Have you ever been sitting at night exhausted but can’t fall asleep? You sit up staring at your phone, knowing it’s not helping you. When you finally abandon your useless tools of tiring, you close your eyes, hoping this last moment will help your brain drift to the gentle land of dreams just to find yourself unusually aware of your breathing. You realize in that moment, there’s something in your nose, or your lungs feel slightly heavy.

Growing up, I really struggled with sleeping. I would always get hyper aware of everything going on the moment my eyes closed. I could hear the train near my house. I could feel the cool breeze from the open window. What if someone wanted to climb into the window? If I close the window, it would be too hot. What are the chances? It hasn’t happened yet, so how likely would it happen now? It only takes once.

There were nights I would watch hours go by, trying so hard to fall asleep. Finally, I came up with a solution that worked great.

I don’t know how anyone else’s minds work, but I’m very visual minded. So when night came, I would create a story inside my head. There was a series where I got mystical powers, and then a world conquering human-like alien tried to take over the world. I had one series where, in a post-apocalyptic world, all the high schools turned into different tribes that would occasionally go to war.

When I wasn’t creating original stories, I inserted myself into stories I’d read or watched. I went to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I rode Dragons with Eragon and walked the swampy path to mordor with Frodo and Sam. I fought alongside Luke Skywalker and Obi-wan. Somehow, closing my eyes and imagining these elaborate stories were just the right thing to get my brain to sleep.

Eventually, I hated how easily I fell asleep. I’d be getting deep into a good story only to drift off and have to try and wake myself up enough to remember where I was at. Each night, I’d start from where I left off, like watching a series on TV.

As I’ve gotten older, the old man in me can pretty much fall asleep at any time. Most nights, it’s the keeping awake that’s a challenge, even when I want to stay awake. But there are still some nights, I close my eyes and try to sleep. I’ll hear the cars rushing past on the road. I’ll feel the cool wind from the overhead fan above. Did I lock the doors? Yes, I remember checking before coming upstairs. My daughter had a lot of stuffed animals. Maybe I should check on her. No, she’ll be okay. She sleeps with all those stuffed animals all the time.

Then, for the rare times it happens, I take a trip back to those old worlds of the past. Those moments I lived before and I’m able to drift into the gentle world of dreams.

Do you remember the golden stars? I can’t even remember if I ever got golden stars in elementary school, but I do remember them existing. There’s something about that little sticker of motivation that works. It’s not expensive, it’s not even elaborate, it’s just a simple sticky piece of paper shaped like a star, with sparkly gold coloring.

When doing anything, it’s hard to find motivation to keep it up. Enjoying something is helpful, but whenever you set a goal to build a habit, roadblocks always find their way to you. It’s not about wanting or not wanting. It’s about life. One day, you have hours to write and nothing occupying your mind. The next day, you have a bad day at work. You have endless household chores to do, and honestly, sometimes you’re just not feeling it.

When these challenges hit, it’s nice to have a bit of reward showing your efforts. At first, I measured my accomplishment by engagement. The more people saw and interacted with my blog, the more I felt I could put into it. Honestly, though, I didn’t have that much engagement, so that motivator fell off pretty quickly. Then, when I changed my goal to write daily, a new motivator suddenly appeared. The website builder I use sent a notification I had a two day streak.

It wasn’t much. I mean, who cares that you did two blogs in a row? I did. It was really fun watching that streak build from two to three to four. With that new motivator, it was fun to see how long I could go. Now other things in life occupied my brain enough. I sadly broke my streak. Unfortunately, I realized it was walking in the door on a late shift and saw it was past midnight already.

Here I am back again, though, hoping to build a better streak. I’m excited to see how many blogs I can do in a row. I can only hope I keep up my writing enough to have a blog available to post each day. I have plenty of ideas, though.

The simpleness of taking words
And honestly, it’s quite absurd
That throwing them into poem
Makes easier for one to know’em

So throwing them is what I’ll do
If they stick, its up to you
For poems are so personal
Yet subjects they could cover all

To hear a tale about a horse
It runs, it sways upon a course
To you, a horse is steadiness
To him, the horse is readiness

To hear a tale about a tree
It grows real tall beyond the sea
To him, it means the words of life
To you, its roots hold firm and tight

To hear the story of a man
He’s rich, then poor, thrown in the sand
A story of enduring faith
Or story of a punished fate

See, art and words are just like clay
They move around whomever plays
For one, the clay is as it’s made
For others, it can be persuade

Does its value change, you ask
Now that’s a question with a task
For is a golden goblet good
If only stands where it once stood

Is jewelry value set in stone
Or does it come from what it’s known
Does history upon a thing
Make the value soar and sing

Words they seem so easily known
When people put them in a poem
Yet mixed with many thoughts absurd
The complexity of simple words.

The world spins, darkness surrounding me. I lay with eyes closed, my mind adrift, floating ever closer to the shores of dream. At the moment the boat hits the shore, an idea bursts through the darkened sky. I wake up. “That would be perfect”, I think.

There’s nothing better or worse than new ideas popping into your head at the median of night. Yet, that’s when some of the best ideas do come. I can’t count the times I sat up in bed and asked the question, do I write this down now or wait for the morning. Spoiler alert: Almost anytime I trusted myself to remember my idea, it disappeared in the morning.

I’ve learned now that if I want to hold onto any idea, I need to make a note of it immediately. With my new goal of writing as often as I can, I have to keep track of each of my ideas because without them, I’d have a lot of useless words contained within my blog. I’d have blog after blog themed on the idea of “i have no idea what to write about”. The funny thing is you can likely look back on my blogs and see that same theme in almost every phase of writing. By phases, I mean time periods where I wrote consistently.

So now, in the middle of the night, even after having fallen asleep, I’ll drag my tired arm to the bedside, grab my phone, and make a short note of my thoughts. Then, maybe even a week later, I’ll break it down and actually write it all out. It may not have the same fire as the moment of inspiration, but writing does a good job of fueling my mind forward.

In Pethor, a prophet, known as Balaam, received some unexpected guests. The messengers brought news of a people who’d come out of Egypt. The king of Moabites had sent these messengers to ask Balaam to curse these people. Confused, but willing, Balaam calls the messengers in so he can ponder on the matter.

That evening, God spoke to Balaam, informing him he had blessed those people, and he should not curse them. The next morning, he sent the messengers away. The king wasn’t thrilled with these results, so he sent princes back with an offer of great riches.  On their arrival, Balaam again allowed them to stay the night so he could ponder the proposition. The Lord came to Balaam this time saying if the men come to him again to go with them. Seeing this as permission to accept the money, Balaam saddles up his donkey and rides to the King. 

Along the road, an angel waits to intercept Balaam, who had been a little too enthusiastic with his travel to curse the people. The donkey, seeing an angel waiting for them, runs to the field. Balaam, angry at his animal, forces it back to the path. It’s not long before the donkey again sees the angel in their path. With nowhere to run, it smashes Balaam’s foot into the nearby cliffside. Exhausted from the disobedience, Balaam smacks the donkey, pressing it forward. For a final time, the donkey sees the angel and stops refusing to move forward. Balaam, no longer able to contain himself, smacks his donkey with a rod.

Just as his situation couldn’t get any worse, Balaam’s donkey looks up at him and speaks. Suddenly, Balaam finds himself arguing with a creature he’d seen as simple. In the next moments, his eyes would be opened, and he would see the angel standing with a sword waiting to end his life had his faithful donkey not avoided moving forward.

This is a strange tale that I’ve always found fun to read. A donkey speaking to save a man from death. It doesn’t help that the King James version of the Bible uses the more crass version of donkey. That only makes the story more hilarious. Yet as I started thinking about donkeys and their placement in the Bible, this tale took on a new meaning.

The Hebrew text has at least four different words for donkeys. Chamor, an adult male. Athon, an adult female donkey. Ayir, a foal or a young donkey. It also specifies wild donkeys as well. This, to me, especially in a story such as Balaams, means there’s a symbolism behind the specific type of donkey.

One very power symbolism is the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9.

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

This scripture uses both the adult male and the foal version of the word for donkey. The adult male represents humility. It doesn’t have the same conquering tone that riding in on a horse has. The male can also represent materialism and human nature. The messiah riding in could signify His overcoming of the natural man and mastery of the material world.

This symbolism is even more powerful with Christ’s literal riding of a colt into Jerusalem. A colt is unburdened, untamed. They’re a symbol of a fresh start, a potential yet to be unlocked. The mention of a colt emphasizes Christ’s humble and peaceful arrival, not on a warhorse, but on an untamed young animal. It was a symbol of a new kind of Kingdom, one of peace and humility.

When we take this deep symbolism of Christ’s donkey and return to Balaam, his story changes. The female donkey is seen as more docile and patient. This makes her a reliable companion. In this story we have Balaam going against the will of God in hopes of gaining riches of the world, it is not until his humble and reliable companion finally convinces him of his mistake he can see the angel of God waiting for him.

This is not a story about a man and his donkey. It’s a story about a man of God who’s fighting his own humility and reliability to God. Balaam knows he has chosen the wrong path, and it is not until he heeds the more humble part of his soul that he again sees the path God has in store for him.

Don’t we do the same thing? How often do we punish ourselves for being humble? We asked why we should allow our humility to stop us from a great opportunity. It’s easy to fault Balaam for being so easily swayed by the riches of the world, but today, we’re swayed for much less. When we find ourselves walking down the fateful path to Moab heed the donkey, heed humility.

You know that thing, AI. It’s becoming really popular nowadays. There’s something so defeating about seeing a video made from AI or reading a text written by AI. It’s not that it’s flawless, in fact, it’s actually usually pretty easy to see. When you see it and you know you’re not quite at that level yet, that you need improvement, you start to feel hopeless. I’m sitting here watching a video, and I know the images are AI and the voice, and I’m certain so is the text, yet I’m intrigued enough to keep watching. If I’m intrigued, how many others are as well.

The place of art is so flooded with AI that all the people putting their personality into their art are getting diluted out. I’m not a, AI is not appropriate on any level, mentality. I think its a great tool to help people bring to life a story from their own mind. It can help you fill gaps with ideas, it can help you correct some grammatical mistakes, and it can even help you visualize your characters. It’s a great tool, and I think it’s wrong to discount someone for using it to assist.

The fault comes in when a creator uses AI to “do it all”. All they have is a subject, very broad, and tell the AI to forge something with it. Nowadays, it can create entire books, and we have a generation that will be raised in the midst of it that will not be able to tell the difference. How can you compete with that? When there is so much content out there, what brings people to yours?

It’s very defeating knowing that if I can enjoy an AI created video, most others can as well. All my hard work on my book could be for nothing because by the time I finally get it written and edited, AI will have filled that space with millions of books. Mine diluted into a grain of sand floating in an ocean of AI.

I’m not giving in, though. This post alone is an effort to push against the constant beat down of AI content. The only way it wins is if people stop creating without it. So I will keep writing. If my work is lost, so be it, but it will not be lost because I let it be.

It is such a struggle to try and accomplish my own goals sometimes. To write as often as I want to write, that’s not easy. It’s not about enjoyment. Honestly, I could write for hours if I knew I had the time. It’s like doing a food challenge. They place before you a giant burger with everything you love on it and around it. You know you can down the whole thing with enough time, but given the time limit, you’re well aware of how sick you’re about to be.

Just like that sandwich, doing something constantly, knowing you need to do more and more of it in a certain amount of time, can be exhausting. I think that’s a reason a lot of fiction writers start to struggle with the later books in the series. There’s so much pressure to finish the book they stop feeling the creative juices flowing. For me, it’s not that I don’t have the creative juices. I create new ideas for blogs multiple times a day.

This very blog was just a simple idea I had when I was looking at my, two or three, blogs I had prewritten and thought that’s not enough for a daily blog. Now, I have a list of six or seven ideas with empty drafts. I create short titles from moments of my day that I feel inspired, but I haven’t created all the words. This was even more overwhelming a second ago when I thought I’d written out a few more blogs than I actually had. Suddenly, being four or five blogs ahead turned to three, and one of those is my Sunday blog, which only works for Sunday.

I never wanted to write daily, I was too worried I’d get overwhelmed (case and point), but I also never expected to enjoy it as much as I do. Literally, I started writing a blog before this one and two words in. I said “maybe I should write tonight. I’m not super in the mood,” then a paragraph later I was swimming. This very blog, two words in, I was over it. Now, here I am at paragraph four.

The only thing that stops me from writing is myself. There’s always going to be something easier to do with my time, but there’s also always going to be something “better” I can do as well. There is nothing worse than sinking yourself into a mind stimulating paragraph, then getting pulled out of it because there’s something you realized needs your immediate attention. Hence, the sheer overwhelming thought of trying to keep up.

The world is chalk full of ideas. For years, ideas could only be presented to those within your voice. Once language was further developed, writing became a tool as well, but that was still privy to those who actually learned to read and write. In modern days, most ideas gain traction based on the elegance of the originator. Today, even the most simple can express themselves through the tools of AI, allowing nearly any idea to find its way into the world.

There’s something beautiful about storytelling. The ancient world was brilliant at understanding exactly how to tell a story that not only captivated an audience but also kept history alive. Because it was such an important role, it was often elders that people looked to for the stories of their people.

With the development of writing, people had a new person to look towards. Rather than the elders, it was now the educated. People looked to those who could read to share the stories passed down now in writing. This didn’t discount the tales of the elders, but it did create a more established narrative. Going forward, when someone spoke of history, there was always a chance an educated person could refer to the text and correct the verbal history.

As education became a more common occurrence, ideas and stories flooded into society. The world was suddenly overwhelmed with ideas. It was not just educators and elders now. While in some ways, this was wonderful, in other ways, it was overbearing. How do you know who to listen to? How do you know what is right? It all came down to elegance.

Anyone could tell a story, but some could captivate the audience. They could bring them into the hills of the past. Let them smell the flowers of history and feel the cool waters of ancient time. Any writer could write a story, but only some could use their words to build an archway through time. Create a path of words leading to the emerald city of imagination. The elegance of the teller became the standard for people. The more elegant a presenter, the more people you had listening.

Today, the elegance is no longer a skill one needs to perfect. With AI, someone can spend thirty minutes throwing in prompt after prompt until the computer creates an elegant text. With a few prompts, a video can be made that will captivate viewers long enough to present a short story. Media is constant. You are constantly bombarded by it, and the ease of its creation is making it harder to ignore.

As a creator, taking part in media is crucial to better myself. If I don’t read, I can’t see new writing techniques. If I don’t watch shows, I can’t see different ways to tell stories. If I don’t listen to music, I can’t understand how a sound can change how someone feels. With all the media one needs to consume, there’s almost no time to create.

In the ancient days, most people were listeners. Today, people use short cuts to create so they can be listeners. People are so overwhelmed with media they don’t have time for anything else. There is always a movie coming out, always a TV show, and always a podcast to listen to. There are roughly 4.42 million podcasts globally. If you wanted to listen to even a fraction of them daily, you would have time for nothing else.

In some ways, the days of the elders would be nice. The only stories in the world were the ones you told your family as the patriarch. Now, it’s a struggle to even have the time to tell a story. It’s a struggle not to get drowned in the ever flooding world of media.