Eventually that time comes when you have to publish your photos somewhere. When to continue in a business you have to make a profit, where to upgrade your equipment you have to really earn it.

As a test to continue photography, I will not buy any camera equipment unless I have earned that money with what God has already given me (camera-wise that is).

Here's the first shot I've published since the eBay photos.

It's State fair, and you should check em out.

http://www.myspace.com/statefairmusic

The Quirks of Charity or Starting Small

I've spent the past few weeks in places I didn't expect to be. Helping people (almost) willingly, giving away my food to strangers, maybe even just throwing heavy equipment on a truck. I help and serve people everyday because it's my job. I am far from any sort of grand person. They pay me most of the time. Yet recently...I've helped people because I had the time and was in the place, and there was a problem I was able to solve.

It's reminded me what the whole season is supposed to be about. Giving, as in not taking.

I didn't buy anything on Black Friday. For once I proudly participated in the fine art of spending nothing for one day. For the next week I only bought gas, milk, and three donuts (they were delicious). It was freeing like no other. I didn't have to go anywhere, to grab some item, for some person, so it can be ignored.

You probably won't get a present from me this year. I've got something better. It's called help. Let me make your dinner for you, watch your kids, or maybe perform a one man show because you can't afford that broadway ticket. All I can give you is my time, and my heart.


This year I owe so much to people, and I still have mass amounts of debt. I know crazy, huh...a college student with debt. But this isn't an effort to stay cheap this year. It's an effort to live a little bit of life without money as a focus. It's a chance to pay off debt selling the many things I never needed, and to give money to people who will use it to buy time.

Be it a longer life span, a safer water supply, or that roof they always wanted.

Can you imagine asking Santa for a new roof?

I'm starting small, but I have a lifetime of things to sell and a lot of work to do. I'm only giving away 20%, but everything else has long been accounted for by those I owe.

Another day.

(Maybe someday I'll explain the new blog madness)

More.

Quickly I found myself falling, fighting, failing deep into the ravines of life. But there was no ground to catch my shattered bones. I continued to drift until all light was given away to the call of night, the surrounding engulfing black.

It consumed me. Removing myself from that, extracting what good was left out of that is just the tip of what's happening.

The rest will follow.

So many Filters.

More often than not my posts here don't end up published. I start a thousand things, but honestly lack the guts to follow through. Everytime I get near pressing that little orange button I frantically slam the backspace---quickly followed by a slap on the forehead for doing something just quite that dumb.

I worry incessantly. Every minute a new worry pops into my head, but recently something new has found it's way in. Thoughts. Brief yet bright, quick little firey bursts. My proverbial wheels are dusting off some of their gunk and going for a testdrive. Did I mention brief? It's not that I'm crazy or anything but the past few years have been quite the battle as to what I really think. A new, or not so new thought came up again, and keeps coming up.

What if I just said it. All filters off, words spewed violently across the page. What would come up? What sort of good could be produced from this sort of vehement verbal vomit?

Did I mention brief?

Don't Get Comfortable

There is this one Shawn McDonald song that has haunted me recently. Whenever I'm alone, walking along somewhere enjoying perfectly good silence...it pops into my head. To say it's a catchy little ditty is an understated understatement. "I need you" it cries out in my head, breaking through my focused concentration. "I cannot do it all on my own" it responds. Over and over it starts, breaking my whole thought process away into pieces---invading my brain. It's a song with such presence and this undeniable rhythm permeating through every thought I try to conjure. It wraps me up in it's momentum and drags me along for the long haul.

But of all the songs to have a presence in your head I could go for far worse. Over and over it tells me that I can't do it on my own, take my hand God, I need you, I cry for you...I can't do it alone, it gently reminds me. It's this promise, between a man and god. A silent shout. I see this song as a conversation. One that could be held without any sound. Honesty in it's simple expressions. No hesitations.

Then like a whisper it fades out on the winds, as I'm brought back into life by stunning reality.

It's been a while people. The few who read, but mostly me. I haven't had an outlet for anything...a dangerous situation to put me in, one might say. Against all that I am when people have asked me recently: "how are you?" my brain would shut down. Some robot somewhere was responding for me, mechanical, dry...lacking in all forms of warmth. I would start to come through and this automated program would rush me away on a conveyor belt knocking the wind (and words) right out of me. Afterward I would twist around my words, writhing with the pain that I have become such a creature, created in the aftermaths of morning after morning of continuous monotony.

I want my brain back! To become this is crazy for me, I am the real answer guy---and all you're getting is this half-assed response I give a hundred times a day with no variance. Someone has switched my brain over to filter, and only a trickle's coming out now.

"I'm Fine." my robot answers...'but I'm not! I actually feel like crap AND I struggle to get up every morning knowing the joy has been sucked away like my energy as I deal with you people, YET AGAIN!' I am screaming inside, taking all the force in my body to make some sort of sound but nothing is coming out. I just won't tell you that, because that would be wrong to say, or inappropriate. My voice is becoming smaller and smaller as the conveyor belt whisks me away into it's dark endless motion, shrinking into the horizon line.

Why must we always be appropriate. Screw appropriate. Some people make me screach inside. They bring up something that I haven't felt in quite some time...a rising force, a vigorous passion knowing there is something better coming. Something somewhere inside me is waking up after a ridiculously long nap...and it's getting right to work. It's showing me things I've forgotten. It's reminded me of things I've ignored. Take my hand it tells me. You can't hide from me, it offers to my ear with gentle kindness. This thing, this voice...it knows me in ways no one else does. I recognize it, it's voice soft and familiar like a good old friend. I think this voice might be god again.
My lips are dry, parched as if they haven't said anything in quite some time. Just like speaking for the first time, it's very hard to say.


I need you, God. I force out with all the gravity of the world.

Hello World. (on how I became an uncle)

Elowen Ann B.

Seven Pounds, Eleven Ounces, wow.

You're here! Finally. It's been a long nine months I'd say. You look like your mom and your grandpa...and you have the family eyes.

I guess this means life moves on even when you're stalling. It's safe to say that's what your uncle has been doing. I hope when I get to know you, I'll be a better person. I'm not a fan of this life I've been living. The just enough mentality. I'm going to change for you. A more together person. One who shows you God's uncountable love with everything I do. I promise to work on all those messes I keep getting in. It'll be a while, and it'll be hard...but just like learning to take that first difficult breath---it's something that needs done.

Honesty is a policy...

You've been warned. I don't want however reads this to think that I am this deeply depressed person, but I need an outlet again. Something. So here's a piece of it all.

A lot has happened. I have changed, my life has changed. I have seen things that I will never forget, even if I try. I have seen things that I will not forget, because I can't let myself. You know, the other day I was just fighting it out with my mom. Shouting and fighting because I didn't know what to do. These past few months have been harder on me than I could ever imagine. I have gone from extreme to extreme, and no one would be expected to remain healthy under that strain.

I was shouting, and fighting...because I did not know what to do, or if I could even do anything. Because it feels like every time I come home, or every time I leave I am on my own. It feels like I am left behind and forgotten and that is something damn hard to deal with. I try to stay in contact with people, but it seems like it is all too little too late. I have had so many restarts, do overs, second chances, and I have burned so many people in my destructive path. I should be in therapy, some sort of therapy somewhere with someone, but more importantly I should be going back to god on this. Instead I'm here. I'm writing it out just to make it that much more tangible, so it exists somewhere outside of my inner turmoil. Which there is a lot of, I'll have you know. I have serious issues, that when I bring up stop people in their tracks. People worry that I will continue to break beyond repair. People worry about me. Now that is just unexpected. I have things that I am just going to have to deal with head on, I have people. These people want to see me stay changed. They don't want me to regress into a hole. I have a savior, and he is watching out for me.

I took this picture in Vancouver. It's a simple self explanatory picture, and probably one of my favorites. Fire, is one thing that forces change. It burns and manipulates whatever it touches until it is otherwise unrecognizable. Instant change. You can't hide what it does either. A lot of times you have to start over after a fire. It does what so many of us want to do, but can't find the will---all without a second thought. Sometimes though things just have to change, we don't want change, we don't think we can handle change but life moves on with or without us. Life burns us, saves us, helps us. So here I am, changing, being changed and I would like to share my changed life just a little more.