On Australia Day I decided to read a book. I read this one. The whole thing. All 183 pages. I know, I'm pretty much a book reading demigod, the freak child of Socrates and Mrs Zeus. Aside from how awesome I am with my computer-like, pentium II speed of comprehension of words, the book was about humility which I didn't really need to know about. I read that book like I would read a book about thrifty home maintenance of secondhand washing machines, it's an interesting insight into a skill which is only important for those people who have much to be humble about.

Actually, surprisingly, it did feel relevant. For one, I had been struck during the week but how incredibly prideful and stupid I am. For two, my constant desire for recognition and glory is always tempting me to self-congratulations, which is especially tempting in the line of work that I'm in. Though I guess, pride is not exclusive to the arena of those who find themselves regularly standing in front of large groups of people.

The book is a pretty easy read. It's written in the style of a leadership book and it seems to be pitched at business leaders. I had just finished Great by Choice which is also a business leadership book (it was pretty fantastic by the way), so I felt like I was in the right genre frame of mind. It wasn't going hard on the Jesus stuff like a lot of Dickson's stuff (not that going hard on Jesus stuff is bad), though Jesus did make a solid appearance.

Dickson leads us through the history of humility as a virtue, gives the reader some historical examples, tells us why humility is a good idea and finally gives us ideas on how to be cultivating humility. One of the things that struck me reading the book is how much more you admire humble people over proud people. So I think to myself "I want people to think I'm great, I'm going to be humble", which seems like the wrong reason to cultivate humility. However Jesus did say if you want to be great you need to be a servant, so it's not as if it's wrong to strive for greatness through humility. But I guess it's a redefinition of greatness. Greatness is about not people thinking you're great, but being able to move beyond self-love and self-promotion and into other-centredness. That's where true greatness lies. Unfortunately I worry, were I ever to reach that greatness, I would be so humble and other-centred I wouldn't notice how great I am. The great humble person's dilema.

Still, I am convinced that humility is a better path than pride. When I'm self-obsessed and prideful, I will constantly be worried about how I am being received and how good I look in the eyes of others. Yet when I'm more concerned with other, and using my gifts, position, power and abilities for the benefit of others I'll be so concerned with others that I won't even worry about myself, I'll be at ease, the same thing I was striving for in my pride. It's an interesting flip, which seems counter-intuitive, but is also totally obvious.

It was a good book to read. Challenging, inspiring and not condemning and accusing. I know I've got plenty far to go on the journey towards humility. But I've at least read a book on the subject, so I'm probably at least a little bit more awesome for that, wouldn't you say?

Yesterday I had my yearly review at work. I did pretty well. The boss a little upset that I use my speaking platform in schools to promote my line of dietary supplements to kids, but I think he understands, a man has to make a buck where he can. Other than that I think he was pretty happy with my performance.

One of the things that came up was a suggestion I made to be allowed to work from 10am-6:30pm. The official working hours for my workplace are 8:30am-5pm but over the last year we've been allowed to come in at 7:30/8am and work till 4/4:30pm. I have been doing this because, as a result of traffic, I only have to leave home 15 minutes earlier but I get to leave work half an hour earlier. However it's meant that I've had to be up at 6am every morning. While I try and get to bed by 10pm, I never succeed. If you have a look at the time I do my blog posts, it's usually around midnight (like tonight). So I've been getting less than 6 hours most nights of the week. I generally fall asleep at work in my chair and I'm pretty sure my productivity suffers when I'm asleep.

So I suggested the late start. Because I have a good boss, he was happy to let me test out the new working hours (I also gave him some free supplements, which may have made him more persuadable). I tried them today, and while I felt a little sad having to work till 6:30pm, I think I was more productive, I was less sleepy, and I really enjoyed the sleep in this morning. And I'm really happy that I could go to bed right now and still get a solid eight hours. Plus I got to have a night out and not worry about the time. So day one of the trial has been a success. We'll see how it goes. I won't keep reporting to you though because, well, I don't want to share all my personal information. Some things, like how a man's work hours trial progresses, should remain private.

First things first, no unattended baggage blew up.

Secondly, we didn't predict any womanly changes for me. So no win there.

I cannot tell you much because the predictions ritual is very secretive, kinda like being part of the Masons or the Cinebuzz Club. What I can tell you is that of the twenty-six things we predicted for 2011 only 11 and three-quarters of them came to pass. While it was predicted I did not fall in love with a person called Tara (that was the name Jo picked), though The King's Speech did win Best Picture at the Oscars (hooray)! My nephew was not born ugly and got cuter, he was always pretty cute but he definitely got cuter. Jo didn't manage to finish knitting a scarf which we also predicted. She did however get herself romantically attached, which is a win all round!

The rest of the predictions I cannot tell you. Mainly because of secrecy, but also because I cannot remember, but I might not be able to remember out of secrecy. I'm not sure how good my security is.

Ask me next year and I'll tell you how we went this year.

I'm standing outside the Star Bar on George St waiting to meet Jo Kemp (if this blog were a sitcom then she'd be known as a former regular character on this blog). We meet around this time every year to make predictions about the year ahead and read the ones we made last year. I'm pretty excited as I have no memory of what we wrote. If we predicted that I'd become a woman then that predictions will be 80% wrong. I'll let you know how it goes. (Unless of course I get blown up by the unattended luggage that has been by the bin this last ten minutes. I'll let you know how that goes too.)

I'm reading a book at the moment called, The Obedience Option. It's about obedience, which surprised me as I thought it was a spy novel. I guess sometimes titles and their books match up.

One of the points the writer makes is that obedience is primarily about choosing God's glory above anything else. And this may be an old and basic concept for many of you guys, but it was pretty revolutionary to me. Not that I couldn't have guessed it seeing as everything is about God's glory, but the idea that when I choose to obey God, I am actively choosing to glorify him, that's a big deal. Often I have viewed obedience in the negative, obedience is not choosing to do the sinful thing I feel like doing. And then I go from there to give myself positive reasons why obedience is a good idea (e.g. because sin hurts people, it makes God sad, it's why Jesus died, I might get put in jail). Sometimes I even have the idea that obedience feels better, in the long run, but when you're staring temptation in the face, it's hard to believe that. However when I view obedience as an active choosing of God's glory, it becomes for me a much more exciting prospect. Obedience stops being about me and starts being about God. I love God, and I love to glorify God, so getting to actively choose to glorify him, to do something that makes him look good, that's exciting. I'd rather be obedient because it's good, than not be disobedient because that's bad. And glorifying God is the best, so that's the best.

On 20th February 2011 I posted this blog post saying that by 31st December 2011 I wanted to have $1000 in a savings account and a tidy room.

I'm happy to say that while I had many things on my list of things to achieve which I did not achieve (sit-ups and push-ups anyone?), I did achieve those two. I probably posted them because I thought they were the most achievable, but I partly think I achieved them because I knew I'd blogged about them. Blog accountability. Or maybe the magical power of blogging things into existence.

In light of the great success I have with blogging my goals, while I haven't really made any goals for 2012 (don't get a gender realignment will probably be on the list though), I will say that by 31st December 2012, I hope to have $32 million in a savings account and a tidy room in my holiday house in Gosford.

Now we're talking.

Happy New Year and all that.

I made a resolution to blog everyday in 2012. It's 3am on the 2nd January. I haven't gone to bed yet. I hope this still counts or I failed at the starting line.

Just while I'm here, we invented a new fashion tonight. They're shorts and pants. Very sexy and good for all seasons. If I achieve nothing else this year, after doing this, I would say it's been a successful year.

Here they are, they're called 'Shants'.

Mil and Martin are currently around from Alice. On the weekend David was up from Melbourne. On Saturday we went up into the mountains with Anmol and hung out with Gem and Jem. These guys are some my old friends. They are people who I have grown up with and we hardly see each other. Every time we hang out I'm struck by how close I am to them all. I think I've mentioned before, they're the kind of friends where even though you may not see each other for months at a time, when you do get together you just pick up where you left off. It's special.

I was thinking about how, when you're a kid you just have friends, when you're a teenager you have a group of friends. You find an identity in your group. When your an adult your group disperses and you have many circles of friends and acquaintances. But if someone were to say to you "We're getting the old group together", it means something, it's not just a line from the movies.

Anyway, I love my old friends. I love the times we spend together. I love the spouses who have joined us of the last few years. One day I hope we all come together from around the world and move into a giant community of houses or houses of giant community and have vegetable stacks in the backyard and beer and stuff. And our kids can date each other.

That'd be special fun. I'm feeling nostalgic for the future.

I have a challenge for you blog readers and writers. Go see Justin Bieber: Never Say Never all by yourself, then come back and report on your experiences. It'll be a test of your courage and fortitude. It'll develop character. It'll teach you about the world.

I'm gonna do it. Who's with me? Or perhaps, not with me?

Howie, Josh and I went on the Sydney Airport Tarmac Tour, which was awesome. Then we did some crazy stunts in the Maccas' carpark which was even more awesome. Probably the awesomest thing on YouTube. Dramatic Hampster, you're going down.

I was asked after church on Sunday if I was going to "the young adults thing downstairs".

There's been discussion over the past few months about starting a young adults hangout time downstairs after church. So I asked "Is this the new hangout thing?" To which my friend Gough, who was inviting me, responded in the affirmative.

After I had been talking upstairs for a while, Gough said to me "It's just started, are you coming?" So I trotted on down.

When I went in there wasn't the buzz of hanging out young people I expected. There were just a few people sitting in a circle with one person reading the Bible. I thought "Wow, this is pretty intense for a post church hangout."

Then the Bible reading kept going. And going. We read almost the whole of Colossians. I thought, "This is going to be a full on Bible Study, I don't know if I'm up for this every week. I'm pretty tired from church." Then I noticed everyone was holding Bibles and photocopied pieces of paper. "How did they know to be prepared, and not me?"

Then I realised there must have been an email sent out and everyone here was invited, except me. I started to feel a little miffed that I'd been left off the invitation. I also worried a little bit that so few people had turned up to the first young adults hangout. It didn't look like it wasn't going to be very popular. I felt bad for Tamie who has been organising the young adults stuff.

Then Tamie, started by saying "So I wanted us to read and think about this passage before we plan what's happening with the young adults."

I realised then that this wasn't a young adults hangout, it was a meeting about the young adults ministry. I had been asked if I wanted to be in this group a few weeks before and I had said "No" and now here I was in a meeting for it. I realised that that was why I never got the email about it, I was never meant to get an email about it. This wasn't my group.

I started to feel really bad. I had turned up to a meeting uninvited, and just sat myself down like I belonged there. I was sure everyone was thinking "What's Tom doing here? We didn't invite him. How do we tell him he wasn't invited?" It was like a bad dream, thinking you're one place then realising you're somewhere totally different...and you're wearing no pants.

Thankfully I was wearing pants, I checked.

Then Tamie said something about how she wanted to check with us if we were still committed to working to make the young adults thing happen. I didn't want to seem rude and say "No" but seeing as I had said I didn't want to be in the planning group, I wanted to say "No". Plus I didn't know if they would want me to say "No" because I had turned up uninvited. Perhaps they would be relieved if I said "No".

Then Chris, the Associate Pastor, piped up and said something like "I think we can assume we're all happy to help make this thing happen. None of us are here under duress. Except perhaps Tom." To which everyone laughed.

I thought, "Is that a joke because I'm not meant to be here? Or does he think I'm meant to be here and he just made a joke and unwittingly hit the nail on the head?"

He went on to say "So if no one has any questions we can probably move on."

At that point I was confused enough that I thought I should speak up. "Sorry, but I don't really know what I'm doing here." Everyone just laughed at me, like they all just thought I'd made a good existentialist joke, and didn't realise that I really was confused. I didn't know how to make them understand that I had no idea what was going on.

Then Tamie said "This is the group you told me you didn't want to be part of, but Gough invited you anyway, because he thought you should be part of it."

And then everyone laughed a little bit more and moved on with the meeting. It seems that everyone knew I'd been asked to come even though I had said "No" to joining the group. Gough had asked me to come because he thought I should be there, and I thought it was the hangout that was planned, so I went. He maintains that he didn't trick me into going there, but I'm not so sure.

Anyway, if you want to play a good practical joke on someone ask them to come to a fun, relaxed hangout and then surprise them with a church meeting. It really is like a bad dream in real life. Hell is probably an eternal, unnecessary, church meeting.

That said, sometimes a meeting is necessary even if they're hard to endure. And this one wasn't too bad, it wasn't too long, things moved fast, and I'm excited about the young adults ministry. Seeing as I realised everyone knew I was uncommitted I decided I'd just say what I thought and remain uncommitted. I managed not to pick up any new commitments all meeting. Win!

So it should be a good young adults ministry, they were a good team I met with, it's in capable hands. I'm looking forward to being a part it as a young adult and not running it as a young adult. I run enough.

And Gough is still one of my favourite people even if he did promise fun times and give me a church meeting. He gave me spaghetti bolognese tonight which turned out to be spaghetti bolognese. Excellent.

I'm off to the wedding of my friend James on Saturday, and James has informed me that I'm not going to know anyone there.

Knowing that I'm not very good in situations like this, I just stand around and feel awkward, I thought I might ask all you folk in blog world to give me a hand. Would you be willing to set me challenges to do at the wedding. Maybe conversations to have, tasks to do, photos to take. Then I'll come back and blog how I did.

I'm not going to do everything you set me to do. And I'm not going to do anything that'll distract from the wedding. But I will try to do as much as I can. This is your chance for interactive blog fun. Woo!

Photo from: Scarlatti2004

I watched The Biggest Loser finale tonight. It inspired me to lose weight. But first I need to put some weight on so I have some to lose. So tomorrow I'm going on a trans-fat diet with sugar for snacks.

(I think there's a Soul Survivor/KYCK blog in me, popping out soon.)

I am currently toying with the idea of tweeting.

I do generally find Twitter dull. Or if someone has something good say, infuriatingly short.

I think I shall shoot for exceedingly dull. I wanna make it an art form.

I worked yesterday ushering at a conference. It was a conference for sales people of a big brand, pyramid scheme. It wasn't all that interesting. Most of the talk was about how if you do the right thing in the company you can retire within a few years.

There was one person telling people how to be good at sales. He said most people were bad because they were worried about what other people thought of them. Like if I push my crappy product on you, you'll probably think I'm a tool. He didn't put it quite like that, but that was the implication. In fact the speakers often mentioned the fact that people tend to dislike the sales people of this brand. It was a source of pride that people dislike them. Kinda like when Christians get together and say "The world will hate us, but we have the truth. Rah rah rah!"

Anyway, the speaker was saying, to be a good sales person you have to not worry about what people think of you. People don't think about you as much as you think they do. He said "I want you to ask yourself, how many times today have you thought about your spouse? Your children? Your best friend? Your friends? Your neighbours? Your acquaintances? Not once. You haven't thought about them at all, because you're too busy thinking about yourself. And in fact they haven't thought about you because they're too busy thinking about themselves. People are essentially selfish. It's alright that's just how we are."

His application for this enlightening piece of information was that you should be as brash as you want in selling stuff, because no-body is thinking about you, so don't worry about what people think of you.

It was rather inspiring stuff.

I saw this poster the other night when out with the Bennetts:



Seeing as that looks like such a winner I've decided to run my own event for people with special needs. I'm going to call it:

Retardance Party
Get downs on the dance floor

On Sunday I preached at my church for the first time. I had a good time.

The man with an eye patch who I once pondered if he was a pirate turned out to be a swashbuckling Baptist minister who interviewed me so that the congregation would know who I am. He didn't stab me with his cutlass, just jab me with some denominational proddings about my confirmation. I'm not sure my flaky Anglican affirmations of faith were deemed an adequate substitution for a hearty believer baptism. But he is a gracious man, and welcoming, so I was forced down no planks into the baptismal pool and was allowed to preach. I like him a lot.

The other week I introduced him to Gem and he said "Oh I could tell you a few stories about Tom", at which point Gem replied "I think I could tell a few of my own." I was most pleased that he would feel like he knows me well enough to tell stories about, despite the fact that before that we had shaken hands and said "G'day" only twice. I was also pretty sure that any stories Gem has about me would top his stories seeing as "He's said "G'day" on multiple occasions" isn't much of a story. He was probably just saying he could tell stories about me to affirm our congregational connection. I think that's pretty friendly.

I really hope he doesn't mind the pirate references. If he does next time I'll go the evil genius route.

The preach itself went well. I felt ok about it. It was good to be preaching again. I especially loved being able to preach to a group I know (at least know better than almost every other group I've preached to this year, the whole right hand side of the church I haven't really met). It's a real blessing getting preach to your home church. I really find it satisfying because you know where to pitch it. You don't find you're just fumbling around in the dark hoping your application is relevant. Still the topic I was preaching on (God's love and suffering) is a pretty universal one.

After church a guy patted me on bum to say "Good job". It was the first time preaching has got me congratulated like a footballer. It was like I'd just scored a try. I think that's the only time straight men are allowed pat other straight men on the bum. Still perhaps we should institute more bum pats for preachers to make preaching more manly. There could be a few blokey blokes standing on stage with the preacher and every time they make a good point the blokes could grunt and say "Good-one preach!" and pat the preacher on the bum. I think it'd make men feel like church is more like a sporting match and make them want to come more. Perhaps also if church had cheerleaders too.

Speaking of blokeiness, I got to watch the NRL Grand Final on Sunday too. I was pretty cut that I wasn't going get to watch it. The first year I wasn't at Black Stump and I wasn't employed by the church, and I was preaching and I was going to miss it.

But happily, it was organised that we'd all watch a taped version after church and none of us would know the score. And we could fast-forward the ads and the half-time jabber when everyone goes to the toilet.

It worked very well, and I was very happy to be watching. I was keen for the Eels to dominate because they are, I guess, my default favourite team after Norths folded. I also think Storm don't deserve to win because they're from Melbourne and people in Melbourne don't even care about the NRL. It's the worst kind of insult for Melbourne to think our game sucks and still beat us at it.

Alas, the Eels were rather disappointing. The Storm outclassed them with very methodical football. It wasn't showy, just precise and it got the job done. At least that's my analysis and I watch about three games a year, so I should know.

I was so sad for the Eels. I think I felt depressed for at least a minute twenty after the game ended. Then I went and did a wee.

I'm not one for getting too excited about the internet (Woo Bing!) but I did just watch a one hour presentation on Google Wave. It looks pretty impressive. If this thing takes off it's gonna change how we relate on the web. It seems to put all the best bits of the net into one place so you can share it with everyone. I'm rather excited.

It looks to me like it'll be the usual problem with the internet enhanced. More information, more communication, more time wasted.

Google is going to own the world.

I've decided that I need to keep a journal. At least a second journal to my normal prayer journal. My prayer journal is pretty dull, and a little embarrassing. I need to keep another journal full of inspirational stuff so that if I die (probably more like when I die, if I'm being realistic) it can be published and everyone will see that my inner spiritual life was amazing and Christian youth speakers can quote me for years to come.

I'll write things like "I just want to live for you Jesus" and "I now realise that it's only through embracing brokenness that God will show us his true picture of wholeness" and "I met my greatest enemy again today, you know the guy who stabbed me in the kidney last year? I saw he was being beaten up by a gang of thugs at Hornsby Station. I ran in to help. They broke my leg and made me blind in one eye. Thank you Lord that I can share in your sufferings. I hope my enemy is ok and not too scared to go to the station in the future, he could lose his job if he's afraid of the train. Jesus bless him."

I'm pretty sure that'll be a best seller at Koorong. The only problem is that I'll be dead so I won't get any of the money. Perhaps I will have to fake my death too. That way I can funnel the money from my estate into my secret account and live happily forever.

Faking my own death also means I can plan to die in the most inspirational way possible to do maximum book sales. I think I will be tortured to death in some hard-line middle eastern country's prison for refusing to renounce my faith after being arrested giving food and the gospel of Mark in Arabic comic book form to impoverished terrorist children.

If that doesn't make you buy my journal, you've got no heart.

I'll just have to make sure I mark which journal is the inspirational one clearly. It'd be terrible to go to all the trouble to fake your own inspirational death and then people read your journal and realise you were actually pretty dull:

"Thank you God that I didn't get that job. It looked crap anyway."

"Please give me grace because I didn't study for my exam again."

"Please make my hair grow fast because this haircut looks terrible. Only on my head though. My back hair is growing fast enough."

I currently typing this offline. My internet has a problem with working after about midnight these days. As does the light in my room. It works fine during the day, switch it on at night, nada.

Tomorrow (today) I'm going to have lunch with a guy from my old youth group. He organised to meet me at the pub. He's not 18 yet, not for another two weeks or so. Sneaky bugger. It's probably a set up and he's wearing a hidden camera for Today/Tonight. They're going to be doing a story on corruption in the church. "Ex-Youth Minister takes ex-youth out for under-age drink." Well, I'm not going to be fooled that easy. No sir. I'm going to teach the kid a lesson. The only drink he'll be drinking tomorrow is pink lemonade. He's not allowed within 2 metres of the bar which means I'm buying. Pink lemonade punk! That's what you get for trying to punk a pastor.

If he gives me any cheek I'll lock him in the car with the windows up and go play the pokies.