YONDER BREAKS

Back in 2012/2013 I had a pretty long commute to and from work. About this time, I discovered the voice recorder app on my phone (I'm not sure why it took this long...) and decided to use the massive amount of time I was spending in my car productively. I did this through writing songs, dreaming up verses and choruses and then recording them, piece by piece, on my phone. Well, by the time 2014 rolled around and I quit my day job to become a stay-at-home dad, I had quite a few tunes recorded. And don't think that just because I dropped a daily commute that I stopped writing on the road...no, no. This trend has continued to this day. The whole thing got me thinking that it would be fun to make videos and an album of all the songs I have written in cars, recording those very songs inside cars. It took a couple years to get started, but here is the first one: Bleed These Dreams . I wrote this song while driving home from a visit to the main office of the property management com...

I wrote some years ago on the topic of age and expectations . It's an idea that has been coming up again recently, so I thought maybe it would be a good thing to revisit. I keep hearing, "I'm so-and-so age and I haven't done so-and-so," typically centered around the milestone of turning thirty. I can't say I'm not immune to this thinking though, as life certainly hasn't turned out the way I planned ten years ago. My career is pretty much non-existent. Actually, the whole idea of having a career has been slowly flying out the window before me. I think this is something God has been bringing me through personally, so I don't want to make any comment on careers here; but really just dealing with this idea of believing I would have hit a certain milestone by this point in life is tough. My struggle is career, for others it's relationship status or having kids... Actually, I can't really think of any other milestones that come up in convers...

Let's talk about boldness. I haven't been much for boldness, evidenced by my dating track-record. First was the girl I never called because I was afraid my parents would find out I had a girlfriend (they didn't care). Then there was the one who I was not bold enough to ask out, but rather told a friend who knew her to spread the word that I had a thing for her. She came up to me at lunch one day, and the rest is history. That is, until I got tired of her and, not being bold enough to actually break up with her, was just mean to her until she brought up the subject. My lack of boldness continued through college until I met my wife, where I was still not so bold as to ask her out, but kept hinting at it until we decided to have the DTR (define-the-relationship). Things worked out with her, but I still have a ways to go... In scripture though, it seems that God rewards boldness. Jesus said in Matthew 11:12 , "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kin...

It's been a hard year. A rude awakening of sorts. A lot of work, not much pay. No time. Out of balance. Things are changing, but one of the things I have noticed this year is that this is a common story. I work with folks who devote hours and hours to multiple jobs, and still  struggle to make ends meet. It would be one thing if they were choosing this life in order to afford an ultra cool loft and a Maserati, but most of these people are just feeding their families and paying off a modest mortgage. I suppose there are always ways to cut back, but outside of moving to Costa Rica and living on a farm, I'm not sure what else to do about it. Photo by Don C. So one day I'm standing on the ramp at the airport (one of my jobs) and watching a plane get ready to take off. By my side are these same men and women that are barely scraping by. In front of me is a sleek travel tool, man's invention. To operate it takes thousands of guys like us, wearing our hands and backs d...

I was in the middle of a 20-day work streak, tired and ready to have a day off with still a ways to go. But sometimes good things come to those who wait, and though I wasn't expectant, one good thing just popped up -- my company gave me an unexpected day off for Good Friday! Awesome! I had a choice though -- my boss said I could work the extra day if I needed the money (really it's a small staff, and I know she wanted the help), which normally isn't terribly tempting for a guy like me, but we could have certainly used the money, and it would have likely been the responsible thing to do. But if you read this blog at all, you know me -- I rarely choose money over time -- and so I declined. As I entered the blessed 24 hours of no work, I wondered if I had made the right choice. It only took about 20 minutes to come up with the answer to that question...YES! I had breakfast with my wife and kids, went to the beach, surfed a little (until I saw a gnarly looking jellyfish), h...