Can’t Stop

So I decided to enter into the topic everyone was talking about in the blogosphere over 12 months ago; Conan vs Leno. I like both Conan and Leno. But I side with Conan. But that’s not really what I’m writing this blog post about. I’m writing this about why Conan O’Brien is my hero.

I’ve always loved Conan’s comedy and style and personality and showmanship and hair. I just watched the “rockumentary”, Conan O’Brien: Can’t Stop, about Conan’s live tour he did between NBC and TBS. Early in the picture, Conan is being interviewed about leaving NBC and his current plans. They were talking about how the day that “The Tonight Show” got cancelled, he was thinking about his live tour. Basically he said he didn’t even know what it means to stop.

As many of you know, my internship with Keynote has fallen through. I couldn’t get the support raised, and I felt it was time to move on. It’s been really tough for me to miss out on an opportunity like that. Music is my life and I fell in love with performing last summer. Losing out on that dream is quite honestly heart breaking. Throwing in the towel with Keynote was tough, but now that I have done it, I feel like throwing in the towel altogether.

But I can’t stop. I can’t give up, I can’t turn on my music. I wish I had the willpower and drive and talent that Conan has. I wish I could have turned right around the day I lost Keynote and began working on my next big plan. That’s what I want to do, that’s what I’m setting out to do. I can’t let failed plans rule over me. Just because big plans didn’t work out doesn’t mean all big plans are out of the picture.

When You Were Young

 

When I was younger, life was so much easier. I didn’t have to worry about paying insurance, gassing up my car, buying clothes, and I didn’t even have to think about tomorrow. Even being sick was more fun! I got to stay home from school, watch movies, and have my mom wait on me hand and foot. Now I just lay in bed thinking of how I’m losing hours at work.

Last week a friend and I went rock climbing. She had never been, and I hadn’t gone in years. My dad used to take me fairly often when I was around 13, but the place we used to go to closed down so we stopped going. So my friend, Jen, and I figured it’d be a fun adventure to do. We took a beginners class and planned to spend the afternoon climbing. It was a fun and surprising experience.

The first thing I was surprised with was how quickly a lot of the knots and safety techniques came back to me while I was taking the beginners course.  We finished up the class and got the green light to have free reign of the climbing walls. So we set off to go have fun.

As I mentioned before, I went rock climbing frequently when I was younger. I used to tackle the harder walls, spending half an hour working my way up them, trying to strategically find my finger and foot holds. But since it’s been at least 6 years since I last climbed, I figured I should take it easy. So I stuck to the easiest walls.

But this is where I was even more surprised. After just half an hour of climbing the easy walls, I was utterly exhausted! My hands were giving out on me, my legs were burning up, and I was all gross and sweaty. I used to spend half an hour on just one wall!  But now half an hour is practically all I can handle.

Things were so much easier when I was younger. Not just physical things like rock climbing, or the responsibilities of life. But also spiritual things. I see so much truth in the concept of “Faith like a child”. It’s not about believing blindly because you don’t know better. Everyone who has ever interacted with a child knows that their favorite question to ask is “Why?” Faith like a child is about so much more. I think that having the faith of a child is not worrying about tomorrow. I think that having faith like a child is looking at the world with awe and newness and wonder. I remember looking up at my dad as a little child and thinking he was the tallest man alive. I remember climbing half way up the pine tree in our front yard and thinking I was on top of the world. I remember reading in my picture bible about the blind man who Jesus gave back his sight by spitting in the dirt and just being blown away! And here I am 5, 10, 15 years later, and it’s all changed. Most nights I walk outside and don’t even notice the stars. It’s just sad.

And just like with the rock climbing, I think having faith like a child is about being energetic and active in our faith.

I remember being very young and just knowing beyond a doubt that God had HUGE plans for my life. But as I have grown older and become more jaded by the world, I struggle to hold onto that truth. I used to be so excited to go to Sunday School and church, and now most Sundays I honestly don’t want to get out of bed.

I wish I could be young again. In every sense of the term. So here’s to youth of spirit!

I’m Not Dead Yet!

I’m a huge fan of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. One of my favorite scenes is the “Bring out your dead!” scene with the guy trying to put the old man on the the cart with all the other dead people. That’s how I feel a lot of the time, in respect to the old man. Sometimes others look at me and say, “Oh yeah he’s as good as done.” There’s a whole bunch of those people working at my old high school. But that’s besides the point.

But even more than that, I feel like I count myself out more than others do. I think that I have not hope, and might as well jump on the cart with all the other corpses. But no matter how many times I’ve felt that way, God has always brought me through. Somehow, things have always worked out.

Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

I know I’m not the only one who feels like that. Paul found himself in a similar situation. In Acts 17 Paul was at Lystra proclaiming the gospel as he always did. But some Jews came in and stirred the crowd against him, convincing them to stone him. They dragged Paul out of the city and left him there, thinking he was dead. But the disciples came to find him, and he was still alive.

Even when it looks like you may be dead, even when it looks like it’s over; It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

My Trumpet List

I’m sure most of if not all of you are familiar with a bucket list. Well a genius that I follow on twitter, Dr. Ergun Caner, posted that he was sick of the clilche term and coined a rephrasing of it. He called it his “Trumpet List”, the list of things he wanted to do before the trumpets of the rapture sound. I liked the idea, and thought I’d take some time to make my own “trumpet list”.

Blowing Up

Photo by Dane Gustafson. Used with permission.

Life is blowing up. I’m working 60 hours a week between my job and building a ministry partnership team. What’s weird is that two months ago I had literally nothing to do.  I had no life at all. I spent most of my days staring at the wall. Or the ceiling. Or the tv.

Now I feel like the only time I get to myself is sleeping time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled that I have work again and I am so excited to be going to Keynote and I actually enjoy talking about and sharing my ministry with others. But the thing that gets me is the irony.

The irony I find is that before I had all the time in the world to play music. That’s what I’d spend a large chunk of my day doing. But because I had  nothing going on in my life, I had nothing to write about (as my blog clearly depicted.) But now that I’m out of that season, now that I’m living life, I have so much inspiration. I have so many songs I’d love to write and sing. But I don’t have the time to.

Maybe someday I’ll reach that point where I’m living enough of life to have things to write music about, and still have time to actually do it. But that time isn’t right now.

My Evil Plan to Save the World

So it’s been over a month since my last post. And for once I can say it is not due to laziness. I mentioned before just waiting for my life to liftoff, and now the engines are igniting. A few weeks ago I went out to Indiana for the Intern Kickoff Weekend. Support raising for my time with Keynote is now officially underway. So between work and getting started on support raising, I’ve been extremely busy.

Now some of you may be asking, “Why is Nate going to do an internship with Keynote?” Even if you aren’t asking that, I’m going to tell you anyways.

God has instilled two major things within my heart. The first is that music is my ministry, and the second is that New England is my mission field. God has blessed and gifted me with music and given me a conviction and a heart for evangelistic outreach in New England. My intentions for this internship with Keynote is for it to be a learning experience. Spending last summer with them I saw how effectively God is using their ministry all over the world, and  I knew that New England needed that. But only being there for a summer project didn’t give me nearly enough information on how to get an active ministry like that started here at home. I felt like there was so much more I could learn.

I had been praying about it for about a month when I got a call from them challenging and inviting me to do an internship. I took that as an answer to my prayer. I’m hoping that through my internship I can equip myself to set up something very similar to Keynote focused specifically on New England. I leave at the end of August, and I am so excited.

It’s so surreal, taking my first steps into my “career”. Growing up I’ve had all sorts of ideas and dreams as to what I’d be when I was older. I wanted to be a roller coaster designer, a video game programmer, a writer, and so many other things at any given time. But now to finally see one of my dreams come to fruition, it’s really strange.

Hopefully I won’t have to go too long before posting again, but no promises. The next few months are going to be busy and long. Pray for me.

Lunchbreak Thoughts: Music Availability

So I’m on my lunch break at work and got some time to kill. Today I’m filling individual plant pots with soil. I did roughly 800 this morning, and I’ll do that again starting in about 10 minutes. It’s boring tedious repetitive work, but it’s not so bad if you got your tunes. Unfortunately, I forgot my headphones today.
Before the Walkman, how did people do boring jobs like this? You could have the radio, but still even before that what did people do? I spend almost every second of every day listening to music, even if it’s just in the background. When I don’t have it, everything just seems lame.
How did they manage before recorded music? I guess there are some things I can think of. Sailors had sea shanties and soldiers sang war marches.
Music just seems to be what makes my world go around, and it’s hard for me to imagine how slow the earth spun for thousands of years before music was as tangible as it is today.

Countdown

Photo by Dane Gustafson

As I mentioned in “It’s Cold”, life has been pretty humdrum for me. Without having work, it’s difficult to stay busy. And if it weren’t for God it would be impossible for me to hold onto my sanity. I mentioned that it’s really hard looking out at the endless wasteland of my life, nothing in sight for my future. Well I guess that’s not entirely true. The one thing I have to hold onto is going back to Keynote.

I’m planning on doing an internship in Indiana for a year with the organization I spent the summer with. So I’m not completely hopeless, but I do have something to look forward to. It doesn’t start until November however. In the meantime it’s just filled with a lot of waiting. Just a seemingly endless countdown.

That Countdown reached another milestone today; the application is sent in. Hopefully this will make my waiting period easier because I should be able to start support raising soon. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I’d much rather have something hard to do than nothing to do at all.

Also a week ago I got some other very exciting news. Here’s some set-up.  Recently a man named John has started coming to my church. He has a history with gangs, but God worked in his life in major ways and John got saved. Now John is a minister, and has a heart for reaching New England for Christ. In particular he ministers to people of the inner-city projects like he was. Now that’s great news in and of itself; God changing lives and reaching out. But that’s not the good news I got last week.

The good news that I got that I’m referring to is that he has asked me to lead worship at the new church he is starting up. Ever since meeting John it has been a huge boost to my morale and excitement because he has a conviction very similar to mine; spreading the gospel in New England. I’m really looking forward to working with him and this new experience. It’s going to be interesting leading worship, it’s going to be mostly inner-city people, many of whom have never even been to church before. Please be praying for us all as we prepare and work everything out and praise God for all the work He has already begun.

I’m looking forward to posting more about both Keynote and the new church.

I Need an Adventure

A little over a year ago I read “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller and it changed my life. It inspired me to live a more memorable and adventurous life. It inspired me to live a life that’s a story worth telling. That was what my New Years resolution was for 2010, and I felt for the most part I did really good on keeping that resolution.

I jumped headfirst into this challenge and right at the beginning of January went swing dancing with a friend on a whim. Eventually the year lead to my biggest adventure ever; Keynote. But after Keynote, my life has been completely devoid of adventure, a really really boring story. I think it’s hard to find and enjoy adventure after the summer I had. It’s like going back to standard def tv after watching hdtv. It’s like going back to Internet Explorer after using Firefox. It’s like McDonald’s going back to not having the McRib. What once was satisfactory, has now become a disappointment. The semi-precious gemstones of adventures I used to have seem worthless after the diamond I just lived out.

I desperately need a new adventure. Not necessarily anything big or extravagant, there’s no way I’ll top touring with Swerve anytime soon. But I need something extraordinary, something to break the routine I have of staring at the ceiling.

It’s Cold

Photo by Dane Gustafson.

So it’s been four months since my last post.

The past four months can be summed up in two words; “It’s cold”. That’s really all there is to it. Nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing at all. Just cold.

But having friends all over the country is pretty neat. Although not when you live in New England. Why, you ask? Because hearing them complain about their weather just makes you mad.

• “I’ve had to drive in the snow three times already! I’ve had enough!” Oh really? I’ve driven in the snow more times than I’ve not.
• “It’s cold outside, it’s 55 degrees!” It’s 54 degrees in my bedroom right now.
• “I’m planning a beach trip for tomorrow.” That’s cool, I’m trying to start the car in -11 degrees F so I can go to church.
• “My driveway is entirely covered in ice! This is crazy!” My state is entirely covered in ice.
• “We got 6 inches of snow, everything in town is closed.” We got 27 inches of snow and my brother still has school.

It’s cold.

But unfortunately, the climate is not all that those two words describe. I finished work on the farm for the winter, and haven’t been able to find a job since then. I hardly ever get out of the house, because I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, no money to spend, and even if I did half the time I can’t get out because of the three feet of snow we’ve been under since November. It’s cold.

To be bluntly honest; I’m miserable. I’m going out of my mind bored, I’m frustrated with my completely fruitless job-hunt, and I’m alone. I honestly think this has been the roughest winter I’ve ever had.

But despite all of that, this is the best winter I’ve had since 2000. Now I know I just said that it’s been the roughest winter, but that’s only from a situational viewpoint. The only thing that sets apart this winter from the rest can be summed up in one word; “Hope”.

Winters have always been hard for me. The short days, being locked up inside because of the ice and snow, and the height of responsibilities at school. And through every past winter, all of those things have caused me to relapse horribly with my depression. I would always spiral into a state of desolation, feeling like I’d never again feel happy. But this winter, despite all the junk that’s made me feel so down, I know it’s temporary. I know it will pass. I know brighter days are ahead. I know God has plans for my future, even if those plans aren’t too clear right now.

So now I just have to wait for the ice to melt. Both literally and metaphorically. I’ll be heading back to work on the farm in the spring, and maybe then life will begin to actually feel like I’m living.