One of the things I’ve been working on is figuring out new ways to show some of my talents. I feel like I’m going to have to work on someone else’s dream before I can get the kind of funding I need to really commit to any of the things I want to create.

A few weeks ago Kyle Humphrey & Graydon Sheppard released a video called Shit Girls Say. It became a meme that resulted in parodies with just about every type of person making fun of things their group says. The meme may be on it’s last legs, but I decided I’d throw one in the mix using some of my favorite southern expressions.

If you’ve heard me speak, I don’t have much of a southern accent, but I did up until college. I pull this accent out of storage whenever I have to take my car in for service and talk to a mechanic.

This was fun to produce, if there are southern expressions you use or remember that I left out, I’d love to hear them and use them in a second Shit Southern People Say video.

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.

Evernote almost works for me. Out of every tool I’ve tried, I like Evernote best, and I LOVE that they’re tackling new Apps that improve life. Today there are two new Apps I’m looking forward to trying, Hello and Food.

Hello tackles the problem some of us have with remembering names when we meet people at events. I’ve used an App where I’ve explained that I’m bad with names and asked if I could take a photo. That process seemed a little awkward to me. Hello handles it in a way that makes it kind of cool. Hand your phone to the person you meet, they hold the phone up to their face and the App automatically takes four photos that string together to create a mini animation of the person’s face.

Here’s a video so you can see for yourself…

Hello is free in the App Store. I had to search for Evernote Hello to find it. After testing the App, the feature I wanted to see most was the light face animation. I went back and read the Evernote blog post about Hello again, and it looks like that’s a feature coming soon?

Then there’s Evernote Food, an App designed to help us remember as much about a meal as we want to capture. You can capture photos of food, drinks, dining companions and recipes. Give the meal a title and it’s there for you to remember anytime you want to look reminisce.

Here’s how Food works …

During the years I produced GeekBrief.TV, I had a lot of great meals with interesting people. It would be so cool to have them captured like this. I’m looking forward to capturing even more awesome breakfasts, lunches and dinners with this App in the future!

When I was twelve, I built a replica of the Jim and Tammy PTL set out of lego. I sponge painted the walls of the outdoor patio area to look like stone. I made cameras. There was actual lighting. I even made dresses for Tammy Faye and the PTL singers. I LOVED Jim and Tammy. I’m pretty sure I always will, even as Jim wants to sell me some Glenn Beck supplies. Tammy may have worn some heavy makeup, but she wasn’t fake. She loved people just like they are and Jim and Tammy ended every show saying, “God loves you. He really, really does.”

Before we started GeekBrief.TV, Luria and I did an audio show called The Crappy Christian Show. It was intended to be silly and funny and we were trying to be like Dawn and Drew. The show had an underlying message, though, that kept cutting through the silliness. We said, “If good Christians hate gay people, we must be crappy Christians.” We really believed a Crappy Christian is the best kind you can be. When we started that show, our goal was to be like Dawn and Drew and to quit our day jobs to podcast full time. The Crappy Christian Show quickly transitioned into something deeper that looked a whole lot more like ministry than show business. We had about 3000 downloads per episode and 80% of the audience was made up of gay Christians. I wasn’t ready to be in any kind of ministry, but I had a heart for the gay community that I didn’t understand. I believed back then, and believe it even more strongly now that God loves GLBT people just as they are and doesn’t expect them to change.

Over the last five years I’ve had conversations with hundreds of gay men and women. Their stories are all so similar. So many of them grew up in church loving God and feeling a same-sex attraction. They begged God to change them, to take it away. It scared them. They didn’t want to be different. They didn’t want to be gay. No matter how much they begged. No matter how much they pleaded. No matter how much they quoted scripture, went to counseling and got prayed over, God didn’t change them. So many of them were kicked out of churches and told to return only if they repented. Some of them felt rejected by God, but so many of them still felt God’s love and acceptance in spite of what they were getting from people who say they loved God fulltime. When these men and women got to be around 40-years-old (some sooner), they started to be really okay with the fact that God doesn’t seem to have any interest in turning them straight.

One of my biggest struggles over the past few months has been over the same thing I struggled with when we were doing The Crappy Christian Show. I don’t think the church has done a good job loving people just as they are. We’ve been so worried about hating the “sin” that we claim to love while holding our noses. If the love is genuine, it certainly isn’t being perceived by GLBT folks who long for God’s presence. I could be completely wrong about what I believe, but I sincerely believe we need to only love people and let God deal with whatever He chooses to deal with. I’ve had chains of sin and bondage just fall off this year. I didn’t struggle. I didn’t fight to be free. I just focused on what is true and pure and holy and God did the work. I don’t believe that God wants to turn gay people straight, but if He does, He can’t do it when we are pushing people away.

I know that I’ve so frequently gotten God wrong and not shown His amazing love and grace. My heart’s cry is for me to never let my stuff interrupt God’s grace and love. That isn’t the righteousness of God. That’s self-righteousness and I want every bit of that out of my life. Jesus said we have to die to ourselves. I embrace that with everything in me and with every step, the amazing grace of God overwhelms my mind, will and emotions and fills my spirit with love that can’t be defeated.

I want to continue to make a difference in what new media is and is supposed to be, but a lot of days that hardly matters to me. If you want to see me filled with passion, talk to be about Jesus loving gay people. Every time I hear about another gay kid killing himself, I know deep down my life is meant to be about not letting that happen anymore. My friends tell me there is a balance between the two. Maybe so, but it’s been the thing I’ve struggled with for five years and I haven’t stopped yet! I believe in a God who loves us with extravagant grace, and I think He wants His people to always love, no matter how hard it is. I have huge new media dreams, but I also know I have a huge calling to challenge the church on the gay issue. I just can’t help doing it no matter how freaking hard I try!

I really believe that’s a big part of why I’m divorced. Jesus condemned divorce. He never condemned gay people. The church has massive grace for divorced people. It’s time that the church starts to have massive grace for GLBT people too.

At my church we sing a song called God Be Praised (I don’t think my church would support my postion on gay rights, but I love the people there just as they are, even if they aren’t ready to be as accepting as I am). The words bring me to tears every time we sing it:

You saved my life from death
When I was all defeated
You spoke Your promises
And brought life to my weakness
Came as a conquering King
And You warred for my freedom
My soul can’t help but sing
Hallelujah

You opened up my eyes
For the first time I saw You
Your love commanding life
And deserving devotion
You told me who I am
Now in faith I believe it
My soul can’t help but sing
Hallelujah

You’ve made a place for me
Silenced all my accusers
Leading me forth with peace
Filled with joy I will follow
Your cross demands my life
Now Your grace is my anthem
My soul can’t help but sing
Hallelujah

Hallelujah, we’re redeemed and made free
By the blood of the Lamb We have won
Hallelujah, we will sing victory
Jesus conquered the grave
God be praised

I’m very glad God hasn’t required me to be a good Christian. He seems to like using me as a crappy one!

I have two ideas for turning what happens on Twitter into compelling TV. I shared one of the ideas on Twitter this morning:

I got two types of responses. Social media folks understood why it could be a good show because they see examples of peoples lives being positively changed or at least inspired every day. Other folks weren’t certain anyone could squeeze more than a single episode out of the idea.

Last year Amanda Rose organized an event called Twestival to raise money to provide clean and safe drinking water to over 17,000 people in developing countries. The event raised over $250,000. Since then Twestival has raised nearly half a million dollars. An episode about Amanda Rose and Twestival would start with a tweet and end with people filling bottles with clean water in a village somewhere.

May 20, 2009 Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Drew has a sense of humor about the cancer and started blaming everything from losing his keys to Twitter being slow on his cancer. He asked other people to blame things on his cancer too using the hashtag #blamedrewscancer. Drew’s goal is to raise $1 for every tweet blaming something on his cancer. Another episode would tell Drew’s story.

When Nashville flooded a couple of weeks ago, Pete Wilson tweeted a request for volunteers, hammers, trash bags and brooms to help with cleanup. Hundreds of people showed up to help. There are stories to be told about that.

Those are three examples that made the news. Other amazing stories of people connecting and helping each other in very special ways happen every day on Twitter. To me nothing is more interesting that hearing people’s stories about going through pain and coming out the other side stronger and with more depth.

I’m throwing my pitch out to everyone because I don’t mind if someone other than me makes it happen. I’d love to work on a project like this, but I’d also like it if someone else wants to make it happen.

The quick pitch is Extreme Makeover Home Edition meets Twitter meets On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

Do you have an amazing Twitter story to share? Leave a comment!

In the last year, two men in new media announced their marriages were ending. I’ve admired the work of both men and the marriages of both men. When they each announced their divorces, I was deeply saddened for days. I didn’t understand the sadness. I know them both a little bit on a professional level, but not very well on a personal level so the depth of my sadness was unusual. Looking back, I think I probably had a sense that my marriage wasn’t making it either.

There is no way I could have ever guessed how painful the divorce process is. Friends help in amazing ways, but unless they’ve experienced the emotional trauma of divorce they can only help so much. They try their hardest and you’ll appreciate the effort, but I’ve found it really helpful to find people going through the same thing.

At first, I attended something called RE|ENGAGE at Watermark Church in Dallas. It’s a dynamic, ongoing Wednesday night ministry designed to strengthen and heal marriages. One of the most unique things about RE|ENGAGE is its group sessions. There are couples groups, like you’d expect, but there are also groups for spouses who are there to work on their marriage without their partner. There are men’s groups and women’s groups. There is something powerful about hearing a person you don’t know, express in words the exact feelings you’re experiencing. The realization that you’re not alone in feeling the way you do is the beginning of healing. At least it has been for me.

I still believe God wants to heal marriages, but I’ve lost faith that He’ll heal mine before divorce is final. I’m switching from RE|ENGAGE to another support system called DivorceCare. DivorceCare is something that takes place in churches all over America. It’s a support group kind of thing where you walk through the pain with other people who are experiencing it too.

I’m not really in a position to hand out advice to anyone, so this is really just about what’s working for me. Friends have been amazing. Friends have also been frustrating when they haven’t understood, but mostly they’ve been amazing. Ultimately though, it’s been very important to talk to people who personally know from experience what this is like. That’s what I encourage anyone going through this to do.

It turns out we’re never quite as unique as we think we are and that’s a very beautiful thing.

Last night I was flipping through channels and landed on a biopic about a woman named Temple Grandin. Claire Danes played the leading role. I’ve loved Claire Danes since My So Called Life so I started watching even though the movie was already half over. Now I can’t wait to go back and see the whole thing.

From my perspective, movies hardly get any better than when they tell a real life story about a person who struggled through life to make a difference. Temple Grandin is now a Doctor of Animal Science and professor at Colorado State University. She also has autism.

Because of the way she was rased, she pushed through limited expectations to do something that changed the way we treat the animals we eat. Autism gave Grandin the gift of thinking different. As a grad student, she had to visit a stockyard where cows were being prepared for slaughter. She reacted to the stress the cows were going through and went to work figuring out how to alleviate the stress. She says, “I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we’ve got to do it right. We’ve got to give those animals a decent life and we’ve got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.” She designed a system that not only got cows from stockyards to slaughter peacefully, it also saved money.

In addition to her work with animals, Temple Grandin is also an advocate for autistic children. She’s been able to explain to worried and confused parents of autistic kids what the kids are experiencing when they spin in circles, put their hands over their ears or rock back and forth.

I’ve never heard of Temple Grandin before last night so I figure I’m not alone. The movie I watched is in rotation on HBO, but if you care about animals, you might want to order it from Amazon. She wrote a book called, Thinking in Pictures, one called, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s and another one called, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. I can’t wait to learn more.

Here is a video of Temple Grandin speaking at TED. Tech people need to see this!

A few weeks ago, I connected with my favorite cousin from growing up. She and I spent as much time as we could together singing, watching Cinemax and eating Doritos. Around college time, I pulled away from friends and family for a stupid reason. I had a nickname that everyone, including teachers in school called me. I HATED it made me feel small and avoid social situations because I hated being called that name. It’s an Arkansas thing, I guess. I have a great aunt who seems to have no qualms about being called “Mutt” her whole life.

When I left for college, I used my real name and started life fresh. Lots of good came from the fresh start approach, but I regret so deeply that I lost touch with all those people who meant so much to me growing up. I should’ve just told everyone to stop calling me that stupid name!

This morning, I checked in with Facebook and had a friend request from one of my best friends during the high school and early college years. I approved the request and started browsing her friends and saw so many names of people I care about and miss having in my life. Clicking around led me to a memorial page for one of my best guy friends from childhood. He was killed in Afganistan December 30, 2009. He was one of the best kids I knew growing up. His dad is a doctor. They were wealthy. He didn’t have to serve the country by going to war. He had to have done it because he wanted to do it. I never would have known he was gone if it wasn’t for Facebook.

An earlier generation told us about the hardship of walking to school uphill both ways. I think my generation will tell our kids about how we used to loose touch with the people we loved when we moved to a different city. That doesn’t have to happen anymore and it is a beautiful thing.

I’m going to spend some time this weekend connecting with people I miss in memory of my old friend, Jeremy Wise (1975-2009).

When you start a business you love, you may be tempted to put 100% of your time and energy during waking hours into making it a success. Cali and I have done that with GeekBrief.TV. Even when we took time off from the show, we used the time to work on parts of the business you don’t see. We took that quote, “Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” to heart.

The problem is, people aren’t designed to only work. We need rest, and we need play.

Yesterday morning I was listening to the audio version of My Life in France by Julia Child and I got a life lesson. She wrote,

In 1963 I was shooting four episodes of The French Chef a week while also writing a weekly food column for the Boston Globe. In the Fall, we were scheduled to take a break from TV work and had planned to visit Simca and John at their rambling farm house in Provence, but as November hove into view, we began to regret it. The quicksand of my cookery work, Paul’s painting and photography projects and all the mini bits of upkeep and improvement that 103 Irving Street required were sucking at our feet.

‘I just don’t know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,’ I sighed.

Paul nodded, but then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days,

‘Remember! No one’s more important than people.’

In other words, friendship is the most important thing–not career or housework or one’s fatigue–and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went, and thank heaven we did!

Throughout the last five years we’ve produced Geek Brief, we had similar opportunities and intentions to travel, but we always made the other choice. We prudently decided we should use that time to work on the business. Sure it would be great to go to Italy. I want so bad to go to Scotland. Hey, we should go to Japan and see all the crazy gadgets and have real Ramen! Instead, we opted for the more prudent choice. We stayed home and worked on our business.

Rest and play are the other side of the work coin. You can’t just breath in. You also have to breath out. Lot’s of people look at our story and think it is inspirational, but I hope people will learn from what we got right AND from our mistakes.

Take real breaks. Leave the Mac at home or at least in the hotel room. Enjoy life with friends and enjoy the beauty in the world. Otherwise you’ll just wear yourself out and burn yourself up.