Good Friday Means One Year of "Thinking"

Happy Birthday!

It was Good Friday one year ago when the blog was born (I'm still not sure if it's a boy or a girl).

Here's how it started:

Last Good Friday, I was contemplating the direction of life on a rare off day from work.  I decided I needed to do more.  I had fallen into a daily rut of work, gym, tv, and repeat, and I was starting to feel like a hamster running circles on a stationary wheel.

My life needed...meaning. 

Beyond what my job provided. 

I like to think that my job makes the world a better place, but I know I'm not the only one who could do it.  If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, the State could hire some other lawyer who would, once properly trained, be just as good at keeping criminals in jail as I am. Maybe better. 

I needed do something unique.  You see, I believe that we are all created to do something unique with our lives, something that no one else could do.

And I realized I wasn't doing it.

As Donald Miller wrote, a good story involves a character who really wants something, and their quest to get it.  But our lives often don't add up to good stories, because it's so easy to run after things (money, promotions, vacation time, pleasure) that aren't what we really want, if we're honest about it.  I realized that when I'm gone and my story is told one day, I want it to be about something more than just my resume.

That's when I decided it was time to write again.  It's what makes me happy, and whatever silliness ends up in this space every Tuesday, at least it is unique to me.

But it hasn't been as easy as I expected. 

I had a captive audience of thousands writing for my college paper, and almost that for the paper in law school.  Before I started this thing, I had visions that I'd once again have thousands of followers within a few months when I got going. 

It hasn't worked out that way.

(Although I've done surprisingly well in Denmark!)

While my sports columns get those kind of numbers thanks to the forum Bleacher Report provides, this blog, where I can write about whatever I want, is lucky to get 25 hits per post (56, for my election column, is the all-time record) (Editor's note: one year later, these numbers are much higher.  The all-time record is currently the cicada column, at 250 reads).  It's just hard to find in a crowded cyberspace. 

So, with my expectations unmet and monthly hits on a continued downward cycle, I almost gave up in November.   

But I didn't. 

I was sure that this is what I was supposed to be doing, come what may.  And God calls us to be obedient, not necessarily successful.

After being inspired by a Chris Jericho autobiography, I came back to write again, and things are looking up.  In 2011, every month has been better than the last, and soon some more big things may be on the horizon.  More importantly, wherever this path leads, now I'll at least know I took it until its end. 

Everyone, I'm convinced, has their own unique path they are meant to wander.  Sometimes life gets in the way of actually following it, though.  If you haven't found yours yet, today, Good Friday, is the perfect day to think about where it might be.

Because whatever you think of the deity of Jesus, we can probably agree today is the day he showed a love for humanity so great that let himself be tortured to prove it.  If our lives were worthy of that sacrifice from, at minimum, the most influential person in human history, then it is worth considering whether we are using those lives to the fullest.  When he told us his purpose on earth was to make our lives more abundant, I think that was at least part of what he meant. 

If you are already on your path, take heart.  Just because it isn't easy doesn't mean it isn't right.  The journey from one destination to the next isn't always smooth, but that doesn't mean the trip isn't worth taking. 

Things will look up soon.  Probably even sooner than you expect.   

After all, Easter is all about unexpected good news.

The Frogs from Hell are Back

After several weeks of traveling, a busy weekend and several consecutive nearly sleepless nights, I spent all day looking forward to a Tuesday night with no plans. 

I had dreams of sitting on the couch watching tv until exhaustion overcame me, which would probably be by nine o'clock.  I'm pretty sure I even turned off my phone.  And then, somewhere around 8:30, the unthinkable happened.

What, you might ask, could possibly get in the way of my carefully planned evening of blissful peace, quiet and a good night's sleep?

The frogs came back.

The frogs from Hell.  Sent specifically from Satan to torture me.  For the third straight summer.

Some of you may recall that I spent last summer writing about the deafening evening sounds of the frogs that congregate on my neighbor's unkempt above-ground pool, that left me running on minimal sleep for a solid five months last summer, for the second year in a row.

I called the police with a noise complaint, and they literally laughed at me.  I tried to catch them myself with barbecue tongs.  I tried salt in the pool.  And bleach.  Nothing worked.  If anything, I think all those substances combined to cause a mutation that made them louder. 

I called the city code enforcement, but they referred me to the health department.  The health department referred me back to code enforcement, and so on, for several hot, sleepless weeks. 

Finally, the health department got so tired of my calls that they sent someone out to make them take the pool down, and all was right with the world.

Until they bought another pool a few weeks later.

You can read all about my summer frog saga here http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/04/things-are-jumping.html

and

here. 

http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/07/best-of.html

It is the kind of thing that sounds very funny.  If it doesn't happen to you.

And now, after a winter of hibernation, with the neighbor's new pool quickly becoming as disgusting as the last one, the frogs have reappeared with a volume vengeance on the worst possible night.  There's nothing I can do about it, which is why I'm writing this instead of dreaming in my bed.  I'm pretty sure they've had this planned all along, to torture me as revenge for all those frogging adventures from the last two summers.   And I'm powerless to stop it. 

I can hear them as I type.  In fact, if you listen closely, YOU can probably hear them too.   Even if you're in Denmark.

And there's nothing I can do about it tonight.  I have no remaining solutions, other than perhaps to sleep on the couch on the opposite side of the house from my neighbor's back yard with the television turned up.  But I can still hear them, even then. 

The only potential solace I can think of is to buy an old Atari system and the ancient "Frogger" video game.  You know, I was pretty good at steering those virtual frogs out of danger back in the day (even if their organic cousins don't seem terribly grateful now). 

But in this case, I can pretty much assure that those frogs will be coming to intentionally violent ends early and often.  I'll turn up the volume as high as it goes, and as I repeatedly plunge the virtual frogs into digital oncoming traffic, those type of croaks won't bother me one bit.

Tucson is a Ghost Town

Tucson has plenty of residents, but it turned out to be a ghost town nonetheless.

As you may recall, I left off last Tuesday night complaining about the lack of entertainment options in Tucson.  As you may recall, I wrote about how the dreary downtown, a very loud, historic hotel room (that preserved its 1920s feel by not having tvs), combined with a rock concert being held in the hotel bar, led to a miserable time for me last Tuesday night.  Unable to deal with the noise, I finally asked to be switched to a quieter room, wrote a quick blog post, and shut my eyes to go to bed.

And then things got much more interesting. 

I kept hearing noises in my new room (and not just the ones from the rock concert).  I knew it was probably nothing, but as I lay there, I remembered that as I was walking toward my newly assigned room, the shape of the walls seemed to shift as I looked down the hallway.  As I kept hearing little banging noises in my historic hotel room, I finally got up and turned on the lights.

I notice The new room had a very creepy feeling I couldn't fully explain.  The Victorian armchair directly beside the bed looked like something out of the Amityville movie.  The sink was on the opposite side of the room from the bathroom and seemed likely to turn itself on at any moment.  And the noises, both inside the room and from the street directly outside, wouldn't stop, and I was losing the ability to distinguish between them.  After about half an hour of trying to talk myself out of it, once the rock concert stopped, I finally broke down and asked if I could go back to my original, non-creepy room. 

I blamed it on the street noise. 

I crawled into bed and almost immediately went to sleep.  I heard a lot of yelling that night (someone repeatedly yelling "F- you, Hotel Congress"), but I mostly slept through it, assuming it was rowdy concert-goers not wanting to go home.  I wondered why no one was calling security or the police about it considering how long it went on, but I was too tired to let it bother me too much. 

The next morning, I had a few extra minutes after I woke up, so I googled "Hotel Congress" and "haunted" just to see if anyone else had ever had a weird experience on the second floor there, were both of my rooms were located. 

Sure enough, the second floor is widely reputed to be haunted, owing to a shooting that took place many years ago in Room 242, just down the hall from where I stayed.  And as I type this, it just occurred to me that all that yelling I heard through the night might not have been about the concert.  In fact, I wonder if anyone else heard it at all.  

I had no idea of any of of these legends until the morning after I experienced whatever it was I did.  I still don't know, or want to know, what phenomenon is going on that floor. 

But it's safe to say I won't be rushing back.

Sleepless in Tucson

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I never see
...
It's not easy
To be me

Superman
-Five for Fighting

It's almost midnight at the Arizona hotel room where I've been sentenced to spend the night, which means its almost two in the morning according to my internal time clock.  This is my fourth consecutive week traveling away from home as part of my mission to save the world from the powers of evil, but frankly, I would almost consider letting evil win a few rounds if I could just get a couple good nights' sleep in return. 

Tonight, my room is directly above the bar and a rock band is playing.  Worse yet, my historic room doesn't even have a tv I can use to drown out the constant, pounding noise. 

Hotels are in the business of providing travelers a good nights rest.  I would love to hear the logic of the hotel manager who thought hiring a rock band to play in their lobby on a Tuesday night until 2 a.m. helps accomplish that goal.  Whoever had that brilliant idea should be drug out into the street and shot.  Or even worse, be forced to spend a night in a lower-floor room of the hotel they manage.  

I would walk the streets for a while just to escape, but I've already done three loops of the downtown Tucson streets and there aren't any available diversions for a lone traveler (other than perhaps being mugged by one of multiple local wandering vagrants or hooligans), even if I didn't have to be up before seven in the morning.  There isn't even a bar within walking distance where I can watch ESPN. 

I'll be happy to go home tomorrow. 

I'd be happier if society didn't make life miserable for those most trying to help it.  Teachers make almost nothing, and states across the Union are trying to take away what small perks they ever had.  Police officers and firefighters don't do much better.  Prosecutors in my office haven't had a raise in four years and get only about a third of the salary of the attorneys who, as I once did, shuffle thousands of dollars back and forth between billion-dollar corporations in hyper-technical disputes that are ultimately meaningless. 

I don't have the energy to do justice to a full debate on whether society should pay its heroes substantially more than its janitors, but suffice to say, it doesn't have to be this way. 

And my hotel room doesn't have to be this noisy. 

At my wits end, I just walked to the reception desk to ask about other available rooms and inquire as to the logic of the hotel providing beds for guests to sleep while simultaneously providing noise that would prevent even those clinically dead from resting in peace. 

The receptionist gave me another room on the same floor that turned out to be only 30 paces away from my original.  I was less than assured when I immediately saw a package of earplugs sitting on the dresser, but it is at least slightly quieter than the first one, which might as well have been inside the hole of the lead singer's guitar. 

I'm tempted to complain about the idiocy of this whole arrangement to the incompetent hotel manager tomorrow, but I doubt I would get anywhere. 

Besides, who am I to complain? 

The band probably makes more than I do. 

They love me in Denmark

Other than the U.S. and Australia, want to guess the country from which the most viewers have read this blog?

It's Iran!

No, not really.

It's actually Denmark, as my blog title indicates. And it isn't even close. Canada, where I thought I had friends, came in a distant fourth. Sadly, Iran isn't actually in the top ten, but surprisingly, it's still one spot ahead of Mexico. I guess I might not need those Spanish classes after all.

To what do I owe my surprising popularity in a country I've never been too, have no friends or relatives, and whose people I often mistakenly confuse with the Dutch? I have no idea.

But I'll take it!

I've always loved the Danish. It's one of the all-time underrated pastries. Scones are dry, bagels are boring, and doughnuts are bulky, but absolutely no one turns down a cheese danish. I've never understood why they are generally limited to hotel continental breakfast buffets. Danishes are a seriously underutilized breakfast food.

So, needless to say, I was thrilled to find out that danishes love me as well, even if I'm a bit confused as to how they surf the Internet.

Of course, it is at least possible that at some of my hits from Denmark come from people rather that pastries. That would be even better news, except for the fact that anyone actually reading this from Denmark probably has already heard more pastry jokes than they care to remember and are no doubt offended to the point of no return.

But this is not my intent. Danish jokes are undoubtedly in bad taste. And by now, even I realize they've grown stale. So, no more.

Seriously, I'm thrilled when anyone reads this silly blog and grateful that someone found it across the Atlantic and apparently shared it with some friends. Either that, or someone over there decided to play with my head by logging onto the site from every computer they could find. But either way, Denmark now has a special place in my heart.

I'd love to know how this happened, though. I don't have a single contact there, and, as far as I know, I've never written anything of particular relevant to the Danish state. I know several people in Canada, but hardly anyone reads me from up there, even though they don't have a lot of other options-- it's been too cold for anyone up there to leave their house for the last four months.

Denmark, in contrast, has my back. I'm sure that if I ever actually get to meet some people from Denmark, I will like them. Especially if they read my blog.

Which they probably will.

To learn more about Denmark, Andrew Smith's third-most passionate fan base, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark

Random Thoughts

It's Monday. It's late. I can't sleep. What better time for a fresh round of random thoughts? As always, real thoughts, really random:

I think I saw a popular local writer at Trader Joe's yesterday. What's the appropriate response when you see someone who may or may not be famous? You can't just go up and ask them, can you? This is why there should be a law making famous people wear name tags at all times for the rest of our benefits.

If someone wearing a costume is disguised, is someone wearing normal clothes considered "guised?"

Every other time that I tell someone I'm originally from Alabama, I hear in response either: "you sure don't sound like it" or some lame joke involving a fake Southern accent. No one would do that kind of thing if I were from, say, China, because that would obviously be offensive. So, what's the difference?

Has anyone else realized that Daylight Savings Time doesn't actually save anything? It doesn't change the amount of daylight we get, it just pushes the light from the morning to the evening. Whoever coined the name was just lying to us.

The other day someone asked me if I knew where I'd spend eternity if I died today. He was pretty surprised when I told him I was already dead.

Last week, I flipped by American Idol and saw some guy singing a Bon Jovi song to a very unhappy looking Steven Tyler. Isn't that like wearing a "coca cola" tee shirt in hopes of impressing your bosses at the Pepsi Company?

What we're doing in Libya would have been much easier if we would have done it two weeks ago. I'm just saying.

Speaking of which, can the world please agree of a unified spelling of Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Kaddafi? I've never seen the Q, K, and G used interchangeably before and don't think a homicidal madman deserves to be the first guy to pull it off.

Why is it that in Tennessee I can buy bananas year round from Costa Rica and pineapples year round from Hawaii, but no one sells crawfish, even during the height of their season, because they only live near the Gulf Coast?

By the way, I now decree that "Andrew" may also be spelled starting with an E, Q or X.

Why does the U.S. have a Midwest but not a Mideast? And if St. Louis, Missouri is the Gateway to the West, does that make East St. Louis, Illinois the Gateway to the East? If so, why would anyone ever move East?

With Japan in the mess that it's in, does Fox have to pull all of the Simpsons episodes involving Homer screwing up at the nuclear plant?

Speaking of which, every time I think I'm unlucky, I need to think of every Japanese person 75 or older who've lived there since birth.

Why is it that the songs that get stuck in my head are never ones that I really liked in the first place?

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.

That's all for now.

I'll be back soon.

Xndrew.

Exciting News

So, last week I wrote about following one's dreams, or something like that. It's one of those things that's easy to write, but tough to actually do anything about.

But when I wrote that all that sentimental, head-in-the-clouds-type stuff, I wasn't just speaking hypothetically, like I usually am when thinking unattainable thoughts. I had something in the works. I'm sneaky that way.

I'm thrilled to announce that the blog is moving up in the world. Or at least part of the blog is. While my pointlessly random attempts at humor and thoughts on life and spirituality will be staying right here, those sports posts that half of you consistently tune out have a new home. As of today, I have an arrangement with Bleacher Report, the fourth most popular sports website in the United States, to be the new home of all my sports blogging.

This is good on several fronts. The hardest thing about this space has been figuring out how to balance my desire to mix in some sports-related posts, given that my sports topics are the only thing that half of you read, but they completely bore everyone else. It's been much harder than I had imagined trying to figure out how to write humor columns, politics, sports posts and life observations all in one consistent voice.

Now, I don't have to. The sports posts go on Bleacher Report and everything else stays here. Having two different sites also means I'll be blogging twice as often, and being associated with BR means I suddenly have an exponentially larger audience, so maybe I can finally get some long-awaited hate mail.

Of course, I'm thrilled about the added exposure Bleacher Report provides. I'm on the verge of having credibility. But for all of our sakes, I'm going to try really hard to never quite get there. Life is much more free when you have no expectations to uphold.

Anyway, for those so inclined, my first sports column, recapping Alabama's basketball season, is posted here:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/627395-alabamas-2010-11-basketball-season-officially-a-success-with-win-over-georgia

I promise not to make a habit of cross-referencing every sports article on this site. But for my first one, I would appreciate the page views, even if you don't actually read the piece.

God bless you all. Thanks for reading, and pushing me one step closer to my dreams.