So yeah, I have been mostly moving on to other resources for online communication and blogging. Below is a list of various resources. I am sure I will still find use for this blog at some point other than simply redirection.

General life - Facebook

Family Life Updates - JustLikeLions

Frequent Deep Thoughts/Literary Discussion - TrueGent

Gents&Jacks Manliness Company Blog - Gents&Jacks

Manliness Store Front - Gents&Jacks

Hope to interact with you on all these resources soon!

I was born into time in the history of this world where fantasy literature consisted of blue women wearing barely any clothing and alien knights fighting trolls and wizards. To be honest, I have never been able to greatly appreciate the fantasy genre as it exists in most modern graphic novels, books, and board games.

When Tolkien's books where first made into movies, I loved them. I wasn't as obsessed as many people I knew, but I definitely admired both J.R.R. Tolkien for writing and Peter Jackson for developing such a wonderful screen adaptation.

I didn't really learn such a great respect for the author, or the roots of fantasy literature, until I began to learn about the man himself. I was gifted an awesome book of essays on Tolkien's life and works, and realized that this was a man seen deeper in his journal entries and personal letters than most men are seen in daily interaction. From here I learned to love his works, once I saw from where they found source matter.

Tolkien was passionate about mythology. Norse, Greek, British, and every other deep culture. His works where the natural outcome of his understanding of how and why these great people groups built so much into and upon narratives. It is because of this that he became what I would describe as a founding father of classic fantasy literature.

Since Tolkien, much has been dulled down. While much of the adventure or creativity which fantasy allows for is still active in the genre, it seems hollow when there is nothing greater in a story than the progressing of a handful of characters through a chain of events. This is true originally in the thought processes of the author, and becomes obvious when the story is built. The depth at which the author is processing his stories and their surrounding implications, or the implications of their fictitious surrounds upon them, is the depth at which the story becomes real to the reader. Or so I assume is also true for others.

I will end by saying this. Tolkien was not largely a fan of his good friend C.S. Lewis' Narnia fables. While I greatly admire the philosophic and emotional efforts and expressions put forth in these books, I think Tolkien saw within them the death of the genre he was nurturing. Tolkien is a great founder of a genre which went on to lead a rather ill fated historic progression in my opinion.

It seems that thousands of amazing resources on a variety or materials will one day soon be completely worthless.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis references a grocer. How many people in today's economy and social standards even understand what a grocer truly is? Most have never been in a grocery store where the proprietor himself was actually involved. The even scarier thing is that your probably reading this and wondering why it matters.

It is crucial to understanding any intentional expression that one can completely grasp all that the author's subject matter holds. This is true when I read a book of in-depth study about a subject I have never studied. It is true if I watch a comedy sketch about current events when I haven't heard or seen the news in a few weeks.

The truth is that most of the emotions and events, even the simply daily lifestyles of the past are fading at a rate unprecedented, and I can only hope this is not true for the knowledge accessible therein.

So now that I'm married and my whole life has taken such a drastic turn, I started a family blog at wordpress. (Don't tell blogger, I didn't think it could handle that kind of rejection. I just think we should keep our options open.)

So anyway, the adress is http://justlikelions.wordpress.com/ .

I'm not sure as of yet whether I will continue to seperate off some personal thoughts onto this blog.

I am married now, and finally starting to settle from them craziness of the past two months or so. At this point we are finally settling into a cold apartment, during record breaking snow fall, while working horribly non-rhythmic schedules which keep us guessing constantly. I'm at Kroger most days, while my wife tries to manage Yagoot by day and night.

When we are together, we are trying to gain perspective on one another's thought processing, how we communicate, and building a family mindset and a spiritual unity as one flesh. Our free time is spent trying to adjust to this completely new life, reading alot of awesome books (aka- "Night" by Elie Weizel, "The Shack", "Mudhouse Sabbath", etc.), and hanging out with the church community (worship breakfasts and groups of grown men building massive snow fortifications and wishing they could build a fire inside). So we are living slightly hectic right now.

It would be really nice to find a more rhythmic occupation, preferably for both of us. But things are going very well, its awesome to be in this stage of pure growth. It is strange, I am very much of a big idea, long-term thinker (a Meyers-Briggs "N", if your into that sort of thing), so this stage is a bit strange, because I don't really have a goal in mind with life right now other than "get situated" mode.

We have created one rhythm, that of Wednesday "family day". There are only two in our family now, but we are excited to act in a mindset of our family and its missions. Wednesday night is also the day that we meet with brothers and sisters to fellowship and share Christ together, so we planned that to intentionally include church in our only weekly rhythm.

This huge post is the result of little time to debrief lately, and the lack of internet access.

P.S. I'm planning on soon starting a family blog, to document the progression of our family missions and activity.

JANUARY 23RD - Wedding. MY Wedding...

So yeah, that being said, there is plenty to do before then.

I have plenty of well founded reasons to feel like I should not be waiting long to be married to my wonderful future-bride, but I have to admit that the schedule here on out is a bit daunting. I mean, I just started a new job at a place that is about to be booming with crazy amounts of business. Then there are the holidays, which successfully take up all our time until January. Not to mention my cousin's wedding, on the 2nd which will also take a few days. By that time your only just two weeks out from the grand event itself. And there are a million things to try to remember to do. For a kicker, we have plenty of non-wedding, non-holiday stuff to get done in the next few weeks.

Future-bride has really kicked it into high gear, to my surprise and delight. I'm often the type of person who is mentally worrying about every aspect of anything I'm personally invested in, so even though she is taking care of many more things that I have to, I am still overwhelmed for her, or something like that. Either way, I feel a weight that isn't bad, but ends up slightly exhausting.

Today, my focus needs to be on getting the invitations and programs designed and completed. Phew. Wish me luck!