Cody

My pastor likes to say all the time that we need to watch what we do for the sake of everyone around us.  Especially if we claim Christ openly because we are an image of Christ whether we like it or not as Christians.  Sometimes you may be the only image of Christ that someone ever sees… that’s a tough one to swallow… there have been so many times where people know that I claim Christ and know that I pretend to be a Christian and are around for my… well not finest hours lets put it that way.

There was one time that to my everlasting shame I took the image of Christ and drug it through the mud and hung it up for so many to see.  This isn’t a story that I tell often… and most definitely don’t tell it in it’s entirety when I do… I’m about to do both.  Four and a half years ago I had a girlfriend… I know, hard to believe, but it’s true.  Once upon a time I did have a girlfriend… with whom I made the foolish decision to lose my virginity to… but that’s not what the story is about, that’s only where the story begins.   The girl I was dating is a professed Atheist which uh… makes things awkward anyways… but I gladly smeared the image of Christ for a moment of pleasure.  Although, this still is not what the story is about, it’s only the beginning.  The good thing is that this person is still a very close friend of mine, and I’ve been able to hold up to every promise I’ve ever made her, and in that I’ve been able to redeem much of what was lost.   Instead this story is about what happened nearly a year later over winter break.  I hadn’t really dated anyone since what happened… and still haven’t for lack of trust in myself.  But there have been a good deal of people that I’ve liked over that time, one of which being a girl named Tatum.  She was a couple years younger than me, but rode the same bus as me from school, and was so cute.  She was friends with some of the same people as me like Phil whom I love dearly.  I could tell that she came from a home that was filled with strife, which was so much more of a problem for me because I have a weakness for hurting people… The protector in me rises up to get close to hurting people in any way possible to single handedly save them.  I knew I couldn’t really date Tatum, not only from the illegal aspect, but because we had separate sets of morals… but I still enjoyed talking and flirting with her doing what I could to understand and in any way possible help her.  One day 3 1/2 years ago over winter break she called me and asked me to come over to her house… I knew what she wanted, but I didn’t really care.  When I got there we sat around and talked for a few hours before her younger brother went over to a friends house.   Knowing last year I came to school in a skirt and blouse for my birthday and knowing my birthday was coming up she suggested that I do it again, and she had a dress that would be hilarious if I wore it.  Shortly after she coerced me into trying it on (ok, so it didn’t take any real coercion).  When I was taking it off again she approached me and put her arms around my neck to kiss me.  Without getting into too much detail we ended up having sex before I went home.  The next week we went back to school, the time in between I wasn’t able to get in contact with her.  After finding out from Phil that a few days after I had visited Tatum at her house she started dating another guy.  The news emptied my spirit for the knowledge that I’d never be able to regain any kind of good image was all too present.  In a single act of foolishness I managed to burn the image of Christ in front of a broken and hurting girl, as well as a lost young man my good friend Phil, as well as completely reinforced a wretched idea to her younger brother.  You see later that week on Sunday I went to youth group which I hadn’t been to in a matter of months because of some stubborn and selfish differences I had with Otis.  When I walked into the church I saw a familiar face… Tatum’s younger brother was there to see my hypocrisies in all its glory.  Of all the days I choose to come back, of all the churches in the area, him and his friends come to a tiny little church of less than 300 people off out of the way of everything in the area hidden back in an inconspicuous residential neighborhood… I’ve never been so disgraced and ashamed of a decision.  I would still give whatever it takes to protect Tatum, and many other people, unfortunately because of my folly that’s not an option.

Ok Cody thanks for the trip down shadowed memory lane… where is this coming from?  Well I was on Myspace today as I tend to do from time to time.  And I got a friend invite from a gorgeous model… I know, I was thinking the same thing.  But I always check profiles just in case so that I’m not making people as spam who are real people, because that’s just rude.  As it turns out it was a real person… but obviously way out of my league so I was going to mark as deny anyways… until I spotted a verse from Proverbs on the page.  I was so excited to see a Christian model that I accepted the invitation… only to be disappointed by the portfolio of said model.  I think as Christians we need to be more aware of the image we are portraying in everything we do… even if we’re just trying to pay the bills, sometimes you’ve got to draw a line.   I’m pretty good at putting up a show in the public forum about how Godly I am… but definitely need to check myself more often how authentic that bull crap facade really is.

My mom has been seeing this guy for two weeks now… or so maybe three, but anyways she asks me how I like him.  Obviously having three kids it is just as important that we like him as it is that she does… or well that I like him as she does since Brittney isn’t going to like anyone who takes attention away from her, and Brook is never home so it doesn’t really matter.  To be honest I really do like the guy a lot.  He has a good job and makes great money, but remains very down to earth and isn’t one of those strict neat freaks that you see with most people with the same job positions.

Anyways… on to the point of the story.  You might remember that I had an article on here a while ago about wanting a ridding partner, then went on to explain more what I was really asking for with that.  Well I never did ride the Katy trail, would be fun and I’d love to do it sometime, but getting out on my own is majorly no fun, and trying to convince someone else that ridding bikes for 4 days on a 300 mile trip would be awesome is difficult to say the least.   Funny thing is Scott (My mom’s boyfriend that isn’t really her boyfriend because we’re definitely not in 6th grade anymore and there is no such thing as a good adult boyfriend… every time any of my friends referred to their parents boyfriend/girlfriend it was not in a pleasant tone.)  rides his bike all the time and was talking about this area by him where they are doing construction and the land is all torn up, how much fun it would be to go out there when it is raining and have fun getting a little muddy.

yeah… so there wasn’t really a point to this one… I was just sharing

What is up with everybody plotting for me?  I mean seriously, every time I turn my back there is someone new with plots and plans on helping me and making things so much more awesome for me… only thing is I’m so oblivious I didn’t even know it this last time.  Most of you know that I was greeted coming home from Jamaica with job offers and everything necessary for me to survive without scrambling to get another job.  Plus the freedom to go to St. Louis for a couple of weekends to have fun at the Ren. Faire.  Then while at the Ren. Faire I got accepted into the “family” and got the royal treatment the entire time with help from everyone, even if I never knew their names they were always coming up to offer help/advice of any kind that would be of service to me.   Truly was awesome, and there will never be a time that I miss the Ren. Faire again because those people truly are my family
Just today (well technically yesterday, but with the hours I sleep I never know what day is what) I learned that there have been more plotting in my favor as well!  And when I say this, I don’t mean they just had some opportunity for me that just kind of works and hey why not get Cody to come…. no, these people have gone out of their way SPECIFIED me and did everything they could to push me into the path of said opportunity [as a side note, I was stumbling and found some random article and there was an add on the side of the page with a guy and a blender at the top it was scrolling through messages that said “started drinking vegetables?” “you could be heading for a mid-life crisis.” so obviously I’m headed down that path to a mid-life crisis, next thing you know I’m going to be getting a loan to start my own business and wait… crap… I am having a mid-life crisis… guess I’m only gonna live to 42 ]

wait… where was I?  I got distracted by my stumbling… uh… so yeah, I wasn’t really ever planning on actually TELLING you what this new plot is, because I don’t usually do the whole telling people what is on my mind thing.  Doesn’t hurt that only 1.5 people actually visit this site a day… unlike Archmaille Designs which now, thanks to StumbleUpon has reached 300 people a day… let me say that again because I’m not sure if I believe it yet, but the second day of optimizing my stumble information I’ve reached 300 people for one day, not including yesterday where I had 150 people, so nearly 500 people in the last two days… not so bad.  Oh, and the moral of the story is that I win

[disclaimer] This post is all about ME, unlike many of my other posts where I try to have a moral, and an ending that makes you think this is just a rant nothing more.  A rant about me, and what I would like to see… sorry, most the time I keep on track but for today, not so much. [/disclaimer]

I had a bit of an interesting weekend. Well more so funny than interesting, and definitely not in a bad way. I’m still not sure exactly how everybody knows when I get ready to make a move, but it’s not so surprising when I do. Maybe things just work in time cycles for me, and people have gotten used to them, or I show outwardly what I’m feeling inside more so than I’d like to admit. However it is that everyone knows, everybody knows that I’m unhappy and ready to start a fight. I guess it’s not necessarily that I’m unhappy or anything, just get bored easily…. and of course I don’t get along with many people so it’s easy to get me going, plus working for other people just doesn’t work for me. Anyways, what is spurring this is that this weekend I got asked by two different people to go into business with them! Now at first I was a bit puzzled, being that one likes to call me lazy for trying to run my own business’ and constantly tells me to get a “job” the other knows that I’ve NEVER been successful at any kind of business that I’ve run despite several endeavors over the years. Thing is I’m ready to take Tiana up on her offer of opening a tea house, if I had the resources I would do so right now… and even though 1 year is an early time frame of taking a business from the planning boards to physical operations I’d really like to push the envelope to 4 months from now. Of course that is mostly due to the fact that in 4 months I won’t have a job and don’t really want to go get some petty job to fill in the gap… although, since I’m getting serious about this I should get a job somewhere like starsucks just to get into the industry. Thing is I can’t work two jobs and expect to be able to research and write any kind of legit business report (not to mention designing and maintaining 4 different websites right now).

Oddly enough the way that I knew I was ready for a move to start fighting for my own business was because of my “girl situation” if you can even call it that. Those of you that know me, know that I thrive in ultra high stress environments. For example, in high school I never did a single homework assignment… that’s right… not one. I was a good enough test taker that I could pass classes by doing classwork from time to time and pass all my tests… thing is that put the stress on that I HAD to pass every test with at least a 95% or higher or I would fail the class, to some this always seemed foolish, but it honestly is the ONLY way that I could ever make it through most classes… ultra high stress situations bring the best work out of me. Even though I work best when the heat is on I’m still a very comfort based person… if that makes any sense. You see, when working stress is great for me, often times I use my OCD to put extra stress on myself (things like deadlines, and any kind of numbers, one thing about my OCD is I love numbers such as at LifeTouch they keep track of Pages Per Hour which is perfect for me because I can access that and put extra stress on myself to keep those numbers as high as possible). Stressful situations keep me moving, keep me alert, and get the wheels turning so I produce the most creative amazing things you could ever imagine… unfortunately high stress environments do bad things to my already insomniac lifestyle. I can not sleep when my mind is turning and things are running at 150% there’s always a new idea, a new plan, a new toy, something can always be done… often times I will work 50-60 hours in a row until the project is off the ground and just completely burn myself out. This is one of my biggest problems with starting a business, I will spend 3 months sleeping a total of 30 hours a month and build one of the most ingenious, creative, just plain cool business/sites you could ever hope for then crash and never visit the idea again. Part of the problem is that ever business has the 3 month slump, that is when you start a new business there are 1,000 things to do after 3 months you can generally have that all done… but that doesn’t mean you’ve got customers yet. For the most part it takes a full year to build a good client base, and since the first 3 months you’ve been working on actually getting the business ready for business unless someone else has been working in the foreground getting a client base you’ve got nothing at the 3 month point… which is what I’m not good at, I can keep going at an insane rate for as long as needs be… but as soon as the workload goes away, I’m done. Which then brings me back to the “girl situation” a big lose, lose conundrum for the Cody. As many of you know I’m a very physical person, love giving/getting hugs, love being close to someone, and I love having someone to take care of. Problem with this is that having someone to be close to is a huge stress reliever for me, which makes taking on the extreme workload of starting a new business impossible. The thing is I know how I’m built, and where all my weaknesses lie. Most the time when I’m up late hours thinking about a project and the wheels are turning from the stresses of the day there is no productivity going on, only insomnia. The ideal situation for me would be to have a girlfriend when I’m starting a business so that I don’t crash so much at the 3 month period… unfortunately this would have to be a VERY unique situation that most people don’t get, and I have a hard time verbalizing. The only way that it would work is if I had 8-12 hours during the day (depending upon how on fire I am at the time) to work, then have the opportunity to hang out with said girl at random times later at night to just watch a movie, go to a park walking around hand in hand, lay on the hood of a car outside the airport watching the planes land…. something of that nature to calm my nerves so I could sleep at night. Things like this have never worked for me though, because to ask something of the such is far too selfish and I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I understand that when you’re dating someone who is home all day it’s easy to say that they’re not doing anything and want to hang out… I know I would. For the most part it seems harmless, but when I get thrown off track you may as well forget about me working, especially if my stress level goes down. Every once in a while it’s fine, but after so many times it always ends the same with me freaking out about not getting anything done, but unable to say anything for the fear of being selfish until I push everyone away going into seclusion. This is one big reason as to why I like to sabotage myself on the front of people I like before anything could ever go anywhere. Any time something comes up such as the business proposition from Tiana I always start to like someone, or someones. This time I was just more aware of it, and it was one of the big reasons I knew that I was ready for this undertaking. God programed this thing in me to help balance me out because the only way that getting anything running for me would work is if I have high stress to keep me going, and someone close to destress with. Anyways, this weekend my mind went back to Rachel… which was somewhat odd. After having the week to consider it I finally figured things out. The only other person that I really can say that I “like” right now would be Brenna, who by the way lives in Montana (even only visiting once a week or so would soon become a very costly endeavor). So just for entertainment sake, and so I had something to obsess about my mind regurgitated someone that I’ve only met once but at least lives close enough that if by some crazy coincidence we might be able to hang out again. Of course thinking of her is something completely selfish, because I don’t want someone to date unless the fully understand the situation, and show obvious, strong Christian beliefs. I only met Rachel once, but that was enough… generally I’m a very good judge of character, and along with that I can spot someone who’s more physical like myself from a mile away. When I met Rachel I was kind of in the same situation as now (maybe another reason my mind is regurgitating) and went to the school musical which she was in. Kenna invited me to the movie party, and I wasn’t about to resist. Rachel’s a very pretty girl, and after watching her for a short time it was obvious that she was a kinetic learner type of person. Through a completely random and unplanned series of events (yeah right) I ended up with the opportunity to sit by her and kind of snuggle close and put my arm around her. Even though after this point not one word was exchanged between us it was probably the greatest moments I’ve had in the last couple of years. I’ve gone on other dates with people and not felt so much of a connection as I did with Rachel, which is another big reason why my mind kind of wanders back to her. This is where the sabotage comes in though, I know that I don’t have any way of contacting her, and it has been long enough that who knows what her situation is now. Not to mention she’s 15, which of course age has never been an issue for me, but I would most definitely go to jail for even thinking about dating her
I’ve always wanted to date someone who I could also work with, but even that would take someone very special.  I mean sure I’ve worked with people I could fool around with, but those are the Kenna’s and Anna’s who I could hug and be close to, but could also push away and have no feelings for when I needed to get things done.  Yes I am a selfish person if you’re wondering.  In order for either to work I really need to find someone that I do care about, but understands my need to work and can help without interfering… that’s where I’ve run into problems before…

I’m most certainly ready to test the odds again… but that fear still resides in me that things won’t work out because I’ll just go, and go, and go until I burn out… hopefully going into the project with two friends who are equally interested, and invested will keep things going without my “expertise” or they’ll be able to go during my low times.

Have you ever asked a question so sure about the answer that you already knew what you were going to be doing before you ever asked the question? Then when you get the answer you’re so bent on going with your way that you find yourself denying the fact that you even got the answer that you got?

Background: I’ve been reading through first and second Samuel, don’t know exactly what lead me to it, but I got to a point in my life where I knew I needed to be reading the bible every day… Opened it up and found myself ensnared by the life of my now very good friend David. David reminds me so much of myself that I hate to put the book down, you want to get to know me, know my flaws that no one ever sees? Read through the books of Samuel. David was awesome, even before he was king of Israel, as a young man not even old enough for a drivers license he went to meet his brothers on the battlefield where the Israel army was terrified of a single man… David looks at this man standing nine feet tall wearing all bronze armour and says “My God will destroy you for taunting these men, and not only that but after he uses me to kill you I’ll cut your head off with your own sword and leave your body to be eaten by the birds.” This was a horrible curse for them, since the Philistines believed that a body unburied or unburnt would never make it to the after life. But David isn’t all talk, he doesn’t just threaten this man three times his size he goes and accomplishes what he said he’d do, then he totes this guys head around to every city of Israel showing everyone what he did… yeah… that’s the part most of the kiddie stories of David and Goliath leave off… While reading through these stories it often talks about David calling for the “holy vest” going off away from everyone else and praying about what should be done in a particular situation. I didn’t think very much about it, but my Bible has these random (and believe me, they’re random) excerpts where it decides to explain historically what something means. Well the “Holy Vest” wasn’t much of anything special simply a nice vest type covering that contained a pocket… it was what was within this pocket that was special… sort of. The pocket contained a smooth rock that had stuff written in Hebrew on both sides. When someone had a hard decision to make they’d pray about it for long periods of time wearing this vest and when they felt their heart was in line with God’s they’d throw this rock in the air and let it land showing them what God’s answer was to their question. The ancient Hebrews believed that God could control the way this rock landed and that is why they would often use this method. I like David a lot, so if it’s good enough for David, it is good enough for me dagnabit!!

Story: For the last month I said that I’d run my business until I was out of money, or close to.  Well I’m not really at that point quite yet, but I’m also not really making money.  So for the last week or so I started asking the question should I find another job to go to get this stupid credit card paid off, and all this other crap that would be nice to get taken care of.  Answer I got: yes.  Cool, I’ve got two good opportunities 1) what I like to call the easy way Taco Bell simply because they’re in desperate need of help, and Tiana works there so I know I could get a job and 2) Nebraska Furniture Mart a little more of a stretch, but more money with starting pay of $11.50 an hour.  The question this time was should I seek either of these jobs?  no?  uh… well… we’ll try this individually (since I was SOOO sure it should be one of them) nope… alrighty… well whatever I did say that I would wait until I needed to get a job before I did and just for funs sake I asked if I should continue with Archmaille Designs: yes.  IF I NEED TO BE CONTINUING WITH THIS THING WHY IS IT SO DISCOURAGING TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING?  Oh I get some amazing stuff acomplished, things that I’m rather proud of (new website design, new equipment that reduces production time in half, and I’m getting stuff made like crazy), yet no one is buying ANYTHING!!! Fine… we’ll let that one go, for now.  Moving on from that there are also a couple of girls who’ve been awesome lately… and I’m starting to like ‘em ya know?  So the question this time pursue any of them: no… uh… ok, this is a test, right, I’m supposed to wait a little longer (Neo kind of thing where the Oracle tells him he’s not the one so that he makes the correct choice at being “the one”).  So I ask about worrying about dating them individually… no… right, this isn’t God’s answer, the coin is just broken!!  As many of you know it’s not an exact 50/50 chance that a quarter will land heads/tails it will land tails more often because the heads side of a quarter is heavier… so I get another coin (and not just another quarter a penny this time, more evenly balanced… then a dime… and a nickle… for good measure)… you know what?  THEY’RE ALL BROKEN!  So I find myself sitting here saying “alright, so my money is dwindling, you’re not sending me any amazing opportunities that are working for making money, and even though I’ve got two great opportunities for other jobs you don’t want me to take them.  After not dating anyone for two… er… three?  Guess it must be two years now you send this beautiful girl into my life who’s awesome and kinda flirting with me… but I’m not supposed to worry about dating her… or pursue any kind of relationship with her… ok… so what’s next on the agenda?”