WORK PUT IN

 As i promised I went back to work on this site since revisiting this place. I didn't think this place was bad, it's just that after 10 years and many life experiences felt i needed a little sprucing up. I posted a lot more pictures in the side bar to enhance the mood and feel of a peaceful garden. I updated the sections on what i am currently reading, watching and music i recommend, and i also updated the quarterly we are studying in sabbath school. i may update the inspirational corner quote soon. I am satisfied with the way the place looks now. More soon on what has been happening this summer.

REVISITING THIS PLACE!!!

 Wow!!! I thought i had forever lost this place--i changed laptops i think like 3 times in the interim, i forgot how to enter my blog. In fact I forgot it even existed for a while there.  I've recovered a part of myself tonight. 10 years since my last post. My goodness how time flies. I started reading some of my old posts--in some ways i'm still very much the same person and in other ways i've changed a lot. I cringe partially to revisit some of these posts and others make me smile.The things that seemed so important really aren't that important anymore. In fact, objectively speaking, i don't think they ever were important, but when you're living through them they seem like the world to you. I've got a lot of housecleaning to do here. I intend to come back and post a few more times after 10 years. It's still my thoughts and i don't expect anyone reads this or cares, but it's all part of having a little self respect and taking the time to put things in order. 

Life didn't work out at all the way i thought it would all those years ago. And when i say it didn't work out the way i thought, i mean in many ways--not just one or two aspects of my life. But then again, i suspect that for most of us it doesn't work out the way we first thought it would. Life seems to be part planning, part improvising, and a lot of faith in the goodness of God. The real important thing is what type of person are you? do you let God work through you? Are people better for having known you? Are you spreading joy and positivity to others where you go? or are you living only for yourself? Ultimately that's the only thing that matters. The rest is just ephemeral.  

Life goes by quickly. Time is objective but it is also subjective. When I was a kid everything seemed to take forever, it seems now that life is speeding up more and more.  One day slips into another--sometimes i don't even know what day of the week it is with everything that needs to be done at school.At one point i was a young man in my 20's--now i'm 51 and already thinking about things like retirement and of course burial insurance, not because i'm in a life threatening situation right now, but rather because id rather not be a burden to anyone in my future. That's what lies ahead of course even though many would prefer not to think about it. The top of the roller coaster was reached a while back, the only thing that remains is the ride down. But that's good too--it is the natural order of things and there many things to be grateful about. The shortness of life is why what we do with our lives is the most important thing. It is a responsibility. Yes, believe it or not, we are mere stewards of our lives too. We don't own ourselves even though many times we think we do. It sounds like a cliche but it is as true as the fact that the sun will come up tomorrow. 

Lots to do in the next coming weeks--but ill be back to post on some things that have been happening and just my general musings. See you soon.

I cant believe it's been two years and a few months since the last time posted on here. There's a lot of housekeeping to do. I still like the pictures i chose and the theme for my blog page. I wish that garden existed in real life. I would visit it in an instant! I will have to overhaul the right panels--we are studying something completely different these days. 

It's funny you set out to blog because you think you can do an online diary--but then you find that you really don't have much to write about on a daily basis. Life is essentially a grind, and very few things happen that merit being written about and immortalized. It's more of personality thing I guess. If you  don't have the type of personality to pick up a pen and write every day, then you most likely wont do it even if it's on a computer.

In many ways I continue to be the same person I was 2 years ago, in other ways i can feel I have changed a lot--which is scary when you think that 2 years is a relatively short period of time. I gve thanks that the lord has been with me all this time, and look uncertainly towards a future that only He knows is in store for me.

I feel grateful for my professional life as I enter my third year of working as a 9th grade history teacher. Hopefully I can make it through this year and the next. I just want to make it to tenure so as not to be so insecure or stressed out regarding the job. The Lord will help.

I'll write more in a few days. I'll probably put one more post before the end of the summer.

Sprinkles

Life is funny--you think you closed a chapter in your life a while back and that you've moved on and then something happens. And it now surprises me to see that I am having to deal with all these feelings once again. Stuff that I thought i had successfully dealt with and had moved on from. I guess I didn't do as good a job in moving on as I thought I had. I'm not devastated but this is definitely one of the more emotional points in my life in the past 2 years.

Life is change--this time the change must be permanent. It will never go back to the way it was--I accepted that a while ago and adjusted my behavior accordingly to a healthy level of distance. But I now see that I was too soft with myself. I wish I could make my heart hard. I have often thought that life would be simpler, for me at least, if we were all Vulcan following the rules of logic rather than having to deal with irrational emotions. There's nothing about them at times that makes any sense and yet they are an undeniable part of the human makeup--what a mess!

It is clear that if I am ever to move past this recurring situation in my life i will have to make a complete, clear, decisive, and final break. Not in a negative way--but more as in the sense of needing to start over, having a blank slate as it were. My past is behind me--there will always be nice parts of it and negative parts of it--but in the end I have to take a step out of the past and one towards reaching for my future. The alternative is forever being stuck in sorrow. The other party already has taken a step to their future--it is high time I stopped the nonsense and did the same. New beginnings--we all need them. It will be problematic for those who don't understand my situation, whom i dont care to share the details of my personal life with. All that they will know is that I will be leaving and they wont want to let me go. But as long as I am in that place, the situation will always renew itself  in one form or another. It is not healthy for me. I have put myself in second place for far too long in favor of serving the church and others. At times this happened due to circumstances, at other times due to a sense of duty, at others because I wanted to lose myself in the work. But that can no longer continue. The church will always ask for more, more, and more if you let it.

Much is made of the value of friends in popular psychology as well as within the church. But i have ever been a lone wolf inside. It occurs to me that friends are like ice-cream sprinkles. They make the ice-cream nice, and it's good when you have them, but in the end they are an accessory. If they are not there it does not destroy the ice-cream. Nice but not indispensable. As an example, if my best friend were to tell me tomorrow that he could no longer continue for x,y,z, reason it would make me feel sad, but then I would wake up the next day and find that the world had not come to an end--life would still go on.  The same reasoning applies in this present situation. Life has taught me that we must all learn to depend ultimately in ourselves and on the good Lord. In the end He is the only true friend.  Life must go on. I will miss the few good friends i have made here, but I know they will be safe in the Lord's hands. Within the next few months I must make the decisive move to jump ship elsewhere. And when I'm there, I'll finally put this in my past, meet other people and move on.

May the good Lord help and bless all of us.

EASTER 2012

Easter 2012 finds me happy---it will be a wonderful weekend. Things in my life seem to be taking a turn for the better, but it will be a long time before I'm fully recovered from last march. Life is funny in that it seems to go around in circles. I think it's a good thing that friendships are preserved even if things will never quite go back to being the same. The hardest thing is always maintaining faith in the fact that the Lord is leading my life, but it's all part of the walk of faith. If I've reached this far then there's no reason to doubt the future wont be what I need. That's the thing about God--H wont necessarily give you what you want but He'll always give you what you need. I take solace in knowing that ultimately what any of us need is Him. And if my life is to be one of companionship with Him--well then in truth that can't be said to be bad. There are a lot of things that could be worse. I look forward to the Easter service and Communion. The weather has been wonderful by the way. As a teacher, we get Spring Break. I think I may use the week off to go to the botanical gardens and just experience all the spring blooms.

JANUARY 2012

It's hard to believe i haven't visited this blog since last March--almost a year. The events of last march will always be with me. Unfortunately they are a part of me now. Lessons learned i think--but life rarely gives you a chance to put what you have learned into practice. Instead it throws entirely new situations at you that have nothing to do with whats gone one before. The learning by trial and error and hard knocks never really ends i think. Well Jan 2012 is here. A new year---what will this year turn out to be? No real way of knowing. Walking in faith often feels uncomfortable. Nothing left to do but to proceed. I have already accepted certain truths about my future. They're still hard truths to swallow, but at least i wont waste anymore time chasing after foolish, insubstantial dreams. The most important thing is learning to be at peace with where you currently are in your life journey.

New Beginnings

New Beginnings always hurt, in some cases because they imply the birth pangs of something, but in other cases they hurt because they imply the death of something. I cant believe that I was dumb enough to believe that if I only gave it time, that if only I stuck around, if I treated her well and we shared fun experiences together that it would draw me closer to her heart. In the end I'll never measure up--I know that now and although it hurts a lot there is a certain peace that comes with acceptance. it's the story of my life--always good friend, but never a partner. I'm in a lot of pain right now, and I don't know how I'm going to go on without her being a part of my close circle. Just knowing that I'll never see her again makes me sick to my stomach and makes me feel empty inside. But that is the way it must be if I am ever to remake my life. Six years of my life gone down the toilet--who can I go to to get a refund on wasted time? In a way it's good that I'm in pain--it serves me right for being an idiot---and in life morons deserve to be punished swiftly and severely many times over. I wish I could wrap it all up neatly in a bow and say "ok kiddies what did we learn from this?", but the truth is there is nothing to learn from this experience--only the acceptance of pain. Over the next few days I'll slowly exorcise the poison, the hurt, the sadness, the pain from my system--but I wont necessarily be smarter for having gone through it, and inside there will always be a huge empty spot where this friendship used to be. After all is said and done are any of us ever really the wiser for what we go through? It may make us feel better to say yes, but in the depths of our heart are we really? This area of my life is one in which I remain as clueless as when I was 16. Perhaps that in itself is a message that I should accept a destiny where i rely on myself and nobody else and give up on the idea of companionship. After all we are born alone and die alone--why not live alone?

Opening a New Chapter in my life? That's a laugh--what if the novel reads the same way the whole book through? I'm reminded of Nicholson in the movie version of The Shining writing entire pages made up of one sentence repeated over and over. I'm not turning the page, instead it feels more like I'm crawling on my hands and knees--but I don't know where to. If my life is a psalm then the Lord must have a pretty funny definition of what it means to praise. I better shut up now before I say anything foolish....