Dreams.

It's 3:00 am. I can't sleep. But I can't stop dreaming.

One thing that I haven't (but at the same time, have) been doing a lot of is dreaming. I've spent the past few years dreaming of who I want to become, but not much dreaming about what I want to do - specific things that I want to accomplish at some point in my life.

As I'm laying here, trying every way I know how to get to sleep, ideas of "doings" have come into my brainplaces and I might as well write them down. Some of these are definites, some are maybes, some are "it'd be kinda cool if's," but they're all dreams of things I want to do in my life.

• Live of off 60% of my income. That would leave 10% to church, 10% to short term, emergency fund type savings, 10% to long term type savings (retirement, kids college, etc.), and 10% just to give away at some point (in small or large doses, depending on God).
• Lead a small group of middle school or high school boys.
  
• Be a part of a professional video game - enough to get me on the credits.
• To be credited as a writer on some sort of art, be it film, TV, novel, video game, etc...
• At some point, to work with my wife in the sense of a job.
• To own my own small company for side projects (works well with the previous idea).
  
• Write a book (about what, I haven't the foggiest, but it'd be cool).
  
• Live the somewhat urban life.
• Live a somewhat rural life.
• Have a spiritual retreat weekend.
• Get married to the love of my life.
• Sing a solo in a musical. Maybe not a lead part, but that one character who shows up in Act 2 as being really important who gets a song or two to themselves.
  
• Institute some non-cheesy rites of passage for my son.
• Write a story that gets adapted to multiple media.
• Have best friends and hang out with them frequently as I have a family and as my children grow up.
• Assemble a team of some of the best people I know to accomplish something. (In other words, to have an excuse to bring together the talented people I've known over the years (and will continue to meet) for one (or two, or three) awesome project.)
• Build a dream house someday on some property with a good deal of woods.
• Own two dogs. At the same time.
  
• Have a Japanese themed kitchen, complete with tea set, bamboo placemats, chop sticks, and plates.
• Give away a car.
• Speak at a camp. (Like church camp.)
  
• Speak at a conference. (Like GDC.)
• Take a homeless man out to dinner.
• Write a certain number of words per day. (Starting small...)
  
• Meet with someone further behind me in their journey once a week. Buy them coffee.
• Meet with someone further ahead of me in their journey once a week. Let them buy me coffee sometimes.
• Be an above average dancer. Especially with my wife.
  
• Be an okay swordsman (i.e. learn to fence; not the creepy-foam-swords-in-a-park-on-Thursdays kind of swordsman.)
• 
  

I might edit this in the next few minutes as I get more ideas, but I'm gonna go ahead and post now anyway.

Man, I wish I could sleep.

One of *those* posts.

This is going to be just another one of those posts trying to motivate myself into updating again. Sometimes they end up being an actual update, too.

So... newsworthy stuff...

I suppose by now all of you have seen Facebook. I am indeed "in a relationship." (It still weirds me out when I see it.) I guess that's kind of newsworthy.

Heidi's pretty cool, I guess.

So that's the update. Maybe there will be deeper thoughts to come.

What if it's true?

Here's something else I've been thinking about yesterday and today. What if it's true?

What if what we believe is true? Jesus really was God in the flesh. We really are alienated from God because of sin. Jesus' death changed our broken state, but we are still being changed. The Devil really exists. We're supposed to sacrifice for our wives and wives are to submit to their husbands (Oo..... controversy...). The meek will inherit the earth. Brother will be divided from brother.

Sometimes I believe things intellectually, but forget that it's really true. That it really does change the way I see the world and how I act in it.

God is really heavy.

So I'm reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. It's been on my reading list for a full year and I've finally gotten to it. It's like Rob Bell's basic theology book.

Here's a thought that's getting to me.

In Movement (chapter) 3, he talks a bit about missions. So often, when we talk about missions, we say that we are "bringing Jesus to" China or Africa or Chicago or the film industry.

But Bell reminds his readers that God is, in fact, everywhere. There is no place that he is not present. It is the awareness of his presence that changes from place to place and person to person.

The duty of the missionary then, is not to force Jesus onto a people, but to show them where he is already active and moving. What are the true things that are happening in the place? Are people laughing? Are there crops growing? Is there, in a word, goodness? If so, then God is there. He must merely be seen more clearly. He must be named. Just as Paul does at the Areopagus (a way cooler name than Mars Hill, in my opinion...), we can point to things already around us (like poets, philosophers, prophets) and say that they have it somewhat right. But there is a higher reality. It all comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God who revealed himself through Jesus the Messiah and the Bible.

So, Bell suggests, a missionary is perhaps better called a tour guide - one who can see God in the everyday. Someone who can see the Lord working in the most unlikely places.

In my own life, I am finally at a place where I am not surrounded by Christians - my job. It's not as hostile of an environment as I expect in the game industry, but I do not see people coming to work with their Bibles... How do I show them Jesus? How do I make disciples?

The suggestion that our job as "missionaries" (or evangelists or Jesus-networkers [I just made that one up]) is merely to see God already at work, point to it, and call it out appeals to me.

But it is a challenge. A change in how I look at the world. Sadly, even as a believer, I don't have the eyes to see God's movement in any but the most obvious and powerful places.

But Rob Bell might be right. If we see ourselves carrying God from one place (Cornerstone/my life/my church) to another (my job/my career/the streets/the bar down the road), we will undoubtably get exhausted.

God is really heavy.

Entitlement

Remember that one time I had a blog? Yeah... that was a good time.

I'm working on learning a little bit of Game Maker right now (search it on Google... I don't feel like linking...) It's good times.

As I was sitting outside in the beautiful sun today, I was watching some bugs move around on the grass. I figured maybe it looked fun. Maybe I should make a gameplay experiment about jumping around on different sized platforms, just to see if I can make it fun.

Then I remembered: I want to be a game designer and I should probably learn and make some...

Church was good this morning. We've been going through 2 Chronicles something or other: "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will hear their land." Today was "turn from their wicked ways." Good times.

Jason said something this morning that resonated a bit with me, though, that I'll share here. In talking about sin and specifically some things in the congregation, he mentioned that "out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." But how much moreso our bodies act? What is the heart behind my actions? (A question that has been plaguing me for some time...)

I guess lately, I've had a bit of an entitlement attitude. I've been expecting life to go my way without any hard work. I have not been learning how to design video games, I have not been spending time outside of my schoolwork writing or concepting. I only applied at a few places to work this summer - no wonder I'm stuck at a movie theater working weekends!

If I feel entitled now and act this way now, how much more so will I act when I have a college degree? In my observation, jobs don't come from hard work. I've always been taught that "It's not what you know, it's who you know." It's not how hard you work, it's knowing people that will give you a job anyway. That's not how the world is going to work out of college. We don't know anyone (at least, I don't). I need to kick this entitled attitude right in the rear now.

Another thought I had in church: In America, we feel entitled, like it is our right to freedom, our right to riches, our right to upper-middle class subdivisions, an SUV, and 2.5 children. This is exactly the attitude that our forefathers fought against! We feel like we deserve what we get - they worked hard to get it. There are many days that I wish I was more like generations past in work ethic and attitude.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. (These things are always longer when I look at them than when I type them...)