New Year Resolutions for 2012

I'm a fan of new year resolutions.

Here's why:

People rarely slow down to honestly assess their lives these days: where they're at career-wise, the things they value, what they spend their time and money on. Now, some people still don't get it. But I like the fact that, built in to our culture, is a kind of system for self evaluation.

I thought briefly about resolutions this year, and even briefly considered resolving to make no resolutions at all. I finally decided against it. Why? Because people are all messed up and are always in need of improvement; and, when looking in the right places, a very particular type of improvement in your own life is always readily available. What I mean is, by God's grace, we can end this new year with a greater understanding of who we are, the world we live in, and what Christmas really means. (What? Yeah. Life is about Christmas. It's pretty sweet that every year ends on a high note, reminding us about the things that really matter.)

So here are my resolutions for this new year:

1. To consider it one of my highest joys to serve my wife, my children, and my family with humility, generosity, and grace.

2. To take my wife out on a date every month. (Perhaps a modest goal, but one I'm sure she'll like.)

3. To give my wife a kids-free crafting day once a month.

4. To improve my physical, emotional, and mental fitness by exercising my body regularly.


5. To pray for my wife and children daily.



For those of you wondering, I say "new year resolutions" and not "new year's..." because they are my resolutions - not the year's. I want to take ownership of them....

Let's also take a look back at my resolutions from 1/1/2011 and see how I sized up:

1. Read a minimum of four excellent books.

I only read two of the books on my short list for the year, though I did read a few others, too. The two I did read were The Reason for God and Forty Days of Musa Dagh. I'll get to the other two this year, I'm sure.

2. Pray for my family every day.

Totally didn't happen. Utter failure. But it's a good thing that God already knew that.

3. Climb 5.11a.

Also didn't happen - I don't think. But have been climbing a lot more recently. In the last two weeks, I climbed my first 5.10d and V3. My guess is that 5.11a isn't out of my reach, I just haven't had any opportunities to give a climb of that rating a shot. I attempted a 5.11b yesterday, at the end of my climbing session, and couldn't hack it. I got stuck about half-way up. If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, here's a quick intro to how climbs are rated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)

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You might be wondering about a few things here - why 2012's resolutions don't include anything about climbing or reading. Re: climbing, I still want to climb - and climb harder - but I want to make sure my interest in climbing doesn't overshadow my service to my family. Re: reading, I still will read - and I hope to read more this year than last - but again, I'm not interested in focusing on it. I'll just do it. Hopefully.

P90X and Climbing

A very good friend of mine recently recommended that I try working out with the P90X home fitness video series. He was so serious about having me give it a shot that, for my birthday, he bought me a pull-up bar. Why I all that interested? Nope. Do I like home fitness videos? Definitely not? But do I want to improve my climbing ability? Absolutely.

Some of you may remember that my first post of the new year (2011) was a set of new year resolutions. You can read 'em HERE. One of those resolutions was to climb 5.11a. Basically, it's a difficulty rating system used by climbers and anything rated 5.11x is right in the middle of it - not too easy, not too hard. So all in all, I set a humble, moderate goal of being able to climb about 1/2 of all routes.

I've only done two sessions/days of P90X and, so far, it has spanked my pants off - hard. On the third day, yesterday, I went climbing at Devil's Lake. I was sore, but was able to pull off a couple of good routes fairly cleanly - a couple 5.8's and a 5.9. (Devil's Lake ratings are stiffer than anywhere else I've climbed, so a Devil's 5.8 is really at least a "real" 5.9 and a Devil's 5.9 is at least a "real" 5.10a.

A few months ago - back in May, when I was climbing more regularly (READ: before our second child was born), I was easily climbing 5.10b and was close to climbing 5.10c. (The steps from 5.10a and 5.11a are: 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.10c, 5.10d, and 5.11a.) I feel like I've taken a small step backwards, but still hope to be able to accomplish my goal by year-end.

So the hope is that P90X helps to round out my training, so that I'm not *just* climbing, which has pretty much been the case for a while now. I've been feeling like a slug, and, with the exception of a handful of runs between today and this past May, it's been all I've done.

I'll fill you in on how I'm doing in the coming weeks...

One of Top-Ten Most-Depressing Professions

I just read an article from Health.com about 10 Careers With High Rates of Depression, and guess what? Artists/Entertainers/Writers made the list! Nice. Well, isn't that odd? These very people have sought to make a living doing the very thing which they are most compelled to do - most would say most inspired to do. Even so, artists strive for creative "success", and once found, they still find something to complain - nay, to be downright depressed - about. How is this?

Rabbit trail: for starters, let me say that there's quite a buzz about this article on the music industry blogs... that is, of course, how I found it myself. Specifically, I read about it HERE. And for the record, I mostly agree with what Chris R. at CDBaby.com has said. We differ mostly in our worldviews, which is to say, I think Chris would say that self-help tactics (such as those he has listed) actually work, where as I would say that, ultimately, they do not.

Now to answer the question how...

Let me preface this by saying that I haven't worked out all of the details of my argument here and I'm open to discussion. If I have something wrong, I'd like to hear about it.

I really think it's quite simple. There are two things going on in the minds of artists:

1) Artists channel their feelings to create art. You can't just create excellent art void of any feeling. I don't believe it happens. Art requires emotion.

2) Artists, like those in all other professions as well - all humans! - are on some level discontent with life. I believe that this sense of discontentment is the dominating emotion of our culture - and maybe of every culture that has ever existed. Thus, when channeling emotions to create art, an overwhelming majority of the time, the art produced will represent an aspect of a life of discontentment.

Simple enough logic?

Now, two major questions to tackle on this one:

A) What about love songs? I thought there were more songs about love than anything else.

Yes, you'll often here it said that the most popular song topic is love. But, I, for one, have never seen a study on the subject, so I'm hesitant to agree with answers.com. [Who do they have answering this junk anyway?] And in any case, I'm going to guess that half of the songs about love are actually songs about heartbreak. And even if that's not the case, underneath the words of many, many a love song is, in fact, a longing to be understood, to belong, to be content.

B) So how do we truly solve this human issue of discontentment?

Artists try to solve it by writing about it. Many non-artists try to solve it by listening to art, by watching art, by looking at it or eating it or consuming it. There are other ways that people try, too. "Love" - whatever that means - is also another way that we try to solve it.

But it never works.

The songwriter always has to write one more song. The investment manager always has to get one more paycheck. The church always just needs one more program. But this is also just a part of life in this world. We need certain things to survive, don't we? Money. Clothing. Shelter. Food. For the man or woman of this world - and for most artists - there is no contentment to be found here.

But I have found contentment somewhere, though many of my closest friends witness my chronic struggle with being discontent week in and week out:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hospital Beds and Jello Heads

My dad was admitted to the hospital last night because doctors discovered two separate pools of blood in his head - not in his brain, but between the brain and the skull. Scary times. Last night, he had a small procedure to place a filter inside the inferior vena cava (the main artery that feeds blood into the heart), then doctors pumped him with plasma to reverse the effects of the blood thinners he was on. And this morning, he had two holes drilled into his skull to drain the fluid from his head. The procedure was completed around 10:15 AM and I had a chance to talk with him briefly afterward. He's doing okay. He has several days of recovery ahead of him.

I'm still processing this, so I don't really have much more to say except the facts. I'll let you know more as things progress... and as I compute.

Also, the Bears played a great game last night against the Vikings...

Any Good?

Does any good come from being sick? Some might say yes.

Certainly nothing good happens while you are sick, if you know what I'm saying - unless, of course, you'd rather feel horrible than go to school or work...

The bottom line is that being sick sucks. Taking care of someone who is sick sucks slightly less; but in this case, you hate to see the person suffer through it. The only thing worse is being sick yourself and still having to take care of someone else, who is also sick.

Some would say that being sick reminds you to long for days without any sickness at all. Some would call those days "heaven." I think I've even said it. And quite frankly, I'm sick of being reminded by life to long for a day when everything that's wrong in this world gets fixed. Every problem is solved. No more suffering. No more sickness. No more pain. No more weariness. No more burden of life. No more miscommunication (I upset someone I love this morning, on the phone, by being insensitive and choosing the wrong words). I'm sick of feeling sick. (By the way, I'm not physically sick in the sense of having the flu or anything.)

I want the perfected creation now. Does that phrase make sense? You probably have never heard it before. It pretty much means exactly what it sounds like: every animate and inanimate object in the entire universe functions exactly as it ought to. Everything is "right." That's what it means.

So what can we do about it? Well, I'm still working on an answer to that. At the very least, I think having that sick feeling in your stomach - that longing for the pain to go away - longing for it to go away so badly that it makes you sicker to think about it - is a good place to start.

I think maybe another good place to start might be to make a list. I might do this. I'll right down the things that I see wrong in the world and see if I can find a way to counter it and, ultimately, correct it. I think I will start with my own life.

There are definitely a lot of things that I'd change about myself, if I could. For one thing, I definitely value my career too highly. Career. Ha! Well, I'm going to take some time right now to think about how I can temper how I value my music, and I'll report back - maybe tomorrow - on what I discover...

Photo by: Joel Sage.