Supafly.com

I’m writing from my room on the eighth floor of the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta. Actually, it’s my friend Paul George’s hotel room, and he gave me a cot in the corner.

I have an hour before I have anything to do, so I am enjoying laying here in bed, watching “This Old House” on the TV, then looking out the huge window onto the Atlanta Skyline. Then I look at this laptop. The room is at the end of the hall, and we have a huge bay window that opens up the view of the skyscrapers of Downtown and Midtown. Last night it was a quiet thrill to look out over the sparkling city. I’ve always loved city lights, and I always will.

I am here in Atlanta for the National Catholic Youth Conference, known by everyone here as NCYC. Youth groups come in from around the country every two years to the host city for several days of talks, entertainment, and hang out time. The attendance this year is low, about 17,000 teenagers. In years past, it’s been almost twice that. But regardless, that’s still a lot of teenagers.

The thing to do here is to build up the personality of your group. You wear matching shirts, hats, or whatever makes you look most ridiculous. You make friends with other groups by trading little gizmos or trinkets. A group from Texas might have little cowboy pins, and a group from Lima, Ohio, will give away baggies of lima beans. It’s silly circus of teenagers, but it helps people get to know each other.

Life Teen has sponsored two concert stages, and we have a large booth set up where we tell people about our youth group program, our summer camps, and we sell T-shirts. In the past few NCYCs, I’ve given sessions where people come and sit down in a room while I talk. This year I am an MC for one of our stages. I’m glad that my role has changed, because I do not have the energy to prepare for a session to entertain, engage, and inspire teenagers in a tight forty-five minutes.

All day every day I work on lifeteen.com, a site for Catholic teenagers. And here I am; at the National Catholic Youth Conference, and I am stunned by how many teenagers that don’t know about our website. I mean, this is our target demographic, and it looks to me like we are failing. We should have a Greyhound bus wrapped with “lifeteen.com”, parked right in the front of the convention center.

It’s just; weird feeling to have spinning in my chest…a mix of disappointment and frustration.; Am I frustrated because I am impatient? Or am I frustrated because I’m tired of working so hard for so long by myself? I just can’t understand why the 17,000 teenagers in the arena two blocks from here don’t know about my website dedicated to them.

Well, my hour is up. It’s time to go downstairs and introduce some bands.

It’s a cool October morning in Phoenix. I don’t know if there is any other city in America that is as excited about autumn as Phoenix. After several months of summer heat, the cool air is giving life back to the city. The sidewalks are packed with people jogging and riding bikes. The outdoor cafe’s are buzzing. It’s just so good to be alive.

Every day I plan on working on nomoho.com to get it back online, but the change of weather has pulled me away from my computer and outside. Working on my landscaping is so healing…I can’t even explain it. It just makes me so happy to make my home a sanctuary. I’ve lived in this house for three years, and I’ve only been able to do work on it in the past year. It’s finally taking shape into something beautiful. I don’ t know…I guess I am tired of having clean websites and a messy home life.

I’ve become fanatic about landscaping. I knew this a week ago, but now I’m just out of control.; Since I got back from Cleveland Sunday morning, I’ve worked on my landscape fro about twenty hours in the dark. I drive my shovel into the ground and I fasten a clamp light to the wood handle. It’s my outdoor spotlight that keeps me going until after 11:00 at night. I think I’m starting to spook my neighbors.

Other signs of my fanaticism is the rate at which I fill up my “green barrel” trash can. The city comes to my curb and empties it out on Thursday morning. By midnight the same day, I’ve already filled it up with grass clippings and branches. I even borrowed my neighbor’s green barrel because I couldn’t wait another week to do more work.

My conversations mostly revolve around landscaping. If I know that a new friend owns a home, I immediately ask him about his landscaping. If I’m at someone’s house for a party, I walk right through to check out the backyard. Visitors to my home can’t leave without taking a tour of my work out back. If I was home when the UPS guy showed up, I’d probably give him a tour too.

This fanaticism about landscaping has caught me completely by surprise. I was raised on a farm, and I spent many years as a kid working in our organic garden. I did it because Dad made me do it, not because I wanted to. I remember knowing a pretty yard when I saw one, but it was never anything I took time to admire.

The only memories of liking plants or trees came from movies. I thought it was cool in “Edward Scissorhands” when the misunderstood town freak sculpted overgrown bushes into works of art. The other movie that had some good plants was “Karate Kid” when Mr. Miagy had some well-shaped bonsai trees.;

I’m laughing at myself because I’ve become one of those guys who gets written up in the community newspaper. You know a caption that reads “Valley Resident Plants Pride in Backyard Sanctuary” and then there’s a snapshot of me crossing my arms with pride as I lean against a well groomed tree.

This concerns me because a landscaping freak is not far from a dog show freak or a Beanie Baby collector.; Shouldn’t I be getting into something more glamorous and distinguished, like sailing or mountain climbing?

I’m on the four-hour flight from Phoenix to Cleveland. I just endured the movie “Bewitched” because I’m in first class and it was free. It’s the kind of movie that is only good when you have absolutely nothing to do, like on a lazy Saturday afternoon or when you are stuck on an airplane.

One redeeming quality in the movie was the American dream home setting where most of the movie took place. I’m making progress on my landscaping in the backyard, and the movie gave some inspiring shots of landscaping, gardens, lighting, and outdoor living. Without that good stuff, I would’ve been more interested in watching people wait in line for the airplane bathroom.

I’ve been landscaping my backyard steadily for the past year. I never imagined it would’ve taken this long, but I guess these things just take time. Now that it’s fall, the temperatures have dropped and I can spend more time outside.

Life has been better since Dad and my brother Pete came out to help me with things around the house a couple weeks ago. We finished a second brick patio that was “almost finished” for several months. Now I spend some time each morning sitting outside enjoying the morning. I listen to the birds, pray the rosary, and enjoy the cool air. The leafy trees filter the morning sun and shake light over the whole yard.

I’m awaiting approval from my Home Owners Association to put an arbor over the side entry gate to my backyard. A year ago, I planted a beautiful pink flowering vine plant called “Bougainvillea” that has covered one side of wall that separates the front and backyard. After a year of growing, it’s stretching up above the wall, reaching for something else to climb on. Once the arbor is in place, there will be a perfect crown of pink over my cute wooden gate. It’s going to be quite charming. It’s kind of embarrassing for a guy to talk like that, but every time I show someone my plans for the arch, there’s something in them that melts when they imagine an arch covered with pink flowers. That’s both guys and girls.

This arbor will be the finishing touch of a project that I started a year ago. It’s beautiful now, but last year at this time it was a disgrace. It was hot, dusty, and scattered with mean-looking weeds. It looked like a vacant lot where people dump old appliances and set random things on fire.

The transformation began last winter when I scrubbed the dirt and added a brick patio and winding walkway. On either side of the path are mounds with distinct desert plants that look more like sculptures than bushes. At the end of the path is a desert tree than I’ve been shaping every week for a year. It’s getting quite an impressive silhouette. At this point, it’s this area is most beautiful part of my backyard. Worst to first!

With ten days of hard work, I can finish the last quarter of my backyard. But that might have to wait because it’s time to plant trees in Arizona, and I have a couple to replace in the front of my house facing the street. One tree is a Mesquite that was never pruned and trained well while it was young. Even after two years of patient shaping, it still looks lopsided and silly. It’s time to go.

I want to plant a different breed of Mesquite in the same place, except I want to give it the attention it needs while it is young to grow into something beautiful. There’s a perfect mesquite near Candyce’s old house, and I think I’m going to go and take a picture of it and use that as a template. Whether or not you like trees, you just can’t see this one and not say something about it. It’s just a really cool looking tree.

The other tree that needs to go is actually the oldest tree at my house. It’s a Pepper tree that has a windy trunk and limbs like a Live Oak. But it has sucker branches grow on every barky surface. I am haunted by the endless amount of weeds littered up and down the tree. Plus, they grow all around the ground near the trunk too. The only time it looks nice is after I trim it, and it’s downhill from there. Plus, the tree litters my front landscaping so much that there’s no chance of keeping the front of my house clean. It always looks terrible. My friend described it as “a foot of a hair troll.” It’s time to go.

So I’ve made the decision to take out these two trees, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’m going to have to finally buy a chain saw and take ‘em down myself to save money. It’ll cost about $800 to get new trees, but I know they will make a huge difference on my home’s “curb appeal” that you hear about on every home improvement show.

It’s interesting how my creative passions evolve. I never would’ve guessed I’d be so into landscaping. But there’s something magical about working with dirt and bringing ideas in my head into a reality with my hands. Plus, a well-designed landscape makes life more interesting because you can hang out in places other than the box-shaped rooms of your house. It makes life happier when you can have parties entirely outside.

Once the landscaping is finished, I’m going open up two bedrooms to their own private patio gardens. Each room will be more bright and open once I knock out the windows parts of the wall to make room for the French Doors. Both rooms are on the north side of the house, so they are naturally darker and not as fun to be in. These new doors is going to add a lot of life to that side of the house.

I guess the big mission here is to make my house more fun to be in. Right now, 75% of our waking hours are spent in a boxy living room that makes up 10% of my house. With these improvements outside, the rest of my house and property are going to be more inviting and relaxing.

Man. Once I start writing about landscaping, I can’t stop.

In the week since my dad and brother came to visit, a lot has changed in how I look at my life. I didn’t expect this to happen, and I’m not sure how to deal with it. Hopefully I can sort it out in this journal. I’m going to be 27 next month, and I’m taking a look at my life since I went on “The Real World” when I just turned 21. I’ve poured all that I have into each day since then, and I’m beginning to feel the toll it’s taken on my life.

My brother and dad came to visit me for two reasons: to help my brother look at jobs out here, and to help me with projects around the house. The most important of the two was giving my brother a chance to see all of the home building out here compared to Georgia. He’s not married and he has nothing to lose, so he needs to know what opportunity is out there.

I told them I needed their help around the house mostly because I don’t know how to entertain the guys in our family. I can’t take them to cool parts of town with cute shops like you do with most guests. The best way for us to spend quality time with each other is to work on something together. So I made a list of unfinished projects, ranging from tasks as small as filling nail holes, and as big as tearing out my entire kitchen.

Half way through the weekend, Dad told me that he didn’t know how I spent my money. “There is nothing in your house: no towels, no beds, and your light bulbs are all burned out.” His disbelief became apparent as we finished projects and crossed things off the list. How did I not have the time to finish these easy 30-minute projects? It’s because I am always at work.

It’s becoming more obvious by the hour that my personal life has been entirely ignored for the past six years. I’m lucky to have as quality of a relationship with Candyce as I have. I am lucky my house is still standing–literally. I’ve had three broken sprinkler systems on the corners of my house that have threatened the foundation of my house. It took me over a year-and-a-half to fix each of them. How could that have not been a priority? Because there were 100 other urgent things to tend to–most of them at work. That since of urgency is destroying my life.;

The past week I’ve had a sinking feeling inside of me that I am falling apart. I’ve worked hard to get lifeteen.com where it is today, and it has been worth the fight. The next two years on the site have huge potential. This would normally make me giddy with excitement, but it makes me feel terrible because all of this means more work, more deadlines, more impatient people and more critics. I can’t work anymore. I can’t stand the thought of being at the studio.

I have to make real changes in my life if I am going to keep my sanity. I’m not exaggerating…I am being absolutely serious. I am about to snap. I talked to my boss about this half way through the week, and he understands. He’s given his blood too, and he’s been where I’ve been. We’re going to work something out to get some time off.

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Matt Maher told me about a sermon that the Vatican Preacher gave to the Pope. It’s about making the mistake of tending to what is URGENT as opposed to what its IMPORTANT. There are many things in life that command our attention because they are urgent, but we never stop to think about whether or not it is really important.

Dad and my brother Pete came out to visit me for the past several days. We really had a great time together. The plan was for Pete to come out and look at the real estate market in Phoenix. He restores homes in Georgia and does well, but the real estate market in Arizona has expanded for the last 30 years, and he could stand to do better out here.

The first full day I used a tank of gas giving them a tour of existing neighborhoods, new developments, golf courses, and high-end land. We started in Mesa, drove through Chandler, then up to Pinnacle Peak. Although I like the commotion of the East Valley, the I can’t deny that mountains around Pinnacle Peak give welcome solitude to the people who are fortunate enough to afford a home there. We really enjoyed looking at all the huge homes tucked into the mountains. Before we left the area, we had burgers and beer at a cowboy junkyard. It’s one of those places that is too bizarre to write about–you just gotta see it. Then we toured a luxurious timeshare on the mountainside.

It was time to head south again, and I took them through Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, and finally Arcadia. On any other day, five hours of driving would’ve driven me crazy. But my Honda Element is spacious so everyone has enough room. Plus, I had the new David Crowder CD playing the whole time.

When you are spending time with family like this, you just have to go all out and make good days into great days. So we marched onto the golf course where I live to sneak some holes before the sun set. It was so much fun to wack the ball and then turn and talk to Peter about real estate. I didn’t realize how fanatic I have become since I moved from Georgia. We tried to sort out the pros and cons of him moving out here and to start a business.

After the round of golf, the two of them fell asleep while Candyce and I left to see the David Crowder Band at Gammage Auditorium. What an amazing show. The auditorium itself was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, so you could have a good time even if nobody stepped onto the stage. But David Crowder is just such a bright, talented guy. When he and his band stepped on stage, the whole place went absolutely crazy. I wish I would’ve bootlegged the show so I could remember it. It was funny because almost everyone of my friends was at the show, so at least we’ll be able to reminisce together.

I gave David Crowder a NoMoHo belt buckle before I left. I hope he likes it.