Life at 3 miles an Hour

I’m staring at another blinking cursor, taunting me and trying to convince me to chase it across the virgin white screen. I wonder if this is how extreme skiers feel when looking at the untouched powder that they long to slash through, making their mark along the way. I’m having some difficulty chasing this morning, but it’s Monday and being the slave to schedule that I am, I’m here in my caffeine portal trying to fill the white with “my mark”. I can’t decide whether I’m being driven by need or want at the moment. After all, I reason to myself “what would it hurt to take a day off?” Would it be held against me? That doesn’t seem to help. Here I am anyway. Is it need or want that brings me here again? I guess that this is the question of a lifetime. In the dawn of time, excluding the cell merging, fish forming, legs growing, dragging up on the beach, growing hair and then walking upright part, when Adam and Eve sat in a garden looking at the apple, lost in the “I’m not going...

I woke up twice this morning. Actually it was three times. Once was an unscheduled response to a bottle of IZZE just before I went to bed. Once was to the alarm and the last was a frantic jump when I realized I had drifted off again after the previous. Late again… I hate being late. At least I used to hate being late. I’m not all that bothered by it as much anymore. I’m a bit more relaxed about it. I’m just a little more flexible as I get older. Learning is not an option for me. I’m trying to go against the traditional tide of becoming more set in my ways. It’s a mental exercise that I have tried to employ at the same time that I’m using the gym thing in a futile attempt at physical rejuvenation. I realize that I’m swimming upstream, but it feels worthwhile. In working with my community o’ faith, I have come to value most highly the learners in the group. Those who don’t know everything are the ones I choose to spend the most time around. It doesn’t really matter what c...

I had the privilege, this past weekend, to complete a project with some from my community o’ faith. We were giving a much needed facelift to a popular gathering spot in our building, the legendary “social hall”. Very simply it involved a new color scheme with some fresh paint. It wasn’t just any paint though. This paint promised to go on like yogurt. I was wondering, how does one know such a thing? I mean do high priced executive types try their hand painting various food textures onto walls until one is found to be desirable? Or maybe, quite by mistake, they have painted a surface only to have the experience transport them back to their days when they indeed used mom’s yogurt for a new creation on their bedroom walls. I have personally been found guilty, as a child, of painting my bedroom walls with a less than desirable paint substitute, although I don’t think that it would be appropriate to use as a new marketing campaign. Anyway, this particular paint was incredible. For...

So I was listening the other night to this preacher guy on the television. I’m usually not too impressed with preacher guy types with obvious connections to local cable companies. I’ve not yet determined whether or not it’s their message, their hair, or just a case of “pastoral arts” envy that causes me to be so critical. I guess that I have formed an opinion, I’m not saying that it’s a good one, that if you have to pay large sums of money to put yourself on the air, then maybe that’s kind of a self serving use of your resources. It’s kind of like writing a screen play so that you can star in the movie. I’ve never been a fan of self promotion. It’s probably why I haven’t published the novel, the short story, or even the catchy tag line that I’ve always dreamed of writing. Like I said, it’s not necessarily a good opinion. All that being said, I have to admit to a certain admiration for this particular “preacher guy”. I’ve heard him on a number of occasions and no matter what part of “Th...