Joey O'Connor's Blog, page 18

Joey Recommends Michael Hyatt's E-Book: Writing a Winning Book Proposal

Welcome to Joey Recommends! This is a new video series where I personally recommend some of my favorite writing tools, books, movies and creative resources to help you in your personal and professional life. If you're a writer or aspiring author, you might have missed my post a couple months when I recommended Michael Hyatt's, Writing a Winning Book Proposal. Michael Hyatt's eBook is an excellent resource to help you understand all the necessary steps you need to take to develop a clear...

Dan Wallin: The Sound of Creativity

I love inspiring stories of people like Dan Wallin who continue to push their creative comfort zones well into the later stages of their lives. So when I read about Danny (as his friends call him), the oldest working sound engineer in Hollywood, I was blown away for a number of good reasons. Dan Wallin is eighty-four years old and he recently finished mastering the sound track for Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol. While he could be playing a lot of golf or enjoying twenty previous years...

2012 Goal: Learning to Swim

I never thought learning to swim would be this difficult. And after a couple swimming lessons in the past week, I never thought swimming could be this easy. Wait a minute, you're saying (for those who know me), "You're forty-seven years old and you're just learning to swim? Well, yes and no. If you've followed this blog, you've probably read a few posts about my Ironman triathlete friend, Scott Rigsby. After being with Scott last October for the 2011 Ford Ironman, watching the world's...

Top 10 Art, Life & Faith Posts December 2011

Here are the Top 10 Posts from my Art, Life & Faith blog for December 2011. It's been one year now since I've been writing the Art, Life & Faith blog and I'm so glad I developed this "Home Plate" as my primary place to engage with friends and readers. It originally began as a writing palette to work out ideas, but the greater benefit has been making a whole host of new friends. From Art, Life & Faith, the other sites I connect with people online are Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and YouTube...

A Christmas Prayer

During Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other holidays, I'm often "the guy" called upon to lead everyone in a prayer before the big meal. Praying with my family is a gift and a privilege, but I must confess, I'm often at a loss for words about what to say. How do you beat the Christmas story? (Not that God has any real competitors.) It's pretty tough to surpass the eloquence of Isaiah and the simplicity found in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, or John. So instead, I offer you a prayer for this...

Waiting for Christmas

In these final days leading up to Christmas, I spent a several hours in a hospital waiting room. It wasn't the same maternity ward Joseph was searching for, dashing all over Bethlehem in the middle of the night with Mary in tow. Though my dad used to spend a lot of time in a waiting room a la seven kids, a waiting room was where he, my older sister Colleen and I were camped this week as we waited for my mom in surgery. My seventy-something mother, bless her soul, had a three hour rotator...

What is Your Deep Gladness?

Have you ever asked yourself, "In my life, what brings me deep gladness?" What really brings you deep joy and satisfaction?  In his book, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC, Frederick Buechner writes about purpose, vocation and calling: "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Answering these two questions, "What is my deep gladness? What is the world's deep hunger?" are critical life question. They go hand in hand like the picture...

Joey Recommends: The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller

Chances are you've heard the story of The Prodigal Son. You know, The Younger Brother who hacked off his Older Brother after wasting his inheritance on wine, women, and wild living? If you missed my post, The Prodigal God: Are We Loving or Judging Others, I want to recommend you get The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. Today I'm beginning a new video series where I personally...

The Action-Oriented Artist: Part 1

As a boy, I loved action-figures. GI Joe was my hero and if there was one guy I'd ever want in my foxhole, it was him. I had the GI Joe Navy S.E.A.L. Scuba set. The G.I. Joe Egyptian Explorer Jeep set complete with sarcophagus-mummy-winch holder. The G.I. Joe Jungle Python-Slashing set complete with authentic plastic machete. I was all things G.I. Joe. Boy, could I accessorize that man-doll: grenades, ammo, M-16, Howitzer, you name it.

What did I love about G.I. Joe? Popping muscles and cammo...

Persevere! You Can Do It!

Note: Flying over to the 2011 Ford Ironman World Championship last October, I wrote this post about my recent experience with Scott Rigsby and his unthinkable venture into high surf on Memorial Day. Whatever "high surf" you currently find yourself in, I hope you're encouraged to persevere through whatever stormy seas you're in. If you think you can't persevere, with God's strength, think again…In the video below, watch Scott exit the water after his two and a half mile swim at the 2011 Ford...