Supafly.com

I had trouble sleeping; last night in Boston, so I was able to sleep away the first couple hours of this plane ride. I was hoping to get bumped-up to first class, but I wasn’t so lucky. But I don’t feel as cramped back here as I usually do.

The event in Boston was called “Proud 2b Catholic Music Festival”, and I was the an MC and I led a session. I believe this was the fourth year that they’ve had the event, and each of the 1500 people there seemed pretty excited to be there. It’s hard to know exactly what God is doing at any event, but there’s no doubt that this festival is doing good.

Several of my friends from around the country flew in to do something on stage, so it was fun to catch up with each of them and see what they’ve been up to. We each live the unique life of traveling, and it’s always entertaining to hear their tales of misadventure.

It’s hard to do these three-day trips at this time in my life. I know that I’ve written quite a bit about this subject in 2005, but I can’t just say it and be done with it. I am breaking out of all that I knew for the past four years, and I am dealing with this change every day…

I do love the adventure of experiencing a new place, but I have exciting things going on in my own city that are worth staying home for. For the past four years, I’ve delayed many things in my life because I needed to get out there and travel while I could. Now that that is over, I take so much pleasure in doing the things that I postponed.

I think what it comes down to is this. I could continue to travel and make a difference in the world, one talk at a time. But, I miss out on other opportunities because I doing the same thing over-and-over again. I feel like there’s more that I can do than stand in front of a group and speak, and now is the time to start doing it. I’m at peace with this.

This week I’m traveling with Candyce and her family to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. It will be a cool opportunity to relax and freshen-up my creativity. Whenever I travel to another culture, I always come back loaded with new ideas.

I am on a flight from Phoenix to Boston so I can be the MC at a Catholic youth rally tomorrow. I don’t know how this weekend will turn out, but I always;feel better leaving home for a weekend when I know the event is planned well. I really have traveled an insane amount over the past four and a half years.

My life is changing, and I am happy to have these changes. The most drastic change is cutting back on traveling. I traveled an average of 35 weekends a year for the past five years, and now I am cutting it down to about one weekend per month. Although the number of flights has cut down, I am still reaching a lot of teenagers because the events are quality.

I am thankful that my friend Mark Hart set up the Inspiration Tour each year during the fall, because I am able to connect with over 10,000 teenagers in five quick trips with my friends. Aside from the Inspiration Tour, I am speaking at our summer camps in Georgia (close to my parents) and Arizona (close to my home.) I’ll always spend a week at the LTND conference because it’s such a phenomenal five days. Then I will speak at larger events—1500+ attendees–throughout the year.

It’s quite beautiful to watch this transition in my life. As my MTV fame has passed, my online influence through lifeteen.com has grown tremendously. Since we launched Version2 in February, the popularity of the site has grown immensely. We averaged 650,000 page views per month on the old site, now we average 2,200,000 per month. That’s a 360% increase. Our average visitor comes to the site 4.8 times each day.

Those are excellent numbers that point to one thing: the people who come to our site love it. Now the goal is to get more people to come to the site. And that’s where my traveling becomes so important. I am a walking promotional campaign for lifeteen.com.; This is a success story already, but it will only get better. We have ten projects planned for this school year that will push the site to become more of an online community. The results will be staggering.

I am enjoying being a grownup. Although my experiences on MTV were exciting and glamorous, I did very little to earn those delights. Could something that came so quickly stay that long? After the show, I had so much opportunity in my hands, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

Fresh off The Real World, I took an honest look at my skills, and figured out that I don’t have what it takes to make it in Hollywood. I can’t sing, dance, or act. I have a fun personality and enjoy making people laugh, but I could never cut it as a comedian or hold captive an audience in a talk show. Good looking people can do okay, but they’ll soon be replaced by someone who is younger and better looking. So what’s left in Hollywood for me? Maybe another reality show, but what after that? Not much.

I believe I made a good decision to bail out on the chase for fame and fortune in Hollywood. I fought through two years of hell to get that website up, and it’s proved to be well worth the fight. The success of lifeteen.com has really helped me self-esteem because it tells me I made the right decision.

I spent the past four days in San Diego with Candyce and her family. I flew out Thursday night and got in at eight this morning on time for Monday at work.

I wasn’t planning on traveling out there over the weekend, but I realized it had been over three weeks since we had seen each other. If I didn’t go out this weekend it would’ve been almost five weeks apart. It doesn’t make me any tougher of a guy because I can go without my girlfriend. We’re at a point in our relationship where it’s all about commitment. So regardless of how busy I am out here in Phoenix, I have to make time for the two of us. She’s worth it.

Playing House
It felt GOOD to be together. We usually do the same thing: coffee shops, beach, and looking at houses. Looking at houses is my favorite part. You can call it “getting to know the market” or just snooping in someone else’s house, either way, we sure to have a good time. Part of the reason we love it is because homes in Phoenix and; San Diego are so different.;

In Phoenix, people like things to look uniform and in harmony with nature and one another. I like that because you don’t have to worry about your neighbor building an ugly house. And in fifteen years when your neighborhood isn’t new anymore, you can guarantee it will still look tidy and presentable. In San Diego, everyone builds off of the classic look of a California beach house. Every house seems to have so much personality and energy. You just want to kick off your sandals at the front door and start your living right away.

The opportunity became even more enticing when we found two homes in our favorite neighborhood that were for sale and within my price range. But it would take require that I cash out of every nickel in every investment that I have. The house would be an investment, just like any other, except this investment is a lot more fun.

Making it Work
This is how we would make it work. For the first couple years, we’d rent it out to beach-going vacationers to help bring in money that we could put back into the house.

Once the beach season passes, we would leave Phoenix for the long weekends and work on the house. This is the part that excited me the most, because there is nothing I’d love more than to spend time with my dad remodeling the house. It would be a dream for both of us.

After a couple years of renting it out and remodeling, Candyce and I would be married and we’d live in San Diego for the summers, then in Phoenix for the rest of the year. This way we could be near her family for at least part of the year.; Plus, it would be a terrific vacation spot for all my family back in Georgia. A house near the ocean would tease them into visiting me more often.;

The Big Decision
It was an exciting story waiting for us. But after praying, comparing money numbers, and discussing every pro and con, we decided it was too early to make a decision this big. I’m all for taking chances, but you cannot let your big dreams outrun your logic.; It’s best to be patient and continue to make smart investments now to make this dream come true tomorrow.

One thing that bothered Candyce and I most about the dream is that to make this come true, we would have no money free to give to our favorite charities. It would basically be a story of the two of us hoarding our God-given blessing so that we could have a cool place to live. It didn’t feel right.

Making this decision with Candyce was truly wonderful,; because it’s something BIG we did together. Some couple dread making decisions; together because it causes division and bitterness. But for us, it was a peace-filled and exciting decision to make together. This is a sign of a good life to come!

I really like my 10-year-old Honda Civic, mostly because it’s inexpensive to own. It gets really good gas mileage, which has become a big factor in the past year. Gas prices are so freaking high right now. Every time I see a jacked-up Suburban with big tires, I feel a deep pity for that guy. He spends at least $60 every trip to the gas station. My car is also awesome because I never need to take it to the mechanic.

All in all, the car frees up money so that I can afford other things. I can get over my ego and drive an older car because I know that it makes every other part of my life a little more exciting. But this excitement is starting to pass because me car is getting more ghetto by the day. Right now, it needs new paint, a fixed fender, and a repaired dashboard so my A/C can work again.

So today I spent two hours looking for a new car online. I’m going to stick with a Honda, but I’m not sure if I want an Accord Coupe or a Civic Coupe. It will need to be newer, maybe a 2000 or a 2001. I know that much, but I don’t know if I have the time to buy a car right now.

When I really look at the situation, buying a car is yet another project and I have too many of those to do. I have no time to look for a car, organize test-drives, and investigate the history of the car. Once I find the car, then I have to decide whether to finance the car or pay for it all at once. Then it’s time for registration and getting insurance.;

I am realizing that there are no “small projects”. They always end up taking twice as long as you think that they will. If I really don’t have the time to do it, I gain nothing by trying to “make time”. As it is, I’ve already made time for too many things. I’m so close to making NoMoHo.com quite cool, and I think I’m just going to drive a ghetto car until that site is finished.

It is so exciting to write a journal about how well lifeteen.com is going. This time last year I had nothing good to write about. I was frustrated because I felt like all my talent and passion was thwarted by incompetent people. It really took a toll on my self-esteem.

Today Mark, Adam Robo, and I had an hour-long meeting about what we’ve done this summer, and what we are going to do this fall. The biggest satisfaction comes from having Adam on full-time so we can update the site more each day. We have cool sections that deserve to be updated often. Although we still have some room for improvement, we have a strong group of writers reviewing movies, video games, and CDs. Hopefully God will bring us some talented people to review books.

But as I write this, I realize I still have not forgiven people that I work with for not giving me an intern to help me through the hellish work load of the spring. We went around in circles for several weeks trying to figure out if it was a priority, and nothing ever happened. I know that they had other things to worry about, but their unwillingness to get me an intern put me through five months of hell–and nobody seemed to notice.

Everyone demanded that I get everything done, but nobody had a clue how much work I had to do when I came into the office each morning. I need to get a big banner to hang on the wall above my desk that reads: “At any other company, 10 people do my job.” This is not just some general value I place on the work I put into the website–it is a reality.

Show me another website where ONE person who does all of this: maintains 2600 pages of original content, edits the work of 60 writers, and updates over 30 sections to make an average of 23 updates to the site each day. This is not just me pasting in someone else’s work and clicking “update”. I have to edit, re-write, and format every update. I do all the graphics, fix old code, and write new code. On top of all of that, I designed 23 shirts in two weeks and spoke in front of thousands of people at a dozen conferences.

“Busy” was the pace I was working three years ago. “Overloaded” was two years ago. This spring, I was absolutely DROWNING in work. I worked at a frantic pace every second of the day to keep the website held together. This went on for five months. I’ve never felt so helpless. Just writing about it right now stirs anger in my chest and I want to explode.

How did this Happen?
This journal started out as happy and I’ve become angry. Rarely do I let emotion drive any part of my work decisions. But the anger inside of me is real. I don’t know.

I think I’ve created a problem by succeeding at anything that people throw at me. I always do whatever I can to solve problems that would help make our ministry stronger. Every part of our ministry needs the website in one way or another, and what they needed, I always got done. So to them, I don’t need any more help. Nothing seems broke, so why fix it? I need to start telling people, “No. I can’t get that done because I physically cannot fit any more into this week.”

I don’t like it when people try to muscle me into finishing one project and not another, as if I was a poor worker and needed a little motivation to get my work done. I work very hard to manage each project to keep harmony so everything gets done. And getting muscled into shifting priorities only tells me that that person has know idea what I do and the repercussions of their expectations.

Another thing that is driving me absolutely insane is trying save money every step of the way. Pinching pennies is taking up way too much of my time today, and will cause me great pain in the future. I know this because every project gets disrupted because of some money-saving decision that should’ve never been made. In the end, every penny we pinched this spring meant only one thing: I had to work longer and harder.; A two-minute decision broke my back for two months.

I hope that this is all going to change because I have Adam Robo on board full-time. It took several months to find him, and some of my frustration comes from the fact that I needed him that whole time. And I know that everyone has a lot to do. It’s not fair to focus this anger and resentment at anyone specifically, but this anger is real. I’ve deleted three paragraphs of anger from this journal because I didn’t want to immortalize my resentment. I need to pray about this and try to figure out what to do.