Today I ate a bowl of Froot Loops for breakfast. Lately I’ve found myself drawn back to the cereals of my youth: Apple Jacks, Cocoa Puffs, Trix, Cap’n Crunch, and Froot Loops. I suppose it’s the nostalgia of the holidays. That and the fact that a person can only be expected to eat so much shredded wheat before the gag reflex is summoned. Anyway, as I chomped happily on my loops of froot, I was struck suddenly by the fact that there were six distinct colors in the bowl.

“Six froots?” I thought to myself. “Why, I recall when Froot Loops were a nearly monochromatic blend of red, orange, and yellow!”

(Remember watching cereal commercials like they were news? It was tough work keeping up with Toucan Sam, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, the Trix Rabbit, et. al. I watched those commercials back then like I watch the news today.)

Anyway. All this to say that I feel old. I feel old because I got mad that there were six different colors of Froot Loops instead of the original three. I feel old because I remember exactly what those three original colors were. I know there’s a lot out there who will laugh at me for being 24 and writing a blog about aging, but gosh darn it, I feel old. And I think I deserve a 29¢ cup of coffee at my local diner for all the years I’ve endured under the hot, damaging rays of the sun.

New Year’s is my favorite holiday. Has been for several years now. Back at King College, my friend Kristen & I used to bring our pals from school home to Asheville for New Year’s eve. It became tradition:

The evening always began with taco salad. Kristen and I were best friends growing up, and I couldn’t count the number of times I had taco salad at her house. It’s a Mojonnier staple. But they do it well. Better than anyone else I know of, and so taco salad became our end-of-year celebratory meal.

After dinner, we’d move onto games. Cranium was usually the game of choice, though Pictionary and charades both got their fair share of floor time as well.

A movie followed game time. This mostly served as a way to get a nap in before heading downtown. Asheville, like many US cities, has a downtown New Year’s party called “First Night.” It is fantastic. Music, food, hippies, and of course, one of the best fireworks shows I’ve ever experienced.

So, this being my first New Year’s in San Diego, I wanted to start a similar tradition here. It turned out to be a great evening. We had 30 people show up, and let me tell you, if you’re going to feed 30 people, there is no easier or cheaper way to do it than with taco salad. We then played a rousing game of “Best of 2006 Charades,” which included the categories of movies, music, and TV. My favorite moments were watching Sheila trying to make us guess the movie “Slither” and Ben acting out “Dancing with the Stars.” I had the unfortunate task of trying to get my team to recognize my interpretation of Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous.” (That must never be spoken of again.)

After charades, we tried a new game that we simply call “Celebrity,” but has less to do with Hollywood than it does hostile takeovers á la ‘Risk.’ My friend April played a sneaky game & ended up dominating the room and owning us all.

We ended the evening by walking to the bay through Little Italy and watching the fireworks shoot off from Coronado. They were distant, but still the only way to ring in a new year!

At night’s end, I think we all had a great time. I know I did. Hanging out with old friends & new ones – it just doesn’t get much better. I look forward to many more New Year’s celebrations in San Diego!

I remember the day I decided I wanted to sing. I had become enamored with the idea of writing songs and singing them for people. I remember envisioning my name on a CD... or, rather, cassette tape... full of my own music. I only told one person. It was my sister, Amy. I told her in confidence, and she, being probably 4 or 5 didn't quite understand what that meant. As my biggest fan (back then, and, I suspect, still today), she promptly made it her mission to announce to everyone what my life goals were.

I remember being terrified as she told Dad what I was planning to do. Right in front of me, she proudly declared, in her trademark squeaky voice, "Matthew is going to be a singer when he grows up!" It wasn't so much that I was ashamed of my dream; it was more that I was afraid it might never happen. And if Dad even so much as smiled the wrong way at this news, my hope for one day writing and recording my own music could be exposed as a vain, unachieveable whim. Just a dream that passes in the night.

Last weekend, my good friend Amanda came down from LA to record some backing vocals on the album I've been working on with Thomas Gray for the past several months. Tonight, I was able to closely listen to the new mix, with her smooth additions, for the first time. After hearing how much her haunting harmonies changed the mood of "Don't Let Go," I had to remind myself to breathe. Something changed in me as I heard that song for what felt like the first time, though I first wrote it over five years ago.

You see, up until now I feel like I've been playing make-believe. In Reno, I recorded an album with one of my best friends Rob Woods. We didn't get as far as we had hoped, but we got several decent tracks out of the process. But something in me has kept them silent. With the exception of posting a couple of the better ones on my myspace page, I have done little to expose those songs to the light of day. It's as though I have always believed that my dream would pass, that it was vain and fleeting and a waste of time pursuing with any seriousness, and the best I could ever hope for was to go with the flow when it carried me into occassional periods of exploring the art of songwriting and recording.

People, good friends and strangers alike, consistently tell me they believe I have something to offer in my songs. I always struggle with how to accept those encouraging words, because I always feel like it's just make-believe, that these people are unwitting guests at some tea party where everyone is supposed to be polite and courteous and be sure that we each feel valued and special. But tonight when I heard those words, that melody layered with Amanda's gentle, sombre tones, I realized that something has happened that I didn't expect. Somehow, somewhere along the way, my dream has begun to materialize.

What once were the far-off wishes of a 7 year old boy have now become the reality of a man who never envisioned something this good ever happening. What once were the solitary, silent hopes of a teenager scribbling phrases in a 3 ring notebook have now become the combined effort of friends I've made along the way, people who truly believe in these songs - so much so that some of them have devoted several months of their own time, energy, and talent to create something I never could have done on my own. Friends from college who spent hours teaching me guitar or writing with me; Rob, who stayed up with me countless nights into the early hours of the morning in order to get my songs out of my head and onto a disc; Amanda, who shared microphones with me on a worship team in Reno, taking time off of work and school to travel to San Diego to lend her talents to this project; Thomas, who has carefully overseen the recording, mixing, producing, and playing of nearly every instrument that wasn't my guitar on these songs; the litany of friends and family, near and far, who constantly remind me that they appreciate my songs and hope to hear more... There is (not-so)suddenly a community of people surrounding me who have spurred these dreams into something of substance and promise.

I don't know quite what it is that I'm getting at here. I think that tonight I've had a very unexpected realization that sometimes, a dream is put in us for a reason. Sometimes, no matter how much trouble we have believing it could come to be, we find ourselves in circumstances that enable us to live out that dream. Sometimes you have a little sister who thinks you can do anything, and friends who want to help you along the way. Sometimes... ok, I'll stop short of saying 'dreams really do come true' and spare us all the Disney moment...

But I think you get the picture. How grateful I am tonight.

The song playing in my head over the past 48 hours has been Sheryl Crow’s “It Don’t Hurt.” She’s all tongue-in-cheek singing about some lover (this was a pre-Lance song) who’s gone, but:

It don’t hurt like it did
I can sing my song again

Even though Sheryl gets to the end of the song and doesn’t really believe what she’s singing (“It don’t hurt like it did/ It hurts worse, who do I kid?”), she’s still singing it. And so am I.

You know that physical signal you get right before you throw up? The one in the back of your throat and in those glands just behind & below each ear, and the way your mouth all of sudden produces this ginormous amount of saliva? I get another signal that’s very similar. It’s like an emotional gag reflex. My stomach feels like it twists 45 degrees counter-clockwise and I feel the sudden urge to clench onto something very tightly (my misshapen keyboard wrist rest, which is made of a wonderfully malleable gel-like substance, can attest to this).

When I get that signal lately, the very first thing I do, after squeezing the wrist rest, of course, is to take a deep breath and then start singing to myself:

It don’t hurt like it did
I can sing my song again

For me, this does something. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a songwriter who’s felt completely blocked and crippled, an puddle of fears and emotions slowly draining into some forgotten spillway, but the possibility of “singing my song again” is one of the few things that holds weight and light in the world anymore. And I’m just choosing to believe that if I say “it don’t hurt” enough, and keep on singing my song, somehow it will come to be.

The Genesis story of creation is based on the idea that something can be spoken into existence, that the only thing preventing something from being is that no one has said it exists. I’m not waxing theological here, and obviously I’m don’t mean that if I just say “Let there be sweet ride to roll upon the earth” then a 2007 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 is going to suddenly appear before me, but there is something built into the way this universe works that puts a certain amount of power (with which comes - you guessed it, responsibility) in our hands to believe that something is, or at the very least, can be, even when it currently isn’t. I think somewhere, someone called it faith.

No one sees God without faith. I think this is the same as saying the more one chooses to believe in God, despite the lack of sensory evidence, the more reason one has to believe in God. I think the same goes for what we believe about who we are and how we fit in this world. The more I choose to believe that I’m displaced, forgotten, and unvalued, the more reason I have to believe those things are true. My hope is that it works conversely: the more I choose to believe I have a place, something to give, and friends to share this life with, the more reason I will have to believe those things are true.

So, despite the intermittent onslaught of the emotional gag reflex, it don’t hurt.

What if this were the last thing I ever wrote? What if I finish this page and tonight, as I ride home from work, my bike is struck by an inattentive vehicle, sending me to some life after this one? Would I want my last piece of communication to be the sorrowful, solemn piece I'm inclined to write on this quiet Monday morning?

I dont think so.

Life feels long, especially when youre in the middle, when youre waiting for something, something that never seems to arrive. But it isn't long. Its just a breath. One breath of God, and the earth has spun around the sun 70 times, and my body has gone from new to old, and everything that mattered so much in July of 2006 is long gone.

Everything comes down to making a conscious decision about whatever is bothering you. You just have to say it, and then do it, even if you don't feel it, even if you don't believe it.

"I'm going to commit to the life of faith, the way of Christ. I'm just going to do it, to live that way, even though it often feels absurd and isolated."

"I'm going to live in San Diego, to be a member of this urban community. I'm just going to do it, to live that way, even though I often wish I were somewhere else."

"I'm going to be the friend I wish I had to the people close to me. I'm just going to do it, to live that way, even though I often feel unnecessary and undervalued by them."

"I'm going to believe that I have something to offer, and I'm going to offer it. I'm just going to do it, to live that way, even though I often feel no one else believes in me."

No more self-pity, no more tears. Just resolution, determination. Creation of the life I wish I had. That's something I'm comfortable with writing, should this be my last day on earth.