This is my Rubik's cube.

This is my Rubik's Cube.

I've known how to solve these things for over a decade now. My dad showed me how to solve it using 5 moves, ranging from 4 to 16 turns. Each of these 5 moves can be used as tools to put the pieces where you want, in a 3-phase system from start to finish. But being able to complete these three phases requires a knowledge of how the cube is built and how it was designed to move.

Although I am still able to impress people by my ability to solve it, I myself have grown bored with this method and have started developing a new way of thinking about it. See, I will never be able to use this method to complete a cube in 20 seconds. There are too many steps. As I study the cube and the way the pieces move across the 3 axes, I find new ways to do the things I already do, but in a significantly reduced number of turns.

The key is to think of the entire cube all the time, rather than the two or three pieces I'm dealing with at any one moment. This doesn't mean to memorize where everything is all the time. What this mindset does is afford me the freedom to combine the functions of the moves I already know, without having to go through every single step.

When I think in terms of the entire cube, I am able to create new moves that are specific to the current state of the cube. Furthermore, if I pay close enough attention, I can engineer my current move to set up the cube for my next move. In time and with practice, what will eventually happen is that the entire process will be one giant improvised move. This is how people look at the cube for 15 seconds, then solve it in 20. They don't have a vocabulary of set-in-stone combinations that they use at different points in the process - the entire solution is one huge combination.

I'm trying to learn how to live life like this. To learn how to treat my relationships like this. To look into the systems that we mere mortals have put in place, and see the underlying elements that make them what they are and understand why they function the way they do. It's looking at a person and seeing the world they live in. It's looking at a system or mechanism and asking "why." Because just like with the Rubik's Cube, I can't change my way of thinking until I gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the cube itself. Can I solve it? Yeah. But could I solve it more efficiently? You bet. It just takes determination, time, and paradigm shifts.

I think I read that somewhere...

This is all for now.
-R.

UPDATE:
I was lying in bed at about 3:30 this morning staring at the ceiling, and it came to me: the best way to explain this new mindset I'm trying to adopt.  It's the difference between a local and an out-of-towner, with regards to driving.  If someone from another state visits Dallas, I can give them directions from point A to point B.  They'll know that one route, and if they stay long enough, they'll start to memorize it and learn other routes.  But some people choose to limit themselves to memorizing routes.  Then there are locals who have lived in the city their entire lives.  They've got a map of the city burned into their brains.  These people can come up with new routes - routes with shortcuts, scenic routes, routes that avoid freeways - because they just know the roads.  I want to have the "mind of a local" when it comes to the Cube.  Actually, when it comes to everything.

'NOTHER UPDATE:
I've been playing with the Cube every day at work this week, between tasks or whenever I needed to get my mental juices flowing.  I've been counting my moves and timing myself, and when I averaged everything out, I've been pretty consistent about finishing it in 2:30 minutes and using (an average of) 75 turns per solve.  This is using my new system where I apply the "mind of a local" to the whole cube.  I solved it a few times using my old system, and the averages were about 4 minutes and a couple hundred turns.

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This is my final.

This is my final.

This semester, I've really been struggling to get back to where I was when I had a tight rein on my day-to-day routine, my habits, and all the things I was interested in incorporating into my lifestyle.  I've gotten to a point where I realize what I need to do to get back to that place.  This was my final project for my drawing class.  I completed it in 3 hours, as opposed to the 18+ hours it would take me to do similar drawings a few months ago.  I really think it captures where I'm at in life right now.

I've been meditating for about an hour a day these past few months, and have started to have some pretty interesting revelations.

The Macroverse

Everyone I've met in my life lives in their own world.  Some worlds overlap, sometimes completely.  I live in my own world.  Yet I see a bigger picture in which all these worlds coexist, connected to one another to create a giant web of life and experience.  I call this big picture the Macroverse.  Each of these worlds exists as both a cloud and a node, containing a nebulous collection of common experiences and ideals, shared among its members, yet serving as a point of intersection between the pathways that link these worlds.  Many worlds are strongly connected to one another, some are faintly connected, and others are completely disconnected.  Lately I've been learning to not only see the worlds people live in, but where those worlds fit into the Macroverse, and how they influence it.  Often, when people are discontent about who they are and where they are in life, what they really have their eye on is another world in the Macroverse, and they just don't know how to get there.  It's simply a matter of showing them the path that links the two worlds.

The Voidness

When I peer into myself and am asked what I see, it's very much like peering at a sample through a microscope with an ever-increasing focus.  On the surface are my actions.  This is what people see with the naked eye, that determines who I am in their world.  For everyone who actively perceives me, a slightly altered version of me exists in their world.  Therefore, I have as many alternate selves as I have relationships.  On the cellular level, I find the ideas that govern my actions.  On a molecular level are my beliefs that shape my ideas, and on the atomic level are my experiences that form the beliefs that govern the ideas that determine my actions, which in turn create more experiences.  But between the nuclei and electrons of the experiences that make up the person I've become, there exists the Voidness.  This is the space between the space.  It's who I am when you strip me of my beliefs, my experiences, my thoughts, ideals, morals, opinions, habits, goals and actions.  This innermost part of myself is both the most beautiful and the most terrifying part of my being.  There, I see my true self peering back, and my world is suddenly saturated with the realization that I am being introduced for the first time to this pair of intensely focused eyes whose obsidian gaze has waited 24 years to be met.

The Triune Law

There are three sets of laws in existence: Human Law, Natural Law, and Supernatural Law.  I'm still discovering what each of these entails, but what I do know is that everyone has a veritable pie chart in their mind that reflects how much weight each of these laws carries in their life.  These three schools of Law do not carry equal weight in the universe.  Those who subscribe to the Supernatural Law have been known to break not only Human Law but Natural Law as well.  There are those who would follow Natural Law and in doing so can escape Human Law, but not Spiritual Law.  Those who desire only Human Law live in the smallest of worlds, as they necessarily must follow the other two, to exist in this universe; they are often completely unaware of the existence of Supernatural Law.  The primary school of Law a person follows can be determined through several factors, including the density of meaningful content in their speech, the motivation behind their actions, and the subject of both their attention and intention.  The Law each person seeks to follow directly influences the world in which they live in the Macroverse.

I had to write this down before I forgot it.

More to come as more is revealed.

-R.

This is my set.

This is my set.

It looks like a garage...because it is.  I recently shot (most of) my next short film.  It's mostly an exercise in camera tricks and sound editing, but it's been quite a learning experience so far.  I definitely bit off more than I could chew with this project, but that's the best way to work up my chewing skills, I guess...so we'll see how it turns out.

Okay people, I must take a break from this post to mention that Watermelon Dream by Guy Clark just came on my Pandora station, and I was subsequently reminded of the time my dad devoured an entire watermelon in approximately 90 seconds to win a contest at one of the many food-centric summer events held in the parking lot of the baptist church in which I grew up.  It made me laugh out loud because the mental picture is something you just can't not laugh at.

Aaaand we're back.  So, in case you haven't heard, I've officially changed my major to Film and Video.  Now, that doesn't mean I got all starry-eyed in my Intro to Film class and bought a one-way ticket to L.A. to spend the next 30 years gunning for the director's seat at some major production studio.  It means I realized that I'll have a better chance of becoming an animator if I jump into the film industry, rather than wander aimlessly through the world of drawing/fine arts.  As much as I love painting, studio art is becoming less my cup of tea and more my cup of espresso.

Plus, all of my Drawing Fundamentals friends say I'm a better fit for the film industry anyway.  I chose to take it as a compliment, even though I'm quickly learning that it could simply mean I would fit in well with a room full of pale, overworked starving artists who are strung out on crack and all seem to have Tourette's.

All this to say...I actually have no idea what I was going to say.  I'm still listening to online radio, and somehow something I listened to made me think of people Googling their names.  So of course, I did mine because it's 4:30 on a Friday and I've been typing it up all day.  But I already know what websites will pop up, so I made things interesting by searching images and videos.  Here are the top three entries for each.

Videos

All you really need to see here are the thumbnails.  The first is my first short film, the second is a home video I made for a friend when putting together a dance/painting performance thing we did, and the third is what the freaking crap is that video doing on my results page.

Images

Left: my Myspace profile pic, which I totally forgot about because who cares about Myspace anymore?  Center: coincidentally, this is the person for whom I made that painting video.  Right: my wife and I during our first year of marriage.  Neither of us looks like that anymore...it's kinda crazy.

So, I'm going to need to come back to this post at a later date, because while posting those pics, I started listening to a man and a woman conversing in the lobby of our building.  Against his better judgment, he thinks that she is helplessly fascinated by his extensive knowledge of exotic cars, and she seems to think her son is a crash test dummy.

Anyway, to wrap things up, I'm officially pursuing a career in film making now, and from the way this post went, I guess the job suits me well, because while running a crew on set, you must be able to pay attention to multiple things at once, much like writing a blog post while reminiscing about your distant past, Googling your name and eavesdropping on old people.  It's one of the only lines of work where being constantly distracted can actually be a good thing, so we'll see how it goes.

This is all for now.
-R.

This is my cat.

This is my cat.

His name is Maximus Leopoleon.  He is a mystery of sorts, deathly afraid of everything but that which he feels the dire need to overpower and destroy.  A cross between the Cowardly Lion and King Leonidas, he encompasses all the qualities of a stereotypical house cat.  Also, he drools like a freaking pit bull.

But when I think about him and how he conducts his business, he really has boiled down the essence of catdom to a simple, concise message, and surprisingly, it's not "feed me."  He's like the haiku of the cat world: it is what it is, and there's really nothing more to him than what needs to be.  It really made me start to think about how much "boiling down" I could stand to do in my own life.  If I wrote a one-page summary of my entire life as it stands right now, what would be excluded?  More importantly, what would be included?

There's an exercise in which many a seasoned thespian takes part, in which a pair of players generates a two-minute dialogue between themselves, following it up with a compressed rendition thereof, lasting only one minute.  This process continues through thirty seconds, to fifteen seconds, and finally to a ten-second dialogue that is still meant to capture the essence of what was truly being communicated in the original two-minute scene.

The idea here is brilliant.  If time were money, narrowing a two minute discussion down to ten seconds would be a 92% savings.  The idea of minimalism has always been extremely appealing to me, but this concept isn't minimalism.  It's reductionism.  It's the simple act of viewing the complex system that is life in terms of the interactions of its individual moving parts.  It's weeding out the things that don't need to be there.

I'm not about to go on another one of my purging sprees - I did that in college and wound up sleeping on a mattress on the floor with a thin blanket and no pillow.  This is just another one of those introspective moments that happens to me every once in a while to make sure I'm still growing - still reaching for that next part of me that's just out of reach.

These blog posts will probably start getting shorter.

At least for a while.

But not less meaningful.

I hope.

We'll see.

This is all for now.

-R.

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This is my Drive Home.

This is my Drive Home.

I know it's a little abstract.  It's not really a picture of a drive home; it's a car, it's a sunset, it's the silhouette of the trees sitting on the horizon.  It looks like the album cover to an emo punk band who sings nostalgic ballads about the golden teen years when everything was fun and nothing was hard and love was simple.  But all those things encompass what goes on in my head on my drive home.

I've always been introspective.  But when I drive home from somewhere, it's like my inner monologue is on crack, spouting out some kind of esoteric narration about where I am in life and what I'm learning and why it matters.

I got a new job.  My official title is "marketing rep," but my day-to-day tasks are mainly comprised of blog posting.

I get paid to blog.

Ironically, between that and school and being married, I haven't had much time to hop on here and write about my own life.  All this introduction aside, what I really want to write about is what's been going on in my head on my drives home recently.  I know it sounds morbid, but for the past week or so, I've been pondering what I would say at the funerals of my dearest friends and family.  This morning, I found something on my computer that I wrote a long time ago, about one of the most important people in my life.

I don't know why, but growing up, my dad hated not being able to open our bedroom door all the way.  If he ever went back to our room to check on us or say something, and something was blocking the door, it was never a pretty sight.


We had these toys called "no-ends" when we were kids.  They were named as such because there really was no end to what we could build with them.  We built space ships and weapons and "life-sized" people to play with.  We went through a phase where we built tents.  They were basically giant igloo-shaped wireframes with blankets draped all over them.


One night, my brother and I had had the same igloo-tent sitting in our room for over a week.  It used every single no-end piece we had, so it took up a lot of space.  Well, my dad came in to tell us dinner was ready, and sure enough, the tent was blocking the door.  Naturally, we were inside the tent at the time, so we were greeted with my dad pulling back the makeshift blanket-curtain doorway and asking "what are y'all doing!?"


We instantly accepted the impending reality that we would be made to disassemble the tent.  But instead of issuing the orders we were all too ready to hear, my dad simply said "I'll be right back."


I remember my brother and I looking at each other, dumbfounded.


He returned minutes later with a desk lamp, a portable television and a power strip.  He asked if he could join us in our tent.  We weren't in the habit of telling him "no," so we moved aside and watched him crawl awkwardly into our tent and plug everything in.  He had us affix the lamp to the top of the tent while he messed with the antennae and tuner on the TV.


We sat there watching a baseball game in grainy black and white, in our new and improved tent, fully equipped with interior lighting and a slightly larger entrance.  And my mom came in later and got all three of us in trouble for not going out there to eat.  But as a young lad, there was something to be treasured about my father being in trouble with me.


It's the unexpected moments of fatherhood that scattered themselves throughout my childhood.  It's the random decisions to get in trouble with me rather than get me in trouble.  These are the times that I remember when I think about my father.  It's not even that I choose to focus on the good and not the bad - no, not's not that shallow a sentiment.  It's the overwhelming depth of love I remember feeling as a son, knowing full and well that my dad was letting go - even if just for a moment - of his adulthood, to assume the role of a child, so that he may relate to his son in a way that would be understood.

Herein lies the true nature of a father's love.  This is how I will always remember my dad.

-R.

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This is my drawing.

This is my Drawing.

Fundamentals of Drawing is a course in which I expected to learn the fundamentals of drawing.  Go figure.  I've learned a lot in that course, and some of it has actually been about drawing.  But I have this weird way of absorbing all kinds of things just from being around people and listening to what they have to say.

One of my classmates is ex-Air Force, and was talking about a tattoo on his arm.  It came up in conversation that it's a Latin translation of his brother's life motto.  He explained that he got the tattoo because his brother died before he could get it.

"That's why I quit the military.  Not because he died, but because he made me realize that life is supposed to be lived."

It's amazing how deeply meaningful a couple sentences can be.  It really hit home when I realized how directly it applies to a concept I've had brewing for the past few weeks.

People often quantify their devotion to something or someone by what they're willing to do for that person or thing.  It's the idea that drives the age-old Klondike marketing campaign: "What would you do for a Klondike bar?"  I find that there are (at least) three stages of devotion on this scale.

Things worth FIGHTING for.
Other than things not worth fighting for, this is the lowest form of commitment in my opinion.  If you won't fight for something, it can't be worth much to you.  Being that it's the lowest, it also covers the largest variety of items.  It could range from your material possessions to your pride to someone you love.  I think, however, that this also depends on maturity.  I find that the older I get, the less willing I am to fight people.  I think that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that I'm learning the truth behind the saying "a gentle answer turns away wrath."  Still, no matter how mature I may become, there are some things I will always fight for.

Things worth DYING for.
I know that seems like a jump, but it's really just an exaggerated form of the last one.  There are often things that we would like to be able to say we'd die for, but the truth can only come out when the opportunity presents itself.  Being that most people will live their entire lives without ever facing the challenge of dying for something they love, this question all too often remains in the realm of the hypothetical.  Nevertheless, we all have things that are important enough to us that I think we would genuinely give our lives for them.  This category encompasses a much smaller group of items than the last, being that there are plenty of things that I would fight for, but would gladly forfeit were my life on the line.  Most people stop there - if you would die for something, it must be one of the most valuable things in your life.  Not necessarily true.

Things worth LIVING for.
If you think about it, this is the hardest thing to do.  Fighting for an ideal is a win/win situation because even if you lose the fight, you've still got that underdog integrity and the knowledge that you have the balls to stand up for what you love.  Dying for something isn't necessarily easy per se, but it is a one-time deal.  Once you die, that's it - there's nothing more you can do; it's over.  But try spending 60 years protecting and treasuring and fighting for something.  It goes back to what my ex-military friend said.  How can you live for something if you're dead?

I love my wife.  Sure, the first thought in my head when someone disrespects her is to Hulk smash them in the face.  Sure, I would take a bullet for my wife (although I can't imagine anyone wanting to shoot her).  But getting up early every morning to make her breakfast and pack her lunch, taking care of house chores to give her time to rest, working to provide for her; I plan on doing these things (or at least things like it) for the rest of her life.  Not to make light of martyrdom, but when you consider the weight of spending one's entire life devoted to something, death starts to look like the easy way out.  When John says that Christ laid down his life for us, this means that he could have had a life of his own, but he gave that up to live for us instead.  So even if I never die for my wife, I would like to think that I will lay down my life for her.

So there you have it.  Again, this is a work in progress - there are probably more intermediary steps that I haven't yet realized.  But it's been my experience that there are some things I'd fight for that I wouldn't die for.  And there are things I'd die for, but would have a hard time living for.  And I also find that the things I live for, I would also gladly die for, and have often fought for.

I used to love the idea of being martyred.  I've always accepted that death is inevitable, so I've always wanted my death to be the sacrificial - where I stood up for a person or ideal that I loved dearly.  Preferably God.  But my uncle told me that if I wanted to give my life for God, I should give him my entire life; don't cut it short.  That advice stuck.

A little exercise: list the things that are important and valuable to you, and categorize them in this fashion.  You'll be surprised to find what things are more important to you than others.

This is all for now.
-R.

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This is my dessert.

This is my dessert.

Grocery stores are very strategic in where they place their products.  You need fruit because you're a good person and want to try to be somewhat healthy, so you head to the produce.  Of course, the apples and bananas are right up front screaming "you can't buy fruit without buying us!!" because of that stupid song they made you sing when you were a kid, even though I was always the frustrated one in the back of the class, holding his hand as high as possible saying "Teacher, what in the world are ooples and ba-new-new's??"

So you get your apples and bananas even though you know the bananas will go brown before you have the chance to eat them all, and you say you'll make banana bread but you never do, and then your wife eventually gets on your case because one day she'll open the fridge and get knocked unconscious from the stench of the three rotting banana-turds sitting in the very back, decaying everything around them.

But then...

...sitting right next to the apples, hidden awkwardly behind the similarly packaged grapes, there sits among the rest one single plastic container filled to the brim with the most radiant, lush strawberries you've ever seen in your entire life.  You can't take your eyes of them, and you're pretty sure that just one bite will grant you the knowledge of good and evil.  So you take them.

But wait!

Conveniently placed just adjacent to the succulent red morsels of heaven you now hold in your hand, lest they be stolen from your shopping cart and you go to jail for murder over an 8 ounce box of fruit, there sits a package of undressed shortcakes.  Individually molded, sitting naked in their plastic prisons, begging to be lavished with strawberries and whipped cream.  Thaaat's awkward.

But where's the whipped cream!?

Of course!  It's right above the short cakes!  Yes, there is a whole whipped cream section in the back of the store, and yes, you can probably find a better deal back there.  But it just wouldn't be the same.  They must have put this whipped cream here for a reason.  It must have been hand-selected because the grocery store people knew that this whipped cream would be the most perfect fit for the strawberry shortcake masterpiece they know you're going to create as soon as you get home.

So you buy the strawberries.  You buy the shortcakes.  You buy the whipped cream.  You buy a jar of maraschino cherries because you think you'll want to put a cherry on top, but when the time comes, you'll actually feel weird about mixing strawberry and cherry in the same culinary venture, even though there's no real reason to believe that it won't turn out even more delicious.

Well, turns out the cakes are dry, the strawberries are soggy and the whipped cream is frozen solid, even though you could've sworn it was in the refrigerated section and not down the frozen aisle with the ice cream treats that never look as good in reality as they do on the front of the boxes in which they're packaged.

The moral of the story: The bigger your eggs are when in Rome, the harder they fall if you keep them in the same basket, as the Romans do.  But if you love them you'll let them go, because nobody puts Baby in the corner and there's no crying in baseball.  See, when life gives you lemons and the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, you start smashing little kids' lemonade stands.  And if you lead a gift horse to water and give it a fish, it will be fed for a day; but if you teach the horse how to fish, you still can't make it drink the water if you look it in the mouth.  A penny saved for your thoughts is a penny that earns good luck all day if you find it and pick it up.  If you break a mirror while swallowing gum, you'll have seven years of unlucky indigestion.  Shoot for the stars; if you don't make it, you're still pretty on the inside and social acceptance is overrated anyway.

I've completely lost track of where I was going with this.

This is all for now.
-R.

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This is my Alarm Clock.

This is my Alarm Clock.

It is now 11:54.

One minute away from a multiple of 5.  I don't think I could be clinically diagnosed as having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but I would say I have a few similar tendencies.  And if I did have OCD, I wouldn't call it that - because I don't like the idea of it being considered a disorder.  That word always brings to mind an image of that 20-something-year-old dude whose parents still push him around in a wheelchair while he spends all day drooling and not being able to control his arms.  I know, that's terrible.  Also, bite me.

Anyway, I would call it OCT for obsessive-compulsive tendencies, or OCBP for obsessive-compulsive behavioral patterns.  Or even OCTNARD for obsessive-compulsive that's-not-a-real-disorder.  But sometimes I wonder if I should get tested.  I normally set my alarm based on how long I want to be asleep, rather than when I want to wake up.  So instead of waking up at 6am every day, I'll figure out how many complete 90-minute sleep cycles I can get in before 6, and set an alarm for that many hours/minutes (e.g. if I go to sleep at 11:30, I know it takes about 5 minutes for me to fall asleep, so I'll set the timer for 6 hours and 5 minutes).  The thing is, if it goes off at 5:23, I will set it for 2 more minutes and go back to sleep.  I don't think it's actually possible for me to willingly get out of bed on a minute that's not a multiple of 5.

It is now 12:02.

The clock has this cool little projector thing that displays the time onto the walls/ceiling.  It has a little focus wheel so that I can make sure it's clear no matter how far away the surface is from the projector lens.  This little scrolling wheel kills me though, because I always want it to be perfectly focused.  For some reason (read: because of my self-diagnosed OCTNARD), it really bothers me if the edges of the numbers are even the slightest bit blurry.  I'll spend several minutes (5, to be exact) twisting that knob like a locksmith trying to get it to the precise middle ground between blurry and...well, blurry in the other direction.

And it's hard to do when I'm really really tired because I never know if it looks blurry from being out of focus or just because I'm really really tired.  I just about murdered one of my cats for knocking it off my headboard one day, simply because of the time I knew it would take for me to reposition it so that the time was displayed directly in the center of the bed, and was completely in focus on the ceiling.  And by "almost murdered," I mean "became very irate at, and took my frustration out on my opponents in a few online StarCraft II matches."  And by "a few," I mean ten.  I would've stopped at 8 when I had had my fill, but I think that may have possibly caused a stress-induced rage-fit and made the situation worse for everyone involved.

It is now 12:11.

I wrote last time about how I've been lazy lately, but that I haven't gone out of my way to be lazy.  Well, I recently discovered that this is not true.  I would edit my post, but I follow a blogger's code which involves never editing your posts once published.  But it only seems fitting to admit the truth, while I'm on the subject.

There was a power outage sometime ago, and as is usually the case with power outages, every clock plugged into a wall reset to 12:00am once it came back on.  I was really good about resetting the microwave clock, since that's how we gauge how late we are when getting ready in the morning.  But for some reason, I never got around to resetting the alarm clock.  And then the "overdue library book syndrome" took over and I spent days not doing it simply because I hadn't yet done it.  Days turned to months, and months turned into me no longer counting how long it had been.

Eventually I decided something needed to be done about this clock.  This clock which I adamantly refused to reset for some reason.  It got to the point where if I reset it, the clock would have won.  And I don't lose against electronics.  I think they would revoke my Bayron card if I did.  So I had to be one step ahead in this epic chess match of man vs. machine.  I sat on the bed, stared it down long and hard in the face, and figured out just how far off the time was.  I calculated that if I simply added 5 hours and 7 minutes to the time on the clock, I would be able to figure out what time it was without having to reset it.  It was pure genius.  Or maybe pure laziness.  Or maybe...lazenius.

It is now 12:21.

The one exception to my 5's rule with clocks is that it can also be a palindrome of numbers.  That means I have to go to bed now or wait 4 more minutes.  But even then, when it's :25 or :55, there's a good chance I'll wait 'til the :30 or :00 (respectively), just because it's just so annoyingly close.

Crap!  12:22.

What to do for 8 minutes...

-R.

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This is my Radio.

This is my Truck Radio.

Sort of.

I saw a promotional video recently about the most classic American tale of male laziness: the guy watching TV who will do just about anything to be able to change the channel from across the room - even if it expends more energy than simply walking to the TV and pushing a button.

When he spots the remote, it is sitting conveniently atop a shelf on the other side of the room.  When throwing things at the remote doesn't work, he tries to get his dog (which kind of looks like Falcor) to fetch it.  Once he realizes that won't work, he lets out a sigh and gets off the couch.  But wait, it's not over.  The next thing we see is him holding the Falcor-dog inches away from the remote on the shelf, begging him to fetch it.  When the dog knocks it off, he covers it with peanut butter and tries again.

Now, this is an extremely exaggerated example of the whole going-out-of-your-way-to-be-lazy idiom, but you get the idea.  I wouldn't say I've been trying excessively hard to be lazy lately, but after picking up the pace on the whole life-maintenance thing, it's gotten really easy to see how lazy I've been these past few months.  Not the lethargic, sloth-esque laziness.  More like the "I really don't feel like doing anything right now" laziness.

I have two perpetually recycling lists floating around in my head at all times: things I need to buy and things I need to do.  I underwent a veritable brain boot camp about half a year ago, and I learned a great deal of techniques for remembering things, so retaining these lists is not a problem for me.  Actually taking care of the things on the lists is what has been the challenge.  The buying list never seemed to pose a threat to my getting-stuff-done-ness; but the doing...that's another story.  None of my tasks are particularly difficult or time consuming: sending back the Netflix DVD, building shelves from a desk we took apart, filing all of our bills and such, and taking out / repairing my truck's stereo, to name a few.  The reason these things have stayed on my list for so long is simply this:

At no point in my day do any of these tasks seem more fun or interesting than playing StarCraft II for hours on end.  

I know, I know.  Just let it go, I'm workin' on it.

But seriously.  Remember how the last post was about just sucking it up and doing the things that need to be done?  Well this is taking it one step further.  Not only do I need to keep up with all the recurring life-maintenance things, but I also need to treat my personal to-do list like the one I have at work.  At the end of every work day, I make sure that everything on my plate is either taken care of or in someone else's court.  If I were to do that at home with all of my random yet important tasks, I think the Wife would be much more happy.

Because even though I am in the Gold League on Battle.net and I'm quickly climbing the ladder of division ranks, somehow that is significantly less impressive to her than the fact that I did the dishes and folded laundry today.

So here's to finally getting around to taking out my truck's stereo, cracking it open and rescuing the CD's it's been holding hostage for all this time.  By the end of this month, I plan to have a clear to-do list.

Because that way, I can play Starcraft II for hours on end.  And not feel bad afterwards.  Or like, y'know, feel like I'm going to die from sleep deprivation.

That's all for now.

-R.

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These are my Brakes.

These are my Brakes.

Cars are all about maintenance.  You change your oil, you rotate your tires.  You check your fluids and replace your filters.  Well, after my brakes had gotten so bad that the entire truck would rumble every time I hit the brake pedal, I decided it was about time to get down 'n' dirty with some long awaited and much needed maintenance.  As I sat there using my spare tire as a makeshift bench, busting my knuckles trying to break the bolts that held my brake caliper to it's bracket, I began to think about how just about everything in life requires some degree of maintenance at some level.

Life Maintenance

I recently read an article on a somewhat well known blog about how difficult it is to make the transition from teenage internet-monger to responsible adult.  Y'know, the whole mix of catching up on e-mails, watching your finances, housekeeping, etc.  But I realized this weekend that all of those things can be summed up under the title "life maintenance."  You're just taking care of all the things that keep your life moving forward, much like what changing the brakes or flushing your transmission fluid does for your car.  House cleaning, doing dishes, taking out the trash, grocery shopping, laundry...these would all be considered home maintenance.  Then returning phone calls and e-mails and setting appointments and things would be social maintenance.  Eating, working out and hygienic practice would be personal maintenance.  Then if you developed a system to organize and plan out all your maintenances, that would be maintenance maintenance.

Work vs. Home

I think I'm much better at keeping up with my stuff at work than at home.  My work space is immaculately organized, everything on my desk pad calendar is color coded with highlighters, and my inbox is perpetually empty because I immediately respond to all of my e-mails, then file them in the appropriate folders.  But then at home, I've got a speeding ticket that I've been dragging my feet on until about a week ago, our financial filing cabinet is overflowing with unfiled bills and pay stubs, and I have no idea where I stand with my fall school schedule at UTA.  I need to figure out a way to get more on top of my home stuff.  I would join FlyLady, but there's just one problem with that: it's called FlyLady.  They should make a men's version called Shark-Raptor Man.  Their tagline can be "Take care of your crap or the Shark-Raptor will kill your face."

Go-Kart Relationships

Back to the auto-maintenance thing.  If you don't keep up with your car, it will eventually fall apart and all you can do is hope you're lucky enough to not be inside it when that happens.  Same goes for relationships.  Granted, some relationships take a little more work than others, but they all need upkeep from time to time.  We normally call this "hanging out."  One of my mechanic friends once told me that "everyone wants a go-kart."  What this means is that you buy a go-kart, you drive the go-kart, then you forget about it until you want to drive it again.  There is little to no maintenance to be done.  It made me start thinking about how many relationships I've had in the past that I've expected to be go-kart relationships.  That was clever when I thought of it, but now it's just cheesy.  But I have a rule against backspacing when I blog, so it is what it is.  It's kind of like how I sketch using pen instead of pencil so that I can't erase the stuff I don't like.  I feel it's more honest that way.  And more sloppier.

All in all, there is a myriad of applications for this whole life-is-maintenance idea.  I guess the message behind it is that maintenance must be done if we want things to run smoothly and efficiently.  Every time you find yourself doing some kind of menial task that you hate doing (in my case, folding and putting away laundry), think of it as life maintenance, and understand that it will inevitably need to be done again sometime in the future.  It simply must be done in order for your life to run smoothly.  You might get a few busted knuckles and a shirt stained with motor oil in the process, but there's nothing like the sound of an engine that just got fixed up, roaring extra loud as if it knows it's in good hands, and it's happy to be there.

This is all for now.
-R.

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These are my Keys.

These are my keys.

They used to all be on one key ring until I organized them today.  Now, I've got a ring for my car keys, one for work, one for home(s), and one for the keys that I have no idea what they go to.  I never realized how many keys I actually use in the course of one day.

My Apartment Key.

I use it to lock the door behind me when I leave for work.  We recently got the wife's key duplicated because I lost mine, and driving to Walmart to spend the last of our spare cash on a new key just seemed easier than looking between the cushions on the couch.  We still haven't found my old key...mostly because we haven't looked for it.

My Truck Key.

This one really counts as two because I use the fob to unlock it.  I've always called it a fob.  In my college years, I would mention my fob and people would think I was talking about the band Fallout Boy, because that's their initials.  Then when I met the wife's Asian friend, I learned that the letters FOB also stand for the slang term, "fresh off the boat," which is commonly used to derogatorily describe Asians who haven't been in America very long.  Being Asian myself, whenever people toss a FOB joke my way, I quickly remind them that it actually stands for "frequencies of brilliance."  And if that doesn't shut them up, I usually throw things at them, then storm out of the room, screaming and knocking over random objects on my way out.

My Key Card.

Yes, I've climbed high enough on the corporate ladder to be one of those vest-wearing D-bags who carries a key card around in their pocket, just for the rare occasion that they might actually have to use it.  I must admit, though, that the feeling of waving your wallet like some kind of magic wand in front of that plastic panel on the wall, hearing the click and seeing the red light turn green as the building doors swing open automatically...In my head I always hear the voice of Jerry Orbach as Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast singing "Be Our Guest."  It reminds me of the day I went with my dad to his job at EDS back in the day.  That was also when I found out that brief cases are like ties: they serve no legitimate practical purpose, yet they make you look ten times more professional.

My Suite Key.

And what a sweet suite key it is.  It's extra long so that even if you duplicate it, it still won't work on the door. In fact, the one I have still decides not to work sometimes.  It took me a good solid two weeks before discovering the secret.  When they gave me the key, they forgot to mention that I would have to turn the handle counter-clockwise as far as it would go, then turn the key slightly to the right, and release the handle to let gravity do the rest.    I've always wanted to ask my coworkers if they have the same issue with their keys, but there's always that fear that they'll have no idea what I'm talking about and somehow find a connection between my apparent deficiency in key-using skills and the fact that I was home schooled.

The Mail Key.

One day, I sat in the office of our center director, having our weekly catch-up meeting.  She looked at me and said "Ryan, I think the time has come for me to pass this along to you."  She grabbed something off the top of her filing cabinet, and set it on her desk in front of me.  It was a key.  As she moved her hand away, a choir of angels sang in perfect harmony as the florescent light from the ceiling panels cast a magnificent glow which glistened off it's pristine golden surface.  To what new heights had my job position just been thrown?  What mysterious wonders would be unlocked at the feeble hands of this humble man, a mere operations specialist??  Through what golden gates of endless possibility would I pass by way of this new addition to my plethora of keys???  ...It was the mail key.  I now check the mail at work.  Mostly it's just bills.  Bills and bills and a letter and bills.  I now pay the company's bills.  Yaaay me.

The (apartment) Mail Key.

I check the mail when I get home from work.  We have a care's team.  There's always a flier posted on the inside wall of the lil' mail center thingy.  It's always for an event that already happened.  Like a month ago.  Every afternoon I see a flier for free breakfast.  It's got a clip-art-esque picture of some bacon and eggs with smiley faces on them.  I always think to myself, "Man, that sounds good.  I think I will show up to grab a free breakfast this coming Fri--ummm yeah, that was May 2nd.  It's July now."  I guess it's all for the best, considering my newfound pescetarian lifestyle.  All I would probably walk away with is a glass of orange juice and a tortilla.


Well, those are all the keys I used today.  Still on the carabiner are the key to my parents' house, the key to the storage unit we don't use anymore, a key that I think goes to the Dallas branch of my company, and some other small key that I fully intend to stick into every keyhole I come across until I find a match, or until it gets stuck, in which case I will promptly break it off and run away like my life depends on it.  Because that would make a great story, and we Asians like telling great stories.

This is all for now.
-R.

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These are my Flip Flops.

These are my flip flops.

The wife got them for me a long time ago.  They're my favorite.  Although they look ridiculously old and worn down, they are the most comfortable things I've ever worn on my feet.

I once knew a guy in high school who always wore his favorite flip flops as well.  Only, he literally wore them every day.  They were so broken in that there was a hole in one of them, right where his big toe went.  The bottom of the other one was completely covered in duct tape because it literally would've fallen apart otherwise.  I asked him why he didn't get a new pair and he simply replied, "because they wouldn't be these." He and his flip flops had been through so much together that every blemish was a story - a memory.  He wouldn't trade them for the world.  I find it difficult to get that attached to mine, because...well, they're freaking flip flops.

I could understand the sentimentality if they were, say, puppies.  Or some kind of mythological creature that you just happen to stumble upon in your back yard.  Like a gryphon or something.  That would be flippin' sweet.  I would totally make it a saddle and fly around with my shirt flapping in the wind like Atreyu did on Falcor.  That is, if it didn't try to eat me first.  And there's a good possibility of that happening, especially if I covered it's belly in duct tape and punched a hole in it's face with my big toe like that dude did with his flip flops.  You should never treat your pet gryphon like a pair of flip flops.  That's totally not where I expected to go with this.

If you look at the picture, you'll see that one is more worn down than the other.  I just can't figure out why.  Maybe it's because I walk heavier on my left foot than my right.  But usually you walk heavier on whichever foot corresponds to your dominant hand, which in my case would be my right.  A childhood mentor of mine taught me that to figure out whether your cat is right- or left-handed (or would it be left-pawed?), you put them on a sheet of carbon paper, and make them pounce off of it.  Whichever foot makes the darker impression is their dominant side.  I thought about testing this, but my cats have a habit of trying to eat everything that I don't want them to.  I'm not sure what would happen if they ate carbon paper.  But wait a second - who actually has carbon paper just lying around?  I guess I could use my checkbook...

This is all for now.
-R.

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I really need to get a Phoenix tattoo.

I realized something.

Remember how I was talking about that idea floating around in my head that was put there by my improv-troupe friend?  Well the foundation on which that idea was built is the concept that we humans have an innate burning need to add form and organized structure (or would it be structured organization?) to things in our lives, whether or not those things need it.

For example, when I started at the Fort Worth center, I rearranged my desk to make it more organized.  Everything was put in a place and those places were stacked and positioned logically and strategically for the most efficient use.

Yet, it's not any better.  It just matches me more.

What I saw as chaos, the person with whom I share my desk saw as order.  And now my "order" has created a chaotic workspace for my partner.  I felt the need to add structure and organization to my workspace, even though it didn't need it.

Well I think I've done that with this blog.  The Facebook Fridays was a good idea when I had it, but this most recent post has proven to me that it's just turned the blog into a predictable, formulaic record of my life, lacking any kind of artistic exploration or emotional connection.  It might as well be called Ryan's Weekly Update, because I'm starting to feel it's just gotten that bland.

So, instead of continuing down my current path of obligatory unabridged Facebook status articles, I think I have a good idea of what phase 2 of Project RoboDog will be.  I'm still taking a daily picture every day on my iPhone and uploading them to my Project365 app.  Instead of stocking up on random ideas as they come to me, only to have them explode into my blog once a week with no semblance of continuity or overarching thought process, I will post up a photo and wrap my post around it.  Not just any photo, though; it must be the photo I take on that particular day for Project365.

I'll still collect ideas as I go about my day-to-day life, but the real challenge here will be relating my thoughts to the photo.  I only managed to do four Facebook Fridays before running them into the ground.  Hopefully my Photo Philosophies will last a little longer.

Onwards and upwards, my friends.

This is all for now.
-R.

I was born a poor black child.

Ev'reh fowth o' Joo-lah growin' up, I 'member askin' mah mamma, I said "Mamma?"  An' she would say "Yes, child?"  An' I said "What in cotton-pickin' tarnation is dis donzerly light dat everyone keeps singin' 'bout?"

An' she would jus' smiiiiile like she always did, 'n' start singin' some ol' song 'bout Jesus while rockin' back 'n' foath in her rockin' chair on our ol' wooden poach.  It was dat soft quiet smile dat said "You'll figgya it out soon enough, son."

Well, mamma, I still ain't quite figger'd out what in the blazes dat doggone donzerly light is, but one tang's fer sure: dat nat'nl anth'm is still one gosh-dern purdy sawng.

Happeh Foath, y'all.

Facebook Fridays: 2am

So this was a pretty eventful week.  Comedy clubs and Deep Ellum bars, midnight movies, deep paradigm-shifting revelations...oh, and my wife thought I was dead today.

It seems like everything significant this week has happened at or around 2am.

Saturday, at 2am
I'm sitting in a bar with an old friend, catching up on life and talking about the structure of the church.  He's part of an improvisational comedy troupe for whom I designed a poster quite some time ago in exchange for free tickets to a show.  Well, we went Friday.  It was loads of fun.  Our wives hit it off.  After the show, as we sat in an otherwise empty bar in Deep Ellum, he brought up a concept that I'd never previously considered.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  Actually, no it didn't.  It hit me like...scalding hot coffee in my face.

Whenever someone says something hit them like a ton of bricks, I always want to respond with "So you're saying it killed you?  Wow...[insert something awesome and sarcastic that I'm too sleepy to think of right now]."

But seriously.  I walked away from that conversation with a new thought hovering in my head that would change everything I thought about the Body of Christ if I let it.

Tuesday, at 2am
I'm walking out of the Studio Movie Grill in Arlington, debating with my wife about the differences between the movie Edward and the book Edward.  People kept asking me "How did you like Eclipse?"  And my answer of choice: "I like seeing my wife happy."  If I have to paint her a shirt and go to the premier to make her happy, then that's what I'm gonna do.

I read a book recently about keeping a beginner's mind when learning things.  The whole concept is that you learn most when you understand that you are a beginner.  Once you get comfortable in your aptitude, you lose your thirst for growth and you stop paying attention to things from which you might learn.

I've begun to apply this principle to every aspect of my life.  It's gone pretty smoothly so far, but it's the marriage and the Christianity parts that are really proving to be challenges.  Surprise, surprise.  It's amazing, the things that pop into your head when you look at your loved one and think to yourself "I need to re-learn how to love you."

Wednesday, at 2am
Well this wasn't really at 2am but I'm going to pretend it was because I'm already this far into the post and I pretty much have to stick to the theme, or else I think like a fairy somewhere will die or something.  So at 2am on Wednesday morning, I was walking out of the Movie Tavern agreeing with the wife about how terrible The Last Air Bender was.  But after the heated Twilight debate the night before, it was refreshing to agree just as strongly on another movie.

Highlights of the experience:

 - The guy in front of us in line who was able to pronounce M. Night Shalaman, Shominom and Shakala, but for whatever reason couldn't wrap his head around the concept of correctly pronouncing Shaymalan.  Granted, it's not an American-friendly surname.  But most of the time, people who can't pronounce it don't even try.  They just mumble it, much like that Millajovavovavich woman from the Resident Evil movies.  Most of the time it just comes out sounding like "Emnashomanon."  And that's okay.  It's a respectable and humorous way to say "I have no clue how to pronounce that freaking guy's name."

 - My Facebook post warning fans of the cartoon series against seeing the movie.  This is a highlight because several people whose tastes in movies (and really, most media-related artistic mediums) closely match mine, posted comments showing respect for my opinion.  They were along the lines of "I'll wait for it to come out on DVD then" rather than "I don't believe you and want to see it for myself."  Well, one person did say that second one, but I'll let it slide...because his wife can hurt me.

Saturday, at 2am
I'm blogging about my week.  I normally do this during the day on Fridays, but today I had a root canal and we were also taking care of my stroke-surviving mother-in-law.  Oh yeah - on my drive home from the dentist's office, my phone remained on but decided not to ring or alert me when people called or texted.  The wife freaked out after me not answering my phone for an hour straight (while driving on the freeway in the rain in a truck with bad brakes, mind you), so she decided that I was probably dead and proceeded to place panicked phone calls to just about everyone in her contact list, as well as 911.  I got home, and the dialogue proceeded as follows:

  Mother-in-law, lying on couch: "Hey, cutie!"
  Me: "Where's Glennda?"
  Glennda bursts in: "Where have you been!!?!?"
  Mother-in-law: "Someone help me up, I gotta pee."

I was in big trouble at first, and my wife had that look in her eye that makes husbands immediately stop talking and start indiscriminately cleaning random things around the house.  But once she found out that I was in fact alive, and that it was my phone's fault for not ringing, she cooled off and just wanted a hug.  But, you guys, this is just one more reason why I need an iPhone 4 as soon as possible.  I'm jus' sayin'.

So what does this have to do with anything?  Nothing really, but there are some things that you just don't not blog about.  This is one of them.

Well, I started this post at about 1:30 thinking that I could finish it by 2, and keep with the theme of the post, but here we are at 3:43 and I've had to wake myself up about 87 times during the course of writing this post, and I'm pretty sure I have the impression of my laptop keyboard plastered across my face.  So that was my week.  How was yours?

Good night.
-R.

Facebook Fridays: Look But Don't Touch

Whenever I buy something from a vending machine, I always go through a moment of slight panic, where I am convinced that my snack is going to get stuck and I'm going to starve to death.  I've been using the vending machine a lot at work lately, and thus I've been panicking at least once a day.  It's worth it when I get my Cheeto's.  I wish I could grow a Cheeto tree.

Humility vs. Hatred

My sister was recently in a theatrical production of the musical, "Titanic." Among the other cast members was a particular young man whom I've spent the past few years strongly disliking.  For stupid reasons.  Reasons so stupid that I would've felt ridiculous explaining them to people.  Of course, I was able to make my loathing more dramatic and mysterious by stoically saying "I don't talk about him" when people asked me about it.  Well, I recently realized that I can't move forward in life until I let go of what's behind me.

So I went up to the guy after the show and made an effort to sincerely congratulate him and tell him he did a great job.  Because he really did. The feeling of letting go and putting myself in a vulnerable position was truly infuriating.  But the feeling of freedom after the act was well worth it.  So worth it, in fact, that I went back to Mamma Raine's house that night and had a heart-to-heart with another guy I didn't particularly care for.  The conversation wound up being very deep and meaningful, and at the end I asked forgiveness for writing him off before getting to know him.

I don't ask forgiveness.  There's a reason that humility is my biggest struggle.

But, learning humility is the task at hand - I've known that for a long time.  Only this week I acted on it...and it is truly a liberating feeling, being able to be in the presence of these people and not dwell on the reasons I hate them.  Because really, I don't hate them anymore.

Looking vs. Living

A friend of mine recently posted approximately four billion photos from her/our childhood.  I say 'our' because I've known her since she was like 4.  Nostalgia and sentimentality are a dangerous combination for me, because I don't just look at the photos - I relive the experiences captured therein.  When I hear certain songs, they send my thoughts to certain places.  Good Riddance by Green Day will always remind me of Richard Raine.  Regina Spektor's On the Radio will always make me think of my awesome desk from the place I worked when I discovered that song.  Ahh, mail clip robots and staple stacks...those were the days.

Well, when Champagne Supernova by Oasis comes on the radio, expect me to get lost in a daze, reminiscing about my childhood days when doing nothing was the order of the day.  It's never good to live in the past because you miss out on the present and the future hits you like a ton of bricks.  But at the same time, life is like climbing a mountain: most of your attention is in the present, on the current task in front of you; you look upwards every so often to continue planning the route you'll take to get to the top; but you'll never be able to gauge how far you've come until you look back down at where you started.

And that's when you say "whoa, we're really high."

I didn't realize it until just now, but it looks like I've spent the past week subconsciously pondering the idea of moving forward in life.  And it also looks like I've stumbled upon the idea that I have to let go of everything in my past that I've been holding onto, but at the same time I need to remember enough to learn from it.  It's kind of like a "look but don't touch" kinda thing.  I think that will be my new motto for when my actions are motivated by sentiments and values that I once held dear.  From now on, I'm allowed to look at the past but not live in it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot...

I finally got rid of my massive and extravagant bottle collection.

I know, right??

This is all for now.
-R.

5 More Minutes

Sometime in the fall of last year, I had a day at work that was abnormally stressful.

I'll start with that.

I woke up with a headache, I was behind in my work, and it seemed that every customer in the building was hellbent on keeping me from catching up.  I took a 5-minute break to meditate outside and find my "happy place."  It was London in the 1800's.  Sitting atop that roof inhaling the cool, clear breeze as I looked down upon flame-lit street lamps and horse-drawn carriages really put my mind at ease.  It put my spirit at ease.  I was able to finish my day with grace and efficiency.

Well, yesterday I needed another 5-minute meditation break.  It was a very similar situation.  Only, due to the change in my job title, it was the likes of event coordinators and booking managers and our billing and accounting departments that kept me from my to-do list, rather than whiny customers.  Either way, I needed to escape for five minutes to exist somewhere not work-related.  This time it was an empty classroom.

I sat in the dark, legs crossed, with my hands strategically placed in front of my sacral chakra, palms facing inward.  I practiced deep breathing and calmed my mind.  In no time at all, I found myself sitting on Big Ben, looking down on the same scene as before.  Only this time, as soon as I began to relax and enjoy the breeze, the scene was ripped apart as if it were an image printed on a sheet of paper that was being pulled in 12 directions at once.

I heard the rip - I felt it.  Other scenes of tranquility that I've used in the past began to flash in and out of my mind's eye - a glass dome in a rain forest, a tree house in the heart of the jungle, a solitary island in the middle of the pacific.  Each scene appeared for a fraction of a second, only to be replaced by another.  Finally, I landed in the desert.

The earth beneath me burned my feet.  I saw a stone about 2½ feet in length, sliding across the rocky desert surface as if being magnetically pulled across the expanse of sand - or perhaps it was moving by its own will alone.

I thought to myself "how is this supposed to be a happy place?"  As soon as the thought left my mind, the sky turned to night as if a deep blue blanket were suddenly thrown over the sky.  The moon glowed with the intensity of the sun, and the stars screamed out for attention as they painted the earth with a soft blue glow.

I laid back and began to take it in, when all of a sudden, more rocks like the first one came out of nowhere, glowing with a bright white light.  There were seven of them.  They circled above me, then exploded into different directions.  I stood, bewildered.  They had gathered behind me.  One stone swept my feet out from under me as the other six cradled me...catching me.  They lifted me up toward the sky and the stars shone brighter and clearer than ever.

It was amazing.

Once I realized that I had been ascending for quite a while, I looked down to see how far I'd gone.  The instant I began to ponder my height, the stones lost their glow and dumped me out.  They didn't disappear, they didn't just move out from under me - they dumped me out.  As I fell, the lights in the sky faded and darkness swept the surface of the sand.  Just before I landed, my eyes opened and I awoke with a gasp.

I was sitting in the classroom...in the dark.  My hands were gripping the floor next to me; my fingers had dug themselves into the carpet.  I was out of breath and I had tears streaming from both my eyes.

I took a few moments to gather myself up.

It was supposed to be relaxing.  I rationalized that I probably fell asleep and was dreaming.  If so, then it was the most vivid dream I've ever had in my life.  Dream or not, I cannot help but think that this radical meditative experience has to mean something.

And here's the strangest part: I understood.

Just like before, I felt a peace.  But it wasn't a relaxing peace.  It was just a...peace.  When people said things, I understood what they meant.  But it wasn't just that - I understood them.  I could see what they were trying to communicate.  I could hear their intentions.  I continued to return e-mails and handle my responsibilities, but everything seemed to fit into some grand scheme that for some reason I had never noticed before.

It's like if someone painted an immaculate painting across the entire Wall of China, and I was walking along looking at it up close, one detail at a time - never thinking that if I were to take a step back, I could actually see what it's a painting of.

Even today things have been making a lot more sense.  It's to the extent that I feel stupid for going all this time without seeing how some things in my life are connected - how they influence each other.

I've always been a "big picture" thinker, but what do you do when you find that your entire big picture can fit between the pixels on the HDTV of the universe?

I am such a geek.

Well, it's 11pm and this geek has a lot to process.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for my Facebook Fridays post.  It should be good.  If not, I'm just gonna make stuff up.

This is all for now.

-R.