And so Pokemon, chess, music, and the Gospels is where I’ll begin.

One of the joys being a long-term substitute teacher has been connecting with the kids around the new Pokemon Mobile Game, chess, and life in general.

In this episode, I listened to Jordan Peterson and a panel organized by the Daily Wire discuss the Gospels, while playing Pokemon, chess, and messing around with music. This is what is known as “the play cycle” and it’s dang fun.

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What childhood joys do you want to get back in touch with?

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I gotta say, this was super duper fun. This game is awesome and I can’t wait to keep playing it and improvising and playing music and being overall a silly human being.

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This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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But aren’t you a 29 year old man?

Yes, but reintegrating my childhood joys has been what has allowed me to become a man and stay away from the sexual sin which has prevented me from returning back to my Father in Heaven.

Fun is as easy as allowing oneself to become a child of God. And that means playing Pokemon because you never did as a kid.

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What childhood joys do you want to get back in touch with?

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I gotta say, this was super duper fun. This game is awesome and I can’t wait to keep playing it and improvising and playing music and being overall a silly human being.

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This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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“Nothing more controversial than Christian

This that workaholism which cures addiction” 

How did we get here?

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Nehemiah and I went live yesterday after almost a FULL DAY of writing with Tom Bajoras. Whatever it takes to make this part of our daily reality, we’re going to do. It is cool to see how things got here. Watch it above.

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We fly merry poppin cause we got it in the bag

We full Christmas stock in you know we got it like that

You must’ve missed us rockin

Too busy being hard hat

You need to step up, lock in

Our building never falls back

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Christ is our foundation and we’re going to build upon him

That means low end, to mid range, to high end; bass, drums, piano, vocals, autotune, you name it

“Yo we’re flipping failures

We hit it out of the park

We making major

Moves come outta the dark

Peel back the layers

We may be missing the mark

But we got flavor

Chef be our savior”

This song is going to be incredible when it’s done and we’re cooking up fire beats with the Lord’s help. ‘Cause he’s the chef we’re just the ingredients.

This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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Follow us as we climb the tallest mountains, slay the fiercest dragons, and pursue the highest good while confronting the greatest evil we’ve ever known.

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But what if you feel like don’t have the resources to pay?

Solution: build a better foundation.

This is what it looks like to go mad on stream and learn that you’re not as good at chess as you think, but that your potential is so much higher than you can ever imagine. But you gotta build a foundation first.

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Being a writer is screaming into a void and feeling like you’re going insane until somebody stops you and says,

“Hey, I feel you. I understand you. I also feel this way. You’re not insane. You make me feel less crazy when you speak.”

And then the dissenting, accusing voice inside says, “But they’re insane. Everyone else before this didn’t hear you, didn’t stop to tell you they understood, so this person right here, they’re the insane one. They’re insane for thinking that you aren’t.”

That’s when you say right back, “So what. If I’m going insane I might as well do it with others who feel a little less crazy whenever I feel like I’m going insane.”

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This is how I’ve felt recently, attempting to work as a full-time teacher while simultaneously starting a business. I don’t have a lot of help right now. I’ve been through this before. When I start to zero in and focus on something whole-heartedly, people start to fall away as those who said, “That sounds awesome, I want to help,” quickly realize, they don’t actually want to pay the cost and sacrifice it’ll take to come with me.

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But that’s what it looks like to lead. Sometimes you feel like no one is with you, when in reality, they’re right behind.

And Jesus is right beside, carrying his cross just the same saying, “Don’t worry, if you feel as if you can’t, I can do it for the both of us. I’ve done it time and time again and just remember, on the other side of this is eternal life.”

This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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But what if in that moment you feel like a failure?

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Honestly, I felt like a failure last night while playing chess and trying to make music on livestream. We shouldn’t need an audience to feel like what we do matters, but sometimes if you’re used to performing in front of a crowd it can feel like you need one to go, even if you know the Lord is with you and watching.

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It took almost two hours to finally find the bass line which unlocked the song and allowed it to breathe. Once it came, it felt like a path was blazed ahead, one that requires many different heroes to come along the journey. I can’t finish this song by myself, and that’s a wonderful place to get to.

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Don’t play how you feel, play how you want to feel, by making others feel the way you want to.

Yesterday I felt like a failure, but that’s not the music that needed to be played.

“Yo we’re flipping failures

We hit it out of the park

We making major

Moves come outta the dark

Peel back the layers

We may be missing the mark

But we got flavor

Chef be our savior”

This song is going to be incredible when it’s done and it’s only gonna happen when I get out of the way. I am not a failure and I will not play as one, even if that’s how I feel.

This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

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Well, kind of.

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For the music part we chickened out and didn’t quite go live, but then around 730 PM when Nathanael came back from capoeira, we recorded a short snippet of Nehemiah messing around with our new Logic tools.

Nathanael hopped on and tried to get on live to play chess but then had to troubleshoot some things and then finally, at 830 PM, we finally went live:

“Investing in Skill” was finally born and we decided on a title for the overall thing-a-ma-jig we’re doing.

It’s going to be called, “My Father’s Office”, because that’s where Nehemiah sang loudest growing up and our studio is a place to worship the Father, and also, the upstairs loft of my parents’ house used to be my Dad’s office. And and and… the original owner of the house had a photography studio up there and so the layers upon layers of meaning are enough to dip a nice corn tortilla chip into.

Nathanael had a wonderfully liberating experience performing the practice of learning about chess in front of a sparse crowd (nobody tuned on) and even started doing karaoke. Then when all was said and done, it turns out the StreamLabs settings never had the screen turned on for monitoring and output. Which means – the audio from the screen never recorded!

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success! This was our first of many and we knew that we wanted to do at least two before we promote it to anyone at all, because things always go wrong.

Success is obeying the call of the Lord. 

A wonderful singer by the name of Terron Brooks that we’re friends with told us that.

And it’s wonderfully true. If we never got on live in the first place we would have never found out what could go wrong.

Additionally, imperatively, and serendipitously so, through the magic of editing, it actually made for a wonderful story full of insanity, madness, and silly extravagance that we edited into a little montage for you.

Moving forward we’re going to make lots and lots of changes and it’s going to become more playful, intentional, and of course, worshipful.

But for now, here is a compilation of what it looks like to get on your first stream and realize nobody’s watching and actually go forward and live the cliche:

“Dance like nobody is watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth” — Mark Twain

Well, Mark Twain, nobody was watching, and nobody was listening, and it’s also heaven on earth. But thanks to the magic of livestreaming, we got some of it on footage. So you can watch right now.

What would you like to see us do in the future?

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“I won't quit this time
I won't let it in

I guess that I'd rather laugh than cry 'bout my problems
When honestly I don't know how to solve 'em
I'll water the flowers and pray for a garden
'Cause honestly I'm just all out of options”

- Valley

Let’s get this thing started. Can’t wait to see the garden grow.

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This has been a PPDK Production and we invite you to Press Play on Your Purpose.

Sincerely Yours,

The Paraprosdokianist

Get more from PPDK PRODUCTIONS in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app