themattscott 3.0
I’m back.
I think the time off was much needed and incredibly beneficial. I think you’ll find a (not so) subtle difference in the content, which will begin tomorrow. I’ve changed in many ways, yet still remain connected and interested in the emergent expression of faith I was a part of before my world blew up.
For now, I’ll leave you with this brief introduction I wrote to another project I was/am working on, hopefully it’ll suffice as a bit of a life update for any of those still connected to this blog through the various RSS readers out there that aren’t connected with me on facebook and twitter. A brief note, however, this piece doesn’t quite reflect the direction this blog will go, again, it’s more of an update as to where I am in life.
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It’s somewhere near midnight on a chilly mid-December evening, and I’m laying alone in my blow up bed, writing by the light of my laptop.
Yes, a blow up bed.
I guess the blow up bed is as good of a place to start my story as any other, I mean, how many stories really start with blow up beds? The world could use more stories starting with blow up beds, it would certainly be an interesting sort of world if there were.
Not many people sleep on blow up beds every night. Most people, that is, most normal people, sleep on actual beds, with frames and mattresses, perhaps even bedskirts. I had all that once, I slept on a pretty plush queen size bed with an incredible feathertop that made it seem like I was sinking into a cloud every time I laid down, and a bedskirt, it had a bedskirt too. That is, I had it until my wife took it the day she moved back into her moms house.
What I did there probably made you think less of my wife, because she took my bed. You shouldn’t, it’s my fault. Really, it is. Actually, we agreed she’d take the bed and I would keep the TV, because back then I was silly and thought I’d actually miss the TV not the bed. Now, I don’t even own cable, and watch movies on my laptop more often than my TV, in fact, I’m probably going to get rid of my TV before this story is over.
I should probably get back to the blow up bed, and the “my wife left me” part.
I made some small mistakes… and by some, I mean a lot, and by small mistakes, I mean massive ones. There is an author named Donald Miller, he wrote a book that talked about stories, and if I were to use his terminology, I was living a very bad story. Such a bad story, that I told my wife I didn’t want to be her husband anymore, that hurt her very deeply and she left me to go live with her mother.
I was doing some “bad story” things that made her leaving feel easier, but after a while I realized that I was living a terrible story. I was unhappy, trying to find happiness in others. I was depressed, trying to ignore my depression. I was hurting and trying to numb the pain. I was hiding from reality.
I was an avid runner for a while, but I stopped after my wife left. Then, one late October evening, I went for a run again. When I run I usually listen to music. I like rap music when I run, rap music and hard rock. I don’t know why, I listen to folk music most of the time, but I can only run to rap and rock. But, I was running that night without music. I was just thinking and running.
I had tried for two months not to do any thinking, but that night it caught up to me.
I realized I was living a terrible story. I realized I wanted to change it. That was a month and a half ago, and tonight, I decided to start to share it.
This is my story… I’m scribing it as I go, thus I don’t know the ending.
You’re not suppose to tell stories without knowing the ending, but I’m breaking that rule. I don’t know when this story will end, but whenever, and wherever it does, it’s going to be a better story. It’s going to be an interesting story. It’s going to be a story I can be proud of.
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