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I have noticed something while riding the DART rail at the earliest a man should be up in the morning. A lot of people have their heads down or just flat out sleeping. If you’re already up snap out of it. Wake up. I just see laziness when I see someone hunched forward, clinching their backpack and a hoodie on while sleeping. Get the day started, listen to your iPod, read a book, text your girlfriend, do something! There’s no reason to waste your waking hours sleeping again. Maybe I’m just picky, but I don’t see why you bother getting up just to halfass it after you’re already up for the day. Until next time, I’m Dayne Watkins and you are not.

I just heard a whale expert say the most fascinating thing. He said the whales are smart enough to realize they can’t get out of the enclosure. They could sulk at the bottom of the pen or just stay away from the trainers. But they don’t. They let themselves be trained (let that sink in.) They LET themselves be trained and make the best of the situation. I could preach on that for 2 days straight. Now I know some of you are thinking “I feel like I’m stuck in a cage in my job or my life right now.” I got news for you: that’s a good place to be. What! Are you insane Dayne? No. Let me finish. I’m preaching to myself as much as you so stay with me. These whales have enough primal, animal instincts to know its better to adapt to their situation and make the best of it than to butt their heads up against a 5 foot concrete wall for two weeks until their noses explode. But isn’t that what we do? Don’t we butt our heads up against a situation or a person until our nose is bloody, our energy is zapped, and our pride is long gone? I know I have. Make yourself sick you’ve run through the scenario so many times and don’t see a way out. Run yourself crazy you’ve calculated the numbers so many times Houdini can’t find a solution. Christians don’t like to admit it but sometimes God puts us (read: on purpose) in situations that are hard. Yes let that sink down into your theological mind. Ed Young’s often quoted line is: change. Conflict. Grow. I have come to realize first hand. You won’t grow without change. And you won’t change without conflict. I’m dealing with a schedule change that would make Franklin Covey get on his knees right now but guess what? I’m growing. I’m having to rearrange every part of my life for a night shift and guess what? I feel like a million bucks and no I’m not speaking by faith. I really am beginning to like this. Why? Because its a change. No matter what people say change is good most of the time. Now if you’re changing wives every quarter that’s a problem. I mean good change. Change that is God ordained. Change that is meant to make you grow. What are you dealing with today? What is throwing your system out of whack? Give it to God. Submit to Him. Watch Him take that valley and make it into a mountain top. See Him make a way where there is no way. Learn your lesson now so you don’t have to spend 40 years in the wilderness going around the same mountain like our beloved Israelites. God has your victory in waiting. It won’t be this hard for long if you trust Him. He’s not in the breaking down business. He’s in the building up business and business is booming for those who do it Gods way.

 I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.   I overheard a coworker asking and griping about why people don’t go to church, but have no problem going to the movies.  He asked why people can read gossip mags and Entertainment Weekly, but a Christian magazine no one reads.   Of course, me being the humble man that I am I gave him an answer.  “Because most churches are boring.”  Oh he didn’t like that.  He answered with “it’s not about being bored. The Word of God isn’t boring.”  He made a common mistake.  The Word of God is not boring, that is a given.  However he is making the assumption that these dead, boring churches are preaching the Bible, and most of the time they aren’t.  I then asked him “why do you think some churches have 25k people going every weekend? Because they’re hip, they’re preaching victory instead of defeat, and they’re fun.”  His response was that they only preach prosperity.  And that church wasn’t about being fun.  But he’s once again misguided.  Go read your Bible.  The Bible only teaches prosperity.  It only teaches prosperity in your soul, your spirit, your bank account, your job, your relationships, your family, and your entire life.  The Bible doesn’t teach broke.  It doesn’t teach defeat.  It doesn’t teach broken relationships.  It doesn’t teach sickness.  It doesn’t teach sadness.  It doesn’t teach despair.  It doesn’t teach hopelessness.  It doesn’t teach anything like that.  The gospel means “good news.”  Well what’s good news to someone divorced? God can restore your heart and your life and bring you another mate.  Life’s not over.  What’s good news to someone who has cancer?  God can and will heal you if you’ll believe.  God is your healer.  God wants you well.  What’s good news to someone who needs guidance and doesn’t know where to go or where to start?  God will give you wisdom to make the right decision.  What’s good  news to someone who is going to hell?  God will save you, just call on Jesus and you will have eternal life.  You see, the reason why some churches are dead and have 15 people in the pews is because they are preaching defeat.  They’re preaching watered down Christianity with no life, no victory, and no substance.  No one is going to sit in a congregation for 20 years and hear every Sunday “I know it’s hard brother, but it will all be fine when we get to heaven.”  No one wants to hear that.  No wants to hear day after day after day “just hang in there.”  I don’t want to hang in there for 20 years.  I don’t want to be broke for 20 years.  I don’t want to be heartbroken and in despair over a divorce for 20 years.   I don’t want to wake up every morning depressed and thinking my life is over for 20 years.  I don’t want to be miserable for 20 years and have someone telling me it’s all going to be alright when I die.  Jesus said that satan is only here to steal, kill, and destroy.  He said He (Jesus) came so that we could have LIFE and have it more abundantly.  The greek word for “life” in that verse (John 10:10) is “zoe” which means “The God kind of life.”  Now wait a minute.  I thought we’re just supposed to hang in there and suck it up until we get to heaven?  I thought God was putting cancer on us to teach us some lessons about how much He loves us?  I thought He was breaking our engine in our car so He could teach us a life lesson?  I thought He was breaking up your marriage because you married the wrong mate and He wants to get some glory out of you learning to deal with emotional pain?  No. Not right, not the Bible, and NOT OK.  I don’t imagine God being 120 days late on his mortgage.  I don’t imagine God not having money to go to dinner with his family.  I don’t imagine God walking around Heaven with a tumor in his spleen.  I don’t see God and Jesus walking around arguing with each other and not going to Thanksgiving dinner because they’re fighting with themselves and the angels are in the back gossiping about the both of them.  No. You think about the God kind of life and you think victory.  You think wealthy.  You think  happy.  You think healthy.  You think abundance.  You think peace.  You think kings and queens.  You think royalty.  You can make this pretty easy.  Anything that has to do with stealing, killing, or destroying is satan.  Anything having to do with life and abundant life is God.  James said that  “every good and perfect gift comes from above from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness.”   When I was 16 my parents surprised me with a brand new Pontiac Firebird.  I didn’t look at that and think to myself: “Awesome! I knew the mean neighbors down the road who everyone hates would get me a car!”  No. I knew my parents, who loved me and sacrificed a lot for me and my sister got it for me.  So why do people have such a hard time thinking and realizing that God is not the one giving them cancer, breaking up their marriage, and causing all their problems and then give satan credit as the one who is the one giving all these rich Christians money?  There’s a liar in the wood pile and his name is satan.  He’s doing the same deceiving he did in the garden of Eden and we can either wake up and start living a better life, or we can stay the same broke, busted, and disgusted church that no one wants to be a part of.  Things are changing in this world.  Time is running out.  The churches preaching the Bible are going to continue to thrive and get results and the ones that aren’t are going to get weaker, and weaker, and less people will attend them.  There are firemen who are called to preach, and there are preachers who are called to be firemen.  There’s a lot of people in the ministry that God didn’t mean for them to preach, but they are.  There’s a lot of people putting out fires who are supposed to be in the pulpit.  There’s a lot of people teaching Sunday School that aren’t meant to, and a lot of people sitting in the congregation that are supposed to be teaching Sunday School but aren’t.  Hence why you see churches that are dead, boring, and no life in them.  And why you see churches and ministries that seem like they are just destined for success.   The truth is every Christian in this world is destined for success.  You can be called to be a janitor and still be a millionaire.  Wrap your religious head around that for a second.  It doesn’t matter if you are the King of Saudi Arabia or a teacher at a pre-school.  If you are in the spot that God called you to be in, and you are obeying Him and His Word,  you will thrive and you will be successful financially, spiritually, and mentally.  God doesn’t give some Christians wealth and some Christians poverty.  If He did He wouldn’t be righteous and His Word would be a lie.  God can’t lie.  Our problem is that we just pick a job or a calling out of a hat and give no time whatsoever to get with God and see what they are supposed to do with their lives.  And then they spend the next 50 years griping about why something isn’t happening.  I’m not going to run out and start to train as an ice skater because I know I am not called to be an ice skater.  We need to stop picking our jobs and callings out of a phonebook by running our finger through the B’s with our eyes closed and then apply for jobs that start with “B.”  We have to realize God is infinite in His wisdom, wants our success and happiness even more than we do for ourselves, and He IS love.  It doesn’t say He has love, the Bible said He IS love.  Love doesn’t want you broke.  Love isn’t going to want you dreading your job every day.  Love isn’t going to want you on your death bed at 31 years old with cancer.  Love isn’t going to want you alone for the rest of your life wishing you hadn’t made the decisions you made and always thinking “what if.”  Love doesn’t want you fighting with your family or your siblings and having strife at every turn.  Love doesn’t want you spending your days worrying about how you’re going to pay the light bill, the car payment, and your kid’s college education.  Love doesn’t want you staying up late nights worrying about some decision you made in 1975.  That isn’t love.  I can sum up God in one word: Love.  You think of the best gift you ever got, the nicest person you ever met, the coolest thing you ever heard of, the best boss you ever worked for, the neatest thing you ever saw,  the friendliest person you ever knew, the richest man you ever heard of, the sweetest relative you ever had and you multiply all that by infinity and that’s God.  That’s Jesus. And that’s the Holy Spirit.  Don’t make it complicated.  Make it the Bible.  He’ll do the rest. 

When I was in college I always went to clubs with my friends. Not clubs that played rap, or country, or hard metal. Real clubs.  Clubs where techno, breakbeat, house music and trance was played. Clubs where people danced and drank and had a good time and where the thumps from the speakers were so loud you could feel your lunch rising up in your stomach.  I’ve always liked electronic music, for as long as I can remember I’ve been listening to DJ Merritt’s EDGECLUB show on 102.1 FM.  I remember the first time I went to the Red Jacket off Greenville avenue and stared at those two Technics 1200 turntables and that 12” vinyl record just spinning.  I thought “that is a thing of beauty.”  I was mesmerized by it.  Still to this day when I see one turning on a turntable it brings back memories.  My buddy Jeremiah was a bouncer there and always just let me in, no line, no cover, I’m with the band so let me in sucka.  One day me and my buddies went to a club called “The Village” in Oak Lawn and I made friends with the DJ there.  Every time he played a song that was a crowd mover I’d run up to the DJ booth and he’d stick the record cover up to the window so I could jot down the name of the song and the label it was on.  This went on for months until finally I looked at Kimball Collins at the Red Jacket DJing one night and I said “I can do that.”  So off I went.  $1500 later I was at home with 2 Technics 1200 MK3 turntables, a mixer, and the nicest headphones money could buy.  I was more motivated to learn how to spin than anything else in my entire life.  I spent almost my entire free time in life that wasn’t spent on school or work in a record shop sifting through thousands of records.  I will never forget that first day of practice.  I was so discouraged you would think I had lost my arm in a car accident and couldn’t DJ. It was like it was Mandarin Chinese or something. So hard I couldn’t even think straight. For the first month or two I almost quit 6,798 times.  Finally around month 3 or 4 I got to where it didn’t sound like 2 shoes in a dryer.  Progress.  But still aganizing when I could see in my head me playing house parties and raves with the best songs that no one else had because lets face it, no one in the world listened to more dance music, searched more record shops, and listened to more DJ Mix shows than me.  My college buddies used to joke that every time they saw me I was glued to the computer at North Texas in the student labs with my headphones on and shut out from the entire world.  If I wasn’t in class or working, I was looking for records.  No one would be more in the know than I was on this particular subject and it frustrated me that it didn’t just come as 2nd nature to me.   I will never forget the day that it just “clicked.”  I put my 2 favorite records on for practice and they were mixed almost instantly.  I thought “maybe the speeds were just set the same.”  So I put two different records on. Same thing.  Beats matched perfectly almost instantly.  I was in heaven.  I stayed up all night and mixed almost every piece of vinyl I had and the next day went to Bill’s Records off Spring Valley and emptied my bank account and bought every choice morsel of  12” vinyl I could purchase.  For the next week or so I started mixing CD’s and giving them to my friends. At first no one said anything. But slowly they started asking if I could do a party or a house get together. I’d start lugging my gear around and having a blast playing at parties.  All for free.  I was doing something I loved doing and that I was obssessed with and was glad to do it. I was having more fun playing my records than any of the people dancing and having a good time were.   I got better, and better and better until finally I was sounding just like the DJ’s CD’s that I was buying and listening too.  No missed mixes, perfectly seamed music and transfers. It was great.  Then shangri la hit.  What I had seen Kelly Reverb do at the Red Jacket all those times I was now able to do.  There is one way to tell how good a DJ is when it comes to spinning.   If a DJ can slap a piece of vinyl on a turntable and only use the pitch control (speed of turntable spinning and therefore matching the two records’ speeds) to mix it, he’s good. Very good.  If he’s constantly backing it up with his hand and then using the pitch control as kind of a secondary tool, he’s not that good.  Now I was doing it just with pitch control.  It got to the point to where I could be doing a house party or a rave and almost carry on a complete conversation with someone talking to me while mixing two records together. It was sweet.  Now how does this tie into life and success?  Simple.  All of us have something that we can be excellent at, enjoy doing,  and fulfill our dreams.  Finding it is the first part.  Following through with it is the 2nd.  Spinning records and moving a crowd with music was what I was excellent at in college and to be honest I’m still searching for what my calling and assignment is now.  It may seem extremely hard when you set out to be successful in whatever area you choose.  You’ll want to quit a million times.  You’ll throw up your hands and not know why it’s taking so long.  But if you know you can do it, if you love what the end result is, if you stick with it you will get to the point to where not only are you excellent at it and succeeding immensely in it, but you’ll also get to the point to where it’s easy. To where it’s second nature.  And you won’t get there without being obssesed with it.  No one is excellent at anything they aren’t obssesed with.  It just can’t happen.  I never would have got so good at DJing had I not eaten, slept, and crapped Djing.  But once it does become and obsession and you do it consistently then you are in the realm of greatness for whatever endeavor you set out for.  And that my friends is the sweet spot. That’s where practice times discipline times destiny equals your dreams come true.  Whether it’s money, stability, fame, fortune, success whatever.  You can do anything in this world as long as you stick with it and put in the time.

When I was at UNT getting my degree we had a lot of logistics classes. I remember my professor always extolling the excellence of Walmart’s distribution system. They basically turned the distribution world upside down and were and still are innovators of it. They can pinpoint where any specific box is at any given time through a myriad of GPS/Radio ID’s/Radar devices, and at the press of a button (though most likely a computer is automating it which is even cooler) they can re-route a truck or package to meet inventory or special order needs all around the world. Read the rest of this entry »