In Which the Protagonist(?) Muses About Stuff

Wow, there's pretty much nothing on my mind today that I want to blog about.

[Mind-wandering starts here]. I've done some work on a video project for one of my classes which involves writing a piece of music. And I miss it. I started writing music with Garageband on my Macbook almost from the first day I got the machine, and it's consistently been one of my favorite uses. Granted, it's all pretty much canned instruments, but I enjoy it a lot. I even put together a cover track for a parody with some college friends.

I also miss writing a lot. I have this tendency to stay up till 5:00am writing when I'm on a roll, and that's not really something I can do when I have stuff to get up for every morning. I also have a bad habit of both overestimating the time I have to get things done and underestimating my ability to accomplish necessary things in that time frame.

What's useful about doing this daily blogging thing is that it forces me to sit down every day and do some writing, even if it's not particularly good writing. I do have to say that the idea for this came both from relatively faceless internet sources (read: articles by writers) and from my friend Evan, who now co-writes a blog over at Culture War Reporters. In the last few years he's started up a few blogging projects, including one that involved a specific time period during which he obliged himself to blog about something every day. Sound familiar?

That's about all. As a parting note, if you've never heard of Tobuscus or doubt his inhuman levels of awesome, watch this video. And if you've never heard of Minecraft or don't like that, you're a lost cause, and most everything I say on this blog is probably boring or annoying to you.

Shrugging off.

Bringing an Infusion of Confusion to the Table

I am a man.  I know this as a legal fact.  I am eighteen, voting in this year's "election" and capable of such radical new activities as marriage and the Selective Service.  Yet somehow I cannot tell whether I am truly a man.  So many of my behaviors seem merely vestiges of childhood and the purgatory American culture calls "adolescence."

I suppose the source of my perturbed spirit is that I am still in this awkward stage where I have not taken on the full responsibility for my own life.  Fear still clutches me, whispering that I may not be strong enough, not qualified enough to take on the responsibility that barrels towards me like a freight train.  More brain-scattering is that at this period in my life time has chosen to move at a sluggish pace.  I am aware in time's normal progression, but my reactions are limited to the same rate relative to which the inexorable behemoth's approach.  I can see the coming collision but can do nothing to throw myself aside.  My only hope is to find some way to brave the impact, to ride on it and conquer it and make it my steed.

Indeed, too many men cannot see the weight of their responsibility as at the very least a catapult into their goals.  All things may be means to an end.  I for one believe in manipulating the means so that they match the end.  If this means changing a "necessary" killing into the kind reconciliation found almost exclusively in fantasies, then so be it.  The ideals of fantasy are not outside my reach.  I am strengthened by the King of the Universe.  With His strength I might become something entirely different from this meandering child I have been.  He will make me a paladin.

Let me elucidate.  I'm not talking shining armor.  I'm talking the Grey-clad, the guy willing to debate even-handedly with the best in the nation wearing blue jeans and a grease-stained shirt.  One who dares to understand, to look at the horrors no one else will and do something about it.  Oh, the justice and the mercy. . . .  I'm afraid of that man.  But that's who He wants me to be, and that's who I will become.

But how to get there?  No idea.  Not getting many answers from the Big Man either.  That's well.  The biggest thing to learn is trust.  Best way to learn it is to know He's there.

And go through the trials.

Here I go.