There are a different approaches to hardship in life. In fact, there are different types of hardship that one may experience in life. Ignoring for a moment that the trials you, I and probably most other Americans experience are nothing compared to what many others in our crazy world suffer, there are still some kinda crappy experiences that we face in our lifetime. There are different ways to respond when life gets wacky. In my experience, it’s not out of the ordinary to feel more down than up in life. So, the choice is how to respond to such feelings. Is it best just to learn to become numb to those feelings and realize that life is more than living on your emotions? Is it better yet to realize that there are more things to be learned during emotional or circumstantial turmoil – to realize that there is a God, a higher power that is much bigger than my immediate problems? What about starting over – changing the scenery, doing something different in life, something with purpose (which of course poses the question of what is actually meaningful)? In fact, are the meaningful things of life those things that you don’t actually feel like doing…at least at first? Or, is it in fact worthwhile to let life take you to the bottom – to follow a hedonistic way of life to your own demise – only to be brought out of it and be given the opportunity to realize how much God has saved you from?

I feel like I *should* ignore the crappy feelings of life, like I *want* to go start over with some new things in different areas of life, and like I’m *jealous* of people who are able to appreciate so greatly where God has brought them from in life.

I know that there is a good (or possibly even right) answer posed in one (or a combination) of the questions posed above (you don’t need to tell me which one you think is correct). I know that there are a lot of easy answers to hard questions in the world, but I also know that there is a big difference between knowing, believing and living.

My questions for the week are these: 1. What do you find joy in? 2. Do you live more by your emotions, your mind, or your spirituality? 3. What kind of furrie are you?

I had a somewhat strange thought today as I was listening to Mark Driscoll. So, Mark is going through the Song of Solomon in a sermon series and today he was giving us insight into men’s brains. One thing he mentioned is how competitive men are and how much they like to win.

Before I share my thought, let me take you back to my early childhood days. I used to love playing basketball and even played on a small rec center team in elementary school. It was a lot of fun until I went from being somewhere in skill around the top 50% of people I played with to being worse of a player than most of the kids my age. Even my own sister would beat me at just about every game of 1-on-1 we played (no hard feelings sis). So, instead of working on improving my game, I gave up and became bitter. I resented anything related to the “common” team sports (i.e. basketball, football, baseball, etc…) – “extreme” sports were OK with me though. *sarcasm* After much therapy *sarcasm*, I’m proud to let you all know that now I am OK with you playing whatever sport you choose – I am no longer bitter. Personally though, I enjoy snowboarding, skateboarding and running.

Fast forward to today…the thought I had (as I was out running, ironically enough) was that if all guys are competitive, where does the competition go if you are not into sports? At this point in my life, it goes into competing with others in what I know about computers (this is unhealthy) and competing against myself and others with my running (healthy). It would be nice to put more of that competitive energy into running and into wait for it…serving others…what does service have to do with competition you ask? Only that the energy has to go somewhere, so it might as well go to something to combat the unhealthy competition.

Question for you all: What do you put your competitive energy towards? Question #2: Is it healthy to push your kids (especially boys) to play sports?

I remembered what I was going to write about. It’s a matter of familiarity. In particular, with regards to the senses. The workplace of every job I’ve worked has it’s own particular smell. I think that’s takes the longest to adjust to in a new position – the smell. The smell at any new place can be so overwhelming at first. If it’s unfamiliar, that can evoke feelings of either excitement or trepidation depending on your personality and possibly your mood that day. If the smell is familiar to your senses (such as a hint of vanilla or cinnamon) it could take you back to a memory from long ago. Familiarity of smells often breeds peace and relaxation rather than contempt regardless of whether it’s a “good” or “bad” smell.

Maybe this is just a guy thing. I heard recently that a woman’s smell can actually be an influence on how a man feels about her. Maybe this is why women are more concerned about their hygiene than men.

Back to the subject of smell relating to location. I walked into a friend’s place of business and was so overwhelmed by the new smells that I became dizzy and almost had to sit down. They certainly weren’t offensive, but were all so new to me that it sent my senses into overload. So, this is just something to keep in mind. When someone first comes into your home, your church or your workplace, what smells are they greeted with. Will they feel at home because the smells are familiar? Will they feel apprehensive at the hint of something they haven’t smelled before? Or, do I just have a hyper-sensitive nose?

I was sitting in church last Sunday and came up with a great idea for a blog post. Now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was. I need to start carrying around some sort of recording device with me, whether that’s a pen and note cards or a voice recorder, just something to take down ideas as they come up. I just took a look at my phone and it has a notepad function, so that may be a place to start (however crude it may be).

Earlier this week, I talked to Todd some about GTD (Getting Things Done). Maybe it’s time to bring some organization at least into capturing ideas so that they don’t get lost in the shuffle. What tools do you use to record your thoughts and keep your ideas organized?

I started out this election year not really caring much about it since I am not particularly fond of either candidate. However, as time has gone on, there have been very strong opinions that I have seen coming from Republicans and Democrats alike. In past elections, I remember seeing very strong emotions from one party or the other (border-line hatred for the opposing party), but this year, there seems to be hatred coming from both sides toward the other party. Certainly not everybody who is for one party or the other expresses such strong feelings, but speaking generally, the emotions are running much higher all around this year.

In some ways, I still don’t care too much who gets elected this year because I know God will place in authority whoever he chooses. However, the emotional response from others has led me to do a little more online research about what issues each candidate supports. If you are only interested in the two big parties, this is a great website to check out to compare and contrast Obama and McCain. http://www.bobbarr2008.com is another good research website if you are interested in the main Libertarian candidate’s stance on some of the issues. I won’t go into what I agree or disagree with about each candidate since you are capable of forming your own opinion and don’t need one more thrown into the mix to influence yours (and you don’t need another person to hate on when you disagree with me either). The media does a good enough job of swaying people’s opinions as it is. When a president’s ratings go up and down based (inversely) on the price of gas, you know we live in a nation full of people (or if not the nation, at least the survey population) who have an odd basis for their convictions.

Reading through the candidate’s positions on each of the issues on the websites mentioned above and watching the debates so far has gotten me thinking about which of these issues are important to agree with when placing your vote. Since the president is commander in chief, I would think national security/war issues would be kind of important. On a selfish note, I would like them to have a decent plan for the economy, but I’m certainly at a loss as to what a good plan at this point would be. Schooling issues are certainly important as the youth will be our future leaders – some may argue that these issues should be left to more localized government while others may point to Florida’s school system as a counterargument. Then there are the moral issues. Although the “bigger” issues are the most talked about, I think the moral issues are what people get the most passionate about (at least for Christians). The issue of abortion in particular is the most controversial. I’ll just say that I am definitely pro-life/anti-abortion, whatever you want to call it. I’ve thought a lot about whether I would vote against a candidate solely because of their stance on abortion. I honestly do not have an answer for this. I don’t know a lot about politics, but isn’t the president in the executive branch of the government and not the legislative? Wouldn’t it be better to lobby congressmen about these issues rather than placing your presidential vote based on this criteria? Just my opinion, but feel free to disagree.

One last little thing to share…again, just my opinion. Sarah Palin is not the one running for president and she does not come into the VP candidate position with a lot of relevant experience (feel free to disagree). That being said, the thing she has going for her is that she is able to speak without as much of the usual BS that often surrounds politicians’ speech.

If you are going to vote this year, I’d encourage you to think carefully about why you are voting for a particular candidate. Or, just vote for whatever you feel like since the election is not going to be decided based on one vote, despite what the media may tell you (I wasn’t sure whether to put sarcasm tags around this or not). Please share your thoughts in the comments. One last thing…if you haven’t watched them yet, check out the SNL debate skits on Hulu. Absolutely brilliant.

When you’ve been sick and lying in bed for a number of days and finally make it past that turning point where you can get up and walk around, there are a series of steps that must be taken to feel quote-unquote normal again. There’s the showering, then washing all your bedding, then the progression of eating food that’s easy on your stomach until you are able to handle normal food again. Finally, you must decide in your head that you are better and go about life per usual.

I realized today that some sort of similar ritual is needed when feeling in a slump. I woke up this morning realizing that I would not being doing any long runs this weekend (or any running at all). I also realized that I needed to do something (nay, something productive) today. There are many unfinished projects and things in disarray around the house that I decided to start tackling some of those. Here is the story of my day:

It was good to sleep in a little bit. The alarm began buzzing at 7:01, but after realizing it was Saturday, I hit snooze. Subconsciously, I pressed the button every nine minutes until it was finally 8:30 and felt so late that I must get out of bed. I love the fall when the mornings are cool. The nights are just the perfect temperature to sleep under a blanket or two and rest comes easier to the body. This morning, we took the dog to the vet for an ear infection. He hadn’t been in 4 years, so the veterinarian, bless her heart, reprimanded us for not taking him in more often and proceeded to tell us everything that is wrong with Berrie. His teeth are in bad shape, his ear infection is the worst she has ever seen, his nails are too long (dogs’ feet get more sensitive as they get older) and he is such a nice dog that she couldn’t believe we have taken such bad care of him. I just heard “dog”…he is only a dog. And hey…at least we brought him in. They’re going to get him all fixed up though and with some proper care he should be as good as new…or as good as an 11 year old dog should be.

Phew, after a visit to the vet, it was time to start cleaning the house. Just a light dusting, vacuuming and wiping of the counters and, oh yeah…the basement. That was a project I had been putting off for a few months. But, it’s finally finished! Well, almost finished. We got the wrong size blinds, so those will go up tomorrow. But, at least it’s clean. Leigh and I did a few errands after that (dropped off a bunch of unneeded coats, went to the library, grocery shopping (Meijer was a madhouse!), and bought a new toolbox). After all of that, we did some more filming for our podcast (which went really smoothly) and are soon sitting down for some fish and banana bread.

Bored yet? I probably would be if I made it this far in the post. But, all of this is just to say that it’s good every once in a while to clean things up, get caught up on day-to-day things and get started on projects again…even if it is just something small. Hey, we even talked today about Leigh looking into the possibility of working part-time so we don’t get too far behind on everything at home. What projects do you have in your queue that you can’t wait to get completed? Some of mine are: 1. Getting the motorcycle in reliable shape, 2. Ripping out bar and installing booths, 3. Lots of website projects.

Lately, things have just seemed a little bit harder than usual. Running has been tough – I may have a stress fracture in my right shin as well as one in my left foot. It has made it hard to put in the miles and I’ve been debating how much to rest up until the marathon. Anyway, my car just started making weird noises this week. I feel tired out all the time – I go home in the evenings and just want to lay in bed, but there is too much to do in the evenings.

So really, none of this is a big deal, but things during the day seem to add up to frustration at times. I started thinking about all of this last night as I was out running and listening to Mark Driscoll’s podcast about praying like Jesus. My first thought was that my frustrations dwindle to almost nothing when compared to what things that other people go through on an every day basis. I’m just experiencing normal every day life. My second thought was that no matter what degree of frustration I experience, what really matters is what my response is to the frustration. Am I going to complain or am I going to go to God and ask what I can learn through this?

As a side note to all of this, I received an email from Jocey and Andy last night that they got free tickets to the Funny Bone next Wednesday and invited us to come along. I remember when I first started blogging with a paper and pen and everything I wrote was depressing. It was a lot of naval gazing and introspection. I thought to myself, I need to write material that is a little more upbeat…so naturally, that would be comedy, right? Well, I made a number of attempts at it and realized that I’m just not that funny of a guy (and good comedy takes a lot of time to write). I still love comedy though and appreciate it even more after trying my hand at it. I’m learning now that if you can laugh at yourself, your circumstances and even your emotional state, it can make life much more enjoyable. There are times and things in life to take seriously, but there are many times when it’s good just to laugh and move on. Suffice it to say that I’m looking forward to next Wednesday when I can enjoy someone else who makes their living from making other people laugh.

What areas in life do you need to enjoy and laugh more about and take a little bit less seriously? What areas do you see that I to do that more? Please share your thoughts!