what is this pain?

I feel pain at the loss of my honor. For years I've been wondering where this pain was coming from and for years I have been a dishonest person. I've lied to the people I love and even people I barely know just to maintain this facade I'm just now starting to wrestle off. Underneath I now realize the pain I've been feeling is a mourning at the loss of my honor. The most valuable thing a person can possess is honor. In feudal Japan it was customary to disembowel yourself if you had failed to uphold your honor. If that were true here and now I would have been dead many times over.
So, how do you rebuild honor? How do reconstruct integrity? Where do you start?

I'm trying not to lie. I guess it's a start. I'm trying to catch myself in the lie before I do it. I'm trying (not always on my own) to make myself own up to the truth even when I do lie. I want to be a better person. I want to be my own person. Honest to the core and the kind of guy you wish were your friend. I don't want to be worshipped I just want to be respected. The hardest part is coming by that respect honestly.
I must learn what integrity means.
Here are my affirmations then:
I will do what I say.
I will underpromise and overdeliver.
I will be on time or early
I will be considerate of others.

Everyday I will review my schedule for the next day at the end of the day. i will make sure I take time to consider others and slow down. I will make sure that I do one extra considerate thing everyday with time permitting.

and I'll see how long I can make it last.

What is this about?

Is this about me? What is this about? Who am I? Where am I inside this mess? How do I pare myself down to something so thin? If there's anything at all. Is that just my fear talking? Am I afraid that what I might find won't be pretty? Is it that I have to just buck up and look inside myself to find the person that I really am? Who am I? I am a person with feelings and passions and perversions and imperfections. I am a human being. Is it that I feel that some of my worst qualities make me undeserving of love? Yes, I feel that way. I have obsessions that I can't handle. I am addicted to pleasure and will take it any chance I can get. The hardest part of this addiction is that the people that surround me are distinctly divided in their opinions about my problem. In one camp they say that wanting to please yourself on your own time is natural and normal and yet the other camp understands that my problem isn't the self pleasure but the addiction to the end result. The unrelenting want for release and irrational willingness to go to any lengths to achieve it. Thus, it becomes an addiction. One I would lie to protect and to hide from people who won't and can't understand. How do I make the changes I need to make in myself when part of me still questions if my addiction should be an acceptable thing?

watch out here comes the preachin'...

God is inside of people
inside of plants
inside of rocks
inside of the earth
if there is truly something in existence
that created... existence
how can it favor anyone thing over another?
God and the language of the universe
is love
and is accepting and loving of all it's creation
beauty and chaos
love and hate
all is beautiful
in the eyes of god

Finding the truth...

I haven't been listening.

I've been speaking, talking, preaching, and taking a stance for seven years. Someone once told me you should act proportionally: two ears, one mouth.
Of course it's advice I haven't taken.
I have friends that I listen to. Some of them give me no choice, but there are still others out there that I listen to. I take the time to ask them how they are doing... and I care about what they have to say. For years that was how I made friends and for the longest time I had more friends than I could count. For some reason though I stopped listening to the important people in my life. I stopped listening to the woman I love.

I think I know how it started...
I started defending myself. I started waiting for my turn to speak instead of listening to what was being said. I started arguing my case instead of trying to understand its cause. Today, I was told by someone I admire, that each argument is chance to learn something about a person that you didn't know. I think repeat arguments are caused by not learning those lessons. It's time I learned.

Beginnings

Who am I?

A Desk Clerk
An Artist
A Writer
A Musician
A Poet
A Thinker
A Philosopher
A Reverend
A Skeptic
A Believer
An Idea Person
A Dreamer
A Lover
A Friend
A Man
A Human
A Kind Person
A Genius
A Fool
A Coward Who Dreams Of Heroes
A Pervert
A Monster
A Liar…
An Illusion
A Long List of Labels and still searching for the truth.




There is a world I live in and I’m sure you live in it too. A world we’ve all constructed out of pretense and lies. Built on a foundation of false hopes and advertising pitches, marketing slogans, and magazine fabrications.
Here in this world I have built for myself a golem. A man molded out of the clay of my imagination. Sculpted out of my ideals and misconceptions. Hollow inside it is the perfect shell. I can step inside and it protects me from the world, a shell of clay protecting me from harm and preventing me from really getting to know anyone and from anyone really getting to know me.

Therein lies the problem… I’ve worn the shell for so long I’m not sure what is inside anymore. Now, I stand before the river and I am wading in. I am letting the water wash away the lies of clay in hopes that some truth still remains and there is some of me still inside.