It’s simply genius!

A friend of mine, @inprogress, tweeted this video last night and I just couldn’t pass it up.  KK and I were in tears reading through the captions.  So funny.  Thought about waiting until Monday for it, but it’s too good.  Now your turn.  Go burn some calories and laugh!

Got a creative question for you.  I have my own opinion, but as someone who is continuously trying to be creative in many different aspects I like to know what you think!

So, do you prefer simple or complex?  (gadgets, Web sites, graphics, t-shirts, etc.)

Why?

Anyone else absolutely HATE these?

I hate being forced to do things.  I don’t do my best work when I am forced.  My motivations aren’t there.  The work is done just for the sake of being done.  Your boss tells you to do something.  Your significant other tells you to pick up your socks.  Your parents tell you to do your home work.  Being forced into something usually requires consequences that we don’t like.  Sometimes those are just implied and other times they are spelled out for you.

I am wrestling with this right now.  Just 30 minutes ago I was staring at a blank blog post page.  I made a commitment 333 days ago to blog everyday, but now I’m just forcing it.  Of course Family Guy and Friends were on and that makes it quite difficult for me to concentrate, but tonight it didn’t really matter.  Nothing was coming out.  Sure there were plenty of things I wanted to say but I just couldn’t remember what they were.

So I tried to force something.  I wasn’t in the mood to write something very serious, especially something that wasn’t on my heart and mind, but I had some notes that I knew I could shove into a post.  So I grabbed some of those and started typing away.  But it was still one of those things.  One of those forced things.  You know, where it is happening but the whole time you are thinking I don’t wanna be writing this right now.  There has to be something better.  The problem was that I knew the notes were good and I could still probably force out a decent post if I just stuck with it.

Then the dog interrupted my forced blogging needing a bathroom break.

That was all I needed.  It broke me free from the prison I was trying to force my mind into.  And then, this post.

Sometimes being forced is a good thing. We force ourselves to exercise, eat our veggies, start new habits, break old habits, look away from something or someone.  It may all be against our body’s desires, but deep down inside we know it is the best thing for us so we force it.  We have to make ourselves do it or it won’t get done.

I have to make myself eat healthy, exercise more, pick up my socks, read my Bible and do the dishes. Right now, in a very anticlimactic and non spiritual way, I am forcing myself to write. What do you have to force yourself to do?

Right now as I am writing this we are driving along the Alaskan coast.  On one side of me are mountains covered in green with touches of snow.  On the other side is the ocean separating us from more gorgeous mountains.  It is definitely an amazing sight.  But usually when I see this kind of thing or any kind of creation, I don’t think to myself, wow, we have an amazing God.  I am not just drawn closer to Him because of the amazingness around me.  I think to myself, that’s cool or that’s awesome, but not He made that.

Many of us live our lives oblivious to the God around us.  God is a Sunday morning/small group/study type of God and nothing more.  We can see the amazing mountains or beaches or oceans or kids or whatever but we don’t see God in them.  We might appreciate their massiveness or awesomeness or complexity or beauty but we are acting ignorant of the Creator since it isn’t a Sunday morning at church!  We might as well be like my 4 month old baby.  As we are traveling around Alaska she just sleeps through all the scenery and all the wildlife.  She doesn’t know she is supposed to see and appreciate what’s around her yet.  She may see the creation around her but her understanding of the beauty and complexity of it is not there.  And so are we.  If it isn’t during the prayer time or while we are reading the Bible or while the pastor is driving his point home we miss God.  We miss the truth and deepness that the creation around us teaches us.

My mom is not this way.  She sees the things that God created for what they are: evidence that there is a powerful, amazingly creative God out there who has chosen us out of all the things He designed from scratch to love on.  That’s pretty amazing.  So while we have a week left in this gorgeous painting, I hope to see it for what it is and not just more cool sightseeing spots on a map!  I pray you do the same!  It doesn’t have to be mountains or oceans.  See him in your kid’s face.  See him in the complex human race.  See him in the trees and bushes.  He is there.  We just have to stop acting ignorant and arrogant and look for Him!

Welcome to Alaska!

(Pretty catchy title huh?)

Yesterday was the final day of the 30 Day Shred.  For those of you that don’t know, it was created by Jillian Michaels who is one of the main fitness trainers on The Biggest Loser (a show I don’t watch).  The workout consists of 3 segments of strength, cardio and abs in a constant pace for 20 minutes.  I believe it also comes with a diet plan too, but since we just borrowed the DVD and didn’t buy it, we didn’t get all the information.

The box boasts that you could lose up to 20 pounds in 30 days through this program.  While I did not, I can’t say that it won’t do that for you since we didn’t use the diet program as well.  But while I didn’t lose much weight at all, I can say that I did gain a bunch of muscle and my abs when from a keg to a five pack (not quite a six pack).  I got lots of questions about the workout as we were doing it, but I wasn’t really sure what to tell people.  But now that it’s over here are my thoughts.

Girls: This is a great workout and it is designed for you.  It’s very aerobic-y and works the areas you want it to.  The arms, abs and thighs.  My wife, who blogged about her 30 Day Shred experience here, just had a baby and did this and looks great!  There is also a modified version of most of the exercises as well so you can easy your way into them.  But either way it’s exhausting.

Guys: While this isn’t created for you, it is still a good workout.  If you can get passed Jillian calling everyone “ladies” then you will probably be ok.  Beware that there are muscles that you have that girls use and want to work out that you don’t use.  These will not be fun.  Be prepared to get laughed at if you are not flexible.  Some of the stretches made me and my manly flexibility look pretty silly.  But after you get through all that the workout is pretty good, if you actually do everything as directed you will work up a very good sweat, and the results will be good.  It’s pretty exhausting.

Final Thoughts: If you are like us and don’t have a ton of time or money to workout at a gym, this is a good workout for you.  At $11 on Amazon isn’t very expensive either.  Start with level 1 and see how it goes.  We shot for 10 days on each level and now looking back I wish I had pushed to level 3 a little sooner (although to be completely honest at when we were moving up a level I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready).  I suspect that if you follow a strict diet and apply yourself for the entire workout for 30 days the weight and toning will be significant with such a short workout and time period.  My only real negative was that my knees hurt and made weird noises throughout the month (and it had nothing to do with me being old).  We are planning to continue using the workout in a 3 times a week plan, but I will definitely be replacing some of the exercises that put negative stress on the knees.

I would recommend this workout to anyone that wants to lose weight and build/tone muscle, can be disciplined enough to do it every day, and wants to save time and money by not using the gym.  Just make sure you don’t do it too late at night if you live in a complex because your neighbors won’t be a fan of all the running and jumping!  (And yes, I know I just completed a girly aerobics program and I’m ok with that.)

Anyone else done the 30 Day Shred?  How did it work for you?