You might be thinking: What did you do with the dave I know, and who are you? If you're thinking that there only one reason... dave & books. If you don't know that those two things really don't well together, then allow me to explain.

In general, I don't really enjoy reading. I read slow. Really slow. Other people who say they read slow, I read slower. (I'm just using that for emphasis, not literally). In high school I took "Reading for the College Bound" (which was mostly worthless). We learned a lot about how we should take notes on our reading so we could learn more from it. We did a few reading speed tests. Keep in mind, this isn't the most academically advanced class, lots of slackers and stuff in the class. I was always the slowest person. Often I didn't get the article read in the time allowed. My teacher kept telling me I needed to just hurry up and not worry so much about understanding every little detail. I tried that. First off, I wasn't very good at it... I didn't want to miss anything. The idea was you would get used to reading faster and your comprehension level would go back up. Well, that never worked so well for me. I read faster, I miss entire chunks of details. So I read slow. I read so slow I get bored while reading if it's something remotely long. Magazine / online articles are ideal, I can stay interested for the whole read, and it's not so long I can't go back and re-read the whole thing if I missed something. Books on the other hand, well, they're usually a lost cause. The second thing is I read for concepts, not for details. I was reading Tim's novel that he's working on, and we were discussing it briefly one evening. He asked me to tell him what was going on, to make sure the story was followable. My reply was right-on, but without any of the character's names in place, or other similar details. It's so bad that often in my reading I would have to go back and figure out which character had participated in a previous event.

Ooops, that wasn't meant to be so long. Anyway, here's the point of my posting. I'm reading this book on David. That is, the most famous David in history, the guy who killed Goliath and was King for a while. It's interesting, my Mom bought me the book on my 18th birthday and it sat on a shelf, as most of my books do. I decided this Christmas to bring it down to Phoenix with me for no real reason. Matt decided to teach his small group bible study on the life of David, so I figured I should go to that. So, I'm starting to read this book by Charles Swindoll titled "David: A man of Passion & Destiny". I figured maybe God has something to say to me when two things like that, even perhaps insignificant, happen. So, I'm reading along in one of the first chapters and I come across this text, which isn't anythin new to me, but I've thought about this much in the past and it stood out so I thought I'd post about it:

Solitude has nurturing qualities all its own. Anyone who must have superficial sounds to survive lacks depth. If you can't stand to be alone with yourself, you have deep, unresolved conflicts in your life. Solitude has a way of helping us address those issues.

Moving along, I've come across a band that has a really good sound I like, they call themselves Hangnail. I think some of their sound can be compared to Jimmy Eat World, other's might disagree. They have some very talented guitar work in many of their songs. Their lyrics are fairly strongly Christ oriented. Here's an exerpt from their song "All You Wanted":

The past left behind, out of my way,
pressing on to what you have now granted me,
can this be, I'm all that you wanted.
When all of the feelings pass, along with certainty,
I cling to a faith that lasts, completely covering me.