Friday October 22

It was another successful day in the life of A.C. Hall today. I woke up, did some administrative work on Hall Brothers, and found we have a lot to accomplish in the coming month. Our first book will be published in the first week of December, with the second book following just a few months later, so we've found ourselves up against some tight deadlines getting all of that together. It's a fun and awesome challenge though, and I'm so excited to get these projects in my hand.

While I was working on all of that, my roommate/best friend got home from work and it turns out he wasn't having the best day. So we hung out for a while and talked and then played a card game. After that I'm honestly not positive what I did. Maybe played PS3 baseball or something? Regardless, the hours blazed past and before I knew it I needed to get ready to go cover high school football. I wasn't feeling very well, plus I was bummed to be missing the Rangers game, but I headed out. Turns out I had a fun night. The game went well for the home team and I again got put on the air during the radio show. This time I was doing color commentary for the last part of the 3rd quarter and some of the 4th. I wasn't talking quite loud enough (my mom said that I sounded like a little kid, hahaha) but other than that I was pleased with how it went. I'm getting comfortable because I'll be doing a full game in a few weeks and I need to be ready. My performance was still a bit robotic but it was devoid of the "uh" and "um" repetition that seriously marred my earliest radio appearances. So that was fun.

After the game, of course it was all about the Texas Rangers. I don't have a whole lot to say about it tonight. I followed the team very closely this year, went to several games at the stadium, and this is just a special team to me. Those who don't get deep into sports don't understand, and that's okay, but those that do know what I mean when I talk about just how special and meaningful this night was for me as a fan. I bought in to this team and these players, I was a part of their journey, and to have the Texas Rangers heading to the World Series is just an unfathomable dream come true. I'm especially happy for my dad and grandpa, both of whom have been such long time fans through all of the years of terrible teams. I went by to see them after the football game and my dad was re-watching the final inning. I have no problem telling you that I teared up sitting there experiencing it with him. What a special moment for this team, for this town, and for all of the fans. Just so awesome and amazing that our Texas Rangers are going to the World Series. It seems surreal to keep typing it.

So after that I came home and talked with my roommate and his big brother for a bit. Then I watched the recorded game, or at least the best parts. So awesome, and so wonderful for it to be the awful, evil Yankees that we beat to get there. Like most self respecting sports fans, I hate the Yankees and it seems poetic that we crushed them on our way to the top. Hearing the fans chant for Colby Lewis in the 8th inning was awesome, and watching Neftali dominate the Yankee batters in the 9th was awesome. Such an awesome experience.

And that was pretty much that for my day. I've now retired to my room, where I'm sitting in the pitch black darkness listening to the new Kings of Leon album, wide awake, even though I should be long since asleep. I'm probably going to read some submissions for the newest Hall Brothers Entertainment short story anthology and then watch a few episodes of Community season 1. It feels like a special night to be alive.

And for the picture of the night, this one says it all.

Thursday October 21

While I won't be making any grand promises to keep this blog daily (as I did last year and was not able to keep up), I do feel a bit out of touch these days. And I think blogging more often will help, so here I am.

I'm a little sick, and that stinks. I've got some projects to write for Hall Brothers Entertainment but I'm awful at writing when I don't feel good. It just doesn't quite flow correctly for me. But, after writing two novels back to back (Black Badge from June to July, Scrolls from August to September), it's not the biggest deal in the world to move a little more slowly right now.

For the most part I had a really great day. Woke up early, got some work done, finally got around to sending off my entire savings account to Uncle Sam. That didn't make me happy, but that's life I guess and now I wan't have the massive 2009 tax bill hanging over my head. I then went to spend a little time with my family. I haven't seen them much the past week since I've been feeling under the weather and it was amazing to get to be around them, even for just a short time. Even though I tell them all the time I really don't think they all understand just how much I love each of them. Some people live far from their family, or aren't close with their family, but being near them and close to them is like breathing for me. I can't imagine life any other way.

So, anyways, that was really nice. Got to see my nephews and help a little with their home school lessons of the day. I'm blown away by how smart they're all getting. One day they're little kids and the next they're explaining to you what a subject is in a sentence and the difference between nouns and verbs. It's insane.

After that I ran a few places. Blockbuster, Albertson's, Wal-Mart to get some medicine for my headcold thing that is haunting me. Then home, where something a little disturbing happened.

Bloggers note: Originally I had a massive thousand word rant here about local politics. Upon using my brain I decided it probably isn't the most professional thing in the world to leave it up on a public forum such as blogger, so I've removed it. However, I stand by it and would gladly share it with any of my friends or family who wish to know about it. Just ask me or email me or facebook message me and I'll send it to you. And now we resume the regularly scheduled blog post.

And seeing as I just went on a massive rant, I'll wrap the rest of this up quickly. Rested at home, watched television, ran to the bookstore, came back home, hung out with my roommate and his brother and had a pleasant time doing so, then retired to my room to answer emails and write this blog. I'm hoping I feel better tomorrow, as I've got a busy day ahead of me.

It seems fitting for the picture of the day to be of me, taken just a few minutes ago, looking every bit as ill and exhausted as I currently am.

I'm a real boy

It's been quite a while since I did any personal blogging. I've really been wanting to blog but the last month and a half of my life was pretty much all about getting the first episodic fiction series for Hall Brothers Entertainment finished. But I've talked about that a lot lately, so what else is up with me?

As it turns out, not that much really. The newspaper is still chugging along. Summer can be something of a slump for us but surprisingly this summer stayed pretty busy thanks to a lot of goings on with the City Council. Still, the past three or four weeks we've finally hit that inevitable summer dip. But, school is back soon which means I'll be back on my many sports coverages and that's when things pick back up. It's almost football season and I'll be working with the radio show again this year as they do a live broadcast of all of the local high school football games, so that'll be cool. I had a lot of fun last year, it's awesome to get to experience working with a live radio broadcast. I handle all of the statistics for the guys and provide them with updates on all things stat related. So that'll be cool, I'm really looking forward to that.

In my personal life things are pretty tame as they usually are. I posted on Facebook about my crush on my bank teller a while back, that's still going on. She makes going to the bank into such an awesome task and we always have fun talking when I'm up there. I still have no idea if she's married, but think she probably is. It's silly but I get so wrapped up in talking to her that I never can remember to look at her finger to see if she has a ring on it. Several friends have given me good lines to use to find out if she is or isn't married and maybe one of these days I'll use one of them. For now I just enjoy having a crush and this girl really is someone who I love talking to and seeing for a few minutes every week. I enjoy it for what it is right now and don't feel all that rushed to try to turn it into something else. Maybe someday I'll give it a shot, but for now I'm perfectly happy just having a crush.

Mostly my life has been all about family and writing lately. Hall Brothers Entertainment is coming together so beautifully. The company has been in existence for only like two months now and yet it's so well defined and set up. We've got another month to go before our site goes live but working with my brother on it feels like such a natural and important thing. It feels like what we were meant to be doing all along. I know that may sound stupid and that's okay, but it's honestly how I feel about it. It's been such an inspiration to us both and it's given my already awesome life another level of awesomeness that I never imagined could exist. It's really been a motivator to just go for more in life. I see so many people who sleep, eat, work, rinse and repeat and I'm just interested in more than that.

Hall Brothers Entertainment is work, don't get me wrong, it's actually some of the hardest work I've ever done. But it absolutely proves the old saying that if you make what you love your job then you'll never work a day in your life. I've written over 90,000 words of an episodic fiction series in a month and a half and yet it never felt like work at all. It was really hard to get it done that fast, and yet it wasn't like this hard, awful challenge that I had to get past. It was this glorious challenge that was so much fun to take on and I can't tell you how elated I feel now that I finished the first season of that series.

There's a religious book titled "The Purpose Driven Life". I've never read it and can't even tell you who wrote it but I've always enjoyed the title. It's my belief that the difference between living and existing is having a purpose in your life above just the regular stuff. I don't care what it is, but I honestly believe that the difference between happiness and simply just "getting by" is by having that extra something you go after in life. Something that you're passionate about and inspired to go after, be it creating a fiction company with your brother or becoming a great fisherman or weaving your own baskets and selling them on ebay. I may only be 29 years old but it sure does feel like I've stumbled upon a pretty darn brilliant solution for staying excited and happy in my life by following this formula every single day. Lots of time with your family, keeping God in your heart and trying to live in a way that brings glory to him, and going after that something extra. It's the A.C. Hall secret to happiness and so far it's served me well.

See what I went and did? I get all excited and rambly and stuff. That's what happens when you wait too long between blog posts. You let too much stuff out all at once. I sincerely hope that all of you out there have been doing really well. It seems that blogging is sort of "out" with a lot of my friends right now which makes me sad. I love reading blog updates and yet it really has become a facebook and twitter world. That's mostly okay, I like following friends and family on those too, but for me I like the depth and length that only blog posts can give you.

And with that I shall finally shut up.

Learning to live again

Okay so I've made a pretty big life decision. Church did it to me actually, so in this case I suppose I can blame God. A little over a week ago my oldest nephew was going to be baptized. This meant that I was going to have to go to church. While I love my church dearly I had also grown to dearly love not going to said church and instead sleeping in on Sunday mornings. But for the first time in about four months I got up, went to church, and then got slapped smack dab in the face by the Almighty. You see the preacher was preaching primarily about our focus in life. What do we spend our time on, what do we think about, what do we thirst after in life? And I was forced to face the fact that for me, my focus for the past two months had been poker. I wasn't neglecting work but I was neglecting other things. I wasn't hanging out with my family as much and my day pretty much began thinking about poker and ended thinking about poker. Oh and guess what wasn't going on at all... creative writing.

That's right, the thing I am most passionate about, the thing I believe with all my heart I was born to do, I was not doing. At all. And in that wonderful church it struck me just how stupid and wrong I've been for these past few months. Let me say this about poker. I believe, truly and absolutely, that within two years time I could make a living playing poker. But, to do so would mean it would have to continue to be my constant focus. And that's not something I'm okay with anymore.

So, while I'll continue to play and enjoy the game, it's now back where it should've stayed; as a hobby. What then, will I spend my days doing? Writing, good people! Writing until I can write no more. What will I be writing? Ah, I'm not sure I'm ready to spoil that one yet. I do know that I've got a novel that's about 80% completed and a short story collection that's about 75% completed, so you can be sure those will be getting some attention. But the big thing, the main thing, that is something else entirely. It's an entire business, an enterprise if you will, that I'm embarking upon with my beloved big brother Phillip. Will it make us rich? Probably not. Will it be awesome? Most definitely. Will we have a ton of fun doing it? No doubt about it. Will there be lots and lots of awesome fiction to read as a part of this new business? You better believe it.

So that's really all I wanted to blog about tonight. I appreciate all of you out there, be you family or friends. While nobody gave me any direct grief for my past few months as a poker obsessed degenerate I was starting to pick up on some worry coming from a few of you and I appreciate that. I think I was closer to going down, not a dark path exactly, but a path that wasn't exactly in line with who and where I want to be in life, and I think the indirect worry of my family helped me realize that. But mostly it was getting facekicked by God with that sermon that was so obviously directed right at me.

So anwyays, stay tuned for the big announcement and more excitement! I hope you all had a wonderful Monday and that your week's are off to fortuitous beginnings! I know mine is.

Disappointment

There have been a few things going on around work lately and then a few events going on with my family in the past few days that really have my mind churning. It takes a lot to get me upset and yet I feel upset with how I've seen some people handle themselves recently. I know that life is hard and you can't always fully put yourself in someone else's shoes, so I'm trying not to be too judgmental over some of this stuff. But at the same time I don't really see the justification for some of the behaviors that I've been privy too. In some of the cases it's just these things that have seemed to reveal such a lack of character that I'm embarrassed I didn't see it sooner. This is in reference to some work stuff, in particular. I don't know, it's hard to say much while staying vague I guess, but I just find myself a little let down by the lengths some people will go to get ahead. So many people have been so unbelievably ugly lately and I can't seem to figure out how in the world they go home that night and are at peace with themselves. There's never a justification for such blatant ugliness and hatefulness and yet I've seen it from many individuals and it just makes me sad. I can honestly say that my fondness of my community has waned greatly in the past month and that's something that really upsets me. I lived here obliviously for most of my life but once I started with the newspaper I got to go "under the hood" to what makes this city tick. And for the first time I started to believe in things like community and what a group of people can mean to one another and how they can lift each other up. And yet lately it seems like it's only the bad things that are going on. I've been forced to believe in things like unwavering hatred, unfounded lies being passed off again and again as truth, and once respected people spewing disrespect and half truths as often as needed to get their side of the story across. I'm an idealistic guy and once I buy into something I do it with my whole heart. So when I see things that make me realize that what I bought into isn't as wholesome and good as it should be it really gets to me. I feel personally wronged by the fact that these things are going on because I put my heart into the fact that I believed in them.

Really, what it comes down to, is personal responsibility. We are all responsible for the things that come out of our mouth and the actions that we do. On a perfect day it's easy to be a pretty good guy, I understand that, but lately it seems that adversity has brought out the absolute worst in people around me. Instead of rising up to challenges it's like people are stooping lower and lower to take them on. Fighting lies with lies, unfairness with unfairness and hatred with hatred. And I'm not just sitting here in judgment, I'm as flawed as anyone. I'll admit to being disappointed with myself in some ways in recent weeks. I've let these feelings fester and it's effected several aspects of my work and my happiness. But I'm saying right now, that's over. I can't change what others do and say but I can change how I react to those words and actions. I think that it's past time that everyone stand up and take responsibility for ourselves and our reactions. Because one thing is for sure, not a single person is judged to be great by how they acted on an easy, simple day where nothing went wrong. True character is revealed in the heat of a crisis and I'm not just talking about huge world shaking crisis. I'm talking about trouble at work, a conflict at home, a bad situation with a friend, common issues that we all run into on a weekly (or more) basis. It's easy to be pleased with yourself after a Saturday during which you slept in, woke up, watched some sports, went and had dinner with friends, went shopping, came home and watched a movie, and then went to bed. But how do you feel at night on a day when you run into issue after issue, a problem with a co-worker, a crisis in the family, a rift in the marriage, a moral issue in the workplace? I'd like to be able to fall asleep with the same sense of peace at the end of those days as I do on the easygoing days off. And the only way for me to do that is to consistently do what I know is right. To say to hell with the fact that most people around me seem to have thrown their character out the window, I still care about mine. I care about being able to say that I was faced with a bad situation and had a good reaction to it. That I didn't fight back against lies with lies, unfairness with unfairness or hatred with hatred. That I used truth, fairness and love as my weapons against a dark, ugly world that seems to grow dimmer and uglier with each passing day. That I carved out a positive, moral path for myself from the time I woke up until the time I fell asleep. That I carried myself as someone my mom would be proud of, my grandma would be proud of and that I can be proud of. I swear, if all of the unnamed people I've mentioned in this blog would make that same vow, take this same challenge, I think things would get better instantly. I think it'd be like waking up in a different place tomorrow.

I'm not perfect. None of us are. I'm never going to succeed one hundred percent of the time but I'm done using that as an excuse to not even try. I want to be the absolute best I can be, in my work, in my personal life, in every way, every single day. I don't care at all about others and how they go about life, I'm done letting that influence how I go about mine. All this said, it's not like life's been bad or anything for me recently. But I'm a super happy dude who loves being alive and I've noticed in the past month or so that that happiness has waned ever so slightly due to some of the things I've mentioned in this blog. I've let some people around me and their actions steal away a little bit of my joy and now that I've realized that I'm pissed off about it. I'm pissed off and I'm not going to stand for it any longer. I think that just about all of us can do a little better than we've been doing lately. So, for those loved friends and family members who have cared to read this far, I hope you'll undertake this challenge with me. Let's get back to making it a daily goal to be the absolute best version of ourselves possible. Let's challenge ourselves to make good decisions, to have positive reactions to even the most negative situations and to have compassion for others. Let's lift up those around us instead of tearing them down and let's withstand all the daily people and events that try to steal away our happiness.

Anyways, just my random stream of consciousness about something that's really been weighing on me for a few months now. It all started with some work related issues that I never really dealt with and then like I mentioned it's sort of been compounded by other recent community developments. This wasn't intended to be preachy for anyone other than myself and if you took it that way then I apologize. It's late and I just needed to get my feelings out of my head and out into the world. I hope you're all having a great weekend!

New Blog, Same Man

So, I've officially taken all I can take from Livejournals incessant need to make me watch a commercial every single time I go to their site so I decided it was about time to make a new blog. The reason I've been so hesitant to leave livejournal in the past is due to the great network of friends I've got there. Well, seeing as all but 1 of them don't really post or read it anymore, I figured the time was right to just make a new blog. So here we are!

Why did I feel so strongly the need to blog tonight? I don't really know. Frustration, for one. I'm frustrated with my poker journey and tonight just drove that home. Once I moved up to the 2 dollar stakes things were great and within ten days I was up to 130 dollars. And now, like a week and a half later, I'm still at 130. I always seem to earn back just enough to stay at the same place but it's really getting to me that I can't seem to break past this barrier yet.

I guess "them's just the breaks" as they say but today I'm just frustrated by it and needed to vent but my roommate is already asleep and so all of you people get nominated to listen. My results are still good, I'm still playing well, and this isn't the first plateau I've found myself stuck on so far on this poker journey and I'm sure it won't be the last. Just venting about it has helped a lot and I'm looking forward to trying again tomorrow and seeing if I can't bust up and out of this little slump I've got going on that's got me stuck in the 130 dollar range.

So what else is going on in my life? Not a whole lot. Went to the Rangers game yesterday, that was a lot of fun up until the sun started to murder us. I wore a hat and a long sleeve shirt so the sun decided to scorch the backs of my hands something awful. Add onto that the weird fact that it seems to have sunburned me through my shirts and I've been feeling pretty miserable today. Traffic was a nightmare when we left and I think from it took us about 2 and a half hours from the end of the game to get home, which is pretty sad considering we only live about 20 or so minutes from the stadium.

Hmmm... what else? Nothing I guess. Just living and working and staying positive and enjoying life. I'm pretty sure that my oldest nephew is going to be baptized at church this coming Sunday, that's a big deal. I didn't know anything about it before the other day so I haven't fully processed it but I'm really excited. He's such a great little guy and I love him so much. It's such a privilege to get to be a part of my nephews lives. Speaking of, the same nephew has a birthday coming up and I'm blanking on what to get him. I'm generally a great gift giver but I'm not coming up with anything for him yet. He'll be 8 and I really want to avoid the typical flavor of the week action figures (which right now is Pokemon for him) and get something a little more lasting. My latest idea is a model rocket set that he and I could do together but I think that might be kind of lame. I saw this cool mini-electromagnetic accelerator canon thing on thinkgeek.com that I thought about getting him but it seemed a little irresponsible to do such a thing so I didn't order it. That's what being a grown up is all about, not buying little kids electromagnetic accelerator canons that fire steel marbles.

Speaking of birthdays, my own is coming up before too long! I get really excited about my birthday and my best friend always makes fun of me for it but I don't care. It's just like a month and a half away and it's going to be awesome! I think I'm going to ask for a few comic book collections (Invincible and Walking Dead, more than likely) and other than that am just looking forward to a day of family and friends.

Okay, I guess I'll just shut up now since this is getting long. I really hope everyone is doing awesome and wonderful and that you have stellar weekends!