life
Oops, almost forgot a title.
Dec 14th
Here she jumps.
Here she glides, plummets.
Here she splashes into this pool of VermilionLine?
Hello!
I made a youtube video last week, Wednesday I believe and only just uploaded. I’m using that as my excuse to begin posting.
So, since that video, about four days have passed.
I had the modeling interview yesterday and it was fantastic. They really wanted my look and loved my style, but in the end I turned them down.
What?
Down?
Heck yeah! They wanted money moar than they wanted me, I ain’t no fool.
I feel extremely well about the situation. It was one of the moar independent adventures I’ve gone on and tackled with style. Talk about character building.
Finals start Wednesday for me. I’ve got one on that day and two on Thursday.
I worked on my drawing final for 4+ hours today and still have loads moar to fix up. Most of the others are going to be written, so that’s another area I need to work on asap.
I’m still not so positive as to what I’ll be using this blog for, but I’m sleepy and I can worry about that as time goes on.
Goodnight.
Meagan.
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
Dec 11th
So I was contacted by somebody from my old work today who found herself in a pickle. In an attempt to add to the company website (which I designed) she had accidentally edited something and the main page wasn’t displaying.
/me puts on his 'web-troubleshooting hip waders' and steps into the murky swamp of the website…
Two minutes later voilà! the front page had returned, and the new page had also been added.
What did I learn from this? Surely I’m not a super-genius who can prophetically find problems and solve them instantly. The reason I found it so quickly and was able to revert it was because I knew that website intimately. I built it, I knew what each and every character of text needed to be, in order for it to work correctly. I could fix that site in moments while still groggy from recently waking up – but I might take hours to fix a site designed by somebody else. See I’m just the regular kind of genius, the kind that knows what he’s done very well, and has no clue about what other people do or how they do it.
I think if I can pull back from this even further I’d put it like this, I knew the truth about the website, I knew the way it ought to be, so any place anything differed from that state of truth, I knew immediately and was able to fix it. There could be a million ways it could have differed from the truth it would have been impossible for me to study, learn, or even prepare for all of them – but I didn’t need to prepare for all possible contingencies, I only needed to study and know the truth in its pure state in order to restore it.
So where do we go from here? What did I really learn today, that I can fix a website I built? Yes, but I think this whole adventure and crisis served as a reminder that skill, talent, desire to fix things are worth far less when you don’t know the truth. I guess goal #1 should always be to have an unquenchable thirst for the truth and let everything else fall into place after that.
—Tom
Beauty in the Dark
Dec 9th
So for the past few months I’ve been taken by the lyrics of a song called “Alone with the Sea”, by the band Hurt. The lyrics speak to the emotions of a man left behind by lost love.
Because I’ve strangely become immune
To the thought of seeing you
And the smell of cheap perfume
Is just a ring around the moonThere’s no more beauty in this world…
Somehow those words both gripped exactly how I felt, and set it free at the same time through the beautiful music those words where sung over.
…But at some point something changed—I found beauty where I least expected it and now those words serve as nothing greater than a marker to a chapter of my life that’s quickly closing. It all happened before I realized what was taking place, but somehow I find myself surrounded by peace, happiness, and tranquillity where before there wasn’t.
I’m thankful, but now as I lay that outdated anthem to rest I’m searching for a new verse to find refuge in during this new chapter that’s opening ahead of me. I’m not sure yet, but I think it follows the tune of “Assurance” by the same band.
So you need assurance that
Everything’s gonna be fine
’cause you’re just a woman who’s
Everything good in my life
Though we’d been over, weeping over,
Our last goodbyes.
I have learned to live with these fatal gifts,
And still you’re mine…
Sometimes a song can capture our emotions better than we can express them ourselves, but now, even though this is the closest to how I feel at the moment, I can’t help but feel that it cheapens my beautiful situation and I’m not entirely sure that it does it justice.
For now, instead of trying to find the right song to match how I feel I think I’ll focus on finding out where this new chapter leads me, and what more beauty there is to be found in it.
–Tom
Alone with the Sea
Assurance
What’s love got to do with it?
Dec 7th
I hear so many people talking about love as if it’s some abstract cloud of feeling that can only be understood by staring from a distance after it’s passed you by. I’m not one of those people and my understanding of love is very logical and clear. Am I a heartless robot, or do I have a valid perspective on the issue? I’d love it if you watched the video and left a comment or two (or would I just like it?)
–Tom
I’m Dead Serious
Dec 5th
So how often do we stop and think about the afterlife? For some of us that’s a pretty scary thought, for some of us it’s a lot closer than for others.
Well, I heard a group of religious thinkers talk about it a couple of years ago at the university here in town, representing a bunch of different perspectives on the issue. This was one of the ideas presented, and I thought it was beautiful, so I just latched onto it and made it a part of me. Tell me what you think!
–Tom
Where’s the beef?
Dec 2nd
So it’s been three years since I stopped eating meat this December. It looks like this is going to be a long-term thing, so I thought I’d take a couple minutes to share a bit about why I stopped eating meat in the first place, as well as why I continue to keep it from my diet.
