Thursday, April 13, 2006

Note to Self

A goal from my notes today:

More poetic, cryptic creations, please. The kind I write down when I'm whole and don't need to be understood to feel I've expressed.

When I'm broken I write Prose. It's long, detailed and Exhaustive. It's formulated with the ache, "Please understand me."

When I'm whole: Poetry. Fluid. Ambiguous. Free. Open. Honest. Naked and unashamed.

Imagine if the poetry invaded the places where the prose lives. What kind of revolution would that be? Who would win?

posted by Scott # 3:30 PM 0 comments

death of a playlist

It happened last week. All had been fine. There was no warning. Then in an innocent act all was lost. My iPod began to refuse me my music. It had to be re-formated; wiped clean.

If that doesn't sound utterly tragic to you... well, first of all you're right. It's not that big of a deal. But at the same time that's not how it felt.

I didn't care about the music itself. That's all backed up. What bothered me was the loss of all my playlists: 'Black Tuesday' a cheeky blend of songs walking with the subtle bouquet of valentine's day angst; 'a moment' an indie rock blend originally compiled following a rather significant DTR; or 'sub urban' a eclectic blend of ambient and hip-hop.

Those are all gone now, and because they are, I've come to realize how much I attached memory and feelings to each playlist. They were carefully designed, constantly edited with the intent of providing the perfect backdrop for my life.

At first it bothered me. I didn't help that I was already in a funk. Now I have this one thing that I've grown so attached to letting me down. It also bothered me that it bothered me. I was not fully sure if what I felt was healthy.

But I began to realize that they needed to be gone. 'A moment' had gone from being the perfect life aligning mix to the spot I dumped all my cool new songs because it was the first alphabetically. I never listened to 'sub urban' that much anymore or 'thought', or 'worship'.

I needed to move on.

For one thing those songs always locked in the same context began to hinder the appreciation of the music itself. I think of how the same musical notes can be rearranged in new ways inside of each song and I think that genetic identity is maintained to the next level when you hear the same songs rearranged into a new score. In music, it seems, excellence is good, but it has a shelf life.

Then there's the spiritual implications. Music is such a great metaphor. I needed to have some ideas disasembled and rearranged. I needed to see that I was running to something for the comfort. I needed to ask if I wanted perfect or timely. I needed to build something new.

Thanks to a few 1's and 0's I have that.

posted by Scott # 10:26 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Contract

I remember hearing Don Golden from Mars Hill talking about his contract with the cosmos. The idea that in order to justify his existence something was expected of him. His was that he must keep his family together. If he didn't he would be considered a failure. To who I don't know. The consequences of failure, equally undefined. I won't tell the whole story because you can hear it from him on the Mars Hill website on the February 26th recording.

That contract idea came to me today because I think I have one too. I think my contract has been to convince other people that I am a "good boy" and a "nice guy". The strange thing is that unlike Don's Storey. I don't feel like I've failed. I think most folks would say that I am "good" and "nice". I've fulfilled my contract. So the two questions are, "so what?" and, "why don't I feel like a good boy or a nice guy?"

The answer to the first question, "so what?" is another question: is my life any better because I've found out how to convince people that I am what I've been told I'm supposed to be. It's also whether God cares. Did He write the contract?

I guess I assumed He did though I never thought to ask. So as I was writing this today I began thinking about this the certificate of debt Paul describes to the Colossians. I had to look it up again (Colossians 2:14 if you need to find it) and as I did I began to notice some things.

I don't think these were Jewish believers. They were probably Gentiles. They wouldn't have grown up with Torah so their debt wouldn't have been to the Law. What would their debt be to? Did they know? That's something I want to find out.

But as for the second question, "why don't I feel like a good boy and a nice guy?" the answer is easy. I'm not either of those things. I never really wanted to be. I want to be good, but not in the way the title "good boy" usually denotes. I do not care to be well behaved or polite. I'd rather be anything-but most of the time. What I want is to act anyway my heart desires and have that be good.

I definitely am tired of being "nice". That word originally had a connotation of ignorance. I'm pretty far from ignorant. Now it's more of an excuse to be written off for one reason or another.

From here I could ramble on about "nice guy" syndrome and it's effects on dating, but I don't feel like throwing a pity party. I don't much even care about dating right now.

My point - because I need to remind myself - is that I really feel like breaking the contract just to prove that it isn't real; that I'm done trying to prove who I am. That's funny because I was thinking those thoughts a year ago when I began therapy. I've forgotten about them until I got to writing this entry.

A year later and I'm still not very sure where to start.

Oh wait, that's right! Matthew.

You'll think I planned this as some grand lead-in to a Bible verse that I want to throw at you, but... well, I didn't. Honestly I just now remembered the verses I was trying to memorize this morning. One of them was, "He who seeks his life will loose it, but he who looses his life for My (Jesus) sake will find it."

posted by Scott # 2:49 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

bloated

Yesterday's vomiting onto TextEdit (yes, I'm on a Mac) seemed to do me a little good. So like any fast learning lab gerbil I figured I'd try it again today. I see it as a new spin on my handwritten journal only it's legeable if still not correctly spelled.

I'm in the midst of something described in Matthew 6. I'd say more about what, but in the passage it says that you aren't supposed to do a lot of talking about it. I'm vascilating on whether that means I should even allude to it or not... but I just did. So I guess I made a decision of sorts already.

But my reason for bringing it up is to observe that I didn't know you could feel so stuffed from drinking four types of juice simultaniously. I actually feel like I just gorged on junk food. So I have all the pain of having eaten a Big Mac with Fries and a Coke (which I have intentionally not done is quite some time) with none of the pleasure. V8 and bolthouse farms should not effect you this way.

And all of this because I'm on a quest for joy. Makes sense, right?

I figured since Holy Week came at me way before I had time to really prepare my heart with a good solid Lent examination, and since I have been finding myself overly busy and prone to emotional trainwrecks of late, why not slow way down and start re-centering my soul.

Let me ask you something. What would you expect out of that?

If you consciously took the time and effort to clear out your schedule for a whole week, try to get to bed on time, get up on time, eat... different, etc. what would you expect.

Actually I need to ask myself that. I am not sure what I expected. I think I expected it to be easy and for God to say, "Cool" and hit the button marked "Scott Hopkins: Joy".

However, true to form, Jesus has not come the way I expected, or would have expected had I taken the time to expect something.

Now, He has most certainly come. I cannot question that. Why? Because my world, it is a-changin'. The Bible is doing that thing it does where you try to read your set number of chapters and you can't. Not because you keep falling asleep, but because you keep finding things that make you go, "oooh! [sigh] but... [cringe] [cringe]". In other words I've been confronted with a lot of my sin and bad choices.

The last two mornings have found me in deep turmoil. Part of it has been over a young woman I treated pretty poorly. Mostly by trying to be a nice guy. Accompanying that has been the fear that maybe I have missed the boat entirely on my friendships with the women around me. A fear that my entire worldview on whether or not women and men can be "just friends" has been simply wrong.

Who want's their worldview to be proven wrong? Not me. Unless, of course my worldview is wrong.

Another cringe has come from the realization that my once victorious, bondage breaking desire for a simple life free of consumerism has been buried in a laundry pile of impulse purchases and credit card debt. I've made light of my debt and by comparison to those around me I'm very in-the-black. I think it's time that I admit this is not good; that I have symptoms that point to bad spending habits; that I make purchases I don't always need; that I feel bad about myself because of it.

But the interesting thing that I've noticed is that as I write all this out I don't see a drama. I don't see this epic struggle between desire and holiness. Nor do I see a sarcastic, sadistic god (one who acts like I would) saying, "Ha Ha! I'll show you a path to joy... THROUGH SUFFERING! A Ha Ha Ha! (Z-Z-Zap!)"

I just see a Father saying, "OK. I'm glad you finally want My joy. Now let's get down to it. This has been getting in your way. This too."

It's a very subtle a-ha moment. God has made some connections that I wouldn't have with no fanfare and no mountain-top. Just another couple of steps in His direction.

The only real tangible feeling I have right now apart from a simple contentment is the sensation that maybe I should have had less juice. I'm feeling kinda bloated.

posted by Scott # 10:37 AM 0 comments

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
Albert Einstein

posted by Scott # 9:34 AM 0 comments

Monday, April 10, 2006

This post is perfect

Let's see what it looks like when you write something just for yourself. Most of my writing in typed form is in e-mails to folks that I'm trying to convince or appease. Something good always comes out of those (after two or three revisions, 4 responses and a phone call).

In fact, in general I have been noticing that I don't tend to think about things until I know I have to talk to someone about it. The thought makes me sound and feel like I'm the ultimate in laziness and procrastination, which I'm starting to think could be pretty accurate.

Somehow I like to blame all that on being busy. But why am I busy? What am I trying to accomplish. I don't know.

I do know that I am not accomplishing much of whatever I am trying to accomplish which is... ( I thought it might come to me. nope)

The thing I'm already noticing is that I'm anticipating some sort of theoretical audience. Is that bad?

Downstairs a coworker was just drawing a bunny on a dry-erase board. The short exchange between him revealed that you have to be in a certain kind of mental-emotional place to draw a bunny, and I, sadly, am not in that place. His final remark, "I try to be in a bunny place all the time."

My response was that my asignment for the morning is to get to a "bunny place". Aside from sounding a little to self-help, twelve-step, the-glass-is-always-half-full; artificial it's a good goal. I think I need to talk to the bunny guy more often.

Or write him an e-mail.

I want to let people in on these personal thoughts. Maybe thats why most of my time is spent on e-mails or phone calls... well not phone calls. I keep those short. But I like to talk. I like to talk using my hands and I usually work out my inside thoughts when I talk. It's the best when it's unscripted or at least when I get past the script that I'd planned out in my head. The stuff that I think about when I know I'm going to have to talk to someone about something that I don't really want to talk about.

I try to anticipate what they'll say and have it all worked out before I even see them so that they don't think less of me for being such an idiot, jerk, fill-in-the-blank. That's called perfectionism and I'm trying to grow out of it. Thankfully I'm aware of the problem and try to avoid speaking to anyone on script, but I still seem to pull quotes from the script.

Sometimes those one-liners make people smile and say something encouraging about how deep I am (which oddly enough I don't self-depricatingly deny. I agree.) But deep isn't just a way to look cool. It's also a way to swim really far down until your ears fill with water and you remember you are a mammal who likes to be warm and usually dry and oh, by the way you need oxygen.

So I have to come up for air to my friends. The good friends are the ones who have stopped being impressed about my depth and just accepted it as a part of who I am. They are also the one's that ask the questions I don't expect and ask me too many to stay on the script anyway. I love/hate that, but I'm not ambivalent about it.

I've also been trying not to go back and add new thoughts to old paragraphs. I did it once up there. I need to just let this flow.

But the way I think I find myself easily going back to old thoughts and painting new layers on. Why can't I do that when I'm really painting? I try to do all that at once.

I try to present myself perfect all at once. That keeps me from being very prolific which, apart from being something cool that Ben Gibbard said in an interview I heard once, is one of those things I know I need to be whole.

So perfection is killing me and right now I'm exercising imperfection. I guess that makes this something to share with my friends.

posted by Scott # 10:00 AM 0 comments