We all have two lives.
The second one begins when you
realize you only have one.
— Confucius

Even if the rain won't stop
Even when I'm falling down, down, down
I'll hold my head up high
Drink the rain and learn to fly away
Lauren Black — "Drink The Rain"

The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be
Switchfoot — "Dare You To Move"

It's fitting on this Thanksgiving Day that God has been hitting me hard on two things.

The first, as I've mentioned in the past is [……]

Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
The Go-Go’s — "Vacation"

I know that blogging has been sparse of late — oh who are we kidding, it's been non-existent — but with good reason. It's been far too long since I've had a vacation. I mean, I've had vacation days where I took time off from work and did little or nothing. And every year I use some time to volunteer my services for a large international equestrian three-day event but that hardly ends up being relaxing. No, I'm talking about just kicking back and blocking out the [……]

All those times we looked up at the sky
Looking out so far, it felt like we could fly
Grace Potter — "Stars"

I was out walking my dog last night and it was so beautiful and clear out that the night sky was just filled with stars. More stars than are usually visible were shining all around and that never fails to make me pause and drink it in. It reminded me of when i used to run back in college. I would take off from in front of my dorm and head through the downtown of the small rural [……]

"... and thank you for your support."
— Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes

I was ever so gently admonished by Len this week for not sharing what's on my mind when something is bothering me. To quote the great Jim Dale as the narrator of Pushing Daisies, the facts are these.

I've not been sleeping particularly well for the last couple weeks and one day I offhandedly mentioned in a text to her that I guess I had too much on my mind. But every time she asks about it, I seem to deflect the conversation back to her as I try [……]

Just a collection of things that don't merit a full post all to themselves. This could easily become a regular feature where the mindless fluff and short bits of amazingly profound wisdom congregate and then present themselves to a weary world in need of their refreshment.

Or not.

• I'm subscribed to way too many podcasts.

• The thing I miss the most from my old life are the simple pleasures. I'm a big fan of the really nice moments that happen all the time but sometimes get overlooked in the search for the big events. I want to sit together with someone with a

No words are spoken
A hand slips into a hand
Fingers intertwine
Thumbs caress each other in a familiar dance

No words are spoken
A head leans onto a shoulder
Crisp night air is breathed in
Contented sighs are breathed out

No words are spoken
An eye catches glimpse of a smile
Footsteps match footsteps
Lips tenderly touch hair

No words are spoken
And yet everything is said

When did I become an idiot? I didn't use to be an idiot. I used to actually be rather smart (former Mensa member) and I had some real common sense. Now, however, that all seems to have left me to the point that some days it feels like I don't even know how to tie my own shoes. OK, that's hyperbole — but, truthfully, I sometimes find myself face to face with things that seem like they should be so obvious but that I simply haven't been able to get out of my own idiot way enough to see. And [……]

This is a repost of something I wrote just over five years ago. I've edited it ever so slightly from it's original form to account for my life changes and to update some wording. Additional commentary follows.

A couple months ago I woke up at 4:30 in the morning thinking about a girl — a girl I haven't thought about in many years. For some reason, my mind wouldn't let go of her memory and I couldn't get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Eventually I got out of bed, fired up the computer and did a [……]

Work on the blog continues.

Yes, I realize that you most likely don't give a rip.
No, that doesn't concern me.
Yes, you can sue me if you feel that strongly about it.
No, you won't get anything because I don't have any money.

So anyway.

On the front end, page titles are now getting generated correctly. Again, I'm probably the only one who really cares about that but it matters a lot for search engine recognition and analytics reports. The biggest addition that you will notice is that pagination is now working. Next on the agenda is to finally get comments working [……]

I've been thinking a lot recently about the concept of "they" and this habit we have of lumping people into groups. We're so good at doing that. We automatically separate everyone into various groups and slap labels on them so we can refer to them as some aggregate entity. I get why we do it. It's easier to deal with people that way. We don't get bogged down in all of the details that don't matter to whatever the topic of the day is. It's much easier to say "They said this" and "They want to do that."

It's such a [……]