Keep Calm and Respawn

So after taking almost a year off from blogging I thought I would start writing in a blog format once again. There was much debate in my mind about if it was worth the time or not, or if it would just end up being another thing I forgot to keep updated. In the end I went for it, but only if there was room for change. I knew (like many things in my life) there needed to be some changes between my blog contributions of the past and with what was to come. For this reason I have started over by launching this new blog page and breaking apart my old one. The changes will include more consistency, order, and less complaining. My last site really turned into a place to have a personal complaint fest. So now it is time to change and start over.

A friend of mine purchased a t-shirt for me that was created by the wonderful people of Penny Arcade, it says "Keep Calm and Respawn". The shirt is in reference to first-person shooter games where when your character dies you get to, in time, start fresh with a new character. This shirt is very fitting for me in two ways. The first being that I often get very angry when playing first-person shooters online and I have to remind myself that its just a game and I have infinite lives. And second, I need to remember when being angry with life or circumstances that sometimes I need to keep calm and let myself refresh or start over.

Chasing after change and starting over seems to be a constant theme in my life. Sometimes when we get a fresh start or are able to respawn we need to remember to look forward instead of wasting time thinking about the past. The apostle Paul of the Bible wrote a letter to the Philippians and said "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead," (Phil 3:13b esv). Perhaps thats what we all need to do, we need to make change, and keep making changes while looking forward toward the big picture in life, whats really important and let that be our goal.