so despite the fact that everything seems to be butterflies and roses (actually let’s go with peonies or tulips as i’m not the biggest fan of the official flower of the bachelor franchise) lately, i am currently nursing a slight case of writer’s block (wah, wah). so until i find the remedy for that (something tells me that retail therapy may or may not be a viable cure, but then again, come on, what doesn’t that cure?), i’ll just share with you a few lyrics that have really been resonating with me as of late as they have seemed to be perpetually acting as the background soundtrack to my morning and afternoon commutes. i kind of can’t think of better lyricists than the boys of switchfoot, and i’m not even being biased given the fact that my pastor is their dear old dad.

been fighting things that i can’t see
like voices coming from the inside of me and
like doing things i find hard to believe in
am i myself or am i dreaming?

i’ve been awake for an hour or so
checking for a pulse but i just don’t know
am i a man when i feel like a ghost?
the stranger in the mirror is wearing my clothes

no, i’m not alright
i know that i’m not right
a steering wheel don’t mean you can drive
a warm body don’t mean i’m alive

no, i’m not alright
i know that i’m not right
feel like i travel but i never arrive
i wanna thrive not just survive…

 thrive | vice verses

feeling like a refugee
like it don’t belong to me
the colors flash across the sky

this air feels strange to me
feeling like a tragedy
i take a deep breath and close my eyes
one last time
one last time

storms on the wasteland
dark clouds on the plains again
we were born into the fight

but i’m not sentimental
this skin and bones is a rental
and no one makes it out alive…

where i belong | vice verses

sometimes i forget that this life is but a vapor. that our days are numbered and we aren’t as invincible as we perceive ourselves to be. i recently stumbled upon an old blogpost i wrote back in late summer (what? you don’t go back and read your old entries when you find yourself with nothing to do on a thursday evening? yeah, me neither). it was entitled “eighty pages” and its inspiration came from a conversation had while lounging in the spa at my friend’s lake arrowhead home.

“our lives are like a book and each of us gets about 80 pages or so. we can’t go back and rewrite the pages that have already been written, all we can focus on are the blank pages ahead.”

sometimes i plan so much for tomorrow that i forget about today. that i focus on the “surviving” part instead of the “thriving” part. that i revisit pages already penned rather than focusing on the blank ones ahead. that i become stagnant and plateaued, existing rather than excelling.

but when i think about my life in terms of numbers. about 80 of them, in fact, it kind of puts everything in perspective again. this skin and bones is most definitely a rental so i might as well get my monies’ worth, right? so here’s to making each page count in my life’s book. to thriving and not merely surviving.