Not afraid of being alone with only our own thoughts.

Today has been pretty goodish. Got some good work done, had basketball, helped spread the goodness of cherry jolly ranchers, figured out some stuff for our spring break trip. Got a hug from a kindergarten kid. Tacos (I LOVE TACOS!) for supper. Smiles from a friend. Good day.

Someday, I'll lose my need to impress, and I will stop trying to convince the world that I'm something I can't be.

Transparency mode on.

So, frequent readers of my blog will recall me talking about the promotional video I've been working on. I'm honestly fairly unhappy with it. I haven't done any of that kind of editing in the last year, year and a half+, and so I'm rusty and out of practice. I don't like the way it turned out, but I just needed to get it kicked out the door. It has the problem that all of my creativity does - it isn't very. I'm pretty workman-like in my creations, I can do things fairly well technically, but they're dry, boring, derivative things. No spark, no real 'art'. And especially when people tell me that my video is really cool, I just don't handle that well.

Compound with this the apparent fact that people think I'm good at my job, when everyday I feel like it is another day that I'm barely holding my head above water. I don't actually have a good handle on networking, my attitude is too laissez faire for me to pro-actively address problems before the metastasize. And then people tell me, "You're superman." I know they mean it to be a compliment, but it just drives me further into the ground because of my knowledge that I'm really not. See, you know your pride is really bad when you are proud of your false humility.

I'm trying to accept compliments better but it's just not a normal mode for me. I'm trying to be better at receiving things, but that's difficult for me, too. Yet it's something that, as I'm reading through Rmns10 I see more of the importance of doing this. It's not my works that actually matter, but that which matters comes from a different source. And this source is not anything that I have done or have control over. All I can do is accept it, and then try to follow the Way for the rest of my life. My pride should frighten me with an abyss as black as night.

In our guys group last night, we talked about servanthood, and one thing we talked about was the start of the sixth section in the tax collector's message, and one of the questions asked was, "What do you do that no one notices?" I realized that many things I do out of 'servanthood', I really do just to be noticed. Is that bad? Well, it shows where my reward will be. So I'm going to try to do one thing every week that will not be noticed, yet is an act of servanthood. We'll see how long this resolution lasts, but maybe the thought alone will make me more conscious in every opportunity.

My will be a dead man.