Our worlds are off-kilter. Our priorities, exceedingly off-base. Most of us are only awakened  to what “means the most to us” when tragedy strikes, when something is threatened to be taken from us. Oddly, it is in something’s absence that we most fully realize its presence. How is it that we’re such a largely blind race when we have the potential to see the extraordinary?

Here it is. Today. A boy with a gun and a bad idea. A bad idea that breaks apart the worlds of hundreds of others. One individual among many and his actions echo. How can we not see that what we do has the ability to profoundly affect others? One boy with one bad idea and the course of history is changed. The deadliest campus massacre in U.S. history. And here it is. Today.

There’s a somber look in people’s eyes. But one I don’t quite trust.

“Did you hear about the shooting?”

“Yes, terrible isn’t it?”

“Terrible.”

And then just as quickly as we mourn, we move on. And the boy with the gun and the bad idea that has shattered hearts is now something that sits hazily on the margins of our mind as we drive to pick up the dry cleaning and meet our friends for dinner. We don’t know them. It touches us only briefly in a distanced manner.

We have forgotten how to be genuine. We have found it easier to not get involved.

We thrive in the desensitization of life and thereby are all the more sharply wounded when we can’t brush it off . Life catches us off guard by introducing the absence.

What would you miss? What, if taken from you, would harvest that intense pain in your soul? What are you doing about that thing, that person today?

I don’t know much, but I do know that time is one of those things that once lost is lost forever. I know that our words and actions leave imprints on the lives of others. I know that his luck could be my luck and through the course of life we’ll all find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I truly believe we have been given life and that, in as much as possible, we should be good stewards of that gift. Tragedy, in all its sorrow, awakens.

May we open our eyes.

It’s weird being from Nashville. Most cities shuffle into oblivion. Kansas City. Lincoln. Columbia. Waco. But Nashville lingers. It has a reputation. Sometimes inaccurately countrified, but occasionally dead on. To those who know it, they love it. They see it for the quirky, dive bar, Flying Saucer, not-quite-vintage town that it is. It’s where people go when LA burns them out and the congestion of New York is wildly apparent. It’s a life-giving source of new imagination and authenticity. It breathes the soul back into limping hearts. Well, at least for some.

It’s a Sunday night and I’m leaning against the back wall of the Casbah holding an emptied Heineken and watching Rocky Votolato play harmonica on stage. It’s vaguely reminiscent of home as intentionally grungy-dressed youth filter through the crowd, swaying slightly to the sound of poorly-amplified indie rock. Smoke funnels. Beer pours. Music thrives. We all move.

It wasn’t a great show. But it was good to go. Good to be Nashville for a night.

It’s a slightly overcast Sunday morning in San Diego. I have a fruit bowl, a half-full coffee pot, a newspaper on the front lawn, automatic sprinklers, and a load of laundry that’s spinning endlessly in the garage. I have a church service in two hours and a to-do list of emails and writing projects that will consume the majority of my afternoon. I have a stack of bills beside a lengthening grocery list and a refrigerator with magnets. I have a you’re-almost-grown-up sort of life.

When does one grow up and how does it happen and why does no one tell you that one day out of the blue you’ll be sitting on a stool in the island of your kitchen wearing slippers and a robe after you just got out of the shower as you sit drinking black coffee and thumbing through the newspaper as though it was the only thing you wanted to do at that point in time?

I suppose these are the evolutions of youth that come earlier for some and later for others. I’m 22. I suppose that’s par for the course. Maybe. But who really knows.

When I was 17, I sent my grandfather a short story and he sent me back a letter saying, “You may write professionally or for your own pleasure, but whatever you do, keep writing. Don’t neglect the gift.”

Just this past week, a family in Idaho sold everything they had–yes, everything–and donated the proceeds to Invisible Children. They’re moving into a small, one-bedroom apartment  so they can donate $600 a month to my company instead of having a nicer place to live. I have payments for the next four years on a brand new car and I also just bought a new TV, desk, and GPS. Ughhh.

I don’t want this to be about guilt. But I do want to be a good steward of what I’ve been given. Conviction might be one of those necessary evils in life that crawls up out of nowhere to say, “Yes, you’re drinking your coffee and doing laundry and paying bills. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Maybe it’s time to show some dedication in lieu of youthful flippancy.”

I don’t want to grow into a boring life where all I’m doing all the time is work and paying bills and pinching pennies, but there has to be that point I suppose where you stop doing everything you want to do and buckle down. Where you stop thinking Dad can help out in case you spend too much one month.  Most of you have probably already discovered this. I’m admittedly a late bloomer, but at least I’m blooming.

You’ve probably already been deceived. It’s quite possible that I’ve already fooled you or lied. Whatever the case, we’re off to a bad start.

This is “The Daily Grist”–more so in name and theory than in actuality. “Daily” implies that I’ll write something every 24 hours. “Grist” implies that I’ll say things that are useful and/or meaningful. But I promise neither the frequency of my words nor the value in my monologues.

The only guarantee I make is that I will talk–on occasion–about things that might or might not be of any given importance.

Welcome, friends, to the written crap-shoot.