Just keep me where the light is

I write this as I lay in bed wondering what comes next. The latest chapter of my life has seemingly ended. I can't help but imagine what is next to come as the pages continue to fill themselves.

I write this as I listen to music that molds me, lifts me, heals me, energizes me, and has helped me become the person I am today. The music I listen to inspires me. The songs we listen to give us hope if only for those sparingly few minutes the play.

I write this wanting more. I want more from this world. I want to give more to this world. I want to help the world change for the better. I want the world to help change me for the better. We all want more. What it is we want is the question.

What do I want? I want too much. I want material things. I want emotional things. I want spiritual things. I want things. We all want things.

What things do we need? We need God. We need mothers and fathers who love us. We need hope and desire that never waivers. We need to be inspired and to inspire others.

We need to have nights where we lay in bed wondering how we got here, how we learned to call a place called Nashville home, how we came to love the same music our father's love, how we are hopefully beginning a career, and what we are going to do next.

We are in this together. We fill our lives with I's when it's the times of we that truly matter. Cherish those times. Do not, ever, let those moments pass you by unnoticed. Open your eyes, listen, and take the world in.

I write this as I fight the notion of sleep. I do not want to miss the world around me as it continues to move. I want more.

I am only a man,
B

In his words...again.

I was 23 years old when the nation was attacked on September 11, 2001. I can remember hearing pundits say "this changes everything" and "things will never be the same." Obviously it was a tragic and traumatic event, but that sentiment has carried on through the better part of my twenties. If you were 43 years old on that day, I would imagine it was a difficult concept to get your head around as well, but if you were a young adult just entering his or her individual life, there was an added twist; how can you process the idea of everything changing and things never being the same when you have no point of reference for what "everything" and "the same" is? I was just beginning to put my hands on the world around me, to interact and engage with it, and to actualize the dream of being an adult in a free society. To wait in line for 23 years only to have the "sorry, future canceled" sign flipped in my face was depressing, to say the least.

The social and political narrative of the last eight years, if you're a young adult, has been "you are the first generation of the second half of the rest of human existence." That's a huge psychological undertaking, and I believe it's one that will someday be diagnosed on a massive scale as having led to a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Something has to explain away our premature obsession with 1980s nostalgia.) My generation has come to know itself as the generation that should have seen the good days, my, were they spectacular, now take off your shoes and place them on the belt.

What Barack Obama says to me is these days are good for something. Just when I'd thought my only role as an adult was to help shoulder the nation through its darkest days (known to us as "the rest of them"), Obama gives me the feeling that I could be alive to witness one of the most brilliant upturns in a country's history. Imagine that -- a young adult in this day and age being given something to someday brag to his children about having being alive to witness. What a concept.

That's why hope is a worthwhile commodity. To those who question whether hope is a tangible product worth building a campaign around, I'd say take a look at despair and how powerful that has been in reshaping how people think and live. I believe the definition of the "hope" that Barack Obama enthuses operates on the unspoken thesis that there has to be a polar opposite to the despair of 9/11. Because if we accept that there's not, the will to live becomes forever altered. To adults who will vote for him, Barack Obama represents a return to prosperity. To the youth, he represents an introduction to it.

-John Mayer
Huffington Press

Won't you be my neighbor?

I was called a grown-up tonight. I'm not sure it fits.

I listened to Room For Squares tonight for the first time in several months. I needed it. "3x5" and "Great Indoors" hit a particular note. It's amazing how lasting the message in a song can be. I feel like it was just last week I was listening to it when it was new to me feeling the same things I felt tonight. I'm thankful for the world this album opened my eyes up to. If it weren't for this album, I might not know who many of my now favorite artists are. If it weren't for this album, I might still be listening to Limp Bizkit and Korn (a great band, not my cup of tea anymore). If it weren't for this album, I might not have been motivated to finally learn how to play the guitar (i'll get good one day...maybe).

The Cubs weren't even in the playoffs this year. That's my absolute feeling on the subject. I'm completely numb to anything that is Cubs baseball right now. I put up a slight fight to anyone who tries to get on me about it, but I don't even feel like fighting for them right now. After 100 years without a World Series title, 25 of which I've been alive for and 21 of which I have been a Cubs fan, I didn't think Cubs-nation would ever doubt this team as much as I feel we are right now. If the term die-hard wasn't coined describing the Cubs I don't know where it comes from.

I watched Evan Almighty for the first time this past week. It was pretty good overall, but lacked the cleverness and originality that Bruce Almighty had. The scene where Evan's wife is talking to God stood out to me. Morgan Freeman is playing the role of God and he tells Evan's wife about how he doesn't think God gives people things like patience or courage, but instead he provides the opportunity to be patient or the opportunity to courageous. I don't know what the bible says about this particular point, but I like it. This is something I need to be more proactive with, taking opportunties that are presented to me instead of waiting for them to appear to me crystal clear.

I'm getting the job I'm waiting to hear back from. If I don't I guess I'm just gonna have to win the lottery cause it's really the only thing left.

Either that or you guys support me. Just send me your credit card numbers and I'll be fine.

Much obliged,
B