Radio Silence

In my last post I mentioned that I was basically going brain dead between my periods of furious activity on my three projects. This weekend I got "away from it all" and spend a couple days doing maintenance on our lake house. A wind storm had blown down quite a few large branches that needed to be cut up and burned, and the lawn needed mowing. It is nice to take a break from mental work and constant communication and just have a time of silence and hard physical labor.

After a few hours of working my mind began to come alive again. Soon I was going over the remaining tasks on the project in Thailand and how to fold them all into the next couple months, and my mind began working on the Christian Media organization that has been brewing for almost a year now. But then something terrible happened. I had gotten the fire burning, which was no easy task since the wood was soaked from several days of rain. The fire was very smokey. The billows of smoke sometimes cast a shadow over the whole yard. As I piled branches onto the raging fire the smoke billowed even more. Then "it" happened. The phrase "old smokey" popped into my head, then the song "on top of old smokey" started playing in my head. It is bad enough when a song gets stuck in your head, and of course it is usually just one line of the song, and it just goes over and over. But what happened next is truly sickening, the words changed into the childish version of the song. The words of the song usually sung by very, very young children are as follows: "On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed." So, that infantile chorus kept running over and over in my head to the tune of "on top of old smokey," for about three hours. Three hours! I'm not exaggerating to make a point, I was actually tormented for that long. I could not get it to stop! Dave Barry wrote in one of his humorous books that the only way to get a stupid song out of your head was to sing it to someone else and infect them. The "song infection" will then jump out of your head and into theirs. I agree it is not the nicest thing to do, but hey, sometimes it is just survival of the fittest. In my situation I had no one around to infect. I was considering calling the guy in Thailand (the one who called me late Friday night) wake him up, sing the one line of the song, then hang up. I didn't do it but it crossed my mind. The song finally left me, but not without first bringing me to the brink of insanity.

I came home after the weekend of work and solitude. It was nice to see my family. Tonight my wife made dinner, we had spaghetti and meatballs. Can you believe it? I excercised enormous restraint. I could have infected the whole family with that stupid song at dinner time, it would have been great fun. My considerate side won out over my childish side, this time.

Blog Shortcut

It has been a busy time. I am working on two engineering projects and trying to wrap up post-production on my movie, "Spirits Among Us." It is a good kind of busy, but busy nonetheless.

What I am finding is that this current state is consuming 100% of my mental and creative energy. I have nothing left for insights, or interesting thoughts to post on the blog. I'm mental, that is certain, but just not very creative right now (outside my three projects). When I'm not working on the movie or one of the engineering projects I have noticed that I have no thoughts in my head. It is very quiet, just kind of a hollow sound. No self-talk, no debates, no observations epiphanes or insights, just an eerie silence.

So, I am taking a shortcut and giving you a link to my movie blog, here it is:



www.Spiritsamongusmovie.blogspot.com

Overdue Appreciation

I decided that this post was important enough to reference it in both my blogs. Please click the link below to go to my "Spirits Among Us" blog to read my post "Overdue Appreciation."

CLICK HERE PLEASE

Voyage

The title of my blog “Stumbling Toward God” isn’t just an attention-grabbing title, it is actually what I feel like I have been doing most of my life. I try to know God better, and serve Him better, but I seem to trip over many things and I often trip over myself.

I’m still learning that relationships hold a higher ranking than accomplishments. For some that comes easy. For me it does not. It is our voyage that is the goal, not the outcome of our efforts. It is a voyage largely into the unkown. I could be called the stumbling voyager.

Here is an excerpt from a recent devotional “My Utmost for His Highest” that articulates my thoughts well:

“We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.

It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.”


So, I’ve been trying to add “activities with other humans” to my daily “to do” list. If I don’t put it on the list, I won’t do it. Isn’t that “interesting.” An example of this is, last weekend I actually did very little “productive” activity. I spent a lot of time with family and friends, below are some photos to prove it. That was time well spent, even though I had to convince myself it was okay to not work for about 1 day. I’m learning.

The first photo is one of our new boat. If you look closely you can read the name of the boat "Voyager."

WebCam

Well I set up my webcam and skype account so I can talk with my friend and business associate in Thailand. I hope to set up connections with other friends and business associates. Here is a goofy little recording I did to test it out. I'm glad I got this, I needed something to fill the extra 15 seconds of spare time I have each day!

Engineering Nerdiness

Some of the things that I consider interesting, or even exciting, would bore most people to tears. I am evaluating new solid-modeling and 2D design software, and I'm really excited about it. Engineers typically design using 2D design software, and sometimes get to use 3D (solid modeling) software. Both programs are expensive, typically out of reach of individuals. The 3D stuff costs several thousand dollars. But...we finally have two viable competitors that offer nearly identical programs to the most popular (really expensive) ones, at about 1/5 the price. That is why I'm excited.

So...I've been hunkered over my keyboard the last few days fiddling around with these programs during the trial period, to make sure they are worth the investment. Isn't that just about the most exciting thing you've heard of? I doubt it.

Reunion

We just got home from my 30 year high school reunion. Wow, 30 years, no wonder I feel old-I am! It was great fun talking with so many people I hadn't seen in so long. It was interesting to learn what courses their lives had taken.


Some people were divorced, some never married, some have battled thyroid cancer, some are rocket scientists, some are ministers working for Pat Robertson, some are opening night clubs, some are airline pilots, some live in the U.K., some have lived in Australia, everyone has an interesting story.











I wish I had talked to these people more when I actually was going to the high school.