A Rant and Ramble

Sometimes I just like to get on here and let my mind wonder and my fingers do the talking and see what comes out. Sometimes I sound somewhat intelligent, other times I'm a blathering idiot, but here I go.

Sometime over the course of this week, this blog as surpassed my other blog in page views. Not really remarkable on either front, since Blogger only started tracking my page views for me in 2008 and in 4 years neither blog has gotten more than 17000 views (in internet terms, that's a very small number of hits per year). But considering that blog is 2 years older and has almost twice as many posts, it's interesting. There' actually a couple of posts on here that have really taken on (in a limited audience kind of way) and I'm really proud that people are reading what I'm saying. My series on What the Bible Says is slowly gaining some attention to, and I kind of like that.

So here's to you, Deeper End of Chaos, I'm proud of you buddy, let's keep it rolling.

I'm not good at keeping my blogs up. I keep making excuses why I can't write. I'm too tired. I'm in too much pain, I just don't "feel it", I just got the Batman game and need to play that for about 100 hours... excuses. I honestly like writing, even if no one is really reading it. I don't write to be read, I write because I think I have something to say and I like writing. I often think that, through writing, I might be able to do something. Maybe not something great or earth changing or anything like that, just something that add to the world rather than subtract from it. But then I never take that step of actually trying to produce something.

But then I saw this story:


You hear about these kinds of things sometimes, you heard a lot of these kinds of sentimental stories if you watched the Olympics this year, but this one really got to me. This dad saw how much his daughter enjoyed this kind of activity and CHANGED HIS LIFE to be a part of it. What excuses do I have for not making a difference in the world? To my family? To just one of my children? The new Batman game? Shame on me.

So what do I do with this new-found inspiration? I don't know. But I want to do something. Write? Draw? Photograph? These are all creative things that I enjoy. I want to PRODUCE something and not just recycle something. I want to be a creator not a re-poster. (I'm referring of course to the Pinterest/Tumblr/Facebook way of reposting and reposting something created by someone.) I want to be that guy that MAKES the thing that gets reposted. Not for the sake of fame or anything, just to MAKE something. But what? I don't know. Inspiration without that spark of an idea is just frustrating.

And then there's right now. I had the kids help me earlier to fix the vinyl skirting on our trailer house. I was only outside, on my feet for a few minutes (it was a pretty quick fix) but now I'm a reeling in pain from my knees, through my back, and into my neck and head. It's getting harder and harder to just DO things and that is so very very frustrating.

I whine a lot about my pain and stuff on facebook. I worry that my friends will get tired of that and give up on me. I know some have. But really, life isn't all that bad. I have a great wife, great kids. A grandchild that is amazing (even though I only get to see him online, and even then not nearly enough), another one on the way, and generally speaking things aren't all that bad in our below-poverty-line-middle-of-nowhere-New-Mexico life. School has started, we might be getting the youngest into a preschool program, the Mrs. is in her last year of college and is already getting some great job offers - things are good.

Except for one thing that is going to be a huge pain in our patookiss. I hesitate to write about it here because it could blow up in to a big huge court-battle thingy. But let's just say that it involves my unborn grandchild and a person that is not directly related, at least in the first generation, and is making vague and just downright weird demands on my daughters person and time. I blew up at said person in a text message and now it could get ugly. Really ugly. And a big part of that is my fault. I acted in a very un-christian manner toward this person, but dang, I honestly think she's nuts and this is my family that I'm dealing with. You don't mess with my kids and expect me not to notice. I'm going to defend them. And that means mean and nasty and ugly, I can and will do that.

Fall is here. Already at night the temperatures are getting below 60. The leaves are starting to change. Saw my first hint of yellow earlier when I was outside. I hate fall. Hate it. Why? One word: allergies. Even with super awesome great Allegra, which makes me feel like like I don't have allergies most of the time, cannot compete with whatever the heck it is that grows around here and pollinates in the fall. It's horrible. Fortunately, it only lasts a short while, but dang, during that time I just want to kill my nose.

I still shave my head every day. Well, not every day. Sometimes I let it go for a week, which makes shaving difficult because then I have to break out the clippers and buzz it down to the scalp, then get the blade. It really does help to have it this way. I know there could be a happy medium between the long hippie hair I had and totally bald, but I like it bald. No combing, no washing, no conditioning, no worrying about "does it look greasy today". Bald is beautiful. Incidentally, a large number of hits on my other blog are from posts I made about shaving my head. The video is wildly popular (in a one hit a day kind of way).

Speaking of video - I have a huge backlog of stuff I need to edit together. It's all boring home-movie kind of stuff, but still... Another one of those things where Batman wins over actually doing something productive. I'm a little depressed that we didn't do more this summer that was exciting and video-worthy, but now school is starting and there's all this stuff that goes along with it. I really need to get on editing those together. But sometimes it's just so hard to get moving.

I know part of that feeling is my depression. It's been better as of late, my doctor switched my medication a while back and the new stuff is pretty good, but there are still times when I'm like "ug", you know? It's just painful to move, hard to feel anything... I don't know how to describe it. If you have it, you know what I'm talking about. It's not so much sad as this.... emptiness... this feeling of nothing, a blackness... a void. Urf, I'm having an episode just talking about it. But you get my drift. It's this internal struggle to even get up and make coffee. I hate it. But I live with it.

I've learned to live with a lot. Chronic pain, constant headaches, migraines that last for days, sometimes weeks....

I'm getting new glasses. Don't know why I decided to bring that up, but I am. My eyesight has gotten "shockingly bad" compared to what it was. My left eye has lost some strength (not surprising given the continual decline of everything on my left side, so my new prescription should tone that up, hopefully. I've lost some peripheral on that side too. The eye doc wanted to give me bifocals, and they're in my future, but for now, since I don't drive, we're just focusing on the close up stuff. While we were picking out some frames, I tried on some "hipster" glasses. We just about died laughing from that one! I don't know why those frames are so popular, but they look ridiculous. We settled from some rectangular lenses with a subtle black frame. Anna says they look awesome. I don't really care how they look, so long as I can look through them. I'm tired of everything being fuzzy. They should be here on Monday or shortly after.

Speaking of Monday, that's when all the college kids start school. It should make thing interesting. I really like the time I had last year with my four year old. Tea parties, dancing kitties, Barbie dolls that knew how to fly like Superman, but often landed like Super Grover, kids shows on Netflix... We might be getting her into a preschool program this year, so I will miss her, but on the other hand I get to have some "me" time! I don't think I've been alone for more than a few minutes since I got sick. I'm thinking naps are in my future.

Well, I'm about ranted out. If you've read this far, kudos, you're a true friend. If not, well, you're still a true friend, I just didn't expect you to read this far. Have a happy!