and what's good for me not to do. a little kind assertiveness gives a guy a louder voice without raising the volume. things are shaping up, but not how i expected. i do kind of like this though. i do.

sometimes it's just worth it to take a johnnie walker black, neat. and a double.

the strangest thing:

I had the weirdest feeling today.

It was an overwhelming emotion that I'll probably be THAT person who is single with a full life in his late twenties. I'll be heavily focused on work and music, maybe other things. I don't really understand any of it. But I do not see myself with anyone in particular in the next 4-5 years.

I don't see myself anywhere else but here. (not geographically, but situationally)

I had the greatest experience today.

It was an overwhelming sensation of direction, positive reinforcement, constructive admonishing and $100 steak. My bosses treated me and a few other co-workers to an extremely nice dinner. One of the nicest steakhouses on the planet. Unreal. Treated like a celebrity; I dare say, a billionaire.

Best meal I've ever had. Absolutely floored by my bosses reaction/reflection to the last year of my work and progress. I feel more encouraged right now in my life - and I don't even remember ever feeling this great about things.


I think my brother will find a nice girl. Hopefully, prayerfully he finds Jesus first.
I think my sister will find a guy, get married finally and have a kid before me.
I think I will be the one who is the fun, single uncle with my mom constantly bombarding me with inquisitions as to whom I'm interested in, or whom I have my eye on.

Anymore, I don't know much more than making the things I have in my life, the very best things they can be. It's going to take tremendous effort, sacrifice, diligence and work, but I am very determined, very motivated and driven to achieve this goal of perpetuating success. Success defined by my terms.

I'm stepping up to the plate to be more of a man, and get rid of pacifism.

I experience this weird sensation with very specific smells.
Some things remind me of being a kid - and how things smelled.
Or when I first smelled something new, somewhere new. Or meeting someone.
Even smells that remind me what being in love really did feel like.
Or that time when you smelled it and couldn't remember it, but just that you loved the smell.

Noses, barging into other things. Taste receptors allowing for the particles of whatever = invade space.

I thought about what life would be like if I indulged in the things this world tells me to: it looks so empty and unflattering. So wasteful and withering. It looks opulent, lavish and elegant at first - but it ends in death. I'm learning more than I thought I would. So much to take to heart. God is showing me a hard line, and it's wonderful to have some clarity for once - to make sense of.

It's finally happened to me.

Right now, I'm laying on a large bed.
In a suite, on the 23rd floor of a skyrise.
On a business trip, being a business man.
I look out my window, after a few drinks, and the lingering smell of tobacco on my shirt.
Jazz music is swooning quietly, subtly through the speakers - the city lights are dancing.

I bite my lip to see if this is real. I keep expecting to wake up to some "senior-year-in-high-school kind of dream". That all which has happened to me is a trap door. And a faux wall. And love was really a hidden passage behind a bookcase. And all the things I thought I knew, or thought I wanted, were merely forecastings of wonderful, blissful ignorance.

This is not so. This, this is real.
And it finally happened to me. Just the beginning though.

if there were only time

Oh to shut myself away, for a day, or three.
To rummage through the pages of many books I've started, and forgotten about.
I long for the weekend of isolation and staying in.
For the rain, the lamp, the coffee and the stack of books to pour through.

I've lost time, and I need to find a place to pick back up again.

#books #life #satisfying

So close, that you can hear the damper pedal on the piano creak as it lifts to break the sustain. Like you can pick up the audio of dust flying off the forgotten strings.

It pierces your heart, like fiery barbs of remembrance. A moment of brilliance.

To be completely honest - those are some of the the times that I feel closest to God. Surrender, broken silence, chords of sonic emittance of everything on my heart. Playing a note that tells Him I'm terribly sorry for my faithlessness, and asking forgiveness for my frequent coldness.

There are so many things I want, and I too often feel marginalized. I don't know why. But I press on. And work my butt off. But the things I want aren't the things I get. And that's ok. I trust God, but there are still plans and aspirations. And all of that comes out when I hit a D#/Gm sus down to a Cm. It sounds sad, but it's honest. And I pray in different ways, but God hears me.

animated/not moving

It's almost one week into the new year. It feels like a month.

Being gone feels like forever ago. Conversations, laughter, drinks, study, prayer - out of mind.

I have this weird sensation of not remembering too much, when I'm in it.

And then there were weird dreams about girlfriends, old english teachers, my bible getting stolen, and getting shot in the hands. I wake up in a haze of confusion. Dreams are too real sometimes, and life is too slammed for any of it to make sense. I think I'm just going to stand by the fact that most of January wont be mine.

It feels nice to be wanted so much - pulled every which way. But some things are pulling too hard; which is cause for a push back. Still, I am going to make it a point to make time for myself and the Lord. Everyone else can wait - I need to live that part.

Here's a tweet I posted earlier:

.


Something for consideration in my own life. Wild.

sometimes there are these moments (like now, since I just realized it and had to write it down) where I step back and see some of the things I've lost, or forgotten.

I'm a different person. But I'm the same person. But not the old me. And the new me is similarly different.

what is done is done

a better life is waiting.
I can tell things are going to change, big time.
I can feel it, in my bones.

Aslan is on the move.

God has reformed me in spite of many things.
God has led me to places I otherwise wouldn't have considered.
God has told me to pick up and move on.
God has charged me with being some kind of "change" to which I didn't have any idea of the repercussions that were to follow and landslide in the forthcoming months.

Good are easy and hard.
I can often quantize good with easy. Bad with hard.
Those are the times I'm a lazy Christian.
And the times when I'm a sinful, rebellious Christian, I am gravely reminded that every time, my volition chooses myself over God. I am in need of God to want to seek God, to even have the want for the desire of the pursuit of God. And I'm saved by grace.

Me, the one whom Christ atoned for, still sins, willingly.
What does that say about the condition of our world. We know it, but to think in terms of sin as a value of choice, that changes everything.

Bad things happen, and they are good. I might die of cancer in the next year, and God is good. My mom might get in a car wreck and be paralyzed, and God is good. Infants might drown in the bathtub, and God is good. THAT is a hard truth. A truth that comes up and is impossible to look in the eye. It's easiest said at a hesitant, safe distance when I can write this in my bedroom. When I can think of all the things that are going on in Hayden's life/world and overplay a scenario to imagine bad things, it's safe.

God isn't safe. But He's good.

2012

This year all Mayans are proven to be fools.

I do feel different, too, unlike the Death Cab song. I still love that song though.
Some personal resolutions I have for this year:

Move out
Get a new car
Lose 30 lbs
Do a more in depth bible study
Go to another country
Write an album
Lock my heart away in a SWISS BANK SECURITY DEPOSIT BOX