My Web Comic.

Ok people, here it is.  

After a very long time coming, I have finally put up my very first web comic.  It even has its own page called "Life and Stuff".

Hit the link and all of your questions will be answered.  Ok, maybe not all, but most.  Alright, probably not even most, but some.

Just go look.  

Thanks a bunch!

When Passion and Purpose Collide

I have good news and bad news and depending on your perspective of this whole blog thing, you could go either way on which is the good news and which is the bad news.

Here is the bad news.  I will be gone this coming week (I'm actually already gone) and will most likely not be able to post while gone after tonight.  Tonights post is going to be short as a result of this "being gone" thing.  Or, maybe that's all good news.

Now for the good news.  I will be back.  And, hopefully, with more content. (maybe that's the bad news) 

I mentioned long long ago that I was trying to work on a comic strip.  There have been some technological hurdles.  I could have done it old school, but it takes a lot of time that I didn't really have for doing cartoons.  Then I upgraded some tech and have basically had to relearn how to draw in order to use it.  

It still isn't perfect.  But it's now useable.  I'll be upgrading the art as I go and improving as I post.

I now have a direction that will lead to other directions and I have to say, drawing again is like breathing again when you didn't realized you had stopped.

It's easy to forget the things you are passionate about when you have been devoid of it long enough.  But this past week I was presented with some unexpected inspiration and, just as a joke, I decided to make it into funny art.

And suddenly, I remembered why I loved to draw and how important it is for me to do so.  The process of creation is very intrinsic to my personality and desires.  Those things haven't been a part of my life for a long time.  The exception being, maybe, this blog.

So, while I have some logistics to work out as far as where I will post strips and what they will be called (I'm thinking "Life and Stuff."), I'm very much looking forward to making it happen.  I have the ideas, now to put them to them to paper.  And by "paper", I mean a digital drawing tool that cost more than I'd like anything to cost.

However, I would like to reiterate this point.  Never lose sight of your passion.  Never walk away from it.  Simply find a way to use that passion in your life and make that passion ride with your purpose.  If you can do that, you are hard pressed to fail in the pursuit of joy.

Have a great night and I will see you in two weeks!

Taste of Awesome

Good evening my peoples.

I hope you're world is grand and significantly lacking in ritual torture.  If you have recently been ritually tortured, then, um, I apologize for bringing it up.

Speaking of torture, how many of you have ever been to the "Taste of Chicago"?

Perhaps I should start with, how many of you have ever heard of the "Taste of Chicago"?

While I will admit right up front that city living is probably not for everybody, it does come with some perks.  There is always something to do.  You can get to most things you need to by walking or riding a bicycle (you know how I currently feel about that bit of joy).  And, there is more food and food diversity than you can shake a truck load of sticks at.

From my apartment, I could throw a rock and probably hit three or four restaurants.  With the same rock.  I'm totally that good.  (I'm not even close to that good.)

If you feel like traveling at all, within one mile in any direction, I can find enough culturally diverse foods to name off most of the countries of the world with.  And they are all (mostly) so good.

Chicago is known for many things, and food is right up near the top of that list.

But once a year there is this week long phenomenon called "The Taste of Chicago".  Every year, a bunch of eateries set up shop in Grant Park between Michigan Avenue and the lake.  Then, roughly every human on the planet (except you if you've never been, and all the other people who don't come) squeeze themselves all at once onto the one street to sample all the good eats and drinks and listen to the live bands playing.

It's really pretty great.  But it can get expensive very quickly if you like to eat a lot.  And, because there are so many things to try, you wind up stuffing yourself like a thanksgiving turkey to the point where walking is much more akin to an egg wobbling across the counter as it tries to roll away.  And even then, you still haven't come close to sampling everything.  You just can't do it.  There is simply too much.

So, you get tortured on two fronts.  One because of how much you ate, and two, because of how much you didn't get to eat.

And then, again(I guess this is technically three), because you feel bad about this food and how much more you want, and then you think about people who haven't had food in days as a normal course of life.

Huh.  Suddenly I feel guilty for going.

Hmm.

One thing my wife commented on this year was something only tangentially related to food.  This is one of the few things here in the city where you get people from all parts of town, North, South, East, West, all hanging out in the exact same spot.

You might be thinking, "But isn't Chicago one of those great culturally diverse places where everyone is sort of lumped together in this great melting pot of people?  You know, in a non-cannablistic-melting-pot-sort-of-way?"

Yes.  Yes it is.

However, if you spend any real amount of time in Chicago at all, you find it's a lot like many places.  The different groups have a tendency to stay in their own areas.  The south Chicago people tend to stay in the south and the north Chicago people tend to stay north.  Add to that how the city is broken up into "neighborhoods" and how many of the "neighborhoods" are relatively culturally specific.  It's true that there is overlap and the mixing of peoples, but if you zoom back and take a look at the city as a whole, you actually see a lot of groups just hanging out with themselves.

It's sort of strange when you think about it.

But at the Taste?  Everyone shows up.  Everyone all in one place.  And by "everyone" I do actually mean a sampling of everyone.  

And they all show up because of food.  Food, the great equalizer.  Everyone needs it, and most people like it.  Food is one of those things you can't avoid.

And historically, this has always been true.  The equalizer part, not the need part.  Clearly the need part has always been true.  

In the ancient times, when people came together for any reason, whether it was a festival, or a negotiation, or even to work out their differences, they would often sit under a tree and share a meal.  They would do the thing everyone had to do.  The thing that made them equals.  The thing that gave them common ground.  A need and love for food.

And the beauty of this is how it shows that, cultural differences aside, all people are largely the same.  I eat, you eat.  We need to survive, and hope to be happy doing it.  We like to love and laugh and make babies.

Everything else is self focused (not necessarily selfish) world view commentary.  Important, but not absolute.  Or maybe meaningful, but not important?

I'm not sure what the correct way to say that is, but what I do know is, the moment you bring out the food, most of that stuff suddenly vanishes and then we become this group of people who don't know each other and may not even speak a same language, sharing a meal, passing napkins, making space in the line for them, smiling as they walk by.

If only the rest of life were that simple.

Maybe, it is.  Or it would be if we let it happen.

Wouldn't that be something?

Hot Dogs and Freedom!

Hello all and Happy Independence Day!

By now, many if not most of you are well on your way to a grilled beef (or acceptable substitute) induced coma, which may or may not have been assisted by some sort of "lubrication liquid".  

Horse shoes, potato salad, and Bocci Ball may well have been involved also.

Later, as the sun sets and inebriation rises, there will be a frighteningly grand use of controlled explosives designed to look pretty in the sky.  

You know, drunk people and explosives.

'Merica!!

I hope this day has been and will continue to be an enjoyable time for you all.

However, in case one or two of you decided to step away from the hot dog for a second to actually read this (actually, you can probably continue to eat the hot dog AND read this at the same time.  if you can't, it's either a quite spectacularly good dog, or you've hit the second case of MGD already and you think this is a website dedicated to Lynard Skynard.  Unrelated, once you figure out this isn't that, I do recommend their song "The Breeze".  It's one of my favorites.), I thought it might be a good time for a short little thought on the topic of "freedom".

I'm not going to bore you about the subtle difference between the concepts of "independence" and "freedom", nor am I going to go on about the state of government and politics.  

I simply want to talk about what it means to be free.

Freedom can mean many things.  Are you free from oppression?  Free from slavery?  Are you free from tyranny?  Are you free from burdens?  Free from hate?  Are you free as opposed to being costly?  Does your "free-ness" or "freedom" come at the expense of someone else's "freedom"?  If so, then was it actually "free"?

Are you free from self-doubt?  Free from debt?  Free from depression?  Free from self delusion?  Free from all illusions?

Are you actually free or do you just think that you are free?

Or, can you be beholden to another but still feel free?  Is true freedom something that happens externally, or does it happen internally?

What does it actually mean to be "free"?

I'm not going to pretend to know the absolute meaning of this.  My words are simply that.  Words.  But I would like to offer at least one thing to consider, not as an absolute definition of truth, but as one thing that might be true in a basket of other true things.

Freedom, is a choice.  Not just the ability to choose, but more importantly, your choice to be free no matter your physical circumstances.  A person can be a prisoner, but be free inside, just as a person can be free from walls and barriers, but be trapped in a prison of their own mental design.

Have you chosen to be free?  In this land of relative freedom, and significant lack of overall oppression compared to many places, have you chosen to be free?  Truly free from the things that truly imprison us?

Things like hatred, bigotry, selfishness, vanity, arrogance, pride, ignorance...?  These things are all choices.  Sure, maybe you were exposed to and raised in environments that programmed certain things into your overall view of reality, but that does not mean you can't choose something better.

All those things, and others, are extensions of one of the greatest prisons.

Lies.

The lies we chose to believe, and even worse, the lies we told ourself.  Lies about who we are and what our significance is or is not.  About why I'm better or worse than you.  About what why I hate you.  About why I'm angry.  About why I'm trapped in life.

Lies that I choose to believe so that I may willfully remain ignorant.

Ignorance.  Another great and evil choice.  I realize that there are some places where this is not necessarily a choice, but here, in our country, in the age of information and the internet and access to almost anything we want to find?  Ignorance is a willful choice.

I meet these people all the time.  People who want life no other way than to be negative and hateful and arrogant and ignorant.  People who have woven great lies and believed them into their soul.

But, there are other people.  Greater people.  People who've chosen to be free.  People who love unreservedly.  Who hate no one even if they disagree with them.  People who don't believe they are better than that other person who lives in a way they don't believe in.  People who seek to understand in spite of the difficulty of bridging the gap between bigotry and brotherhood.

Those people are awesome.  Those are the people who've chosen freedom.  Those are the people who have chosen to make their life one of happiness and fellowship.

Those are people I want to know.  They are the people I call brothers and sisters and kinsman and countrymen.  And I don't care what nation or bloodline they came from.

That's because freedom by it's very nature is about the absence of boundaries.  The absence of confines.  If not in body, then in mind and soul.

I live in a country that is both wonderful and imperfect.  In that sense, it's much like every other country.  With aspects of both wonder and imperfection.  And, we do have it better here than in many places in the world.  It's a country based on the principles of independence and freedom and equality, even if the reality has at times fallen short.  But there is one thing that must be understood very clearly.

This country is not what makes you free.

You are the only one who can make you free.

Now, go blow something up in the name of awesomeness!

'Merica!!