Faking it
I’m still reading The Way of the Wild Heart and really am only about halfway done. So obviously my journaling is still going to be about that 
Anyways, in TWOTWH (You like that? There are only two groups who like acronyms more than anything that’s the Military, and Nerds… but I think the Military wins since they’ve got entire dictionaries of acronyms) he describes five stages every man goes through to becoming a man. The first being The beloved son then comes The Cowboy (or Ranger for the LOTR fans) after that there’s The Warrior on to The Lover and finally The King. Each stage builds on the next, and really overlap…. You could say that I’m in a transitional period between the ranger and the warrior… Unfortunately I feel as if most of the ranger stage was fake…. not all of it, there was a lot of good, but a good portion of it. Adventure is key for the ranger (as is work) to develop properly into the warrior, and a lot of the adventure for me was completely faked. There was a lot of good adventure; I got to crash my second car… and crashed it good, it was awesome! I’ll tell you about it some other time, my mom would say it was scary to see, but she lies it was awesome! So wish I had my camera back then to take pictures of it because… yeah… total awesomeness! I’ve got some really good mental snapshots, when they figure out how to get computers to read mental imagery I’ll show you what it looked like… it was great. Also during this period of time I was in wrestling most of it, which was both good adventure and hard work. There was theatre, bike ridding, my recent bike trip, and a host of other solid adventure… but there was one major mistake…. I squandered a good deal of time that should of been seeking adventure, or doing hard work (one of the only reasons I lasted so long working at Wal-Mart is because it was excrutiating physical labor unloading trucks… and I loved it) in playing video games. Don’t get me wrong, I think that video games have been a great social outlet for me with the LAN Parties and everything. And in they’re not a bad thing… but they should be limited more, and they are no substitute for true adventure. Unfortunately I did look to them for adventure a lot of the time, they’re much easier than actually taking the risk of going and finding adventure… and a lot easier to get permission from my mom to do…. even at 21 it was hard for her to let me go on my bike trip. Now especially after that wonderful expirience out on the road alone, I want something substantial… something meaningful. Which is driving me crazy being here with my cousin because we used to be gaming buddies… well still are. All he wants to do all the time is game, even though we should be doing work online to get some sort of extra income he wants to spend 8 hours a day playing games and it’s driving me nuts!!! Nine months ago dude I would of been all over it, 12 hours a day all gaming, all the time… but now it doesn’t satisfy… nothing about it even appeals anymore… even as a time waster it’s lacking. It doesn’t feed my soul like it used to seem to, and I really am not understanding what the appeal was before for me. Even two months ago it was a good destresser/time waster, but now that’s even gone by the wayside. I need something substantial, and I need it quick. I’m thinking with my first couple of paychecks I’m definitely getting the stuff to build a forge… start learning blacksmithing.
Blacksmithing is a whole other subject. One of the reasons I decided to go ahead and get a job (oh, and btw, for those of you who don’t know I got a job :-P) besides the obvious of need of money for rent and everything (oh, and btw, for those of you who don’t know I finally got Jordan to understand that I had to move out, or they’d be alone so I’m now in my new place). I was with my mom and we went to eat with one of her old patients who’s a really cool Christian guy, who had cancer but got better from it, and offered to teach me to ride motorcycles…. which I may take him up on… but that’s another story for another time. While talking to him, he’s got a friend who’s an artist actually makes jewelry and he was saying I should meet her. I love meeting people who are actually making a living as artists… it’s hard to do, I know first hand. Anyways he was also showing me a painting she did and was joking about how he shouldn’t of paid what he did for it because she owed him money or something but still did because their work as artists is worth far more than most peoples but unfortunately they can’t make a living from it. It made me think back to this other guy I knew who was an awesome artist from here in Kansas City and actually world renowned. Jean Paleologue if you’ve ever heard of the artist Pal that was Jean’s father… Pal is a VERY famous artist, but Jean was very well known worldwide as well. Even being world renowned and celebrated… he made a very meager living. I’ve seen some of Jean’s work sell for tens of thousands for a single painting… unfortunately Jean never saw that. Artists often have to settle for selling their pieces for whatever they can get at the time, and then the person who got it holds it for long enough that the rest of the world can appreciate what that art meant at the time and then sells it for 10, 20, 5,000 times as much as they bought it for. Jean made a living as an artist… but there was something about him, something that I’ve noticed about everybody I’ve met who actually is making a living as an artist… they don’t stick to one art. Now they usually have one that they are most passionate about, one that they love, but they usually take part in at least 3 artistic fields to survive. So until I’ve got blacksmithing down, continue with my jewelry stuff, and also can do webpage design I’m going to have to hold down another job. Doesn’t really bother me, so long as I can keep a physically laborious job that pays decent I’ll be ok.