The first thing I thought was that I needed a company, a group of business people who carry yellow pads to come storming into the room so we could figure out how to take something over. It was just a passing thought, but that’s what came into my mind when I walked into the room.

Not the actual hotel. But perfect for homeless guys for sure.

Then I get over to the conference, and Scott McClellan, the big man who runs the conference and I started talking and I told him thanks for all the square footage because I like to run wind sprints. He said when Dan Merchant walked into the room, the first thing he thought was that he should go gather up a group of homeless guys to stay there for the night. That made me feel like crap. Dan Merchant.

* I should add that hotels often throw in free suites as a thanks to conferences. Echo doesnt spend your dough on this stuff. Now the fact I demand silk sheets for my cats is a different story.

The Difference Between Me and Dan Merchant is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

I hate exercise. It’s completely stupid. I’d no sooner stand around in a gym lifting weights than you’d eat your own poop. Eating your own poop makes complete sense because it’s filled with vital nutrients but standing around in a gym lifting weights makes no sense at all. I never, ever exercise. Call me lazy if you want, but I don’t exercise and don’t see the point of it. I don’t set fitness goals, I don’t plan out my week, I don’t work with a trainer (not the kind of trainer you’re thinking of. I work with a trainer sometimes and fitness trainers could learn something from my trainer, actually. If fitness trainers threw a mini-snickers at their clients every time they did a push up people would want to do more push ups but that’s off the subject.) The thing is, I like my body. I don’t think about it’s limitations at all, or the fact that I’m a bit more pudgy than I was only a year ago. I don’t sit around wishing I was a more fit dog and I never will. So my only advice about exercising is never, ever think about it or want to do it or plan it or hire a trainer (unless they have a fannie pack of mini-snickers bars.)

So that’s all the advice I have for you about exercise.

That said, here’s what I love. I love to run after a ball. I love to fetch and I could fetch all day. It’s my absolute favorite. My favorite favorite fetching is when Don throws the ball into water. If we are at the river, Don throws it way down the beach and I run down the beach and tackle the ball in the shallow water like it was a baby antelope. I make a huge splash about it and if the ball is in deeper water I swim as hard as Michael Phelps and when I get the ball I take it down like an alligator drowns a swimming cat. Then I run it back to Don and drop it at his feet and he throws it again. We do this for hours. If we are at the reservoir it’s a whole different system. Don throws it into the water and I dive off the edge like a cliff diver in Rio and land flat on my belly with such a loud splash that everybody in the park turns and points at me in time to see me catch my stride, making a two-inch wake in front of my snout, reeling the ball in by feet per second. I sometimes get distracted by ducks so I lose the ball. Ducks are complete jerks because they make you swim around in circles. I’d seriously like to get my teeth into a duck. I can see their little buts under their feathers just a half inch above the water and I want to bite their duck butts. But then I go get the ball and bring it back. I do this until I am completely tired and I can’t walk anymore. Then I lay down in the shade. When I want to chase the ball again, I pick it up and lay it down next to Don and get into a hunting position, very frozen, you can’t move an inch, you just have to stare at the ball like you’re a statue and then Don picks it up and you get to start the whole thing over again.

But I never, ever exercise. Exercise makes no sense at all.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 7 – How I Stay Fit Without Exercising is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

So Don and I have a good thing going. It’s just us up here in the condo, though it seems like we have somebody in the guest room every night. I like when we have guests but I wanted to say something about why I bark so loud when they first come to the door. I wanted to say why I run to the door and shout when I hear their suitcases rolling down the decking toward our door. I want to say why I keep barking even when Don pulls on my collar and tells me their name. I even growl sometimes but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. I don’t bark for long and I don’t growl very much. But the thing is, I want to make it known that we have a good thing going and it’s our thing and before we invite them in I want them to know they can’t bring any crap in here that messes with what we’ve got. I want them to know the rules around here are that we take care of each other and we care about each other. I know intuitively that it’s a special thing to have water in your dish every night and food in your silver bowl in the morning, and a place to sleep and somebody who will take you out to pee. I know there are probably better places to live but I also know there are much worse places to live, and I know intuitively there are very real threats to love, and I know you are have to defend love with everything you’ve got until your voice doesn’t work anymore, until all the muscles in your body are tired from being tense. I know about a dog that got hit by bad guys while defending it’s home. They found it broken and dead in the laundry room. But he didn’t run, he just kept barking, defending his good thing.

It’s not in me to bite anybody. I don’t bite but if somebody came into our good thing and wanted to hurt it I’d stay and bark and it wouldn’t matter what they did to me I’d keep barking until somebody came for help. And if they hurt me I’d keep barking. When you build a Love Fort you die for it. That’s the cost of a Love Fort. You have to be willing to build it first and then you have to be willing to die for it. You have to defend things that are special.

But when I know people are supposed to be in our fort I get very excited. I run around the island in the kitchen so I can get some speed and I jump and put my paws in their stomach and I get in trouble every time. And when they are all talking in the living room I lay on my bed and watch them, and when they go to bed, I sniff around the guest room door and lay down in the hallway to listen to them go to sleep. I’m so very happy they are here. And when they get up in the morning and open the door I run in and say hello, and if one of them is still in the bed I stand on them so we can look out the window together. I always want to have people over. We have a good thing going, and when you have a good thing going, you defend it against the bad guys, and you invite the good guys in so you can share.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 6 – Building and Defending a Love Fort is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

I pretty much like everybody. I don’t like them instantly, though, but if they show the slightest bit of niceness I like them immediately after and I like them a lot. When somebody first comes to the door I bark at them to let them know this is where we live. I set very clear boundaries. And then I get so excited to see them and be with them I just about explode. When my bladder was smaller I would just pee right there on the floor. I peed because I was very excited and also to show that I would be submissive and I wasn’t going to threaten them. Not all dogs are as trusting, but that’s another subject.

Here’s the thing about people, though. Not everybody is going to like you back. But that’s okay. You shouldn’t hardly think about that at all. A dog can only take so much love. I have more than I even know what to do with. Here’s how I got it:

1. I am genuinely excited about seeing and being with people. Seriously, if you are excited about people, you improve the chances of them being excited about you. It’s best to genuinely love them and want to be with them and enjoy their smells. One of the differences between people and dogs is that people can fake whether they want to be around somebody but dog’s cant. People like dogs because dogs are genuine. But people can be genuine too if they practice and they learn to trust and forgive.

2. I don’t get bitter when somebody doesn’t like me. If somebody doesn’t want to pet me, I could care less. I will be very nice to them and excited to see them all the same. I don’t take it personally at all. Remember, there’s plenty of love to go around. The cool thing about dogs is we really don’t care who loves us. I don’t place the value of one persons love higher or lower than another’s, except for my master. If you show partiality, you are going to have a very hard time loving and being loved and you’re going to be miserable. It’s a sad thing about humans that they want people to love them who just don’t, and they don’t accept love from the people who really do love them in the first place.

3. I know my place. I know that I am just a dog, so I don’t get all up on people too much. Okay, I do it a little too much, but not too much too much. If you liked people as much as I liked people, you’d want to stand on them while they were sitting on the couch drinking coffee too. I seriously love people. But I also know that any creature can feel like a burden if they don’t have self esteem and the ability to be okay with just themselves, laying on the dog bed, for a little while. You can still watch them from the dog bed. They are so awesome. I love them.

4. I avoid people who hurt me. If somebody is mean to me, I will remember it forever. I will associate that person with a mean time. I don’t hold it against them, but I don’t get too close to them. In fact, I’d just prefer it if they weren’t around. But I certainly don’t sit around thinking how I’d like to hurt them. When they are gone, they are gone. My life is really good in this way, and I think it’s sad that some dogs have to be with people who hurt them. It’s sad for people in that situation, too. If they can get away and to a better place, I think they should. Or maybe they should try their hardest to talk it out. But if they keep getting hurt, they need to move on.

5. I don’t hold grudges. Sometimes you meet people who don’t love you. They may even not like you at all or want to be with you. With these people, I am just as nice. If they don’t want to be with me then they walk away. That’s their thing and I don’t take it personally. And if they ever come back and want to be friends, I am all in. Like I said, I don’t take it personally. The best way to be forgiving is just to wipe the slate clean and call it even as often as you can. Actually, though, that’s a human thing, because I don’t keep score. I just like people all the time.

6. I am loyal. I will never turn on a friend. Never. I understand going into it that I am going to love them more than they love me, and they won’t always be so loving, but that doesn’t matter. I can only control me, and I really like people and will never turn on them. Some dogs will but those aren’t good dogs.

There’s probably more but I want to go outside. Do you want to go swimming? We go to the river. I want to tell you how to get along with other dogs, next. But not right now.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 5 – How to Love and be Loved is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

While I’m working on another project, my dog Lucy has taken over the blog. I should be back blogging a few times next week. Until then, I’m hoping you and your dogs will enjoy Lucy’s perspective on life.

I can tell by the way Don puts on his socks whether or not he is getting ready for work or whether we are going for a walk. His head is down when he’s getting ready to write. His head is up when we are going for a walk. That’s how you know. I lay in bed until he puts on his socks. From the time he gets up in the morning to the time he puts on his socks can take half an hour, which is fine with me. I sleep late. I roll over on my back and put my paws in the air and feel the wind from the ceiling fan against my belly. I love my belly. I love my body when I know it’s there. I don’t always know it’s there. Sometimes when people pet my hind end I remember I have a body but other than that I don’t think about it, unless of course there is wind across my belly from the ceiling fan. I love my belly because it’s where the air touches me, and where Don pats me. I love my belly because it feels so good to have a belly. I love my belly because I didn’t make it, have nothing to do with it, and yet I got it for free and didn’t have to earn it. I don’t even feel grateful for my belly because my belly was a gift and it was free and whoever gave it to me just wants me to enjoy it and not feel obligated about having it. I get to connect with the things I love through my belly, through the blond hairs on my belly. I feel the same about my ears.

Here are the things that matter to me most: Don, other people, using the bathroom, swimming at the park, swimming at the river, playing in the house, playing outside, food, chasing cats and squirrels and other dogs. My body isn’t on that list but without my body I can’t do all the things I love. I’m not my body. My body is what I live in but it isn’t me. My body is just the tent I come back inside of when somebody pets my hind end or when I need to see where the squirrel went in the tree.

When I was younger, people liked me more. I couldn’t go on a walk without people pulling their cars over to pet me. I love people so I didn’t mind, but after a while Don took me mostly down backstreets so I could get some exercise. As I got bigger, people didn’t stop as much, but I didn’t notice. That’s one of the differences between people and dogs, you know. People think they are their bodies, that they are how they look, and they get sad when they don’t get noticed as much, but they aren’t their bodies, they are something else. People have to have categories and definitions for things so they make things up, they pretend they are their bodies or they are their personalities, but really they are something else that doesn’t have an explanation. Dog’s understand this very well because we understand just what we are supposed to understand and nothing more.

People think Dog’s believe lies and that makes us cute, but the truth is people believe more lies than dogs. But the lies people believe don’t make them cute. They are cute without the lies. They were cuter before the lies got told and before they believed the lies. Dogs don’t cover up their bodies because dogs don’t know they have bodies at all, unless somebody pets their hind end.

I love my body. I love when Don pats my belly, or when he gets down on the floor and tackles me with his head. I love tackling his head with my paws, or when he takes my legs out like a cow and I bite his arms and whip around and pin him to the floor. The only thing we are really given a body for is as a way to connect with other people and for swimming. It’s how we touch, or tell people we are smiling, or tell people we are crying,  or parallel the connecting of our souls. It’s a sad thing people know they have bodies. It’s a sad thing they believe they are their bodies. It’s a sad lie.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 4 – Thoughts on Having a Body is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

There were furry, bouncy, rolling animals that moved like magic across the floor, rolling fast up to walls then bouncing back toward you when they attacked. I went nuts over them. I wasn’t scared at all on maybe the second time I saw them. I’d chase them down, my feet moving faster than my body across the slippery floor, then I’d catch them in my mouth and they’d play dead. They are dastardly, lying critters. I’d back up and bark and tell them to roll off but they were afraid of me. Don would pick them up and they’d jump from his hands fast as lightning and bounce like mad things off the walls and furniture. Don and I could hunt them for hours until I tore them into shreds. They reproduced in the cabinet by the sink in the kitchen. They came out of their nest all new like babies from a hole in the ground and would jump from Don’s hand as soon as he brought them out, running from me and scared like they should be. Then I’d catch them and they’d play dead. Liars. And I’d shred them for their inconsistencies. I’d even eat their fur and sniff their parts out in my poo.

One day I was lying on my back, watching the moon through the windows, through the canopy of the plants, when I put a paw in a pot and felt some of the cold earth. I stood up and smelled it and it smelled like the outside world. I put another paw in and felt it between my pads, in my claws, and it felt so good. I moved some dirt into a pile at the rim of the pot then shoveled the pile onto the floor and scattered the dirt across the floor. I jumped fully into the pot and with my front legs sprayed the dirt between my back legs and dug till I found the root of the plant and then bit the root so hard I fell out of the pot but still had it in my jaws. And I was wriggling out of the pot with the root of the plant in my mouth when Don’s hand, firm and painful, grabbed me from behind and pulled me to his giant face and his mouth was moving and thunder was coming out. His hands were like claws and I could feel his fingers wrapping around my spine. My tale went between my hind legs and I looked away. I couldn’t look him in the eye because his eyes were displeased. There isn’t a worse feeling in the world than when he looks at me with those eyes. He put me down and I ran across the room behind the chair and peed. He came back around the chair and stood with his hands on his hips, as giant as a tree, and reached down and put his hands around my spine and put me outside, in the cold, separated from him. I could see him walking around the house with towels and spray bottles. I loved the smell of towels and spray bottles but I couldn’t smell them from outside. I started shaking. None of it made any sense at all. I thought he was crazy. I couldn’t figure out why he’d suddenly turned on me.

Lucy’s Blog Pt 3 – The Terror of Learning Right from Wrong is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

This is how I take a nap

If the kitchen I came from was the world, where Don lived was the cosmos, or bigger than the cosmos, it was all the material that existed and there was no boundary to it. There were walls in the house but you had to walk forever to find them, and there were turns you could make that went to other turns and other turns that looked like the ones you’d made before. And there was furniture as big as elephants separating it all.

He had a cage and he’d put me in the cage. He put a new bed in the cage and some toys and that was fine, but I’d see his shadow out in the cosmos and I wanted to be with him so I’d cry till he came over and sat next to the cage and talked to me.

The first time we went on an adventure we went down the street. I go there all the time now. I go much further, but back then it was the far world. Back then the coffee shop at the end of the block was India. We went and sat outside and I ate crumbs from under the table. I ate crumbs and every person who came out of the shop talked to me. They had coffee on their fingers and I bit their fingers as hard as I could. They had sugar on their hands, and more crumbs. They talked in long, high pitch songs and they put their giant faces in my face, and their lips tasted like coffee and like sugar. They would walk away and I would leap after them. They would walk away talking in their high voices and they walked until they fell off the sidewalks into nothingness, until they fell off the great wide world that had no borders. It all made me very scared so I would stare at Don until he folded the corner of his newspaper so our eyes met, which made me feel better, then I would look back out at the great wide world with no end until I felt scared again and I’d look up and wait for him to fold the corner of his newspaper.

At night Don would put me in the cage but I would cry. The cage had borders but I already knew about the great wide world. I’d cry so Don would put the cage on the bed and sleep with his head against the bars, and I’d sleep with my head against the bars and put my paw through the holes to feel him there. But I wanted to be closer and I couldn’t sleep with anything separating us. I would cry and he would take me out of the cage and let me sleep on the pillow next to him. And that’s when I didn’t think about the world anymore. When the whole world has no boundaries, you can either lie to yourself that there are boundaries, tell yourself it ends in Kansas or in India or at the space station, or you can make your place a person. That’s all you can do, really. Let your place become a person. Otherwise you’d go crazy, you see. It just keeps going. There’s no end to it. But hopefully there’s a face you can touch with your paw. If you make a person your home, and don’t think about the world with no boundaries, you can get some sleep at night.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 2 – How to Get Some Sleep at Night is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

Me at Seven Weeks

I came from a litter of Labs and I was the only brown one. My brothers were all black, and we lived in the woods by waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge. We lived in a cabin and we lived in the kitchen of the cabin. We lived on a blanket in the kitchen at first, and then when my mother left we lived on a towel, me and my brothers. We slept mostly, all together like one animal, as though we were still my mother. We became my mothers parts when we were hungry, and went out across the tile floors toward the food, which sat a cold earth away next to a silver bowl of water. There was a board that kept us in the kitchen but it didn’t matter. The kitchen was the whole world and there wasn’t a map to the world. It smelled like wood and cats, like water from the creeks, like grass, like oil and like soap. I missed my mother. Everything is very hard when you get born.

Don came at seven weeks. I knew a couple people before I knew Don, but I only knew them with my brothers and we competed for them. I liked their hands. They smelled like butcher shops and candy stores. They smelled like garbage sacks and old socks. They smelled like leather.

Don took us all into the living room where there was a couch and a table and some newspapers, and he sat on the floor with us. My brothers wanted to wrestle each other, but I wanted to smell Don’s hands. He’d eaten a turkey sandwich with tomato and relish. I licked his hands. He was wearing a fleece and his neck tasted like chicken. I wanted to eat his fingers and I wanted to live inside his fleece.

I was very scared. In the car I was scared and I crawled onto his lap. I don’t know how I knew he was safe but I knew. I fell asleep and woke up and cried and moved myself onto the floor of the car, next to his feet. I couldn’t stay awake for long. It was all terrifying.

I know now that was the day I was picked and being picked is a beautiful thing. But I also know beautiful things are frightening. When something beautiful happens it’s sometimes like an amputation, like your heart is being cut out with a knife. You don’t ever think when you are in extreme pain that you are being saved, chosen, picked for relationship, set aside to be loved. You can never really believe pain. It’s almost always something beautiful transitioning to something better, the whole time masquerading as a tragedy.

It doesn’t do any good to question life. I’m at the mercy of forces I trust, a whole world of systems that are out of my control. And I’m fine with that. I don’t even think about it. Thinking about it would make the pain cryptic, rather than just what it is, dark colors in a painting of a bright muse. If I had the ability to think about it, I’d create systems of false security so I wouldn’t go crazy. I’d actually convince myself that, to some degree, I was the master of my own destiny. I’d block my conscious mind from considering the brevity of life, or my pending death, or my seeming insignificance in the endless cosmos. If you could think about things objectively, the only way you could actually stay sane would be to become the center of your own universe, rather than a character in a grand epic, going around charting delightful smells, feeling fear as a reference for security, or pain as a reference for pleasure, enjoying all the scents God made in an effort to bond.

Hello My Name is Lucy is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

Lucy Miller

You’ve probably noticed I’ve written fewer blog entries over the last couple weeks. There are a number of reasons for this, including a major project I’m trying to wrap up this summer, and an onslaught of guests traveling through town. All great stuff, but all keeping me from my daily discipline of blogging.

The other day, Lucy, my dog, asked if she could cover the blog for a while. We were at the park and I was moderating comments on my phone and I think she felt sorry for me. Lucy is my best friend and roomate and she see’s how busy my schedule has gotten. Lucy isn’t a writer by trade. She’s trains daily as a swimmer at the local fly-fishing pond at a park down the street, but I am going to give her a brief window to share some of her thoughts.

I’ve not turned the blog over to another writer for any length of time. I’ve had a few guest posts, but not many. I take this blog very seriously. I do this for free, so there is something pure about it and that helps me love it for the writing and thinking without a mixed motive getting in the way. So it was a struggle to turn it over.

But in the two years I’ve had Lucy, I’ve learned an enormous amount from her. She’s taught me to calm down, to rest, she’s taught me to focus, she’s taught me how to get along with people, and she’s taught me it doesn’t take much to be in a close relationship. So I’m hoping she can share some of that with you guys.

I’ll be back in a matter of days, but as of tomorrow, I’ll be turning this blog over to my dog. This will allow me to get caught up on my other work, and will also give me a chance to collect more wisdom worth sharing with the world.

Thank you for understanding.

Best,

Donald Miller

“….as of tomorrow, I’ll be turning this blog over to my dog.” is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

Of the videos the Tripp and Tyler have made, this might be my favorite:

Or this one:

Five Questions I’ve Never Been Asked (With Tyler Stanton) is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog