“marg”, 2010.  ipod touch drawing.

Here’s some happy art I made.

You know, sometimes, it seems I can’t help but get mad at everything that makes my life great.  It’s a character flaw, I think.  I spend more time than I like to admit, cursing at all my blessings.  I mean, look: It’s great to have a challenging job that pays pretty well, even though it stresses me out and makes me crazy.  It’s great to have three great kids who are healthy and creative and have minds of their own, even though they often frustrate me or make me feel inadequate to the task of raising them.  It’s great to have a wife that has stuck with me for years and loves me like crazy, even though she drives me up a wall on a regular basis.  It’s great to have faith and a belief that God loves me and the community of believers I hang around with are challenging and active and take up a lot of time and energy.  It’s great to have hopes and dreams even though I get frustrated chasing after them.  It’s great to have a big pool of family and friends, even though it takes a lot of time and energy to keep in contact with them.  It’s great to have opposition and tension, even though I decry it as exhausting… without tension, there’s no creation.  It’s great to be loved, even though I always fear I don’t deserve it, and it could disappear at any moment.  And it’s great to have limits, even though some part of me believes I really don’t and shouldn’t, and that I should be perfect and independent at all times… instead of imperfect and requiring of help, love, friendship and guidance.

Know what I mean?  Blessings everywhere.  It’s just me that can’t always see them.

But I see them tonight, and I’m posting this here so that I can refer to it when I need to, which likely will be daily.  And maybe, if you’re like me, it’ll help you.

I’m a lucky person.  And I’m a lot happier than I think I am.

A self-portrait drawn on bad day, on my old ipaq.

I found it today while going through some old files here in the HWC (Hellbuster Worldwide Control) lab… I have no specific memory of drawing this, but found it accurately captured my mood today.  Which could be a coincidence, but I rather more suspect I feel like this frequently enough that pretty much I could grab a drawing like this at random every day and have it sum up the situation.  

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #2: “Imperfect Crime” by Todd Mauldin copyright 2010 all rights reserved.  Click above to listen.

The almost-true story of the attempted destruction of a school house in Beowawe, NV with a tractor tire.  

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #1: “Tapes” by Todd Mauldin copyright 2010 all rights reserved. Click to listen.

Wherein we explore one man’s obsession with buying cassette tapes at thrift stores.

Update: I’ve decided to do one of these a week, see how close to 52 in a row I can get.  

Another blast from the past… the mp3.com days… “Sex On The Streets” :)

Ain’t that something…

HAVE YOU EVER GOT CAUGHT?

I can’t quite believe it’s been so long since I posted something here.  Where’d we leave off?  That ukulele photo was from this summer, when the Hellbusters were out at Taylorsville CA… that was what, July?

I did a recap of 2009 over at hellbusters.net, so I won’t repeat that here… and this morning I’m thinking about the emails I get sometimes about the song “Guilty Blues”, the title cut from our 2007 record.

Most people who know me and our music know that the songs on “Guilty” were written when I was still an active alcoholic.  We recorded it shortly after I sobered up, and I’ve remained a sober alcoholic since, and plan on staying so.  Life is better.

Somebody sent me the above picture the other day and I had to laugh, to keep from crying. 

uke

Hey, Jerry at DDOCast heard my little DDO song and is including it in his weekly podcast.  Very nice, very flattering.  Check it out.