Parents.

Today is the first day of my 30 day blogging challenge that I really don't want to write anything.

One of the reasons I challenged myself to do this thing was sort of an accountability thing.  I figured that, if I had to write something interesting every day, I would have to do and think interesting things every day.  Every day, as I made progress toward my goals (numerous though they have become), I would talk about the challenges or thoughts I had along the way. 

So far, it's worked okay.

But today?  Today was kind of boring.  Yesterday was kind of boring, too.  I've put my life on hold for a few days to take care of something a lot more important. 

As I've alluded to in the past few posts, my sister has been in the hospital.  She's just finished the last surgery in a series of three to deal with a condition that sort of popped up a few years ago.  It's been a long year.

I am immeasurably impressed by her attitude through all of this.  Her condition has not been glamorous, but she has maintained an light attitude and a perseverant spirit.  She's an amazing girl, to go through three majors surgeries, take a year off school, and move to a strange town as a 20 year old.  

I'm also increasingly aware of my parents' example of sacrifice and love.  I feel like I'm putting my life on hold for three or four days because my blog posts won't be as interesting?  Psh.  My parents have been walking with my sister every step of the way.  It was when my mom went down to South Carolina to take care of my sister that her doctor first suggested to move to Ann Arbor for University of Michigan hospital care.  My dad and mom essentially lived at the hospital for an entire month as options were being weighed.  They would go to work, go to the hospital, eat at the hospital, go home to walk the dogs, go back to entertain my sister for a few hours, then, one of them would stay with my sister and one would go back to take care of the dogs some more.  They did this for an entire month.  A month!

In the months since, they have taken work off to be with my sister for treatments and surgeries countless times.  Right now, while I'm taking care of the dogs at home, my mom is sleeping in an uncomfortable hospital chair so that my sister doesn't have to be alone.

There is an awful, selfish part of me that says, "I want to go home so I can keep trying to live an interesting life.  I want to skip out on taking care of my sister.  I want to forget that all of this is going on and go back to Grand Rapids as soon as I can."  But as I continue to look toward my parents' love as an example for my life, my marriage, and my eventual child-rearing, a more selfless part of me is stirred. 

Hopefully that part wins the day.  I want to someday contribute to the legacy my parents are creating.

Creativity.

Another short post today, since I've spent most of the day in a hospital hanging out with my sister (who is doing well, by the way). 

While she distracted or unconscious or something, I pulled out a book I haven't picked up in a while. 

Image shamelessly stolen from Amazon.  Clearly.

Yes.  That's right.  Orbiting the Giant Hairball.  Great title.  Its subtitle, "A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace," really does describe a large part of the content of the book.  It's about how to be creative in an environment that isn't always creative.  It's about not releasing yourself in wild abandon to pursue creative things outside of any system, but using the good things of those systems while transcending them.  It's a really good book.

After reading just the first two chapters, I may have to add another point to my list of ways I'm creative.  Read at least two books about creativity a year.  Maybe more.  I dunno.  We can play with the number later.

The moral of the story is that I need to be inspired.  I need to be reminded that I am, in fact, a creative person.  I need to be challenged in a more broad sense. 

Sometimes, when I get into the mundanity of creative output, I forget about the creative part.  When I write, I think about my story structure analysis.  I think about my characters and their goals.  I think about the point of the whole story and why I'm writing it in the first place.  I start relying (rightfully so) on systems and rules that have helped me make a better product in the past. 

But in all of those details, I forget what it is I'm doing.  I am creating something (hopefully) fresh and new and interesting and unlike anything the world has seen before.  I am using my brain and imagination to echo the creative God who gave me both.  It's a huge privilege and tremendously fun while carrying a gravitas that I almost never realize.

The creative act is, I think, a bigger deal than we typically make it out to be.  It is books like Orbiting the Giant Hairball that help me remember that. 


I leave you with chapter 19 of Orbiting the Giant Hairball, in its entirety: "Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license."  Go ponder that for a while.

Marriage is broken. How do we fix it?

We had a very interesting small group meeting tonight.  I'm very tired and have to get up in five hours, so I'll sum it up by this: Marriage is broken.  What does it take to fix it?

Clearly, marriage in America has taken a hit in the past four or five decades.  With divorce rates near 50%, many people in my generation have begun to wonder if it's worth it.  For some reason, marriages have just been failing.

Why is that?  We can blame all kinds of things.  A rebellious culture before us that made the formerly taboo divorce okay.  Media that inundates us with messages that certainly don't strengthen marriage.  An entitlement attitude among the 20 and 30 somethings that demands a me-focused reality.  It could be lots of things.

But how do we fix it?  How can I be part of the solution to marriage?

So, really, I would love to hear some responses to this short post.  If you're married, how can other people help you have a good, strong, close, fulfilling marriage?  Seriously.  Ideas.  Go.

Simulated Effort.

I drank waay too much caffeine last night.  I ended up in bed around 1:00am, but unable to sleep until probably 2:30.  During that time, I teetered on the edge of sleep, leading to some interesting thoughts that, I’m sure, will be shared on here in the coming days.

One of the things that struck me (for whatever reason) is simulated effort as portrayed in platformer games.  By simulated effort, I mean the simple idea that the longer you hold the jump button, the higher your character jumps.  It was a simple choice in the early Mario games, I’m sure, but as I thought about it, it was quite significant.

This might seem obvious to most of the world, but that kind of means that the harder I work, the harder Mario works.  And none of us, especially in the early days, merely pushed down the button and leisurely held it longer.  No, we mashed that thing into the controller.  On several occasions, I’m pretty sure I had to unstick the B button out from underneath my Super Nintendo controller.  As I reflect, though, my increased effort was met with what seemed to be a commensurate amount of effort from my little avatar, Mario. 

This really increases the identification I have with my character, too.  We really are on the same team, both trying hard to save the princess. 

I mean, think about it.  How much more sense did Mario make in Super Mario World than Donkey Kong?  In Donkey Kong (correct me if I’m wrong), your jumps barely clear the barrels.  Every time.  Mario’s effort was the same when you accidentally hit jump as when you, in a last minute realization, jammed it with all of your might.  But in Super Mario World, Mario can hop.  And when you want and need him to, he jumps with all his might.  How right did that feel the first time someone experienced that? 

Obviously, this idea has evolved over time.  My favorite instance of simulated effort was in the cult classic, Shadow of the Colossus.  I have never been more stressed in a video game than when I realized that, by holding a button and watching a bar disappear, I was making this poor kid hold on for his life.  As that circle of effort shrank to nothing, I pressed harder, hoping that, against all logic, it might help my hero.  He seemed to renew his effort, but his exhausted animation matched the dwindling “effort bar” until he fell back to the ground.

What brilliant innovations for their time, these simulations of effort!  Now, in our era of motion gaming, we have new opportunities of increasing the bond between player and character.  And yet, in the motion games I’ve played, this has woefully not been the case.  Is this because of lack of engaging games (most motion games are sports sims, so far, it seems)?  Or is there an “uncanny valley” when it comes to motion control without force feedback?  What are your thoughts?

Why I killed the internet.

I got rid of the internet on Sunday.  A couple weeks ago, I called up AT&T and said, “Can I cancel my home internet?”  My former roommate and I had secured a yearlong “introductory price” of $20 a month which I suspected was about to expire.  That would double the price to $40 a month.  You know what?  I just don’t think home internet access is worth that to me.

So I call AT&T and tell them this and the lady says, “Sir, did you know that, here in the retention department, we can apply other discounts to your service if price is the only factor.”  I didn’t know that.  I ask her when the discount is set to expire.  “December.”  When I get a new roommate anyway, so there’s no difference in price to me. 

Well, dang.  Just like that, this nice lady at AT&T took away my only economic reasons for canceling my internet service.  But I still told her to cancel it.

I don’t think that’s a terribly common decision for a modern 20something to make, so I thought I’d briefly explain my counter cultural actions.

A while back, I wrote a post about ways to be creative.  Inspired by another blogger, I made my own list of ways that Kemp is creative; tangible things I can do to make myself more creative.  Briefly, here is the list:

Read.
Cultivate and pay attention to fun.
Listen to music intentionally.
Write 250 words a day.
Be impulsive.
Be bored.


Having the internet kills every single item on that list.  Especially number six.

Facebook, marvelous though it has been in connecting us to people, has destroyed our free time with worthless gossip and “catching up.”  YouTube, while revolutionary to the distribution of media in the 1st world, means that we never have to be bored again.  Though Google Reader allows me to follow way more blogs than I ever could before, how many of those posts do I actually think about anymore and how many do I just read so I can check them off my list?  On the internet, there is always something to do, but you never actually get anything done.

So I killed it.  If I thrive on boredom, I need to make sure I’m more bored.  And guess what?  Already I’ve written more, thought more, and engaged more with what I do.  I no longer peruse Hulu for new shows just because I have nothing better to do.  (But seriously, check out Spy.  It’s a Hulu exclusive and it’s hilarious.)

I mean, sure it’s inconvenient.  I can’t follow my shows.  Writing emails on my phone is tedious at best.  Maintaining my blog-a-day challenge has been… irritating.  (I didn’t really think that one out, did I?) But if I had easy internet access, would I still be writing this post?  Or would I have checked the new item in my feed, added someone as a friend, and clicked links until 1am? 

This has been a worthy endeavor so far (I write on day two…).  I’m sure there will be further updates about life without internet, but for now, how could you survive with less internet access?  Could you survive?  Do you think you could be more productive/creative/relational/etc…?  Think about giving it up for a day or two and see how you change.