Still working on my mindgame lessons… obviously, got this post, and a post on both Archmaille and Archmaille Designs blogs… It’s funny how much of a burden it was starting out… but how little I even notice the blogging anymore… it’s just kind of something I do each day. Which is good, I’m glad to be writing more and getting more content up each day. God has been faithful, already made $150 this month from various income sources! Most of them were random and somewhat unexpected so it’s good but doesn’t show consistency. I must be the one to show consistency! I have slacked off on what started this whole thing… and changing character is what this is about so it’s good to have reminders I started this because of an Earl Nightingale speech called “The Strangest Secret” in which he challenges you to make a goal and spend the next 30 days focusing on that goal in a calm, pleasant manor each day for 30 days. Now thought without action isn’t helpful, so he also says you need to do more than is required of you. I’ve stuck to the more than is required of me part… and I think about the goal every once in a while, but not a good meditating focus on it. So that still needs a LOT of work Found the sheet that I wrote it on and the verses to go with it… I think over the course of the day, or week, or something I’m going to re-write out each of those verses and what they mean to me, why they are relevant to what I am doing here. I guess I should also say what I am doing here!

The first goal on my list is my short term goal… That is to make $1,000 a month from my websites. That’s not shooting for the stars, but it does give me enough money to keep up with tech, and contribute to our family, our church, etc. The next goal is to be a great animation artist working with Blender. Of course this is for the Animate the Bible project, I want to bring the stories of the Bible to life as they occur in my mind. Some of the forgotten stories, stories that get watered down in church to make them more PG rated… The Bible is NOT PG or even PG-13 rated, if the Bible had a rating it would be R rated because of the violence, language, sexuality, and immoral content it contains. I want to bring that Bible to life… If God isn’t afraid of exposing the raw offensive side of life through HIS word… then why are we as Christians so afraid to talk about or show the messages God has for us? Obviously this isn’t something for kids, I wouldn’t expose them to that… but I think there are a lot of people out there who don’t realize the depth of the amazing stories in the Bible because of how watered down and diluted they are presented to us at Church.

The last goal is sort of an inspiration goal. Symbolic in a way. That goal is a Maserati… Maserati in general is just awe inspiring to me. Especially taking into consideration their company slogan “Excellence through Passion” notice unlike many other car companies it’s not “Excellence in Engineering” or “Excellence with Heritage” no Maserati invokes passion in what they do… that’s what I want to be, I don’t want to be simply the man of cold hard engineering calculations… and I don’t want to sit on the laurels of my heritage failing to innovate because of what was done in the past… I want to live a life of passion, one that inspires others to live free, strong, and courageous lives.

Some times it is the simple things in life that make the largest impact. I think everyone should at least once in their life sit and marvel at a single tree for a day. Seriously, it seems odd, but there is so much that you and I can learn from a tree. Picture a tree in your mind, for me in this example the mighty oak comes to mind. Are you picturing your tree? Now picture the invisible around it… Surrounded by poisonous gases, pollution, dirt, dust, and all sorts of evil things. Do you ever feel like that tree standing in a crowd? Now think for a minute about what that tree does with those things. It doesn’t succumb to the evil around it, in fact it is quite oblivious to it. It doesn’t mind that life stealing carbon dioxide flows in through its leaves, it pulls the dust, dirt, and pollution in nullifying its effects on the creatures around us. It turns toxins into life sustaining ingredients, and it does so tirelessly. The more toxins you throw at it the more good clean air it puts out… without complaint. I have heard a lot of people talk about toxic people in all of our lives for years. The general advice from those people is to avoid or remove those toxic personalities from our lives. But I wonder now if that is the right advice. Look at Jesus and his amazing ministry, he went straight into the pit of vipers every day, directly, purposefully surrounding himself with toxic poisonous personalities. Liars, betrayers, whores, prostitutes, hypocrites, slanderers, you name it he surrounded himself with the most offensive, disgusting people of society. And our of those people what did he create? He let them pass through and around him, pulling out their scum, exposing it to the world for centuries to come… and left behind a trail of purity unsurpassed by anyone ever previous, or since. What if the key to success is not surrounding yourself and networking with the the spiritually, morally pure of the world… but rather fraternizing with the toxic personalities of this world.

The next lesson that trees give us is optimization. While trees happily take on any challenge offered in purifying the toxic… they never spread themselves thin. Lay under a tree at its base some time. Every leaf has a direct path to the sun, and if it does not it is eliminated. As the sun moves throughout the day the leaves tilt and move to follow taking full advantage of the time they are given. I think many of us feel that in order to best serve we must do many things in a wide variety of areas. When in reality the fringes is where 90% of us belong. Trying to live as a leaf on the trunk produces very little results, and trying to be the trunk at the fringes will only hinder and block the leaves from doing their job. Also God is not a dormant God, He is a living and active God moving all day throughout the day, and in order to best serve with him we must follow his path absorbing and being used by him to sustain life around us.

At nearly 48 hours it has become obvious that I have to end the fast… I wanted to go 3 days, but without food being crunched around in my mouth, crammed everywhere and picked out… well my wisdom teeth sockets are filling with puss… so I’ll have to postpone and do another fast at another time. Guess I’ll be adding several other sites to da mix of continual updates. I’m thinking the new list of sites for the next 15 days will be here, Archmaille.com, EasySimpleSideMoney.com, and YourVacuumGuy.com that ought to make for a good run and keep me busy. I also need to read “The Holy Wild” every day, keep meditating on God as if I were fasting… I know that’s not exactly possible, or even feasible, but I will give it a try

Also part of the problem I think is that when you fast your body burns off excess fat in your body (obviously) and your body uses fat to store toxins that it couldn’t process at the time… so when you burn that fat you release those toxins back into your body to be processed out. Because of the high level of toxins being released it tries to get rid of it any way possible… so your mouth generally ends up stinky because they process out through all of your glands. Well that happening is probably adding to the festering badness in my tooth sockets. Gonna go and start with a salad, and then move on to a real meal in a couple of hours.

With my latest post I’m sure you could easily recognize that today is a conflicted kind of day. I want to spend some money to gain momentum with my websites… but at the same time I know that I’ve tried that tactic several times before to no avail! Moving forward is the most difficult thing a person could ever be asked to do in my mind. Staying still is so comfortable and easy. Even though I decided to abandon the jewelry business in favor of working on animating the Bible with Blender there is a big part of me that wants to go back to it… it’s easy, it’s familiar, and I know it makes money occasionally. A living from animating the Bible? Really? That’d be great, but not sure it’s going to happen (oh ye of little faith right?). That’s why I’m starting a fast today… not necessarily looking for guidance, though it would not be unwelcome… I have my marching orders so to speak… the big problem is “keeping the faith”. Aside from it being a long time since I’ve fasted, I need the closeness with God that it brings… I realized this Sunday how much I miss Pastor Jim, how much I miss being challenged, and how much I miss walking beside God on a daily basis… I need that back if I’m going to move forward in faith. I’ve got to finish this website for the animated Bible, and then start working with the others to really move forward on the project itself! It’s a big task, and none of us can do it on our own

Well, I know I’ve not actually joined in on helping to animate the Bible yet. Haven’t had the chance to join the animation team yet, but the work that I’ve been able to do on the site is good! I definitely think it’ll help to bring everyone together in a more productive working manor. I’ve been off the project for a few weeks as my head healed, but yesterday I finally got back to working on it. Even using CakePHP and their bake function it’s a LOT of work to do… but I think I can get through it. I’ve not even finished baking all the models yet… which of course is the long part. Once I do that I can just run the “Bake All” command for controllers and views. Then its off to changing the code for each page, deleting unnecessary pages, and what not until I’m blue in the face It’s one of those things I wish I had someone else to work on those parts with me, but I don’t think it’ll kill me to do it. I have made some pretty complex websites before, and it always surprises me when I’m done, I don’t think this will be any different. I think by the time that I’m finally done it will be something to marvel at, and not because I’m so awesome at coding or anything, but because of what skills and talents God brings to the table at just the right time. Still kinda trying to get myself into the mindset of getting back on the coding horse after such a long time of not working on it with the wisdom teeth extraction… kinda set me back on everything. Well, it’s about time that I head out and pick up the wife from work, then back home for church, and the usual daddy things after that while trying to get some coding & blogging done. Sounds like a fun day to me

James 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

If you know what God wants you to do with your life and you are not working towards it, that is sin. Pretty intense huh? Every once in a while we need little reminders of such powerfully irritating words. Even for the most devout Christians these words will convict you to your soul. Actually I’d say these are some of those words that shake a devout follower of Christ to the core, but might leave the self righteous arrogant type untouched. I understand not really knowing where you are going, or what God has planned for your life. God is a mystery, for us to discover, and that is okay, that’s how it should be! Where the problem lies is when we stop attempting to discover God… when we think we’ve got him figured out and keep going one direction without questioning it. What we need to do with our lives is spend each day, every morning wake up and say “God, if it is in your plans, this is what I am going to do… if not, guide me to where you wish me to go.” This is something that I need to work on and learn to do better. I think if we’re honest with ourselves all of us could use a little learning/practice in this area