i should be a contractor.

for real. at least that way i could be the one to build what no doubt deserves to be an absolutely hulking monument to my laziness. you might notice that the last time i was here was late last year, sometime in december, the 22nd to be exact. the end of that day's entry said that there would be subsequent ones soon to follow within the next few days.. well, like i said, that was at the end of last year, so i s'pose the next few months would have been a more accurate descriptor of the time that's elapsed between that entry and this one.

i don't guess there's really any easy way to say what it is i want (wanted??) to say. and i suspect that's mostly on accout of i was an absolute mess at that time. i remember pretty vividly feeling extremely beat up and worn down. i hesitate to say that any period of time was the hardest of my life or anything like that, but the nine or ten months starting sometime around february was nothing short of ridiculous, and as the weeks and months went by, stuff kept piling up on top of itself and each revelation seemed to grow more unbelievable and disheartening than the last. the end of a year, any year, being what it is lends itself to providing tons of opportunities for recollection and when i thought about everything that had happened in the year that had passed, i just sort of marveled at how i survived it and that despite the toll it had taken on me emotionally, i was somehow able to keep a halfway decent attitude and not go completely nuts.

that, i realize, is, in large part, no thanks at all to me. i really can't begin to tell you how exceedingly easy having a rotten attitude was (is?) especially when prompted to think about certain events or circumstances or people. the fact that i didn't go completely nuts is more a credit to the people around me than i suspect any of them realize.

there's a part of the old testament, the entire book of first chronicles to be exact, that's pretty much nothing but a list of names. whenever i'd find myself in that part of the bible, i'd be inclined to skip it, mostly on account of it's painfully boring. when i was at wheaton i heard jerry root give a chapel message on that passage, and he said he felt the same way whenever he got to that part of the bible, too. then he made a point that i didn't expect, he said that those people's names were there because God really cared about who they were, their names were important to him because they were important to him and he wanted us to know about them and see the same things in them that he saw.

that's how i feel about the rest of this entry and more specifically and significantly, the people who are mentioned in it. it might not mean anything at all to anyone but me, but it means a ton to me, and in any case the debt i owe these people really can't at all be overstated.

*kristy for giving me something to look forward to starting in about august. the second time my car got stolen she took me to work and brought me breakfast. that was after she got pissed at me for walking to and from work the day before, going as far as to leave a message saying "you better not be walking home right now."

*jessica for being a way solid friend and her family for thanksgiving.

*kacey for bringing me back to my roots and challenging me in pretty much every way i thought imaginable, and probably lots more. also for perspective. he knew better than a lot of people what life was like for me and when i told him i'd resigned, the first thing he said was "you've been set free."

*jeremy, tommy, cody and justin for burgers and soccer and coffee and hot chocolate and movies and tons of other stuff.

*stacy for being just about the only one with a clue.and brian and marla for wisdom and untold amounts of support. other parents like chuck and eleanor, nancy, scott and laurie, chris, bridget and steve, ty and julann, jay and nora, dave and nicole, steve and kathy. chris and kimberlyn for representing Jesus in ways that staggered me.

*adam and randy for an ear and their wisdom. gregg headley for the same. jaroy for the conversations at the adam's mark in dallas on october 9 and 10 and looking out for me despite being the second busiest guy i've ever met. link for insight and tons of useless and useful conversation.

*mike for the stuff he said to me on october 31.

*the network, more specifically al and laura at YFC, tim and shelley at first baptist in lakewood, brandon from calvary in north long beach, darrin from cottonwood, john at long beach christian fellowship, mark at bethany and eric at life center. i wish the people i worked with could have done half as much for me as this crew did.

as i write it's sometime around half past 2AM, so there are no doubt people who belong on this list that are casualties of my own wee-hours-of-the morning-induced oversight. slight consolation may come in the fact that i suspect nearly everybody mentioned won't ever happen across this corner of the web, which is ok, at least right this second anyway.

next time i'm here i suspect will bring a list of some people who get no thanks, mostly because everybody deserves recognition, even those who treat you like shit. i'm not making any promises as to when that will be, you know, track record and all.