Getting Back Into the Groove

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium." ~Norbet Platt.

For the past couple of months, I seemed to be in a constant state of writers block and it really has affected me. Writing has always been one of my loves and not doing it daily or even weekly has really thrown me off of my 'groove'. But because of a recent portfolio I had to make about myself I went back to writing. Part of the requirements included 2 pieces of work by yours truly, and I could not believe how hard it was to find something that I liked that I had written before. It was all to immature, too flat, too wrong for what I wanted. So I started to write again.

But I didn't stop there, I just wrote yesterday, planning on spending just a half hour and just write about anything. But what turned out from some musings while doing the dinner dishes turned into a two hour writing spree where I just typed as fast as my fingers would let me.

I have forgotten how much I was in love with writing. They may not be the best writing, but just to write and to express myself has been too great for words. I now try to haul around a writers journal with me wherever I go so I can write whenever the urge hits again, even if that causes me to lose sleep. Now I just work for it to stay.

Scary How Fast Life Comes At You

I cannot believe that 2008 flew by so fast. I still have whiplash. I have been thinking about the past for several weeks and how fast life is happening. I want it all to slow down and freeze. I have friends who are married, friends getting accepted into college, friends who are in relationships, and it is all so real to me where it wasn't before. I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that my best friend and I will live states away, that I'll be in college, that more of my friends will start families. Am I not too young for all this to happen? It sure feels like it and it scares me half to death. I feel like I've not lived enough to move on with life, and yet I feel so old. I don't know what will happen. I don't know what I will do.

Pack Rats

Happy New Year! Normally on New Years people blog about their resolutions that they are going to try to keep through out the next year, but since I'm completely opposed to New Years Resolutions, I decided to write about something else.

Today I was cleaning out my closet so I can start my year afresh by getting rid of old things and cleaning out junk I don't need or want anymore. It is a very cleansing excersise by the way. Anyway I hollered to my little sister and her friend to come and sort through my old stuff before I gave it away to DI. They did, and then my little sister started to mock my closet, making fun of it because it was so clean. She then called me a pack rat because I had two boxes full of sentimental childhood toys and I immediately bristled. That could have probably been the worst insult that she could have given me.

My little brother and I started to talk about it and he agreed with my sister, but he also said that everyone is a pack rat in their own way. He told me that I was a minimalist pack rat, oh the oxymoron, but I was a little bit more appeased then my little sister's rude comment.

It's funny how connotations can rule our minds. To my little sister, a pack rat might not be that bad of a word, but to me it is.

Anyway, it sort of made me angry and I just had to rant about it. Sorry it is not quite the New Years blog that most people make.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

That phrase has been heard often enough, I am my own worse enemy, but how many of us actually understand it? Last week in my seminary class I had a lesson on loving oneself, and it got me thinking how truly hard it is. It is easy to compliment others on their hair or their clothes, but when it comes to us we can’t seem to accept people’s compliments. We are our own worst critic, seeing every flaw even when they don’t exist. It is like the people who say that they are fat when they wear a size 2. That just bothers me.

I continued to think on it though. What does loving oneself truly mean? I have decided that it means that you respect your self for who you are, and you accept yourself for all the weaknesses and flaws that you have. When you love yourself you see your strengths as well as your weaknesses and you work hard to become all that you can be. Loving oneself it not egotistical, it does not give you rights to brag, it is to accept who you are, appreciate where you have been and what you have become.

When we have self respect then the whole world is open to us because we know that we can do anything. Even when we fail we can pick ourselves up once again because we are optimistic that things will change because we can do so.

Loving oneself is hard, it is not an easy journey to take, but I can only hope that once I reach that point, my love for others will grow as well as my love for God. Today I will stop being my own worse enemy and try to be my own best friend.

No Man is An Island . . .

"No man is an island unto himself." These famous words written by John Donne have been sticking in my mind for the past couple of days. I seem to find myself more and more alone lately as I hide in my room pouring over textbooks and writing essays, but the more I think about it, I can never be truly alone. I cannot hide away on my personal island, because even though I may shrink away from the shore, as soon as I look up I notice more and more islands besides me. This makes me exceptionally grateful to my friends and family who are always right besides me, supporting me, helping me.

Being alone, I think, is all an allusion. You can be surrounded by people but feel completely alone, or be all by yourself and reading an old letter written by a dear one and feel their love reach out to you over oceans and mountains, or even across just the street. Being alone, I think is a choice that we all make. We choose to be social, or to cast ourselves out of the group. True, some may take more effort than others, but in the end, we can't really blame people for ostracizing us because we chose it. If we really want to be apart of something, then we just have to do it. People are willing to welcome you if you make the effort to do so.

No man is an island because we are all a part of something much bigger. A community. A friendship. A family. Even if you don't feel like you belong, you do. People care about people and so they care about others, about you, about me.