passion

"Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is wretched, for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle...; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin."
-Soren Kierkegaard.

i crave passion. what good is doing things if there is no drive, no desire, no passion in it? i want something to put my energy into, something that matters to me, something worth living and dying for. i find the idea of just merely living to be contemptible. i want something that matters to me so much, that I orbit around it, i'm drawn to it, I want to be one with it. it's hard for me to make God that thing. I want it to be physical, I want to experience it day by day, being able to touch it and smell it and really feel it. i want it to be a she. i want to make a her the center of my attention, seeing happiness in her because of what i have done. this is wrong for me for now though, there are so many reasons. but i still feel this void, this empty space. even in the happiest of moments, inside i still cry out, "but there could be more!"
that voice, that singing, it reminds me every time. you have no idea.

i could die any day, at any time at all. i could die before i finish writing this.
that's why i need to live, to really live.
i can't waste my time chasing after such incredibly insignificant things, like money. i'm not buying into the idea that i need to get a "real" job and try to become "successful" in the world's terms. my need is to express myself. i want to make, to create. music is a passion of mine, one that's been steadily growing. i won't ignore it, i need to cultivate it. once i graduate, i doubt i'm going to go looking for a job. i'm going to do what makes me happy and has meaning to me, and right now i think that's going to be making things of my own free will, springing from my free will. God has shown me time and time again that He is by my side, and I fully believe He will show me the plans that are laid out for me. I think this is the right direction to go.

if i can make it possible, money-wise, i would really love to just go somewhere. take a trip, i don't need a destination. bring my instruments, of course. i could just drive somewhere, stop where there's a town, meet people, do whatever. i'd write about it the whole way. i don't know if i would rather go alone or not. i don't know if anyone else would be willing or able to leave everything for a while like that. job, friends, family and whatever else. we'll see.

i'm out of steam for the night, callin' it quits.
peace.

some good thoughts (sleepy)

pictures from the lan party will probably be posted at a time when i feel like posting them.
:)
i'm unmotivated right now.

i just wrote a short philosophy paper. the guy we're covering next is Soren Kierkegaard. He seems really cool. A Christian guy from the 1800s. He was really focused on the individual person and how people are losing their individuality to the masses. I can agree with his view on things, especially in todays society. I'm not saying that I'm some kind of individual standing above the throng of the multitudes. I'd like to believe that, but I know that I do my own fare share of crowd following.

ugh i'm really tired right now so i don't know if my thoughts are clear.

one thing i was thinking though as I was reading stuff about Kierkegaard was the concept of "be yourself." It's important to ask yourself "who am I trying to be?" It's also important to realize that you probably shouldn't have an answer for that, because you shouldn't be trying to be anyone other than yourself, and being yourself isn't something that needs trying for.

If there is one thing that I'm always impressed with as I learn about new philosophers, it's that whether I agree with them or not, whether they are right or not, they always have a solid position that they stick to, and I typically can respect that. Although I'm not sure if it only seems that way to me because they are all long dead and cannot change their mind, their words and ideas are immortalized in text. But it's admirable that they had a conviction and stood by it, especially when it went against popular thinking at the time. Kierkegaard lamented the spread of mediocrity among people, how we level ourselves and others into similarities. "They're only human," covers the mistakes with an excuse. Why can't we have a passion for greatness (in a greatness of virtue/character sense) that makes us more than just what everybody else is, or consents to be? We can be more. You are not a slave to your desires or the desires of others. You can do what you will not what you want. You can use your will to choose a life contrary to what the masses create as a desire, a want in you.

i'm almost embarrassed to admit that throughout this philosophy class, almost every time we start a new chapter on a new philosopher or philosophical view, I am am always saying "a-ha! now this person had the right idea about things." but then we start the next chapter and I see the holes poked in their views by later philosophers, without the persecuted able to give any defense from the grave. If there is one thing I've realized, it's that no man has gotten things exactly right. For all our "wisdom" and "intelligence," we can't explain things in a way so that they can't be refuted in some shape or form. We are so obviously imperfect, with limited understanding.

As a final note, I think that modern day philosophers, or serious students of philosophy must be either very patient with or very annoyed with the numbers of people who know very little about philosophy but who fancy themselves a philosopher with all sorts of grand ideas about things. One starts reading about the great thinkers of the past and then one starts believing that they've got some ideas of their own and so they start quoting and proclaiming.
I would annoy myself if I were a separate person who was more learned in philosophy than me.

we know so little, yet we think we know so much. i'm guilty of this too.

boy i'm tired, i hope it didn't show. goodnight.

no sleep. no sleep at all.

i'm sitting here in indiana. at indiana university to be more exact.
i'm having a really great time, this is fun.

i've been here lanning since about 1 in the afternoon, and it's not almost 4:20am. i don't plan on sleeping. the drive home is going to be killer. hopefully not literally.

i bought Orange Box, and i'm currently participating in a team fortress 2 tournament. 8v8. we won our first round. i'm playing a medic and loving it. we had dota going earlier, but i'm not so hot at that and the team i was on got pitted against the toughest team here and we lost. there's been a CoD4 tournment and.... i think maybe another one so far. prizes have gone to the winning teams, and prizes have been raffled off as well. we've got smash bros and rock band on two large tvs here. i was banging on the drums with rock band for a bit, as well as playing guitar. this has definitely been worth the trip so far.

my dad called me today to ask me a couple tax questions. he gave me the good news that my tax return should be somewhere around $1500. notice the lack of a decimal point in that number. i could also write it as $1,500. that's nuts! i'm pretty excited about this. i'll be able to get my guitar pedal(s), a synth, and possibly set aside some of it to get a laptop later on, perhaps around my birthday.

i can't wait for band practice tomorrow. i love to play guitarrrrrrr.

anyway, i'm going to go back to the LAN. we'll see if i write anything tomorrow night after getting home. i might just fall into bed and forget everything.

i'm happy.
i wish facebook wouldn't tell me things i didn't want to know.
but i'm doing good. farewell.

untroubles and singalongs

so. things are going great. i like it.

i haven't done much deep thinking lately. in part because my mind hasn't been troubled really. that's nice.

today was sweet, i don't even feel the need to recap it. tomorrow i'm driving down to indiana for a lan war and chillin with some homies that i met at GDC. should be an awesome time! i can't wait.

today while driving home from work, i took my camcorder in the car with me. i turned it on, set it in the seat next to me, facing nothing. i then proceeded to blast The Fall of Troy and sing/scream along with it. this was just for my own personal use because i was curious as to what i sounded like screaming. to be honest, i think i was pretty dece at the screaming, which i was proud of. the rest.... well, i laughed. and so, i figured that i could give other people a laugh too by publishing this super awesome content on the internet.

if this gets a good response, maybe i'll do a series of these videos, where i just tape myself singing along (badly) to random songs while i'm driving. might as well do something productive with my driving time, other than driving that is.

but yeah. i don't exactly have all the words memorized to the songs i sang, which is quite obvious in the second one. that only makes it more funny. the end is really good though, if you don't stick around for it, at least skip to it. the end has better effect though if you watch it all the way through.

oh, the lulz.



if the video isn't up right away, it should be by morning. if it's not by the time i get up, i'll fix it when i wake.

peace.

splendid day

i woke to see the sun shining. i love that.

classes went well. i'm making slow progress on the flash game for Mark Kissler. but then again, i don't have the hard part to do so really i'm moving along just fine. sometime soon i'm going to have a meeting with some people from Jenison Christian Schools about helping them make a promotional video. i made a good jump in progress on my own flash game, i'm excited to continue working on it. my soccer game was much fun, i scored a goal! i stopped by home after the game and talked to my mom for a bit, then talked to west for a bit. both good talks, i love my family. maybe the most important thing about today is that from this point, my summer internship is a GO.
yeah! i'll be doing work for Giannii on a couple of his projects. fun! this is just another example of how blessed i really am in my life. so many great things for me have just fallen into my lap. all of my jobs before costco were basically offered to me, i didn't have to search them out. and with costco i just applied and sat around for a week and they called me. playing guitar at church wasn't my idea, i was asked to and it turned out to be one of the greatest happenings in my life. it was literally almost an accident that we ended up adopting 3 kids, all i did was mention an email i got from my aunt. even the path leading to this internship opportunity was crazy blessed. i met giannii last year in california because he knew a friend of a friend and he went to a party or two with us. i kept in contact with him online. i wouldn't have been able to go to cali again this year if it hadn't been for him offering his place for me to stay at, and Jo paid for my plane tickets.

if all of these things have just been "good luck" so far, then i think i would start panicking. if it was all just happening by chance, i have every reason to be afraid of when that luck is going to "run out." i'm glad i know and can rely on the fact that God's got my back. it's really quite nice.

soah... nothing awe inspiring or creatively cool to post tonight i think. but i will leave you with the funniest thing i've seen all day. it's a music video from Horse the Band, their song Lord Gold's Throne Room. if you're sensitive, i suggest avoiding listening to the words. but the singer "dancing" and other things in this video had me cracking up in class.



oh! and thanks to Emily for making me a paper tiger! it's much much more complicated than i thought it was going to be!

marching on

today went awesomely.

waking up went pretty well. got to class a little late, but class was good. i got home, and wrote a paper right away. that = productive. didn't have lunch with my cousin because she left her phone at home and i couldn't get a hold of her. another time. alex came by and we hung out with emo. talked about anime, music, watched youtube videos. good stuff.

then, the jamming.

so good! i love music. i love playing guitar. alex and i had some pretty dece jams going. i need to go learn how to play all of F.C.P. Remix and also maybe Ghostship part I. ghostship is kinda long though....
but anyway. lately i've been discovering the joys of delay and harmonics. ambient music ftw! delay is fun to play with, i never knew. this summer... i so want to play guitar like... all the time. i'm gonna try to make it happen. maybe i'll make a plan to learn one song a week or something. or something.

his house was fun. usually if i'm not playing the music i don't enjoy it as much, but i didn't feel like that today. it's good to hang out with those people, i like them. katie's surprise part was after that, fun stuff. had a good time just hanging out with people more out there. played a little wii sports. i beat adam twice at tennis and i won at bowling. i got 6 strikes in a row on wii bowling, that's a record for me. in case you didn't know, that's called a 6-pack. i was impressed, justin was maybe depressed that i won like that.

after the party alex and i went to burger king and got some food. the car in front of me was taking forever to get their food at the drive through. i had this great idea to turn up my music real loud, get out of the car, and start hardcore dancing outside. i was literally opening my door to get out when the car in front finally started to pull away. i was a little disappointed. then i saw adam and tyler come through and i ran out and hxc danced by their car until i was noticed. :)

came home. not knowing what to expect. emo and nick had been planning something to do to me for april fools. i look around carefully as i was walking up to the house. i opened the front door very slowly and quietly. i thought i might be able to sneak in without them noticing me. the door was open only a few inches before i saw something move a few feet inside the room and i slammed the door shut. but not before i heard the silly string. yep, they went for silly string again. i don't have any pictures now, but lets just say that they used about 3 cans on me. those guys... pictures another time. my camera battery died and i don't feel like getting the ones from emo that he took.

but as a mental recap, i want to remember that i am very happy with my brain's behavior this evening. anytime i started to think in a way that would have normally triggered emo-ish thoughts, it only took half a second for me to tell myself that it doesn't matter, and it's not something i need to care about anymore. and it worked, it worked really well. God is good.

in closing, i'm posting a video to a song i really like. this is the live version, if you want to better be able to hear what the song is like, there's a couple versions on youtube with just the music. it's called Cupid Missed His Mark, by a great Christian band named Burden of a Day. I want to see them again live, this time on a stage where they've got room to be awesome like they are. you get a much better sense of the energy they put into it by seeing it live.


Burden of a Day - Cupid Missed His Mark

Disenchanting and contagious, when we think we were in love
superfluous, disengaging, to think we were in love
pointless words, when it comes to push and shove
we're just kids in grown up bodies right?
i am right aren't i?
to think we were in love.

this love is a tie that binds, the noose around my neck
this love is a tie that binds, the noose around our neck
you created me to love so much deeper than that
please let me fall again, i'll never come back

we can fall, just one time
it still hurts, in rewind
you can heal, broken hearts
and replace, with spare parts

i keep my heart in my pocket, it's weighing my shirt down
bleeding through the fabric and bursting with the sound
what if my heart beats too fast?
i'm longing for your still small voice, your still small voice
veins bloom with blue, like roadmaps
we fell against, against our will
what if my capillaries just seem to lapse?
we fell against, against our will

honestly, honestly, would you say those things to me?

get on your horse and ride!
---------------------
i could go on and on about how i can make this relate to myself and situation. but i won't. i'm only letting myself be complainy about things for a little while. plus i'm doing so well that it would be a shame to let my own thoughts push me back voluntarily.

night.

warmth inside

today was real nice.

woke up, it was raining. i didn't really want to get out of bed, but i did, and went to work. work was pretty good, cept for doing carts out in the rain. but giannii sent me a text while i was working, asking if i was busy tonight. i texted back saying to call me anytime. then 10 minutes later my mind exploded with an amazing idea!
giannii has wanted me to help out with some really cool ideas he's got going. he needs some flash work done and maybe other things. i want to help, but i really dunno if i'm going to have much time to dedicate to the project, especially if i get an internship this summer. but wait... what if the internship WAS giannii's projects?! EPIPHANY! so yeah, i talked to giannii tonight, and i'm going to try to swing that as my internship. it would be cool! i would be doing real work that i actually wanted to do. such a good opportunity! we'll see if this works out, i hope so.

so that was good. i didn't do homework again today. i need to get myself organized. i'm really thinking i'm going to get a planner of some sort now. something i can physically write on and schedule times to do homework. i need to do that for myself.

rodd and jas' was fun. i did get some reading done over there. came home and emo and i watched the end of a movie in nicks room, then we watched nick play FFVII for a bit. we made the game more entertaining by adding "in bed" to the end of every line that any of the characters said. good times. i've been hanging out with nick and emo more lately and it's nice.

tomorrow looks pretty busy for me. class, then prolly lunch with my cousin, then hanging out with alex. his house as usual, then staying out there until whenever. things are looking good for me right now. i hope tomorrow isn't a stumble for me. but i am interested to test out my newly established and directed willpower. i've been doing pretty good with it so far.

the video of me playing/singing the song i wrote is up on youtube/facebook. i'll put the youtube video here. i was happy with how it turned out :)



there you have it. good times. love the fam.

i'm heading to bed. night kiddos.