I lay the tracks you lock the flow

Being sick sucks. I'm almost through my cold now. I took so much medicine yesterday heh, unfortunately it didn't seem to help much.

So, back on track -

I suppose we all deal with this sooner or later. Moments when writing down in these blogs we've made becomes more trouble than it's worth. I knew the bubble would burst sooner or later and peoples monotonous posts, lack of posts, and life would just eventually lead their interests away. Heck, even my posts of late have been pretty tame and lame. I ponder on the what this blog actually is to me and everyone else. I know I've been probably a little too forth coming for my own good (and some other peoples), I've maybe stirred the pot when I should have let it sit, but connecting with everyone outside of my room was ultimately more important than anything I could have written. I could have smoothed over almost anything (I'm very good at smoothing things over) I felt, so I just wrote, unabashed, hoping to be free of my loneliness.

And now, now that I am no longer lonely, what is my purpose? What is the intent of my words now? I could say, simply to keep in contact, spout off here or there about this topic or another. And maybe I can do that, maybe I can keep posting with such frequency with those intents. What I don't want is to lose my honesty, to get complacent in my posts and lose the edge I once had. I thoroughly enjoy writing along the edge, and hope I can when the time comes again.

So, chin up my dear readers, if you're tired of your blog being one thing, change it, no one says you have to keep it the same. Make it a blog of quotes for a while, make it your scripture study journal (I thought about that one, and I still think its a good idea). You can always turn off comments on your blog too, sometimes being able to comment isn't necessarily a good thing - sometimes you just need to say stuff, and if people really want to respond they can just call. What I'm saying is find a new purpose, as I'm trying to, so that we don't go days, then weeks, then possibly months between.

I'll let everyone know when I've hammered out a new purpose for this blog, got to lay the tracks first.

-A

Short, but sweet

I am back.

I had a great vacation up in WA with my fam. I forget sometimes how good it is to be with them all, and I only really got to hang out with a small portion of them. But I'm going back there in a couple months for a longer period of time so no biggie.

So, okay, generally I don't do anything without learning something and this blog is where I analyze that something. Unfortunately nothing juicy happened this vacation to warrant some long post about it. I did however make some resolutions upon my return to further improve my situation. Feeling good about dating for fun now is one of them. Finding a stable job is another one. I think with these two additional lifestyles I can better assess my situation and have more options in order to understand myself, and make better decisions in my life. Nothing has happened yet, so don't be too relieved heh.

But I'm glad to be back home too, sleep in a real bed, use my own bathroom. It's been a long time since I was happy to get back to my life, so I must be doing something right.

Thanks again everyone for a great trip!

-A

Landslides

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

I took a drive up the canyon Sunday afternoon and it was beautiful. On the way back I could see a massive landslide had knocked down trees over a huge area, increasing the area the farther on down the mountain you looked. One loose rock tumbled and brought down the side of the mountain and destroyed everything in it's path. I am hesitant to call this a good or a bad thing, such destruction is often looked at in a negative light, but honestly landslides are as needed as fires (another area of the drive was covered with burnt trees from a fire long ago), or even floods. The metaphors for life in this regard are heavy and not often a part of the ways we appreciate life. We as a people have grown intelligent enough to recognize the need for these destroying forces, and so we have controlled avalanches, fires, landslides in order to prevent further damage to the landscape. I can see and apply this principle in my own life in many ways. Being as methodical in my rational as I am with the reality of my immaturity has offered me a unique chance to have controlled landslides. To express the honest truth of what I feel and not bottle it away for later. To make it a habit of facing the world in a real way, with hope and a positive outlook even after all the hopeless and pessimistic thoughts have passed through.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around

Some landslides move slowly down the mountain, my landslide of issues have surely reached a plateau which I am completely content with. But contentment is an understatement. My words in previous posts were heavy laden with doubt and frustration from many areas of life. I won't say everything is solved in the sense that I found all the answers I was looking for. But when I was looking for resolution in life through my unanswerable doubts, I only found lonely answers, unconnected answers. I have such a strong testimony of obtaining the proper perspective before deciding on the answers I seek.

Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Thinking back on the uncontrolled landslide that happened on the backside of the mountain now gives me pause however. We are all susceptible to landslides in our lives no matter how well we communicate and think we have the proper perspective. But since everyone has to deal with that reality, I am perfectly okay with it. Feeling stable, happy, and free is not an excuse to let my guard down from potential landslides however, but knowing where my feet are standing is all the security I need right now, and is more than I have known in a long time.

-A

Marker

This is just a marker post to myself.

I'll have something substantial up soon... hopefully.

-A

A new look

Working on a new design, still getting some different browser bugs out to make it seamless between internet explorer and firefox.

Anyway, nothing really to update. Life continues. See everyone soon, 6 more days.


-A

Bad Movie, Bad Service... but a good night!

Last night my old roommate James and I went over to Meagan's to watch a movie on the side of the house. They invited a bunch of other people over to watch it too. I helped her dad set it up with some really nice equipment - an audio mixer for two large speakers, the Clearplay box for our rated R movie, 28 Days Later, and the projector. The grass was kinda wet so we had to lay down a tarp for the blankets we laid down. It is getting increasingly cold at nights, and I think last night was the coldest since spring. Which is nice I guess, though I love warm nights. Warm nights remind me it's still summer, but the summer is over, and fall is here. But what a summer this was, I'll write a summary of it sometime and if you readers are lucky enough it will be posted here, but don't hold your breaths, it won't be soon lol.

I set the Clearplay's settings on low for violence and bloodshed and we still barely had a zombie movie to watch. If we had left the settings at full strength the movie would be about 4 people wandering around, when they meet an army platoon, and then run away from them. I figured leaving the vulgarity setting at full strength wouldn't be a bad thing... only they just mute the movie at a curse, so during some intense scenes, the audio would just go blank for several seconds. It was a pretty terrible movie on clearplay, everyone agreed.

Then we broke down the gear and got some Wendy's... I almost got my order first time through, which isn't bad considering how OFTEN I get my order messed up here. It's actually really ridiculous how bad the employee's are at getting orders right. I understand not being able to understand English and needing to clarify... but when you have a ticket with a readout of exactly what the person orders you know there are supposed to be so many hamburgers, and so many fries... and try ordering something without mayonnaise or onions lol. If you order two chicken sandwiches one without mayo you are screwed. You will invariably get two chicken sandwiches without mayo or they'll ignore the instruction and you'll get two normal ones. I could go on and on about this, it's just ridiculous the frequency that this happens I'm fascinated by what the actual cause of this bad service is lol.

It was a fun night, not for James though, he was freezing the entire movie and I guess fell asleep as well. I think I prefer no more than 4 or 5 people watching a movie too, the group divides too easily past 5 people and then 2 groups are hanging out and the idea of getting a big group together is lost. Unless everyone knows everyone else I guess. But whatever, it was still fun to do it.

Oh, side note, I bought a black Love Sack for 80 bucks... it's dangerously comfortable...

My personal pensive

Okay, enough political talk for one week imo. I get sucked in and am forced to debate issues I don't even know where I stand on based on just my perspective - which generally leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I want facts, I want citations, I want concise conclusions... which no one can actually provide lol.

I'm feeling pretty amazing right now. Some outstanding issues have recently been resolved for me, issues I didn't expect could actually be resolved. Now, I wonder how broad and general that sounds to everyone lol. But honestly, me being happy sure makes some lame posts on my blog, however I am keeping a documentation of my life sporadically in a private journal of sorts. It is turning out to be a non-linear journal. By that I mean the day I write it is not so important as the content. I am not writing for a future date, I am writing for now, and I am writing for tomorrow if I so need. It is a self help journal of sorts. I poor out my mind into the page to organize and read back to myself the thoughts I have, it has been revealing and immensely helpful. The freedom of having loose pages of thoughts that I can sift through to find a nugget of truth I can latch onto and find the groove in my mind to follow it towards the conclusion is an amazing thing. Knowing I have completed, and thoroughly documented thoughts down on paper about healing, and feeling complete is a treasure.

But such raw, honest, and almost sacred thoughts don't quite belong here, which I think everyone can agree. I leave them as unrefined as possible, because once I went back and edited, and reworded, and even fixed sentence structure... it wasn't the same, it didn't hold the same potency and I couldn't find the path in my words. My mind couldn't latch onto the refined work as easily because I had refined it at a moment when I wasn't feeling what I was when I originally wrote it. I don't know if this is really weird I do this I just realized, it's just my method I suppose. It just grew naturally, and I think that makes it right.

And every once in a while, something will slip out onto the page, and cause the puzzle pieces to come together and display the most amazing picture of love my Heavenly Father has for me.

-A

Swaying in the wind

So Andrea made a post about the political climate right now and I fully intended to keep my comment about it short and sweet... however it turned out I had a lot more to say about it than I had thought. I suppose my mind feels free to explore the culture of politics, and I can exult in the discovery of new perspective, which is why I always seem to be passionate about it. People who are so eager to throw stones, sing praises, and conclude so forcefully about issues and politicians makes me sad sometimes. Too much money, too much pandering, too much celebrity for anyone to see who or what people are. Popular journalism is forced into a corner of having to create drama or the perception of it for us viewers at home. It is just a big TV show, I'm just glad it's not a reality TV show.

Is anyone 100% conservative or liberal anymore? Haven't we each seen the detriment and benefits of both sides? I have, and I have decided to vote the opposite of whatever current political climate we are in. Currently we're in a situation where the government has been given power over the people, to spy, to control information, to detain without warrant, to start wars, etc, etc (real or not, what's important is the perception of it). So, concordantly, I will sway the opposite way, to balance it. Because that's what this is all about, balance. Our country just sways in the wind on capitol hill, the only real change that happens is when we make a difference in our own spheres of our lives.

Maybe I'll change my mind, I give myself the freedom to do that, I leave it up to John McCain to enlighten me on how, in one of the most dire of situations (economical and political), that he should lead. So far all I've heard is a bunch of whining about how Obama shouldn't be, not a lot why he should be. It would take something real, from him, to sway me.