Very Good Day

This is my third attempt to write a blog for this week.

The first attempt was a boring and dismal failure, talking about the death of my old computer and getting a new one. Big news in my life, but not really the stuff folk want to read about. I was kinda proud of it, too. It had links to the computer's specs and it talked about how annoying (humiliating) it is for me as an an IT professional, (after a fashion. If you squint real hard at my job) to know nothing about Windows 7 - not even enough to know which version I would need for what I do.

Boring. I still wanted to write about it and I still might, if I can find a way to make it remotely interesting to the rest of you.

The second was about responsibility. A bit philosophical, but boring.

Instead, I'll tell you about my Very Good Day and my Very Good News.

The Very Good News is that by the time I get this posted, I will have been dating (officially) my girl for six months. Yay us! Truth to tell, I never thought I would write something like that every again. But, there it is. Just goes to show that things can work out way more awesome than I think they can.

And before you go hide under your desk from my flood of words, I'm not going to give you a 'how we met' story. Seriously overrated, writing those down. Especially since this one is a lot of me banging my head on my desk saying "Bad me. No treat. Cannot has girl."

When, in reality, I could have. And do.

No. It is today that was very good.

Exhausted. But successful?

You know, I think if I were a bit worse at doing my job, I might be less stressed.

That said, my guts are better, I've dug somewhat out of the hole, and now seem to have found a backhoe as opposed to a shovel. Go me?

Today, I managed to sort through the major, uber-urgent items, but I haven't managed to get to the 'get organized' part of my plan. Still, I'm not drowning as badly as I was. Progress is progress, even it's measured in inches instead of miles.

I think I'm a bit too successful at the new job. For each thing I attempt, I create three new things to do. In terms of PR, I don't have money to work with. Let's face it - Dragon's Lair is a small business. While growing, we're not there yet. My job is to get the store exposure. My major tools? The website, my writing and my brain. Traditional PR tools for a business are advertising in various mediums and word of mouth. The problem with a niche business like Dragon's Lair in a city like Austin is that we have more competition for our niche than most niche businesses. There's only one store in town that specializes in fixing electric razors, for example. There are two or three vacuum stores in Austin, but they aren't all in the same geographic region.

However, Dragon's Lair has three direct competitors all in the same region of the city.

I can put stuff up on the website, send out a thousand newsletters, post up flyers, even get small mentions on the radio, but if no one is visiting the website, then nothing I do matters. I think the trick of it is actually going to be community. Some niche businesses have communities surrounding them, but very few are actually built around an existing community. Sure, a Janitor's Union might decide they like one vacuum store over another or a group of sharp-dressed businessmen might prefer going to the Shave Store more than buying from a large retailer, but there aren't really communities built around the use of vacuums or electric razors.

Gamers, comic book readers, manga and anime fans - these people, by their very nature, form communities. Without those communities, the interests or hobbies could not thrive. Playing games by yourself is not nearly as much fun as playing them with other people who are just as passionate about games as you are. Reading comics is fun, but discussing comics with your friends is even more fun. Same with anime and manga.

Gaming groups, comic reading clubs, manga and anime clubs - these communities exist with or without Dragon's Lair.

(Yes, Dreamsaint, the whole community thing did not escape my notice. You can stop chuckling at me anytime.)

I need word-of-mouth advertising to work for us. I need us to be a presence- a positive presence - in these communities. I need us to be the first place people think of when they think of gaming or comics or anime and manga. I need us to be the place people start and end at when it comes to providing them with the product and customer service they want. The problem with this is that Dragon's Lair is not a part of these communities. The other gaming/comcis stores? They are. They sponsor and host big events, such as Staple or their customers write internationally published and distributed gaming modules.

Why are they able to get this kind of recognition and we aren't, when we have more resouces, more longevity and more collected experience in our industry than any other store in Austin?

Because they have been able to reach out to and become a fixture of those communities.

I know some people argue that Dragon's Lair is too professional, too much like a big chain in policy and procedure and dress code, but that's a fallacy. Barnes & Noble is a major chain, but where ever they are, they are plugged in to the local community. The host signings by local authors, allow writers' groups to meet at cafes and allow writing seminars to be held in their stores. They provide a venue and support for these events, and the people who attend these events buy books and want to keep patronizing the locales that provide their particular group a place.

And big chain stores like that have smiliar policies and are even stricter about uniforms than we are.

So if both big-name chain stores and smaller gaming/comics stores can manage to do what I think we need to do, why can't we?

Inertia.

The First Law of Motion. Sir Isaac Newton defined inertia as this: A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force. Dictionary.com also defines inertia as a lack of activity.

In order to correct the problem, I need to figure out why we have inertia. Why we're a body at rest instead of a dynamic force moving forward. Okay, so part of it is a lack of resources. Part of it is that we're sitting on our laurels. We're one of the oldest and most established game/comic stores in central Texas. For a long time, that's been our selling point. We're stable, we're steady, we're always here, so people can rely on us.

I like that. It's a good starting point.

It's time to get us moving again. The problem with being such a large and established presence is that getting us moving means I'm fighting physics. (Not that I haven't attempted to thwart natural laws before.)

I have to work carefully, slowly, and with great deliberation. I have to build us into communities, and I have to do it in ways that don't require money. Well, where money can open doors, so can hard work, persistence and follow-through. It's a lot of work. A commitment of time and resources.

Most of those resources are me.

Good thing I'm stubborn.

However, I think I can do this. I'm going to be going to YomiCon on Friday and I'm going to present some information to the Fandom Association of Central Texas' board on Saturday. The only snafu there is that I'm supposed to be off and spending time with Musuko.

And at some point, I'm supposed to go visit MuggleMomma to have lunch and pick up some software I need for the new computer.

The fact of the matter is that I'm able to start building these connections and integrating myself - and thus the store - into these communities and using those connections to reach out to other communities. I just hope I can actually make this work instead of falling on my face.

A lot of this is harder than I thought it would be. Some of it is easier.

I think, though, that once I dig myself out of the hole I'm in that I'll be able to do more than just frantically keep up. I'll be able to be more pro-active than I am now, and I'll be able to start integrating the San Antonio store into their communities. First, I have to figure out what communities there are in San Antonio and contacting them.

There's so much work ahead of me that it's daunting, but I can't tackle it all at once. I have to take it one thing at a time, one process at a time, and I have to get organized so I don't drop the balls I'm juggling.

That's my current goal. To get myself set up so I can juggle more, better, faster. I have to have an infrastructure to support what I want to create.

On a different note, I switch back to religion for a moment. Just a random moment in time that left me shaking my head in wonder at how God works. The Men's Lab at the Well has just started reading Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. I took one of the store cats to the vet today, and was reading the book while I was waiting for him to come see the kitty.

When he came in, he noticed the book! Not only is the vet a Christian, but he's probably fairly close to the Wellian ethic (if such a word can be applied to our way of doing things). He wants to chat a bit about the book when I finish it (he's apparently recommended the book to a lot of men he knows). I think I'm looking forward to that chat. That's a relationship I never expected God to work on, especially not like that!

Considering how much resistance we've had to starting the study, I'm not surprised God started using it within ten minutes of my starting to read the book. I wasn't actually going to participate in the study, mostly because I feel out of place at the Men's Lab, but after getting a prod from the Holy Spirit and having my father, of all people, ask me if I was going to participate and then seeing firsthand how much resistance there was to us doing this, I had to take part.

If only because thumbing my nose at anything that tells me 'you can't do this' is really an avocation for me.

(I was serious before: when dealing with serious Christians, you either have to decide we're crazy or decide we're on to something.)

Though I still have no real idea how I'm going to dig myself out of this hole and accomplish the things I want to accomplish for myself, I think it's at least possible for me to do so now.

Hey two posts in a row with actual content. Who saw that one coming? (And this one didn't even have bullet points. I almost miss them!)

Jayiin and the Crazy, Awesome, Very Insane Day

Okay, so I tried to parody the title of the book Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (I probably got the title wrong) and failed at parody. Does anyone else remember that book? I want to find a copy of it, but I never can.

I remember it being awesome when I was a kid.

So. I have less than an hour to write, edit and post what will prove to be one of my more complicated posts. Why will this post be more complicated? Because it's going to be my first real religious post, and that will open up a huge can of worms for me.

Really? My spiritual walk, my faith, my church - these are important, vital and central to my life. Blogging every day and not dealing with these topcis isn't something I can do - because of that, there will be posts centered on that. I've thus far managed to skirt it, even in posts where those factors played major roles. Mostly, I haven't touched on them much because I'm a coward. I haven't wanted to have religious debates on my blog or deal with some of the questions that might arise.

Until I now, I could get away with it beause I was a fairly casual blogger. However, at least until October 31, I'm a fairly serious blogger. Though most of my first few entries have been short on substance and long on failed wit, not all of them will be. I am not going to friendslock any of my blog challenge entries because that feels a little like cheating.

So. Read at your own risk.

I'll put most of it under cuts, so no one has to read. Those of you following on blogger or a blog reader that doesn't support cuts - you have been warned.

Today's service at church was one of those services where the Holy Spirit was working overtime. Usually, when a month has five Sundays in it, the Well has a contemplative prayer service. Usually, this combines mystical, liturgical, prayer and praise and is focused around directed personal time with God. Dreamsaint will lead off with an explanation of what we're doing and why, open us in prayer. We'll sing a bit and then get started. At the end of the service, we'll have Communion and break for lunch before having a Baptismal service.

This week, we already knew two of the kids were being Baptized. I've have had the privilege of watching several of my students accept Christ, which as been an awesome, humbling experience.

Today, the service was an Ignatius Examen, except instead of focusing on a single day, we focused on the first six months of 2009.

I wrote a lot in my journal and had some profound revelations about where my head is at. A lot of it, I liked - I needed to realize that I am doing better at focusing on Christ and acting as Christ than I thought I was, but I also needed to see the places where I have failed utterly or need to work on more. There's a lot more of the latter than the former, but that comes with the territory - none of us perfect. We're all broken in some ways. Damaged goods. No matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we work, how much we do and how far we go in our walk with Christ, we will never reach the pinnacle of what we are capable of, let alone reaching the goal of living and acting as Christ.

That's where Grace comes in. We don't have to. If we truly believe in Christ, then we're going to try. We're going to fall short, we're going to fail...but we're going to keep trying, because we believe it's the right thing to do. Because we believe, because we love Christ and because God keeps His promises, we're already forgiven. It's not about the end result - that will work itself out, one way or the other.

Except...once you've given yourself to Christ, once you've truly decided to believe and truly decided to follow Him, you know what the end will be.

But that just means the journey is that much harder, because once you set your feet on the path of Christ, then God will direct you, and sometimes it's harder to follow Him than it is not to. We follow, not because we're earning some Heavenly reward, but because we know it is the right thing to do.

Sounds corny. Sounds too good to be true. Just believe, and be given eternal life with God? To be promised Union (if you want to get Evelyn Underhill mystical about it) all because you believe?

Yeah. That's all there is to it. Except, it's hard to admit you're broken and you can't make things work on your own. It's hard to admit you're wrong about things in your life, that you can't succeed, you can't become all you need to and should become without God. It's the most brutal, visceral kind of humility and it comes on you like a metric fuckton of acme anvils hurtling from the sky as if they were meteors on a crash course for an extinction-level event in your brain, heart and soul.

It doesn't matter if it's a slow, gradual thing like it was for me or a blinding instant of realizing - for a moment, you're standing naked in front of the Creator of the Cosmos and you realize how small, frail and hurt you really are. You're buried under the weight of everything horrible you've ever done. Drowned in all the things you can't do. Crushed by the undeniable and utterly horrific fact that you are empty, alone and there is something awe full and awesome missing.

For that moment, it's just you and God.

There's no words to describe God. There's no words to describe that moment - and conversion is the greatest Mystery in faith, I think, because it's so different for every person. So personal and individual that no writer or artist or poet or philosopher is ever going to codify it any more than we can truly codify people. There's no way to explain all the factors or moments or decisions or thoughts that push and shove and nudge a person toward that moment where they accept Christ. It's a cosmic Butterfly Effect so personal and powerful and unique that you almost never see it coming until you don't know what to do about it.

Accept Christ. Now there's some hard words to write about. You accept Christ is real. You accept God is real. You accept you are broken. You accept you are flawed, imperfect and unable to ever escape that. You accept Christ loves you. God loves you. God not only loves you...God likes you. He wants a relationship with you because you are His creation, you are His child. He wants you in his existence. He wants to know you, to talk to you, to listen to you, to help you. You accept that love as something bigger, greater and more consuming, more powerful and overwhelming and incomprehensible than you can ever grasp.

You accept God knows more than you ever can understand. You accept God's leadership, guidance and authority over you. You accept the only way to make being broken truly livable, the only way to be free of it, to face it and to make it better is to accept God's love. God's sacrifice.

You accept God is right and you are probably wrong about how your life works, where it should go and what you should do with it.

Talk about hard. No one likes to be told what to do, least of all me. I hate havig people in charge of me, telling me who and what I should or shouldn't be. I hate rules that say what I can or can't do, what I can or cannot be.

You've all heard me say it at one time or another.

But.

I am broken. I am flawed. There is more wrong with me, more ways I am a horrible, no good, terrible, very bad person than I can ever write or speak or tell in any way.

God still loves me. God still likes me. God still wants me around.

God.

The Creator of Heaven and Earth. The beginning and end of all things - alpha and omega. The being, force, power, Prime Force - the center of the universe, the all-encompassing ineffable, indescribable, incomprehensible, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Lord and Master of All Things loves and likes me. The fat, stupid little geek who spends too much time writing and reading fanfic who can't get out of debt and can't help but fuck up everything he does.

Today, I got to see that moment on the face of my brother and on my friend.

At the end of the service, right before Communion, Dreamsaint did something he almost never does: he offered an invitation for people to stand up and say: "I need Christ."

I know the invitation is pretty much tradition in most churches, but the Well doesn't usually do it, because we don't work that way. We try not to push people, pressure people or put people on the spot. We don't want to make them feel uncomfortable or like there's something wrong with them if they aren't ready to stand up in front of the church and deal with that moment with dozens of strangers they might not want to have to talk to about it.

But Dreamsaint said he was 'under orders' to give the invitation today, so he did. He said his piece, almost in tears because of the sheer presence of the Holy Spirit being there, working on us all...but my brother stood up.

So did my friend.

My brother has been coming to the Well for a couple of years now, off and on, and has been moving towards this for awhile, I think. My buddy has been dancing on the edges of this for a few weeks, too.

We already had the robes. We already had the service planned. It was the easiest thing in the world to add them in the line-up.

Off to Barton Springs spillway we went. Now, I know some people don't hold with the idea of Baptism, because once the decision has been made to accept and follow Christ, the act of Baptism is just a formality, a ritual - a public confession of faith (which is necessary for accepting and following Christ, but that's a topic for later). There are lots of ways to publically confess, lots of rituals and symbols and formalities.

It's true. Once the decision is made, that's it. You're a Christian. You're a follower of Christ.

But there is something truly transformational about Baptism, and it has to be important, because otherwise, why would it have such a prominent place in the Bible? Baptism is part of the mystery of conversion (and conversion happens whether or not you're raised in the church. Every Christian is born again and a convert.) Baptism is part of that process. What part is plays...I'm still working on that. It's different for every person I've talked to. For some, it was just a formality, like signing your name to a contract or shaking hands when you meet someone. It didn't do much for them...but other things did.

For others, Baptism was a profound and life-altering experience with profound consequences for their Christian walk.

I'm glad I was there when my brother was Baptized. I'm glad I was there when my buddy was Baptized. I don't know what role it will play, but I'm glad was there. I'm glad to have been there when my students were Baptized.

It was humbling and inspiring and full of awe. Did I mention humbling?

(Just for the record: I claim no part in their coming to Christ. It was all God working his miracles. If I did play a role, it was incidental at best.)

I will say, however, that Baptizing in public like we did was something of an experience. We do things this way for several reasons. For one, we aren't going to hide who and what we are, and people seeing folk being Baptized and seeing how we treat it, seeing us - as normal people, with kids in swimsuits playing in the water. Seeing us drinking sodas, smoking, laughing and enjoying hanging out, just like they are...but also seeing us as Christians.

It's a way for us to be incarnational and to try to be a part of the community.

It's also practical. It's free and convenient. We don't have much money and we don't have space of our own, so we have to find a way. The Barton Springs spillway works as well as anything we've tried, and better than some.

None the less, it's not easy for me. I am not an outdoorsy person. I know, a lot of people scoff when I say that, and think I'm not appreciating nature or think it's because I'm fat or lazy or just don't care to try to enjoy it.

Maybe they're right.

Then again, maybe not. I'm allergic to nature, for one. I have fibromyalgia for another. It's painful to walk down the trails to the spillway, and it's no picnic navigating the rocks and wet out there. I'm hot, sweaty, itchy, hurting and generally miserable. The water is cold enough to make me hurt when I get in, and the amount of energy walking down there and walking back up take is simply staggering.



Needless to say, I've ended up with hives, a limp, and a bit of a sunburn.

Not too high a price, really, for getting to be there.

I have, however, finished re-writing CH6 of HPU.

I still need a haircut.

And I still want my new computer to come!

Standing Witness

Today, I played a small role in a big event.

Long story short: last summer, my friend JK adopted four kids - as a single mother. Four siblings, actually. J, S, A and R. Over the course of the last year, I've gotten to watch as they became more and more of a family. I've spent time with the kids both in and out of church and have gotten pretty attached to them. There's an earlier post, , where I talked about going to R's school for the 'bring your dad/uncle/brother/male family friend' to snacktime.

It's a powerful thing she's done. A powerful statement about who she is and what she wants to do with her life. She's a social worker for CPS, which means she deals with hurting kids all the time. I've watched her play Aunt to about half the kids at the Well. JK is a woman with an endless capacity for love and an iron will.

Today was the connsumation hearing for the adoption. JK had asked that as many people who could be there. Dad and I went; it took some wrangling, but we both managed to get the time off and get Mom situated enough she didn't need us for the afternoon.

When I first set out to write this blog, I figured I'd say something like 'today I say a family being created', but that's not true. They've spent the last year creating their family, and JK spent years before that preparing to have a family.

Even saying that today made it 'official' isn't right, because what law or proclomation or signature can make real what already exists? It can merely acknowledge, through ritual, what is already there. During the proceedings, JK accepted parental rights and responsibilities for the four kids, but - she'd already done that, long ago. She's been their mother for a year now. They call her 'Mom' and they've been using her name.

All the judge could do today was acknowledge what all fifty or so of us who came to support her already knew.

Yes, I did say 50 or so. Dad and I weren't the first or last to arrive, and as we sat in the chairs set aside for fat people (comfortable armless chairs set against the wall), people kept arriving. A few here, a few there - more and more people trickling in to be a part of the legal ritual.

People do love their rituals, don't they? We have rituals for almost everything. Physical expressions for abstract concepts, rote routines created to symbolize and commemorate moments and events and milestones. Rituals permeate our culture; we're fascinated by them, both the ones we understand and the ones we don't. We're flattered and honored when we're invited to take place in them, and we get offended when other people don't take our rituals seriously.

"What we hold sacred gives our lives meaning," - yeah, it's a quote from Babylon 5, but it's been a few posts since I used sci-fi to make a profound point.

Today was a moment, I think, that will define the meaning of 'family' for those kids for the rest of their lives. Even if some or most of the people who came to the courtroom drift away, or they outgrow the memories of today, I think knowing that many people came to support them as they were officially adopted will leave it's mark.

It was an amazing thing.

Small towns in Texas are places out of time, combining hints of modern with the past. The courthouse was no exception; it was beautiful and old and steeped in history. The seats weren't made for people my size, but there were some modern chairs off to the side, behind the jury box, that worked well for it.

The judge walked in and we all stood. When it came time to swear in the witnesses...the judge was flabbergasted that he would be swearing in the entire courtroom. More than fifty people stood, raised their right hands, and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The attorney questioned the placement agency representative, presented an affadavit from CPS, questioned JK - and then questioned the other witnesses. The rest of us. All fifty of us. We answered yes - JK was the right person to raise those four kids.

Question after question, a ringing, echoing chorus of 'yes' reverberated through the high-ceilinged room, leaving the judge smiling and the attorney grinning. (The attorney had been forewarned about the possible turnout - the judge had not.) The attorney questioned the kids, and then the judge brought them all up to bang the gavel. Each of them got to bang the gavel.

Of course, the youngest banged it the loudest. *grins* RK is still my boy.

It was over faster than I thought it would be, but I think the statement was made - no matter what happens, JK and her kids won't be going it alone. They have a whole community behind them, willing to be there for them and with them as they go forward, officially a family.

One saying I've heard all my life is "you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends," and the older I get, the more I think that's a lie. JK chose her family - and the rest of us chose to be her family, too. Families stand together and stick together.

Friends, you can walk away from. Family, you can't.