178. I be illin'

This weekend kind of conspired against me and I think I have the beginnings of some kind of bug. It's not too bad now, just a kind of achy discontent. But it's got potential and I intend to keep it from reaching that potential. And so I'm turning in early tonight.

But...

But I've found a kind of affinity with my blogdience (my new word, you like?). I mean last week there were something like 200+ readers to my MySpace blog and something like 60 hits to my Blogger blog. Both blogs have the same content, I started the Blogger one so that friends not on MySpace could read my entries, and I kept the MySpace blog because it was getting so many hits that I didn't want to just pull out.

Anyway, all that to say that I just because I'm too sick to spend two hours composing a blog (yeah, it takes that long sometimes...sometimes longer), I don't want to leave my readers hanging.

So...

So I decided to put together a list of "essential entries" from my blog - blogs that I'm particularly proud of or that say something about who I am and what I'm about. The links will be to the Blogger site because I'm not sure how to link to the MySpace entries (and my Blogger site could always use more hits...yeah, I'm vain like that).

Here we go - entries (very loosely) ordered from mostest favorite to less favorite.

1. A Flower of Prose November 26, 2003.

It all started here and it's kind of a fitting beginning. I remember writing this entry. I was feeling that itch to write but I was already in bed for the night. But the itch wouldn't go away. And I don't know what made me post my writing instead of just writing it in my journal, but I remember getting out of bed, logging on, and writing this tiny entry.

And it's kind of funny how it sort of sets the tone for the rest of the blog. I had no idea I'd still be posting two and a half years later, but the line, "Is this a flower? No, it's a bud that wants to burst but it waits for rain, for God to take notice and to touch the skies." is kind of, sort of what my blog has become - a place where I can post my thoughts and wishes, and a lot of times, I write because I'm trying to work something out, to understand something about myself or God or the world. And these posts are like buds (no, not that kind of buds) that long to open up, to be a bit of beauty in a darkening world. But it can't open yet, it's still waiting for...for...for something it hasn't found yet.

123. viva la revolucion November 29, 2005.

This is one of my favorite posts of all time. I'll be honest, I haven't lived up to its ideals, but I still believe in the cause.

158. the problem when it comes to Christian art January 31, 2006.

I love the questions this blog raises - questions that frustrate as much as they fascinate.

30. rant (caution, potty mouth) April 2, 2005.

Phew, when I said "potty mouth," I wasn't kidding. This blog marks the emotional low point of my blog. I felt the frustrations I shared in that blog on a regular basis back then, and although I'm in a much better place now emotionally, I still recognize the things that I shared there.

Luckily, things start (slowly) looking up from there. As you can see in...

34. the arc of change (part 1) June 6, 2005.
36. the arc of change (part 2)...aka Cusack vs Giamatti June 9, 2005.

These two entries mark a huge turning point in my life. There are some really big realizations in those entries that have changed the way I see the world and it's made a...uh...world of difference.

If you don't want to read through the entries (and I don't blame you, they're kind of long...but also kind of funny and relatively well written, if I do say so myself), here are the key ideas:

1. I had a twisted understanding of who God was.

2. My past is not a pattern destined to recycle itself throughout the rest of my life. Instead, "Every day, the sun rises on a new day. God designed it like this because he wants to drill into us the idea that as soon as we're ready we can pick our sorry selves off our ass and get back at living the life extraordinary."

Damn...somebody offer that writer a publishing deal! (pop...as in pop my big head before it gets too big)

62. too much information August 9, 2005.

Near the end of this entry I list the qualities that I'm looking for in a woman. That list still cracks me up because I can't believe I actually shared that with the world.

7. Statues October 8, 2004.

This is the first of my experimental short story things.

Oh, and here's a little clue about my titles. Titles for entries that are just plain blog entries are all lowercase except for proper nouns. Titles for story or (wanabe) poetry entries have proper title capitalization.

I actually created another blog as a kind of storehouse for my short stories and (wanabe) poetry things. It's called The LoneTomato Sauce.

43. and she was tired of talking so he told her a story... July 7, 2005.

The title of this story breaks the rule I set about titles (see the description under blog 7, above). I can't remember why I did that.

Anyway, this is still one of my favorite short stories. The three stories within the story all came out in one sitting. I have no idea where they came from...well, that's not entirely true. I had a big crush on this girl (later to be referred to as Orange, see blog 92) and this is the first in a series of stories loosely based on my feelings for her. See, I was pretty sure she didn't read my blog, but I didn't know for sure and so I'd work out my feelings through these story things.

The series continues in blog 57, blog 61, blog 64, and blog 67.

58. Wishful Thinking August 3, 2005.

This is another of my favorite story things. And even though it comes in the middle of the story series on Orange, it isn't about her. I know this because Orange isn't a reader, at least not the kind of reader in the story.

It's pretty easy to see (I mean, it's in the title) that this is me writing about my ideal girlfriend/wife. To write the story, I just kind of told myself to imagine that I was already in a relationship with the girl of my dreams. What would our relationship look like?

I especially like the bit at the end where she points out the typo and the comma.

136 embarrassing stories December 28, 2005.

These are just two stories that really happened to me. Enjoy.



Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I was planning on this being a short blog entry so I could get to bed early and now I've been writing this stupid thing for almost two hours!

I'm done. That's a good list. Good enough, anyway.

Thanks again for reading.

(more original posts when I'm feeling better)