A Temporary Thing
Being married to Luria was all I ever wanted in life. It was the thing I prayed for in bed when I was nine-years-old. I wanted to be married to a beautiful, smart, sweet girl. I’m not sure what I believe about God anymore, but Luria turned out to be an answered prayer. I loved her, love her and will always love her.
I worked on things to fit what she said where her dreams. Modeling didn’t work because that business is just weird. She groked it and that business doesn’t like girl who grok it. We then started writing a book. Harry Potter was taking off and we started writing a book set in New Orleans with a flood threat that skidded to a halt with Katrina. My next thing was podcasting inspired by Dawn and Drew. The Crappy Christian Show quickly evolved from Luria and me getting drunk and talking into a mic into a ministry type thing to share the idea that God may love gay people just as they are, without any expectation they change. I didn’t want to be in ministry and Luria certainly didn’t.
Steve Jobs announced the first iPod that played video and I worked to make that iPod play GeekBrief.TV. That worked well. We started making money. Mevio was a great partner. Luria wanted more, and people in her life convinced her she was the character I wrote every day. Her belief that she was Cali Lewis grew into an argument that led her to leave our marriage.
I still want to be writing tech news as Cali Lewis and producing GeekBrief.TV. I don’t get that as an option, and I’ve come close to launching alternative visions. I almost released a gadget show yesterday.
Here’s the deal though … I don’t want to work on a next thing that is anything but temporary. My heart can’t currently believe in long term. I want to work, but I’m not ready to say, “This is the thing that replaces Cali Lewis and GeekBrief.TV for me.” Even my dreams for Bacon.TV in partnership with Wright Brand Bacon isn’t that powerful!
The Mayans predicted the world ends at the end of 2012. Obviously, that’s silly just like when that preacher dude did it twice in 2011. But you know what? So what! What will happen if I live this year like it’s not only my last year, but yours? That’s what I’m going to do.
Tomorrow I launch a temporary thing I can believe in and I think it will inspire you to do something better than you planned to do in 2012. It isn’t serious because I’m not ready to be serious. It’s just about fun.
I’ve lost my life goal of being married to a beautiful, smart, and kind girl. I’m not making that kind of goal again. To make it through. I want to live as though it’s not only my last year but yours too.
Read MoreRight After Luria Left
The day Luria left, she and I went downtown to Dallas. She ostensibly had a lunch meeting with a producer of the local Fox morning show and I needed to get my chef’s knife sharpened at Sur La Table. She dropped me off, and I did my thing.While I was there, I bought her some baking gadgets and a paella pan for me.
She texted me to say she lost track of time and would be awhile longer. I told her I would walk from Knox-Henderson to Borders in uptown Dallas. No worries. I did. A couple hours later she picked me up.
We laughed in the car on the way back home to Keller. We stopped at Central Market and bought $60 worth of ingredients to make paella. I had a new pan! We got home, unloaded the groceries, and Luria remembered that she needed to pick up some dry cleaning. I put away the groceries and got a call about five minutes later. Luria told me that John had removed her clothes and all our production gear from the house and that she would not be coming back.
It was a nightmare. Everything had been stolen from the house. Drobos, Macs, cameras, lights … everything required to produce GeekBrief.TV. They left my MacBook Pro, a mic and my 5D Mark II.
After I went to visit Geoff Smith in Nashville, she returned some of the gear so I could continue writing and editing GeekBrief.TV.
I prayed to a god I hoped was real, and I started to try to figure out what was going on. None of it made sense. I sat down in front of the camera and talked about what I was going through. My career has been to share my life on film online. I shot these films not knowing what was going on and I shared them with a few friends. They have been password protected until today.
These videos aren’t entertaining. People who have seen them say they are hard to watch. They document my pain. I got the Love Diaries and tried to work through that, but Luria wouldn’t respond. I only did a few and here they are:
(BTW … I haven’t watched them since I made them. I’m adding comments as I watch.)
She gave me the DVD back unwatched, I guess. I no longer have faith in God to help.
The way I hurt her was to say over and and over for a year the John P. should be out of our marriage.
I no longer believe God is able.
The thing we went through? Me not liking John trying to take our business. She loved that!
I miss that girl!
This one really pisses me off. I ended up giving the Valentine’s gift to Dave Curlee to give to his wife and then he went to work for the thieves. On the upside, it’s where I think I thought of the idea to fade between color and black and white.
And then I stopped trying. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone after her. I let her go. I’m always about freedom, but I think I blew it.
Read MoreWhat I Did on my Summer (NOT) Vacation
On January 15, 2010, the woman I married almost twelve years ago left home and my world turned upside down. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it’s turning out to be the best. No doubt I loved her. I poured every bit of my talent and energy into creating an uncommon, life and career for her. It took six years to get that right, but once I did, she took it and ran with it.
The first part of the year, I worked on trying to save my marriage. I went to counseling, support groups, read books, watched videos. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to fix it because I didn’t believe in divorce or giving up. I don’t think there was anything I could have done to change her heart, mind or focus. When fixing it didn’t change anything, I started working on me.
I grew up in church and for me nothing feels like home like when I’m in church. I was a close-minded fundamentalist who loved the story of Jesus. As a teenager, I fell in love with the charismatic experience of worship. There is a mystical thing that happens in a charismatic church as the music starts on a high and transitions into a tender, peaceful rest. I wanted to grow up to lead worship because I loved those feelings I got in church.
After I was married, that girl seemed perfect. I couldn’t name a sin she was guilty of, and if she was sin-free, what did I really need with a God I couldn’t see? We stopped going to church and I started worshiping her. I thought she was all I needed. I didn’t think I needed friends. I didn’t think I needed family and I didn’t think I needed God. I gave up on God and gave up worship
It wasn’t fair to her though. It might feel nice to be worshiped a little, but no human can stand to be worshiped with the intensity I worshiped her. When she couldn’t supply the spiritual and emotional needs I used to get from worshiping God … that joy unexplainable and peace that passes all understanding … I began to slowly fall apart. I broke and I wanted to die.
This Summer, I worked on healing. I reconnected with friends and family in beautiful ways. I went to Budapest, Vienna and Prague. I ate, prayed and wondered about the possibility of love. Friends and family sustained me. When I fell apart, they grabbed me and held me back together. I confessed my sins to them and they didn’t run away. They helped me heal. They saw me weak. They saw me cry. They saw me want to give up. The saw me through.
This year, I became a worshiper of God again. I’m not a fundamentalist any more and I can’t come anywhere near thinking you would get the same thing I get from faith, but I know it works for me. I feel like me again. I have joy and peace in the middle of the decimation of my hopes and dreams. My church has a thing called Freedom Ministries and it has been the most transformative experience of my life, on both cognitive and spiritual levels. It’s helped me with depression, fear of rejection, selfishness and I’m just getting started. Freedom classes are available online.
In her book, Mosaic
So I thank God for the mountains
And I thank Him for the valleys
I thank Him for the storms He’s brought me through
’cause if I never had a problem
I wouldn’t know that He could solve them
I wouldn’t know what faith in His Word could do
This year has been the hardest of my life, but it’s brought depth and meaning like I’ve never had before. I’m starting to build something new and this time it won’t be a frivolous quest for fame and fortune. I want what I do next to be a tool than generates resources to help hurting broken people. It will be just as shiny, happy and fun as GeekBrief.TV, but it will have a deeper purpose.
This last week I was in the home of a dear friend, Pastor Randy McCain. He preached the funeral of Tammy Faye Bakker. There were two things I remember Tammy Faye saying over and over again.
- You can make it!
- God loves you! He really, really does!
I have a lot to do! My goal is to build an amazing new media production company that entertains, inspires, funds charity and maybe even changes the world a little bit.
Stay tunned…
The Distillation Process
Right after we started GeekBrief.TV, we shot some video at a small boutique distillery just north of Chicago where a husband and wife made vodka and gin. The process was fascinating. We never used the footage because it seemed too far off topic for The Brief, but I often think about what I learned that day.
The distiller explained the process of turning water into a spirit. All kinds of ingredients are mixed into the water to add flavor (when it’s gin) and to innitiate fermentation. Through heat, purity is separated from impurity and alcohol is produced. Distillation is also used to purify crude oil and water.
I like distillation as a metaphor for personal growth in the midst of a trial. I’m going through the single most awful thing I’ve ever 
experienced in my life, but pain isn’t without gain. I’ve grown as a person though out this process in a ways I never would have with only good things happening to me. Romans 5:3-4 says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character…”
My life, in just about every way I can think of is at a crossroads. I have dreams and goals to create something bigger and better than what we accomplished with GeekBrief.TV. I’ll need to find good people to work with, but first I need to take some time to go through this personal distillation process where everything that isn’t loving and caring in my life gets burned away. Another part of the personal distillation process has been to work toward the core reason I failed as a husband. That process has involved counseling, group therapy and study.
Pain in life gives us an opportunity and maybe even the responsibility to grow. It’s my mission to walk through this process and have people, even people who may not like me, say “Neal is a better person than he used to be.” The pastor at my church says when we are children, life is all about what we can get, “Give me, give me, give me.” With maturity, we stop just asking “What can I get?” and start asking “What can I give?” That second question is the one I want to spend the rest of my life answering.
I hope my story also reminds people to take care of their marriages. If it’s not working, get to work on it! Go to counseling. Go to church. Talk about it. Date your spouse. Look into each other’s eyes like you used too when you were falling in love. Don’t let your marriage die without working hard to heal it. Even though the growth that comes from the pain is good, you can always choose to grow when things aren’t so bad.
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