The blog

Man, this really is tough. To clarify, I mean this semester. I can see why my manager,
Crystal, is so dang proud of graduating and working full time the entirety of her studies. I mean it’s really rough.

But I’m gonna clean my room this Wednesday, get my hair cut Saturday; I manage to squeeze in time with my BF as often as possible and still finish my assignments on time. I’m starting to put money away now that I’m getting things paid off and I’m managing fairly well for my sixteen credit hours, one a Bio course with lab, and my full-time work schedule.

The one area I’m lacking in? My writing of course. I mean, of all the things in my life, what’s the first one we’re gonna push aside for later? You guessed it; Nathan.

Now I’m not sure I have ever mentioned my infamous assassin, Nathan. Nor have I ever stated that I am working on completing my first novel by the end of this year. That means by January 1^st, 2009, I will have completed my first real book. If I have ever mentioned this, forgive me for being repetitive.

No, but really, I am kinda worried about this decision already. When I started telling everyone I was gonna finish it by the end of this year, I didn’t quite realize I had several full semesters, plus a loaded summer, a boyfriend, lots of work, etc. to worry about. I guess there really is only one way to do this. Just do it.

Call it cheesy, but these are the new words that I rally my life around. It is coupled by a similar phrase, just don’t do it. You see, when I came to the conclusion that everything in life comes down to one of these two things, the world became tons simpler. Obviously, there is always something that will contend with what I ought to be doing. Like the TV. But when I am sitting there thinking it is impossible for me to move, I think to myself, ‘it’s really as simple an act as raising your arms, pushing yourself off the dang thing, and going to do your work’. Same thing with when I don’t want to do homework, just do it. And I want to watch TV and pig out, just don’t do it.

When I realized I had control of all my actions, a lot of things changed. My homework amazingly started getting done, I somehow managed a better work ethic at work, and, surprise surprise, I’m finally making a time to tackle the prehistoric mess that is my room. Amazing! Now obviously it’s not a perfect system; it’s still up to me to get the things done and do them right, but I’m certainly making progress.

Think about it.

Twenty days into my second semester… I’m gonna die. Good news is I reconciled myself with getting up at six ‘o clock; bad news is, only because I sleep through my alarm. Yeah. But other than obscenely early classes, it’s looking to be a good semester. My grades prolly won’t be as good as my first semester, but my first semester was easier too. At any rate, I am still excited even though it is 9:32 on a cold Monday morning. Not necessarily for school, but because Emery is coming in concert this Wednesday and they are a super awesome band. Also, it appears as though I won’t be spending Valentines day alone like I thought I would. I just got a super-awesome boyfriend one week and one day agoAside from that, it’s been a slow week. Slow, aside from the church service I attended yesterday. That was epic. Okay, so our senior pastor is away in
Africa right now trying to get a feel for the situation over there because our church is doing some stuff to help. So Jeff Dart, the senior high pastor is standing in for him. And Jeff Dart is amazing. He delivers some of the best messages in the world and this one involved our tongue. No, not in a bad way, it was more controlling what we speak. Not only did he point out the wisdom of shutting up occasionally, but he also taught another thing inside that passage we were learning from. From the same mouth blessings and curses flow, meaning this; we who worship God bless God one moment and the next are talking about a coworker behind their back. But, as this pointed out, people are made in the image of God and, as God’s creation, deserve respect. I had to think about that, about the people I despised for any number of reasons. They are horribly annoying, they look like sluts (I have a personal vendetta against sluts because they tend to screw up the good guys), or sometimes they are just plain dumb. Now please don’t misunderstand here and think I’m talking about a Christian bias because, while many Christians are biased, I’m not talking hating them because they’re ‘sinners’ like most of you would assume of me. I dislike them in a very meaningless, shallow way. I’m a gossip if I don’t like you, I’ll admit it, and I gossip with my extremely secular co-workers. James 3:9 ‘With the tongue we praise our Lord and father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.’I had to think about how true that was in my own life. Jeff spoke about building people up with our words, and he said how people would notice that because it is so unusual. And he made a good point, (and I have to use a quote from my teacher, Hersh now) that if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, people are gonna think it’s a duck even if it’s actually a turkey. Then it made me think, dang, God still hasn’t given up on me yet. By allowing my heart to receive such a message, it shows he hasn’t given up. I still think he should because I may just be the most hopeless mess in the history of the world, but he hasn’t and he won’t. And what it comes down to is, if God can afford me that kind of grace, maybe I can afford to give a little of my own.