Friends, I may have made a terrible and irreversible mistake.  I just violated a cardinal rule of mix tapes in the soundtrack of my life with back-to-back Seger posts.  I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me of such a grievous error.  Rest assured, every penny donated as a result of this post will be used to form a charitable foundation for the education of aspiring mix tape creators everywhere, that they not succumb to the same traps into which I have fallen.

Have you ever felt an insatiable desire to jump in the car and drive away; drive to a place where no one knows your name (not very far for the less socially active of us); drive until to go any further you would need an enormous pair of water wings, a sextant, and a working knowledge of constellations in the Western hemisphere?  I have, and I suppose I must now consider that itch to be scratched.  The palm tree (her name is Francine) in front of my balcony seems to think so at least.  By now you have surely heard of my departure from the idyllic state of Indiana (may its blue laws continue to uphold the morality of its residents, one Sunday at a time) for the hedonistic beaches of Southern Florida.  News travels quickly in smaller circles, and my 2πr is smaller than average, que?

What crazy shenanigans will I get up to down here?  What wacky characters will I encounter?  How many gallon’s of water will I stock up on in preparation for ‘cane season?  Do not be surprised if it is 18 in the house and another 6 in the car.  I picked up 3 today so as not to start a rush on water.  I might be the world's most un-outdoorsy boy scout.  So I suppose the third question is already answered, but you will have to stick around to see if the first two questions are ever addressed.

Thus begins the new adventures of not so old (under 30, anyways) Jeff, following in the footsteps of one of his childhood heroes: the ‘Heralded’ Dave Barry.  Speaking of Dave, I toyed with titling this post ‘A Mazda Protégé named Desire’ in honor of my long drive down here, but it seemed like a good name for a rock band instead.

This was originally going to be a post entitled 'Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness' in which I intended to harp endlessly on how frustrating my job has become, whine about my inability to finish anything I start, and complain about how lousy the "city" is in which I live.  In the spirit of the new year, however, I decided to spare you, the faithful reader, of all my unearned angst and settle for a more traditional New Year's themed post instead.  I fear this will not be as organized or thoughtful a post as some of my previous entries, and I reserve the right to blame any misspellings, grammatical errors, or flimsy transitions on the bubbles.

Oh what a year it has been.  I attended three weddings and a funeral this year, which I am pretty sure puts me just one wedding, three cans of hair spray, and one Divine Brown encounter away from being mistaken as Hugh Grant.  Jim left Scranton for Stanford but then came back.  Somebody won the world series.  I went camping for the first time in my life, roughing it in the back of my Mazda. I moved to the hopping, northeast side of town, and I reached my quarter-life crisis, or perhaps my mid-life crisis given my typical high cholesteral, low vitamin diet.  I did not, however, manage to keep my resolution of aquring a taste for whisky, neat, which instead quickly found itself drowning in a bottle of Meijer Cola (Drink it, love it).

In fact, one of the things that I have always despised about the New Years's holiday (besides the fact that January is easily my least favorite month of the year) are new year's resolutions themselves.  I am easily annoyed by people who crowd the gym in January and February or who tie up all of the microwaves in the breakroom with their frozen weight watchers meals.  I have never been one to make serious new year's resolutions, at least not ones that I make known to anyone else, and I have found it is much easier to avoid failure if you do not set any goals.  But perhaps it is time to chance more practice at my one true skill, with some real resolutions.  I could make a resolution this year to not meet anyone new or to 'eat mor chikin' but that would be like giving up vegetables for lent.  Instead there are two particular self improvements that I would like to concentrate on this year, and both can be summed up in the following google-mined quote from Ganhdi:

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

One of the things that I have regretted ever since graduating is that from about tenth grade on, I never really applied myself to my education.  Instead I sort of coasted along in neutral for seven years, just working hard enough to not do poorly in the subjects I had any interest in at all, and leaving all homework and projects to be done at the last minute.  In my senior year at high school, I used to do all of the previous day's homework in my first period physics class, sometimes writting an essay or short paper and then typing it up in the 10 minutes between physics and Spanish, putting to good use all the typing practice I gained through instant messenger chats.  At college I gradutated to a new level of procrastination, leaving month-long programming assignments untouched until the night before they were due and, in rare cases, not doing them at all if upon starting I realized there was no way I could finish in just one night.

I have lately become interested in learning again, however.  One of the things that I have been especially interested in lately are foreign languages.  I am not sure exactly why, since I have only previously been interested in computer related subjects.  Perhaps the juxtaposition of such logical and programatic rules of grammar with all of the irregularites and idiosyncracies inheirent in any language satisfies both sides of my brain at the same time.  Perhaps I am just tired of computers and not being able to keep up with the unending stream of new technologies, concepts, and practices.  In either case, while the desire is still there, I would like to set a goal of attaining a newspaper reading level in two languages (French, and probably German) by the end of the year.  If I am not too lazy, I think I ought to be able to manage that.  Of course that is partly based on the assumption that foreign languages, like computer languages become easier to pick up with each new language that you study.

So, with seige towers rolling off toward the language barrier, let us move on to my more abstract goal for 2007, living without fear.  I am afraid of heights, closed spaces, large crowds, spiders and cockroaches.  I am afraid of getting into a fight, breaking down on the side of the road, and talking to girls.  I am afraid of failure and rejection, and possibly affection.  I am afraid of that which is unknown or unseen.  I am afraid of death.  If you will excuse the double negative, there is not much I am not afraid of to some degree.  I have recently been thinking of and watching some of my favorite movies, and I realized that each of these movies, regardless of setting or plot, all have something in common.  They all conatin a hero (or heroine) who makes a decision to fearlessly sacrifice his life for a greater good, be it freedom, love, or the lives of others.  William Wallace in Braveheart, Alice and Duncan in The Last of the Mohicans, Captain John Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars A New Hope; each of these scenes sends a chill down my spine every time I see it.

As I was laying awake a few days ago, thinking about coming back to Muncie, I was reminded of one of the most inspiring sermons I have heard and certainly the most intriguing Christmas message that I have heard.  It is from Pastor Dan Nold at the Calvary Baptist Church in State College, PA and is titled 'An Epic Christmas'.  Seeing as it is from two years ago and I can no longer find it on the Calvary Baptist site (http://www.calvarysc.org/index.php), I have included a recording in this post below for anyone interested in hearing it (may the RIAA have mercy on my soul).  I would not do it justice to try and summarize it here, but suffice it to say that when I hear it, I am inspired to seek the courage to stare fear and adversity in the eye and not back down.  I am inspired to live dangerously without fear.  Each time I hear it I think perhaps this time I could actually succeed...perhaps 2007 could be the year.
  

• Fear
• Anxiety
• Vulnerability
• Uncertainty
• Failure
• Rejection

I wrote these words down last night after watching another hour slowly tick away on my ceiling, counting down the minutes until it is official (366, in case you were wondering).  Rarely do I share what I am truly feeling inside, but I thought that bringing these into the open might somehow make them less real, just scary shadows outside the window that disappear when the lights are turned on.

My mind is a sea of uncertainty, with new questions surfacing every minute and all the answers down in the deep where my hard-earned beginner's swim card cannot possibly take me.  What should I do?  What should I say?  Will she think I am funny?  Boring?  Where can I learn to play guitar at this hour?  Who wrote the book of love?  Who let the Monotones on my boat?

The list goes on and on for miles.  I turn around and see the shore that I am leaving in the distance.  It offers comfort, security, and loneliness, a bittersweet cacophony as Cool Ethan might say.  But I cannot turn back; not now that the salt is in my lungs.  It is a different shore that I must seek now.  One that offers all I ever dreamed.  One that can only be reached through uncharted waters, with peril on every side.  The journey has just begun.  Godspeed.