Why did I start this blog? What do I hope to achieve through this? My name is David Evan Schlotterback, and I gave my life to Christ in July 2021. At the time, I was completely addicted to smoking pot and watching porn. I knew what I wanted in life, but the path that I was heading down was certainly not going to provide that. All I wanted was a wife and children. That was my biggest ambition. While I’m still a single man, living with my parents, my outlook on life has changed both drastically and permanently. As of the time of this writing, I’ll be turning 27 years old in just shy of four weeks. Yes, I know this website looks extremely bland and boring, and I hope to get some more excitement in it in due time. Maybe local art?

I decided to start this blog on November 29, 2024. It’s a terribly long and involved story that I will get into at a later date, but it was born out of adversity. I’ve kept a personal journal/diary/log of the daily happenings in my life for over three years and recently go to the point in my life where I’m asking myself, “what can I do with this knack I have?”

First and foremost, serve The Lord with it. Above anything else in life, this is my strongest desire and the most important thing a human could do. I will not apologize for my beliefs here. What I will do is praise God for one of the most incredible gifts we have: music.

My love of music, while obviously a part of my personality that God Himself created, as Psalm 139:14 declares, likely became manifest at the ripe young age of 3-4 with the 1999 Sesame Street: Music Maker PC game. Several years later, it was an inaugural viewing of U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky: Live at Red Rocks (on VHS!) that really cemented the idea in my young mind that music = cool.

My musical palette has expanded and constricted so many times throughout the years, and my taste has become more refined as I continue my life’s journey led by the Holy Spirit. I’m one of the likely relatively few who simply don’t have a favorite band or song. People change. I used to love Nirvana when I was 15, now I rarely listen to them. This is the issue with getting obsessed with a certain artist or thing too long, it burns out. I’ve learned to enjoy certain things at arm’s lengths so as to keep them special.

That said, however, I’ve been on something of a Phish kick for the last two-and-a-half years. Before that, it was Hendrix, then the Beatles, punk rock, Nirvana, U2, Metallica and then the mess of nonsense I was listening to in my tween years as I was learning to shred on my $50 Peavey Raptor (‘International Series’).

At this point in my life, I’ve learned to appreciate so much of the music we’ve created over the last 70 years or so. Currently, Dean Martin’s Swingin’ Down Yonder spinning away at 33.3 RPM as I write. Getting a turntable for Christmas 2017 was life changing, I’d like to think. While it can be awfully easy to buy into the whole “vinyl is better than digital” thing, that won’t work for me. I have the hearing of a 77 year old. Years of drumming without ear protection has permanently caught up to me. Let’s be honest, is anyone’s 59-year-old copy of Whipped Cream & Other Delights really in all that nice of shape? Is my Audio-Technica AT-VM95E anything to get excited about? The answer to both is a resounding “no!”

But it’s still fun! I have well over 1,000 LPs going back to 1949. I’ve listened to… maybe a third of them. Some swing and miss, some don’t. Some will stay with me until this life ends, some really need to go back to Goodwill. Spotify lets me listen to almost anything I want, whenever I want. This is an enormous blessing, and it makes me think back to a sermon I heard Pastor Matthew Kottman preach once. He was highlighting the importance of the here and now. Yes, 2024 has a multitude of issues. The same could be said about any other time, and it’s that maturity in Christ I have that reminds me that I serve, worship and love the same God who was sovereign over us going back well before I came into this world.

All glory be to Christ.