True quote of the day...

I'm sitting on my couch right now, my new-to-me tan leather loveseat. I'm sitting lengthwise on it, and with my back up against the side of the couch - two pillows at my back - my feet hit the middle of the cushy couch arm. My big toes stare at me, intertwined as they tend to automatically do when I'm working. I'm still in my work clothes, 1) because I haven't had a chance to change out of them and 2) because I'm hoping it'll make me get into work mode. Writing mode.

And yet, the thought crosses my mind - "I wonder if I've gotten any emails since I checked two minutes ago." So I check, then I check Facebook, then Twitter, then Facebook again. Pause to watch a silly video posted by a friend, and back to my empty blog post. I'm distracted by my roommate's sudden exit, the boxes of her stuff waiting for a home in our apartment, the air conditioning going off and on.

The apostle Paul knew the struggle. He memorably said, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" and the rest of us humans have been quoting him for the past two thousand years, taking his words both in context and out. In Romans 7, Paul's talking about sin, going on to talk about how sin lives in us when we cannot do the good we want to do, that we are created to do.

My new brilliant writer friend Jeff sees writing as a gift that is meant to be shared with the world, and to keep it to ourselves is essentially sin. It's wrong. He said this to me among an enormous amount of tips and ideas for getting my voice out in the world. It's nice to know others who are walking down this writing road, struggling and succeeding occasionally at the same time.

I feel like a broken record, but it's hard, man, to do what you love. And it's easy to do the things that are meaningless. Because they take less work, less investment, and less dreaming. If they fail, nothing is lost. But the passions, they are hard to follow because they take you on winding, long trips in which the end is unclear. The point, though, is to keep going. Onward!