Supafly.com

Yesterday at Inspiration New Jersey was cool. We knew it would be the lowest attended stop on the tour this fall, but you try not to let that bother you. The people who came needed to be there, and it doesn’t matter how big or small the group is–you give it your all. There’s no doubt the teenagers that came had a terrific day that they will remember for a long time.

Last night at the end of the day my friend Dan and Caroline gave me a heart-felt compliment. I was tired from traveling and from being on stage the whole night. Once the auditorium was emptied we began packing the gear into the trucks. Dan and Caroline caught me at the corner of the stage and told me that it’s how I love people that makes a difference, not what I do when I speak on stage or work on the website. Caroline cited a couple times when I was loving towards her, and how it made a difference for her.

I really needed to hear that at the end of such a crushing travel across the country. It lifted my spirit…giving me peace, knowing that my “performance” means little compared to the simplest things I do.

Once the trucks were packed we snuck onto a couple rides before the park closed. Then Steve Allgeyer, Ike Ndolo, and I drove from Jackson, New Jersey, to Philadelphia. It was fun riding with Steve because he’s always funny and down-to-earth, but it was particularly fun getting to know Ike.

Ike moved from Missouri to Arizona four years ago after he graduated high school. I’ve gotten to know him more since he’s become the Assistant Youth Minister at my church last year. He has a big heart and likes to have a good time, so hanging out with him always thaws me out after a long day at work. He wasn’t scheduled to lead music at our event in New Jersey, but our original musician was stuck in hurricane in Texas. Since Ike lives in my neighborhood, we were able to travel every leg of the trip together from Phoenix to New Jersey and back. It’s so much more fun when you travel with a friend.

Anyway, we fell asleep at 1:30 AM shortly after we settled into the hotel by the Philadelphia airport. It was such a gross, ghetto hotel. Ike and I shared in the fear factor as we each snuggled into our beds. It was the kind of sheets that you tried not to move around much. I just laid still until I fell asleep. Four hours later, we woke up and hopped in the shuttle bus to the airport. In the last five years of traveling, I’ve never; felt rested or at peace while I was in the Philadelphia airport. Every part of that airport reminds me of the sleep-deprevation, stress, and the 1500 miles I had to cross before I could be home.

I lucked out with a first class seat, and I fell asleep about a half-hour into the flight. I woke up somewhere over New Mexico. It’s much easier to fall asleep in a big first class seat than it is packed in with strangers in the back. I spent the last half hour of the flight talking about real estate with the guy sitting next to me. He builds condos in Las Vegas.

It’s so good to be home in Arizona. Pope John Paul II would always kiss the ground every time he got out of the plane. It might be a little melodramatic for an average guy like myself, but there is an incalculable comfort that comes from having your feet on the earth. We weren’t meant to live in the sky.

But these three-day weekends are more difficult for me now than they have ever been. Candyce and I are in a serious relationship, and there’s nothing more I want to do on the weekend than spend time with her. I mean, I’ve grown up in the five years since I began traveling. My life has changed, and I am enjoying those changes.

Maybe for next year’s Inspiration Tour, we will assign speakers according to who lives closest to each tour stop. There’s no reason traveling 3500 miles round trip to do something that someone else can do just as well. Being there yesterday was hard for me, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

This is what I accomplished today before 9:30 AM.

1. Cleaned a very dirty kitchen and dining room
2. Did two loads of laundry
3. Updated Lifeteen.com six times
4. Checked four email accounts
5. Composed an executive email
6. Took out the trash
7. Carried several IM conversations
8. Paid my bills online
9. Opened and sorted my mail
10. Made a breakfast date with Candyce

Now I am on the last hour of a way-too-long flight to Philadelphia. I am so hungry right now I am about to snap. Its late in September and the temperatures should be dropping, which is awesome. This is a frustrating time to live in Phoenix because we have really hot summers, and we feel entitled to a speedy autumn. Usually summer will drag on weeks after it should. I am ready for a change!

I’ve worked 10-11 hour days every day since February 14 of this year. I got into work yesterday at 8:30 AM, and I didn’t leave until 7:30 PM. It’s not because I screwed around all day and I had to stay late to finish my work, but it’s because there is that much work to do. I work at a frantic pace everyday–beyond what I ever knew was possible. Everyday at the studio is like the day before the big final in college.

I hope there is an end in sight. We are about to launch a new online store, and that will hopefully start bringing in more money for our organization. With more money, I can hopefully hire another person to help out and lighten my impossible work load. It’s hard because I feel like our website is a brand new Ferrari. It looks great just sitting there, but you only know what it can do when you take it to the high gears. Right now we are puttering along in second gear. Everyone is wowed, but they have no idea how much better the site can get.

Tomorrow I am speaking at the third stop of the Inspiration Tour in Jackson, New Jersey. It’s a long flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia, then we have a two hour drive to the hotel in New Jersey. This is going to be a long, hard weekend.

I don’t know how I get into these situations. I mean, I cut back on traveling, but somehow I’m scheduled to travel most of the weekends this fall. Most of it is because of the Inspiration Tour that Life Teen hosts in five cities. I’m doing three or four of the events. These are great events, but I don’t know how much longer I can live like this. I’m so active and productive that I am almost depressed.

Someone told me the other day that, “10% of the people do 90% of the work.” I’ve heard that throughout my life, but I’ve never believed it more. I can’t point to who in my life is among the 90% who do mostly nothing. All of my friends are go-getters who make things happen. But, I really do wonder how the other side lives.

It says in the Bible that, “virtue is its own reward.” So as you make the correct moral decisions and live a selfless life, the rewards come from each of those decisions. Most people are too selfish and impatient to try a life like that, so they can’t believe the rewards could be there. I know the rewards are out there, but I’m having trouble feeling that right now.

Now I know I should be thankful for my health, family, friends, and for Candyce. I am very thankful! I have blessing all over, but I guess I am too overworked to really experience those blessings. Poor Candyce and I have to work so hard to make time for each other. Every time we talk on the phone and try to schedule time to spend with each other, there is hesitation in our voices as we try to sort through our million responsibilities and deadlines before we can commit to time with one another. We always DO spend time with each other, but we are always haunted by the world that has demanded much of us.

Why is it like this?

This summer I talked to a young mother backstage at a Steubenville Conference that I was speaking at. Each year she and her husband are a part of a team of volunteers that make the weekend go smoothly. They set up the meals, help people find seats, and run around with walkie-talkies helping people who need it at the moment. She and I sat down for a moment in all the insanity of the weekend, and I asked her why she continues to volunteer every year.

She explained that she knows the weekend is a life-changing experience for those teenagers, and she wants to help in anyway. She went on forever about the stories she’s heard from friends who’ve attended the conference as teenagers. Then she paused and said, “And I know this isn’t the reason why we come, but my husband and I always get a blessing after the conference. It’s a delightful surprise that we look forward to after every conference. I don’t know…God just always has something waiting for us.”

I don’t know, I mean, I’ve gave my all at about 200 conferences like the one she helps out at once a year. I’m not comparing my service with hers or what blessings we are “owed”, but I do wonder if I’m missing a blessing because I am too stupid to see it.

The great saints knew that suffering was a blessing. I wonder about what kind of “blessing” the television preachers are really talking about when they preach about “God’s favor.” Is he talking about the suffering God has given him? It seems like every testimony I’ve ever heard involves them getting rich somehow. It just doesn’t seem right to think that God would make people rich. I can’t make sense of it.

Maybe I am blessed right now in my suffering from working so much. Maybe I’m in the middle of the greatest blessing of my life. I’m not doubting that God is looking out for me, but I am struggling to understand why I am always so tired and lifeless.

I always see advertisements that say something along the lines of, “You owe it to yourself” or “Because you deserve it.” I read that and it resonates deep inside of me. I almost want to turn my car around and read the billboard again just to hear someone appreciate my hard work.

After five years of an insane travel schedule and endless work and personal projects, I wonder if this is how I am going to live the rest of my life. Will I always be too busy to notice the blessings around me? Will I ever be able to lay on the couch and watch a TV show without being haunted by what I’m “supposed to be doing”?

A few weeks ago my mom told me that when I came home for Christmas, I was restless. I couldn’t sit in the room and just be. She explained that my eyes darted around the room and my mind was in another place. She said, “You aren’t content in the normal experience of living.”

I’m sitting at Candyce’s coffee shop on a beautiful Saturday morning. With every day that passes, temperatures drop in Arizona. Our summer is like every else’s winter: you stay inside. Today’s high is going to be 99 degrees, which is nothing in dry heat. I climbed out of my bed at eight this morning just so I could catch the cool morning. On my drive over here, I couldn’t believe how many people were taking walks and riding bikes. There were hundreds of them!

The past month at work has been hectic trying to launch the store on lifeteen.com. A month ago, my computer crashed and I lost many of my files from the last four years of my life. That was good and bad. Good because I’m glad to be done with that crap, and bad because I needed some of that crap. So I reformatted my computer and got back to the store.

It was three weeks of hard work, then my newer computer crashed three days ago. I lost all my files again. Its easy to say that I should’ve been backing up my files, but who backs up files on a new computer? I mean I hadn’t even added names to my address book yet. Yesterday I installed a new hard drive and started back up.

It’s ironic because I had to reformat my home computer the day before. It had become so buggy and loaded with spyware that I couldn’t even do basic tasks like shutting down. I don’t understand because I have Norton and I never download crap. I became so frustrated with these assholes who create spyware that screws up my life. I mean, I’m trying to relaunch nomoho.com, a good website with a good cause, and here I am spending one night after the next restarting in safe mode to scrape off all the spyware.

It’s been pretty easy to deal with these woes because many of my friends are down along the Gulf helping the relief effort for Katrina. If all that crashes is my computer–I am doing pretty well.

So anyway I left work at 7:15 last night after my computer was back in working condition. I picked up Candyce for dinner at a restaurant called “Z Tejas” in Tempe. Five years ago I wouldn’t want to get caught in a chain restaurant because I was too cool for corporate stuff. I preferred locally-owned hipster restaurants. But this place has good food and a good vibe, so why not?

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the “scene” at this restaurant on a Friday night. The average age in was probably 28. Every girl was pretty and every guy was smooth. Our little table was sandwiched in between two large tables of Arizona Cardinals players. The parking lot was loaded with blinged-out H2s, Escalades, and luxury cars. I was so entertained by the scene because I didn’t know it even existed. It’s just so good to be in my own town on a weekend!

I’ve been watching a lot of “Cribs” on MTV. It all started when they had an “Extreme Sports Edition” where they showed the homes of professional skaters, surfers, and BMX riders. So I got a season pass with Tivo and now I have a new show to watch whenever I feel like it.

I never got into “Cribs” before because it seemed like a bunch of foolish celebrities flaunting their foolish purchases. But the extreme sports celebrities have a lot more flair. It’s like they each build a fun house they dreamed about as a kid. One guy had a ramp on the roof of his house in Bel Air, another guy has a full BMX course in his backyard, and almost every skater has a full skate park behind their house. Inside the house is always full of character with art, bright colors, and memorabilia. Their cars are always fun. One guy put shark teeth in the grill of his Dodge Ram V10 pickup to make it look more menacing.

I’ve enjoyed watching the show because I can see how different people deal with having a lot of money. I know on a show called “Cribs”, they aren’t going to show their investment portfolio, but get an idea of where their priorities are. You just watch what they brag about. Some people brag about their flat-screen televisions, and others show off their recording studio. Then others take pride in their collection of art or family photos.

One new R&B singer had a modest one-bedroom and one-bath townhouse in southern California. I thought that was cool to show someone at the early days of the big pay checks. Then the singer took us out to the parking lot of the complex, and she had a fully-loaded toy box: Escalade, H2, BMW, and a custom chopper that she’s never ridden. Why do you have as much money in cars as you do in your house? That’s foolish investing.

I was most fascinated with the house of Brazilian skateboarder Bob Burnquist. His wife is a pro skater, and they have a daughter together. There house is in the hills of San Diego, and their backyard is a massive organic farm. Plus, he has a HUGE skate park. He just seem to have so much character…like there was more to his life than trying to look cool.

One snowboarder in San Diego lives down the street from Candyce’s parents house. I thought it was so wild because I’d heard rumors that Shaun White lived close, but I had to see it to believe it.

Anyway, watching “Cribs” has been fun. It’s given my brain an break in the middle of the hectic pace of working.