I’m off to L.A. in a few hours. It’s kind of strange to go on a business trip again. I like it. I’m taking part in some brainstorming meetings to launch a new business. I’ll also be hanging out with a friend I haven’t seen since 1999. I’ll also be hanging out with my cousin, who I’ve only seen twice in my life (that I remember). When I called him earlier this week to let him know I was coming my wife heard his reaction from upstairs. Should be fun.

Business trips have an odd effect on me. I tend to kick my work into high gear, I become increasingly anal about making lists, and I try to tick every to do item off I can. In the end I usually end up cutting the list short, but I also keep thinking of things I should finish. Right now I’m frantically typing one last blog entry before I go, I just wrote a review and added some monkey news. I’m also thinking I should call my parents, grab something to eat, and maybe play some Mario Cart. My ride comes in 45 minutes.

I also bring way too much to do with me. I have three books in my bag (admittedly one is short and I’m one-third through another, but still) and notes of things to think about for my business. From takeoff to landing I’ll be gone for 48 hours.

I also go on a spending spree. Monday night we grabbed take out and rented School of Rock. Last night we grabbed fast food and went to Coldstone.

I also think of lots of things that would be fun to do, like a web site compiling the best Coldstone mix-in combinations (last night I had vanilla ice cream with Twix, brownies, and chocolate syrup). How dumb is that? Yet the idea bounces around in my head anyway.

I also keep thinking about an iPod. Right now it’s a business expense I can almost justify (an overpriced voice recorder for interviews). Even though I’d rather read a book at the airport, the idea of strolling around with an iPod in my pocket and my Best U2 Ever list playing makes me smile. Or maybe that’s just my rock star haircut taking over.

Anyway, business trips do weird things to me. I haven’t even talked about missing my wife, sleeping in a strange bed (or couch, as the case will be), or missing The Apprentice. Maybe I’m just weird in general. My dreams of late have been especially odd (I had another odd one last night, though the memories are too varied and incoherent).

So much for the best laid plans. The play went off well and everyone said we did a good job (does anyone ever tell a youth group they did a bad job in a play?).

Of course I had a slight problem. I had to be at the church at 8:30. The alarm went off around 7:15, and it was probably 7:40 before I actually got up. Then Abby poked her head in the bathroom and reminded me it was Daylight Savings. It was actually 9:01. The first service had already started and I went on in 19 minutes. Quite a shock when you’re still in the shower.

I made it to church with one song left before we went on, and I was in costume and in position a full 30 seconds before we started. Whew.

Nothing like a crucifixion early in the morning.

Tomorrow I reprise my role as Jesus. Of course I didn’t have time to watch any of the movies I thought about, but the whole thing prompts plenty of reflection.

My role as Jesus is pretty physical. I have only four or five lines, and much of the time I’m just silent. A lot of the role is stumbling, falling down, looking like I’m in pain. I’m not much of actor, but it’s fairly easy to do pain. Well, it’s hard work, but it doesn’t require much skill.

What really gets me in the role is when I think about what’s going on. As I first walk in I’m being taken before the chief priests and I scan the audience. I walk up the center aisle and look down the rows. In rehearsal they’ve been empty pews, but tomorrow they’ll be full of people. I’m going to connect with as many pairs of eyes as possible, and that’s the piercing part.

Since a lot of my role requires me to stand there and take what’s dished out, I do a lot of staring. I stare back at the kids in the youth group as they hurl insults, and I try to imagine what Jesus was going through. Part of me wants to act all smug and sarcastic. Part of me wants to haul off and punch somebody. But I know Jesus looked at them with loving eyes, despite the fact that they were selling him out.

As I stand before Herod he gets frustrated when I refuse to perform a miracle, and says I’m just like my cousin. It’s full of spite and hatred, and it’s entirely designed to get a reaction out of Jesus. But his eyes are full of love and pity.

The most brutal part of the play is when the crowd yells Crucify. The congregation is shocked to see their children, their teens crying out for the blood of Jesus. It’s jaring. But I can imagine Jesus crumple inside as he realizes this is it. He knew it was going to happen but he wanted a way out. He hoped in the garden that the cup would be taken away, but as that crowd yells crucify he knows the cup is his. These people that he loves more than anything in the world want him dead, and it begins. The taunts, the kicks, the spitting, I fall at the front of the church, just before the altar, and the iniquity of us all is laid bare.

My sins yell crucify, louder than the mob that day
My sins yell crucify louder than any crowd
(“Louder than the Mob” by the Supertones)

And the cross. The cross is brutal. I obviously can’t measure up to any movie renactment, but I think seeing it before you live is a different sort of experience. As I stumble down the aisle I want to reach out to a pew to pull myself to my feet and meet another set of eyes. Those connections are freaky and jaring. You never quite know how the person will react.

As I climb the steps to the choir loft and stretch my arms to the horizon, the pain increases. Of course my arms get tired and sore, but the simple act of stretching and breathing is work. I look down on the congregation and the teens, the chief priests and crowd members yell up at me. They hurl insults on the dying, and somehow Jesus manages to shout, to choke out the words of forgiveness. How amazing. He feels love up there in all that pain, love shining down on the very people killing him. The words sound so loud and echoey when they come off my lips, from so high up in the church. I cry to the Father and my words seem to go through the ceiling.

Then I give up the last breath and all goes limp. The lights go dark, the solider walks off, and I’m left there alone. Dead. Silent.

And just last week the people were praising him with hosannas. Just last week is tomorrow. The cross is raised before we’ve lowered our palm branches.

It’s 12:43 and what have I got to show for it? I’ve accomplished next to nothing today. I was pulled out of bed too early to help my wife get the car out of the driveway without sliding into our rock retaining wall. I went back to bed for an hour or so of that half-asleep state, and then spent two hours chiseling hardened snow off the driveway so I won’t have to get up at 6:55 and try to push the Jetta uphill.

After breakfast, checking the e-mail and news, it’s late. I booted up the laptop, made a phone call, and crossed one item off my list — but only because it was pushed back a few weeks.

Then I started searching Google and Amazon trying to chase down a book idea. I scoured my harddrive for any applicable notes, then started searching through my old blog entries. Then I forgot the book idea and just started reading old entries.

Now I’m writing about it all and it’s 12:47. What a day.

With my recent eBay obsession I’ve been digging into my childhood collection of trading cards. What started innocently enough with Topps baseball cards in 1986 turned into a full-blown addiction where I’d spend my entire $8/month allowance in a single Friday night at the Alcove Hobby shop on Woodward Ave.

Now I have no attachment to the cards and they’re simply taking up room in the basement. The only reason I still have them is because everyone my age grew up hearing the stories of attics full of Mickey Mantle rookie cards someone’s mother threw away. So everyone my age has a closet, basement, or attic stocked with cards they desperately hope will be worth more than a penny a piece. With most of my cards now 10-15 years old and still worth pennies, it’s not likely they’ll ever be worth anything.

Today I walked into Shinders, a comic book and sports card shop, and I saw packs of baseball cards I snatched up as a kid for as much as $1 a pack going for 29 cents. I was briefly tempted to buy a pack to remember the nostalgia of opening pack upon pack of baseball cards. But only briefly.

As I’ve been pouring through my collection and revisiting a sports card shop, I can’t quite figure out what I saw in baseball cards. I liked baseball at the time, and rooted for the Detroit Tigers. But I really didn’t know anything about baseball. I didn’t follow the sport, I didn’t know half the players, I didn’t know who all the rookies were. I think the cards were simply a collection to me, which is why I so quickly transitioned to racing cards and diecast when I got into NASCAR.

I collected a lot of things as a kid, from the requisite rock collection, to baseball cards, sea shells, animal postcards, Matchbox and Hotwheels cars, and even stamps and coins for very brief stints. I think baseball cards were probably ideal because they were so ordered. I could sort them by number or team, put them in albums or store them in plastic boxes. When I think about it, that’s all I ever did with my baseball cards. It’s not like you ever looked at your baseball cards just to look at them, you had to sort them, order them, rank them. I don’t even think I bothered trading my cards much.

But what really made baseball cards, and later racing cards, so addictive was the lottery-like nature of opening a pack. There’s a certain thrill in opening a wax pack of 10 or 12 or 15 random baseball cards. You could get that lucky card that completes your collection. Or more likely, that big money card. And if you came up short, Topps gave you a crusty stick of sugary gum to help heal the loss of not scoring big.

I think that’s what baseball card collecting was for me — hoping I’d strike it rich. Which is funny, because it was always a some day pay-off. I rarely sold my baseball cards or cashed in on that big money card. Occasionally I did sell some cards off, but that immediate pay-off wasn’t in mind when I’d open a pack and find a Don Mattingly. I imagined myself years from now, selling the card for hundreds of dollars and being incredibly wealthy. Now here I am at that exact age I imagined myself, and my Don Mattingly card is worth a few bucks, just like it was in 1987.

It seems odd to me that much of my childhood was spent collecting things I could one day cash in on. Now that I’m cashing in, and getting so much less cash than my 10-year-old mind imagined, it’s strangely hollow. I’ll buy a computer with my earnings and a few years later the computer will be ready for eBay, and I’ll be starting over. It’s almost Ecclesiastical.

It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving, and it’s time for some introspection. I’ve realized I haven’t really talked about what I’ve been up to in a while, and it’s probably a decent time to bring people up to speed. I’ll be seeing family I haven’t seen in a year this week, so I need to practice up anyway.

I’m still unemployed. But I don’t really think of it that way anymore. Since about mid-October I’ve been getting a lot of freelance jobs. Enough so that I’ll be taking a small business course soon and giving full-time freelance a go.

In some ways it’s very scary. I have a lot of work and deadlines to shuffle, being productive at home is a constant battle, and I have to hope that the work will keep coming in. But it’s also very cool. My wife says I don’t complain anymore. I’m doing work that for the most part I enjoy (some jobs are better than others). A lot of the details work out nicely thanks to my wife’s full-time job. Insurance and cash-flow aren’t a big deal because of her job.

It’s a different kind of life, and except for the uncertainty, I enjoy it. There is kind of a dread hanging in the air wondering if I can meet all my deadlines, and wondering if beyond the deadlines I’ll be able to get more deadlines. Sometimes you have to trust.

And as I said, being productive is incredibly difficult. Right now for example, I’m typing my blog, which is incredibly unproductive. Earlier today I folded and put away the laundry. I shoveled the sidewalk and part of the driveway. All things that should be done, but the question is when. It’s a balancing act, and I’m learning.

I also have these get-rich-quick schemes. They’re more like pay-the-bills schemes, since it’s doubtful I’d make any money, much less get rich. I just have these grand ideas of things I like to do, and not having a job makes those dreams a little more plausible.

Freelancing is one of those dreams. I wanted to do this back in July, but it just didn’t seem possible. Now it’s happening without a lot of effort on my part, so it seems worth pursuing. And I’m thinking of these other ideas. The main idea was sparked by the youth pastor at my church (technically the Associate Minister, but whatever), and I’m probably sharing it against common wisdom. It’s a business idea, and traditional wisdom would tell you not to publicize such an idea so people won’t steal it. But I guess I’m idealistic, and this idea is starting to flicker, like so many of my ideas, so I want to share it and see if some broader wisdom can overcome the conventional wisdom and maybe jumpstart my idea.

It started when my youth pastor asked if I’d contribute to a newsletter for the youth group. In high school I edited my youth group’s entire newsletter, and I loved it. I volunteered to do the same this time around, pretty much surprising my youth pastor. The 411, the newsletter of Messiah’s youth should be mailing this week (and I suppose I’m ruining the surprise if any of them read this — but I highly doubt any of them even know about this blog — yet). The 411 sparked memories of my youth group’s newsletter, the Ozone, and some of the ideas I had back then.

My brilliant business idea was to make youth group newsletters. It’s something a lot of youth pastors would love to do, but don’t have the time, the skills, or the equipment. Or they want a newsletter so bad they just do it, and the results are so-so. I’d love to do the design, layout, editing, and even some of the writing for youth group newsletters all over the country. I could syndicate my writing, offer template layouts, and offer to design their youth group specific content.

It’d be a lot of fun. The problem is my perspective audience. Churches aren’t exactly loaded, and youth group budgets don’t have a lot of flexibility. I’ve looked at the numbers, and so far I’d end up being a huge budget item for the average church and barely making money worth my time on my end. So I’m still working on that one.

Of course there’s lots of other fun ideas to go along with it, like a national newsletter and a web site component, but those are more complicated. And frankly, there’s lots of companies offering web site services to youth pastors, most of them much cheaper than I could ever hope to be. So my brilliant business idea is still just an idea. I’m hoping my small business class will help me refine that idea and see if it’s worth pursuing. I really hope it is, partly because such a venture would require a new computer and lots of fun graphic design software. Without a feasible business plan requiring such an expense, I just can’t justify it.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m not really looking for a full-time job anymore. I have my eyes open, and I check the job listings every now and then, but nearly as often as I did before. I feel like this is the way to go, so for now I’m taking the open door. We’ll see what happens.

It’s Sunday night. I’m sitting on the porch being introspective. Tomorrow begins week two of unemployment. I’m in such an odd phase right now.

The post-BGEA landscape is still taking shape. I’m having a hard time being productive with my days. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, but it’s hard to focus, to concentrate, to fit it all in.

And I don’t know what’s ahead. It’s like all of a sudden my life has changed so drastically. I’m no longer a newlywed, I own a house, we have a dog who just interrupted me. Children are next, and if the puppy is a small taste of what parenthood will be like, I’m so afraid things are just going to go faster and faster. I feel barely able to hold on now, barely able to collect my thoughts and know what I’m doing, barely able to breathe.

Is this what life is supposed to be like? Or are late night introspective porch sessions there, you just have to make time for them? Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, and sometimes I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

It’s Monday night. I’m sitting at the computer being introspective, again. Transcribing last night’s thoughts, and adding some of today’s. I’m sick today, though you really can’t stay home sick from unemployment. You just are sick, and that’s the way it is. A day lost to lazing and feeling bad, wishing you felt up to accomplishing something. Sometimes I think so many days pass by feeling that way without the convenient excuse of being sick. Of course that’s being pessimistic. Life flies by precisely when things are fun and you’re busy enough to not get to the really important things.

I had a dream last night that we had a baby. I should clarify — I had a baby. The fact that as a man I became a mom wasn’t the only bizarre thing, the pregnancy and birth came out of nowhere, happening in a matter of days. And there was really no birth or pregnancy. It just sort of happened. I didn’t go through labor, I didn’t go through morning sickness. One day I was just pregnant, and a few days later we had a baby in the hospital, as if pregnancy were a euphemism for a visit from the stork. It happened so quickly we didn’t even have a name for the baby, and I kept calling him the name a friend of mine gave to their recent child.

If I gained anything from the dream, it was a thankfulness for the nine month period of adjustment that is pregnancy. A seven pound life change isn’t just dropped in your lap without any warning. You have nine months to feel inadequate and prepare yourself for the unpreparable. Unlike buying a house, there is a time and even physical evidence of the radical change that is about to take place.

Change is good, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.