joshmorton.com

the Universe: If you’re a fan of Douglas Adams, you recognized my spoof on the title of the third book in his “trilogy,” the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While Adams grew up Christian, he eventually managed to somehow ‘reason’ himself out of it, apparently figuring that agnosticism is the only true belief. While I don’t agree with his faulty belief system, I do claim his famed saga to be my favorite collection of fictional literature, and in fact I’m looking right now at the complete collection which is proudly sitting on my bookshelf, right next to one of my HTML reference books. If you’ve never read the Hitchhiker’s Guide, I would highly recommend that you do. The basic storyline is a human traveling through space with his alien friend, recounting the adventures they have together after Arthur is pulled off the planet just seconds before it is destroyed to make room for an interstellar highway being built. What makes the book so great is not necessarily the story itself, but the satirical, refreshingly witty way in which Adams tells it. And while I can’t imagine a non sci-fi fan reading all five of the books, I do think it’s worth at least reading the first one, just to experience the genius that is the writing style of Douglas Adams.

Life: I am inching closer to making my first major purchase or two in the world of backpacking. Thos of you who have been following my adventures, even before I was writing about them, know that backpacking and its various related activities (kayaking, hiking, camping) have become one of my all-time favorite things to do. What I’ve been looking for recently is some basic equipment, for two reasons. First of all, I want to have the equipment to take extended trips into the wilderness, because I’ve found few things as physically, emotionally, and spiritually refreshing as extended periods of time out in God’s magnificent creation; and secondly, spending several hundred dollars to get into a hobby will just eat away at me if I don’t actually put the equipment to use. The three big items are a tent, a pack, and a sleeping bag. I already have an acceptable sleeping bag–certainly not the best, but it does the job–so that leaves me to find a pack to fit my needs, and a tent to shelter me.
The biggest problem I’m finding right now are the two different theories on how to properly backpack. One is the ultralight philosophy, where guys saw their toothbrush in half to save the extra dead weight. Their slogan is ‘light is right,’ and they like to push their beliefs on everyone else. The other guys tend to carry full-length toothbrushes, and generally carry a load ten to twenty pounds heavier than ultralighters. While they sacrifice the ease of lightweight travel, they also enjoy a few things the ultra guys leave behind, like toothpaste, and still having teeth (there is also a third group of luxury hikers, but anyone who carries chairs or cellphones or computers with them is no backpacker, but merely a poor RV enthusiast). Now I have nothing against trying to save weight, and I don’t even mind going a week without a shower or toilets or those types of things. But I refuse to sacrifice my teeth to save 6 ounces on the trail. So it appears I’m leaning towards the second theory, which probably means a more expensive pack and a lot of scorn from the ulralighters I know. Whatever my end decision is, at least I have the confidence of knowing I’ve spent hours and hours comparison shopping and review reading, and I have yet to be disappointed in any large purchases I’ve made when I’ve spent the time to do the proper research on the item. Still yet to be determined is the location of the next trip, which will be no later than mid-October, and hopefully sooner.

Fantasy Football. If you still don’t know what fantasy football is, accept this quick explanation as a hearty slap on the wrist. Fantasy football is a game where a group of people all get together and build teams of NFL players. These players form a starting roster, which scores points based on stats of that player during a given week. So, for example, if Peyton Manning throws three TDs, he’s just scored 18 points. Each week, teams go head to head, and whichever team scores the most points wins the game that week. From there on, it works pretty much like you would expect it to. We keep records of wins and losses, and the best teams make it to the playoffs, where eventually we crown a champion.
Now, the actual game has no semblance of physical prowess whatsoever, but is instead a mental game, challenging the knowledge of one man against another, and rewarding he whose football instincts (and luck) are greater than his opponent. Fantasy football is a way to insult, gloat, brag, and generally demoralize your opponents, but all to serve a greater purpose of male comraderie. In the end, fantasy football is a means of bringing friends together through a common medium to enjoy each other’s friendship, and we experienced that Sunday in a new and incredibly fun way.
Aaron Shepherd (again, link on the right –> ) explains our night very thoroughly, but I just wanted to comment on how much fun it was being with some of my favorite people, chillaxin in the Shepherd basement, doing something completely ridiculous and utterly amusing. For the first time, we had our draft in person, giving free reign of our opinions of players, pacing back and forth together, and tossing back the Mountain Dew. Yes, playing fantasy football is a lot of fun, but it’s the friendship that makes it worth playing. I really do love those guys, and look forward to a year full of rivalry, taunting, and sheer humiliation… just hopefully not of my team

As I hope I’ve made clear recently through my writings, I like to write. If you don’t know by now, it’s a goal of mine to be able to call myself a writer and actually feel like I’ve earned the title. While there are many options open to me as to what career to pursue after college, only three of them consistently make the list, and getting paid to write is one of them (the others two are to be a pilot, or to… okay, there’s really only two I like all of the time).

The problem with being a writer is that you actually have to write things. Now, for many in the profession, that seems to be no problem at all. I can point to countless writers who are more faithful and more prolific at their writing than I. It seems like they never have the shortage of words that I experience so often. Honestly, I think the problem lies more in the fact that I don’t like to write unless I feel that 1) I have something worth listening to, and 2) I can write about that thing in a fresh and creative way. The last thing I want is to write things that feel like form letters.

So when I decide to write something, I usually start the process one to two hours ahead of when I actually login to my website and start typing. First of all, I start my standard evening routine of checking my email, and then heading straight here. I check for any new comments that may be there, and then look at what I last wrote and when it was written. Eventually there comes a day, much like today, where I decide it’s been too long between posts, and I must write again or ultimately lose the readership I so desparately want. So now that I’ve decided it’s time to write again, I leave my website and follow my links to all the other blogs I read, and keep up with what other people are busy saying. Then I usually get distracted by something, and do it for the next couple hours.

Okay, so two hours have gone by and we’re back to my undistracted self. It’s past midnight, I would rather be sleeping, and yet my desk light is on and I feel my website beginning to stare darts at me. There’s this little guy, and he starts whispering into my ear about how I’m not actually a writer and how terribly long it’s been since there have been any meaningful serifs or sans-serifs gracing my front page. So naturally I begin to write to disprove the little guy, working harder and harder to be creative and unique. Yes, I want to have my own “style” and have people say things like, “I like the way he writes,” or, “He’s got a unique style,” but then again, I don’t.

So I end up writing things that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, such as the previous few paragraphs, or the thing about lemon water, or whatever. Hopefully I’ll one day start writing things that are insightful, or meaningful, or maybe I’ll get lucky and actually write something that makes you ask questions you’ve never asked before. Not that I can impart any sort of revelation of my own, but I do feel like God is always revealing himself if I’m looking for him, and I hope that I am focused enough on him day by day to actually grow in my knowledge of him. God gave mankind a wonderful thing called a mind, and with it we have the ability to think and ask questions and search for truth, and normally when I write it’s nothing more than all of those things coming out in words–I’m just trying to share my thoughts and feelings with you.

I have hundreds of topics and ideas and thoughts to write about, but I can’t seem to get a single darn thing out; this latest article a case in point. Once again, I have another relatively useless article on my hands. But I will also say that God made us to enjoy humour and entertainment, and I hope at the very least I’ve captured a little of both. Maybe not. But hey, at least the little guy is happy again.

In order for you to grasp the full humor of this satire, you must first read my good friend Aaron Shepherd’s latest writing, “I refuse to write…” The link is over there on the right, so I don’t particularly feel the need to put it here.

There’s a disturbing movement in the world today. To be honest, I’m not sure that you can really trace the history back to its roots, but somewhere along the way, it became socially acceptable to drink watered-down lemonade. It could possibly have started as a diabetic solution to the heaps of sugar thrown into a pitcher of lemonade, or perhaps a desperate college student in need of the lesser half of his Arnie Palmer, having just used the last of the sugar to make iced tea in the proper way. But my best guess is that the practice was actually invented by the Starbucks faithful, those surburbanites who retreat to their local coffeeshop in an attempt to satisfy their need to be part of the ‘in-crowd.’

I suppose what’s even more disturbing than a rogue slice of lemon, is flavored water, which apparently is all the rage. I mean, this is water… God’s perfect drink! Sure, a few things come very close (namely sweet tea and Mountain Dew), but do we really think we can improve on water? These feeble attempts to add fruit flavor to pure H2O are nothing shy of man’s latest futile attempt at reaching a level of demi-god; and where has that gotten mankind? At Babel, it got us split into different nations and languages, in ancient Rome, it managed to get most of the caesars assissinated, and during the Enlightenment it led to countless men dying, and looking extremely silly doing it. So go ahead, flavor your water. Add your lemons, and make sure to subscribe to your own particular method of how to best add them. You may live for years upon years without ever feeling any ill effects from your habit, but then again there was a time when cigarettes were a statement of coolness, too.

Yes, I realize that nothing I’ve said here is likely to change your thirst-quenching habits, even though I’ve clearly presented indisputable evidence of why fruit was not meant to merely “flavor” your water. So continue your lukewarm habits. Put lemons in your water, but don’t take expend the effort to add sugar and stir. Buy the bottle with the colored labels, and get your berry high for the day. All I can say is someday, when the flavor has come and gone, there’s still one drink without which life could not exist. And the lemons aren’t included.

In sports, there is a moment when an athlete can define himself. One of those plays which shows up again and again, and somehow manages to wrap up the essence of a player within the glory of the moment. You’ve seen them countless times, even if you don’t think you have. Michael Jordan hits a fadeaway jumper to put away the title, Randy Johnson picks the corner to complete his perfect game, Wayne Gretzky skating through an entire hockey team and making them look like junior highers (read: American hockey players). In the same respect, there are moments which inevitably define a career more infamously, probably none more than Bill Buckner and the slow roller down the first base line. In an era of juiced-up pro athletes, where inflated numbers can sometimes obscure athletic greatness, there ultimately comes the moment when a player rises to the occasion, and declares himself a champion amongst winners.

Actually, a lot of things in life tend to fit into this paradigm. The more I think about things (and I’ve done a lot of thinking this summer) the more I believe it to be true. Everywhere from academics to business to music, there are people who perform extremely well, and then there are people who perform almost inhumanly well. The more I think about life, and particularly life outside ‘the bubble’ at IWU, the more I feel like a winner among champions. I mean, I have some pretty incredibly talented friends. It seems everyone I know is exceedingly talented and gifted in their chosen vocation, and I feel left out. My friends are applying to top law schools, forging their places in successful businesses, and beginning effective ministries in local churches, all while I sharpen my skills at… pulling all-nighters driving school vans?

Personally, I take the blame for it. I have every confidence in the fact that God has made me exactly as he intended me to be, that’s not what I’m calling into question. And I’m not even saying I’m not good at anything. I’m good at a lot of things. I’ve just never hit a 40-foot sidehill putt to win my Ryder Cup. At least not yet. Honestly, I place the blame squarely on myself. I’m not sure exactly where I missed it, but somewhere between middle school and college, my friends learned to work hard at school, hard at becoming a cut above average; and I tried to be a cut above while working like the average person. No doubt part of my problem was and is the lack of goals. I don’t honestly know what I’ll be doing a year from now, so it’s hard for me to establish a goal to strive for. But beyond that, the real culprit is my lack of hard work. Things have always come pretty easy to me. Easy enough for me to be decent at them, maybe even better than most, as long as they never practice.

So as best I can figure after living with myself for the last 21 and a half years, one of two things will happen. Either I will let the ball dribble between my legs, and end up in second place, or I can decide this year to do things differently. To work hard, and eight months from now when I walk down the steps, degree in hand, I will sit there knowing that I worked hard, and left nothing behind. There’s three years of me left behind on the IWU campus. I have scores of C’s when I could’ve had A’s. And I’m not by any means saying that I’m going to have a 4.0 this semester. I’m quite content with a 3.5 and a lot of extracirricular things as well. That’s not really the point. My point is this: my collegiate career has come to the bottom of the ninth. There are two outs, I’m down by three, and the bases are loaded with my past three years of college. I’m not stepping in and looking for a hit, I’ve done that before. I’m looking for my walk-off Grand Slam, my highlight which gets replayed over and over again. I want to start a trend in my life of living it to the fullest and leaving nothing behind. Leaving nothing behind in my spiritual walk. Leaving nothing behind in my social life. Leaving nothing behind academically, physically, or any of those other adverbial parts of life.

Before I start to get all of the emails telling me I can’t do this on my own, I know that. Look at my past record. If it were up to me, I would be okay with always ending up in second place. This isn’t about me. It’s about the Holy Spirit working in my life. It’s about me feeling like God expects me to do the very best I can at life. It’s about setting a goal to leave nothing behind because the thing I feel I’ve left furthest behind is my spiritual walk. I’m not out to prove anything to anyone. I’m simply deciding to pick up my cross, and die to myself. And I mean it. If it was a half-hearted decision, I would never make it public for you to read it. But it’s out there, you’ve read it, and I’m counting on you to keep me accountable on this one.

In the past seven or eight months, a lot of changes have happened at joshmorton.com, and this is by far the best one yet. I am now a proud user of WordPress, an open-source program which has quickly established itself as the dominant blog power for those of us who crave more than what blogger.com can give us. I now have all sorts of controls and functions I never had while using blogger, and the result will be a much more appealing, easier to use website. Eventually I’ll bring back all of the previous articles I’ve written, but I’ve given myself the next 9 days as a timetable for that to happen. So until then, come back often as the scenery starts to develop on the new website, and feel free to leave a comment in the now very user-friendly comments section.

I have a lot of things to write about, so look forward to some articles quickly, and also some news about how the articles will come this year.