When I grow up....

As I sit here after a hot, dirty, tough day of manual labor, having a beer (shocking right, me having a beer), I started thinking about my childhood and what I wanted to be when I grew up.

This will probably sound lame, but when I was a kid (5 or 6) all I could ever hope and dream to be was a forest ranger. Yep, you read that right, a forest ranger. A living in the woods alone, climbin trees, watchin animals, straight pimpin forest ranger.

I can remember arguing for what seemed like hours with my big sis, who wanted to be a lawyer by the way (which would have come in handy later on in my life), that forest rangers made more money than lawyers. I would get so mad at her and my Dad would finally tell her that I was right just to calm me down.

I mean, everybody knows that acorns and bears shitting in the woods pays WAY more than the measly $3k an hour that top rate lawyers make. Pssst....stupid lawyers.

Anyway, I tell that story to make a different point. At what point in life did we forget about what we wanted to be and settle for what we could do? I mean, I don't want to be a forest ranger anymore (still the coolest job ever), but I do want to BE a writer/poet.

Yeah I know, I know, I'm gay cause I wanna be a writer/poet. It's the simple fact that it is something I love and have a passion for, why shouldn't I be that?! Instead I settled to DO my current job cause it pays the bills.

I know that the writer/poet thing is not this manly thing that I'm supposed to do, (hell, I'm manly enough. how many people do you know hang 50 ft in the air trying to put a wire tie around tubing while tons of dirt and lint tries to choke the life out of you?) but the fact is, I'm great at it. Since I was 14 every teacher I have had has taken me aside to tell me so. Anyway enough about me, I'm still pursuing my dreams and luckily my wife and my Jesus believe in me.

What I want to know is what yall want to be? Maybe you are lucky enough to be what God designed you to be, and you are that right now. Maybe you feel that you were just supposed to be a mom or a dad (Lord knows we need some good ones), or maybe you want to do long division all day.

Who knows? The point is that as children we have this blind faith and belief that we can BE anything we want and then somewhere along the way we get conditioned to believe that there are only certain things we can DO.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE? We are human beings not human doings. I am 28 and I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. I challenge each of you to name what you want to BE, and then to DO one thing each day to move closer to that dream.

(even if it is being the worlds richest forest ranger.)

God bless, and thanks for listening,
DangerRuss

Friends

You know, one of the things that I have always prided myself on is the fact that I have all kinds of different friends. Its one of the coolest things in life to be able to connect with people no matter how different yall may be.

Yes, I consider myself to be a bit of a chameleon when it comes to hanging out, but I think that has to do with having interesting friends Ash and me tend to chill with. We have Redneck friends that like to hunt, liberal friends that love Obama, gay friends that are funny as hell, even friends that wish to live in New York City. It doesn't matter the race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, style, education, or shoe size, if we like you are are immediately considered family.

Let me drop some knowledge on yall, God loves ALL people and he can show you another facet of his glory through each one. When we were blessed enough to travel this summer I found out that I hold more prejudices and judgements than I thought I did.

We get so wrapped up in our own lives and the people in our circle that we forget we are apart of something so much bigger! Liberal friends don't get excited I don't want to socialize America, I am just saying that I hope that I can step outside of my own selfish thoughts long enough to enjoy the beauty of the world that God has blessed us with.

What have I got myself into???

So...last night, there I was making fun of my wife and her friend about being addicted to social networking sites and the fact that they participate in 5 or 6 different ones, and now in addition to Myspace (which I got sucked back into) and a Facebook, I have decided that the world must be punished by reading my random thoughts as they spill out of mind and onto the keys.

Honestly, there is something eerily exciting to know that other people will be dissecting my thoughts and hopefully enjoying what I have to say. What is it about us as humans that makes us crave attention so much that we update our status every hour and pray that someone will comment us? Weird, but even though I make fun of people for it I am just as concerned with getting some sort of recognition, ya know?

I mean, I just want people to think, "there's more to this guy than I thought" or "wow, he really has some good stuff to say". Look! There I go again begging for a pat on the back. Oh well, I better stop because I could ramble on for days.

Never fear, there will be more to come.