Friends, Real or Imagined

I have been privileged -- dare I even say it? -- blessed with many friends and acquaintances over the years I've graced the surface of this planet, and some of my favorites have been those I've met only online.

When I think back, I remember fondly a favorite teacher, my best friend from down the road, a favorite aunt, friends from school, my ex-girlfriends, the small group I sang with in High School, another I sang with in College, My roommates, my floormates, the girl I met the first day of class, my Brothers and Sisters in Christ, my coworkers of 20 years... the list goes on and on of the people who have in some way touched my life. What's embarrassing is the small number of those people I stay in touch with. What's disheartening, is the small number that care to stay in touch with me. Those I do keep in touch with are those with an online existence, for the most part.

I recently caught up with someone I considered to be an important College friend. He lived on the same floor as me -- we shared interests -- we skipped classes together, watched movies together, ate pizza together. Yet we grew apart after I got married. I was too absorbed in my own life to remember his. Years later when I wanted to reach him, I'd lost all the tendrils leading back to him. With a name like "Smith", he wasn't easy to track down. But I finally found him -- 1600 miles away. I hope to keep up with him from here -- as an online friend, because we're no longer 'real' friends.

What's the point of all this? Just this. Friends and acquaintances are as important as the importance you give them. We can't physically maintain a continual 'real' relationship with that many people, but we can keep tabs on each other, and social media like facebook, YouTube, Vloggerheads, twitter, etc are simply tools that make that job -- and it is a job -- easier. I've learned that If a friend is important to me, I need to make the effort to keep in touch, make myself a part of their life, and be a friend. If it's returned, bonus, but at least they know I have a desire to maintain a friendship. That alone can affect whether or not they keep in touch with me. If I wait for them, they'll wait for me, and contact will be lost.

Is all this just basic knowledge to most people? Perhaps. For me it's an effort, because I tend to be the introvert's introvert. Relationship is a skill I continually learn how to master. Because of this, from my perspective, there is little difference between an online and an offline friend. What is it? The offline friend is HARDER work, because I can't connect day-in-day-out on the Internet. Strangely, and MUCH to my advantage, many of my 'real world' friends have recently popped up on facebook, so they're hybrid online-real-world-friends. I love it.

Peri Urban recently posted a video on Vloggerheads -- a site I no longer frequent -- considering once again whether any of this on-line friendship and community is "real". HE makes some very good points. I can't sit across the table from him and have a cup of coffee without logging onto a computer and a social networking site -- or travelling to Scotland. (Which I'd be willing to do if anyone would care to fund the trip...). I'm NOT going to show up when (Let's say if) his house burns down. And most disappointing to me, I can't play in his studio on a whim and help cook up something fun we can sing together. In that sense, we're not real friends. We don't have a shared history other than YouTube and Vloggerheads. Losing this 'friendship' we have would be as easy as never sending an e-mail or visit each others site again. I have become convinced that he and I each find something interesting enough about the other that we're not going to let that happen. One or the other of us sends a "Hey" not when we haven't heard from the other in a while. And I so appreciate that. I still drop in on his blogs, and I have no doubt, he's rubbing his scruffy little chin whilst reading this right now. So what is thus based upon? I don't really know. We're similar in some ways, but so different in others. But I know I enjoy the relationship -- whether it's a 'real friendship' or not.

Matt Hellyer (who dropped my name in his response to Peri -- do I need to send him a $20 for that?) is in Bosnia Herzegovina, having moved there from someplace in the UK (Horsham, was it?) Matt and I have a similar tenuous Internet friendship -- bolstered a bit, perhaps, by a shared faith, but really having nothing else in common than a level of interest in each other's videos...

Then there are the many people who go to my church that are also connected on Facebook. The online existence seemed to be uncomfortably redundant at one time. I almost felt as if my online existence was invaded by real people. Shy as I am, this was a major cause for concern! But here's the strange thing that happened. One by one, those friends have been leaving the church I attend, and going to other churches. I don't see them weekly anymore. When this happened in the past, those relationships were lost and forgotten, unless we made the effort to maintain contact. (Seriously, this is an effort. I can't even manage to get Christmas Cards out to people each year. Relationship stuff is WORK folks!) Now, however, I see those people almost more than I see the people at church. They're on my facebook. They comment on my cookie I had for lunch, and the pie I baked. They laugh at my attempts to make up funny status descriptions, and we stay in touch -- but they've made the transition from 'real' friend to 'online' friend.

So you see, the line between has become blurred. And I suppose that is my point. Where there used to be 'real' friends and 'online' friends, and one made you sane and the other made you crazy, there are now simply 'friends'. And I like it this way! Don't make me go back.

All friends require a certain level of care and 'feeding' to keep the relationship healthy. I don't think it makes sense, going forward, to continue to draw a distinction between 'online' and 'real' friends. Just make sure you give care and feeding to those who care enough to feed you.

And Thanks -- to those who care enough to call me 'friend'. You are appreciated more than you will ever hear from me, I assure you.

-dan'l

Seeking Balance in an Unbalanced World

Every person has their things they have to do, and their things they'd rather do. If'n I had my druthers, I'druther be singing. But I have to balance my time, and apply it wisely, lest anything that must have attention be missed, or anything I'd prefer to have attention be neglected.


How does one balance?

There are many philosophies to managing time. "Schedule the biggest things first", "Seven Habits of...". In Real-Time we even have special scheduling algorithms for dealing with tasks. FIFO, Round Robin, FIFO with priority Inheritance, LIFO... We schedule data using elevator policies, best-fit, first-fit, etc. But my question at hand, is how do I prioritize multiple first priorities?

Yes, Dan has said yes too many times.

Specifically, for the Christian man, how does one properly balance important priorities outside the confines of the church community against/with/alongside those within the church body?

I've struggled with this for over a year. Now it's a reality and I have to find a balance, but I'm afraid the balance I believe to be 'right' will not be perceived as such by all involved. So now I have to prioritize who to disappoint. :-)

I'm part of the 'servant leadership' of a local body of Christ, and as such I have obligations to the people of the church as well as to my God. These are obviously high priorities.

I'm also part of the leadership of a local school-related organization. Because of the infamous 'separation of church and state' interpretation here in the states, this means a certain degree of separation from the church be maintained. Motivations related to Spiritual matters simply have no bearing on the motivations, methods, or operation of this organization.

How does one separate 'man' from 'Christian man' in the right places when one is talking about the SAME man?

Of course this is a gross oversimplification of the complexities involved. There are also pressures related for home, family, parenting, extended family, illness, wellness, government, and employment. The list is impressive, don't you think? And it goes on.

In Scenario 1, our hero maintains full control in all areas of his life, expertly carving a weaving path through all meetings, and comes home to help cook, clean, and whip out a couple loads of laundry. At the end of the day, the beginning of the next has already come and gone, so our hero gets little sleep, and soon begins to miss deadlines, loose concentration, and generally fail. This is no good.

In Scenario 2, he drops out of church leadership to focus on the time-sensitive effort of leading the civic organization. His daughter will only be with the organization 3 more years, and this is when they need the help. Here, we cringe for our protagonist as 'friends' from the church begin to talk about him behind his back, suggesting he's lost faith, fallen away, or been tempted by Satan to be more 'worldly'. His effectiveness in that community is diminished, and cannot be regained, because those who know he 'bailed on the position' have long memories.

In Scenario 3, he drops out of the civic organization leadership. The organization falls back into a state of disrepair, fails to grow, and his daughter may (gasp!) be bored. Is this better? His Spiritual Integrity is now not in question, regardless of the true depth of his commitment. Appearances are served.

In Scenario 4, our underdog drops out of leadership entirely, all around, because he's obviously not a leader. Leaders don't 'waffle' like this before making a decision.

(sigh)

Consider this. If as the church would desire, a man completely devoting himself to Christ turns his focus entirely inward on the body of Christ, and ignores the world outside, will he not fail to complete his core mission of seeking to save the lost? They're on the outside, after all. Furthermore, if the world continues to be led by those not intensely active in the Church, doesn't the church (and its Christian members) lose effective control over their surroundings, ultimately ensuring their own restriction and demise?

I paint a fatalistic picture, I know. There are more subtle flavors of this eventual fall from influence.


Even though I am a Christian trying to dedicate my life to Christ, I still have to buy groceries at the store, mow my lawn, live in the township, rely on the county, the state and the federal government for services and support, including protection. If the church abdicates influence at these levels of community and government, we will eventually find ourselves increasingly outside of society. It behooves the Christian Man to seek out influence, then, in the world he needs to be part of, to ensure his continued right to his Faith.

Right, so what is my point? I think I lost it a bit. My point is this. I am not a bad person for taking time from Church Leadership and investing it in a local booster organization.

Because if I don't do it, the boosters will rise up against the Christians and snuff us out?

I need to work on this justification stuff some more...

Can't sleep

I can't complain. I mean, I can. I do all the time. But I ought not to. I'm here to complain. I'm here, I mean. Just here.

On Saturday, on my way into a routine surprise appendectomy, they gave me an I.V. antibiotic, and I reacted to it. Fast. Scared me 'to death'. Well, no, not quite, but I was thinking that the end was possible here, when my ears and my throat closed, my voice disappeared, and I had to take a deep breath to make a sound.

But I came through. I have no appendix. But I can breath again, and I came through. I should be grateful. I am grateful. A lot of people dropped what they were doing and prayed for me. I appreciate that. I really do.

But after that they put me on steroids, and now here it is at 3:45 am, and I'm not tired. I'm full of energy, and I'd do anything for you right now. You need 100 reports typed by morning? No problem. I'm on it. Need software coded and delivered by the weekend? How many thousand lines? No problem!

I hate steroids.

But where would I be without them?

Please, please, please, don't let me find out.

Gotta go try to get some sleep...

Dan'l for President - 2008

I hope I haven't gotten myself in too much trouble...

We held nominations and elections tonight for the Band Boosters organization at the school, a 501(c)3 support organization that provides 'Parental Support' for the Marching and Concert bands.

I had visions of being in leadership on the boosters, because I remember what an important part of the band the boosters were when I was in High School. But President? I'm hoping I can hold it together long enough I don't get impeached before the fall.

The boosters manage fund raising and provide pit-crew for the bands, clean and manage the uniforms, provide bouncers and ushers at concerts, etc. They're a catalyst that takes a good band and enables them to become great.

At least, that's now I remember it. :-)

Now I have to drop something else to make room for this. YouTube?

I Have the Power!

Was it "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe"? I think that was his battle-cry. That was my Sister's generation -- I was already grown when it was on, but I remember the sword in the air and the lightening strike.

This morning, I didn't have the power. None of it. I woke at 5:30 to the news that the lights were out. It's amazing how quiet the world is when there is no electricity.

Apparently, somewhere nearby a tree blew over and took out the power lines. It got our whole neighborhood. The kids were scared -- well, Ryan was. Katie was P.O.'d because she couldn't shower. Ryan wants to know why things happen, and his imagination takes him places it shouldn't. He's his own worst enemy. So I grabbed the old tractor battery (which I happened to save after removing it the other day, remember?) and hooked up a 500 watt inverter, and got the TV going. (yeah!) Naturally, there was no news about it.

I'm not able to work without electric, so once I got the kids on the bus, I headed back to bed. I love my bed.

Later, I woke up. Made the bed, wandered through the house doing odd jobs that I could do without power, light, or water. Not much, let me tell you. Mostly, I stood looking at the room, wrought with terror because I could be receiving e-mails and I'd not know about it. Yes, I had an anxiety attack without my computers. I'm such a geek. And I don't mean that in the contemporary uber-cool nerdfighter sense of the word, but rather, in the derogatory 'nerd' sense.

At 11:30 am, I was using the restroom, and heard the slightest hint of a fizzing sound. No, from the inside of the toilet. Stop that! Yes, there was water running. It grew louder, and louder... The PUMP IS RUNNING! Within moments, I had water, and the water heater started up, and the lights worked, and the TV worked, and THE COMPUTERS BOOTED!!! O HAPPY DAY! WHAT JOY DIVINE! I HAVE THE POWER!!!

"Hi. My name is Dan, and I'm addicted to electricity."

-dan'l

The Well-Tempered Man

Mow the Lawn

It seems, on the surface, a simple task. The cutting of the grass is an established tradition in the Spring and Summertime of West-Michigan. My neighbor with the finely crafted, uniformly colored, perfectly flat, irrigated lawn does it with ease aboard his joystick-driven lounge-chair mower. He's retired, though, and he and his wife spend many hours a day in the yard, plucking, pruning, trimming and preening. Their lawn is perfect.

My other neighbor has a similar mower, similar irrigation, and a similarly cultivated green lawn, though he's a very busy man who works early hours at a tough job and returns home to exercise his artistic leanings by carving mighty oaks into bears, eagles, and lighthouses using various chainsaws.

Another neighbor is a farmer, breeds and farms using Belgian horses, and also has a day job delivering propane gas. His wife works at my son's school. They also have a beautiful lawn. It looks so easy...

So one would think, given a similar location, my lawn would green up like theirs.

Well, it doesn't.

So what am I doing wrong? Everything, it would seem.

Last year about this time, we were having a new roof installed. The roofer used a large lift to raise a platform to the roof, carrying shingles, men, rolls of nails... To this day, I can tell you exactly where he went with it. :-) The trenches it left are well-preserved in the hard-packed soil I have around the house. In the back yard, where the original builder buried the trees and stumps after clearing the woods for space to build, a sink-hole has formed, and the roofing contractor buried his lift to the axles back there. Wonderful. Maybe I'll build a pond. It's about a 2-foot deep hole, and getting deeper with time.

Even so, the front yard remains in pretty good shape. The yard is soft -- as it is each Spring, because it's been tunneled through all winter by ground moles. Each step you take out there, you sing in about an inch, leaving obvious footprints in the yard. It's that worked up.

Where grass will grow, it's infested with weeds. Near the woods, where little sunlight shines, moss is taking over the lawn. A different green, and certainly not healthy for the grass -- choking it out.

But I can still mow the weeds, right? Make it look nicer, anyway? I can roll the molehills down, dethatch the lawn, aerate the soil, and mow the weeds off so they don't appear too unsightly.

That was my intention this morning. I sent the children out to pick up stick in the little red wagon. A short task, but they made it long by deciding to also rake the leaves. Good kids! Got to love that ambition. Especially since Katie came down with a cold today, and wasn't feeling the greatest. They came back in a short time later -- "Dad, something's wrong with this wheel!" -- sure enough, we'd run over a crab-apple branch with a pricker intact, and it pierced the inner-tube of the wheel. I grabbed a tire patch kit, and in a half-hour was ready to start the tractor and go mow.

But the tractor wouldn't start. I got it to start last week. Once. After that it wouldn't turn over. So I replaced the battery. Still won't turn over. I tapped the solenoid with a hammer. Dad says that's a good thing to do. Still won't work. I charged the battery -- maybe I got a bad one. Nope, fully charged. Just won't turn over. I disassembled the engine housing, and checked the starter. The engine and the starter both spin freely. That isn't it. Maybe a bad solenoid? I don't know. Now it's beyond my level of expertise. I'll call a guy on Monday to get it in for service. I'm afraid they'll have to rebuild the engine, because I see oil leakage...

No problem. There's still a few hours left, and I can push-mow the entire yard. I can use the exercise. So I got out the push-mower, gassed it up, and set out to make my mark on the lawn one step at a time. This wasn't going to be pretty -- the roller can't be used without the tractor to pull it, so the mole-hills are all out there still, and the push mower will chop the tops off. Sure enough, I sink in deep, and the lawn gets a nasty buzz-cut wherever there was a mole hill. I got once around the yard, and stopped for a snake in the bushes, when it happened.

The push-mower died.

A noisy, clanky, metallic death. When I looked underneath, I saw why. The blade was totally worn out, and the ends of the blade were cut into a forked "V" shape. This blade was LONG gone. A stray roofing nail was embedded in the metal of the mower deck and had sliced the blade up, and the unbalanced blade had shaken the bolt loose, letting it vibrate under the mower deck.

So, I lost my temper a little. (That's a gross understatement, in case you didn't catch it.) By this time, the day was wearing on, and I needed to see that lawn mowed. The flowering grass plants on top of the mound on the east lawn mocked me as I pushed the dead mower into the garage. half-an-hour later, I'm back from the store with a blade -- and a spare -- to get the mower running again. Turned it over, mounted the blade -- back in business!!! NOT.

The tipping and mounting had flooded the mower engine with gas, and the engine refused to start. I pulled and I pulled, and it would start, run up to full speed and shut off immediately. Finally, I let it rest for an hour. That engine wasn't about to start and stay running. Finally, frustrated to no end, my wife asked what I was mad about. "Watch this! This thing won't start either!", and I pulled. Much to my chagrin, it ran! "Go! Get it done!", she cried, and I was off and running -- I cut my way across the front yard and turned to head back, victorious over the machine at last, I was thrilled to be hacking the tops off the mole-hills and dandelions, carving a swath across the wet lawn.

Wet?

Drip. Drip-drip. Drip. The rain began...

Bound to get the job finished, I plowed ahead, ignoring the icy raindrops running down my face. I kept pushing, pushing, going, and going, and eventually, the shower stopped, and I had won:

The front yard was mowed.

I was exhausted, fingernails full of dirt and oil, clothes looking like I'd wiped sludge everywhere I could find a clean space. But I was done. My lawn was no longer the total embarrassment it had been at the start of the day. It remained absolutely ugly, but not quite so embarrassing.

Meanwhile, the riding mower sits dead as can be in the corner of the garage. A useless heap of greasy metal costing me time and money. I can't decide if I want it to come back from the shop all fixed up and ready to go for the year, or if I want it to be DOA, so I can order a new one.

There's no end to the frustrations the world is capable of dishing out. Is there?
Time to shower, get cleaned up, return to the world refreshed.

"Hey, Dan? Did you know this shower is leaking?"

Happy New Year

Best wishes for a Happy New Year in 2008!
-dan'l