Supafly.com

I want to talk about high maintenance people, but first, let’s talk about a high maintenance yard.

I’ve spent most of my free time in January and February cleaning up the overgrown greenery on my property. This is not as simple as raking dead leaves or clipping a few branches from the bushes near my front door. This is big stuff:

1. Climbed trees with my chainsaw to cut out dead branches.
2. Cut down 10 trees that were once bushes.
3. Pulled five big fat bushes out of the ground, root and all.
4. Raked enough pine needles to fill a dump truck.

I have to clear a few things up so people don’t misunderstand my actions. I am not a crazed nature-hating lumber jack. On the contrary, I love nature and am eco-minded. But not every plant or tree belongs where it is planted:

1. Plants need harmony with one another. For instance, the previous owner of my home planted dozens of Oleander bushes beneath the towering pine trees. I imagine the Oleanders looked cute when he planted them, but as the years passed by, they’ve each grown into a dozen one-trunk jungles. The spindly branches caught every dead pine needle that falls from the tree branches above. So when I looked out my window in the living room, all I see is a tangled mess.
2. Plants need room to grow. It takes a lot of discipline to design your landscape with room for each plant and tree to grow. This is a big problem around the perimeter of your yard where it is really tempting to load in the shrubs so it looks perfect right after you take off your gloves. Your satisfaction will be short lived because plants GROW GROW GROW. Within months, your plants will be choking one another. To break up the fight, you’ll be out there every Saturday with pruning sheers. After two years of this nonsense, you’ll tear out half of the plants…realizing that the guy at the nursery warned you and you ignored him. Lesson learned.

So the goal of all of my labor is to undo the mistakes of the previous owner. I need to thin out my yard to make it beautiful and manageable. A beautiful yard is unlike a beautiful mural. You can paint a mural and it will look good without any more work. But a yard needs continuous attention to be beautiful.

I still have a lot of work to do on the remodel of the main floor of the house, and I can’t make any progress inside if I’m out clipping branches on an acre of bonsai trees like Mr. Miyagi.

I was watching This Old House last year when they were rebuilding a stunning home in Carlisle, Massachusetts. I was surprised to see that they did not lay tile on the walls of the bathtub/shower. Instead, Tom Silva installed large panels of synthetic board that were etched to look like tile. It seemed like a lazy shortcut that you don’t ever see on This Old House. The host asked why he chose that material, and Tom explained, “People get tired of cleaning grout in the shower.”

A year ago, I disagreed with Tom’s decision, and now I absolutely agree with him. If you keep stacking chores on your home maintenance to-do list, you’ll become an employee of your home. After working all day at your real job, you’ll come every evening and do more work. It’s no way to live the decades of your life.

By the way, I have no tolerance for high maintenance relationships. Most high maintenance people aren’t that way by birth, but it’s a lifestyle/personality they’ve chosen because it makes them the center of the universe. They take advantage of generous and sensitive people around them, usually family. Think about it: who would put up with a high maintenance person but family?

Yesterday afternoon my friend Adam H. sent me the code and database for Version3 of supafly.com. I’ve written about it a few times over the past year, but it’s basically a three column layout. This website has been up for over six years in a couple different versions. But it’s gotten to a point where I have create a site around a content, rather than letting the site decide what will go where. The biggest part of my site is my journals, and the new layout is that it gives easy access to all of my old journals.

So last night I spell-checked my old journals and added them to the database one at a time. It was pretty tedious, but it was nostalgic reading journals from 1999. I thought it was funny because shortly after I launched my website, I tried out for “The Real World.” I never wrote about any of the many interviews along the way. It was hard because I was so excited as I got closer with every step, but if I wrote about it, I know there would’ve been too much drama around campus.

The part that is so amusing to me is I remember talking about my website while I was trying out for the show, as if I had a corner of the Internet empire. In reality, I had only had the thing online for a couple months, and half of the sections hadn’t actually been updated. Another thing that cracked me up was how in one period I wrote almost one journal a day. If I remember correctly, I; was getting close to making it on the show, and I wanted to write as much to remind MTV how dynamic and interesting I could be.

I was feeling especially nostalgic, so I listened to a playlist on Rhapsody of the best Monster Ballads from the late 1980s and early 1980s. Although that music was from elementary through middle school for me, that music reminds me of a time where I felt like nothing exciting would ever happen in my life. I was just a kid stuck in a rural town in the South. So listening to Skid Row while uploading journals of my adventures in college gave me a sense of relief. I made it out of the small town!

Half way through adding my 1999 journals, people started to come over my house for our weekly 24 parties. These parties started a few years ago after XLT when a couple people would come over to watch an episode of 24 that we had recorded with Tivo. Now it’s different because one of our friends was cast as the assistant to; President Palmer. With 20 or more people in the room, people get pretty snappy when other talk during the show. But as soon as our friend shows up on screen, everyone roars claps, like we’d just won the big homecoming game. Then we’ll replay that three-second clip a few times just for kicks.

These parties have been good for the Catholic community in Phoenix. The success of a lot of parishes in the city are because the people there made a conscious effort to build community and spend time with one another. Sometimes “church social groups” can seem forced and dorky. But the 24 party is an organic thing. It just kind of happened, and it just keeps happening. When old friends are back in town, they come to the party. If new friends are in town, someone always brings them to the party. Strangers are in my house all the time.;

Matt Maher is in Nashville meeting with a lot of Christian music people this week. He’s a talented songwriter, and it seems as though several labels are interested in his stuff. We’ll see what happens. I think tonight or tomorrow night he’s going to Chris Tomlin’s party for the gold party for his latest album. That means he’s sold 500,000 copies. And one of Matt’s songs has been a popular song on the album. So I’m excited for Matt. A few years ago Matt had a song on a Grammy nominated album. I’m just excited to see people recognize my friend’s talent.

Once everyone left the party last night, I sat down in front of my computer and entered the rest of my 1999 journals. The site is still a little buggy, but I’m really excited about the new look. It will take some time to pull the portfolio section together, but that will be a lot of fun to do.

For one reason or another, I’ve avoided being a fan of Steve Jobs from Apple Comuters. Maybe it’s my Georgia Tech education in the late 1990’s when Macs were toys, not machines. Or maybe it’s because I’m a defiant designer that is tired of others telling me that “Macs are great for graphics.” But more than anything, I don’t like to be an evangelist for worldly things. I like NPR for news, Hondas for driving, and Andy Warhol for art, but none of that will save my soul. I am an evangelist for Jesus.

In being a professional evangelist for Jesus, I’m always looking for ways that people have succeeded in my trade. I know that last sentence was a reckless mix of divine and worldly words, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to write it. Quite simply, I want to believe there is a more effective way to do youth ministry. There has to be something more than hokey youth conferences and youth group meetings. Since there aren’t many people within youth ministry doing anything new, I look to the secular world for examples of success. Who knows? Maybe the secular world has a lot to teach us.

One success story that is hard not to admire is the story of Apple Computers since Steve Jobs took over the company again in 1999. They’ve just done one thing right after the next. As an Industrial Designer, it’s hard not to love what Apple accomplishes. I don’t sit in their executive meetings, but it seems from the outside that their biggest priority is to make cool looking, easy-to-use products. The iPod is a success story of Industrial Design matched with effective marketing.

From that amazing iPod, Steve Jobs introduced iTunes and legitimized the business nightmare of people downloading free MP3s. Not only did he help save the music industry, he went a step further and gave TV networks a chance to sell their television shows. Now through Podcasting and Video Podcasting, everyone has a chance to develop their own media mini-empire. It’s amazing. He pulled the whole thing off!

Now it looks like Disney is going to acquire Pixar. Yet another chapter in the story of Steve Jobs. I think Pixar is the most talented group of innovators and Disney as a nostalgic but stale brand. Nobody cares about Disney anymore. Maybe Steve Jobs can turn Disney around too.

I want to be like Steve Jobs. I want to do amazing things that makes an impact on culture. I want

Today is the third day of my month of staying away from the studio. I still check my email, get back to phone calls, and have a meeting here and there. But for the most part, I am taking this month to get my life back together. I’ve worked too hard for too long, and my home life desperately needs some attention.

Before I left for Georgia, this was the list I compiled of things I need to do:

Outdoors:
- Take pictures while I do all of the landscape work
- Contact city to get permission to dig for new landscaping
- Cut down unhealthy Mesquite, plant a young Chilean Mesquite tree and a Bougainvillea vine on the corner of my lot. Make a metal trellis and attach it to the wall. Add fresh decorative gravel.
- Add landscaping mounds and a dry creek bed in the front yard, plant a Texas Ebony tree.
- Finish backyard with a concrete curb, three different kinds of rock, a weed barrier, and two new plants.
- Plant a wall of six Oleander trees in the backyard
- Install and paint outdoor shutters on the front of the house
- Spray weed preventer on all gravel surfaces
- Install security lighting around house
- Install two new ceiling fans in the back porch.
- Touch up paint
- Train the yellow-flower vine out front
- Plant ground cover out front to replace the hibiscus
- Paint all gates

Indoors:
- Demolition the kitchen and dining room
- Design and install new kitchen cabinets, appliances (this is a big job)
- Pull up all flooring in non-bedroom rooms
- Install new lighting and flooring
- Refinish dining room table
- Get rid of fish tank
- Paint the garage, install cabinets and work bench
- Install French patio doors in the master bedroom
- Install new sink and cabinets in master bathroom, fix tile
- Recessed lighting in the hallway

Web:
- Finish designing and then launch the new nomoho.com
- Print five shirts, launch nomoho.com store
- Send out promotional emails to friends and family
- Find shipping solution
- Re-outfit the guest room to be a second office
- Make splash pages for all my sites that aren’t up: jp2hero.com, sayhitome.com, kustoms.com,
-Make simple, CSS-driven new version of this website, supafly.com.

Cars:
- Element: get new black rims, install a different alarm, design outside graphics, pay someone to do it
- Chevy: get it moving, licensed and insured, new exhaust, begin suspension work, put on nomoho.com decals, get a trailer

Random Personal:
- Get a new laptop battery
- Business transactions
- Set up auto bill-pay for all utilities
- Real estate transactions
- Pray a rosary each day

So I hope to get all of that done in the next month. I know it probably won’t happen, but I at least want to give it a chance.

On the way home from the airport in Phoenix, I stopped off to see Candyce at her college. It was only fifteen minutes, but it felt good to see her again. I haven’t seen her that much in the past two months, and it’s getting very difficult. She has a busy semester at school, and it is getting irritation. The last sixty days have been an endless chain of class, homework, work, homework, sleep, homework… I’ve never seen anyone go like this for so long.

I resent her professors because all they have to do is snap their fingers and she pours twenty hours into a project. I’m left on the outside of her life, trying to be a supportive boyfriend. This is just not a good time for me. But the 15-minute visit was awesome.

Feeling jealous of the time Candyce gives her school work, I decided not to drive straight home, but to drive to the nursery instead. If she was going to obsess over her homework, I could do the same. I needed to pickup some Oleander trees for my backyard. Oleanders are a flowery bush that is sometimes trained into being a tree. I have a total of six now, and they will make a screen so I don’t look at my neighbors anymore. I have lived in this house for three years now, and I’m tired of going into my backyard “sanctuary” just to make eye-contact with a woman washing her dishes. So my plan is to plant the three today.

This next month is going to be very good for me. I need to work with my hands in the backyard and not on a computer. I need to exercise and pray. I need to get my life back together.

This Thanksgiving I told myself I was going to slow down so I could find new things to think about. Normally my days off are committed to accomplishing tangible things, like doing my laundry or working on my car. So I decided not to do any of that, but try to free up some space in my brain to be inspired.

So today is Thanksgiving. I joined Candyce’s family at their grandparent’s home here in Phoenix. Two of Candyce’s friends from ASU joined us because their family was too far away. It was really beautiful to see them really feel at home with Candyce’s family.

Once dinner was over, everyone slid into soft chairs in the living room and started watching Batman. I was excited because they bad guys were driving cars that look like my ‘54 Bel Air. My mind started to sparkle with ideas, so I stretched out on the bed in the guest bedroom and let my mind wander.

Right now my mind is not focused on new missions. I already have plenty of cool missions that I have not accomplished. I know that they are worth fighting for, and I will accomplish them soon. So instead of thinking of goals, I focused on how to accomplish goals. Because once you get in the habit of achieving goals, then next habit you ned to is to make sure each new goal is more ambitious than the last.

After letting my imagination run wild, I realize that ambition by itself is inherently shallow. It’s almost always coupled with greed and vanity. In the material world, that’s not a problem, but in the world of ministry it is a grave problem. I can’t expect God to sit back and applaud my ambition. It is absolutely crucial that I pray. Otherwise, I’m just another male out to conquer an empire. Prayer tempers ambition.