Eric and The Social Anxiety (or Eric and his Damaged Brain Part II or I)

            You’re walking towards a door. You reach the door, extend your hand, grab the handle and open it.  You stop and look around to see if anyone else is coming.  You see someone walking in your direction.  It’s time for that split second calculation to determine whether or not they are close enough for you to have to hold open the door or if it would be socially acceptable for you to walk in and forget about it.  You decide they’re too close and hold the door for them.  They’re still coming, this is taking forever, and maybe you’ve miscalculated their distance, now you look like an idiot holding the door for someone who was probably a block away.  They reach you and walk right passed.  They weren’t even going in, now you feel completely retarded.  You look around again, “did anyone else see that?”  “Shake it off” you tell yourself, “just walk in and forget that ever happened, nobody cares but you”, but you never believe yourself.  If this has never happened to you and you can’t relate in any way then go back and replace all the “you” and “you’ve”s with “I” and “I’ve”s.  This is just an example from the craziness in my brain that happens more often than I care to admit.  I’ve got thousands more.

            I’ve touched on my social anxiety before but I figure it’s time to dive right into that scary place and maybe try to figure out what the hell is wrong with me or at least explain the weird hell that is my life.  I will often find myself standing and watching as other people are working.  “I should help these people, why am I just standing here being worthless?” I ask myself.  I’ll try to determine the best way to help and I’ll grab something or try to move out of the way, but it’s usually the wrong thing to grab or the wrong way to move.  These are basic things that most men are born with, but for some reason I can’t function as a team.  My solution is usually to withdraw and just try to be quiet and stand in the corner until it’s time for me to do something or I’ll just leave.

I’m extremely awkward around people I don’t know, people I haven’t seen in a while, people who check out at the grocery store (or any store for that matter), people I do know but I’m scared of because I can’t really tell where they are coming from, people I work with, people I go to church with, etc. (this would have been shorter if I had just said “people.”).  I use humor to highlight things that make me uncomfortable, if often comes off as insensitive and generally offends at least half of the people involved.  I don’t have any idea how to do small talk (I hate sports, wrestling, nascar [notice how I didn’t call nascar a sport?], the weather, etc…)

My coping method for awkwardness is self-deprecating humor.  I will usually say the funniest thing that pops into my head no matter how it will affect my social standing because if I can get someone to laugh it will hopefully diffuse the tension.  I usually just end up looking like an ass (note: it’s not a good idea to joke around with your bosses about how lazy you are, even if it is the most hilarious thing you’ve ever said).

This weirdness is something that I’ve lived with as long as I can remember and even though I am more able to push deep down inside than I used to be it’s still very much part of me and anyone who knows me will probably tell you that I’m not fooling anyone with this normal act (this sentence is far too long).

Eric Anderson

P.S. “He was such an understanding child, he always listened when you explained to him in a rational logical way what you were doing and why you were doing it even though he couldn’t possibly understand any of the words you were saying as he was only 4 months old” is not something that we will ever say about our son.  I love you, Charlotte, even if you do sound like a crazy person.

Eric and his Typical Sunday Morning (or Eric and his Damaged Brain Part I or III)

            I’m sitting in church looking around at all the people praising God.  I hear the music and the singing; I see the dancing and flags waving around.  I tell myself to focus.  I’m here to praise too.  I start singing “…I want to dance…” hmmm, wait a second that’s not true.  I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to shout, and I certainly don’t want to run…anywhere.  Is God going to be angry with me if I don’t really mean these lyrics?  I don’t want to be making any half-hearted promises through song.  I don’t want to lie about how I really feel through song either.  “Okay, stop being distracted…focus…I’m here for a reason”.  I clear my head and try to visualize God.  I see bright clouds.  I’m singing about how Holy He is and how He’s going to take care of me.  I get distracted by some random thought about a video game or a TV show or work or a video game based on a TV show about work (I don’t think such a thing exists…yet).  “Focus”!  I can’t, my brain is malfunctioning.

            I look around again. Some people are lying on their face, some are kneeling, some are shouting and some are wailing (who am I, Dr. Seuss?).  People are speaking in tongues, I realize that the music is still playing but no one has sung anything in what seems like 30 minutes.  Something is happening with these people and I don’t get it.  I don’t feel anything…at all.  Well, accept for the fear that there is something bad wrong with me.  I ask God for help, but do I really mean it?  I might be dead inside.  “Okay, focus, close your eyes, visualize the bright clouds, and maybe throw a throne up there for good measure”.  I don’t want to lose control and fall on my face, or shout, or wail, or dance, or laugh, or speak in tongues unless it’s real.  I don’t want to fake it.  If it happens to me then great, but I’m not going to pretend.  Is this really happening to all of these people?  Are they faking it?  Am I just broken?  (Yes, maybe, and probably)

            Okay, praise and worship is over, it’s time for announcements and to pray for tithes and offerings.  “Finally, something I don’t feel so guilty about” (I started tithing again about a month ago), “oh but wait, what about all that time I wasn’t tithing, and what about the part where I’m supposed to be a cheerful giver?”  I’m trying to give cheerfully, but that’s really hard.  I tell myself it’s not my money, it’s God’s money and I’m just giving it back to Him.  I don’t have a problem with doing this out of obedience, but I’m rarely cheerful about anything I do, and in fact I’m really not sure what that even means.  Okay, prayer time is over. It’s time for the sermon.

            The speaker gives us a verse and I pull out my iPhone.  At first I go to my Olive Tree NKJV app and read along, and then I get bored and play Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies.  I can multitask; I can hear what the speaker is saying…mostly.  “Focus!” I turn off the games and go back to the bible, and then I get bored and check Facebook. “Oh look, other people in church are posting right now” but they’re usually posting bible verses so they’re still better than me.  Check words w/ friends and play any pending turns I have.  The speaker says that God loves us and all that, but before He will bless us we have to stop doing bad things.  “Hmmm, what bad things do I have to stop doing?”  “I guess, all of them” since all sin is at the same level and all.  This is really hard.  Am I overthinking this, am I underthinking it? Is underthinking even a word?  Microsoft says no, whatever

            Basically, this is how my church life has gone for the last 20+ years, except replace iPhone with daydreaming.  I’ve never really been able to participate in what’s going on in my church and I’ve always felt like more of a spectator.  This is 100% my fault, over the years they have tried to include me in their jubilee and I just haven’t felt it.  I feel like they have mostly given up on me at this point (and by “they” I mean the leadership).  I’m open to something happening but I don’t want to force it or pretend that it’s there when it’s not.  Maybe I need to find a new church, I don’t know if that would help.  Well, now I’ve gone and depressed myself…again.  Oops

Eric Anderson

P.S.  I don’t want “saying nice things about my wife” to become gimmicky and therefore meaningless, so I’ll probably stop doing that so much.  I do love her though

P.P.S. This was supposed to be the third part of a trilogy, I guess now it’s the first, I don’t know how that happened

Eric and The Nonsense

            This week started out so well; I was in a great mood which was probably not readily apparent to anyone else around me, but I could feel it and that’s all that matters.  This great week turned to suck yesterday and I’m not entirely clear on why.  I’m an emotional wreck and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  Maybe I’m pregnant, oh wait that’s not possible, I’m on the pill.  I feel like I need to curl up in a ball and cry.  That’s not very manly is it?  But I suppose neither is being pregnant.  I’m listening to Ben Folds on repeat because for some reason depressing music always makes me happy in a weird depressing sort of way (don’t worry, I didn’t understand what I just wrote either).

            On Sunday I was sitting in church thinking about how I’ve already written everything I know and that I probably won’t ever write any fiction because every idea I’ve ever had has already been done (and done better than I would do it at that).  Then I started thinking of some new ideas I could write about (nonfiction of course).  I came up with a bunch of topics like social anxiety, ADD, tithing, visions, prophecies, office supplies, OCDs and music.  I was very excited about writing.  I started taking short notes on the topics so that I wouldn’t forget them like usual.  I guess writing them down is like letting them go from my brain, because I lost the urge to flesh them out.  Then Monday that hilarious embarrassing thing happened to me and I was inspired to write.  That was the funniest thing I think I’ve ever written so I should probably quit now while I’m ahead (unless you count this, which in my opinion puts me back down a few points)

            It’s not cool to be concerned with how many people read your stuff or how many page views you get, but I never claimed to be cool.  I probably check this site at least 20 times a day.  I know it’s sad and I try not to think about who might read this when I’m writing it because again it is for me, but I still care and that’s not cool.

            Okay, the point is that I want to be a writer but I’m a neurotic mess and also for some reason my week turned to suck all because my computer and iTunes don’t seem to get along with each other and it lost all of my music and apps even though they are still there.  I need a Mac.  I’m going to try to start working on those other posts even if I don’t feel like it. Bye

Eric Anderson

P.S. If anyone wants to buy a kidney from me so that I can afford a Mac let me know.

P.P.S.  If it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile then why does smiling hurt my face so much?

Eric and The Ripped Pants²

            It’s Monday, and I know it’s quite a cliché to hate on Mondays but there’s a reason for that hatred (not that I’m all that fond of Tuesday through Saturday either).  It never fails that I’ll stay up late on Sunday night watching television, something horrible that probably grates on my soul (last night was the season premiere of The Walking Dead [I guess it depends on where you fall on whether or not zombies are evil if you think that’s horrible] the week before it was Dexter and I don’t even think I should mention how many Sunday nights were taken up with True Blood).  Sunday, is the only day of the week that I get to sleep in, and by sleep in I mean 8:00am because I have church obviously, so I’m not that tired at my normal bedtime.  This always gets me on Monday morning but I never learn.  That alarm on my iPhone goes off at 5:25am and I groggily fall to my feet and stumble around the house trying to get ready in about 15 minutes (so yeah it’s a bit rushed, and it’s better than coffee to snap you out of that stupor).

            Today has been extra special though because I was in my office talking to the safety manager about something work related (I’m sure), and I sat down and felt something tear.  I panicked, “maybe, it was my shirt, I could have sat on it” I thought “could have been the chair?”  “Just sit here and pretend like everything’s okay”.  So I slowly reached down and felt the back of myself and there it was, a tear from the top of my pants down to my upper right thigh.  This is awesome; I looked at the clock, 10 minutes to go until the regular Monday production meeting.  “They won’t care if I’m not there this once, right?”  I called my wife and asked her to go to the store and buy me a pair of pants and bring them to me, why do I need her to buy me a pair of pants? You ask.  Well, I only buy one pair of pants at a time because I’m always planning on losing weight and then I won’t need those pants anymore.  It is a motivational tool that I have used for the last seven years and it has not worked even once.  It is the very definition of insanity.

            I called my boss to let him know that I wouldn’t be making the meeting and told him that I didn’t want to tell him why because he would make fun of me.  He assured me he was going to make fun of me anyway so I told him and he laughed and I laughed and it’s all great.  Charlotte showed up in less than 20 minutes with a brand new pair of pants (so at least I know I have an awesome wife who loves me even when my ass is so big it tears my clothing like a cartoon character).  The worst part of this whole thing is that it’s not the first time that I’ve ripped my pants; it’s not even the first time this year.

            Back in June I was an usher at my brother’s wedding.  We were leaving the YWCA after setting up for the reception and I sat down in the car and I felt the tear.  The wedding was going to start in an hour, we were ten minutes away and I didn’t have any other pants.  We drove to the nearest store, Charlotte ran into a Target, Ross, and Marshall’s, there was nothing suitable in any of the stores and time was running out.  I was live tweeting this entire event (it’s how I’ve learned to own embarrassing situations).  We drove from that shopping center to a Men’s Wearhouse two blocks from the chapel.  Charlotte ran in and gave the guy my size, he said it would be $135 (What!? For pants?!) and he would need me to come inside so he could measure me for hemming purposes.  There was no way I was getting out of the car and walking across the parking lot with a giant hole in my pants, especially since I was going commando (What? They don’t seem to make underwear in my size).  Besides, we only had 25 minutes until the wedding was going to start and I was supposed to be seating people already.  She told him to just hem them the most generic way possible and paid him the insane price (don’t feel too bad for us though, my parents paid us back for the pants plus some).  We got the pants and rushed to the wedding with about 5 minutes to spare.  There’s probably a lesson in these stories somewhere.

            This is either a sign that I should lose some weight or that the small slave children who make the pants should take some more sewing lessons (there, right there, that’s where I crossed the line).

Eric Anderson

P.S.  I would like to thank my wife for going out of her way on many many occasions for me and my neediness.  I love you Charlotte and thank you for everything

Eric and The Smarty-Pants Phone*

            I love my iPhone, everything about it just works and it works easily.  It is absolutely the awesomest thing I own.  Maybe I love it a little too much.  It’s just a phone, right?  Is it?  Or is it a pocket computer/ video game system/television/internet browser/camera/library/everything I’ve been obsessed with since the first time I picked up a TI-64 controller(I don’t know, I think it was an off brand Commodore) to the first time I pulled up Google and it dared me to ask it anything.  It has everything that I've ever wanted to do in or with my life a finger swipe away.  It is the sum total of all human knowledge in your pocket.  I don’t ever have to not know anything (with the exception of the great mysteries of the universe) ever again.  That being said, the iPhone has simultaneously made my life easier and ruined it at the same time.

            I am so distracted by that thing that I have trouble focusing on anything else.  I feel it in my pocket calling me like “my precious”.  At work it’s in my hands, I’ll put it down, work and without even realizing it it’s back in my hands and I don’t know how it got there.  Watching television at home I’ll pick it up every 2 minutes to check Facebook or play Words with friends (I think I’ve finally kicked my Farmville habit).  At church when I’m supposed to be listening I’ll be checking my favorite technology sites to see if there are more cool things to look forward in the next version of my obsession.  I’ll use the excuse that my bible is on the phone so I need to have it out to check the verses.  Now it’s time for the hard questions.

            Does this qualify as an idol in my life?  Probably, right?  Definitely?  So let’s say that it does for sure.  What should I do about it?  Should I get rid of it?  Should I abandon all technology because everything I learn about the awesome things that science has discovered and made for us makes me tingly all over?  Is there a way to step back without being as extreme as too severe the connection?  I don’t have my phone this week, because I shipped it back to apple to get credit towards the new iPhone that’s coming out on Friday.  I feel like I have phantom limb syndrome.  I feel a vibration in my pocket and I keep checking to see if I have a missed phone call or text and nothing is there.  There’s no vibration I’m just a psychopath.  For the first time I feel sorry for Gollum.  Maybe if they had just given him an iPhone he would have forgotten about that stupid ring.

Eric Anderson

*My boss calls it a smarty-pants phone because he resents technology for some reason.

P.S.  My wife has gotten no more than 2-3 hours of sleep at one time in about 2 ¾ months, but she still wakes up every morning to make me breakfast and lunch.  It’s been a really hard few months for her and she might be on the edge of insanity.  I want her to know that I appreciate her sacrifice for our son and that everything will be better sooner than later.  I love you Charlotte and it’s going to be okay.

Eric and The Crisis of Faith

♪♫ I am a C ♪♫

♪♫ I am a C-h ♪♫

♪♫ I am a C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n ♪♫

♪♫ And I have C-h-r-i-s-t in my H-e-a-r-t ♪♫

♪♫ And I will L-i-v-e-E-t-e-r-n-a-l-l-y ♪♫

            Who would choose hell over heaven if they were presented with proof of that choice?  I don’t think anyone would, but it’s not exactly laid out for us that easy. Sure I don’t have any excuse, I was raised in a Christian family and went to a Christian school and church every Sunday and it’s all been hammered into me.  What about the people who were raised in another religion? What about the people who were raised in no religion at all?  How do I tell someone that their god is false and my God is the one true God? They’ll look at me and say “Nuh-Uh”.  The faith part of this whole thing is the hardest part for me to wrap my head around.

            God created all of us and He loves all of us and He wants all of us with Him in heaven so why make it so hard?  Why not just lay it out there for everyone with empirical evidence and just say “here it is, make your choice”.  Who am I to question God?  Nobody, I just get hung up on these things and I get mad at myself for thinking them because I feel like they’re blasphemous.  I want to be a good soldier in this war, I want to fall in line behind everyone else and fight for this thing that I believe in, but I just get stuck.  I’ve had this thought for as long as I can remember.  I’ve always been too afraid to say it out loud because I really don’t want to make Him angry with me, but I just have to get this out there to see if I’m the only one who feels this way.

            My mom keeps telling me to make sure I include God in all of my decisions.  I don’t have any idea how to do that.  She says seek Him first (I know that’s in the bible too), but I don’t know how.  I know this sounds ridiculous, but I rarely ever pray anymore.  When I do it’s usually to ask for God to protect me or my family, but I never consult God on my decisions.  I think I used to, but I just never heard anything back.  Hearing the voice of God is so hard for me and I don’t understand why.  It seems so easy for all of the people at church and the rest of my family.

            My daughter asked me last night what hell was and if they make you eat weird stuff there.  I told her it’s a hot horrible place with no water and no one wants to go there.  She agreed that she didn’t want to go there.  I know that was probably the time I should have pushed her to accept Jesus into her heart, but I feel like such a hypocrite when I even begin to speak about such things.  I’m failing her as a spiritual leader.  I’m failing God as the spiritual head of my household.  The main reason we want to keep Amira in Christian school is because we both know that we’re not equipped to teach her the things she’s supposed to already know about God.  I know it’s sad.

            I started tithing again two weeks ago, and it has been hard, but I know that it’s what I’m supposed to do.  I can’t just choose to believe the parts of the bible that are convenient right?  I know these questions are hard and I don’t want to be the reason anyone else questions their faith.  I just want to know how to believe without question.  I know that I’m at a low point in my life and that it’s probably time that I fall on my face and ask God for help but I just haven’t felt compelled to do it.  What I mean is that I don’t want to fake it.  If it happens then great but I don’t want to pretend something is there that isn’t there.

            I don’t know.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Coinkydinks?

                I’ve locked my keys in my car (actually it was my mom’s mini-van) three times in my life that I can remember.  The first time I was with my girlfriend (my wife now) at the restaurant her mother worked at and my dad had to drive 15 miles down to Santo to open the door for me.  The other two times were kind of weird though.  The second time I was at work (Braum’s) in Weatherford waiting for my shift to start.  I was in college at the time and I was finished with my classes for that day, but didn’t want to drive all the way back to Mineral Wells (about 30 minutes away).  I locked my car with the key inside along with my uniform and well, that sucked.  It just so happened though that my manager had a locksmith out there working on the safe and while he was there he opened the door for me at no charge(I gave him a free ice cream cone though, please don’t tell Mr. Braum).  I guess it was probably just a coincidence, right?  The third time was also in Weatherford,  I was on my way to fort worth to get fitted for a tuxedo for my wedding and I stopped at the post office for something(can’t remember what though).  I left the key sitting right on the console island thing in between the front seats (what the hell?!?!).  So I’m standing there cussing at myself and I look up and see a locksmith truck sitting two cars over.  I called the number on the side of the truck and the guy answered from inside the post office (cell phones are a beautiful thing).  He came out and unlocked the car, also for free.  I know that if I had had to call these guys out to me it would have cost at least $30 and even though they were already there they had every right to charge me anyway.  They didn’t though and for that they are awesome in my book (I mean if I had a book).

                I know a lot of people who might try to read more into this than what is probably there.  How are we supposed to know when it’s just coincidence or when it’s actually God helping out?  When we interpret every good thing that happens to us as God the outside world looks at us like we are irrational illogical weirdoes.  I believe that God is there watching, but maybe sometimes people just use their God given free will to decide to do good things just because they are the right things to do.

                I’ve always felt like I was somehow being watched out for and I’ve had an overall feeling that everything was going to turn out okay.  I know I’ve had a very blessed life as far as good parents, friends, family, school, and even jobs are concerned.  Every now and then I’ll do something out of the ordinary for me (I am a creature of habit) and something good will come from it.  It’s usually something small but it’s always enough for me to stop and take notice.  I’ll run it through my head and question why I broke my routine and if the reward was because of that or would it have happened anyway.  I can’t really think of any specific example of this occurring right now but I know it has happened to me many many times throughout my life.  These random feelings that everything is going to be alright have come to me less and less over the years and they almost completely went away when my daughter was born.  That’s when I got scared (I’ve always been scared, but this was more than ever before).  Do you know how many things can go wrong with a child? I’m going to say approximately somewhere between 1 and 100 billion different things.  When Amira was about 2 she was standing at the window of our trailer holding onto the windowsill and the open window closed on her fingers.  Now this is not a regular wooden window frame that would have smashed her fingers.  It was a metal frame inside of a metal track so that it would seal.  It probably should have chopped her tiny fingers off.  It didn’t, she was fine.  I, on the other hand, was hysterical.  I called my mom freaking out and she and Nancy came over to see how she was and there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage.  Maybe that was a miracle and maybe I just overestimated the strength of the window.  Who knows?

                My point is that there are a million different things that happen to all of us every day and I just don’t know how I’m supposed to interpret them.  I like the feeling that everything is going to be alright but lately it’s been replaced with a hopelessness that everything is going to end.  Which is a happy thought for some of you so there you go.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Pointless Memories

               

I remember when our church split, I was eight or nine.  We had gone to Mineral Wells Christian Fellowship for most of what I can remember of my early childhood.  I remember the split was exciting, weird, and maybe a little scary, but mostly just confusing.  I didn’t understand, those were our friends, we had spent every Sunday, Wednesday, holiday, special event, and whatever other excuse to gather we had together and now we didn’t associate with them anymore.  I know that my mom tried to explain it to me maybe she sugar-coated it a bit, and maybe she didn’t but I still don’t know why we left, other than a difference of opinions and/or beliefs.

                When we left we went to a few different churches, we would meet at the days inn and I think we might have even gone to a few people’s houses, but we finally found a building.  We didn’t have a pastor for a long time, the elders or whoever wanted to, I guess, would take turns preaching.  I remember when the Well of Life kids (that’s our church’s name) went to S.M.A.K. (Summer Musical Activities for Kids) at the First Baptist Church.  One of the teachers was talking to us about asking our pastor something and I think it was Shawn Lynch who said “we like have 5 preachers”.  All of us laughed except for the teacher who looked at us like we were lost souls.  It was a strange time period for me and probably them too, but this isn’t about that this is about the MWCF.

                I have a lot of memories from MWCF that for some reason have come up since the elder at our church announced that he was going back(it doesn’t go by the same name anymore but as far as I know it’s the same leadership) after 22 years.  He said God told him to do it so I suppose it’s for the best but it doesn’t make me any less sad. 

I remember almost burning the field behind the building down with a magnifying glass (I got in some trouble for that).  I remember passing the communion grape juice around in one cup and sharing with everyone (blech!). I remember Charlie Steen standing in front of the church with his family crying about having to move away (I don’t remember anything else at all about that guy or his family).  I remember a camping trip where one of the elders told me that the fish were sleeping so I needed to throw rocks to wake them up (hilarious, kids are so dumb).  I remember being scared by “The Never-Ending Story” (stupid giant turtle).  I remember spending the night at one of the family’s houses with a babysitter watching us while all of the parents were out of town for a church related conference.  I was crying so the babysitter told me that if I stopped my mother would bring me back a present.  I stopped crying but there was no present.  I asked my mom at church the next morning and she had no idea what I was talking about.  I remember my mom announcing that she was pregnant when she raised her hand with a prayer request.  Jay Cawthon said it was too late for prayer, and everyone laughed.  There was some kind of anomaly on the sonogram, but I guess it all worked out because my brother is 22 now and he seems mostly healthy (mostly).  I remember Nancy Lynch holding Cory and my mom talking to her about me and Shawn possibly being friends because we were close to the same age, but Shawn and I never really clicked.  We got along fine and I liked him we just had different interests for the most part.  I always got along better with Cory anyway.  I remember us driving up on a car accident on the way to church one night and it was the Cawthon’s car (it was scary but they’re alright).  I remember every fall we had a harvest festival at the pastor’s house and I remember popping fireworks there on the fourth of July.  I remember eating too many potato chips while watching “Mary Poppins” at their house and throwing up all over their living room floor.  These were mostly good times I had as a child.

I don’t know why these specific memories are the ones that always pop into my head when I think about that church, and I know that this is a boring read with no real point. Sorry

Eric Anderson

P.S. One or more or all of these memories may be incorrect as I have slept many times since they occurred.  If you find any errors in the history I have presented please keep them to yourself. Thank you

P.P.S. My wife makes beautiful children.  I love you Charlotte 

Eric and The Tithe

                I stopped tithing in May.  Not out of greed so much as just wanting to not have my car repossessed.  I guess that’s a little greedy.  I’m not innocent in all of this I could be a lot more fiscally responsible.  Now that my wife has quit her job to raise the newest child we are even more broke than I thought we were 4 months ago.  I know that I should be tithing, but we’ve kind of dug ourselves into a deep deep hole of contracts and obligations and then there’s the private school.  Shouldn’t that count as tithing?  I mean, the church owns the school. So I should get some points for that. No?  I didn’t really think so, but I thought I would try anyway. 

                I’ve heard a lot of people say that tithing is more important than eating (okay, not a lot of people, but my mother says that…a lot).  I want to tithe, I feel guilty for going to church and not tithing.  I feel like I just decided to ignore that part of the bible because it’s really inconvenient.  I don’t want to ignore it.  The pastor always says that we need to prove that we are able to handle a small amount before we can be trusted with a larger amount.  If we had a larger amount we could pay all of our bills and tithing would be easy.  I don’t know, I guess it’s about faith and trusting in God and all of that stuff.

                I am going to tithe on Sunday and if they try to take my car I’m sure my parents will help me out.  I guess it’s easier to have faith with a safety net.

Eric Anderson

P.S. My wife is an awesome lawn mower person. I love you Charlotte

Eric and The Iniquities?

Dear Blog Journal,

                My mom doesn’t read you. Sorry, she has a growing fear of technology and really she’s not a fan.  It’s okay though, she has people who do read you and report back to her any salient points or particularly juicy bits.  So here goes.

                Over the past few weeks I’ve had at least two different people talk to me about iniquities.  I was told that they are something that has been passed down from my parents/grandparents/great-grandparents/etc…  So first I decided to find out what iniquities are.  Now I’m not a complete idiot, I know that over the years I’ve heard the word used and taking it in the context in which it was presented I am aware that they are bad. Just for fun let’s look it up in the dictionary... okay, Webster’s says that it is “a wicked act or thing: SIN” or “gross injustice: WICKEDNESS”.  Hmmmm, okay, maybe I should find a different dictionary…okay, I’m back.  Google listed a whole bunch of sites that talked about curses and being passed down through bloodlines.  I’m not going to try to pretend to understand what this is all about. I can tell you some negative traits I got from my parents though.

                From my mom, I got the aversion to saying I’m sorry and constantly thinking that people don’t like me or are just mad at me.  To be fair she has been doing a lot better with these things and I have been trying to work on myself.  I will lose sleep sometimes worrying if someone likes me or not based on comments they may have said or didn’t say, but didn’t say it in a certain way.  It’s hard to apologize to people, because it usually means that you were wrong and I don’t like to be wrong.  I find it’s much easier to pretend like nothing ever happened and just change the subject and move on.  I’m working on that one too (especially at work).

                From my dad, I got awkward social skills, A.D.D., being compulsive with money, a short temper, and no idea how to raise or relate to children.  These are things that I have no idea how to fix.   I will say that my dad’s social skills are much better than mine, I hardly ever see him lose his temper anymore, he is much much better with his money now and well the kids thing still seems to be a problem.

                I love both of my parents and I know that they tried their hardest to raise me better than I turned out. I also know that I did get some positive attributes from them as well (I don’t really know what any of them are off hand, but that’s not really what this journal is about). Apparently, if this iniquities thing is what I think I understand it to be, it’s not their fault.  I guess that sounds like an easy way to look at.  Nothing is our fault or our parents fault or their parents fault or…  I’m sure that’s not what they meant when they told me about iniquities.  We have to accept some personal responsibility. Right?

Love Always,
Eric

P.S.  My wife is way better at breast feeding than I am.  I love you Charlotte

Eric and The Obviousness

           Journal? Seriously? How can someone who loves words as much as I do not think of "journal"?   What the hell? Am I retarded? I’ve been bitching to myself about how much I hate the word “blog” (even though I post this on blogger and the website is something  something dot blogspot dot something).  Journal is perfect and that’s what I am calling this thing from now on. Thank you Danni you are awesome at pointing out obvious things to your idiot cousin.  Everyone else, enjoy reading my journal.

Eric Anderson

P.S. my wife is kickass at making the bed.  I love you Charlotte

Eric and The Apology

                                                           

I’m sorry if I have made anyone feel badly for me because of all the negative whininess in my posts.  I promise that I am not writing these horrible things about myself to make you feel sorry for me.  The reason for this blog is twofold (who uses words like that?). One, I need practice writing because it’s something that I have inside of me, something that has been trying to get out for years but my lazy fat fingers won’t cooperate. Two, it’s been like therapy for me to get these thoughts out and written down in one place.  It frees up my brain to come up with more whiney nonsense (I’m hoping I’m almost out of that stuff) (probably not).  I have gotten a lot of really good advice lately that a wiser person would actually take (not that I won’t take it, it just might be a while).  I want everyone to know that I appreciate all of the kind words and the reassurances that I’m not a completely broken awful human being.  I’m probably not going to stop writing dark negative things about myself anytime soon because that’s just the way my self-deprecating brain works.

I have never in my life had an actual suicidal thought beyond wondering what it would feel like if I did something that would probably kill me.  I’m just bringing this up in case that’s where the concern is coming from.  I love being alive and I have a deep deep fear of not being alive.  I used to daydream about what it would be like if there was no universe at all and it would hurt inside.  There would be nothing. No before, no after, no now, no anything.  Okay, that was dark.  Let’s get back to the point.

Apparently, there are a lot of you out there who do actually love your jobs. That is beyond my comprehension.  I’m willing to admit I was wrong about this but I’m not going to pretend to understand how you can love having your soul crushed by the man (hyperbole).  I just have a longing inside of me to be somewhere else.

Over the years I have had friends who did get my sense of humor and did enjoy spending time with me although it was mostly at school or work.  Jake, I looked forward to working with you too. It was a hard time for me when you left the soul crushingness that is braum’s to work for what I can only assume was just as bad at wal*mart.  I completely understood the need to get the hell out of there though.  Maybe the people I work with now are just too conservative republican (this is a joke for Amy, the only funny republican I know) to get me.  Also a lot of them are from a different culture and they think I’m nuts.

So yes I love that you are all reading my blog and I really hope you like it, but I’m not trying to “fish for compliments” or reassurances of my normalcy.  I do appreciate all of the comments.  Does anyone have any tips for my writing style (I know it could be organized structurally and a reread for errors wouldn’t kill me)?  I want to get better at this, that’s why I’m forcing myself to do it.

My apology is to you the reader for making you feel badly for me and my sanity.  Sometimes I write these things when I’m not in the best place psychologically.  I’m sorry

Eric Anderson

P.S. my wife wants me to write more nice things about her. So, hmmm…well that’s not appropriate.  That either…ummmm…she…no…okay, got it.  She makes awesome breakfast burritos (hint hint). Ha-ha, I love you Charlotte.

Eric and The Relationships

                I don’t like people as a group.  That’s not entirely true.  It is the vibe I put out there though.  I have a difficult time relating to people.  I am seriously lacking in social skills, but I want badly to be liked, so much so that I generally make an ass out of myself and push people away from me.  It takes most people time to get to know me and understand where I’m coming from.  Where I’m usually coming from is a deep desire to make you laugh, I will say almost anything to make someone laugh and even though I’m not serious it can be taken wrong sometimes.  A lot of the time, the things that will make someone laugh are inappropriate and are not my true feelings.  They are just the funniest thing from the list of possible responses that pops into my head.  Relationships are hard for me.

                I used to have a best friend that I would do everything with, he was awesome, smart, hilarious, and had much better people skills.  We’re still Facebook friends or whatever, but I haven’t seen him since right after my first child was born (almost 6 years ago).  This is my problem; I don’t know how to carry on more than one relationship at a time.  I got married and that was it for me.  I have a best friend that lives with me now.

                Being married is the easiest thing that I have ever done.  I love my wife and that’s it.  I’ve always loved my wife, even way back when we were dating in high school.  Sure we fight and we drive each other crazy.  We don’t have much in common, she doesn’t get me and I certainly don’t get her, but there has always been a connection between us.  When we were apart for four years she was on my mind 90% of the time.  I couldn’t shake her no matter how hard I tried.  I know this might sound bad but I don’t know why we are drawn together the way that we are.  I just know that we are absolutely meant to be together.  That’s why it’s so easy for me.  A lot of people tell me that marriage is hard and I want to see that but I can’t.  Every other thing in my life is hard, but not her. Being with her is the only thing that I know is right. 

                Donnie offered to hang out with me some time to talk about how hard it is to have a job, wife, kids, bills etc…  He says I have isolated myself and I guess that’s not a good thing.  I don’t really like to hang out and I haven’t done it in a really long time. I work 12 hour days 5 to 6 days a week (it’s the only way to make enough money to survive), so there’s a time factor.  About 9 years ago Donnie and I found ourselves unemployed at the same time.  We went out looking for jobs together for a few months and we hung out and exercised and watched movies.  It was good times, then I got the job that I’m at now and we have hardly ever talked to each other again.  That’s just my screwed up personality.  I don’t know how to be an acquaintance.  I don’t know how to do small talk.  I’m either all in friendship mode or I’m not.  What’s wrong with me?

                I guess I’ll just have to work on that. I keep getting tired of talking about myself and saying that I’m going to quit blogging and maybe write some fiction, but then I get overwhelmed all up in my brain. So here it is.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Obligations of Men

                I have a great job, I have a job that feeds, clothes, and keeps my family warm at night.  I hate my job.  My job has gone out its way to make my life easier and it has forgiven me for most of my shortcomings.  I hate my job.  I try my hardest to push myself into doing well for this company that is far from perfect itself, but I get this nagging feeling in my gut that this is absolutely not what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.  I tell myself that nobody loves their job and if they say they do they are lying.  Lying to me, lying to themselves, lying to the whole damn world.  Not every day is like this, most of the time I can convince myself that this is what I’m supposed to do because, dammit, this is what people do, this is what men do.  Men work, men provide for their families, men don’t need to be happy. 

                I love my boss; he is one of the awesomest most well rounded individuals I have ever met in my entire life.  He is so smart and his sharpness amazes me on a daily basis.  I appreciate everything he has done for me in the 3 years I’ve known him.  He has given me a promotion, a promotion that most people, me included, didn’t believe I deserved.  Not only is he a great boss, I consider him a friend.  I love talking to him, more about music than work.  He has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, particularly music.  The point is that he’s a great dude and I have a feeling that he doesn’t love his job all that much either, but it’s what men do.

I know that my hatred of my job has gotten in the way of me being a great employee.  I try to ignore my feeling and do my best every time but they get the better of me sometimes (more often now than before).  I have a perfectionist side that pushes me towards greatness, but it gets drowned out by the lazy procrastinator side more often than not.  I find that if I look at a project and tell myself that there is no way I can do it well then I’ll just quit doing it.

If I look back at this dream of writing that I’ve had since the fifth grade I realize that if I had started pursuing it back then I might be somewhere today other than where I am.  That’s the problem. I can’t change the past, I can’t go back and slap the shit out of a fifth grade me (because I would certainly be arrested) and tell him follow this to the end.  I have written a few things over the years but nothing consistently.  I know I need to accept my life for what it is now or I’ll never be happy.

Regular readers of this blog(I hate the word “blog”) know that I need quite a bit of practice before I could ever get anyone to pay me to write anything, but that has always been my answer to the question “what do you want to do when you grow up”?  Well that and photographer, but my photography is far far far from professional.  While I love quite a few of the pictures I’ve taken, most people tell me they suck. Whatever, it’s just for fun anyway.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Hypochondria V

                Okay, I might have been a tiny bit overly cocky in my last post (Eric and The Hypochondria IV 5/14/11) about having “solved” the problem with my skull pain.  That was a little bit of an exaggeration but it is still 85% better than it was in February and March.  In the last four months I’ve mostly stuck with the niacin solution I accidentally discovered and it’s been okay.  I tested it a few times by not taking it for a day or two and the pain came back strong.  The headache is still only on the right side on the top of my head with the occasional shooting pain in various other spots of my skull.  I finally decided to go back to the doctor in mid-august just to see if there was anything else he could offer.  He’s kind of stumped and I’m still kind of scared.

                He decided to put me on muscle relaxers, because he’s always believed that this is probably a stress headache and he wants me to chill.  He also took another x-ray to see if the original sinusitis was gone and I haven’t been getting enough radiation in my day to day life.  I started taking the muscle relaxers at night before I went to bed and they did a really good job of making me even less functional at my job than before.  After a few days of that the doctor called and said I do still have some sinusitis and he wants me to take antibiotics twice a day for a month.  The headaches were getting better so I continued with the muscle relaxers and took the whole month’s supply of antibiotics.  For that whole month the headaches were 99% gone with the occasional fleeting achiness in my head. 

                Now I’m out of antibiotics, but I’m still taking the muscle relaxers that make me feel awful all day every day.  If it’s the antibiotics that were making me feel better then I should be able to stop the muscle relaxers.  I tried that for one day and the headaches came back.  So now I’ve been without the antibiotics for about a week and I feel the headache today, but maybe it’s just paranoia.  Either it’s stress or sinusitis or a brain tumor or any of the million different things that Google has taught me about this year.  I don’t know, maybe I need surgery on my skull.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Sleepiness

                I went to bed late last night, not much later than usual but later than I should have gone to bed.  I put in my mouth guard (I may or may not grind my teeth but just in case I have a $275 piece of plastic that clips onto my bottom front two teeth.  It keeps my mouth from closing so that my back teeth never touch. Yay), I turned on my iPod(the new Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi album featuring Jack White and Norah Jones, it’s actually quite pleasant to sleep to), I put on my breathing mask, turned the internet functions off on my iPhone( push notifications scare the crap out of me while I’m sleeping, and I can’t turn it on silent because it’s my alarm clock and I need to be able to receive calls from my employees should the building burn down or probably something way less dramatic), I turned the light off, laid down, looked at the clock (10:01 pm [I know it’s sad but I have to get up at 5:30am]), and then my brain went off.

                I hadn’t been able to think of anything to write about yesterday and I had tried.  I thought about writing just for the sake of writing, I thought about writing about my iPhone, I thought about writing about my weird OCDs (that might still happen…later), and I just couldn’t come up with anything.  To be fair I was really busy yesterday at work and anytime I had to chill and do paperwork or something like that I was listening to podcasts( I listen to a lot of comedian’s podcasts because they like to talk about writing and how their process is and it fascinates me[specifically the Nerdist podcast]).  I know I’m making excuses but I do work between 60 and 70 hours a week (at 12 hours a day), I spend more of my waking hours at work than I do at home.  But I digress, so… As soon as I closed my eyes I had an idea.

                I know it was about prayer, but that’s all I can remember.  I was laying there and this thought popped into my head and I heard myself saying that I should get up and go type this right now.  Then another part of me said “are you insane? It’s 10:02pm, go to sleep and write it in the morning”.  So as I laid there arguing with myself internally(obviously) I asked if this was God telling me to go write  or was it the part of me that knows that if I didn’t go write this now I’d never remember what it was.  I told myself that all I had to remember was two words, one was “prayer” and the other was “?”.  I have no idea what I was so excited about writing last night.  I’m pretty disappointed in myself right now.

                I guess I’m wondering if it’s possible for God to want me to sacrifice sleep (something that could adversely affect my job performance) to write something that would probably make me happy, or is it more likely that the devil is screwing with me.  Then again, it could just be the way my brain is wired.  I’ve always been more of a night person.  If my job depended on writing, I would change my schedule so that I could write at night, but it doesn’t, so I don’t.

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Multiple Topics

                Well, that was it; I’ve run out of things to talk about.  I’ve built the last few topics up in my head for such a long time and now I’m empty.  It feels pretty good to be done with them for now anyway; maybe I can start working on something new. Maybe not, I guess we’ll see.  Let’s see how long I can make this post about having nothing to say.

                I have sleep apnea, I’ve been sleeping with a CPAP machine for about 10 months now and it has completely changed the way my days go.  I know that many people point to my being overweight as the reason for the sleep apnea (mostly just my doctor), but I think I’ve had it my entire life.  My mom said even when I was a baby It freaked her out so much she had to put me in the other room so she could sleep, we just never did anything about it until it got so bad I was pretty sure my heart was going to stop in my sleep.  I used to fall asleep during movies, even movies I was really excited to see, sometimes in the theater.  I would pass out during meetings, driving, watching TV, and anything else you can think of where sleeping would be inappropriate.  I was watching iCarly last night (what? Don’t judge that show’s hilarious) and Carly was sleeping with the exact same breathing mask I use.  She’s not fat, and yes I know it’s only a television show, but I know several other quite skinny people who have sleep apnea.  It sucks not being able to stay awake even when your job pretty much depends on it.  If you’re wondering if the mask is annoying or hard to sleep with, for me it isn’t, for me it is the awesomest thing that science has ever done for me.

                Onto a different topic altogether, I had mentioned in the post “Eric and The Questions” that I was afraid that some of the crazy thoughts that came into my head could possibly offend God.  Valerie commented yesterday that nothing I can think of will offend God because that would make me greater than God, and quite obviously I’m not.  This may sound simple but it blew my mindhole.  So I know that there is nothing I can think of that He hasn’t already thought of but my concern is more about whether or not I should entertain these thoughts or dismiss them and repent.  God knows the intent of my heart, probably better than I do myself.  This is a profound revelation to me but I don’t quite know what to do with it just yet.  I kind of feel like a weight has been lifted off of my chest.  I don’t know, I need to think on this for a while.

                Final topic, I swear, this blog has been like free therapy for me, I know it’s been whiney and depressing and I’m sorry but whiney and depressing is where I live 75% of the time.  Writing these issues has helped me kind of see what they are.  I don’t know why but sometimes I don’t realize what’s wrong with me until I’ve written it.

                So this is a lot of words for someone who doesn’t have anything to say.  Later

Eric Anderson

Eric and The Scale

                I don’t smoke, never have, or do drugs (well, there was this one time when I was 24 I succumbed to peer pressure and really just wanted to know what all the hype was about and tried one drag of the weed, it didn’t seem to have any effect on me and I’ve never tried it or anything else again).  I don’t drink very often, maybe once every 3-4 months; it usually just makes me feel awful, so there’s that.  I’m not without my addictions though, there’s my iPhone, the internet, Facebook, etc… The worst and most obvious addiction I have is food.  I know this sounds preposterous, everyone in the world with a problem claims it’s due to an addiction, but I swear the way I feel about food has to be just as bad as the way a crackhead feels about crack or Tiger Woods feels about waitresses.  I have a mental inventory of all the food I have in the house and at work, no normal person without food issues can say that.

                First off, if you take one look at my 5’7”, 340lb, 0% muscle mass body you’ll know I have a food issue or two.  I know that every thin person reading this is rolling their eyes and telling me to shut up, put down the cookies, and go outside.  It’s insane to say that you’re addicted to food when you’re just a lazy fat ass who needs to do a sit up every now and then.  Everyone who feels that way should stop reading right now because I’m not talking to you.  Go have a cheesecake and watch some TV.

                Okay, everyone who’s left I’ll tell you my story.  I’ve struggled with weight my entire life and it never made sense why I couldn’t just stop eating.  I was able to keep it to just standard obesity before I got married, but after that I exploded from 220 to 280 in less than 4 months, that’s got to be some kind of record right?  That was in April of 2005.  In September of 2006, after many different failed attempts at dieting I joined a support group/diet program called The Prism Diet at Indian Creek Baptist Church.  Basically this diet was no sugar and no non-whole wheat flour, and even the whole wheat was limited, and no more than 1500 calories a day.  I stuck fast to that diet for 7 months and lost 70 pounds.  The main reason that worked for me was that we would track all the food we ate and meet every Sunday to discuss it so I was able to scare myself into following it very strictly or the ladies in the group would be mad at me.  That meeting fell apart and I was left alone with a wife and kid who could eat anything they wanted and I dove head first off of the wagon.  I shot from 235 to 340 in less than a year but it was slower than the first spurt after marriage.

                The whole time I was on that diet I was miserable and starving.  All I did all day and night was think about food.  I would smell something or someone would mention something that was even close to food and I would just wander around in a daze daydreaming about pizza and enchiladas.  I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Jeff Garlin was the guest about a year and a half ago.  He had lost a lot of weight recently and was joking with Jon about how if he held a cookie up to him he wouldn’t ever be able to stop because he was addicted to food and he was aware of it.  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before but that’s exactly what I am going through.  Okay, so now I have identified the problem.  I don’t want to be groggy and in a daze like the last time and I don’t want to keep going up in pant sizes, there has to be a medium right? Right?

                On January 3^rd of this year I joined Weight Watchers for $40 a month, they had the tracking, and the support group that I knew had worked so well for me before but they didn’t have the super strict insane 1500 calorie limit.  I went to those meeting every week and stuck to that program for 4 months and lost about 20 pounds. That’s it.  I know everyone who has ever dieted will tell you that it’s better to lose it slowly that way you’ll keep it off, but I plateaued for about and month and said screw it I can’t afford $40 a month and not see any results and spend all my time calculating points for every little thing I eat. 

                So here I am, aware of the problem and the best possible solution but nowhere to go and nobody to do it with me.  I need support and I need a reasonable plan to follow.  I’m weak and I’m willing to admit that I’m weak and I know that I have a problem.  I want to lose weight because it seriously adversely affects everything in my life.  I don’t like to go out in public, I don’t like to eat in front of people, and none of my clothes fit right.  It sucks and it really all comes down to will power and my ability to fight temptation.  I’ve thought about using this blog as a way to check in with the world about my weight or maybe even starting a different one just for that purpose.  Maybe I could start a support group, but that doesn’t sound like me at all.  I guess I’m open to suggestions as long as they’re productive and not hurtful.

                This is like the blog that wouldn’t end. Okay bye

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Darkness

                There’s an evilness inside of me, a cynical skeptical bitter resentful jealous angry judgmental hatred that I try to suppress but it seeps through more often now than ever before.  I honestly don’t know where it comes from.  My parents tried so hard to raise me right. We went to church every Sunday (and this is a great understanding open church, they are some of the least judgmental church people I have ever met in my entire life).  Christian school most of my life and homeschooled the three years before that.  We always had food and clothes and never wanted for anything within reason, of course.  I’ve had my issues with both of my parents(my dad more than my mom), but as I’m finding out with my own children now, parents are just people who don’t know everything and are just trying to keep you alive and a fully functioning well rounded member of society.  Everything after that is just icing.

                The problem now is that everything pisses me off and I don’t know why.  I’m spoiled, selfish and have an undeserved sense of entitlement.  It affects my family, work, and just everyday social interactions (which I keep to a minimum anyway).  I have real trouble with almost anything to do with talking to people.  I’m awkward and uncomfortable and almost always my instincts are wrong.  I can’t prove it but I think that part of me might be retarded.  I write these posts to try to understand myself but I want more than anything for people to read them and maybe understand where I’m coming from.  Yesterday in church the pastor came up to me and said he saw that I had posted a link on Saturday but the comment I wrote on it said not to read it so he didn’t.  This crushed me inside because I write comments like that as a self-defense against rejection,” of course I wanted you to read it can’t you see that these things are a cry for help” is what I thought but didn’t put voice to.

                Michelle, Valerie and Kelly all told me that they follow this and that made me feel good but the darkness is still there inside of me even though everything around is going so great.  I have a beautiful wife, two adorable children, a family that just wants to spend time with me and a great job with an awesome boss and coworkers and still I am miserable.  It makes me want to cry like all time.  I drown it all out with TV, video games, podcasts, music, internet, etc…  I keep myself from thinking whenever possible because my brain is a horrible place.  I guess that’s enough for today.

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Eternity

“♪♫Oh, you can’t get to heaven, oh, you can’t get to heaven♪♫

♪♫In an electric chair in an electric chair♪♫

♪♫Oh, you can’t get to heaven, oh, you can’t get to heaven♪♫

♪♫In an electric chaiaiaiaiair♪♫

♪♫Oh, you can’t get to heaven in an electric chair ‘cuz God don’t want no French fries there♪♫

♪♫All my sins are washed away I’ve been redeemed♪♫”

           

Wait, what? No French fries? Has God ever had French fries? They’re delicious although they contain not nutritional value whatsoever. But still they are very delicious. 

I often find myself wondering what heaven (once again I have to ask, is that capitalized?) will be like.  I know it’s “…a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace…” and I should be excited about it.  I like the idea of not being stressed anymore but I’m concerned about what happens to all the stuff.  From what I learned about the bible in my 10 years of Christian school (see that, Microsoft automatically capitalize Christian for me) there are a lot of passages about not being concerned with the world and the things in it.  I just wonder about all of the art (pictures, paintings, books, music, movies, architecture, movies, plays, games etc…).  Will it be lost forever, will it live on in our memories, will it be edited for content like the wal*mart versions of cds.

I don’t know if it’s blasphemous to wonder if I’ll be bored in heaven but that’s something I wonder about. Obviously it’s better than the alternative don’t get me wrong.  I get the feeling that once we get to heaven we won’t care about all the sinful things we choose to entertain ourselves here.  Most everything I watch/listen to/play has something in it that could be considered sinful and I just overlook it because if I don’t then I won’t have anything to do ever(that’s probably something I should look at about myself at some point). 

I know that there’s going to be a lot of people there to talk to and that we’ll be worshipping God all day (if there is any sense of time there at all).  I think the worshipping God will be more like how we’re supposed to praise Him in everything we do now and not necessarily a traditional service where we all gather into a group, but I don’t know, nobody knows.  Maybe the books and music and movies won’t be edited we’ll just be so far above the bad parts that we’ll be able to look at it objectively and dismiss it for what it is.  It probably just won’t be there and we won’t care.

Maybe we’ll start over and create new stuff, will we have creativity?  I always picture people wandering around in white robes all zonked out like they’re zombies or just on drugs, but that doesn’t sound that pleasant.  I expect it will be pleasant.  I don’t know why my brain does these things to me.

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Overwhelming Depression

Everything is falling apart all around us and that scares the shit out of me.  Disease, famine, wars and if that’s not enough now the planet seems to be after us too.  Drought, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires and have you heard of a gustnado (Google it, that is some scary wind).  Now I’m not going to pretend like all these things haven’t been happening all along and I’m certainly not proclaiming the end is near (although my pastor has been hinting for a few years that he thinks it is, who knows? I don’t).  It just seems to me that these things are either happening more often or I’m just paying more attention than I used too (is that too or to? Help me Google you are my only hope). 

When I was a kid we had chapel every Wednesday or Friday or something like that, who can remember?  We would have guest speakers and one of the speakers, whose name I can’t remember, said something that stuck with me.  He was a preacher who would obviously prepare his sermons during the week by writing down the notes.  He told us he would find that the people who he believed would be most affected by the message would run into trouble on the way to church and often times not even make it in.  He believed that demons or the devil himself would be reading the notes so he started keeping them in his head.  What? They can read too? This has freaked me right out for like 14 years or so.  So much so that I don’t even like voicing my fears just in case those bastards are around listening in.  I know they’re reading this right now.

Every time I get excited about the possibility of making my life better (diet, writing, learning a new language, etc…) something disastrous happens somewhere in the world and I get depressed and say “screw it, what’s the point?”  This is probably not the best attitude to have but it’s so depressing.  I wish I could feel some sort of peace but it’s hard to ignore that most everything sucks.

This didn’t really have point other than to depress you too. You are welcome.

Eric Anderson  

Eric and the Questions

“Father, give me Wisdom to develop Strategies to walk in Victory for Your Glory.”

That's the prayer that Anthony White gave to me at the presbytery.  He said that I need to repeat that prayer for the rest of my life.  I'm going to be honest and tell you that while I know it sounds good I don't entirely understand what it means.  Of course I get the wisdom and victory and glory parts but the strategies thing is weird.  I suck at chess and even checkers for the most part.  I'm just not a strategic thinker is what I’m saying.  I realize that I am asking God for the ability to become a strategic thinker, but that just feels light years from where I am mentally right now.  I'm a questioner; I am the most inquisitive person I know.  I have driven more than one teacher, boss, co-worker, girlfriend, friend, parent insane from all the incessant questioning.  I'm like a four year old in that respect.  The problem is that most of these people view my questioning as argument.  Maybe I've just been asking the wrong people.

On a Sunday about seven months ago (2/20/11 to be exact) Michelle and Rick came over and prayed for me.  Michelle told me the she thought my first letter was inspiring to other men. (Men? Really?)  It's not something I've ever heard anyone say about anything I've ever done.  Mostly at work I hear things like “act like a man” and “He's the daughter his mother always wanted” and “doesn't your dad wish he had a son?” etc... I hope she was right because it would cool to know that all of the crap that gets me down could somehow inspire someone else.  Rick told me that he feels that I should start asking God all of my questions.  This is hard for me because a lot the time I feel like my questions are a little more than borderline blasphemous.  I don’t want them to be but sometimes they just jump into my head and I’m like “wow, why is that like that?” or “if that’s the case then this can’t be that”.  Maybe doubts are okay because God made us with brains and free will.  I guess my problem is that I don’t want to ask a question that’s so bad that it somehow offends God.  I know I’m crazy and somewhat neurotic.

I have trouble with faith and following blindly the people who see symbolism and signs in things that are to me just coincidence.  I’m not going to say that there haven’t been things in my life that I couldn’t easily explain away as happenstance because there have been moments in my life when I knew that God was there.  But there are times when people seem to just take another person’s word for it that a miracle happened.  Sometimes I hear people reading into a situation so much that it seems far-fetched and I’m like “how in the hell did you get that from this, I mean seriously?”  I really wish that I could just turn off my brain and believe it all but part of me feels like I would be dishonoring God because He gave me a brain.  He made me intelligent, I may not have people skills, I may be lacking in wisdom and strategic thinking, I may not have any mechanical instinct or much common sense, but I am smart.  I have a gift for words and retaining information and over the years I have wasted that gift so much that I think it might be dying inside my brain.  I’m trying to get it back (that’s partly the point of this blog)

I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself today so even if no one reads this it’s cool because I’m really not doing it for you/them.  Don’t get me wrong, if you/they do read this I appreciate you/them very much but I have to do this for myself and try not to worry about what you/they might think.  That being said this only counts as half of an entry for this week because I wrote the first paragraph and a half on February 20 and then left it until now. Why? Because I’m a slacker.

Eric Anderson