I’ve been busy, but I haven’t been busy writing. If you’re one of the many people that have continued to visit my blog over the last couple of months, you know this already. I have a million excuses I could share, but the prevailing reason I haven’t been writing is because I haven’t wanted to write about anything. The thousands of ideas I’ve had lined up against the million excuses and battled like Spartans and Persians. The ideas fought valiantly, but they couldn’t overcome the numbers, that darkness that poured over them from above.

The battles continue, and I’m starting to win. Some of the ideas that managed to retreat are even coming back to join our ranks—and we are strong. Our strength is in our lines; I will not send them off to die alone. I will secure their advance. So, for now, I push one clear message, a collage of ideas.

What have I been doing this whole time? Surely the Man of Many Hats has not been sitting idle.

You’re right, of course. I have kept myself very busy. After my friend Clay died, my desire to control my surroundings intensified. Every morning, I’ve woken up and immediately began pushing and stretching myself so that I can collapse into one big pile of horse and rider at the end of the day, hoping to get some real sleep that is untouched by loss and haunting visuals. That sleep hardly ever comes, but I’ve pressed on anyway. And I get stuff done. My new normal is starting to take shape.

Because I’ve been unable to write creatively (music, blog posts, poetry, checks—you name it), my other talents have gotten a lot more attention. The new girlfriend, who has been so wonderful and supportive through all of this, has been the beneficiary of a lot of this unrestrained energy. She even let me make her graduation announcements. It wasn’t a charge I took lightly, and the results show this. I couldn’t be more proud of how this turned out.

Nothing makes a man feel more like a man that being able to make his girl something she can use, and it’s even more of a testosterone booster when she shows it off and brags about it to her friends.

We drove through Texas this spring, and I made her let me take some pictures of her. Despite how gorgeous she is, she doesn't act like she is, so it took some convincing. I took these with my iPhone 5, so they didn’t start out great (besides having the perfect subject), but that’s why God invented Photoshop … And it turns out that I paid attention during my graphic design classes in college.

I added some convincing clouds, changed the lighting, and brought out the blues in the blue bonnets. For those of you who are fluent in Photoshop, you’re probably laughing right now, but I don’t do this shit for a living. I do this on a Sunday night, bat .750 at softball on a Monday night, and play live music somewhere on a Tuesday night. I don’t care about being the best—just being my best, and I do a helluva a job at that …

Writing is art. Good writing is good art. Words have often been said to paint pictures. They do. They provide a connection between schemas we have already formed in our minds and what’s being communicated to us—in theory. Think of our brains as an unreliable Internet browser. We interpret code and display it for ourselves:

It gets a lot more complicated than this. Like I said, we’re unreliable. We are full of if-then statements: If you smell pine, then think of Christmas; if you think of Christmas, then remember a happy time; if you think of a happy time, then interpret it as either past, present, or future; if you think of past happiness, then feel sadness; if you feel sad, then drink . . .

This is the way we work. This is why art works. Some people are immune to it because they are coded differently, and we all interpret things in our own way because we are all using different browsers.

Why are we so drawn to the arts? We strive for connections, for greater meaning. This is why we create—to share how we see the world. And we need the help. This world is confusing: more beauty, joy, and happiness than we know how to deal with, but it’s juxtaposed against hatred, evil, and sadness. We search for a greater meaning in this mess.

This is why I create: why I wear the artist hat, why I write music, why I paint, why I write poetry, why I write this blog. Why. It is all about the why; to share meaning.

I feel this desire to make these connections and tell the people in the cave what I have seen, what I know.

This week, I wear the artist hat in its most widely understood meaning: the painter.

Those who know me well know that I have a strong spirit and a love for this world despite all that I know is wrong with it. I find the beauty in the dark. It glows and whispers to me, calling me forward to grab it, to hold it, and to know it. I give it a name, and I give it a voice.

I wrote this poem a few years back when I was lost. I stood firm holding tangled Jenga blocks, teetering and tottering above me, while something pulled at all of the wrong ones. I hurt. I always hurt. It’s the price I pay for always loving, for caring.

The tower of uncertainty and pain made me question my ability to open myself up again. Is the price of splendor paid by the temporary nature of everything of beauty—of the death of joy itself? It is. We know this. We live this. It is all around us:

And I had to share it through more than words for all of the browsers that can't display it, so I painted it:

We find hope in the strangest of places. For me, it was the image of a rose, dying in a magnificent display.