First blog entry in over two years. It’s a historic day folks, mark your calendars.

Hello, anybody, hello, I’m not hearing any cheering, I don’t get a polite applause? You know the polite applause right, the applause given to fill the silence between introduction and when the speaker begins talking.

I’m always thinking to myself during one of these obligation claps that maybe this person doesn’t deserve the applause. What have they done? You don’t know what this person is about yet. What if this guy is getting up to inform the audience he intends to sell cigarettes to five year olds and use the profits to lobby congress into allowing him to strip mine national parks? You just never know, you could be applauding this guy and he’s a freeloading, kid corrupting, dog hater (I knew if I failed to convince you he was a bad guy by any other means being a dog hater would put you on my side =) ).

Where is this going? I… well, I’m not sure. I don’t have an agenda, no meeting notes, no audience that I know of.

I’ve decided to start writing in this blog again to sharpen my writing skills, to have an emotional release, to…well I’m writing because I mentioned to a new friend of mine that I had posted to a blog at one time. This was during one of our first conversations; she had a blog so of course I had to mention my short lived endeavor at blogging. If you’ve never been there I suggest you check our her blog StopAhead I give it high marks in all categories (but I’m not gonna tell you what the categories are =) ).

It’s phenomenal. Superb prose, excellent pacing, and she expresses levels of detail about everyday life that is not easy to capture. She’s done this four / five times a week for the last couple of years. If you don’t believe me go check it out for yourself.

So fair is fair, she wants to see my blog. I was (am) intimidated. I have three or four entries over the last two years. Most of my entries are quirk, muddled with a little self loathing and pity humor. My entries were written by a guy that no longer exists, a more apathetic, and alone version of what I am now.

I needed a change in my blog, a new direction, a fresh start. It needs to mirror the new me, a changed me.

So what has changed? I think I’ve grown up in an important way between this post and the last one.

I’m happy being me. Experiences over the last couple of years made me happy to be me.

Being “happy being yourself” or “your terrific just the way you are” has always sounded a little to “after school special” for my taste but it’s hard to argue with.

Society teaches us to become different people; we are never good enough the way we are. If you excel at modeling yourself to fit society’s image you go to Hollywood and make millions of dollars.

Society is right in the wrong way.

We are not good enough; we will never be “good” enough, that part is true. Society says we can fix ourselves that we can become better people, we can transcend, morph our bodies and our minds to fit whatever image we want to project. We can’t. Deep down everyone knows we can’t, people will be what they will be.

Well that’s not very optimistic, that’s terrible, depressing, bring back that old guy, he may have been apathetic but this is down right morbid!!!

You’re right, but I haven’t finished. I’m not one to preach, I get a queasy feeling just writing this. I get this feeling whenever I’m in the deep end of a conversation, like the eyes of the world are shouting contempt at my attempt to think deep.

They say, “Who does he think he is? Does he think he’s being original? Does he think he’s clever?”

To those eyes I say, “I am who I am,” “No,” and “Yes I do.”

You ready for this, my mini-sermon, my life altering formula? God can change you. God changes hearts and minds. It’s true. To not say this would mean I would have to face the reproach of the eyes in the mirror. Those eyes, those eyes, are unmerciful, and full of more than just contempt. Those eyes, they know.

I changed when I stopped denying God, when I accepted I would never feel comfortable living a life I knew was wrong.

The apathy is still there, but a simple acknowledgement of who I am allowed rays of optimism to shine through.

Sounds hokey doesn’t it? Well maybe it is, but so what. Hokey is a better companion than cynicism.

Embrace the hokey =)…

I hope to keep this blog running for a little while. I hope to make it full of hokey optimism, but barring that, I hope to at least avoid apathy.