and:

i do not look like a boy.

i say fuck shunning vulnerability.

i say fuck ostracizing those who disclose "too much" of themselves.

i say fuck you to those who judge.


i also say fuck to all those who just wanna fuck at everything that's wrong with society...myself included.

fuck does no good, so watch your mouth.

God is love and love is real, and the dead are dancing with the dead...

i'm attempting to let it sink in that every minute i've got has to be worth something...that doesn't mean it has to be productive...just meaningful. I waste tons of hours, especially at work, wishing my time away, expecting to just get through until the next big event i'm looking forward to...

those big events don't really mean anything. I mean, they're nice and all...and it's nice to have something to look forward to. But i'm nothing if i'm not somehow content with every moment of my very unpredictable life.

So how do i live knowing that any moment, even those really crappy, boring ones, could be my definitive ending one?

so now my life can't be hinged on the next time i'm going to see chase. or my friends. or going to africa. my life is right freaking now. ..and i will try to not take you for granted, breath...and i will love the now more than (or maybe just as much as) the when.

+++

how do i love and fully appreciate life without hating, dreading and fearing the hell out of death? i'm struggling to find motivation to really be alive without the urgency and anxiety of mortality always creeping up my spine. everyone's paradox, i suppose.

+++

i don't care about you.
i don't really care about myself, either. i just want to feed my impulses, and i'll put anyone out in the process.

i also want more than anything to be better than you. and i will secretly rejoice in your downfalls.

i hate this.
but i'm trapped inside it.

+++

the goal of my life is no longer to be the best and most prestigious at what i'm doing...it's now to contribute to the authenticity and growth of whatever community or subject i'm passionate about. there doesn't have to be a best. why does there ever have to be a best? why do i have to be the best?

rather than existing to be the best i can exist to foster a community of authenticity and wholeness...and i can accept my faults. and i can be okay when others are much better than me at things.

so maybe, once i've created something or thought of something or stumbled upon something, i can consider it's impact on the community, rather than it's impact on my reputation.

this will take a long time to live by.

+++

frederick buechner is incredible:

"Jesus said, 'i am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father, but by me" (john 14:6). He didn't say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth and the life. He said that he was. He didn't say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could 'come to the father.' He said that it was only by him - by living participating in, being caught up by, the way of life that he embodied. THat was his way.

Thus it is possible to be on Christ's way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don't even believe in God.

A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and halfbaked idea of whom to thank..."

welcome to the real Jesus, friends.

Christ is everything that is living, authentic, wise and humble.
Christ is every last bit of thing inside you that screams for the good.
Christ is the acceptance, the adequacy and the love that we all crave...
why do we dread him and, at best, make him a chore of obligation?

let's open the damn box we've put him in and start being alive, okay? okay.

+++

More greatness from literature:

"...Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: 'Each man kills the thing he loves.' And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far...

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here. "

Thank you, Paulo Coelho (from the introduction to the The Alchemist) for tearing apart everything guilty and negative about my worldview.

+++

God, just help me be alive.

love is a damn dangerous thing...

but i know our roads will be parallel and we'll change each other for the better.

look at me, world.
i am all that matters, i promise you.
my bitterness is justified.
my annoyance with all the halfasgoodasme's out there - everyone - is expected.
i don't love.
i don't care to love.
you usually cater to my needs and wants well, but lately you're not doing enough for me.
my agenda is unquestionably more important than anyone's
and i expect you to set them straight for me.

i am the only real one.
i am the only worthy one.
i deserve riches.
i deserve love.
i deserve honor and affirmation.

and i completely deserve unconditional love.

i'm going to complain like hell until you make me happy.
i'm going to intentionally hurt others until you make me feel fufilled and loved.
and i'm going to treat you and everyone else like shit until i don't feel like it anymore.

i don't control me.

my damn outlet

warning: this will be a very long read. this will also probably never happen again.

i freaking hated this year almost the entire time i was walking through it...so it's strange to be at the end of it and feel whole. these are some things i've learned

- there is bad, bad shit in the world. i'm susceptible to it. you're susceptible to it. there is no ultimate rescuer from this thing called death that most people in our youth-obsessed culture fear. there are no guarantees. yes, this is something we're all aware of...but to live it - and live in spite of it - is another thing. some words of wisdom from albus dumbledore (paraphrased, possibly) "to the well-trained mind, death is nothing but the next great adventure..." more potter wisdom to come...

- to go along with that, our entire lives are lived in tension (thank you, Andy Mills)...the best of us must come to terms with the extremities and polarities of life, such as life and death, trust and caution, destruction and creation. death is life. there is no life without death, which means there is no meaning in life without death. this feels hopeless sometimes because i often fear that everything i'm pursuing means nothing in the end...all my life and potential can be sucked away in an instant by this random, patternless, inevitability. not only that, this means i'm completely dependent on and naked in front of the faults and bad decisions of others, even those i love the most.

- something that usually hits people in midlife is a shift in beliefs about good and evil. before a midlife transition, where one comes to terms with the reality of death, people (themselves included) are inherently good. following the the encounter with the inevitability of death, which brings with it the reality of human suffering, and the reality of human potential to impose this suffering, there comes the acknowledgment that evil is not an outside entity that beats its way into our lives...it exists inside each and every one of us. scary huh?

i struggled with this a lot...i know i'm not in midlife...but i think i somehow experienced a lot of the symptoms of the midlife crisis, the realization of mortality being one of them. i suddenly began questioning my potential for evil - even my capacity to do what i think the worst thing in the world is: to kill someone else - and i was scared to realize that we all have destructive impulses that we must learn to cope with and accept.

i suffered a couple different types of identity crises this year, one of them spurred because of this. the process of these crises looked like this:

i would feel a random impulse, either an attraction to a girl, or the urge to inflict harm on someone, and i would let it define me...i would clam up and get so scared that i was becoming a monster that i'd search my entire my mind and keep dwelling on the impulse, testing myself to see if i felt any further urge to act on it. i probed and dwelt so much that i often imposed feelings that weren't even there. this made for a lot of stress and sleepless nights...and zoloft...and counseling...and a very real fear of losing my sanity.

lesson learned? i am what i choose to be. let's return to Potter, shall we? i've read the first two books in the series, and can relate to the hero more than i'll admit in most circles and conversations. by the end of the second book, Harry's terrified that he's slytherin's heir and that he's in any way associated with evil, etc...one of the things he kept dwelling on was how the sorting hat wanted to put him in slytherin, and maybe it made a mistake by putting him in gryffindor...he almost let that define him rather than defining himself. the resolution of the book brings another great dumbledore moment where he tells harry that the difference between him and pursuers of evil existed within choices. harry wasn't destined for evil because he would choose not to be...we choose what we are. cheesy, cheesy analogy, i know...but it's pretty profound when you think about it.

- with the extreme of death comes the extreme of life. now that death is real to me, life has so much more potential. frederick buechner once said (possible paraphrase again) that "set next to life, death could scarcely fill a cup." if death is so daunting, life must be huge. why am i not living? why are you not? life is so much.

i feel so full right now...my strength of input is exploding and i want to know and read and see and play and hear evvvvvverything. i'm going to africa. it's going to be incredible.

- Jesus changed for me this year. the hell of realizing just how bad the tensions of living can be...and in realizing just how close we are to the most terrible and tremendously bad things every day of our lives brought with it an insatiable desire to find goodness; hope. before that it was never a big deal because i never understood suffering and i never really needed God...all of a sudden, i was seeing despair and evil all around me, including in myself. this made the perfection of Christ the most welcome realization i've ever had.

i now know what it means to love God; to be in love with Christ. Christ is humanity's only hope for goodness. this is real: Christ is the only thing, one, whatever, that can save us from ourselves.

- my ideas of salvation have developed as well, thanks to James Fowler and his theories on faith development. Fowler brought to my attention this idea of salvation as equivalent to wholeness. Christ didn't come to send us to heaven...Christ existed to make us whole, complete...and i can't believe that that wouldn't extend to every aspect of human existence...mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, whatever. i guess this also destroys the concept of a "one-time" salvation experience...there no longer exists for me a night when i got "saved." i have to get saved every damn day...

- prayer is new for me too...i took a healing independent study with Ivan Filby and it was really cool. it's been real easy for me to dismiss the spiritual benefits of Christianity within the intellectual background of my friend group...but i now believe in this power that is the Holy Spirit and i think it has a tangible presence...i think people get healed and i think people are "filled" with said Spirit...perhaps the most important thing i've learned, though, is the danger of "taking sides." i guess the ideal Christian community would embrace both the intellectual and reasonable, as well as the supernatural and the emotional and expressional (is that a word?)...i think those things can and should co-exist....oh the potential of human kind! of Christian kind...

- also, prayer is (or at least seems to be) always a process...it thrives within consistency, discipline and dilligence, and is most effective when authentic. i think a reason we often don't see drastic answer to prayer is that we don't often devote ourselves to the process of praying for something...and we let our "if it be thy will" overwhelm our amen, which really just means "so be it." though i hate to believe that there's a formula for prayer and that some pray "better" than others, it's undeniable that some (like faith healer Agnes Sanford, for instance...read about her, she was incredible...and not a lunatic) have more success in prayer than others...why? i dunno, but....i've started believing what i pray, and it's powerful. try it.

- i'm going to marry chase.

- i am worth something. and i am not what i think others think of me...

- humility is one of (if not the) biggest indicator of maturity.

- i am not solely responsible for my parents' satisfaction in our relationships. it's not all my fault.

- some emotions really do lie.

- music should not be made merely for the sake of admiration and praise...music should be made because it needs to be made. no more playing music to get attention for me...i'm not the shit. we'll see how this affects my songwriting, if i start writing again.

- none of us are completely straight or completely homosexual...i own my attraction to men...but there are some very attractive women out there, and i'm okay with admitting my feelings. and the human body is a wonderful thing...no shame.

- what i am now is not what i will be. i am prone to progress, and i will choose to make efforts to be the most full and alive human i can possibly be.

- when dealing with depression and anxiety, progress is often three steps forward and two steps back. i've learned to avoid hasty towel throwing...


...and, of course, i've learned that everything i've learned is subject to either complete change or refinement. and this is what makes learning worthwhile...thank you Socrates. i only know that i know nothing.

....i'm sure there's more.

unfortunately

i am a flake.