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SirKranstonOSullivan
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Name: Cullen
Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: San Antonio
Birthday: 12/22/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: Guitar, bass, drums, harmonica, trees, nature, birds, peotry, art, film, my van, anything indie and bob dylan.
Expertise: Guitar, drawing, painting and writing on occasion.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Art
Message: message me
AIM:  kngocarrotflower
Member Since:
12/24/2005
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| On the upside the campaign is over but on the downside I don't know if this is going to be a country I can really believe in. I was raised being taught by my parents and teachers that the only limit to my success were those that I would impose upon myself but now I fear that the only thing that is really going to stand in my way is a government telling me how much I can succeed so that others can be placed onto a "fair" playing field.
Now despite the fears I may have about the coming four years in our country's history, I have the unshakable feeling that God will still be there and that in the end I will end up where I am suppose to be and everything will be alright. I also have the feeling deep down that my faith during this time will grow by leaps and bounds.
This is truly a time in which we need to pray that our leaders make the right decisions despite recent history and decisions made by them. It is something I will constantly need to remind myself that they are just as lost as I am and in the eyes of God, I am just as wicked and guilty as they are.
Good things will come. We just have to be willing to find them. | | |
| A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Echo conference on church media. The first thing i thought i would be learning about are the latest ways of reaching an audience and doing it effectively. Not to say I didn't learn anything along those lines but it send me away from there with a completely different perspective and it's something that keeps coming back to me with just another set of questions every time.
Throughout the event i heard speaker after speaker talking about identity and the importance of having an identity in this day and age but it wasn't until Donald Miller spoke that it sent my world into a spin.
Donald being a lit guy, he decided to talk about the elements of story starting with proper structure and slowly going into how the characters of a story move it forward and all that fun mess that we spent so many years studying in high school and on through higher education but it was funny how he related it back to how it pertains to us all.
He proceeded to talk about how he was approached by studio executives who wanted to turn Blue Like Jazz into a movie and when they actually sat down to storyboard the movie, Miller was shocked to find that the story the executives thought of had almost nothing to do with the book outside of various lessons learned and their reason was that Donald's life wasn't really exciting enough to really follow the book in its truest form.
That is when he dropped the bombshell on the audience. He asked if we were leading lives that could be best sellers and blockbuster movies? Were we living lives that people would remember? And most of all, when we die, what kind of impact/will anyone care when it happens?
I wish i could say that i was more comforted after that but it's something that has caused me to seriously examine my direction and how i'm living my life. I realize that most of whatever i feel troubled by is somewhat my own doing. God has created so much including our bodies as well as the items we need to survive but how much of the time do we look at the world in this fashion? How often do we look over the tools we have been given to solve our problems? God has provided, we just don't always see how.
I wish I could solve the unrest I now feel after hearing that but if we always took the easy solutions, then how would we learn and lead a life worth reading about? Every good story has obstacles and life is no different. The difference will come with the obstacles we choose to deal with and how we deal with it. It doesn't come easy and the little ghost with the cigarette will tell you that it's not worth trying but the only thing i can do is set out an ashtray for him and tell him otherwise and eventually he won't even come around. I know at some point I'll figure it out but in the meantime i'll just have to deal with one step at a time. | | |
| For my next adventure I think I'm going to do two weeks hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Just seems fitting especially after watching Into the Wild. | | |
| Last day in Portland and it still feels surreal that I made it up here. Of course being somewhere that is completely different from the norm that one comes to expect can always make you feel backwards and lost. But here it seems okay to be lost since there is always someone around every corner willing to offer a friendly hand. One thing I have come to notice is how passionate the people are. And it runs in all facits of their life. I have never seen a city more intent on getting the youth involved in government. I have never seen food e as much of an art as here. Yesterday my friend and I found ourselves going back to a small little doughnut shop called VooDoo Doughnuts which specialized in shock value doughnuts but it is what they did, they did it well and they took such pride in it. For dinner we went to place called Apizza Scholls and they use absolutely no machines to make there dough and no ingrediants that are a day old to go on top. Everything is as fresh as going to a market and buying it yourself and it goes from just a meal to an experience when you realize what all goes into every pizza that is made. Since arriving i've seen one major chain media store and maybe two or three Starbucks. The rest are mom-and-pop places and it couldn't make for a more unique experince. The passion that it takes to do that one thing they do well and make a living from it. Really if there is anything that I'll be taking away besides a new pile of books and plays it is a new found since of commitment to the things that I am passionate about and believe in deeply. We were all sent here for some cause or another and given gifts to be passionate about and it is our own fault if we let such things go by. God Bless Portland. | | |
| Is there any better way to experience a town than becoming lost. Although there were places I wished to check out I find that the best surprises have come on the whim. Yesterday we walked into a dollar nd came out on top of the world and then proceeded to the next store and came out on top of the sun. In a way it is kind of depressing knowing that there is no way of experiencing it all in one visit but it makes the case for a return visit. Today my friend and I visited the Grotto and it put thngs in an erie perspective. It lived to its name as a place of solitude and prayer. On a trip such as this where one tries to fit as much in as possible, it is nice to places like the Grotto that can make you stop in your tracks and take all that is beautiful in the world. Now I sit here enjoying a beer and a curry rice bowl. Under normal cicumstances I would be rushing to get on with the day or night but that isn't tghe case here. In an ambient atmosphere such it becomes and even near impossible to care what the next activity is or what is going to go on in the future. I really enjoy this feeling of not worrying about whatever mistakes or missed oppertunities I may have confronted in the past and even better is I don't really care about what might go on tomorrow. Instead I am enjoying the happiness of the world around me right now. | | |
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