I’m an idea guy. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is that every one of my ideas has value. That doesn’t mean every idea is a good idea. It just means that every idea is worth writing down and coming back to later.

Several months ago I had this thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have an illustrated children’s book for 3-5 year olds that taught the real-life stories of Christian heroes?” Before I got too far with it I realized– This is one of the worst ideas EVER.!

Here’s what some of the pages would have been: 

• Polycarp – He was an old man who was burned at the stake because he refused to burn incense to honor the Roman Emperor. When he didn’t catch on fire, they stabbed him with a spear.
• Cyprian – When he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, he was first banished. But then he was brought back to Carthage and beheaded. On his way to be killed he took off all of his clothes and put on his own blindfold.
• Agnes – Agnes was martyred because she refused to marry someone who wasn’t a Christian. But since the law in Rome was that a virgin couldn’t be executed, Roman soldiers dragged her to a brothel first. Then when they tried to burn her at the stake the wood wouldn’t catch fire, so a soldier stabbed her in the throat.
• Jovan Vladimir – He was beheaded in front of his church because he refused to lead his country into war.
• William Tyndale – After being jailed for over a year in a castle, Tyndale was choked, impaled, and burned at the stake. His crime? He translated the Bible into English.
• Hugh Latimer – Why he was killed isn’t all that clear. But people in charge of the church just didn’t like him because he was teaching truth about salvation and had a habit of preaching at places that weren’t the church. So they had him burned at the stake.
• Thomas Baker - A missionary to Figi who was killed and eaten by cannibals.

I dunno, this might be my best idea ever…

Last night I had a night to myself. I have three kids, happily married, and am aggressively launching two businesses. I never have an evening all to myself. Just one of my favorite towns on the planet, Chicago, and 6 hours.

I drove over to one of my favorite hole in the wall restaurants, Irazu. (Oatmeal shake, steak el tico, you need to try it.) I hate eating alone! But the food there is so good that it was totally worth it. Then I took the long way back to my friends house… just enjoying the fun vibe of the city. I drove up Western Avenue, across to Lake Shore Drive, then back up Clark to the North Side.

Even with the scenic route and trying to find parking I was back in 2.5 hours.

So I sat down and pretty much vegged out watching Sportscenter, which kept my attention for about 45 seconds before I grabbed my laptop and started surfing around on Facebook.

The new timeline feature has a little app called “map” that I started fiddling with. Essentially, it’s asking you to tag your photos based on location so that you can see a cool map of the places you’ve been. So I started going through my photos on Facebook. Lots and lots of photos. Each with a story and a memory.

This lead to me looking at pictures on Facebook for a couple of hours. Tagging, remembering the name of the place I was at, and moving on to the next set of images.

Looking at all of those pictures reminded me of all the amazing places I’ve been in my life. I’ve lived in several states. I’ve lived in Europe. I’ve visited tons of places in the United States, Europe, parts of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

If I’m honest– I’ve lived a pretty storied life. Being in my hometown of South Bend this week reminded me that my life didn’t have to turn out the way that it has. Just like my dad, I could have chosen to live in the same community for 65 years and been perfectly happy.

All of that reflection lead me to this single thought: Is it that I’m living a storied life or is it that I’m living a life worthy of telling a story? 

Sure, some could say I’ve been fortunate. They could say I’ve been at the right place at the right time lots and lots of times. But I’d be quick to point out that I was and always am looking for opportunities to better my story.

It’s not so much that I’ve lived a storied life. It’s that I’ve maintained a posture looking for a story.

That’s the choice we face each day. Is today a story worthy day or not? You get to decide. 

Let’s face it. For many of my readers I am the geek in their life.

I’m the nerdy friend you tell your IT guy about when you don’t know what else to talk about because you want to talk about the latest political news about Herman Cain or what happened on SNL and all he is knowledgeable about is Leo Laporte’s ugly shirt in his last episode of This Week in Tech.

You don’t even know who Leo Laporte is. And that’s OK.

So what do geeks want for Christmas? What are the things that will make us shout “sleigh ride” on December 25th? I’m glad you asked. Here’s my list of 14 geek toys that I will happily tweet about when the UPS man drops them off.

For super smooth panning on my YouTube videos…

buy the Camera Table Dolly for Adam at the Photojojo Store!

For capturing my every moment of adventure…

buy the GoPro Camera HD Hero 2 Outdoor Edition for Adam at Amazon.com

So I look cool at the water cooler…

buy the Fail Whale Coffee Mug for Adam at Zazzle

For making me look just a little bit thug on the trolley…

buy the Custom Comic Headphones for Adam at Etsy

So I don’t get lost finding a coffee shop on my bike…

buy the Perfect Fit Handlebar Mount for iPhone 4 for Adam at Amazon.com

For keeping my desk organized…

buy the Metal Cordies for Adam at Quirky

For posting the perfect fish eye Instagram…

buy the The iPhone Lens Dial for Adam at the Photojojo Store!

For making stop motion movies of my web design process…

buy the Neewer shutter release for Canon DSLRs for Adam at Amazon.com

For getting that nod at the bar from fellow addicts…

buy the Angry Birds Triple Threat t-shirt for Adam from Amazon.com

For making people smile more than making them jealous…

buy the iPad Cover Made from a Real Book for Adam from Etsy

So I’m using space wisely and keeping my USB options open…

buy the Space Bar for Adam at Quirky

For tweeting while walking and keeping the digits toasty…

buy Texting Friendly Gloves for Adam at Etsy

For street-level citizen journalism at Occupy San Diego…

buy the Groundbot for Adam at Rotundus

For sharing time with Kristen that’s better than updating my status…

buy the Rocking Chair for Two for Adam at Sway

What would you add to the list? Leave a comment with a link, maybe I’ll add it!

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I love this video. I’ve seen it dozens of times as I’ve considered using it for YouTube You Can Use. In may ways it is perfect because of the high amazement factor. But the video is just too much of a stretch to tie into a discussion guide about God.

Here’s what I think about when I watch this video.

• First, notice this young man isn’t wearing a wedding ring. If he busted out these moves on a date you can see why he might have a hard time finding a spouse.
• Second, this is truly amazing. While some of it looks improvised clearly there is a lot of work and practice to it.
• Third, we all have our own geek inside of us. For this gentleman it is making his fingers dance. For others it is science fiction comic books. And for others it is…

Whatever you geek out on– own it

Life is full of unexpected, frivolous, everyday beauty.

But you’ll only see it if you slow down enough to notice.

You don’t take time to notice beauty. You make time.

May I seek this today. Amen.

UPDATE

Shortly after I posted this I put Jackson in the Baby Bjørn and headed off for a trip to the bank. (Praise God for checks!) Our bank is about half a mile away, an easy walk. I cruised over there, made my deposits, and was cruising home. About half way back it hit me. I wasn’t acting on my prayer. I was rushing right by so much ordinary beauty. Worse yet– poor Jackson was just along for the ride.

So we stopped. Right on our walk. And looked at leaves on trees. The tiny creases. The pretty colors. I put leaves in JT’s hands. We looked at them closely. Next came flowers. Yellow ones, purple ones, burgundy ones. We took turns smelling the flowers and grinding the petals between our fingers.

Prayer is a verb.

As I watched this short film I couldn’t help but think of this phrase: Seize the moment.

Andrew Clancy took his camera everywhere he went in New York for a year and captured the things going on around him. The result? A beautiful tapestry celebrating his year.

Memorable moments of beauty happen every day of your life. But often times we are walking through life focused on the next thing instead of seizing this day a sa beautiful gift.

Even the most mundane day can be viewed as art if curated. Are you curating your moments? 

Let me say this first– talent is overrated.

I’ll take someone driven, or visionary, or hard-working over just talented any day. I actually think we falsely label hard-workers or fast-learners or fail-fasters as talented all the time as a way to make ourselves feel better about our inadequacies.

That said, talent isn’t everything. In fact talent can lead to nothing quite easily!

Here are 4 things talent can’t overcome

1. Laziness – It doesn’t matter how good you are at something, if you’re lazy and you don’t deliver on time or do the right things… you’ll fail every time.
2. Bad timing –  This would be a horrible time to develop a talent on the accordion. Or get really good at writing code for the Palm Pilot. Success in the present age is about timing. It’s not good enough to be talented. You have to be talented at the things that people are looking for.
3. Immaturity – Maturity brings the wisdom to know what to do with talent.
4. Character flaws – No one cares how talented you are when you’re a jerk or a liar or if you step on kittens tails.

The other side of this coin is pretty fantastic. We all have something which could be labeled a talent. That’s the very nature of a free market society. I have skills/talents in one thing and you have talent/skills in another. So we trade goods. Or I trade your good for cash.

If we all had equal aptitude life would be pretty boring.

There is a baby boy on the floor next to me, crawling around the living room, exploring. Everything in this babies life is defined by one emotion: Joy.

We hold him but his joy is something you behold. It sneaks up on you and slaps you when you least expect it. Bam! Joy, joy, joy, and more joy.

Jackson’s joy tackles you down and forces you to smile. It doesn’t matter how bad he feels or that he’s cutting a tooth or that he’s hungry or has a dirty diaper. He flashes a smile and a hug which melts you faster than a snowflake on the hood of a hot car.

There is something about Jackson, something deep inside of him that sets him apart. I can’t wait to watch him grow up so we can discover more and more why God gave him this radiant, magnetic joy.

Here’s the thing: JT is a baby. There really is something distinctive to him. But imagine how much joy radiates from the Father? In Him we find delight, which supersedes joy. (Psalm 1)

Allow joy to radiate on you today. Allow yourself to be drawn magnetically to the Lord. It’s a choice, it’s something you allow in your life, it’s a filter on your soul you consciously remove.

Keeping San Diego State classy, one lawn at a time., originally uploaded by mclanea.

Megan’s comment: “Their grass is greener than ours.”

Click to view full-size

Yesterday, I opened my front door to this letter. Everyone in my neighborhood did. Take a second to read it.

There are so many things wrong in this letter. At its core it teaches us a lot about the power of fear in our lives.

• The letter is completely anonymous. It’s a letter about fear from a person too afraid to reveal who they are.
• A concerned neighbor expressed a legitimate concern. Coyote are dangerous to pets. Let’s agree that this note came from a very good place, right?
• The solution offered is counter-intuitive. Hiding your animals and yourself in your house will not scare away predators.
• The neighbor doesn’t talk about the one obvious solution: Calling animal control.
• There’s a cynical side of me that wonders if this isn’t really about coyote, it’s a passive-aggressive note about keeping your pets indoors at night. Maybe this neighbor was awakened by a dog barking or two cats fighting? And there are plenty of neighbors feeding lots of stray cats.
• The note talks about facts, says there is evidence to back up these facts, but provides no specifics as to where you could see the facts.
• The notes use of hyperbole is impressive, poetic even, like a chapter of Inferno.
• “Every cat left outside will be attacked, killed and eaten.” That’s my favorite line. It reminds me of the nightly news.

Fear is big, bold, all caps… and delivered on your doorstep while you sleep.

Remember: Jesus is not the author of fear.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. ~ John 10:10