My Obsession With Making Things Nice...

 This little project proves my random obsession with making old things nice again.  I am talking about my constant need to restore something most people would see as pointless into the way it once was.  Take this lawn mower, for example:

It is a White's brand push mower that was made long before I was even though of.  I cannot seem to put an exact date on when it was made, my according to my uncle Cecil who gave it to me, it has to be at least forty years old.  He used it when it was given to him by someone else and after many years of use, threw it to the side and it sat out in the weather for probably over ten years.  Everything on this mower is original besides the engine, which he replaced with a more powerful unit (4.5hp of screaming fury, baby), but the original engine was a Briggs & Stratton, so it is not very far off.  

When I say not to let yourself go idle most days after work, I mean to keep your mind stimulated with things that have nothing to do with the majority of your day.  Doing projects like this keeps the carbon build-up cleared out of my mind.  The only thing I really hated about this project is that it took less time than I would have wished.  I started it on Monday, and it is now Thursday night.  Sure, there are things I would like to do to it beyond this, but I also needed a functioning mower of my own since my last one became obsolete for new parts.  I do intend to fabricate a top cover for the pulley system over the weekend, because that is the only part it did not have when Cecil gave it to me, but I have mostly finished it.  There are a few rusted-through places in the deck from a decade or more of standing water, but I will tend to that when the grass stops growing in the fall and I can tear it all down again to do proper body work.  Body work on a lawn mower?  Yes, I am that stupid.  

Here is the process of my week after work, in addition to posting blogs and writing/recording a song every night:

I gave it a good staring at, and took this picture so I would remember where everything went as I prepped some tools.

Here, I have taken the engine off with the throttle linkage and belt.

Getting to this point of the tear-down meant breaking essentially every bolt that was ever installed on it originally, other than the axle bolts.  This took the most time and caused some skinned knuckles, a few choice words, and quite a bit of ancient grease all over me.  

This was after stage one of running a wire wheel over the entire deck assembly to remove most of the paint, the decals, and surface rust.  Also very time-consuming, even with a slathering of BIX stripper, which will probably give me cancer and black lung.

Here we have a few coats of primer put down and you can see the little rust holes in the grooves that I will fix permanently once the mowing season ends, because my grass is getting a bit thick, so I need to use it soon and did not want to spend the time to do it now considering that.  

It is finished!  And my garage floor now needs a good de-greasing. I painted the engine cover to match the deck, because, well, why not?  I should have taken more pictures of it during that process, but I did not do so because grabbing my phone or camera with paint and gunk all over my hands was not my ideal situation. But, hey, my mower now runs great, looks pretty nice, and is ready for the grass cutting to begin!  I still need to fabricate a top cover, but, like I said, that should happen over the weekend if I get a chance to do so.  

If anyone knows anything about these old mowers from White Outdoors from a vintage standpoint, please let me know, because searching anything on Google with the words "white" and "mower" involved only really brings up the current company that is actually still in production or forums depicting white smoke coming from someone's lawn mower exhaust pipe.  Like I have said in previous blogs, I love to learn everything I can about everything I own, and with this I am at a loss.  

Thanks for reading, and if you like my blog, share a link or show it to your friends.  I try to put one up every other day, if not daily about various topics and what is happening in my life.

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic

Email: drewcoustic@gmail.com

Wheel Hubs, Flubs, and Idiocy...

    Welcome to Georgia!  The warm-weather pollen has arrived and a blanket of yellow powder has now covered most of our otherwise lovely state.  Unfortunately, when I was twenty-two I developed seasonal allergies for the first time in my life and since then I have had good seasons and bad seasons.  Last year I did not need to take a single allergy medication, but I have a feeling that will not be the case this year.  So much for sleeping with the window open at night, because after doing so last night, my head felt like it was going to explode the second I came back indoors for an extended period.  That is where my allergies are strange because I can stay outside all day and be perfectly fine, but when I go indoors for more than an hour, something snaps and I feel as if I were run over by a combine and my head beaten with a brick.  It's the best, I tell you...

    

    I had to run to a job with my dad earlier than usual this morning, and even though this had nothing to do with our agenda, I took a picture of something I noticed when standing by this person's door.  This house probably has a market value of over $500,000, easily, but like any subdivision home built in the past fifteen years or so, it was thrown together by people who either did not care or had not a clue what they were doing.  This is the corner of the house. 

Check out the joint:

 Granted, there is some separation from the wood expanding and contracting with the weather, but you cannot tell me truthfully that this could not be prevented if the builder actually cared about the longevity of this house.  Exterior molding that rots and separates like this is so common that some people make the majority of their income by fixing it for home owners specifically.  My advice is this:  If you are in the market for a home, have two inspections done before closing.  Have the recommendation of the real estate agent go through the motions, and then find another of your own who has no connection to the agent or the seller.  This type of thing adds up quickly and if one instance of this is found, there are certainly more either on their way to happening or in process.  Wood rot spreads, and leaks around joints lead to many other problems down the road if they are not addressed by someone who knows what they are doing.

Moving on.  About six months ago, the caliper on my dad's truck exploded (when I was driving it, of course) and I spent a day doing a rebuild and replacement on that side of his rear axle.  Somewhere in that process, I also found a faulty axle seal.  Go figure.  Today, the replacement we put in became faulty and meant it was time for another tear-down to remove the leaking seal and replace it with another one under the terms of the warranty on the part.  Why do I work on cars myself?  This particular job saved him about $1500 the first time around when I had to do the brakes, caliper, and seal.  Paying someone to replace the seal again under warranty would have probably been somewhere around $300 in labor.  Doing it at the shop took about an hour of time, but the job would have been quoted at a few hours to cover overhead if taken to a technician.  Here are a few pictures of the process.  It's dirty and greasy:

 After the first stage of tear-down and removing the axle shaft.

 The hub is gone, so we just have a straight axle tube.

After re-packing grease into the inner bearing.  Yummy. 

 The new seal pressed into the hub.  $30 part, but would have been hundreds in labor.

All slid back together and after about 30miles, there are no leaks anymore.  Luckily we had another job in the late afternoon that required a pretty decent drive, so that gave us a chance to test our work.

Next on the list we have my local newspaper.  I do not actually live in the city that this paper is from, but one city over.  Nevertheless, ever since I moved in I have had a paper dropped on my driveway every Monday.  I would say a solid seventy-five percent of people in my neighborhood either let this gift sit on their driveway and rot week after week or immediately throw it into their curbside trashcan.  Not me, I love to read and there is no better newspaper for me than the one that deals directly with my community.  Unfortunately, however, you sometimes have these little gems of blatant stupidity thrown into the mix that make you realize there is some truth behind the fact that bad genetics are making mankind less intelligent with every passing generation.  Putting your illegal activities online in a blast to the public is just one example of why I find this to be true:

Really?  I mean, I do have a video posted on my Facebook page of some friends and myself detonating a car airbag on my front lawn at midnight a few summers ago.  With near certainty, I can claim that doing such a thing in a residential area is probably a bad idea, but there was also an off-duty police officer friend of mine partaking in the stupidity that night, so that made it legal, right?  At least it was fun and not a felony.

This article ruined my plans for the weekend.  I wanted nothing more than to play a game of "Police Intersection Bowling" but he killed my buzz by writing this piece.  Is that not a fundamental section covered in your driver's handbook in every single state?  You know, the section that talks about yielding to anyone in the road, especially cops?  The only thing that makes this article more entertaining on top of it's own redundancy is that it was written by none other than the editor for this paper, who is also the editor of the newspapers for four other neighboring cities.  I guess, at the end of the day, actually publishing something in print still holds more ground than the usual Facebook slacktivism.  Onto a rant that has been brewing in my mind all day...

    Rarely do I get infuriated by what I hear on the radio unless it pertains to Niki Minaj, but this morning was much different.  If you have ever listened to a morning talk show on the radio, you know they are produced to be entertaining more than enlightening.  Sometimes the hosts get people on the phone to discuss their personal problems, using a fake name and a voice filter to protect their identity.  The hosts will occasionally give decent advice to the caller and the calls they take from other listeners can be either good or bad, and eventually progress is made.  What I am about to tell you is the core of my disgust with so many people in this world.

    A woman called in last Friday morning to ask what she should do about her suspicions in relation to her husband.  She had somehow read a text message conversation on his cell phone in which he had been speaking suggestively with another woman.  When she asked him what was going on with those messages, he brushed it off and synced his phone with his computer over the weekend to remove the data from it.  She called back this morning to give the listeners an update.  This woman was asking those listening to the show if she should confront him about his behavior further or just let it go.  Really?  What sort of terrible circumstances have happened that we marry someone and share our lives with them, but need advice from others about whether or not we should communicate with them honestly?

    The way I view relationships is different than most because I do not play games under any circumstances, which would probably explain why I am not in one.  If you make a choice to love someone, and you make the agreement to stick with them in marriage, why in the world would you be afraid to ask that person anything at all?  We are not honest with each other in general and live inside of lies every single day in most cases, but wondering if you should confront your spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend about a legitimate concern that is eating you alive is entirely asinine.  Being accusatory is easy enough to do if you get into a rage, but you should probably have strong evidence to back up such a thing;  but an actual, realistic conversation is a much better idea.  This woman, had a genuine concern about her marriage and really had no idea of what to do about it.  She was so misinformed about the world that she called a run of the mill radio talk show of all things to figure everything out.  

    Where have we gone wrong?  I cannot for the life of me wrap my brain around someone cheating if they are married or even just in a serious relationship.  Infidelity disgusts me more than essentially anything else when we are talking about the contact and affection of people to one another.  I am not sure how anyone can live with doing such a thing, knowing the cognitive toll it will take upon the person they supposedly care about.  Excuses such as "I was caught up in the moment." hold no ground when you are playing with someone else's mind.  I can honestly say, without the slightest doubt, infidelity is something I would never be capable of.  Anything I am involved with, I give my all to.  Being honest and breaking off a relationship is better for both people if there is even a shred of doubt on either side of the spectrum at any point.  Love is not an emotion, nor a feeling.  Love is a decision two people make to care about each other with a compassion, respect, and devotion that should be entirely unbreakable.  We get so caught up in these superficial "moments" that we are blinded by the reality of our situations.  Finding a real, and solid connection with another person seems to be more and more rare with the social acceptance of divorce on a constant climb, and even more shockingly, infidelity is also becoming more accepted.  The world is on a dangerous path and we have come to the point of romanticizing activities that were always considered unacceptable in the past.  I hate it.  It must stop.  I will not play along.  We must start being honest with each other in marriage, relationships, friendships, business, and life.  I am terrified for the next generations to come.  Terrified.  

Grace and Peace,

    Drew

Current Song:  Tristan Prettyman - Say Anything

Today And The Key To Weight Loss...

    A short video to start off my day today:

You may ask how I loaded a riding lawn mower onto a lifted pickup truck by myself.  Let me show you:

That is a ratchet strap used to hold a car down in or on a trailer.  I closed the hook inside the toolbox lid.

Attached the other end of the strap to the back of the lawn mower and winched it up into the truck.  I'm a genius.  No, not really.

I swear that lawn mower has a creepy face designed into it...

After all of that (as you saw in the video at the top), I went to my parents' house to paint the roof of my uncle's garage for weatherproofing purposes. I used an HVLP gun that I dangled from an overhanging tree branch with a rope.  Again, freaking genius. No...

The paint is essentially liquid aluminum and it gets on EVERYTHING.

This is where herpes comes from...I am sure of it.

I am also a complete idiot in general because I put all of that work into the roof painting fiasco but did not take a finished picture.  Of course, that may be because I had a serious case of the above picture all over my hands.  Don't worry, I showered already.  Onto the weight loss thing that is in the title...

    Anyone who knows me is probably aware that I have lost a considerable amount of weight in a pretty short span of time.  I am actually nearing the mark of having lost sixty pounds since the end of last October, which puts us right at five months.  I look much different now than I did back then and that is all based on my own personal choices.  The weight is still coming off and at this point I am not even "trying" to lose it.  My body knows where it should be ideally and it will stop once I get there, I am sure.  This would be the time for me to post a "selfie" of what I look like now, but I will not because I hate them and I am not at all into looking like a complete pillock.  Once I am caught in a candid picture and you can see me in a non-staged environment, I will post it.  Deal?  Good.  After all of the conversations, I have decided to make a list of sorts about what I have figured out over the past few months about losing weight and being healthy in general.  I am not a dietitian, I have no certifications, but this is my personal experience.  I do not care what you look like, and I am not judging anyone who may be offended by this post.  Everyone is different and entitled to their own opinion.  Here we go:

-Gimmick diets.  If you have to pay for a book or subscribe to a website as a way to follow a diet, you are making things far too complicated for yourself.

-Read nutrition labels.  They will tell you what is in the food you could potentially be eating.  If you cannot identify most of the ingredients, or even a few of them for that matter, do not buy it.  Chicken McNuggets have 37 ingredients and are mostly corn, by the way.

-Just because it is marked as "low" or "no" does not mean something is any better for you than the original product.  Again, look at the label to compare EVERYTHING.

-Do not keep junk food in your house.  This includes sugary cereals, processed foods, pop tarts, candy bars, most granola bars, dressings, and creamy sauces. I hear people say things like "But my kids won't eat anything else!"  I was a picky eater growing up, horribly so if we are being honest but I knew when I was hungry and the picky game was just something to get over.  If I needed to eat, I did, sometimes I just didn't want to.  Throw out the junk food!  I

-Stop drinking alcohol.  I could not tell you the last time I tasted alcohol, but it was a regular happening for a long time before I stopped.  A drink on occasion is probably fine for someone with huge self-control, but if we are talking about weight loss here, you can view your personal conceptions of self-control as inadmissible (sorry, but I speak from experience).  Tout the health benefits all you want, but drinking alcohol for positive health reasons is always just another excuse to drink it.  Once you have arrived at your goal weight or goal health, start drinking again if you want to.  I have no problem with that, I just do not care for it myself anymore.

-If it is an entire meal contained it a box that you add some sort of liquid to, do not eat it.

-American Cheese is not cheese.  Do not eat it.

-If you cannot get the vegetables you want fresh, get them uncooked and frozen.  Eating them out of a can is a last resort.  The same applies to fruit.  If the fruit is in juice or syrup, you are essentially eating candy disguised as fruit.

-Granola bars are often just as sugary and horrible as a Snickers.  Grab a more expensive protein bar and eat it as a meal replacement if you must, but not as a snack or dessert.

-Dessert.  Just...no...

-Smoothies.  Look up the nutrition information online about various smoothies.  They are fruits concentrated by liquefying them in a blender and fruits have large amounts of sugar.  Vegetable juicing is a better option.

-Drink water.  An occasional soft drink is fine, meaning once or twice a week.  But if you are knocking back a Diet Coke or energy drink everyday of the week, you can still lose weight, but your appetite will regulate much better if you stick with water.

-Do not eat out.  This is a hard one, because most people in my generation eat out multiple times in a single week.  Once you get yourself to where you want to be, you can start eating out again.  Chili's and other chains offer lower calorie meals, but you cannot trust them.  Each person working in each kitchen is going to cook the food in a slightly different way that can make a huge difference on the restaurant's health claims.  I worked in the industry for a while and will tell you right now that unless you are going to a vegan restaurant, eating raw vegetables and drinking water, you cannot trust any restaurant out there when it comes to eating well.  If you cook food yourself, you know exactly what went into it.  

-Stop sitting.  Stop making excuses about your physical activity.  What many people tend to do (someone I formerly was) is tell themselves that the things they did during their work day was enough physical activity for them.  Rarely, it can be, but realistically it usually is not.  Unless you work in a very physical manual labor environment, this excuse holds no ground.  Push yourself to get home from work and immediately change into something more suiting to exercise without sitting down first.  Go right out the door and start walking.  If you are married or living with someone, do not wait for them to get home to walk together, just go.  They can get out on their own or you can go with them later if you do not wear yourself out the first time.  Talking to someone while you walk or jog kills off your stamina as well, so going alone is ideal and makes it easier to get in the "zone" while you listen to that killer playlist on your iPod.  I started walking when I came to the conclusion that I was a useless slob, which became jogging, which became running, and now I clear over ten miles at a time.  Again, in five months?   Yes.

-The final thing is that you have to remember this:  Your decision to be healthier and/or lose weight is a decision you make for YOU, nobody else.  If you go into the process with the mindset of "I am doing it for my spouse/kids/girlfriend/boyfriend/to be a chick/dude magnet, you will not make it.  Think of your health state as that of an alcoholic who has yet to stop drinking.  At the end of the day, that person must make the decision to do better for him/herself and nobody else.  Nobody can force the bottle away from that person because they will find another way to get it.  In the same way, nobody can push someone to want to make their own change.  This concept is true for our health and live in general.  Until you make the solid decision to be who YOU NEED TO BE FOR YOU, making an attempt would be a cry in vain.  

    Again, this is what I have realized on my own, and open to interpretation.  You are welcome to your opinion and I pose no judgement to anyone who has decided to read this post. 

Grace and Peace,

-Drew

Life Blog #1

   Today wasn't the most eventful, but the Crestron job we had been working on finally came to a close.  I wanted to do a Vlog of what was happening, but since they are a technology company and it was at their southeast headquarters, I wasn't about to film anything in there, so I opted to take a few pictures of what has been done.  They had these ugly, commercial-grade cabinets in their break room that were an ugly brushed silver color:

    After a few days of inhaling copious amounts of aerosol glue at the shop and cutting my fingers on sharp laminate edges, everything came to completion today:

    But, that is not all, because they needed some storage units custom-built into an existing cut-out in the wall, so we built them from scratch.  Here is my rendering from when we bid the job:

    After all was said and done, the final product ended up looking like this:

    I would argue that as fairly close, no?  They keep their programmers nice and sugared-up at Crestron with any soft drink you can imagine.  I try to drink mostly water and milk with an occasional diet or zero calorie soda in the mix, but I grabbed one of these because I had not seen one in so long:

That first taste threw me so far back in time, and I am not saying that to sound more interesting, because it really did.  When I was a teenager, I worked at a Hallmark store after school and would always have about fifteen minutes to kill before my shift started.  I would park my car and walk down to the Kroger before work and buy a bottle of Vanilla Coke.  For some reason I loved those things back then and tasting it again brought me right back to that sidewalk and the walk I took on it so many times.  It also took me back to the summer days when my friend Daniel and I would leave in my Jeep Wrangler right after church with the top down and doors off.  We would just drive around the back roads of Alpharetta, Roswell, and Crabapple for hours, enjoying the sun and not really caring about much at all. Just blast the music and go.  We did this so often that I didn't even have to shift the transmission.  He knew when I was going to change gear and would just reach over and bump it where it needed to go.  Even though my tastes have changed considerably and I am not a fan of sugary drinks anymore, this one really took a toll on my memory the very second it hit my tongue.  Lost time that I would do anything to live once again.

    Moving on and out of all things squishy, I wanted a new push mower because I had been sort of partnered in using my neighbor's for the past two years ever since my riding lawnmower took a turn for the worse.  My uncle Cecil has things like this laying around (he's an old school southern guy, of course he does) and unknown to me, my dad asked him if he had one for me.  I would rather push-mow anyways because of the health factor, so it made me oddly happy.  Cecil and my other uncle Jerry spent some time tinkering with it a few days ago and I finally brought it home today:

Check out that beast in all of it's vintage glory!  The funny thing about me (if you do not actually know me personally) is that I like mechanically vintage things.  I really do not want to own another modern, fuel injected car, nor one with an automatic transmission.  The reason is my mechanical nature and my love of working on and maintaining things that lived before the age of computers.  This is a White brand mower that we dated to sometime in the early 1970's and I am not going to leave it alone.  Before the grass at home gets too tall, I fully intend to restore this thing.  Knock off the patina, give it a new paint job, do a little more tinkering on the engine, etc.  I love projects, so I am happy to have this little guy in my garage at the moment.  I also like being a little different in the way I do things, and I am pretty sure anyone driving by who sees me using it will take a second look because they do not exist in large numbers anymore.  This should be something fun to do over the next few nights because it does not really need much to make it shine again.  Since I do not have a truck of my own yet, and this thing would not ever fit in my car, I borrowed this beast from my dad:

    This works out in two ways, because I am actually trading Cecil a turf trailer my grandpa had for that mower and I can just bring it back with me when I go over there tomorrow.  I am also taking my riding mower so he and Jerry can play with it and figure out if there was something I did not think about when I was making a mess of my mind trying to fix it myself.  I am going back so I can paint the roof of Jerry's garage for him, because I think that is the sort of thing you are supposed to do for your family.  He offered to pay me, but I would do it for him without that, of course.  But I know doing so would make him feel better about it.  I will try to Vlog some of that tomorrow and post it on here, but we will see how I feel about holding a camera while walking around on a roof.  

    I will leave you with a mini-Vlog of Tiffany and I playing fetch with me while dad and I have a conversation.  Hope to see you here again!  -Drew

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/6801579/?claim=eh3qkwvay5t">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

I Think I'm Ready, As Long As You're With Me...

    Sometimes I am fairly certain that if the majority of the world could see things through my eyes, they would make quick work of calling me insane in one way or another. Over the years I have changed my way of thinking and my own daily actions considerably because nothing ever seemed to fit right. Flash back to about ten years ago and I was the Christian nutjob handing out Bible tracts at the fair. Add on a few years of growth and I am still as strong in my faith as I was back then, but when I see people doing something like that it makes me think “Maybe I WAS nuts afterall. Why did I think something like that would be effective?” I had the blinders on and let people convince me of silly things before I decided to actually begin thinking for myself. I started thinking too much in some ways and since then, doing so is a constant struggle because my brain has developed to remember every little thing. Some people look back at a certain span of life and say: “Those few years were a blur.” I cannot do that, at all. Though sometimes I wish I could...

    I looked at my phone late last night when I woke up at random and had nothing else to do during one of those instances of not wanting to get up, but needing to do something. I opened the “Notes” App and started scrolling around. This is the place where I jot down ideas for things I want to write about as they pop into my head, and that is really all I use it for. I started counting... In 2010, I had jotted down five entires, in 2011 there were twenty-four, in 2012 there were fifty-four, but this year alone, since January 1st, I have jotted down seventy-three different ideas. Some of these topics, ideas, and phrases make no sense, some of them end up as my Facebook status in the morning (if I do not cite an author in those, that means I thought it up and now you know where it came from), and some end up here, in what you are reading. As I said a few entires ago, I write quite a bit now.

    I really do not think I am a great writer anymore than I believe I am a great guitar player or a great songwriter. Self-confidence is something that I do have, but paying attention to how I go about things and the effects it has on anyone else is something I rarely pay attention to unless I am told, which does not happen all too often; but I am very well with that. The things I do that define me and who I am or what I enjoy are just that; things I do because of the joy that comes from them. Many years ago, I had a shot a doing something with my music and turned it down. After that I stepped away for a few years and somewhat fell apart. A similar instance happened with my free-writing. The rigors of writing Hermeneutic papers and throwing down small small novels of term papers all based upon Biblical opinion meant I did not care to write anything down in my spare time anymore. I fell apart further. Anything I was given a shot at being something of substance through, I fear I missed the chance. No regrets.

    The problem I see, and what consumed me with music when I was younger is based around the lust of whatever it is you are doing and the chance of fame or just being cocky. Goals are different, so keep that in mind as you continue reading this. Being the best at whatever it is you love is a wonderful thing, but doing so for the wrong reasons is a setup for failure. When I worked in golf, I would see dads feverishly trying to get their little boys and girls of Elementary School age interested in the game, sometimes to the point of force. During that time they would jab me in the stomach and say things like “He's going to be the next Tiger Woods.” or “I won't have to pay for college if he/she sticks with this.” Saying those thoughts out loud is fine and well as a lighthearted joke, the problem is, most of these parents were completely serious and acted like drill instructors to their children. Have you ever seen a dad yell at a ten year old girl on a putting green for missing a ten foot putt? I have.

    If our only goal is to turn the things we love into money or fame (or force such on our children), the world falls apart much more easily. Name one child singer who has been on a talent-based TV show in recent time and has made it anywhere? Do you remember Billy Gilman? I did not think so. Children can be talented, but being cognitively prepared for the demands of the entertainment industry, they are not. Rather than let the child grow and develop a talent they love, some are forced into all of this prematurely by those in their circle. Sometimes we even do this to ourselves. Like when you buy a lottery ticket and the thoughts of seven or eight figures go through your head, that is how I felt about music years ago and the main reason I am happy I rejected the opportunity.

    Give everything you love a shot at success, but we also have to keep a humble heart and grounded feet in these endeavors or disappointment often ensues. I say we should just do what we love because we love it and let the chips fall where they may. Never pass up a great opportunity in any facet of life, but never expect to be handed anything either. Something I have said before is that we should all leave behind a legacy. If I were handed a music or writing opportunity tomorrow, I surely would not turn it down again. With the same mindset, I will also not be disappointed if nothing happens to that effect. Why not? I have a legacy of sorts. If I die sometime in the near future, I have a pretty big trail right behind me because I now try to stay committed to anything I do with music, writing, my family, or my friends. Getting there took quite a while though. What none of you know is that I have a catalog of over a hundred songs of original cuts and remixes stored on various media at my house. I send a song to a friend of mine every single day and have since October of 2012. Some are better than others, but I love doing it and I will not stop anytime soon. I also have these random blog/note posts that show my opinion to not just those I care about, but apparently the entire world (since I was sent some random hate message from a person with horrible grammar a few weeks ago in relation to these). I also have many pages of similar writing saved on my hard drives. The purpose being something I can be remembered by one day.

    Maybe the things I do today and small bits that I leave behind in my life will one day amount to a career in my two loves of music and writing because it happened to fall into the right hands, but more likely not. For now, I will keep typing, keep strumming, and keep thinking far too much. If you have been given your chance to do something great in life, I commend you and hope you excel at it in every way you can while keeping humble and never forgetting who you really are. As for me? I believe I was given my shot and declined it, so I will sit right here and work on leaving something behind for whomever wants to know who I was in life. For those who do not care to know, they never will...

Grace and Peace

    -Drew

Current Song: The xx – Angels

Twitter: JdrewSilvers
YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers

This Time Is The Last Time. Somehow Make It Through...

   When I was younger, talking to older people seemed like a chore to me. I was sort of shy for whatever reason and developing my conversational aspects took a few years of kicking out of my comfort zone. As the years went by I eventually figured out that the majority of the adults within my circle had some relevant life experiences I could feed from. There were, of course, others who I still believe to be complete idiots, but that is not up for discussion right now.

    I realized at some point that my aunts and uncles on my paternal side were no longer hovering somewhere in the realm of fifty years old anymore, but had mysteriously aged about fifteen years. This came out of nowhere, because in my mind, I had the same images and experiences stored away about them that I did as a ten year old child; especially my uncles, who I see more than my last living aunt. They come from, essentially two generations before me, and while some of the things they say border on the territory of insane, I have learned more from them as an adult than I ever thought I would. I will explain.

    We live in a world of self-importance from my perspective. Sometimes, in certain situations, such as those of personal growth and passions, being a little selfish is just fine; but there is a line to be drawn within this stance. As an example of where my uncle's and my own generation differ, the majority of the people I personally know take issue with their neighbors over things that really do not matter. Hating someone for the car they drive, the physical shape they are in, or even because their yard has lush grass while yours is a pile of dirt is extremely petty to me. We seem to hate those we have not met for the sake of jealousy or even our own lunacy, but I have not a clue why we allow ourselves to stress over such a mindset. I am making a point soon, hang on...

    My uncles will often begin a conversation about their pasts by saying something to the effect of “This one time, when I was helping -insert name-...” or “I helped -insert name- do -insert event- one time...”. There is a key word within both of those quotations: “help”. You see, in this world of jealousy, pessimism, and lunatic tendencies we would rather scoff at someone for what they do or do not have than help them when they need something.  Many times, those with stockpiles of money start organizations for the purpose of tax breaks or their appearance to the public when they do not really care about the topic of their cause. Those with less to give in time or money tend to make more of a spectacle of themselves when they do “their part”, and develop quite a chip on their shoulder. My uncles tell me about helping people they knew in their younger days do things like fix a truck to be sure their neighbors were able to take their crops to the market so they did not spoil, or helping split firewood to be sure their neighbor had enough to make it through the winter. Did people expect monetary compensation in those times? No. Did people expect large amounts of praise for their labor? Absolutely not.

    Those in the generation of my uncles understood what being part of a community meant. They may have had differences or words with those they were helping out at some point or another, but when it came down to being a decent human being and keeping their township on track, people did what needed to be done. We are all missing that now. Our small towns are big cities now. Highways make great distances easily accessible in short periods of time, which allows those we interact with on a daily basis to be much more than simply the person down the street, or the owner of the local grocery store. We are spread out more now but have advancements which allow us to be in the presence of more people everyday than ever before, but we have lost what it means to be a true community. The care factor and need to protect one of our own has all but diminished from most of us.

    I really feel we need to get back to helping others for the simple, human need to take care of a situation when someone is in legitimate need, without them asking for help. The thing is, our span of reach is much larger now, so we should be helping more instead of casting glares to people who would be better served by our assistance. Stopping to help someone change a flat tire or helping your neighbor unload some landscaping supplies seems fairly elementary to most, but a gesture without an expectation attached to it really does make our huge communities a much smaller, much better place to live and grow as people. Give it a try sometime and you may surprise someone, or maybe even yourself.

Grace and Peace,

    Drew

Twitter: JdrewSilvers

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers

Whatcha Say? That You Only Meant Well? Of Course You Did...

   I have been into rap for a while, but even more so in recent months. What many people do not know is that I have a pretty extensive collection of hip hop and rap albums lurking on my various iPods, but my extensive nature is also very selective about content. Foul language does not bother me at all, and if everyone around me knew what I sometimes listen to, they would not apologize for using those words around me (I still don't understand why most people apologize to me for saying the f-word...). With that said, my selectiveness means that I value the actual underlying beat of the song as well as how clever the lyrics happen to be. I like a good banter and metaphors either put into or taken out of context show me how someone has a quick mind that allows them to come up with phrases you otherwise would not hear in everyday conversations. Those are the rap tracks I like and those are the methods I would love to be talented enough to write myself.

    A line that caught my ear lately was by Drake (I've been listening to him more than usual lately) and his one little stanza sparked such an idea that I spent the whole day typing down reminders stemming from it all day. (I replaced the first word in the quote) “People with no money act like money isn't everything.” Now, music is like anything else of opinion, meaning everybody has one and we all have certain ways of interpreting lyrical content just like we all have differing opinions on the Bible, and hey WE (you) are always right in our own heads... Agree to disagree, actually, and just step off.

    The truth I take from the above quote that that, yes, indeed those who do not have money act like money is not everything. Why? Maybe it is because they do not have money and have adapted to such for the better. Those who do not adapt to their surroundings to make the best of it while planning out solutions to their situations ultimately have no goals they are attempting to accomplish or they have reached a spot of stability without struggle that they are both content and comfortable with. The problem is that those who find their area of comfort are far fewer than those who say they are reaching for bigger things yet are just giving up on themselves or their own families for their own reasons. What a terrible existence.

    When I meet someone and actually want to meet them and who they are in a social setting, I try to figure them out for the sake of knowing if they are someone I feel like talking to or getting to know or not. The problem is the question that always seems to be asked first by the time you are in your twenties and the question I would rather not know right off the bat. “What do you do for a living?” This seems like an elementary question, but what I have realized is the flood gates it potentially opens up. If the person is successful in their own right, they make attempts to reveal aspects of their success to me that I really did not care to know. The best example of this involved someone I met a few months ago at a birthday event one of my friends had. This young woman sat next to me as I was talking with another one of my friends and introduced herself and one of the first things she asked was about my job and started digging for details that I was reluctant to give. I was not ashamed to tell her by any means, but that is not my favorite way to find out about someone right off the bat.

    After my polite, but rather uninformative answer, she started telling me about her job. It started off with “I work with Fortune 500 companies....yadda, yadda...” Her verbal novella sounded exactly like one of those ads you find on Indeed.com or Monster.com when a recruiter is looking for a team to pull commission for a multi-level-marketing campaign. Without any further interest from me she started talking about her earning potential and how she could move up quickly.  She was living with her parents, but was about to buy her first brand new car, move out on her own, and told me about everything she had accomplished with the company even though she had been in it only a few months. Being happy with your position at work is completely fine with me, more power to you, but if I did not ask, that is not where I want to be pulling my first thoughts about you from. These are things I would rather know about later, after I have figured out who a person really is outside of where they are stuck for their forty hour work weeks. I already have close, great friends that I am happy to talk about that sort of thing with and friends that are happy to hear about where I am going with my business ventures. When I meet a person, I want to go beyond their job description and Lamborghini dreams and focus on who they are organically.

    Do not get me wrong, goals are great, motivation is just as good, but the older I get, the more I notice the people fixated on the material aspects of their industry are not who I want to be around. Why would I not want to be around people motivated by money? Simple. Most people get consumed by it and do not handle having it very well as time goes on. The people who only chase money as their primary goal tend to be the people who are the most unhappy with their lives. I am going to go right ahead and state that as fact because I spent five years of my work-life surrounded by very wealthy people who were never very nice to me, only talked about money, and complained about their families. On the contrary, there were wealthy people I feel honored to know because they did not talk about the same things as the money chasers. These are the people who spent their careers just trying to do better and had the dedication to move up in the world without allowing money to effect their lives in a bad way. The money never had a big effect because they never focused on having it in the first place.

    The more humble people I have found in life are those who understand their job does not make them who they are, but life is to be lived outside the confines of their office or place of business. They do have business goals and places they would like to be for the sake of a legacy, but they never let any of that get in the way of their personal goals or what they are well aware of needing to be in life. Having a sense of humility about yourself is much greater than saying: “I want to be a billionaire so f-----g bad.” as Bruno Mars put it.

    Doing your job well and for the sake of your own happiness is much greater than money. Having a goal you feel destiny has placed in your path that you would leave that job for if you found a way to go about it is even better. When I looked into this idea a little more deeply a few days ago, I found a message board where someone asked the question “Would you date a guy who did not graduate from college?” The majority of women responded that they would not. Many even elaborated about the fact that they, themselves, did not go to college, but feel that a man is uneducated and not a good support for them without being “formally educated”, regardless of if he has a well established business or a high salary without a degree. I thought we were beyond this? Of course you want to feel secure in finances with someone, but why is the order looks>money>personality. Having someone who is on a good path and smart is more important to me than a paycheck. Now, finding someone who has no goals or motivation for growth is toxic to someone who practices moving forward (believe me, I've tried that) but if we put monetary worth before who a person is either in relationship, friendship, or family, on either side of the spectrum, the inevitable failure is not very far off. Run hard, train harder, and never stop learning. Establish your goals and take some risks because if you do not make it the first time, those who really care will never call you a failure.

Grace and Peace,

Drew

Twitter: JdrewSilvers

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers

Current Song: Amicii - Levels