Totally Forgot

I forgot all about this. I wanted to share my excitement with everyone, even though you'll probably hear it a lot in the days to come. I GOT A MOTORCYCLE!!!! Sorry, I got a little excited about that. It's an 81 Yamaha Seca. Good little 750cc bike. Ironically, my bro, Rich, has an 82 Seca and then I found out that a good friend of mine, Blaine, bought his wife an 83 Seca. We could be a whole family of Seca vintages. Okay, now I'm done.

Of Thinking and Doing

Good morning...I think. Give me four hours and then it'll be a good morning. As of right now, it's 4:25 am and I'm tired. I'm downright exhausted without any reasonable explanation. Sure I didn't sleep a whole lot last night, but I had a 6 hour nap right before work. That's like twice as much sleep as I need on a daily basis. Okay, maybe it's the ideal, but it's still sufficient. On top of my sleep craving is food craving. I'm starving. I slept through supper at the house and there is no meal left out for me at work...good thing I ate at Ryan's baptism.

So what's the dealio with today? Today is day one, again. I've been slightly depressed and down and really unmotivated for the last few days. I had no reason to do anything and as a result, life just continued without me. Not really sure how to say it. This last day and a half have been quite motivational and have helped straighten out my mind. So far, I've done a lot of talking and put very little actual effort into following through. I've had a solid plan and thought out what I wanted, but I did nothing about it. I believe God will give us food, but we have to pick up the apple and move it to our mouth. God's got the way, but He requires a little effort on our part.

So, this is a new commitment to pick up the spoon and feed myself. Enough thinking about it, time to get 'er done. Although, I do have some new thoughts. Typically, I get off work, put in a movie and fall asleep to it...with my computer open to whatever was on the screen. Rather than having a computer so readily available in the morning (HUGE stumbling block), I'm going to go to sleep with my Bible on top of a closed computer and not open it until I've done devos. I think that will help a lot with the struggles and the laziness surrounding devotions and prayer time.

My other thoughts are evading me for the time being. I blame the hunger and tiredness. So for now, I'm going to call it a post and maybe I'll do a second one later. God bless and keep feeding the fire.

I'm writing an extra post today. I've just failed rather pathetically and I need some encouragment. Knowing that I probably won't hear any right away, I'm going to encourage myself. Most of my encouragment is coming from the business world, but I believe it applies to life. Business is based on life so the principles of life apply to business, which means they apply to life first.

Paul Orberson, who was and still is the most successful business man in his industry, has said, "You are only as strong as your weakest moment. You ar as strong as the weakest moment in your business. Did anybody ever want to quit?...You are only as strong as the weakest moment in your marriages. There are marriages lost for moments. There are families destroyed for moments. There are jobs and careers destroyed, weak moments...Don't listen to yourself, talk to yourself...Talk back to yourself. You say, 'That's the way it's going to be' and it will...It's not important that you believe this or not as you start. I hear people say, 'You must believe.' No no no no no! You don't. You don't belive nothing hardly; you don't even believe yourself. Thank God you don't have to believe. You work yourself into the fact, rather than start with the belief." I could keep quoting from this speech for ever, but I'm going to quit there for now.

When I listen to that, I know it's all true. My relationship with Alyssa (actually, most of my relationships fit this, but that's the example I'm choosing) was lost because in a weak moment, I didn't say, "No." I lost the possibility of an awesome relationship (and marrying into one of the best families ever...sorry couldn't resist) because in a moment of weakness, I couldn't do the right thing and say, "No." Today I failed and lost the chance of having tomorrow being day two because in a weak moment, I didn't say, "No." I'm hearing myself now saying, "You'll never make it. You can't even make day four or day two. You can't make eternity." I'm talking back to myself. If other people can beat this addiction, so can I! I'm going to work it into existence, but I do believe that I can do it with Christ.

Napoleon Hill, who wrote the book "Think and Grow Rich" in 1937 (which is still one of the biggest selling business books of all time) said, "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it will achieve." I've obviously conceived the idea otherwise, I wouldn't be blogging right now. I've already told you that I believe I can do it. The end result is that it will come to pass, even if I fail a hundred more times. There was a young man who made up his mind that he was going to be business partners with Thomas Edison. He travelled hundreds of miles absolutely broke to show up on his doorstep. He said, "Sir I want to be your business partner." He didn't show up in your typical Calvin Klein suit looking like a business stud. He looked like a hobo that had been beat up a few times; he was haggard-looking. He didn't get his partnership, but Thomas Edison saw something in this young man's determination to be business partners. Mr. Edison ended up giving him a position in his offices that was unimportant Mr. Edison. Months went by and nothing happened. Thomas Edison invented the Ediphone, then called the Edison Dictating Machine. His salesmen weren't excited about it because they thought it would be nearly impossible to sell. A man named Edwin C. Barnes saw an opportunity and he went to work selling this machine. Our determined young man sold it so successfully that Thomas Edison offered him a contract to distribute and market all over the U.S.A. Out of this was born the slogan, "Made by Edison and Installed by Barnes." His success was bigger than he ever dreamed, and if he can do it, so can I!

Bonnie Harrison is known among some as being the most unlikely success candidate in business. She was a grade ten drop out, single mother of four, living in the projects of Edmonton, feeding her children on $50 a week. She found an opportunity to fight and win for her and her children and she broke records in the company. Her words of advice, "Your results on the outside of your business show where you are on the inside...Persistence is to success what carbon is to steel. It's not very heroic for me to tell you that the only reason I am successful is because I was persistent." I would thoroughly agree with Bonnie on this. Failure on the outside shows that I'm not where I need to be on the inside. Not being there on the inside is why I started this blog. I'm going to keep going and keep growing until I succeed. I've just proved that I can beat this and will succeed.

So I hope this encourages someone else. If not, thanks for letting me rant and encouraging myself. I've set a goal. Bonnie has said, "Your goals should get you excited and a little scared. If you already know you will achieve your goal, it's too small. But don't make it unreasonable either." My goal is to make registration day for school, day 20 of no failureness (what do you call that?) Registration day = day 20. As always, your prayers are greatly appreciated in this.

P.S. My bell tingling friend: if you think I'm lame for blogging, that's fine. I don't let negative people into my dorm room though. Just kidding bro, I love you.

Changing the Rules

Well, it's just after 8:15 in the morning and I am exhausted. I'm headed to bed for some serious sleep, but first I have to leave an update for everyone.

Today is day one, not just for my pornography struggles, but also for my devotions and prayer time. My goal is to have it first thing in the "morning" whenever I wake up. I also wanted to change some of the rules. I've found that almost everytime, if the internet plays a part in my failure, it takes place in my first 27 or so internet minutes. After that, the only thing the time limitations do is to keep me from doing research on something that interests me. I'm going to try something new. I'm not allowed to open Internet Explorer without supervision so there has to be a legitimate reason, and my Opera time is essentially unlimited. See I really like to use Opera and that's my main web browser, but I always use Internet Explorer for looking up anything inappropriate so that the history and ghost files don't show up in Opera where people could see them. Sneaky, just one more way of avoiding desperately needed accountability.

Another thing I'm going to do is set alarms. The time I struggle the most is right when I wake up and I'm laying in "bed" and the computer is right beside me. I get off work at roughly 7:30 am and I'm going to sleep until noon when my parents get home for lunch. How does it help? Simple, my parents are home and I'm forced to get up for lunch. Thursdays will be my exception as no one comes home. I think I'm going to enjoy Thursdays for the extra sleep.

That's all I have for now. If anyone has good Bible readings or prayer requests, comment or email or facebook!! Thanks a lot and as always, your prayers are greatly appreciated.

A Successful Day Two

Today is day two and I'm excited! Okay well, now that I'm done typing this, it's actually 0130 day three and I'm tired, but anyways. I slept most of the day, but when I woke up I struggled quite a bit. I probably wouldn't have made it through, except for a very special friend who came online at exactly the right time. Coincidence? No such thing! Is it God's divine timing? Absolutely! And that is the power of prayer, which is why I asked for and greatly appreciate your prayers.

That's all on my struggles for today, so I have this opportunity to share where I'm at and where I want to go. Will I take it? Yep! Time for another issue that I want to change. I profess to be a Christian and I believe, but often my life does not reflect that. I have never kept a steady prayer life and I have never held to my daily devotions for more than a couple weeks (like two, not like six). My language is downright aweful a lot of the time. I can be cruel and manipulative and selfish. I really don't like who I am. This is why I started this blog and this is where I'm at. So where would I like to end up? Where am I headed?

Ideally, I would like God to be the centre of my life again. I want to be at a place where my tongue is tamed. I want to have the self control I used to. I'm going to end up with a steady, faith-filled prayer life and consistent daily devotions. I hope to be known as someone who has changed a lot (for the good obviously). Someone who is kind and compassionate. a man of integrity. I want to be someone who is respected, not because I've done something worthy of respect, but because there is just something about me worth respecting; I want to be that person who stands tall and knows what he is about even if no one else does. That's the character I would like to develop in my life. I won't get there by trying to act it; it will take a change from within starting in the heart. A total transformation (thus the name of this blog).

I haven't shared my past yet as I'm working up to being able to tell my full story. I haven't shared my dream for the future yet because I simply haven't had time. It won't happen tonight because I'm tired and I've blogged long enough for you guys for one day. I spent 1 hour 47 minutes on the web, by the way. So for now I bid you goodnight and sleep well. God bless.

Where were we? Oh yeah, Day One

It is the morning of day one. Yep 0030 07 August 2009.  Yes there's a missed day in there. Nothing good happened, but I made this blog to be honest (timeforachangeHONESTLY...).

I failed when I know I shouldn't have. I chose to visit the wrong section of a normally fine website. The worst part is, you need an account to do it and I had one specifically for that purpose. You have to make no fewer than four deliberate choices to see this. My new deviantArt account is HeavymetalCowboy4Him (yeah, I know I'm the farthest thing from an artist, but I need a legitimate one, plus it deleted my other one because I used the same email). I used to have a similar problem with youtube, but I created a legitimate account for that too. CleanforChrist is my youtube name because I only look at clean videos now. There was one exception, but it was mostly appropriate and I was stealing a quote that I had heard in previous encounters. That's right, my censorship quotes were stolen from a youtube video. I'm on one other social network (facebook aside) and I'll probably not join anymore. I'm on pianofiles. Play4Him is my name and if you want one of my sheets, just ask. Okay. Moving on.

Other things about yesterday that I want to share. I found myself on the internet for longer than my three hours (mainly because my friend got back from England and I talked to her for a long time). Discipline: I'm limited to two hours of web browser, which should be lots until I get to school. As much as I love getting back from work and talking to friends until they go to work, I can't do that anymore because then I don't sleep. I haven't had real sleep in three days. When I get back the the house, I'm sleeping. One more thing, my phone is disconnected (yep, that time of year again) so if you're trying to get a hold of me, try msn, skype, facebook me to call you, or use them fingers which are in good shape from texting and call me (yeah, I know you have to remember what the numbers mean...SUCK IT UP) 463-2497.

I would really appreciate your prayer as I try and get going on this new day one so that I can post on my blog, "Sucess! My struggles were minimal and I start day two now. In other news..." and then I can tell you what the rest of this whole transformation my life is going to be undertaking. Pornography is a small part of it and it's stealling the show. Thank you so much and God bless you all.

Sucess! Sort of...

Yesterday was day one and my biggest goal was to make it through to day two. I made it! I was online for 2 hours and 17 minutes give or take a small amount, but even still it was almost a failure. My joy from day one is short lived though. I find that beating something like this is a lot like running a marathon. Day one is the first mile, but there's 25 to go. Failing after the first mile is pretty pathetic and yesterday was pathetic.

That's right, I failed on day two. I was under my three hour limit, but I made three mistakes. One, I didn't spend any time in prayer or reading my Bible. Two, I wasn't careful about what music I was listening to. Three, I entertained thoughts about compromising and bending the rules. Now I know where my weaknesses lie. The first two are easy to fix; however, I've been entertaining these thoughts for years and years. To break a mental pattern like that is not an easy thing to do. I'm not sure how I'm going to beat that mental pattern, but in the words of Napoleon Hill, "Whatever the mind can concieve and believe, it will achieve." I will find away.

But right now, I'm tired. I'll blog about my second day one later. Good night (or morning for the rest of the world).

Day One

Hello anyone actually reading this blog!

So I'm going to pick up where I left off and share some of where I am and where I'm heading and hoping to end up. Umm, I suppose I should mention this blog is uncensored from some of the issues of life and really is not intended for children. Like M rated. It should be R rated if not today, one day, but if you are mature and not 18 then I would hate to discriminate against you. Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. 1 Timothy 4:12a.

So I do have addictions and I want them broken! Shattered chains at the foot of the cross. My biggest addiction is going to cause some awkwardness amongst readers, but that's okay. I struggle with pornography. It's true. I've been addicted for several years and I hate it. Usually I'm in a pattern of fail, try to quit, succeed for a while, fail agian. Recently my pattern has been fail, fail, fail, I'll quit tomorrow because I already failed, wake up and fail. I've been so sick of this that I just want to beat myself. Today's post is called day one because I'm done failling and putting off getting better.

I'm not just saying I'm quitting and hoping I can hold out because that's never worked before. I'm not naive; I know that the odds of me successfully quitting this time are way stacked against me and my track record is against me too. Praise God! He is bigger than me and He is bigger than the internet and He is bigger than the world, which makes Him way bigger than pornography! I spend way too much time on the internet for anyone's good and I get bored eventually. Boredom and aloneness are my two biggest enemies! Any time I have something to do, my chances of failure drop to almost nothing if I can find the motivation to do whatever else is there. What steps am I taking to beat my addiction? Well, I'm glad you asked.

1) I'm cutting my internet time down to 3 hours daily. Now that still seems like a lot, but I typically use the internet, youtube specifically, for listening to music, which inevitably leads to no one around, bored, with the internet open already...you see where this is going. In my three hours I will: post something on this blog on a daily basis, do all of my business stuff, check all of my emails, messages, and facebook stuff, do all of my facebook chatting (which means I'm going back to the old school ways of MSN where you can find me via k1quizzer@hotmail.com and I'll also be online on Skype where I'm lancealot1011), do any research or information gathering I need to do online, and find any piano or guitar or trumpet sheet music I want to play. "Yeah right," you say, "and when you get bored you'll  just use the internet anyways." Not happening. Beautiful thing about accountability and daily blogging is that everyday, I promise to honestly tell how long I spent on the World of Wide variety Waste or WWW. I'm not sure of punishment for spending too long on the web, but I have lots of friends that like to smack me when I do something stupid and I'm sure they'll think of something.

2) I'm a firm believer of "Garbage in, garbage out." Working Road construction and listening to everyone cussing up a storm, yeah my language went to shit (I know, bad language, but the irony was just too funny...if you don't share my dry sense of humor, sorry). Look at our mediums of choice movies, music, radio, whatever. Music lyrics promote a lot of trash including a very distinct "Use 'em and lose 'em" philosophy towards women. Movies these days are full of unnecessary nude/sex scenes and way innapropriate humor. Even the ads on the radio (sorry I use radio because I don't get t.v. and have no commercial examples) promote sex whether from which condoms give the most pleasure to which club has the male strippers for ladies night or which sex shop is the best in town. Now I'm not against sex (way not), but the attitudes that are promoted and the places and times it is promoted I would deem innapropriate. That's a talk for another time. That's the very long way of saying I'm cutting out a lot of the garbage coming in. I'm choosing my movies carefully, being critical about the music I'm listening to, and yes, my old school radio stations!

3) I'm filling my spare time with other things than whatever time. I'm restarting my devotion and prayer life, and need things to pray for to help keep me going. If you have prayer requests, comment, email, whatever. On top of which, I've got lots of work to do, that's not a problem. I'm sick of being overweight and unhealthy and feeling sick. I'm starting a fitness program (designed by yours truly! Talk about custom) which will take some of my time. Also I have projects that need to be accomplished, music to practice, mechanical work to get done, body work to do, and I have my own business and a full-time job on the side...since when do I have any time to waste with garbage? My weekends where I'm home alone are going to be filled with people and things to do. There's always work, the church always needs volunteers, and I've become exceptionally fond of "gaming" nights with friends (the next one sounds like it'll be epic and sour!). 

So that's way longer than I had planned to type. Your part in all of this is to simply check in on me. Ask me how I've been doing or how my struggles are going or something. If you can get around the awkwardness of saying, "How's the porn issue?" go for it! It's not a secret anymore it's on the web where the universe can all read it. And if I blog that I failed and you read it, call me out! If you are willing to encourage me when I've fallen, I desperately need it. This one struggle in my life has pushed me to the edges of suicide and people in my life have pushed me back to a desire to live. As always, thank you for taking the time to read this post. Comment if you want (I think anyone can, I'm pretty technology illiterate) or email me or facebook me or whatever you want. I love hearing from people. Prayer is greatly appreciated.

Until tomorrow, take care of yourself and God bless.