So, it's 3 AM.  Yeah, and I'm awake.  Still.  This after a long night/frustrating night of work (At least toward the end of the night).  I'll probably be up all night.  Not so much because I don't like sleep...I quite enjoy it.  But I am babysitting tomorrow, and my little brother has to go to a lacrosse camp that starts at 10 in the morning, so I have to be up to get him ready for it.



I'm sure I can occupy my time easily enough tonight.  I just finished watching a rerun of the ESPYs, I'm currently watching the Dierks Bentley special I recorded off of CMT tonight (Which is followed by the new episode of Mind Of Mencia), and I'll probably kick out a few games of MVP NCAA Baseball '06 as well.  Not to mention what I'm doing right now, which is updating this lovely site of mine for all three of you who read it (Okay, I underexaggerate...but Lord knows I don't keep this thing up and running because of I get 8,000 views a day...).



I've been on a writing binge as of late.  And I'm not talking song writing.  I'm not particularly gifted in writing songs or poetry or anything of that sort.  I'm great at writing in general (Never can I say that I've had a problem cranking out a paper in my school years for whatever purpose...even research papers come pretty easily for me).  Rather, I'm talking about writing for the upcoming school year for the middle school group at my church, The Storm.  The ideas have been flowing recently, which is great.  Because I really love teaching my own stuff.  Other people's writings...they're great and all and they have great use in a youth ministry (There's only so much writing one can do before they burn out a bit).  However, as I found this past year, I felt far more comfortable teaching these guys and gals off of something that I wrote myself.  And I didn't write much last year.  Two or three different series were my own creations, the rest of them were, I suppose you could say, by the book (Technically they were "by the box" since they came out of Kurt Johnston's collections from Simply Youth Ministry).  The series themselves were solid material.  However, it was just something I felt very confined with.  It wasn't written the way I would write it.



This year, it's going to be almost solely my own writing.  And, if the past two weeks are any indication, it is going to be a solid year.  I've got seven different series lined up already in some fashion.  Some are more developed than others, but the ideas just keep flowing.  It's really been cool stuff.



So why do I mention this in a blog I've dedicated to music?  (Dierks Bentley, by the way, has come to the point in his performance where he is doing a song of his upcoming November release, and I am enjoying it.)  Well, I should think that it comes as no shock when I say that a lot of my ideas have come from songs (and poetry).  Some of the ideas have been pretty straightforward; Family Force 5's track Love Addict inspired a five-week series of the same name on...you guessed it: love.  Others have been more roundabout; the most recent idea sprung from Relient K's This Week The Trend.  And, though the song doesn't really have anything I'm using directly in the series, the title itself seemed like a great series title, and the idea has become a series on how Christianity can become a fad and how to keep your faith from just being a trend in your life.



The ideas first started coming through right after Alive Festival.  I purchased Bradley Hathaway's book/CD combo, All The Hits So Far But Don't Expect Too Much.  Two poems in particular, Manly Man and Silence, became ones that I just felt I had to use in some way.  Both have turned into three week series' for the upcoming year.



So yeah, yet again music has become so engrained in my lifestyle that it actually affects, in a sense, the way I teach middle schoolers.  And I'm loving it.