Peace OUT 2021!

Hi all and a very merry Christmas to you and your families!

I just wanted to drop by here to make some quick points and share a couple of related wonderful things that have happened to me recently.

So, first thing is first, the goal I set out to have the birthday that I wanted and the Christmas that I wanted didn’t quite go as planned.  Nothing was completely destroyed or anything, but they definitely did not go to plan.  I actually spent my birthday with my friends, which was pretty nice.  First off, I had a great dinner with a dear friend of mine, but when she had to go, I ended up going with my 2 remaining bandmates/brothers and had a few glasses of mountain dew and shot the breeze with them.  Oooo, that reminds me of another BIG topic to speak of in a second.  Christmas was spent starting off visiting my grandparents at their rest home for a bit, then I got to cleaning my flat which killed the rest of my pre-Christmas time day.  Christmas eve was mainly spent doing what I set out to do, which was do my annual Christmas movie marathon, but that was interrupted by going to my dad’s house to spend time with him, his wife, my sister, her husband, and my two nephews.  It was very awesome, but I had to cut the visit short in order to attend 11pm caroling followed up by midnight Traditional Latin Sung Mass.  I got home about the time that I thought I would, which was just before 2am on Christmas Day, and posted a very lengthy post about Santa Claus and love on Facebook and that caused me to go to bed just before 4am.  It was a long day.  Christmas Day went on earlier than I thought as my brain only wanted to sleep 5 hours but wake up super sleepy needing more sleep.  Stupid brain!  But the good thing is that I completed watching my 8 Christmas films that I set out to watch, plus some bonus shows and films!  So, overall, not like I planned the 2 out of 3 holidays in this month, but not bad either. 

Onto a diverted topic from above.  I’ll just put this on front street.  I think my band is dead.  The band that I, personally, was a part of for 11 years.  The band that existed in one form or another for more than 20 years.  Yep, that one.  Dead.  All over some petty crap too!  Here’s the cliff notes of my version.  Our bass player developed a bad case of alcoholism.  He was forced to quit the band, and the guitar player decided to go scorched earth with him.  I was on board until we practiced with a potential replacement player and realized that I was in effect abandoning a man who had turned from a friend, to a bandmate, and a brother.  On top of the bassist issue, the guitarist brought a guy into the band 3 years ago that is not musically talented at all and has too many projects going on at once anyway to be in the band without even asking the other 3 of us if we even wanted him in there.  I put up with for 3 years before passively-aggressively making my feelings known that this guy sucked and brought tension to the band until said guitarist put it bluntly to “quit pussyfooting around.  Either straight up say it or shut the fuck up.” So, I said it knowing it would hurt both of their feelings (it did), and then less than a month later the bassist situation came to a head.  Anyway, the day after the practice with the possible replacement, guitarist comes over for our usual lunchtime talk “guns blazing” ready to talk smack about his now former best friend and when I said that I wanted to reconcile with the guy and get rid of his musically untalented friend from our band, he flipped his lid big time and annulled our friendship and the band as well.  He went on a week later to say that in the time away from us, he’s lived a peaceful life free of bigotry, misogyny, and other stuff because we haven’t spoken as a band.  Now, let me point out that while outlandish things were said, they were all for shock value and stupidity.  Secondly, this guy had gone completely off the rails into far-left extremism and is an atheist.  Reason I mention these things is that when the off-color jokes got too intense for him, I politely asked him “ok, we’ll stop being stupid this way if you stop using the Lord’s name in vain.” Which of course he didn’t do and actually ramped up his GD’s and his constant Catholic bashing, and protestant bashing.  That’s not to mention the fact that he couldn’t understand my stance on touchy subjects like abortion, gay rights, transgenderism, and everything else that the far left, and even the left claim as reasons that Christians are bigots.  So, I let him know that I still loved him and for as much as he didn’t appreciate our poor taste joking, I felt peace too not having the blasphemy in my life anymore.  He said nothing after his little soapbox diatribe.  But that got me thinking.  This guy is a horrible person.  He’s a narcissist, a bigot, and a freeloader among other things.  I’m sure I lost friendships or had a bad light shown on me because of him.  We were the best of friends for 20 years and I put up with his shenanigans for that long because I truly loved him.  It was only after this what could be permanent fracture of our friendship that I realized just how bad of a person that he is.  Let me say that I’m not just talking trash because we’re on the outs.  I came to the realization after he basically told our bassist to go F himself.  Here’s why I think he’s a narcissist.  This article here is where I’ll point out his stuff from the 6 points it mentions in the section “Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder”:

1. Grandiose sense of self-importance – case and point, him bringing in 2 different guys into our band without even asking us, hating most of the music we’d suggest to only play his horrible music. 
2. Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur – This dude has a bad problem with love.  He is obsessed with his now ex-girlfriend and had this grand fantasy of this life that they were going to have.  He also hits on women no matter if they are married or not.
3. Needs constant praise and admiration – Oh man… on stage?!  Like you read about, this is him!  He’s suicidal and severely depressed as it is, but is always in need of constant attention and praise.
4. Sense of entitlement – Yep.  Kinda feels like this is a judgmental thing, but ties right in with what he does.
5. Exploits others without guilt or shame – oh man.  THIS one always gets me with him. Two glaring examples of this that personally involved me were 1: this dude just invited himself to my best friend’s wedding in Salt Lake City, Utah.  He said he wanted to go because he always wanted to see Utah and just assumed that it would be ok for him to go with me.  Of course, I’d be the asshole if I told him “Dude, you aren’t even that good of friends with him…” so he went with me.  Terrible.  2: While on a cross country trip (that his mom paid for, so that may skew some point of view on this… maybe?), we planned on stopping in two different places on the way back home from Annapolis, Maryland to El Paso, Texas.  One of those stops was with our mutual best friend in St. Louis.  He wanted us to go.  Cool. 2^nd stop we thought of was the greater DFW area.  I have a few friends and family there and he knew of one of them and insisted that we contact her to see about staying at her place.  Who the F does that?!  I felt so embarrassed, but considering that his mom flew us up to Baltimore and we had an all expenses paid roadtrip back down to El Paso, I felt guilted into doing something that personally I would NEVER do.  “…They don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends.” As the article says. THAT right there to the T!  Of course, I did it and felt horrible to ask my friend if we could stay with her, especially since she barely knew him.  As a side note, the bastard had the balls to ask her if he and his kids could stay there a year later when they drove up and did the trip again!  Really, man.  That’s just wrong in my opinion.  Terrible!
6. Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others – Oh man.  Here we go!  The far-left opinion of his?  THIS.  Very much THIS.  Oh, you’re not an “ally”?  oh!  You’re a Catholic?! Let me go out of my way to shame you, call you out, belittle you, and show you how I’m right.  This doesn’t even end there! ANY opinion that contradicts his?  Wrong.  Automatically wrong.  WTF!

The reason that I call him a bigot, by the way, ties into the narcissism.  He believes so much that his opinions on everything are right.  There is never any room for debate.  The one that always affected me is my strong faith in God.  Oh man, that was like lighting a can of petrol for him.  He would not only not respect my beliefs, but he would go out of his way to disrespect mine.  There are a lot of other examples, but that’s one right off the bat that I can point to.  Anyway, he’s out of my life now, and thank God for it.  He actually did the rest of us a favor.  We’re so much better off without him in our lives.  But with that said, the band is now dead. 

Now to a new topic that I just realized no more than 3 days ago.  I’m finally emotionally over my last ex-girlfriend.  Thank GOD for that!  Reason I know is that my heart no longer hurts when I even think of her name and now for sure when I see pictures of her that she either sent me or of us together.  Let me stop there and say that I wasn’t looking at those pictures, but when they’d come up on my google photos, my heart would sink, and I’d just feel like crying.  It was terrible!  Well, as of a few days ago, not anymore!  I’ve been going into my google photos to retrieve pictures of myself to post on an awesome group on Facebook that I’ve joined within this month and let me tell you that the compliments that I’ve been getting have been pretty awesome!  I have very low self-esteem, so to be getting compliments on my eyes, smile, etc.?  man, it’s been awesome.  If you wanna know a secret, I’m actually pretty attracted to one of the members of this group.  Her and I have a lot in common.  We are both self-professed nerds, physical movie collectors, love sports, we’re both really shy, and best of all, she’s beautiful.  We’ve been going back and forth on the threads in this group page since I’ve joined in there and even last night right away complimented a photo of myself in a suit by calling me handsome and saying a line that I always say, “I’m just telling the truth.”  HOLY SMOKES!  The only thing is that I’m in far west Texas and she’s in South Carolina.  We are really far apart geographically.  I would love to send her a private message and start to talk to her that way, but; A) I don’t want her to think that I’m just another guy “sliding into her DMs” to try and get her to do immoral things. And B) I don’t want to get my hopes up to think that if situation A doesn’t happen, and we really do connect even more, something may come out of it.  I know this is going to sound like I’m a jerk, but I’ve been burned twice in my offerings/attempts to move out to where my girlfriends were only to get my heart crushed by them both at the last minute.  What if me and this mystery woman connect more to a romantic interest side of things if I were to send this private message?  The best way to get to where she’s at is by plane and air travel is not only really expensive, but right now is a crapshoot at best with all of the labor shortages and COVID-19 madness going on.  Not that I’m putting the cart in front of the horse here, but considering that I’m not willing to completely drop my life to move way over there, would she be willing to move from there?  She’s not even from there and I don’t know how much family she does have in South Carolina if any, but that’s still a valid question.  Additionally, what if further feelings other than what I’m calling a crush on both sides develop?  I’ve always been of the mindset, even more so now as a practicing Catholic to discern marriage in a relationship.  If I’m not doing that, then I’m just wasting my time.  I do not want a relationship for, how would I say this, the physical benefits of said relationship.  That’s not what I’m interested in.  I want to find a woman to help me get to heaven with.  Who will grow with me in my faith.  Who will love me and desire me for such and desire the same things that I do.  As a practicing Catholic, that’s what I should be looking for.  Anyway, I hope I don’t come across like I’m already with this beautiful woman or anything, I’m just going through the possibilities of things if they were to happen.  Good thing though is that I know I’m desirable to at least a few women out there and my heart has finally let go of my past again. 

With that said, I hope all is well in your world, my friends!  Let’s end 2021 on a positive note and go into 2022 ready to rock!  Wear your mask, get vaccinated, and if you’re already vaccinated, GET BOOSTED!  And while you’re at it, start loving people.  There’s already too much hate in this world!

I’m Still Here and Happy Holidays!

Well well!  Guess who’s still here!

Hello and welcome to the one more day closer to winter on the northern hemisphere!  Holy smokes guys.  I can’t believe it’s been since June that I have posted anything.  143 days, not that I counted or anything.  My life, to say the least, has been pretty chaotic.  I’ll give you the cliff’s notes here:

• Well, sadly but thankfully at the same time, we had to move my grandparents to a permanent nursing facility due to their declining health.  Honestly, we couldn’t take care of them like we need to, and they deserve to be taken care of by ourselves, so my dad did a lot of the major lifting to make this happen.  Thank God that it did!
• I’m still making Catholic podcasts via YouTube my main source of media watching/listening.  I’ve actually given a very DEEP dive into my favorite channel “Pints with Aquinas”.  Not only do I love to watch Matt Fradd’s videos, but I think I actually like Fr. Gregory Pine O.P.’s videos even more. 
• My band was rocking n’ rolling until quite recently when a situation that had been a long time coming finally came to fruition.  Our bass player had to quit to take care of himself.  He’s not actually doing a very good job of taking care of himself, but at least the temptation to ruin his life is not because of us anymore.  Long story.
• With all that’s been going on, I’ve slacked it on my health.  What’s new, right? 

Ok!  I think that covers the majority of it.  I’m sure I’m missing a few things here and there.  I would like to talk about those 4 bullet points at length and maybe I will in the future.  I really wanted to say a few more things with this post though. 

First off, I’m still here!!!!  I’ve seen along the time that I’ve gotten a few more follows and a few likes on previous posts and I appreciate it!  In case you haven’t really noticed, I’m not writing on this blog to make any money off of it, or influence you in any way (well, maybe religiously every now and again), or teach you anything.  Really, all I’m doing with this and all I’ve ever wanted to do with this blog is to write out my thoughts, feelings, tell the tales of situations that I can’t help but to share due to significance or other reasons, and just to get things off my shoulders as to not be a burden on my mind and soul.  Believe me, there’s been a lot of times in the past 143 days that I’ve wanted and or needed to put fingers to keyboard to type out things that have happened in my life, but life keeps getting in the way and I run out of time each day to do it.  I figure that I had an opportunity now, so here we are!

Secondly, and this is going to be the main story of this post, my favorite time of the year has arrived!!!!!  Yes, November 1^st (All Saints Day) to January 6^th (Feast of The Epiphany) is my favorite time of year.  We get rid of the horribleness that is “Halloween” with all of its celebration of sin, and we get into honoring the saints, remembering our loved ones, then all of the things that follow.  I mean, you know!  Haha!  Why am I telling you as if you’re not aware, right?  Point is days like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve make me the happiest.  Here’s the kicker though.  I can’t remember if I’ve ever posted about this or not, but I LOVE to spend those holidays alone.  Well, let me be honest, I love to spend every day alone, but I really make those holidays an emphasis to try to spend them alone if I can.  Now, I know that is contrary to most of everybody’s thoughts on those days, but me being the most introverted INFJ person you’ll probably ever meet, and its accompanying strong isolophilia makes me want to spend those days at home and alone.  It’s not a sad thing for me, mind you, it’s a joyous time for me.

Here’s my rundown of each day:

• Thanksgiving:  I love to wake up at 6am to get myself situated to get ready to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on my local NBC affiliate.  It’s honestly the next thing after the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest that I look forward to in the calendar year.  No joke!  I love watching the balloons, new and old, take flight going down the parade route, and seeing the floats, new and old, make their way down the street as well.  I’m usually drinking coffee and eggnog while it’s going on and about the middle of it, I set up my Peanuts Christmas Tree and small decorations in and around it.  The Christmas spirit really hits me then.  Once the parade ends at 10am, I jump in the shower while the local parade, which God bless them they try, is leaps and bounds extremely inferior to Macy’s plays on the television.  About an hour into said parade is when I remember that the Detroit game has started, so I switch the tv to that and start to prepare my dinner.  Let me tell you, for a single guy living alone, the seasoned turkey breast in a bag that goes straight from the freezer to the oven is the best thing ever!  It’s so much easier than dealing with the whole bird.  And let’s be honest, unless you’re crushing turkey legs at Disney, the breast meat is what you’re going to be eating anyway.  That takes about 2-3 hours, so I usually eat my turkey/homemade garlic mashed potatoes/corn/Hawaiian roll dinner during my beloved Dallas Cowboys game and end my day listening to Christmas Music as I enjoy my first night with the lighted decorations adorning my living room in the flat.

• Christmas Eve/Christmas:  Christmas for me, starts on Christmas Eve.  If I’m not given the day off from work, I’m hoping for the early release or notice that we’ve been given the day off.  If I do have the day off, I start it off by starting my favorite Christmas movies.  In no particular order, they are:  Batman Returns, Gremlins, Friday After Next, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas, A Christmas Story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and The Polar Express.  I know what you’re thinking.  Batman?  A Friday movie?  Harold and Kumar?  Really, dude!  YES!  Really!  Those all happen during or around Christmas!  I love it!  They put me in such a good mood!  I make sure to nap out a bit because I love to go to Midnight High Mass at my local FSSP parish, but in order to get there and have my usual area in the pews, I must arrive around 10 or so at night.  Mass ends about 1:30am, so I get home at 2am on Christmas Day feeling super happy and blessed.  Sleep comes, and when I wake up in the morning, the film festival continues, and I tend to like to end the night by watching The Polar Express.  Actually, I go with the traditional Christmas movies at the end and go off-beat ones first.  In any event, I love ending Christmas Day’s night with the peace and love I feel due to Christ’s love and the warm feelings Christmas gives me.

• New Year’s Eve/Day: This is another great day that I love spending alone.  The party, for me, starts in the afternoon when I put the film Four Rooms on.  This film takes place on a New Year’s Eve and it’s a very wacky movie.  It’s right up my alley!  Once that finishes, I start watching CNN’s coverage of the world ringing in the new year.  I’ve had a tradition, about 20 years and counting, about ordering a pizza, getting or making some buffalo hot wings for dinner.  This is a must.  It’s not NYE without it.  With that being said, a tradition I incorporated about 7 years ago or so when I was trying a sober NYE (I know, I was crazy) was to buy a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling Grape Juice.  I usually switch the channels between CNN, ABC, and NBC watching their NYE specials while drinking various alcoholic beverages.  When the clock strikes midnight, I drink said bottle of sparkling grape juice and as of last year, the only sparkling wine/champagne that I think I’ll drink which is Asti – Rivata.  I can’t speak enough about it.  It’s available here at a relatively low price, but boy is it flavorful!  Granted, I have never had Cristal or Dom, but still! This bottle is awesome!  So, anyway, the texts and social media posts go out, and then I start watching the NYE coverage from Las Vegas, Nevada.  Their fireworks display ends about 1:10am, and I call it a night after that.  New Year’s Day starts off with Low Mass, as it’s a holy day of obligation, then I generally relax and get ready for what the new year will bring me.

So, there you go my friends!  I’m still here and my favorite time has come!  I hope we all make it a good one! 

About Music!

Hi y’all!

I hope those who read this are doing well.  I haven’t written a blog lately because I was focused the past 2 week or so on writing new songs for my band, which now is the inspiration for me writing this blog.  Things with the band have been crazy this year to say the least.  There was almost a revolt, 2 of us nearly quit, and just about 1.5 months ago, the favorite lead guitarist (who left the band only weeks to a few months before I joined) came back into the fold.  Having him back and having our musical interests be very similar reinvigorated my passion for the whole thing and got me to try to fire up at least one of the other guys in the group.  It’s worked to minimal success, but the personal fire is still lit and burning quite nicely.  I had about a 10-day run of inspiration that led me to write lyrics to 5 new songs, two of which I showed 2 separate guys in the group of 6 and 1 of the two had a guitar part put to it.  I may be biased, but I think it sounds beautiful and I want to push to keep it alive.  Sadly, we won’t be practicing for another 19 days, so I’ll just have to keep on chomping at the bit to get a full band experience with it and see how it sounds.

I’ve even taken the next step in my gear quality and moved up from budget Zildjian cymbals to top of the line Zildjian cymbals.  I’m putting all my chips in and going for broke… Not only figuratively, but probably literally as well!  I am willing to make this work and if all else fails, at least I know that I won’t be the one to blame if things don’t work themselves out because I gave it my all and I know I did.

It’s wild how just one person can bring about such inspiration in a band, right?  I would like to think I did it with my bandmates when I finally joined 11 years ago.  I was asked to join on a couple of other occasions when I was too broke and without a drumset until the stars aligned themselves and I was then able to.  We wrote a few more songs after I joined and ended up recording our, as of yet, only album the following year.  We did an as of yet unreleased live album a couple of years ago as well, but the creativity went kinda stagnant overall.  It’s weird to say because I don’t think any of us were bored, but we didn’t really write anything new, but had a great time jamming. 

Having our old lead guitar player back though has changed things for me.  I’m finding myself wanting more for the band.  Sure, the delusions of grandeur have always been talked about, but nobody really put forth the effort to try and make at least the smallest of those delusions become reality until recently.  Now we’re booking more gigs around town, new songs are being written, and if I’m being honest, I have the feeling that somebody is going to take notice.  I really my intuition becomes reality because all I want is for more people to hear what we have to say musically. 

So, if I’m quiet here for a bit of time, it’s probably because I’m trying to get my brain to pump out new lyrics! 

Wish me luck!

The Downfall of Meaningful Relationships

Good morning y’all and happy Monday!

I wasn’t really expecting to be writing something today, much less about the topic that I am going to write about, but I’ve been inspired by “The Counsel of Trent episode #455 – Catholic Dating Nightmares.”  Dun Dun DUN!!!!!!  Oh man!!!!  What an episode!  It is only 15 minutes and 22 seconds long, but a lot was packed into that episode.  A lot of truth, actually.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here, but I have been a victim of online dating a few times over.  The last two girlfriends I had were the result of online interactions, actually.  I didn’t meet them on dating sites, but our online friendships turned into romantic relationships, but they both ended in horrible disasters.  I have tried my hand at online dating as well with no success.  The thing that gets me about online dating is that nobody really wants to build a relationship.  Sure, they may type out on their profiles that they do, but really all most people want to do is hookup.  Personally, I think that’s part of the downfall of our current social world.  It seems as though everybody wants to forget about God and go into situations purely for their own gain and good, mortal sin be dammed.  It’s really sad.  People like me who are striving to live a chaste life pleasing to God are shunned and ridiculed, even amongst “religious” communities. 

It’s crazy, right?  It’s not just in the online world.  These opinions have bled over into the “real world”.  Wait.  This is the real world, right?  We’re not in a computer simulation, right?  Right?  Let’s just go with that, shall we? 

Anyway, I’ve been made fun of for a few things related to this topic.  Wanting to be married, wanting to have children, desiring Christ in my life, making God and His church the focal point of my life, not being materialistic, desiring a wife who wants all of those things as well.  Yep.  All of those things are black marks and I’ve been ridiculed for all of it.  It’s so wild to think that somebody who wants to be obedient to God is the one who is wrong.  Go figure. 

This is probably the main reason that I said a few blog posts ago that I have once again retired from the pursuit of a romantic relationship.  For what?  As Trent Horn quoted a woman named Meredith, a Tinder user, on his podcast; “Some people still catch feelings in hookup culture.  It’s not like just blind [sex] for pleasure and it’s done; some people actually like the other person.  Sometimes you actually catch feelings and that’s what sucks.”  W O W!!!!  Trent went on to say to that quote that feelings brought on by the marital act are an equivalent to an STD in this culture of ours that you don’t want to catch.  AMEN, brother!  How just terribly sad, right?  And boy, do I know about that culture.  My latest ex-girlfriend lives that life.  She didn’t understand why I was so emotional, and related to that, why I had an emotional attachment to her.  She’s been immersed in this hookup culture and could not understand that I wanted a long-term relationship built on an emotional bond and not some sort of physical, friends with benefits-esque agreement.  She even attacked my show of emotion when we had our one and only fight.  Gosh, how horrible, right?  Why subject myself to our horrible culture again when I know that’s what I’m going to find.  I’m really going to leave this one all on God’s hands.  He knows what is right for me.  He knows that I’m just trying to do the right thing. 

God help our society.  Things are more insane than I really realized.  I can see the Gabriel Iglesias meme dancing in my head right now of what I want to tell everybody… “You need Jesus!  That’s what you need!”

Talk later, my friends.

Getting Stronger

Hi y’all!  I hope you are all having a wonderful day.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve typed stuff out to put out as a blog post but just felt better typing it out to release that energy out into the digital 0’s and 1’s of this machine and not saving the post to share it.  This one, however, I am going to share out into the world because I think it’s one that I need to say out loud and not just to my own eyes. 

How many times has God every given you the proverbial tap on the shoulder to let you know that you need to figure it out really quick and shape up?  I know he’s done that to me a lot of times, but the last time he really did it was yesterday.  My finances aren’t going as I had planned them, I’m worried about making sure I keep my flat as my lease is up at the end of the month, I’m still fat, my love life is nonexistent, all the while I haven’t given God the time that He deserves, and I haven’t utilized my renewed gym membership either.  Well, over the past month since my computer died, I switched over some of my podcast listening to the visual form via YouTube and I’ve really enjoyed watching The Counsel of Trent hosted by Catholic apologist Trent Horn and even though I was about 80 episodes in to listening to Pints With Aquinas hosted by Matt Fradd on my iPod via iTunes, I’ve switched up my plan to catching up to the YouTube page of his pod starting with Trent Horn’s episode sometime pre-pandemic last year and am loving it as well.  Also, just this week my bishop announced that he was going to allow 100% capacity back at our local parishes again.  Masks are still required during Mass, but we’re now even one step closer to pre-pandemic times.  With that said, it dawned on me last night while watching Pints With Aquinas episode #192 with Father Gregory Pine that God was speaking to me through all the little difficulties over this past month.  I had just gotten back from the gym for the first time in a month or longer and was feeling good about getting that motivation back, and now I was feeling like I was having my soul and spirit nourished with this great episode.  I tweeted out that I was watching Pints and tagged Matt Fradd on the tweet, mentioned that I have been watching that in the afternoons, and that I have been having that lead right into my nightly listening of EWTN’s show “Called to Communion” with Dr. David Anders as I drift to sleep.  Although I am a cradle Catholic, by doing so I feel like I grow in my faith.  I went to bed feeling what I can best describe as being refreshed.  I knew right then that I finally got the message God was sending me to get my act together, continue to get closer to Him, and get serious about going to confession again regularly (which I will starting this Saturday), go to Low Mass every week again, and get back to going back to the gym consistently.  Everything else will work itself out.  My budget should fix itself, and I’m going on God’s will that my lease renewal will be approved to stay in my flat and if not, then I know I won’t have to worry about what the future living situation will bring.  God definitely has a plan. 

I woke up this morning to find that Matt retweeted my tweet mentioning his name and at last count 20 people liked it.  Let me make myself clear to say that my intention wasn’t to get likes or to hope that Matt would see and retweet me.  Honestly, it was more in hopes that my non-Catholic followers and friends would see that I was happy growing in my faith and hopefully they’d take the chance to check out the show for themselves and maybe have the same thing happen to them.  It did make me happy, though, that Matt saw it, retweeted it, and those handful of followers liked this journey that I’m on.

It’s the midpoint of the year.  Time to finish this one out strong.  Strong in my faith and love for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, strong on my health and fitness, and strong in my budget.  I can do this!

Until next time.