Changes, Water and Layers

Sometimes, I really feel like this blog is a slice of me, I mean a real peice, as opposed to just something onto which I throw a few thoughts, ideas and experiences. I guess that could be considered a fault. It's like I can't just be a little of me, or put simple representations of myself out there for anyone because I would be wasting a tremendous amount of time thinking, writing and revising if it was just a mask, or a glimpse. It would waste your time, too.

I do that with just about everything though. If I can't personalize my endeavors, then they are left in the dust to soon be buried beneath the weight of a thousand other missed opportunities.

I say all that to say this: I feel like I've changed. I'm not talking about politically or physically or something like that. I'm still a Demo-lican and my pants still measure 34 to 36 (depending on the brand and my last couple days' consumption). I just mean that I can sense something is different.

. . .

I used to drink about 2 gallons of water per day -- literally. I did it partially for health, but also for attention. I would carry around these large, 64 ounce mugs from Wal-Mart that resembled pony kegs and I would drink like four per day by 5 p.m.! I peed. A lot. But, I gave it up for a while. I guess I got tired of it, or maybe people just stopped noticing, I don't know. Either way I stopped.

But, when we returned from Estonia, I started drinking it again. I'm not doing it anything like I used to, but at least I'm doing it. I'm not doing it to be noticed, and I'm not doing it for the sake of knowing that I drank an ungodly amount by the time I eat supper (I barely hit 100 ounces by the end of the day). I'm doing it because I saw my desires through the people in Estonia.

Before we went I could name for you a long list of wants. I wanted a truck, a boat, a newer house, a wave-runner, more money, et cetera. It was a load of material crap that mean nothing and spent every day descending to worthlessness. But, when all that I was used to was stripped, when the layers that were disposable fell to the ground like patches off a disowned Boy Scout, when my bed was 8,000+ miles away, when my house was but a pining, when my ability to go to the refrigerator and open a cold Diet Sun Drop left, or when my ability to snack on something all day long vanished, all I could think about was water. I looked at the kids around me. They wanted water -- nothing else. Sure, they drank a Coke every now and then, but not like me.

When you finally realize that everything you think you know turns out to be circumstancially fueled, only then can you truly find what it is that you want. I wanted water. Do I drink Cokes now (and, by the way, in the South, a Coke means simply "a soft drink of some kind" -- it can represent virtually any brand), do I drink Kool-Ade? Yes. But now I drink water, too. I got closer to the core of me than I had been in quite a while and saw that that's what I really wanted. I have to feed the inner-me, the me that takes a pilgrimage to northeastern Europe to exhume, not just the me that functions using the layers to bear the brunt of the blows dealt to me by this materialistic world.

So, what does that mean? Tons. But, for today it means that since this blog is a part of me, and since I feel like I'm changing, I think I need to change the look of this blog.

So, it's changed.

Well, there you go.