Lately, I am realizing that my methods of self-identification are pretty far off. I would liken them to believing in Santa until your 23.

Foolish, I know.

Unfortunately, when it comes to knowing who I am and who I was meant to be, I look a lot like that 23-year old hopeful still leveraging the 'cookies and milk' bit. I'm holding onto a legend that just isn't true and never was. I've digressed from the original version of myself — or more importantly, the intended version.

Somewhere along the last decade of my life, I've opened my identity up to debate. Whether it was by my actions or lack there of, any on-looker or passer-by with half an opinion was somehow given clearance to label me by my peripherals. I've been the musician. The designer. The Cuban. The tardy. The punctual. You name it.

I've occupied every identity I'm capable of except for the one that matters most:

Valued son of God; called to love my Heavenly Father and His people, fiercely.

I've boiled it down to elementary math. Remember reducing every fraction to find the lowest common denominator? We arrive at the truth about who we are and who we were meant to be through the very same process.

I recently listened to a worship song that I heard a long time ago but never quite grasped the true heart behind the message.

Thankfully, I came across it again and was blown away by the relevance and application it held for my life right here, right now.

One part in particular that gripped my heart was this line about “heavenly places.”

I had to stop, rewind and just sit on that concept for a bit because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what the singer might actually be singing of.

What does that really mean?

What constitutes a heavenly place?

And then I began to wonder, is the church doing anything to achieve or earn such a description?

Are God’s people facilitating God’s environment?

When I imagine a heavenly place, my heart bleeds imagery. I see a place where love is the currency. A place where suffering and pain are met with wellness and comfort. A place where the weight of every moment is counted and honored. A place where abundance is the only option. And ultimately, a place where God proudly and powerfully resides.

Does my life’s influence as a Christ follower deserve an adjective as exalted as the word “heavenly?” I would guess that it should, but it most certainly does not realistically speaking.

Tough questions for the mirror tonight.

If you know me well and call yourself my friend then you know that I'm not a fan of socks.

I'm not necessarily a sandal man, I just don't like socks.

Specifically, I wear my chucks sock-less. Now many of you who see me in person from time to time comment without fail at the "oddity" of seeing the skin of my foot through the opening of my twisted converse tongue.

Drop it. I don't like socks.

However, I still wonder why it seems like my pair of chucks only suffers from this limp-tongue syndrome. I have plenty of friends who wear such shoes and with no tongue malfunctions. In fact, I have friends who also boycott socks and still don't have this problem so don't tell me it's a sock thing.

The smallest amount of walking sends the tongue sliding down the side of my foot to one side. Every time.

Maybe converse will enforce a recall if I write them a letter? Does this happen to anyone else?

Do yourself a huge favor and watch this. It's powerful to say the least.

Throw the confetti because this is my 80th blog post and you know exactly what that means.

Nothing.

I've been extremely busy in the design game these days which I can't complain about. It's been a while since the volume of my freelance work has equaled what it does at the moment. God always sees me through.

I'm working on a great project at the moment: a 21-city conference tour entitled, "The Home Owner's Conference." Guest speakers include leading economic forecaster, Harry Dent and celebrated money expert, Loral Langemeir.

I've been brought on to brand the conference logo, website, some film work and additional collateral material. Quite the arduous task but worth the experience.

I wrote a song a while ago entitled, "Your City" and to commemorate the song and my current boredom, I brought the concept to life as a t-shirt design.

That's it. That's all I got.

Morale is a beautiful and complicated thing.

When it's high it's an unstoppable experience for any unified group. When it's low, things look bleak.

Lately, my eyes have been opened to the weighty responsibility on a leader to build and sustain a high team-morale. It's everything.

As a leader/vision caster in any arena, you have to continually feed hope and direction and confidence into your program. Just as barn yard animals need the daily slop - volunteers, followers and employees alike need regular reassurance of vision.

In the context of church leadership, I think of it this way: you are the sacred keeper of morale so guard it like the life of your church depends on it. Because it does.

You've probably heard the expression, "fake it 'till you make it." As much as I hate cliche's I love that statement for its timeless truth. Do whatever it takes to build your team morale and you'll see an army behind you.

I'm back from a small hiatus from blogging. I just had one of those weeks where I had nothing interesting nor profound to say and I didn't feel like forcing it.

What have I been working on in the meantime?

A magnificent exquisite decent work of art known as my portfolio.

As many of you know, I was petitioning the public for opinions on some brand prototypes that I was working on. The result of those much needed critiques transformed a concept into this new simple yet effective design.

Visit my portfolio and tell me what you think!

Columbia, South Carolina is a beautiful place.

I've been staying with friends of mine for the past few days just enjoying the shift in scenery and contour. Tampa doesn't know hills like this.

We drove through the University and saw several of the historical buildings unique to Columbia.

For dinner we ate at the Lizard's Thicket - this incredible down south home-cooked shmorgesboard. The sweet tea was flowing and my stomach was growing: beef stew, rice and gravy, creamed corn, potato salad, and corn bread.

I'll be back home tomorrow to my beloved Tampa. Thanks for the experience, South Carolina, you were good to me.

I'm getting ready to "professional" my portfolio because at the moment, I'm using my flickr account as a make-shift reference and it's in un-branded disarray. It's driving me nuts.

Here are some of the prototypes I've been experimenting with. Any votes?

I decided to re-post the picture from earlier today in color as well as the original version to contrast the manipulation that took place to achieve the HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography look = detail extravaganza.

I edited his eyes quite a bit with the dodge/burn tool to look more blue and glazed. The detail and dirt on his face was also manipulated in the same way. I also sharpened some of the key areas of existing texture (wrinkles, blemishes, hair, etc.) to over exaggerate his age and physical condition. The original image was very sharply contrasted so I applied a guassian blur over the entire image to soften the edges.

Add some channel mixing and photo filter (warming filter 85 at 37% density) layers and you have your final product.

Photo + Desaturation + Shadows/Highlights + Excerpt = Self Explanatory.

That's right. I need your help once again on the color scheme for EVER GREENCARE business cards. Here are two mock-ups of different colors. I just want to know which one has the most high contrast value from one side to the next. Some might say it's an obvious choice but I need opinions. Comment away!

I started this piece months ago and could never finish it.

To be honest, it's not exactly up to my standards of completion but I needed the closure of getting it the heck out of the "unfinished" folder on my hard drive.

I bought my tickets. I'm ready to have my face melted.

I present to you quite possibly Australia's greatest contribution to the western world: Hillsong United.

It's seldom that God gives one church a voice so influential that an entire generation would stop and listen. Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia has been given such a mantle. In all they do, their vision is obvious and passionate.

A stellar example of leadership and integrity -- the entire world could glean from such a model.

Their team of young musicians travel the globe creating an environment where incredible music meets the heart-gripping presence of God; lives are indelibly changed.

And also, they have cool hair.

Old photography piece I worked on from years back. It's always fun coming across old work and realizing either (A) how far you've come or (B) wow, I suck now. Enjoy :)

No particular reason for this post. Just adding color to the world.

There's a guy named Brandon Mendelson out of Glen Falls, NY who is an influential activist against cancer.

I ran into him on twitter recently and asked him a few questions concerning his launch and driving purpose for the campaign.

He actually answered my question via his YouTube video blog entitled, "The Brandon Show." Check him out.

I was thawing out some ground sirloin for tasty consumption when something caught my eye.

As I'm reading the instructions, I notice this strange line on the label:

"Ready for use in fast weekend meals."


What kind of prejudice do these meat people have with regular week day meals? I'm pretty sure I've had my share of tacos, sloppy joes and spaghetti with meat sauce during the week.

But here's what's even weirder -- why did I subconsciously pull this thing out on a Friday (beginning of the weekend)? Maybe these magic meat makers know something far more mystical than my mind can muster.

I promise you that alliteration was completely unintentional.

I know I already let the cat out of the bag on twitter but I just wanted to tell the full story.

Today Keith, our drummer, and I visited a local middle school to have lunch with our friend, Dylan. Dylan attends our church with his family and is passionate about music just like us. He's even come to our practices and dubbed our new band name as "Metallic Blood."

Needless to say, he's a fan of rock.

It was such a rewarding experience to sneak up behind him and see his surprise. All of a sudden, his "cool" status skyrocketed through the roof. Kids were waving to him just to simply say "Hi."

Later he told us he barely knew them. Oh middle school politics. Love it.

I'm just so reminded that life is about people. It's about loving like God loves. It's about serving like Christ served. It's about sharing community and making it public that we were never meant to journey alone.