Supafly.com

It’s Saturday morning and I’m on my flight to Minneapolis. I have no idea why my laptop battery has almost two hours of juice left in it. Just a few weeks ago, it could hardly last for fifteen minutes without going dead. This could be a miracle, or someone who loves me bought me a new battery without telling me. Either one would be cool.

I’m to the point where I am thoroughly tired of my personal life being neglected. For four years, I’ve been go go go! I’ve hardly relaxed. I’ve neglected my house. Last night I Candyce and I had friends over for dinner, and I was almost embarrassed of my house. The carpet is old and is getting stained. The kitchen cabinets are old and cheap. The walls are white, scuffed, and unexciting. You wouldn’t imagine it’s a home of a creative spirit.

I just opened up a document on my laptop called “Goals for 2005″ that was last edited on February 13, 2005. That was almost three months ago. My goals then–small goals–were the exact goals I wrote down this morning while waiting in the airport. I am ashamed of myself for not being able to accomplish such small tasks.

What I’ve found is that I have more ideas than I have time. Even though my days are packed and my schedule is full, the ideas keep coming. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I am doing–there is always a new idea spinning in my head.

The most satisfying part of my post-college life is that my career is to make my ideas become reality. Everything that I do each day are things that I invent in my head. Nobody tells me what has to get done. I just think of something, then I make it happen. I love it!

I don’t have a solution for this idea/time dilemma. It’s been a recurring problem in the last five years of my life, and I haven’t honestly figured out how to solve it. Since I only write journals in the awkward moments when I can’t accomplish anything else–it usually comes across that I am whining. But I’m not…I’m just trying to sort out my ambitions in life.

Since the pope’s death, the activity on our website (lifeteen.com) has increased twenty percent. So I’ve worked hard all week to keep the site fresh and relevant so those people keep coming back. It’s an exciting time, but it’s becoming painfully obvious that I need the help of another full-time staff person and two more interns.

I canceled my snowboarding trip to Tahoe that was scheduled for next week. When I filled in speaking dates on my calendar, I realized I only have three weekends off before I hit a non-stop travel in the summer. It’s not until the fall that it slows down and I have any more weekends off. If I expect to finish any personal projects, I cannot afford to fill up a weekend with a trip out of town. I mean, I have a gangster-looking ’54 Chevy in my garage that I’ve hardly driven ten miles in the year that I’ve owned it. I’m too busy!

It’s been exciting to hear all the news coverage about Pope John Paul II. As much as people have loved to hate him for political reasons, every media mouth is forced to reconcile with the fact that he was a giant of a man. How else can you explain the millions of people who traveled across Europe to see his body?

In the last week, three people have told me things about lifeteen.com that have made me feel good. The first one was from Randy, the VP of Life Teen. He said, “The website is so cool, it makes all of us look better.” I loved hearing this because my goal since the beginning was to set a high standard for all the divisions of our ministry. Randy had just come back from lunch at a resort to consider holding our conferences there. The resort staff explained to him that they’d done some research about Life Teen, and went to our website to see what we were about. One person on staff said, “We spent an hour on lifeteen.com. I know it’s meant for teenagers, but; it’s interesting to adults too.” Awesome!;

The most flattering thing someone can tell a web designer is that you came onto their site, clicked around–and keep clicking around. It takes tremendous amount of work to make a site usable and familiar to first-time visitors. Then to fill that structure with interesting content is another challenge. When you accomplish both, then you know you have succeeded.

My friend Chris is a Youth Minister hear in town and he said, “It’s my homepage. I don’t have to go to other sites to find out news or anything, because all I need is right there. I love just spending time clicking around in the morning, even though it’s officially work.” I keep our visitors informed on world news, interesting perspectives, and funny or uplifting stories that are being covered by the media. It’s important that teenagers are challenged to know what’s going on outside of their town.

So yes, it’s been a busy busy week. We have tomorrow off in honor of the pope’s funeral. I think I’m going to Tivo the funeral tonight and watch it tomorrow.

Today we lost a good one. Heaven opened wide for Pope John Paul II. He was a revolutionary, a fighter for humanity.

I woke up early today because I knew the pope could die at any moment. John Paul II is very important to me, so I wanted to make today worthy of remembering.

I spent most of the day watching the news. It’s such a joy to hear the rest of the world saying things that I’ve been saying for years.

After the pope died, I updated lifeteen.com with fresh content. Then I went to the chapel and prayed for the pope’s soul and the whole church.

Today we lost a great one.

I spent the past six hours designing graphics about the pope: T-shirts, posters, buttons, stickers, whatever. It was a beautiful time for me. Creativity has always been a way that I connect with the Creator. It was soul-stirring to imagine the pope entering heaven, and have him smiling down on me at my computer. This kind of thing is hard to explain.

JP2 is a big role model for me, an example of how a Christian can have influence on society and the world.

This morning I drove up near Pinnacle Peak in northeast Phoenix. The area around Pinnacle Peak is picturesque desert with tall saguaro cactus scattered on mountains of giant granite bounders. Since it is spring, the mountains are covered with millions of yellow wild flowers. It was so beautiful to watch the ocean of flowers waving while the saguaros stood unmoved. The scenery was so stunning, that I turned around and drove each road again. I had last week’s live recording of XLT in the CD player, and I just drove and sang at the top of my lungs. I must’ve been the happiest guy in the world.