Unpopular Life Goals

I have them. I don't really aspire to be anything. I don't want to go to college, I don't want a high-paying job. I would be content with making a little bit of money and living in a small apartment for a while. Seriously. I also want to do some couch surfing, celebrate ferret day every year, and find a wife eventually.

This comic is amazing and on-topic. If you don't read Dinosaur Comics already, get on it!

Blood!

I gave blood for the second time in my life on Tuesday. It's a good experience, if you haven't done it, you should. The lady sitting by the snack table after I'd finished giving my blood said something (I don't remember what) that led me to the conclusion that giving blood is an easy way to be a good steward of your body. The whole thing takes like 15-25 minutes and you're helping to save people's lives (Or so they tell you...). There's really no reason not to unless you're physically unable, as most of us can just regenerate more very quickly and be back to complete normality within 48 hours. Plus, blood and the shedding of it is totally metal. The bus that came to the conference center was called The Bloodmobile. Brutal.

Brace Yourself

Here's a quote for the old quote book:

"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me."

-God (Job 38:8 (NIV))

And another of equal value:

"Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?
...
At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, 'Aha!'"

-God (Job 39:19,20,25a (NIV))

I hope that turned you into a better person, I know it did for me.

Caring... Why? or, Why Girls Are Better Than I Thought

It's very hard for me to care about people... I mean, I know I'm commanded to, and I want to, but I don't know how to make myself care.

Take, for example, let's say someone you don't really know is coming to visit. This guy knows your friends and so they're talking, but then let's say they have to go do something and so you're left to entertain this guy. He seems cool, you've talked a little bit with him about a new movie or video game. But when it comes down to asking him how he's doing or what's going on in his life, I could really care less. Has he just got a job promotion? Does he get to visit distant relatives in the near future? Has he just had a spiritual breakthrough? These are all things that are very important to a person and since we're striving to love as Christ loves, shouldn't it be important to us as well? The answer is obviously yes, but I don't know how to.

Something else I recently discussed was enjoying someone's presence when they're around, but not really minding or missing them at all when they're not there. I've found that I struggle with this a lot more than I'd admit, even with people really close to me. It's weird to think that people actually miss me when I'm not around because it's such a weird concept to me. If I'm not even so good as to care enough to miss someone, what would they see in me that would make them miss me? I don't feel like I'm that encouraging to people or that I go out of my way to show them they're important to me... or that I'm even especially useful or helpful to people.

Little things have been showing me that I do care a little bit - I'm getting better. Now that I think of it, there's been a lot of little things. To go into detail, the conversation was mostly about me struggling with not being able to see girls as good enough friends to want them around when they're not there. This has been proven false three times in the past 24 hours to me.
First, I woke up this morning and realized that I miss my friend Rachel from camp this summer - a lot more than I thought I did, so much so that I would even venture to say that being able to spend a few days with her would be one of the best things that could happen right now. She's like a big sister to me, and I feel closer to her than to my older step-sisters.
Second, my fellow interns Richell and Diana. I often shrug them off because they can be a little more girly or dramatic than I can handle at times. But they also have a very fun and caring side and I honestly do enjoy their company most of the time, it's just I was thinking that I didn't really mind not being in their company either. Wrong. Tonight a bunch of interns went out to dinner and it just didn't feel the same without them and I found myself wishing they were there. Strange.
Third, I find I'm missing my mom a lot as well. I just watched the movie AI tonight, and it's all about the robot child seeking love and acceptance from his mom and it made me appreciate my mom and miss her a lot.

Aside from those big three, a few more were brought to my mind. Amanda, for caring enough to read my blog and for providing a blog for me to read and learn from and even for stealing my "part 1 of ?" format, mimicry is flattery and all that. Also for being humble and forgiving for a strange misunderstanding we had last year. My cousin Michelle for just being rad and having a cool family - same with my other cousin Wendy and their mom, my aunt, LaVonne for just being weird and fun. The rest of the girls on intern and staff for being pleasant and great to work with.

Men are awesome, but women give birth to men so I must give credit where it is due. Women are truly better than I thought.

Rethinking, Reevaluating, Reviving, etc.

This is a lot of what has been going through my mind in the past three or four days. Some of these topics will probably end up showing up again later.

Firstly, I'm rethinking rethinking college (That means I'm thinking about not going). I just don't see any point right now. I was considering architecture but it would require so much time, money and work and I don't even know if I would enjoy it. Thinking about what is actually in my future, couch surfing is looking more and more likely. I would love to take a year off and just travel the world couch surfing the whole way and putting my faith into practice... Like a mission trip, and a learning experience. I don't know how practical that is right now, I would need some money. Regarding money, I'm once again thinking that I really wouldn't mind making chump change and living on that. For one, I could live on little, I'm doing it now. For two, I would rather learn to be financially responsible with a small portion of money than with a large portion. Couch surfing is also looking super-appealing even if I do start going to college and even later in life. I'd love to have my home open to travelers - a constant flow of new people to meet and serve.

Something that's really hard for me is having to sit in on so many classes. Don't get me wrong, the classes are amazing, and that's why it's so hard. It seems like every week I'm getting convicted about something new that I never get an opportunity to put into practice before another week goes by and some more things are added to my pile of ways I need to change. The change seems impossible to me right now, like, I feel like I could never attain the things I'm convicted of because I'm too weak. It's overwhelming at times. The way I try to look at it is that God has got me thinking heavily on these things for a reason - At least I'm thinking about them now. What we have our mind focused on is what we eventually become, to some degree, and if I'm focusing on positive changes, it's only a matter of time before God shows me exactly how to change or slowly make the change in me without me really knowing. Like I posted about a while ago, "Love God, and do what you want," I shouldn't be worried about God's will for my future, just live out how I know how to (intentionally) and expect change to come naturally.

Relating to that, I've come to understand how useless I am as a person... Mostly through my former romantic relationship. I read somewhere that our goal as men when relating to women (all relationships, friends, dating, etc) should be this: The woman we're in contact with should be better off having met us. This is really convicting, because often as men, we want to see "how far" we can get, or how we can make women be more attracted to us, not taking into account the damage we're doing to them and how much worse off they'll be having met us. I read this before going into the relationship and now looking back, realize I completely failed. I was trying to evaluate my impact on her and realize I probably contributed nothing of a positive and lasting importance in her life. I shared this and it was affirmed. This is a very humbling thing, probably the most humbling thing that has ever happened to me. This event got me thinking of ways I could possibly impact people in the future or ways I could have done things differently in the past. I came up with nothing. I realized that as a person, I have absolutely nothing to offer anyone. I think this is a place that we need to come to in order for God to start using us for bigger and better things. This is not a place you can come to by reading something like this. I'm fairly sure you have to come to the point where you experience something like this yourself - God has to bring you here. It's a weird place to be. I'm not saying that now I'm even close to a perfect vessel by any means, but right now I feel like that if God used me for something big I would recognize it as Him, not me - because I know nothing good could come from me. This seems like something that would get me down and feeling sorry for myself, but it hasn't, which is stranger than ever... Praise God.

While we're on the topic if my former romantic relationship, I'd also like to share something I've also very recently discovered about myself (and maybe about you!). All through grade school I've always enjoyed having one-sided crushes - sure, they made me miserable and depressed, but there's a certain romance and mystery to be completely infatuated with someone who wouldn't ever consider you in that way. I've come to find I enjoy that romance and mystery (I like to think I'm a romantic), but I didn't really know that until now. This is a problem, because reveling in that is very self destructive and is in fact, living in sin. There's so much focus on yourself and the object of your infatuation that there's no room for God at all. I realized that after we broke up, my thoughts slowly started drifting in that direction again - a very bad thing, especially since I had already understood, accepted, and agreed with her reasons for breaking it off. It started happening in such a way that I didn't really notice, but before I knew it, I was doing it again - not wanting to give up my feelings for her because I enjoyed my misery. This taught me something very important that I should have picked up a long time ago - taking our thoughts (or attitude) captive is essential. I've been talking so much lately about how we need to live our lives intentionally - constantly be making decisions to glorify Christ. I now know that we also need to be completely intentional with our attitudes toward things. In my case, I need to change my attitude to: "Breaking up was the right thing to do and I can accept that, and if old feelings start coming up, I need to push them aside before they can grab a hold of me - I'm not in love anymore." For me, declaring something like this out loud makes it official (Make sure no one is listening. Awkward!). It's very easy to decide not to be in love anymore if you take this approach. Another step I took is completely removing any trace of her from my life - this meant taking her off my friends on Facebook, last.fm, Skype, and stop reading her blog, and since I don't live anywhere near her, I don't have to worry about that. Maybe some people can go right back to being "just friends," but I'm far too weak to handle something like that. When there's not tons of things all around you to remind you of the one you used to be so close with, it starts making it a lot easier to get over because there's less opportunity for your focus to get shifted back to those feelings. If you're in a situation where you have to see the person on a regular basis, I can imagine it to be a lot weirder and a lot harder. I pity the man that has to deal with this kind of a situation.

I think there's more. I don't remember and I'm super tired and should probably be getting to bed. I hope this was beneficial to someone.

2 Weeks

Hi 11:47.

Left 4 Dead

... is amazing. If you haven't heard of it, it's a first-person four-player-coop zombie-shooter.

Imagine this, there are four of us, me, Kurtis, Ralph, and one CPU player. We're on the last stage of the campaign where you have to defend a dark little beach shack waiting for a rescue boat to come. As soon as you call the radio for the boat, you hear the screams and grunts of hordes of zombies coming over the hills around you. Throwing a couple molotov cocktails to burn up a portion of them, you start opening fire on the ones that get through or come from a different direction. We're all up on a balcony firing down on them as they're coming up. Just then, the music changes and we hear the sound of a Tank coming. A Tank is a huge, buff zombie with gigantic muscles and the mannerisms of a large and angry gorilla. We start pouring bullets into him, light him on fire, and try to take him down. It usually takes over a minute of constant fire from all four of us to get rid of a Tank. The Tank takes Kurtis down as he's trying to distract it with a big swing of his massive arm. We all watch helplessly as it pummels Kurtis to a bloody pulp. It leaves three of us. We fight off the remaining hores of zombies, often having to save each other from Hunters, who pounce on you, Smokers, who drag you away with their long tongues and choke you to death, and Boomers, who vomit and exlode on you, making it hard to see and attracting more zombies to you. It's all mayhem but we're fairing pretty well until we hear the sound of another Tank coming. Dang it, there are always two. When we find it, I throw a molotov to catch it on fire, but it's already too late, it's right on top of Ralph pounding him to death, and as soon as he's down, the Tank gets straight on to the CPU player, who didn't stand a chance. I kill the Tank while he's distracted and hear the sound of the fog horns on the boat, so I run towards the dock while the boat inches closer - it's just me now. Then, I hear the hordes of zombies coming again and see them running towards me in the distance. I shoot a few of them to keep them off of me, and the boat is inching closer. I'm just about ready to get on, when I look over my shoulder and the horde of zombies is climbing onto the dock. I step one foot onto the boat, I'm home free! But then, I start getting pulled back. It's a smoker and he's got me around the neck. I get pulled into the horde and it's game over.

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http://www.l4d.com/