Don’t Make Me Go To Sleep

I didn’t want to go to sleep last night.

My eyes burned. My body was telling me that it was time to recharge, but I didn’t want to.

The night before, I hadn’t slept the greatest. Had a dream where my family was at Disneyland. We were having a good time at the park. Somehow though, Disneyland twisted into a Nazi concentration camp. My dream was filled with dread and despair. And then things got worse when the head of the camp decided that I was going to be his new best friend. He tortured me.

Woke up with my heart pounding. I had no recollection of how I was tortured but instead had a deep sense that it had been awful. I didn’t sleep well after that, my dream had felt too real.

Where did the dream come from? What terrible combination of consumed media propelled my mind into such a nightmarish void? I haven’t read any accounts of torture in at least a few years since I read Unbroken. My family and I haven’t even visited a Disney park together.

I’m also not sure how Disneyland became a concentration camp. Maybe, for some parents, that is what Disney feels like?

Kickstarting ReElise

Justin Fox is a longtime friend I met through Theology Gaming University (TGU). He just launched a Kickstarter for his game, ReElise, a Hip-Hop RPG. Justin hopes to not only fund his dream but start a movement.

How did your values influence your game, ReElise?

The game started out about race. Mostly a coming of age story. Just exploring culture and how people deal with them. When I got saved (gave my life to Christ) the story completely changed. It became a story about how God can make dry bones live again. However the theme of race still plays a role in that it serves no real role in the story. The main character is a black female…. that is all. Sometimes, it’s just not important in contrast to the big plot, and it shouldn’t always be a plot to insert a person’s views on an almost ageless problem so they can be the guy who “figured out how we can get along”. It’s a problem of classifying people as ” those people ” and that’s not going away. Ever.

What exactly is a Hip-Hop RPG?

There’s a lot more to the culture of Hip-Hop than violence, money and abuse of women. There’s dancing, style, language, AMAZING art, and some would even say theology that’s not focused on quite as much. It was supposed to be fun in the early days. I like fun things. A Hip-Hop RPG is a game that leans into the dopeness that is Hip-Hop. I love it. I wanted it in there. I’m indie… so I do what I want I’m grown and sexy.

How long have you been working on the game and what have you learned?

Steadily for 4 years. I’ve been tinkering with it for roughly 7, but those were entirely different builds.

For me, it’s been the power of belief. Believing that something good can come out of an idea that’s not really been done before, and seeing how the power of that belief carried me through for 4 years. It’s a crazy thing. Not to mention how drastically my belief in Jesus changed the core of the game. Belief is really something else.

Engage in epic rap battles.

What would you like to say to anybody thinking about backing ReElise on Kickstarter?

This is more of a movement than it is about just one game. Traditional gameplay but with very non-traditional stories as well as concepts (I mean this is a 2D, hand-animated, Hip-Hop, turned-based, Mature Christian RPG… with sprinkles… definitely unconventional). I’d like to subtly offer deeper things to my audience. I’m giving my audience the chance to simply play a great game, and offer them a deeper story that I truly hope will be beneficial to their lives if they care to look. We’ve just gotta get the colorists, programmers, editors, travel expenses, and advertisements out of the way for this project first. That way we can make this first project everything it needs to be! There’ll be much much more to come with the support of backers.

Thanks, Justin, for giving us a slice of ReElise pie. We can’t wait to get a taste of your Hip-Hop RPG goodness.

If you’d like to back Justin’s work, check out his Kickstarter page.

Where I Have Been/ Where I Am Going

There comes a point where words must become actions in ones life. Failure to turn those particular words into actions will lead to those very words holding you captive; Haunting your waking thoughts with regrets of “what if” and “if I had only”. Trust me, I know.

For over five years I have worked for a company that offers me zero chance of career advancement. Short of going back to school and obtaining a degree in something I have little interest in, I simply cannot go any further in my current place of employment. I am in a way stuck due to the current job market and salary. Compound that frustration with frequent poor treatment, and you often have an irritated and sometimes depressed individual. I feel like I lost myself somewhere when I was told in a mocking tone, “this is so easy a third grader could do this”. Whatever level of college graduate optimism died within me the day those words were uttered. In my mind, I had become another worthless cog in the system, one that could be replaced on a whim. Reality had drop kicked me at the door.

Sometime last year, shortly after my Grandma died, I came up with a plan to move forward. I excitedly told others about this plan and began to set it into motion. I was going to go into web/graphic design. In the midst of the frustrations of learning/ moving toward my goal (acquire skills, get hired), I abruptly quit. I learned that letting go of a new found dream is easy when you lack the will to really work towards it. In a way, I hadn’t quite hit rock bottom yet. I was still comfortable pressed up against the glass ceiling of my job. What I needed was some fresh perspective, some truth spoken into my life. Little did I know that an email, a link, and a purchase were about to radically shift my way of thinking.

One morning, I received an email from Dave Ramsey. Well not a personal email but an email from his site. A link and a click later, I found myself reading about a book entitled Quitter. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this book was about to change my perspective and my life.

Quitter, by Jon Acuff, is all about pursuing your dreams while remaining firmly planted in your day job. Your day job, no matter how terrible it may be, provides a firm financial foundation for you to move towards what you want to do with your life. Truthfully, I had never thought of my job in this way. I had always seen it as something that brought in a paycheck, that had to be endured.

Jon Acuff goes even further in talking about how your attitude in your current place of employment will carry over into your future job. In other words, practice today the attitude you want for yourself in the future. This was a revelation for me.

The Bible talks about how Christians need to be faithful in the small things:

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much,and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” – Luke 16:10 (NIV)

Which got me thinking about my attitude and how I needed to be thankful for all that God has given me. This has required me to shift my perspective, which I admit is not always easy. It is easier to give into the norm and not rise above it.

In the midst of God working on my perspective, He also reminded me of my web/graphic design dream. I was finally ready for it. Almost a year after I first set out to change my career, I was finally in the right frame of mind to pursue it.

Two weeks ago, I started on the first phase of “moving forward”. I began working once more on redoing my churches web site. I have set rewards in place to help me achieve my goals. I have also limited the distractions in my life (video games) that I felt were keeping me from working hard.

My goal right now is to finish the church web site, show the church what I’ve done, and give them a list of possible hosting options for the site. Then, I’m going to find a new project and continue working/refining my web/graphic design skills.

Changing our perspective is hard. Words must become actions; actions must become a lifestyle.

What dreams and ideas do you have that you keep putting on the back burner for later?
What do you need to change so that you can move forward?

I would love to hear from you in the comment section below. Thanks!

Quitter

A few weeks ago I downloaded the audio book Quitter by Jon Acuff. Ever since then, I have been slowly making my way through the book. As each chapter unfolds, I have found God using it to attack lies I have accepted as truth. Quitter has made me re-realize that:

Our American culture celebrates those who quit their jobs to pursue their dreams. What about those that stay and persevere? What about the day-to-day realities of supporting oneself and family?
Blogging at work, doing anything besides what your paid to do, is stealing from your employer. Not sure I’ve ever thought of it like that, but Jon tells it like it is.
When pursuing a dream, coming up with a plan is not always the first step. Jon talks about the importance of looking at what your passionate over, practicing on that, and then charting out/ planning where you’d like that passion to go. Makes sense to me.

I have really enjoyed what I have listened to so far. I have also enjoyed listening to the book being actually read by the author. Seems to add more authenticity to what is being said.

What is your life?

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. – James 4:13-17 (NIV)

The future is a blank canvas that we like to scribble all over. Ideas fueled by our imaginations, egos, and sometimes even greed paint glorious indecipherable doodles that don’t always line up with God’s will. We say to ourselves, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. (James 4:13b)” Notice though, that in doing so, we have failed to bring God in on our future plans.

¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

I don’t think that we always intentionally leave God out. Dreams and ideas mixed with future planning can quickly become intoxicating, even overwhelming. No, I think that we get so caught up in planning out the future, that we do not realize just who gives us our dreams.

¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Our world is full of distractions; distractions that beg for our time and that contribute to the numbness we feel towards the urgency clearly spelled out in Scripture. If our lives are but mist, why aren’t we taking everything to God in prayer?

Dreams of Our Father

My name is Jacob Ingalls, I write Confessions of a Tech Addict but this post doesn’t really fit into that form so Bryan was nice enough to let me post this on his site.

Over the last 2 days, I was at a Logistics and Engineering conference, which I generally dread going to every 6 months but this conference ended up being a bit different. This time around there were a couple other young professionals and doing what young people do in a sea of older people we found each other and had a few drinks after the first day of the conference ended. As we sat at dinner and swapped stories and proposed our ideas, one thing struck me, we were all seeking purpose but not in the way that our parents and grand parents had done. We all said we wanted to be successful but we weren’t sure we had it in us to do what it took to be wildly successful. We were all fairly certain that the 70-80 hour weeks that we have seen our bosses put in to get to where they were was really, honestly worth the effort. As the night went on, it became clear to me that we were seeking purpose and had no idea where to find it. Our generation and even the generation before it has no really overarching definition to it. Almost every generation since 1900 has had something that defined it, whether it be World War I & II, The Depression, The Cold War, Vietnam, The Space Race, but the current crop of 20-30 somethings don’t. We could be called the Internet generation but that has done very little to define us expect that we can text as the speed of light and change our relationship statues on Facebook. I look at my fellow 20 somethings and wonder if we could put a man on the moon before the end of decade, and I honestly don’t think we could, not because we’re not smart enough or don’t have the technology to do it, I just think we don’t have the wear with all to actually do it. From the hipsters to the junkies all the way up to the young corporate shot with her MBA, when I look at my generation all I see is a bunch of people who are already tired of this life at 26 and just waiting for the fulfillment that our 24 hour lives could hopefully bring.

@jacobingalls

Dreams

Sorry the picture is so grainy…no flash photography was allowed in this part of the game. Might scare the zombies!

I do not do well with scary stuff. Take for instance a sudden twist in the Uncharted storyline last night. Everything had been going along swimmingly, when suddenly a past Nazis influence was introduced. Poof! Cue the supernatural elements such as killer Zombies -thankfully not armed with weapons, yet!-. After battling through darkened corridors with only a flashlight, I finally thought I had gotten away from this demonic horde. I was wrong. Very wrong. The game’s developers then decided to chuck not only zombies at me, but terrorists as well. A deadly combination burrito. Without the cheese.

Jurassic Park. Apparently not a fun place considering all anyone does is run and die.

All of the above to say that I had some pretty intense dreams last night. I dreamed of a zombie apocalypse that was somewhat akin to the movie Jurassic Park. Except this time…all of the golden retrievers died.

Dreams can take us to the wildest of places. Sometimes making sense and other times not. I am thankful not to live in a dream world…the nightmares are far too intense.

What crazy dreams have you had recently?

JohnnyBGamer

Faith. Life. Gaming.

dreams