My YouTube Channel

The Big Bang - Deleted Scene

April 13, 2015 
Day 348

For quite a while, YouTube was a huge part of my life.  I watched it every day, I followed a bunch of big YouTube stars--people who became famous because of the site--and I made a bunch of my own videos too.

In August of 2008, I even traveled to Toronto to experience the largest YouTube Convention in the world at that time, 888 (so named because it took place on 8/8/2008).  I was such a newbie at that time, but like so many attendees, I felt like anything was possible.  We met and posed for awkward photographs with other people, including popular YouTubers Dave Days, Tyler Oakley, and Tom McLean (frezned), among many others.  It was a surreal experience for all of us, the famous people and the nobodies, and it was just as awkwardly awesome and awesomely awkward as you'd expect.

https://www.youtube.com/user/angelenroute

My take on YouTube has always been the same: anything's possible.  This is our UHF, our chance to create original content for the world to see, no matter how crazy or silly that content might be.  And my programming lineup of choice?  I created original characters, 99% of which I improvised on the spot.  I even made business cards to hand out to people, hoping more people would discover my channel and me.

Making videos is really fun, and I enjoy coming up with strange original characters too.  I'm a performer at heart, but to get past my inherent stage fright, I prefer to do these kinds of one-take videos at home, without any audience watching me.

As my daily-blog-writing adventure comes to a close soon (only 17 days left now), I'm hoping to start making new videos for my YouTube channel again.  If you've never seen my skits or vlogs, they're just a tad bit odd, I confess, but I try to bring the funny more than the strange, so check them out?

https://www.youtube.com/user/angelenroute

angelenroute

January 28, 2015
Day 273

It's been my online identity and screen name for years, and though it certainly doesn't capture all I am, it has been a helpful guidepost.  So what does angelenroute mean, at least to me?

There are two reasons I like the name.  The first and less important one is that I like to believe an angel could come to help me.  I do tend to believe in a mostly hands-off approach from Heaven--despite the subject matter of my first three books--yet I can't help but enjoy the romanticism of the image: an angel swooping in to help someone in need.

The second and more important reason for the name is that I am always aspiring to be better, more perfect, more angel-like.  It's a lifelong struggle, but I believe in it wholeheartedly, and sincerely wish it were the hope of all human beings to achieve a higher level of consciousness at all times. We can't expect others to be more perfect in our eyes if we see through eyes that think ourselves perfect.

The word perfection literally means done through, or completely finished, so we cannot be perfect until we are finished.  We cannot achieve perfection until we achieve a completion of this life we're living.  And even then, how many of us expect our loved ones to say at our funeral services, "He was just so perfect!"  The pursuit of perfection is silly if it's meant to be a human trait in any way.  It has to be a spiritual one from the very start.  I think you'll agree, most of those who seem dead set on the perfect body, career, or life can be completely intolerable to be around.  Father Benedict Groeschel put it this way, "God bless Saint Joseph.  How would you like to wake up and have your coffee with two perfectly sane people?!"

So yeah, I do want to pursue perfection throughout my life.  I want to yell less, lose my temper and my patience less often, and learn to turn the other cheek much more than I do.  I genuinely do want this for myself.  I'm not an angel, as anyone who knows me well enough can tell you.  I have a long list of flaws, most of which I'm aware of on a very-regular basis.

I'm no angel, but I am an angel en route, an angel in training.  I want to be perfected.  I want to be better than I am.  I believe I can be too...some day.