I am in Fort Wayne right now. One of my favorite things about going home is to catch up with friends I talk with occasionally on the phone, but see rarely. Lissa, myself, and another friend named Laura were set to meet at Buffalo Wild Wings. It turned out about half my graduating high school class showed up. But when Lissa walked in, all other conversation in my book ceased and the fun was about to start.

So you might be asking yourself, why is this girl so important? Do you have like a major thing for her? Not exactly. On paper, Lissa and I should be enemies. In our "Fox News" world, we should not be friends. We should have a TV show where we fight to the bitter death over just about any topic, accusing the other person of being anti-American and a horrible person¹. But there are few people I look forward to hanging out with more than Lissa. The night always seems to end too early.

Lissa is agnostic, liberal², cute, and smart. I am a Christian, conservative², ugly, and not-too-bright. But what I love about our relationship is that we have always had great respect for each other, and we have, with out actively trying, always abided by the rules of an article I came across on Cracked last week titled 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On. The basic gist of the article are these 10 points:

1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One
2. Both Sides Really Do Believe What They're Saying
3. In Everyday Life, You're Not That Different
4. There Are Good People on Both Sides
5. Your Point of View is Legitimately Offensive to Them
6. We Tend to Exaggerate About the Other Guy
7. We Tend to Exaggerate About Ourselves, Too
8. Focusing on Negative Examples Makes You Stupid
9. Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table
10. You'll Never Harass the Other Side Out of Existence

I think all of these points are right on. The only exception being #3, and while I think it is true in reality, it is a sad thing about modern Christianity. I mean, take a couple of different social choices away, the fact I abandoned any desire to go to Law School, and our Sunday morning activities, and Lissa and I live pretty much the same life.

But think about how great this world would be if we approached all people we disagreed with using the above guidelines. Think how politics would look. Think how families would look. Think how relationships would be different. Think how more civilized this world would be. Think how much fun life would be. And both sides are just as guilty of continuing the hatred of the other.

This Christmas I received a present³ from Erik (creator of allenhuntshowsucks.com). I even opened it with my family around the tree with all my other presents (we joked about the fact it might have anthrax). But I sincerely enjoy Erik as a person. We don't agree on religion. But we have respect for one another, and our e-mails back and forth are a lot of fun.

My hope (which they know) is for Lissa and Erik to one day realize the fullness (I didn't say easy) of life found in a relationship with Jesus. But until then, I am thoroughly enjoying the fun times and journey together.

After I finished the show with Allen on Sunday, I went home, packed, and hit the road at 10:30 pm for Indiana. I made it to 4:15 am - which put me just inside Indiana - before I got tired and pulled over to sleep for a couple of hours in a rest stop. What I love about being on the open road is it gets me to slow down and think about myself and my life. I had one hampering thought this whole trip: am I a workaholic? And not in the sense of like "ohh my gosh, I am such a workaholic," but seriously: am I unhealthily addicted to work the way an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol.

Let's check some of the signs:

• I sleep with my phone within arms reach and ringer on in case I am needed
• The very first thing I do in the morning is check my e-mail
• When I find myself in a conflict, my "comfort food" is going to the office
• I work when friends are over and we are all sitting on the couch
• I worked on Christmas
• (I am sure there are others...but I am drawing a blank)

Part of what has brought this on is I've had a new phenomena in the past two months that I have never experienced before. It takes two hands to count the number of people I know who have been mad/upset with me, because they think I am mad/upset with them, because I haven't been present or attentive. Now lets be honest: there are usually plenty of legitimate reasons to be angry with me. But this was a new one. Of course, I try and explain that this is because of the amount of work I have been doing and how stressed I have been, etc...etc... But this brings us back to the issue: how do we define an unhealthy addiction to work.

Especially within the faith community, I think we need to define addiction. While I was in college, and taking my human sexuality class, we had a discussion on what makes an addiction. For example, pastors seem to label someone who has sex with a boyfriend/girlfriend a sex addict and in need of counseling - even if it is in a monogamous dating relationship. While this may not be moral, it is important to understand this is not an addiction. I can't remember all the litmus elements, and I seemingly have lost my notes on the topic, but I remember that amongst other things, in order for an addiction to be an addiction it has to be something you cannot stop and it is adversely effecting areas outside the addiction (relationships / work / responsibilities / etc).

This is the rub. For example, eating is not usually an addiction because even though you "cannot stop" eating, most eating patterns aren't affecting external areas. But that is where my internal process seemed to hit a road block. Work is a necessity of life. And yes, there are people who "work to live" and people who "live to work." I am in the latter. I would work even if I didn't have to. But how far is too far?

I often "joke" that I am pretty sure I am going to die by 30. The Japanese have a term for this, it is called Karōshi. But it isn't Karōshi I am afraid of. It is the words of professor I had at APU when we went out to lunch at a dinner in Glendora, CA. He looked at me and said, "Andy, the challenge you are going to face in life is having meaningful relationships that aren't connected to your work." That is far worse than dying at 30.

The irony during all of this, as I am driving up I-69 about 45 minutes from home on Christmas Eve, is I get an e-mail on the iPhone. Apparently there is something wrong with the podcast. So I momentarily stop processing my thoughts to troubleshoot an issue in the middle of farmland Indiana using my iPhone. All this to say, I am not sure where I land. I guess I'll keep driving through life, hoping to find a peace.

Last night Allen posed the question, "who would Jesus vote for?" Like only the Allen Hunt Show can, we received responses from across the political spectrum. At one point, I got on the air and said that if elections were held today I would probably vote for Huckabee (if he were in it) or Obama (probably who I am going to vote for).

I like Huckabee. He gets a bad wrap because of his stance on science (which I disagree with) and comments about people with AIDS made back in the 80s (who wasn't ignorant about AIDS in the 80s...sheesh, forgive the dude). But in all seriousness, I think Huckabee is incredibly compassionate to the poor and recognizes that being Pro-Life is more than just being Anti-Abortion. It means taking care of the poor and having a social responsibility.

But that really isn't the point of this entry. I came across CNN's "Millionaires-In-Chief" article this morning and I think I have a modified response, but the same conclusion. If Huckabee isn't in the picture, I am voting for Obama.

Here's the thrust of the information:

	2006 Income	Net Worth
Hillary Clinton	12.1 mil	34.9 mil
John Edwards	3.7 mil	54.7 mil
Rudy Giuliani	17.0 mil	52.2 mil
John McCain	3.9 mil	40.4 mil
Barack Obama	.991 mil	1.3 mil
Mitt Romney	37.6 mil	202 mil
Fred Thompson	9.4 mil	8.1 mil

A couple of things stand out to me big time.

1.) Fred Thompson (and Ron Paul) are the ones who are held by the true "Fiscal conservatives" as "their guy." But Fred's info here is alarming. He is the only one who's net worth is less than that of his 2006 income. How is he going to be a federally fiscal conservative if he is personally fiscally inept.

2.) Mitt Romney seems to have more money than god (good thing since he is Mormon who believe they will one day become a god). The other interesting thing about the article is that until he ran for President, he owned stocks in casinos (real family friendly) and companies doing business with Iran (real "pro-American" there).

3.) John-"I-am-taking-care-of-the-poor"-Edwards seems to have built a nice nest egg for himself there. Making money is not wrong. Hoarding money is. I'll respect his stance on the poor when his net worth is significantly less because he gave it away to help those who in poverty. Either that, or provide he IRS return showing that he gave ridiculous amounts of money away.

4.) Barack. Barack is quite poor - relatively speaking of course. Only person who didn't make over 1 million in 2006.

Now Barack's political poverty isn't why I would vote for him. Nor is it why I think Jesus would vote for him. But I think it shows why people want to vote for him. I said last night on air that voting for Barack was like voting for the "anti-Politics" vote. He's different. He gives politics and the Presidency a chance. I think most of us wanting to vote for Barack have no clue if he will actually be a good President. What we do feel like we know is that no other legitimate candidate will be. Thus the only shot we have at having a good President is by voting for Barack.

Does this mean Jesus would vote for Barack. No. I am sort of with Allen in believing that Jesus probably wouldn't vote. But it means that as a Bible-believing, somewhat-conservative, Christian, I am not counting the dude out just because he is pro-choice (even though I sort of want to just to stab that at Oprah).

Sidenote: I'll blog some other time why even though I am pro-life, I have no quarrel with voting for Barack (and you can thank Bush for this one).

Many times on the air Allen will refer to his high school with pride when he states that his High School Alma Mater are the national champions at football. Well it is my turn to offer pride in my high school. I was casually checking out Fort Wayne Observed today (it makes me feel connected to "home"), and amongst my parousing I came across that according to US News & World Report, my high school, Homestead High School, has been ranked as one of the top 505 public schools (top 3%) in the country.

There are many times in my life when I have had the privilege to reflect on how blessed I am to have been born in the United States of America. You don't work in AIDS villages in South Africa, or sleep in a bed 1/4 of mile from a bomb explosion in Jerusalem, or build orphanages in Honduras with out realizing that living in America is a blessing - one which wasn't earned, despite what most Americans seem to think.

But more and more recently, I have come to the realization that my school was a blessing I didn't earn either - and it was a blessing that prepared me for college and life more than I could have ever expected.

I often joked with my friends in college that my hardest year of college was my junior year of high school. And while it was a joke, there was some truth there. Taking 5 AP classes and being an editor on the yearbook was quite challenging. But the brilliance of Homestead was that it wasn't just about the bookwork - it was about a holistic approach to education.

I think back to Block (AP History & AP English combined) and think about the extreme amount of energy that had to have been put into that by Mr. Schmidt, Ms. Decalone, Mr. Teagarden, and Ms. Walker. They didn't just teach historical facts and grammar (which we all know I must have been asleep for the grammar part), but they taught us how to think, how to debate, how to process information, and how to interpret.

I think about Journalism and how truly grateful I am to Mr. Kuhn for not just the journalistic integrity he taught me, but the independence he gave to me to learn my own lessons. Who knew I would eventually use those lessons to produce a talk radio show on the largest news radio source in the South (and no I took no journalism classes in college).

I even think about Woodside Middle School (feeder for Homestead) where I did my first and only web programming class and my first and only video editing class with Mr. Gorman. These are two elements of my life where I have succeeded at GREATLY and they have pretty much enabled me to do that which I do now. Yet I had no collegiate education to show for these areas either.

Middle school was also important because it had Mr. Panning – a man that taught me more about life and provided a great example of what it was to be a man during a time when I desperately needed that (he was a great Math teacher and Cross Country coach too).

I even enjoy that when comparing a lot of the “Gold” rated schools to Homestead, it appears most are “privilege sections” of public schools (basically they are gifted-only academies in public school districts). Even that fact makes me proud that Homestead was truly integrated. I was in ALPHA (the gifted program of Southwest Allen) beginning in Kindergarten – yet I had gym with the star football player, I had photography with the crazy hippy where you wondered if she was on drugs, and I had biology and literature with kids who had very different theological and social outlooks. All this to say, I learned about life and how to interact with people different than me. It wasn’t a sheltered bubble of brainy kids isolated like those of "public academies", but rather a melting pot of experience and perspective.

I currently live in an suburb of Atlanta much like Southwest Allen…only about 10 times more wealthy and “yuppie”. Instead of Dick Freeland and Tom Kelly - you’d know who I am talking about if you lived in Southwest Allen - Usher, Jeff Foxworthy, John Smoltz, and the CEOs of Fortune-500 companies are my neighbors. What cracks me up about this area is how many private academies there are (I can count 6 within the same space as my old school district). Yet I still don’t think any of them do as good of a job of educating and preparing a holistic person better than Homestead did. I spoke at a local private academy's career day earlier this year and I reminded them of Mark Twain's quote, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education." School is more than just books. Homestead got this; I am not sure most private schools do.

Ultimately, it is the teachers that I am most grateful for. I now have a lot of teacher friends, and I know how hard it is. I know how hard it is to deal with parents that think they know better or that their kid is more special than the rest. I know how hard it is to come up with lesson plans that not only educate but that are engaging. I know how hard it is to wake up at 6:30 just to be greeted at 7:30 by a lethargic class. But as all teachers know, it isn't about them. It is about the students. And from one student, simply put, thanks for everything.