Take last Monday, for instance. As I started out the day, I had five things I wanted to get done– all of them for sheer enjoyment’s sake. I wanted to (1) watch a video of my cousin Steve teaching, (2) read part of a couple books, (3) listen to some new music, (4) learn a new song on my guitar, and, most importantly, (5) something else I can’t remember because it’s not that important right now.

Yes, those all sound like wonderful things to do on a lazy day off while my wife is off at school and I’m sitting around the house wearing pajama pants and a funny t-shirt that I am the only one laughing at.

But I didn’t do any of them.

So what did I do instead?!

I played the brand new FIFA 2006 on my Xbox. All day. It was an amazing accomplishment, when I think about it. It’s been a long time since I played video games regularly and it’s been ages since I actually went on a binge.

So, today, instead of frittering away the hours trying to set up the perfect cross from Rooney to Ruud, I am going to work today on finishing what I’ve started, as I have scattered around the house and various “drafts” folders piles of unfinished business.

FIFA 2006 and Man. U can wait a few more Mondays.

But I’m already writing about it, so what the heck…

My theory is this: People who do specific things very well are either normal, stable people who work very hard and practice a great deal or they are rabid, mildly insane and extremely eccentric people who are also phenomenally gifted.

See the diagram below:

This is certainly a very limited diagram. There are, of course, more than four quadrants of people. It’s totally silly to limit the vast number of people out there to just four categories. There’s like five!

I fall into that small, unnamed category of those who are rabid, mildly insane, extremely eccentric people who are not phenomenally gifted, but don’t practice either. Thankfully, I have taken care of the rabies issue. For now.

But seriously, here’s the problem: I am a dabbling jackass of all trades. (All trades except blacksmithery, that is. Bloody anvils!) As soon as something I’m working in or on gets too difficult, I find a new hobby or skill to take up.

There are several things that have haunted me for many years. One is this creepy ghost named Mr. Charlesworth Richenbacher. But he and I have been getting along for some time, so that’s really not a problem. But the other thing that has haunted me for so long has been my inability to practice things once reaching an operating level of proficiency.

For example, after playing guitar long enough, I could play most of the basic chords and all of the uncomplicated barre chords quite easily. At that point, my development as a guitar player choked, wheezed, and sputtered to a stop. When I could hack together a web page designed entirely in notepad without it looking horrible, I stopped working on my html and css skills. Same goes for Photoshop, Premiere, and a huge number of software titles, as well as the Linux and Mac operating systems.

More important to me than any other skill is writing, but I plateaued there as well and stopped practicing.

once I reached the point in college where I could crank out in 24 straight hours a high quality full term paper with research, full citations and multiple revisions, I stopped working on my writing. After I finished college, I didn’t write anything.

Unfortunately, when I was in second grade, after reading Alexander Key’s Sprockets, I determined that I would practice writing every single day of my life. Shortly thereafter, I signed my name in blood on the back inside cover of Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw. And the blood’s now about as crusty as my un-practiced writing has gotten.

Today, however, I have decided to make good on the committment I put myself to so many years ago. I am going to write something every day. To keep myself accountable, I am going to post something every day. I won’t necessarily post what I write, as a lot of it will probably suck ass. But I will do my best to post something just so I can keep track of my progress.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the next Steve Geluso!

I love to read and I always carry around a blue backpack crammed with books. It occasionally drives my wife crazy when we go places and I have to take books with me. And what really gets her goat is when I go to Starbucks 25 days a month and sit and read while drinking a four-dollar coffee, which I did most of the summer. (Double-tall, extra-foam, vanilla latte, please.) It kills her to imagine spending a hundred bucks a month on a non-flammable liquid. But what’s she gonna do? She already married me! Ha, ha, sucker!

Sheesh! I was kidding! Ouch! Stop throwing portable electronics devices at me, Kristi!

Most of the time I read books, they are work / ministry related. but I do throw in some for-pleasure only reading in every once in a while. Here are two of the books that I really enjoyed and what I thought about what I read:

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky set out to place the ideal of Christ into the person of a modern man, his character, Prince Myshkin. Through hundreds of situations, Dostoyevsky seems to use this interesting concept not to give us a cheesy Russian “What would Jesus do?” but to demonstrate how radically juxtaposed our modern culture is to the teachings of Jesus.

Sometimes Dostoyevsky executes his goal masterfully, as he does in an early account of Prince Myshkin and a poor outcast girl named Marie. Occasionally he’s not so masterful, but overall, he gives a great deal to think about. A multitude of powerful statements are made throughout the novel.

This book took me longer to read than any novel I’ve ever read. Yes, it was a lengthy book, but the greatest difficulty was in understanding who was who. Russian names were invented for the torture of Western minds. Simply getting through the first forty pages took me two weeks and extensive note-taking in the margins to track who was who.

Once I had done the work in those early pages, the rest seemed to flow quite well. I had the wonderful joy of reading this book and discussing it with my grandfather as he was also reading it.

Dostoyevsky was an interesting character. Most of his books were published as serial novels and he was paid by the page, leading to quite lengthy descriptions of people and events as well as some additional plot lines that weren’t essential to the story. Reading this book was very much entering into the world of 19th Century Russia, as the extent of the descriptions made for an immersed view of Russian life, culture, and society.

A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren

If you are a Christian and are up for a challenge in your thinking, read this book. Although instead of challenging my thinking, it really affirmed some of the thinking I’d already been doing. It was great for me to come across this book because it actually helped me to articulate many things that I have come to think and believe.

I’m personally so exhausted with the little games that Christians play or with politicizing what was a completely non-political movement. I personally can’t stand how much time, energy and money is wasted on what really comes down to Christian “entertainment”, when there are far greater needs in this world.

McLaren gives a discussion of some of the deep, troubling questions of modern Christianity in the form of a novel. He offers so much hope for new thinking in Christianity — which is really a return to old thinking.