What faith has to do with Martin Scorsese and his detachable penis
I was listening to this King Missile album today, and it has that song “Detachable Penis” on it, and that song is pretty cool because when you think about it, having a detachable penis would be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you could slip it into your pocket when dancing with a girl so it didn’t get in the way, but on the other hand, in the song, the guy wakes up and his penis is missing again. He checks the medicine cabinet and a bunch of other places and eventually goes out and finds some street vendor selling it. That would be bad. I’m glad mine is stuck where it is.
Anyway, that album also has the song “Martin Scorcese,” which is just a bunch of screaming about how Martin Scorsese MAKES THE BEST FUCKING FILMS, HE MAKES THE BEST FUCKING FILMS and the singer goes on to say all of the things he’d do to Martin Scorsese if he ever met him, like bite off his ear and spit it out in his face because HE MAKES THE BEST FUCKING FILMS and I’m not pretending that the song is kind of full of mixed messages, both for Martin and for the listener.
Anyway, that album is called One Step Ahead of the Spider, which is what got me thinking of writing this post because I kind of realized that the album title is a good metaphor for how I’ve been living my life for the past year or two.
Because as I build this online THING, I don’t have to storm my way to untold wealth, and I’m definitely not doing that quite yet. For now, I don’t have to make a zillion dollars.
I just have to make one dollar more than I’m required to spend.
I just have to stay one step ahead of the spider.
(And that’s THE spider, not “stay one step ahead of Spider,” who was this smelly toothless chess genius I once ran afoul of. Although come to think of it, it’s a good idea to stay at least one step ahead of him at all times, too.)
You may be wondering where I’m going with this. The answer is that this post kind of has a metaphysical message to it. Just you watch; I can do that starting from dick jokes. I’m that good.
Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that I’m foo-foo enough to believe that everything really does happen for a reason, and that when bad shit happens, it’s something from which we’re supposed to take a lesson. i.e., if I hadn’t started having panic attacks while pursuing my genetics Ph.D., I would be festering in a lab somewhere right now. So, it was a good thing. And if I hadn’t had my real estate bummer, I would never have started this blog and this business, which now accounts for 100% of my income. So, it’s a good thing. I guess.
I’ve learned a lot from the past “bad” things that have happened in my life. I’ve learned to follow my gut, to listen to my mother, and to make my income through my talents rather than through what feels like easy money (real estate, ahem). I’ve learned, to some degree, which risks are worth taking and which are not.
What I haven’t learned yet is true faith.
(And by “true faith,” I mean faith that is true and real and whole and honest. I’m not talking about that New Order song “True Faith,” because I actually know that pretty well. It’s the one that goes, “I used to think that the day would never come, something something filet of the morning sun” and had much less of a Joy Division feel than their hits back when they were Joy Division and eschewed such traditional concepts as “hits.”)
Anyway, I believe that everything happens for a reason, and I try to have faith about things that seem uncertain, but part of me just won’t listen. So life keeps kicking me in the nuts until I figure it out. Until I accept that whatever problems arise, they will be handled.
Until I learn to see seemingly insurmountable obstacles arise and instead of saying, “Oh, shit,” to instead say, “I’m going to enjoy the ride.”
Now, I imagine some of you may be reading this and thinking, That’s not how things work for me. All of your talk of income and faith and problems resolving as if by magic? Yeah, that doesn’t happen.
Well, maybe that’s not what you’re supposed to be learning right now: Faith about money.
Or, maybe you’re knuckling under and spending all of your time worrying and fretting, instead of trusting and continuing to place one foot in front of the other. You won’t learn the faith lesson that way for sure.
Or maybe I’m the crazy one, yammering on and on about Martin Scorsese and his detachable penis.
But all I know is that despite the fact that things feel like they’re going well, I keep getting interesting… challenges… thrown at me. I’ve already tossed a lot of money down the real estate sinkhole this month, and today was supposed to bring a check for late rents of just over $1000. It was under $400. I have $1000 in insurance due in a few days, and other things due, and I’m tapped out.
But I’m not going to sweat it. Not this time. Because this has happened like twenty times in the past few months, and I know exactly what will happen.
The money will appear. Because what I’m supposed to be learning right now is to have faith.
If this has gotten too metaphysical for you, I won’t be offended if you call me a hippie douchebag and then leave.
But yeah, that’s my thing. Faith. Another thing you could call it is living by your wits. Something always falls out of the sky in front of me, or some solution presents itself. Quite often, money I’m expecting in the future shows up early. I then have the time between now and when that money was supposed to show up to earn the difference. Somehow, I always do. Like, in ways I couldn’t predict ahead of time. I can’t count the number of times that exactly the right unexpected job has plopped onto my desk at exactly the right time, worth exactly the right amount of money.
The thing is, if you can let go of the fear and the worry — i.e. if you can just have some faith for once — it’s one hell of a ride. It feels kind of like speeding along a curving road in the dark without the high beams on, turning this way and that with only the slightest inkling of whether or not the road continues in the direction you’ve turned.
It’s kind of like stepping out onto a bridge that you have no tangible reason to believe is actually there.
It’s kind of like saying to the world, “Okay, I’m not going to raise my hands to block this time. Instead, I’m going to trust that you’re not going to hit me in the face.”
I realize how this sounds. It sounds borderline irresponsible. My dad lives in Philadelphia, and after a break-in in his building, he wanted to buy a gun. Then he thought, Do I really want to live that way? Do I really want to live in fear? Or do I want to trust that what’s supposed to happen will happen?
And so some of you are saying, Get the fucking gun. You don’t have to use it. Just get it and have it.
But see, if you get the gun, you’re not having faith. That’s like saying that yeah, I totally, totally, totally trust my kids not to drive the Lexus, but I’m still hiding the keys. If you hide the keys, you don’t trust your kids. And if you buy the gun, you don’t have faith.
Faith is about belief in the absence of any reason to believe. It’s about not gathering proof and evidence. It’s about not having a backup plan. It’s about operating without a net. The irony is that the minute you have any reason to have faith, it’s not faith.
The only way to have faith is to choose to have it. The only way to work without a net is to trust that you will never really fall.
I have three days. I need around two thousand dollars.
Now just you fucking watch what happens.
Part 2 of the Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions is now available!
You asked for it, you got it… Charlie Gilkey and I recorded a second FREE “Jam Session” to complement our first, available below. This one was louder, more raucous, and contained exactly the same number of flamingos. Check it out!
It’s over at the new Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions website. Please click the deceptive graphic below and then get mad when it takes you to a site instead of playing a file. Then scroll down and listen to the file anyway.
A downloadable version of that file, as well as part 1 of the Jam Sessions, is over at the Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions website. Check it out; we hope you’ll join us!
I quit.
I’m taking a big risk by writing this immediately after my post about how complaining makes you a pussy, but I’m going to do it anyway. I figure that with a bit of misdirection, I can convince you all that not only am I right on both sides of my apparently contradictory opinions, but that I’m actually capable of achieving any goal three days before I make that goal. And that I’m Superman.
So anyway, a while back, I made a pledge to lose 22 pounds. I started out at 212, which is a tad heavy for me. I stepped up my workouts, reined in my diet, and very quickly got down to around 202. Then I stalled.
So I kept at it. Reined in the diet more. Worked out harder.
And stayed right at 202.
At this point, I realized exactly what I would need to do to get down to 190. My natural set-point is currently around 204, meaning that I can do quite a bit or I can do very little and still hover right around there. So to get down to 190, I would need to eat in a very particular, anal sort of way for six weeks or so, greatly limiting carbohydrates for five days out of seven. I’d need to track everything I ate in a food diary. Every time I’ve wanted to bust through a plateau, that has been the procedure — and it always works.
So I found the diet online that has worked for me in the past. I checked to see if my FitDay.com food diary login was still active from years ago.
And then I said, “Fuck it; I want some Oreos.” And I quit.
That’s right, I quit. I am quitting. I am a quitter. You hear me, @recodingjim? I’m bailing on this goal. Finished. Gone. Done. Eating chocolate and bacon again, preferably together and in massive quantities.
I promised the blogosphere that I would weigh 190 by October 15th, and I do not. I weigh 204 again, right at my set-point and well short of my goal.
And I’m proud of it, because I did what I set out to do.
Let me explain. And I think Coach Tim will back me up on this, because it all goes back to values and deep motivations, and because I’m his customer and the customer is always right.
You tell these life coach types that you want a million dollars, and they’ll say, “No, you don’t really want the million dollars. You want what you think a million dollars will give you.”
You work through a process and you determine that what you actually want is freedom, or security, or love. The money is just the vehicle to get there. If you want security and can find it another way, the million dollars is irrelevant.
So going back to my publicly-stated goal of losing 22 pounds, I had to ask myself, What did I really want? Because it sure as hell wasn’t to look down and see 1-9-0 in that order on a digital readout. If that was what I wanted, I would never have peeled off the sticker that was over the display when I bought the scale. That said 190 all the time, and I didn’t even have to be standing on the scale.
So here’s the facts — just the facts, ma’am — about my weight loss goal.
What I really wanted was a sense of control. If you read through the post, you’ll see that I actually knew that when I started this whole thing. I was feeling all over the place at the time, and enforcing some physical discipline was a reliable and comfortable way for me to grab my life by the nuts and tell it who was boss.
That control I wanted? Yeah. I got it. I feel much more in control than I did in August. Things are hectic, but much more reined in.
The “vehicle” goal wasn’t objectively necessary. True, I had eaten too many Doritos over the summer, and true, 212 is a bit too heavy for me. But by “a bit,” I mean like 10 pounds tops. I never did look fat. I didn’t have a bad lipid profile or elevated blood pressure. No doctor had told me to slim down. I have a resting pulse rate of around 50. Even 212 would not have been an unhealthy weight for me, and 202 certainly isn’t. It’s spot on.
The secondary goal actually conflicted with my primary goals. I wanted control and satisfaction (primary) and was going after them by losing weight (secondary). But I’m not a typical person, who only has his cheeseburger-to-miles-run ratio to consider. I’m a weightlifter, and other factors enter into the picture. Other things that make me feel in control and satisfied are lifting heavy things — and, frankly, being kind of big. When, in the midst of losing those pounds, I was suddenly able to deadlift 50 pounds less than normal, that didn’t ring up nicely for me. And seeing a one as the first number on the scale? Okay, truthfully that was causing a bit of approach-avoidance.
And still, if a certain freakishly strong librarian who somehow can’t spell for shit reads this, he’s absolutely going to call me a big pussy for nixing my goal. (Although it’s really a toss-up, because he also says that any man under 200 pounds is a Hobbit. He’s a strange guy, Dan the Librarian.)
But screw it. Screw it, because goals are living, breathing things. When a politician changes his mind, they call it “flip-flopping,” and that’s bullshit because when the situation changes, reevaluating your position is not flip-flopping. It’s being flexible, which is something that I personally would like to see in a leader. And by contrast, holding tight to a no-longer-defensible position “just because” is idiotic.
So yeah, I quit. I absolutely quit, and I’m now back around 204, and it’s cool because I feel happy and healthy and in control of things again. I get to eat shitty but delicious food now and again, and when I go to the gym, I can lift heavy things. Life is good.
Sometimes quitting means you suck. But sometimes, if you don’t quit but should, that’s when you suck. It’s a delicate balance in life, trying not to suck. You just have to do your best, and keep your level of suck to a minimum. And sometimes eat Oreos. Mmm, Oreos.
Four reasons why thinking you have problems actually just means you’re a pussy
Every week, I take my domineering son Austin to swim lessons at our local overpriced health club, so that he can tempt death by repeatedly swimming out of the instructor’s reach. Austin is five, and he’s in the “Advanced Preschool” class. This means that he’s old enough to transition from sinking to occasionally remaining afloat, but not old enough that Robin and I are allowed to leave the area and unwind at all. It’s nature’s way of keeping parents tightly wound and on the verge of a killing spree.
While Austin’s class is going on, there’s also another group in the pool. One kid in that class always catches my eye. I’d guess he’s six or seven years old and he won’t sit still. He’s always running recklessly on the deck and hopping up and down in the little gutters that run around the the pool’s edge. His name is Logan, and I know this because the instructor is always saying, “Logan, SIT DOWN!” and “Logan, put that away!” or “Logan, climb off of that woman’s head!”
I noticed Logan in the pool because for a while, Austin took preschool gymnastics and Logan was in the class after his. We even attended some sort of a gymnastics show during this period, and Logan was part of it, jumping up to swing on the bars and tumbling on the balance beam.
This is all pretty pedestrian until you realize that the kid is blind. Which, by the way, you don’t realize until he leaves, when his mother hands him a long white cane with a red tip.
I am totally inspired by Logan.
I go through every day being able to see what’s in front of me and what’s around me. I make my living by looking at a screen all day. I take for granted that when I need something, I can drive my car to get it. When I get tired, I can be entertained passively by a TV or relatively passively by a book. I can quickly sort through clothes and see what I’d like to wear. I can see when my hair looks like a bird’s nest or when my fly is unzipped. I can watch my kids play.
Logan can’t do any of that, but here’s the thing: He doesn’t care. He’s not feeling sorry for himself. In fact, I’d wager that thanks to his mother, he doesn’t even know he has an obstacle.
You can see this by watching him, by the confident way he’ll ill-advisedly jump up and down on a wet pool deck in the same way my sighted kid will. You can tell by the way he’ll walk a balance beam without hesitating. He knows he’s different, sure, and I’m sure he knows a few alternate ways to be safe in the absence of sight. But his mother could have kept him out of the pool. She could have kept him out of gymnastics class.
You see this kid and you’re like, “Wow, I really don’t have obstacles in my life.” Because if you can watch Logan and still maintain that you have problems, you’re either dying of cancer or something, or, more likely, you’re just being a big wimpy dickbag.
See, “problems” are mostly objects of perception, not reality. And confidence and empowerment? Those are both choices.
Logan’s mother could have decided that he will grow up to live the life of “a blind man.” That would have had a certain base level of satisfaction. But instead, she made a different choice. She decided that he’s going to live the life of “a man, who happens to be blind.”
If you’re starting to feel like your sore back and your credit card debt are kind of minor problems, then good. They are.
I have this fantasy. When I’m really rich, I want to start some sort of a fund to award cash prizes to awesome people. People who are just living their lives, faced with what others might think is a huge challenge but which they themselves see as “just how it is.”
People without major ailments are constant victims of minutia. They will say, “I’m too young to do that. I’m too old. I’m too tall, too short, to dumb, too poor, too fat.” None of that is true. You hear about eighty-year-old women climbing mountains, and destitute people starting billion dollar businesses.
I want to start my awesomeness fund, and I want to catch people who simply were never told that they had a major handicap and were therefore supposed to give up on life.
If you think you can’t do something and feel like the weight of the world is on you, I have three things for you to watch — all of which are contenders for the Johnny B. Truant’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
1. Ben Underwood
If you think you can’t do something because of X, Y, Z, or Obama, WATCH THIS VIDEO. It is astonishing. Seriously. I’ll just sit here while you watch it and crap your pants in disbelief. Check out the trash can bit at the 1-minute mark. Then change those pants.
Serious kudos also go out to Ben’s mother, who was able to grow up with enough confidence to inspire her son while saddled with the hideous handicap of being named “Aquanetta.”
2. Lazy Legs
I can’t stand that show America’s Got Talent, but that’s where the world met this kid. He can’t walk unaided. He’s got those wrist-bracelet crutches that most able-bodied people see and immediately think, “Oh, wow, that guy is fucked.” If he were “normal,” he’d maybe walk when he could but would spend a lot of time on a Rascal scooter. But instead, he gave himself a nickname that accentuates his difference — and check out the shit he’s able to do.
Unfortunately, Lazy Legs was eliminated from America’s Got Talent early-on and a singing ventriloquist went on to win the season, proving once and for all that this country is — demonstrably and definitely, through thick and thin and without question — utterly fucked.
3. Kyle Maynard
This guy was born with no arms and no legs but I’d seriously bet that he could kick your ass, and then steal your girlfriend. Seriously. Like, I think I may even want to make out with him.
Most people get a deep cut on their finger and decide they can’t type for the day, so they go home. Or they’re rejected for a job or cut from a team and they give up on their dream of success. You know what we call that in a world with Kyle Maynard? We call it being a lame-ass douchebag. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you lame-ass douchebag.
The next time you come up with a reason why something can’t be done, just ask yourself if you’re ever going to win JBT’s awesomeness award with that attitude, you big pussy.
