Friday, February 27, 2015

Already an Eventful Day

After a day or two of being one with the vegetation within and around the apartment, I sprung back into to action. Determined that today be a productive day, I checked my bank account to find that my state return had made a belated appearance just in time to save me from the brink of starvation. Seeing that it was two early to start my exercise, I decided to make a break for the store. First I put on my coat. Then I burst outside into the freezing air and cowered back into the house. After Grabbing hold of my thicker jacket I burst forth once more.

It was at this point that the gradual build up to chaos began.Seemingly innocent ice rested on my windows, but Little did I know it was a sign of the coming winter attack on my feet. I removed the ice and gave my tires a quick glance before hopping into the car. After fighting to get out of the random pile of snow that surrounded, I precede ten feet down the road to top off my tires and behold my rear tire was completely flat. The time spent wrestling with the donut and crappy jack included with the car turned my toes into a solid block of ice. To make this battle more intense man a U-haul pulled up and became angry that I wasn't moving the car, now with one missing tire, out of his way.

Luckily a guy from the service shop arrived to start work and used his tools to speed the task along. Before I knew it I was on my way, the only real damage being the blocks of ice that had replaced my feet. Following this, I parked in the shopping center around Costco in order to wait for them to open and see how much this was going to cost me and to renew my membership. While waiting I wandered around Lowe's and chatted with a number of employees there. Eventually I transferred money out of my saving as I sunk into a slight dread over the loss. At that moment I thought, "This must be what it's like to have to pull the plug on a loved one!" With a new empathy for peoples losses I proceeded forward.

Up next I wandered into a mac store, chatted with the owner and gave some of the ladies there a good laugh or two. With 30 minutes still left till Costco opened, I grew impatient and decided to complete some of my shopping at Walmart and bought 2 gallons of milk with a gift card I had received as a gift from a few days prior. The milk only cost $4 dollars so $6 still remained for emergency.

Trying to take a smarter path back to Costco, rather than hopping back on the highway, I made multiple bad road choices and ended up looping back around and taking the highway anyway. I reached Costco waited in line, renewed my membership and waited in another line. I was then informed that if the tire could be repaired they would do it for free. This is great I thought! While waiting, I wandered the store for ramen but kept zoning out and missing it. Eventually I found the ramen and proceeded toward the check out counter.

On the way there I wound up in a pleasant conversation with a lady from Directv, who almost forgot to try and sell me the product. After a good 10-20 minutes of conversation her boss called jogging her memory a bit. After briefly mentioning the service, chats resumed. It was quite pleasant and enjoyable. Even though I was only buy ramen due to financial uncertainty I felt like I had accomplished some good shopping by time I finished. Eventually, after a long wait and picking up lunch, my car was ready and the repair was minor. Thinking God I charged home before any more surprises could hit me. All that is left now is the rest of my day!

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Progress update: Logging Activities On the Temporal Scale And Controlling My Time

Hey oh! It has been a while since I attempted regular progress updates, largely because of how boring they began to get. In order to remedy this I have decided to experiment with embellishing the tittles and at least some of the post to follow.

After a multi-year long stare down in my duel with a brick wall, I have began my assault towards progress in life. I started with multiple small recon mission to determine the enemies abilities. I have been assessing those abilities. By making a few small lifestyle adjustments at a time, and fine tuning what works and what doesn't. By Forming habits and studying self discipline. I have been Finding my center of balance between my need for rest, spiritual discipline and physical well being.

All the while I have been learning to control the aim of my wallet and conserve ammunition for the big fight to come.There have been plenty of set backs, yet progress has been made. It is at this point I have made the next necessary step forward. I realized if I was to maintain progress and avoid another stalemate, I would be have to document and track my activities.

Starting yesterday, Tuesday February 24th 2015 I began using and testing a system to monitor my time with as little overhead as possible. The initial results are promising! Further more, I have begun formulating more detailed plans to move forward in my career and launch Christian Home Entertainment Works Studio a.k.a. C.H.E.W.S. I very much look forward to sharing this journey, and it's results, with you in the future. TTFN, Tah, Tah, For, Now. because tiger is best pony.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Random Child Hood Journal Entry 2

This one had a lot of stuff Scratched out and arrows all over to insert words. All of these happened at the original time of writing. Because of that it may have taken a little more work to make readable. While it was a little tempting to tweak some of the wording or remove some thoughts in this one, for the sake of my own integrity I did my best to avoid any such changes.

However, please know that, to the best of my recollection, my parents did not use the bible when yelling at or disciplining me. I know with absolute certainty that the bible is something I turned to voluntarily in hopes that it would help me to grow into a better person. (Since I started this before my dad decided he wanted to attend church regularly) Some of the lessons where tough, but all of them brought me comfort in hard times. They still do!  I say this because in the entry I did not flesh out this dichotomy but let them run together. I did not want to make such significant adjustments and risk misrepresenting my past thoughts in the process.    


June 29, 2006 at age of 14 (P.S. this one made me remember that I thought someone might read these after I die. Not my parents OFC)

I don't see why my parents think, or at least act like, I am some sort of rebellious teen. I try to listen and do what they want me to and I do my best to live by the bible. Yet every little thing I they make see as if it was an act of rebellion! Like when I ate a scrap piece of popcorn that was going to be thrown away out from an old dish without asking Chelle first. Chelle gave me this whole speech on how I don't care about the rules.

Honestly, I did not think she would care. Now today she says I should not be in and out of the kitchen getting water because she doesn't trust that I am not eating food out of the kitchen, even though I don't take any food from the kitchen. They find out everything wrong with me and everything I mess up (well almost everything) and the fail to notice my five your old sister's dirty jokes about sexual things. I worry about my sisters and feel guilty because of the crappy brother I am.

My parents are caring, Chelle too, they are just sometimes more down on me than I would like and they try to say good things about me, but their compliments are contradicted by what they say to me every-time they get irritated at me. For example: my dad said he was proud of me for trying to lead a good life and do what is right and latter on he is yelling at me about how I don't seem to care about anything. Please excuse my bad writing. I am just seriously down on my thoughts right now and often jumble things up when writing.

I wish to do better things in my life and help people to know God, but it is kind of hard when I hold onto my own selfish thoughts and shortcomings. Sometimes I can't help to feel worthless but I know it is not true. But to tell myself that I am seems to bring comfort to my pain and anger. Though now I don't beat myself up as much and it doesn't hold the same effect. God brings me comfort and reassurance even though I neglect to follow him whole heartily in the things I know he call me to do. Often I wind up pretending like he really doesn't want the things he put in my heart and wind up thinking more about other things.

~Trever Grissam    

Thursday, February 19, 2015

A Bit of Self Discovery

So I completed my exercise today, haphazardly commented on stuff on fb then put on my music to get to work on the sermon message. Normally this gets me in the mode where I can write and be productive for at least an hour. Often times it would be around 3-12 hours and the results seemed to be somewhat randomly determined by some sort of cosmic 20 sided dice.However. it was never less than an hour, so I was stunned to find I could not write a single coherent sentence. Was I suddenly stupid but knew it or was something wrong with my mind? Perhaps I had become a dragon who could not speak normal human languages!




As I was trying to figure out why I was suddenly struggling to articulate my thoughts and struggling to do things that normally come quite naturally. Why I suddenly was stalling on writing and editing my sermon and couldn't think straight. It was quite scary so I look it up and actually found a helpful answer that was given to someone with a similar personality type as me and similar set of issues. Upon reading this answer I was able to properly focus and get back to work.

Jared wrote," ...Generally , I have discovered overly analytical personalities, and people with relatively higher than average Intelligent Quotients tend to manifest their depression and anxiety problems through a neurological mime." He goes on to describe things that I have done thought out my life like zone out and not even remembering half my day or not recalling if I drove home. Normally I have spent a lot of life dealing with depression and was always thinking of responses and solution to issues. This often lead to some pretty good progress, though it was often slowed by moments of feeling emotionally overwhelmed. However, despite the stuff that has been occurring with my sisters and family, I have continued to feel remarkably calm. This initially lead to an increase in determination and excitement for my work. Normally I am quite aware of why I do things and the deep thoughts and zoning out where done in a manner that I was consciously aware of the thoughts.

I had not considered this could, at least in part, be a result of anxiety. Not until I inexplicably couldn't work that is! Once I read Jareds post, which was a lot longer than that excerpt, I began to test it. I decided to look at what I had already written on the sermon previous days, though that is how I normally start. This time I considered that anxiety might be causing me to subconsciously over analyze things without alerting my conscience mind. I was then able to continue my work, all the while I discovered something new about myself. I always enjoy self reflection but normally don't stumble across helpful comments on the internet. I am glad that when, for the first time ever, I hit a wall in this process there was something there to help. I don't really understand how or why it worked but glad it did :D Now back to productive thoughts!

Well perhaps I should get some sleep first. You know before I have to go to work latter tonight. I wasn't all that awake when writing this so please forgive the even lower than usual standard of editing used here.

Here is the answers page that was referenced from for this discovery https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101004214124AA9oQmx

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Blame Christianity!

Does anyone know someone who believes Christianity is at fault for much of the evils commit throughout history? I know that I have met quite a few people that feel this way, and I would love to have a live discussion on the topic in the future. It would be nice to get some of the opposing view points from people who might lean toward such sentiments. I would like to try and answer their criticism in a manner that might encourage some to at reconsider there views. If you or someone you know is interested in discussing the issues with me, feel free to send me an email at tchews@gmail.com. Regardless I will likely be creating a video called, "in defense of faith." on my own timing.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Random Childhood Journal Entry 1

The following was written March 3, 2006 at the age of 14 And I am now posting it here with minimum editing. E.g. Spelling and punctuation. I kept most the wording and sentence structure the same.

Today was one of my better days at school. In first and second period we did nothing other than sit around and work on late work. We were also allowed to walk around and talk because most the kids where not there yet do to an overturned fuel truck blocking the buses from getting through. In french class we had a substitute which meant we got to do review work and the other students where in a nicer mood and where not as uptight and where more sociable than they normally are. The rest of the day at school was like any other good school day.

When I got home I ended up walking in when Chelle was in a bad mood and angry with my sister for something. While Chelle is a great parent she gets stressed a lot, so she was not much of a welcome back from school. Instead I got a raised and agitated  voice letting me in. I had gotten myself grounded yesterday or the day before that, I tend to lose track of time, so I went to my to my room and did the late work I actually had on me.

I also emailed my dad, who is on TOS in Texas so he can do his schooling (college), about what was meant buy something I had said a previous day when he had asked me what I meant. I did not give him a straight forward answer, but I hope hope my answer is satisfying for him and that he does not look to much into something that no longer means anything to me, for it has lost it's meaning. The phrase I was being asked about was, "I would rather not say." as a response to their question on why I did not do my work.

I think I may have overheard one of my my sister's saying to the other that I am the worst older brother ever. I hope I just miss interpreted or miss heard some of her words. Today has been an OK day overall.


Trever Grissam

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Efficiency

I am currently looking into my life and how I spend my time. This was inspired a combination of prayer, and self improvement reading and a recent sermon I am working on. This was followed by news of the death of an amazing talent Monty Oum. I really only new him from a hand full of his work and concern for him both leading up to and after his death caused me to look into his life. What I found in this research is quite a bit more inspiration and motivation.

Because of these factors, I am even more passionately into the process of looking at ways to improve my efficiency. I am doing this by both stacking task together than can effectively be done at the same time, and organizing the flow of my day so that each task makes the next easier. (Or at very least the task that follows is a form of rest from the previous one.)

 Some of the ways I am stacking tasks are: I am now brushing my teeth in the morning while I shower and reading while I exercise. I am considering more ways to stack task for stuff I do on my computer and am awaiting a new cable so I can go back to a dual monitor work-space. Workflow improvements so far this week are: I am eating, then exercising followed by my showers and working on my mentally related task such as writing and studying. I am already thinking of how to organize my studies so that switching from one subject to another occurs in a way that each change requires a different kind of thought.  Finally I am looking at how I can begin consuming my media and entertainment in a manner that I can both enjoy it, and learn from to improve upon my own work.

Last but not least I am considering how to more effectively track my time usage since I plan to get back to journaling it. If anyone has suggestions or stories of there own for increasing efficiency in daily task feel free to hit me up. I am genuinely excited to see where I get to this year and what God decides to do with it. I am even enjoying my work more than ever!

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Launching (CHEWS) Progress and challenges

The project is mostly on schedule though there are a few immediate dangers to the plan I need to address. The first and foremost problem is likely the root of the others. It is simply that I have noticed myself gradually and consistently slipping on my disciplines. If not corrected my current projects will fall behind, my spiritual state will deprecate taking with it my state of mind and ability to function. Because of this from here forward I will be keeping a stricter eye on my daily thoughts and actions. The time in which I begin basic business operation isn't in immediate danger, however I sense that the capacity to which it launches will be severely crippled if I don't sort this out now. I can not and will not let this continue unchecked. I cannot and will not lose. I must not become trapped in a new cycle. I can and I will continue forward, I must prevail.

All the while, as my character is being refined and my flaws become more apparent, my family and some of my friends are going through a variety of serious issues. They range from physical to physiological and there are many spiritual struggles intertwined. I feel the spiritual callings building as the stage is set for not only my own battles but those of my loved ones as well. Because of this, I ask that anyone reading this set aside a small portion of time out of your day to pray for my family, my business, my friends and myself. While I wish I could be more specific I must respect the privacy of those involved. As for myself, things are not quite progressed to as bad of state. I would greatly appreciated any prayers over my spiritual and financial discipline so that I might grow closer to God and continue in his peace and presence. Should the launch go smooth there should be a build up to official content being published. God bless and if anyone has prayer request of there own feel free to contact me at tchews@gmail.com or in the comments.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Ideas and Truth

It is not the ideas that are dangerous, it is the changes that would be required to believe them. We should never be intimated by a new idea, Rather we should first seek to understand them. Then we can fully consider the implications and determining there worth. Further more in regards to truth, it is better to seek it than to remain blissful and ignorant.

Truth doesn't become false if you don't believe it. Unbelief cannot make it irrelevant, it only makes it dangerous. The reason for rejecting an idea that might be true isn't because it is hard to understand, rather we refuse to even consider them if they presents a moral challenge to how we already live. We claim every logic and reason except the one that we use.  If were honest our only argument would be, "I am scared to think of it!" The truth is not that hard to find, though there is more of it than we will ever know. The truth is however, invisible to those who refuse to look.