lent 2019

Each year I find a weird way to observe the season of Lent.  If you’re new to the blog, I think there’s still a search bar over there somewhere on the web version.  Type “lent” in there and feast on the ridiculous Lent-y things I’ve done in the past.  If you’re too busy to be bothered by such labor intensive tasks, just know that I’m relatively new to Lent and while I understand it is a sacred and respected thing for many, I have decided to take my own approach to giving up or taking on things for the 40+ days in the hopes that I’ll come out a slightly better version of myself on the other end.

This year I failed a bit.  I mean, maybe I’m a slightly better version of myself, but I will admit to taking the easy way out this year.  Let me explain that.

Through Instagram this year, I started to notice posts from “morning.gratitude” featuring daily lists regular people would post about things they were thankful for.  Or things for which they were thankful, depending on how you feel about grammar.  I was intrigued by the idea of being challenged to list 10 things you were grateful for every day.  I should say, I consider myself a pretty thankful person.  My parents taught me the importance of saying “thank you” to people and as a spiritual person, I get to express my thanks for the things in my life daily.  This is something I tend to do when I run early in the morning when it’s just me, the deer, rabbits, skunks and God awake.  But going to the trouble to write it down seemed like it could be a good idea.  So I decided just before Ash Wednesday I would accept the challenge and even go one step more…I would list 11 things each day instead of 10 because there are a lot of great things and this would help me be even more mindful.

So each morning when I sat down with my coffee at the table I would look out the front window and be quiet.  Zeke would circle the table, alternating between looking out the window and waiting for me to give him a chunk of banana.  I would eat a granola bar or a waffle and then pick up my cool little gratitude book.  As serendipity would have it, Violet gave me a small hardback journal type book for Valentine’s Day (pictured above).  It’s a Taylor Swift journal with a young T-Swift slinging a guitar on the front cover.  There are flowers and lines on each page, so you know, it’s perfect.  And each morning with only two exceptions, I sat there in my coffee ritual and started my day by listing 11 things I felt very grateful for at that moment.  The word “coffee” made a ton of appearances, naturally.  “Family”, “friends” and “running” also got a lot of pen time.  But there were also less frequent but awesome visitors.  “Wagging tails” was a good one.  “Finding out my license expired before the end of the grace period” was another good one.  “Goo Goo Cluster Lattes” and “glitter” were additions I never saw coming but I’m so grateful that they did.  So many things to be grateful for.

I mentioned two exceptions.  One morning I totally blanked on the routine and forgot to make my list.  I kept my book on the table every day so when I came in to eat dinner that night I remembered and made my list late.  Another day I was rushed by a changed morning schedule and had to come back to the gratitude list at lunch.  But I did make the list every day of Lent.  And I actually haven’t stopped doing it yet. 

I’ve noticed a change in how I think during each day since making the daily lists.  I’ll make that list in the morning and I’ll return to those thoughts throughout the day.  Somehow it keeps the ideas and the gratitude circulating.  I’ll be honest and tell you that this is no magic potion that makes all your days merry and light.  I’ll still get fed up and impatient and go off on someone in my head (and sometimes in person), but there, mixed in with the sudden burst of negativity is all that good stuff and I believe it helps to return me to a happy mental place quickly.  Even in traffic.  So I’m calling the gratitude list a success and I’m planning to continue it…at least until my cool book fills up.

But I mentioned I failed a bit.  I should tell you about that part too. 

See, making the list each day was most of my Lent commitment, but not all of it.  I also planned to do something kind for someone each day.  Any act of kindness would be fine.  It could be large or small, free or expensive, it just had to be kind.  I loosely defined “act of kindness” for this experiment as something intentional I do for someone.  Intentional and kind.  I figured keeping the definition loose would be helpful, not to make it easy, but to help me keep an open mind about different ways to be kind.  I felt that these acts needed to be out of the ordinary for me.  Something I don’t do every day.  I didn’t want to wave or smile at someone and feel like I was off the hook for the day.  So that was the plan and each morning I would reflect on the kind thing and write a name or action under the gratitude list. 

I started strong.  I sat down and typed out an email to a good friend after a busy day.  I mailed grits to Canada.  I gave meter money to a mom scrambling for change.  And I kept going for about 10 days.  But I started to feel weird about it.  I just felt like these were things I should be doing anyway.  Ok, maybe mailing grits to Canada was strange, but I had a friend who had never experienced grits and I just couldn’t let that go.  But one day a thing happened and I went away from it thinking, “Alright, that’s your kind thing for the day” and that just felt wrong.  It also felt wrong to record the kind things.  After writing a few of them down I couldn’t see the good in recording it.  It felt good to be observant and to find an opportunity to do something kind.  It felt good to do the kind thing.  But that felt like a natural end to it.  So I stopped recording them.  I stopped writing them down and I even stopped thinking about it.  I’m not sure if I did an intentional kind thing every single day…at least not one that was out of the normal range of behavior for me. 

My job provides many opportunities to interact with people and I feel a personal responsibility to show love and kindness to those people.  Basically, I mean I try not to be a butthole on a daily basis.  I try to be kind whenever possible, I just couldn’t get behind tracking a kind thing every day.  So I failed that part of my Lent exercise. 

There’s an expression I used to hear old, southern people say when I was younger.  It was “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.  The gist of the phrase is that if you walk around looking for a particular thing, you’ll figure out a way to see it everywhere.  You find what you’re looking for.  This is part of the power of the human mind.  When your head is filled with negative or anxious thoughts, you’ll spend your entire day focusing on the negative, anxious things around you.  If you’re focused on the positive things, those are the things you’ll see.  Since Ash Wednesday I’ve spent my days walking around looking for the good things in my life.  That has kept my mind on the good things.  I also have to point out that several great things have happened to me and around me during this time.  Coincidence?  Serendipity?  I guess it really doesn’t matter does it?  I’d just like to keep the positive things happening so I’m going to keep focusing on those things. 

It looks like my little book is about halfway full now.  I think I’ll fill it up. 

i heart lent

Josie and I were awkwardly attending a gallery thing talking about how awkward we were.  She teaches math at Lander but she's an honorary art person.  She shares my disdain for socializing so we always end up standing around looking at other people socializing in the gallery.  It's funny that we always end up chatting about random things and actually enjoying socializing together.  This night was a few days before the start of Lent and we asked each other what we were doing for the 40 days of Lent.  She told me a few of the things she had done on the past and I shared some funny Lent stories with her.  We agreed it was sometimes more helpful to take up things rather than giving them up.  We were both looking for something that would be helpful to other people.  

Sabrina had an idea for a sculpture class performance art project last semester.  She wanted to make loads of really small, quick objects and record an event where she would give the objects to strangers as gifts.  We both researched ideas for this and found some cool internet videos of people doing nice things for strangers.  She ran out of time because of her outdoor sculpture project but the idea was too good to let go.  So with permission, I stole it for Lent. 

I found a quick and easy heart file for the 3D printer and took a couple of days to print enough for each day of Lent.  My plan was to give away one small plastic heart each day for 40 days.  The loose rule was that it needed to be given to a stranger and that I would try to say something un-creepy and smile.  

The first day was hard.  Most of my days are spent on campus and there's no shortage of strangers there, but when I left my office that first day I became immediately aware that I looked like a "haggard old mountain man" and that I was about to walk up to a stranger and try to put something in their hand.  It felt really weird.  I walked out into the commons and saw tons of potential targets.  Choosing was going to be difficult.  I saw a young lady sitting down by herself looking stressed with her head over a book and I gathered my courage.  I walked toward her and when I reached the "uncomfortably close for a stranger" barrier she looked up with a startled look.  I smiled, placed the heart on her book and told her to have a nice day.  She smiled with what had to be relief and I went to class.  

With the hardest one behind me, I set about doing this every day.  Each day I tried to find the right person and I tried to approach the in the least threatening way possible.  One day Smoak was in the sculpture studio and she said that her friend told her that one of the art professors had randomly walked up to her and given her a plastic heart.  She said it was the bald one with the beard.  I checked to make sure it wasn't threatening and that she didn't think I was hitting on her.  All was clear.  

Some people responded with complete confusion.  Most of them responded with a smile and a "thank you".  One of them tried to avoid me like I was passing out religious paraphernalia.  I stuck with it and kept holding the heart near her until she finally took it.  If it was going to be a battle of wills, I was going to win.  

When I'm not at school, I don't see a lot of humans.  At least, not unless the humans are related to me.  So finding strangers on the weekends was a little tougher.  I found a few walking in public and in a couple in restaurants.  They were really nice.  I also felt like I needed to give a few to people who were not complete strangers.  The brand new cleaning friend in the sculpture studio started her job with us right before we started the plaster project.  On plaster pouring day I saw her struggling to understand what kind of disaster she was having to try to clean up after and I felt like I needed to give her a heart.  I happened by my favorite LUPD officer on one of my missions and decided I needed to hand him one.  Oh, also the super cool Starbucks lady who is so nice to everyone...she totally needed to know how much people appreciate her kindness.  She's great.  

The point of this was pretty simple.  I'm convinced that we as humans are not doing a good job of loving each other the way we should.  We are self centered and we walk around every day with our "me first" attitudes and we push everyone else to the sides.  If people don't immediately seem to have anything to offer our egos, we ignore them.  This has not been working out for us but we appear to be too self-centered to notice.  I wanted to find a way to make myself notice other people and I wanted to create a habit of doing little nice things for them.  It's easy to make someone smile.  Like, really easy.  It takes zero extra time and costs nothing.  

I have a hunch that something that takes so little effort can make huge ripples.  What if one of those morning hearts changed someone's mood for the whole day?  What if it rippled through the day and made that person want to be nice to someone else?  What if the little smiles were multiplied?  I'm gonna tell myself that's what happened.  Or at least that it's possible.  And really, wouldn't that be a better world to live in?  Can you imagine driving on the interstate and people looking out for you and making sure you got around them when you needed to?  Or if people waited an extra two seconds for you to pass their intersection before they pulled out in front of you?  Or if they said "good morning" to you with a smile when they walked past you?  

I figure if that's the kind of world I want to live in, then I have to stop being so self centered.  I hope this is a start in that direction.  

Two important end notes for this one:

1.  This isn't about me.  Please do not read this and think "Oh he's so nice and thoughtful".  Exactly the opposite of that is true.  This was an effort to correct my self-centered nature in a very small way.  It literally cost me nothing to do this and the effort I was forced to put out into the universe was as minimal as walking a few extra steps.  If you take anything from this story, let it be that you can do something small and find your own way to put other people first.  

2.  As a family, we also decided to try to socialize our dogs once a week for Lent.  This was a much bigger challenge and I'm not sure if we succeeded at all.  Basically our dogs are stuck in an antisocial family out in the country and they see other humans about once a year at the studio sale.  We saw a dude in Charleston after Christmas who went into a tiny restaurant after telling his lab to sit outside the door and stay.  He went in and stood in line for a long time before returning to the door to wait on his order.  The whole time he had a little chihuahua in his backpack.  The lab was better behaved than my kids.  Heck, so was the chihuahua.  He never made a sound and was content to sit in his little backpack house and look around.  We were inspired.  So once each week we found some kind of reason to toss the dogs in the truck and go somewhere with them.  Mostly this was a hike or a walk of some sort.  Once we ended up just driving around.  This too is something we'll have to continue to work on with them but it did seem to help.  

a little lent

Ash Wednesday was three days ago and here I am thinking about Lent again.  Sometimes I give up things.  Sometimes I start doing things.  The idea is to be a better human in some small way by the end of the 40+ days.  I have realized that this has more to do with the thoughtful consideration of each day than it does the removing or adding of an activity.

Thanks to Lent seasons past I am eating more healthy, cursing less, not being quite as mean and drawing more often.  I think there's still a way to search "lent" on this blog if you need to catch up.  This year it snuck up on me and I realized I needed to think of a good Lent idea when someone mentioned it was Fat Tuesday last Tuesday night.  After a quick tour of my brain I thought the best thing to do was to adopt the "draw in my sketchbook every day for Lent" path.  It's not new at all and I've done it once or twice in the past, but it is a good one.  Such a good practice for a studio artist in general, but I've been drawing a lot this winter and I've relied on my sketchbooks for imagery.  

So Wednesday night, after a hectic day of plaster pouring chaos at school, I pressed pause, grabbed my sketchbook and sat myself down in a quiet room.  The quiet room was the thing.  It was so calm.  No TV spitting nonsense into the room, no music, only the faint annoying sound of a mean chihuahua coming from the other room.  Every few minutes the giant Labrador would shift his head on the floor and sigh through his wet, shiny nose.  I drew something, whatever it was couldn't have been important, but something struck me about the quiet while I scribbled lines.  I don't watch a lot of TV or movies.  We don't do cable or dish and on a good clear night we get like, 3 channels.  We do have Netflix and a Firestick we don't know how to use, but it's uncommon for me to watch anything alone.  

Every night I have downtime, where I sit in that same quiet room to wind down before bed with a cup of hot tea.  What was different about this first night of Lent?

That freakin' iPhone.  

Every night (and at least 145 other times during the day) I forget the quiet beauty around me and I'm drawn into the world of the hand held screen.  The room may be quiet, but my mind is busy devouring junkfood.  All the videos my feed spews at me.  All the images my people have captured about their day.  These are the moments when my phone throws up all that stuff on me.  I love it and I hate it.  

Yesterday I was driving early in the morning with the music thing on shuffle.  My iTunes library is really diverse and you really never know what to expect with shuffle.  The next song could be Wilco, Taylor Swift, Space Ghost, a song burned by a student from 15 years ago, a sermon, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing live on a spotty recording or it could be a chapter from a forgotten book.  Friday, with the skyline of Columbia in my windshield, it was someone reading Jack Kerouac on a tribute album.  Quoting Jack they said "No one looks up and in".  I bet there's never been a time when this was more true.  A quick glance across the 5 lanes of traffic proved this.  Drivers with their phones up at the steering wheel thumbing through Facebook.  One lady was reading a stack of papers.  The dude in the work van was eating what seemed to be a three course meal while driving with his knee.  

Americans walk around all day with our head magnetically drawn to the device in the palm of our hands.  We don't look for cars when we cross the road or notice the deep blue of the sky.  We don't notice how wonderful the wind makes us feel when it hits our face.  We forget the warmth of the winter sun when it hits our skin.  No one looks up from their phones.  Forget about looking up in any figurative or spiritual sense.  Who has time for that with Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr to update?  And how could we possibly have time to look inward if every waking moment is occupied?  When we get a spare minute we have to see if anyone thought we were important enough to email us.  Or send us a message.  Or tag us in a photo.  We are all indicted.  We are all guilty.  


So for Lent, I will take a moment.  Either a long moment or a short moment, whatever the day will allow, and I will draw in my sketchbook.  I'll draw the weird outfit that walked by my window.  I'll draw a student.  I may just scribble nonsensical lines, but I will do it without my phone.  I'll turn it off, set it aside and take a break from all the information it seeks to provide.  

You are welcome to join me.  Maybe we'll communicate about it through our phones!

phone lent

In a word, Lent is about sacrifice.  

The religious imagery related to Easter is all about sacrifice.  It's kinda the whole idea of Easter.  Religious (and non-religious) people who have observed Lent over the last couple of thousand years have "given up" something as a way of consciously reminding themselves of the sacrifice of Jesus (or the sacrifice of good chocolate to your children for the non-religious, I guess).  

I was late to the Lent party but when I started giving things up, they were generally things that I needed to give up anyway.  Things that I didn't need to start back again once Easter rolled around.  There are several blog posts about past Lent sacrifices on here if you're really bored.  Oh wait, I should change that sentence a little.  There are blog posts as numerous as silvery stars in the cool night air on here if you're as bored as a lumber yard.  (One of my students critiqued my "writing" and told me to be more descriptive.  Is that better Jessie?)


This year I gave up my ridiculous amount of iPhone time for Lent.  I allowed myself to have 15 minutes of phone use each day, just enough to stay connected for school and to not get in trouble with G for being out of reach.  

The reason should be obvious to anyone alive today.  Humans are fully integrated with their phones.  I'm not just talking about the ones that walk around with earpieces in who appear to be talking to themselves or that you always think are talking to you until they look at you funny when you try to respond to them.  I'm talking about the hunchbacked people all around you right now with their faces glued to their hand held screens.  They're driving 3,000 pound machines at 70 mph, they're walking into inanimate objects and they're ignoring the living, breathing human beings literally inches away from them.  They walk from building to building or from vehicle to building and they cant tell you a single detail from that walk.  They don't see people, they don't see their surroundings and they don't really experience anything real.  Everything important to them is brought to them via their phones.  

I'm talking about you.  And me.

I do not consider myself a phone addict.  I'm not one with my phone.  Even still, my kids have tried to have conversations with me and they've had to ask me to look up from my phone.  Embarrassing.  I can't help but think about what I'm teaching them by my actions.  So I decided that restricting myself to 15 minutes a day would be a good idea and hopefully it would set me on a better path in my future relationship with my phone.  

Here's what happened:
I saw things.  I'm a visual person so being observant is a very important part of who I am and what I do.  Limiting my visual observation to a phone screen is just dumb.  I immediately noticed a difference in my surroundings.  The morning of Ash Wednesday I smelled the deep calming aroma of coffee beans as I went through the routine of making my coffee.  I heard the distinct sounds of the machine as each process worked its magic.  As odd as it may sound, making coffee was enjoyable and almost beautiful.  Then I saw the dining room.  It was dark outside but I saw the random objects on the table and wondered if other families had such odd things on their tables.  I heard the foot falls of my kids upstairs and listened to the big dog walk around on the wood floors.  I saw people with actual faces and eyes as I walked across campus.  I spoke to those people and smiled at others.  Human interaction.  Of course, half of them were distracted by their phones and didn't see me, but my experience was better anyway.  There were squirrels and hawks and there was an awkward tension that I felt seeing them knowing that one was going to be eating the other in a few moments.  Even in the most routine of routine acts, there was beauty waiting to be observed.  Beauty that you cant find in even the most inspirational of photos shared on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or Instagram.

This same thing continued for the 40 days (plus Sundays).  I drew more, I saw more and I talked more.  I tried to keep up with posting things on Instagram for shameless self promotion and school but I didn't have time to scroll through the feed.  I didn't open Twitter the entire time.  It wasn't really a sacrifice.  It was freeing and it was wonderful.    


But humans can be dumb animals and I'm human.  On Easter Sunday with my extra phone time available, I scrolled as far back in Instagram as possible trying to catch up on what I "missed".  That's when I noticed the sacrifice.  It seems we are happy to sacrifice time with our families, with real people to a tiny little god with a 4" beautifully detailed screen.  We're happy to miss today's varied hue of blue sky and not notice the whale shaped clouds floating above us so we can see what our high school friend ate for lunch.  

Because that makes perfect sense, right?  

I'm going to be a more responsible phone owner.  If you can put yours down long enough, maybe I'll see you out there and we can speak face to face about those whale clouds.

lent 2015

“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” -Henry David Thoreau

“Life is…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  -Shakespeare

We’re in the future now.  It’s 2015, and we’re supposed to be living on the moon, riding hover-boards and wearing clothes made of shiny silver.  Technology has promised us so much progress.  Seriously though, cars are driving themselves, robots work for us and if you want to appear more-well read than you really are, you can Google quotes from famous authors in 30 seconds.

But if technology has made life easier, faster and more wonderful then why are we so busy?  Think about it, how busy are you now compared to last year?  Last week?  This semester has seemed so busy but when I sat down recently to try to figure out what extra duties were weighing me down and I couldn’t find them.  And then I got a text and forgot what I was trying to think about. 

I think it’s the phone.  Why do I feel so busy all the time?  Because a text message demands immediate attention while I’m sending an email and trying to figure out how to add an event to my calendar.  Then there’s a long Twitter feed that hasn’t been checked in an hour or so.  And there was that photo I was going to put on Instagram.  Then there are 6 new emails.  It’s definitely the phone.

That phone.  I love my iphone.  It summarizes everything technology has delivered up to now.  That phone has replaced books, CDs, encyclopedias, and even my computer.  Anything I want to know at any time, that phone can bring it to me.  It can instantly connect me with current students and students I taught 13 years ago.

It can also prevent me from drawing in my sketchbook.  It can tune me out of a conversation I should be listening to.  It can keep me from noticing my kids are at the breakfast table each morning.  It can even keep me from smiling and making eye contact with strangers. 

Just like any other tool, it’s only as good as it’s user. 

I haven’t been a good phone owner.  Slowly but surely the phone has started making demands on my time.  Instead of making everything quicker and easier, it makes me feel like I have to hurry up and check for new information all the time.  It keeps me busy about nothing.

Whatever you happen to believe about why you were put on this planet, is your phone helping you do anything with lasting importance? 

Right.  Which brings us to Lent 2015.  I’m giving up most of my phone for 40 days.  OK, I’m going to try my best to give up most of my phone for 40 days.  Here’s how it’s going to work:

I can use my iphone for 15 minutes each day and not a minute more.  I can take attendance, text, email or look up the formula for the area of a triangle but when the 15 minutes is up, it’s done for the day.  And since the average human checks his phone 27 times each day, that’s likely going to free up a bit of time for me.  In that time I will draw, talk to my family and actually see the people and things around me.  Heck, I may even become more human. 

I want to see the difference between a life a slavery to an electronic device and a life fully observant and engaged in the things around me.  Once I see that difference I can consciously make a choice about which person I want to be.  Do I want to be the guy with his phone in his hand all the time or do I want to be the guy who listens and looks people in the eye?

I’ve been thinking about this for more than a year now and I know it will not be easy.  I’m not sure if it will be as difficult as not cursing, not lying or completing a drawing every day (see previous Lent entries), but it may very well be even more difficult. 

Wish me luck and I invite you to put down your phone and suffer with me if you dare.