Well, I’ve pretty much resigned to the thought that I could be a regular blogger.  As many times as I’ve said it, you’d think I’d follow through.  I shall henceforth be known as The Occasional Blogger, even if I’m the only one to ever refer to myself as such.  I probably could also call myself The Guy Who Complains About Not Blogging Enough Every Time He Does Blog, but that’s quite a mouthful, so let’s stick with the former, okay?

On to bigger and better things…

I am now once again a reader.  Well, that might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m getting there.  I remember a time when, if given the choice, I’d choose to read for fun.  My imagination was filled with the stories of the Boxcar Children and the Hardy Boys, not to mention Aslan and crew from the Chronicles of Narnia.  Unfortunately, those days ended when I started 5th grade at a new school.  Suddenly, I learned what homework was and forgot what reading was.  Well, now that I am no longer a student of any formal institution, I have the responsibility of making the choice to continue my education on my own.  I suppose that’s what life is all about, but I feel like I’ll probably benefit a bit more by being proactive about it versus just breezing on through.  So anyway, I thought I’d share a couple lists with you.  The first one is fairly short, a list of books I’ve been working on recently:

C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed (completed), The Great Divorce, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (re-reading)
John Eldredge - Wild at Heart (completed)
Mark Batterson - In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

I set aside The Great Divorce a while back, in favor of Wild at Heart, but now that it’s complete, I’ll get back to it.  I needed a break from deeply thoughtful reading, so I decided to invoke my imagination and re-read The Chronicles of Narnia.  I don’t have to sort through syntax to get to the meaning; I can just immerse myself in the story, and I love that.  Reading those books is like watching a movie to me.  Anyway, the second list is my “To read” list.  They’re just sitting there on my shelf, waiting for me.  We’ll see how long this takes.

Erwin McManus - The Barbarian Way
Becky Tirabassi - Sacred Obsession (for student ministries next fall)
John Piper - The Passion of Jesus Christ
Steve Brown - A Scandalous Freedom
Gene Edwards - A Tale of Three Kings (re-read)
Ron Owens - Return to Worship
Bill Hybels - Too Busy Not to Pray
Rory Noland - The Heart of the Artist (I’ve tried to read this a number of times and just never finished)
Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy (Same story here) and The Bourne Ultimatum
Thom S. Rainer & Eric Geiger - Simple Church
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia

I’m sure that list is incomplete, but those are all the books and I can think of at this point.  I’ve also been recommended The Shack, but I don’t have it, so I’ll have to borrow from someone.

Ok, I think that’s enough for today.  I need to leave in 20 minutes for Pendleton, and I want to get a chapter or two more done in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

For Narnia and for Aslan!

I was going to start out with a picture to show the new “Add Media” feature of Wordpress 2.5, but I think there are some issues with it.  Regardless, I’m enjoying the update.  I just hope they get a few things worked out.  Who knows, though.  It could be my host’s server.  I’m pretty much on very budget hosting.

On to bigger and better things.  How about that weather, eh?  LOVING IT.  I’m about to hop on my bike and kick it over to church for what is probably my 1,000,000th rehearsal in the last few weeks, but something (probably the weather) makes me not care a whole lot.  Even as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that I’m a pretty colloquial blogger.  I have other friends that feel it necessary to regale their readers with philosophic jargon, with which I have no problem, but I struggle to sift through it, and honestly, if I wanted that kind of reading, I probably wouldn’t be reading blogs.

I wrote the title to this post many days ago, but because of my aforementioned difficulties with the image, I never got around to writing it.  And now I find myself wondering where I had intended to go with “The World.”  So in lieu of that, I will actually sign off early, in hopes of keeping whatever base of readers I have left in less suspense in the near future (a.k.a. I hope to post again really soon).

Until next time.

Well, everyone…exciting news.  I got tags working.  I’m not sure what this means for either of us, but at least my Wordpress theme is that much more up to date.

Sometimes I have more of it, and sometimes I don’t.  It’s sad really.  I want to be a (much) more disciplined person.  Discipline is an incredible virtue.  Even something as simple as keeping my blog updated seems too much of a chore far too often.  I suppose whether the latest post was written within the last few months isn’t going to make or break me as a person, but I’d venture to say that it could be a fairly accurate representation of the level of motivation I have for other, more vital, activities, such as, say, finishing my graduation requirements, piano practice, songwriting, working out/eating healthy, and time with God.  Now, I now the word “motivation” implies some feeling that promises a positive result, and I realize that discipline has not much to do with feelings.  In fact, discipline, more often than not, acts in spite of feelings.  Maybe that’s where patience comes in.  I think I’d feel motivated if I had enough patience to wait for the reward.  But sadly, I often settle for “good enough.”  The funny thing, though, is that this isn’t a universal principle for me.  Sometimes I find myself so unwilling to settle for “good enough” that I don’t even try, either because I realize I’ll never achieve in that area or because I convince myself that I can if I wait long enough (i.e. “There’s something better out there for me.”).  I hope that makes sense.  I guess that this is sort an exploratory post, a pseudo-psychological expedition into the vast expanse that is the way I think and work.  It’s probably about time I do this.  It would be a shame if I went much longer without figuring myself out.

One thing I do know, however, is that I want to love people and love what I do.  Maybe therein lies my motivation.

Whisper to me
A story of yours
And please take your time
Each word I’ll absorb
Give me a chance
To write myself in
So I can be there
When you tell it again

If this were the chorus of a song, what do you think would be a good song title? “Whisper to Me”? “Write Myself In”? “Tell It Again”? Or some combination of those using a subtitle?

Well, according to my blog stats, I haven’t had a visitor to my actual blog site in quite a while, which makes me a bit sad. But maybe, just maybe, people are reading my blog on other sites like Facebook or Virb, which are set to import posts from this blog. Anyway, I recently got back from a trip to Florida with Cook and Belle. We played at the South Florida Fair…15 shows in 5 days. On the return trip, we detoured to Missouri where we played a show at the Missouri Association of Fairs and Festivals convention in hopes of booking summer gigs at Missouri county fairs. I’m pretty sure we’ve already got a pretty significant amount of summer gigs booked with a number of others in progress. In other related news, I’ve begun to play for another young female country artist. Her name is Casey Jamerson, and she’s from Pendleton. We’ve played a couple gigs at the Moon Dog Tavern on 96th Street in Indy, and there are at least a few more shows coming up in the next few months. It would be nice if her shows started to pick up in the fall, about the same time as Cook and Belle’s start to dwindle. That way, I could have a pretty solid few months of playing regularly. Anyway, I should probably get going. I’m hanging out with my friend Amy tonight (hopefully), and I’d like to run to Castleton and hit up Guitar Center as well as Best Buy. I need to replace a keyboard pedal at GC, and Best Buy has a great deal on an external hard drive.

I’ve been learning Boston’s “Foreplay” on the keys (so Micah, Cliff, Brad, and I can rock it out), so I created a funky jam to relieve a little stress (Foreplay ain’t easy *snicker*). You can find it many places:

www.virb.com/mattulrich
www.myspace.com/mattulrich
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6614417606

The rhythm track (everything that’s not keyboards) was created in Reason, and the rest came from my lovely Nord Electro 2 and my mind/fingers. Most of it is pretty unpolished, but I suppose that’s what jamming is all about. Hopefully you enjoy it!

¹ O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.

² You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

⁵ You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”

¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!

²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.

²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?

²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.