2014

Time is a strange reality. Somehow it fools you into thinking that it's moving slowly only for you to suddenly wonder where it's gone. 

That happened to me in 2014. It was an amazing year in my life. Yet it's already nearing an end, and it will simply be boxed up in my memory and stacked away somewhere in my mind. 

It's hard to begin, really. I suppose the most satisfying outcome of this blog post if the future me is reading this is to put down some things that come to mind as I reflect over this past year, while also expressing how I feel in this very moment early in the morning of December 13th, 2014. 

So let's start with this- the biggest milestone and life change in this past year is buying a house. Lindsay and I love our house so far. Being a new homeowner is intimidating at times, but also feels like it's what we're supposed to do. After living in an apartment for the past 2 years, and in a trailer at camp that wasn't ours before that, I can truly say that having a place to call our own is simply...refreshing. We moved in back in October, and I'd say that I'm still adjusting to life as a homeowner. Getting into the house was a little more expensive than planned, which is common, but right now we need to pay some bills. I'm hoping that in the coming months we'll be able to get on more solid ground in that regard. 

In 2014 Judah and Olivia grew up more- Olivia especially. We started to see the goofy side of her personality at a very young age, and this year she really started to grow into it. Every day she makes us all laugh. And this week she finally got potty-trained! I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen, since every time I sat her on the toilet she'd whine and cry. I'm just mostly excited to save some money on diapers :)

Both Judah and Olivia are extremely smart. They both know their ABCs, Olivia can count to 20 and Judah can count to at least 50. Judah can also write all of his letters. The other thing that really impresses me about Judah is what he builds with his legos and train tracks. He comes up with track configurations that I don't think I could have ever though of. It's very impressive.

As for me, I work a lot. I love making videos and storytelling through video. Over the past year I've improved a lot. Reliant and Berean had plenty of work for me to do throughout the year, and I did my biggest freelance project ever for Preferred Popcorn this fall. I also filmed around 15 weddings. It was an insanely busy year. I'm guessing I was involved in somewhere around 100 video projects on some level, but who's counting? I'm hoping I find a little more balance in the future because right now I'm pretty worn out. I've always been a person that's very driven to improve constantly, and I still am, but I could be getting a little burnt out. Everyone has their limit...and this year I learned that I've got a pretty high threshold of work I can take on, but I also have a limit. Another challenging aspect that I've faced since doing freelance work is time off. I never have a day off. Sure, I have "days off" where I don't really work, but on those days I usually feel guilty that I'm not getting work done, which in turn discourages me and makes me not want to work, which makes me more guilty. All that to say- I LOVE what I'm doing and I feel so blessed that I get to create through video for a living. It's awesome...but not perfect...and there's a lot I can take away from 2014 and hopefully learn in the future to make sure that I keep loving it and stay motivated.

So there's that. This post is a little dry but it's late and I'm trying to summarize one of the craziest years of my life in less than a million words. It can't be done. 

One other quick thought. I love Lincoln. It's an awesome town and I'm really enjoying the people that I'm getting to know. But there's another aspect, and that's that 4 of my closest friends live here, plus some other good friends I grew up with. I was just thinking about that last night as I came home from a "bro night." How awesome is it that some of my bros that I grew up with in small town Nebraska also ended up in Lincoln? I've been super busy and haven't really taken advantage of it like I should. There's something to improve on for 2015.

Another thing I hope to improve on in 2015 is self discipline. Wow, I'm terrible at food. Just terrible. For the past 3 years I've done a "biggest loser" contest to start the year with my in-laws. The contest runs 3 months and each year I've done well. But each year I've done terrible at keeping the weight off. Lindsay and I switched to being "vegan-ish" 2 years ago and overall I've been healthier, but I want to be better. Way better. I compromise- it's super easy to avoid meat. But what I really need to avoid is dairy and carbs. But for some reason that's way harder to avoid. So here's my results from the past 3 years. Year 1- lost 15 pounds, gained back 20. Year 2 (switched to being vegan), lost 25 pounds, gained back 15. Year 3, lost 15 pounds, gained back 15 pounds. ALL CAPS ANGER! I'm sick of it. I want to lose 25 pounds this year and keep the freaking weight off. I can be disciplined for  3 months when there's a contest on the line...but afterwords...I eat a lot of cookies. I can be better. 

The last thought I have in regards to 2014 is how much I like Lincoln Berean. Lindsay and I love attending, and we are both on staff there now. I'm really happy Lindsay was able to get a job there- it truly was God at work to make that happen. She applied and then once we had the details for the job we didn't think it would work. She even called them to have her name removed from candidates for the job. But they called her back a week later and said they really wanted her. They were willing to be super flexible and it worked perfectly with our scheduling needs. It's been a huge blessing for her to get out of the house a couple of days a week and work with awesome people. God is good! I really enjoy my job on the youth staff. It's pretty challenging at times, but I love the challenge and I love knowing that God is directly using my work there to reach and teach kids. Not only that, but I really look up to the guys I work with there on the staff, and I'm blessed to call them friends!

So there it is, a crazy year summed up in a quick blog post. I always say this when I write- but I need to write more often. This isn't anything fancy but it was great to write. As for 2014- you were good to me, and 2015 is just around the corner with the opportunity to love God more and be better.

Compliments

I really have no idea how to take compliments about my video work.

I believe that we are all fragile souls at the core no matter how thick the walls are that we put around our true selves. I've got plenty of walls, and most are thick. But when someone tells me that I'm good at what I do, sometimes it cuts right to that fragile part of my soul and makes me want to break down and cry. If that ever happened, through my tears I would just say "THANK YOU!" It means so much to me to hear that.  I never expect compliments for my work and often times they catch me off guard. My journey just to receive a meaningful compliment has been so long. Most of the time I had no idea what I wanted to do or even how to get there. It all started as a hobby by making videos for fun with my friends for fun and posting them to youtube. I went to community college, not film school. I worked at a camp by myself for 3 years with cheap cameras and 8 year old iMacs. I didn't know what a c-stand was until about 2 years ago. Basically I did almost nothing before I moved to Lincoln that validated me in my work, but I kept going after it because some people believed in me. When it comes down to it, I'm just a guy who loves making videos and wants to keep getting better. The drive I have to be better has only grown as I've improved. It's insatiable. My journey is really just beginning.

Sometimes I have a hard time believing the compliments, because I really struggle to look at my own work objectively. But if it's true and I possess an ounce of talent, I can only credit the God who gave me the talent and is helping me improve. Really, it has nothing to do with me. Don't tell me I'm awesome, because I'm not. Tell God He's awesome. My goal is simply to make the best videos I can with the talent God has given me. It's unreasonable to believe that I can make an awesome video every single time. I'm going fail. As validating as compliments can seem, my only true validation is found in knowing that I'm only able to create because of my Creator. My work is for His glory, not my own.

When the lights go out

Every night the lights go out. And you're alone. Maybe there's someone sleeping next to you that you deeply love. But at a certain point everything is taken away and it's just you, alone in your thoughts as you wait for the mystery of sleep to overtake your consciousness. In this short window of complete solitude, the realization of mortality comes. This life will end. When? We don't know, but the day is coming that will be our last. Is it this week? Is it this year? Will I live to see my grandchildren? What will the death of my body be like? This body that I'm in is merely a house for my soul. Everyone who has ever known me in this world recognizes me by this body that exists only in our physical world, but it's not actually me. If this body is in good enough condition to be shown at a funeral, those attending will look at my body with sadness, as if all that I was ceased to exist. In reality, none of what I was ceased to exist. Yet memories are all that's left of me to those who knew me in this body. Those memories are fragile shadows of reality that will ultimately be shattered when the bodies of those carrying them die as well. But we will still be alive. We will step into the next stage of life. When the lights go out we face the uncertainty of our immortality. Our souls long for truth because we know that there's more than this world and the bodies that house our souls. We have purpose. We know it. There's something out there that put us here, something that made us, and we long to connect with this being. Faith is a difficult thing in a physical world. Faith is believing in the unseen, in things not experienced. I know not to touch a hot stove not because I have faith it will burn me but because I know it will burn me from experience. The body I live in has never died before, so I can't know from experience what that's like. Yet I have faith- faith that there's a Creator of the universe that loves me and will redeem me despite of my flaws. A God that has so much more planned for me than whatever my quick years in this body on this earth will offer. When the lights go out, I'm alone in my body but not in my spirit. When the lights go out, all I need is faith.

My struggle with listening

I wasn't born to be a great listener.

From the time I was a baby, I've had problems with my ears. I kept getting ear infections as a kid and eventually permanent tubes had to be placed inside my ears to help with drainage issues.

When I started to talk, most adults had no idea what I was saying, and many of my words were simply me trying to imitate the distorted sounds that I heard. By the time I started school though, I could talk perfectly fine, and I could hear well enough to not need any sort of assistance to get through school.

My hearing wasn't the greatest, but it certainly wasn't a handicap. Mostly I just didn't think about it because I didn't notice it. I remember some "constructive criticism" about my listening skills at parent/teacher conferences, but since I hated constructive criticism until a few years ago, I mostly just brushed it off. I figured they didn't know what they were talking about or didn't like me.

My teachers weren't the problem that time that I failed the annual hearing test at school. I just made jokes about it and told everyone that I wasn't really trying to listen during the test anyways, which was true. When I came back for the re-test, I managed to do something that probably no other normal kid would even think of trying to pull off- I cheated on my hearing test. It wasn't my proudest moment in life, but I wasn't about to let some doctor tell me that my hearing was bad enough that I needed special treatment. The nice lady who administered the test was also nice enough to wear glasses that day. I had to press a button when I heard sounds of various pitches, and whenever she started the sounds on her end I could see a light turn on in the reflection on her glasses. "I don't even know why they made you come back here," she said after I aced the test. "I don't know either," I replied, as I smiled and realized that I passed a hearing test because God blessed me with good vision.

My good vision didn't see the giant moth flying towards me at maximum velocity with enough time to duck. One fateful Sunday morning I was before my senior year of high school I was detasseling and a giant, bird-sized moth plunged straight into my ear at about 1000 mph. I've told this story a billion times and I don't feel like getting into the details but I'll summarize. Large moth flies into left ear at full speed, get's stuck too deep in ear to reach. Moth is still alive inside ear and shakes violently near my eardrum repeatedly, which sends me to my knees in gut-wrenching pain over and over again. I'm taken to the emergency room. The doctors take their sweet time and finally have to pull the thing out with the longest pair of tweezers I've ever seen in my life. Fortunately, that incident didn't cause me to lose all my hearing in my left ear, but it probably caused me to go from about 70% hearing in that ear to 50%. The ongoing ear infection that followed for a year and a half probably took that down to 40%. I'd guess my other ear to be at about 90% based on tests I've taken that I didn't cheat on and from my experience judging what other people can hear and what I can't. So that brings us to today.

Here's the thing- don't feel sorry for me. Those stories about how my hearing came to be less than 100% have absolutely nothing to do with my weakness. I just find them to be an interesting part of my journey in discovering my greatest weakness. Sure, sometimes I don't hear what people say for legitimate reasons, but more often than not I find I didn't hear not because I couldn't, but because I wasn't listening.

I remember one time when I was a teenager and my best friend Micah was over just hanging out in my room. I was playing video games and he was talking to me, when all the sudden I noticed he started to say the "whats" for me. He'd say, "Hey Bill, do you want to go workout later? What? Bill, do you want to work out later." When I asked why he was saying what and then repeating himself, he said it was because that's what always happened anyways whenever he talked to me so he was just getting it out of the way early. That was when I started to realize that I often said "what?" after almost anything was said to me. Was it because I didn't hear it? Not at all. In fact, usually if they didn't repeat themselves I would realize what they actually said just seconds later. The problem wasn't that I didn't hear Micah, the problem was that I wasn't listening to Micah.

Getting married called this to my attention even more. Lindsay needs me to listen to her a lot more often than my friends ever did. I get home from work, sit down, and she's talking to me about her day and other things, which I am actually interested in, but somehow I'm still not listening. I hear her, I'm nodding my head, I'm saying "yeah," and "oh really?" at all the right times. I even make eye contact. I'm zoning out for whatever reason, thinking about something else, and not giving my wife the attention she needs and deserves. Two weeks later we're driving somewhere and she reminds me that we'll be needing to go over our budget to purchase some snacks for a family gathering, and I'm caught totally off guard. "I told you about this two weeks ago, remember?" I insist she's never told me. She insists she has. Then somehow my subconscious brain takes me back to the one-sided conversation we had after I got off work that one day, and I realize that I heard her but didn't listen.

I have to concentrate as hard as possibly can to make sure I'm listening when I'm around people who would be less forgiving than my wife. When I'm at work, there's countless tiny little conversations with important information about something I need to do throughout the day, and I have to concentrate as hard as I possibly can to have average listening skills and not miss anything major. Technology helps me at work because I can put important events on my calendar and automatically be reminded, or I can send myself an e-mail with key information. I listen enough to survive in the work world.

Regular conversation is a struggle sometimes as well. We all know what it's like to talk to a good listener. Not only are they genuinely engaged with what you're saying, but they seem to care and almost always say the right things at the right times. People who have talked to me enough times probably wouldn't describe a conversation with me being anything like that. Sure, I can fake it if I have to for a little while. But there's way too many conversations where I'm distracted by my surroundings, or thinking about something else, or just thinking about the next thing I want to say. That last one is a killer and I know a lot of other people struggle with that too. That's probably why I'm better at internet conversations than real-life conversations. I have to wait for the other person to respond, I have to read their response, and then I take time to formulate my response. If there's anything great we could learn from internet communication and apply to real life, that might be it.

It's not that I never have genuine conversation and that I never listen. It's just that I miss a lot of opportunities and I catch myself pretending to listen way too often. The funny thing is that pretending to listen is probably harder than actually listening. It's not fair to the person I'm talking to. If one person isn't listening in a conversation, why even have it? Sometimes you'd be better off talking to yourself than to me. No, really.

I'm sure that I'm my own toughest critic, but there's times when it drives me crazy. One of my strengths is communication, but since I'm not a good listener my God-given ability to be a great communicator is utterly wasted at times. I hate it.

It's not like there's some easy cure. Listening isn't just something that I can just turn on and off like a light switch. I think listening is a skill that some are born with, and I wasn't. It's true. Listening just comes naturally for some people, but for others it's a struggle to develop. I can't emphasize this enough. I am a person who is aware of the struggle and I desire to be a good listener with all my heart. But I'm still not a good listener, and I'm actually quite terrible at it sometimes. It's probably my greatest weakness, and I can barely put into words how incredibly frustrating it is to want to be a good listener and to not be.

Lebron James first dunked a basketball in 8th grade. Even before that, it was very obvious that he was a gifted athlete who could become a great basketball player. Me on the other hand, I'm 5'5 and my vertical jump might make it over a cinder block on a good day. I once placed 3rd in a free throw shooting contest...because there were 3 people in my division. Two years ago some friends convinced me to join their rec basketball team. "It will be fun," they said. My season highlights included air-balling a layup and getting schooled by a girl. It wasn't fun. I was born with pretty much the exact opposite genetics as Lebron James, and it's no wonder that I struggle out on the court. But it's also worth mentioning that I never practiced. Yes, I'm naturally a terrible basketball player but that doesn't mean I couldn't get better. In fact, I'm confident that if I devoted myself to practice every day for years and years, I would certainly be better than I am right now.

The way I see it, my listening skills are no different. I want to get better, and I'm glad that I see my weakness more than ever before. It's going to take years of effort, and in the end I have to accept the fact that I'll probably never be the Lebron James of listening. By God's grace, what? By God's Grace maybe someday I'll be a decent enough listener to see my communication skills blossom in new ways. I'll start to have more of those genuine conversations that I feel I'm constantly missing out on now.

If God made both of my ears able to hear 100% again, you'd call it a miracle. Well I say it would be a bigger miracle if God teaches me how to listen.