Piano

I played for 10 years.

And I miss it.

Empty

You have to be empty before you can be filled.

There's nothing quite like opening a brand new journal, and putting your pen to the first naked page. Words can clothe.

"How do you go from nothing to something? How do you face the blank page without fainting dead away?" --Annie Dillard

I document, I describe, I pray...all with my pen. I don't want life to merely pass, I want it to accumulate between the covers, in my own words.

That's why I journal.

More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin. -Anonymous

This book is gaining all kinds of attention. Both from newsweek (go here to read a recent article) and from random people who walk by me at Starbucks. I have about 3 girls here at college who want to read it after I'm done. And yet I'm beginning to doubt what the author is saying in the recent chapters I've read; I've began trying to fit this book into my worldview and am coming up short.

The romantic side of me begs the following questions: What about Michael Buble' and his song "I just haven't met you yet." What about the movie "Dear John" and the way the main girl character gave up on the one who she was feel in love with and married the guy who was "good enough." What about verses that back up contentment in singleness? What about trusting God to write your love story? Are these ideas really that unrealistic? I don't think so.

I plan on finishing the book, and continually blogging about it. Who know, maybe I'll write my own book in response to Gottlieb once I'm done. Ha.

Prince Charming doesn't exist

So, I started reading this slightly controversial book yesterday. The title would probably scare most people off, but I'm a curious person so it only made me want to read it. It's called "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" by Lori Gottlieb. I know, but it caught your attention, right?

Well at first I was just going to read it with the same perspective I would use when researching a book for a paper. I didn't want to buy into Gottlieb's crazy theory. But the more I read it, the more I find myself agreeing with her.

Girls have these lists-whether they are written down on paper and posted on their wall, or if they are simply mental-they have lists, and they can be quite extensive, if not unrealistic. He needs to be talented but humble. Warm but not clingy. Vulnerable but no weak. Strong but sensitive. He can't be moody or cry very often. He needs to love books and play the guitar. Girls think they can find Prince Charming in the real world. They wait for him to sweep them off of their feet. They pass by great guy after great guy because he didn't meet their impossible criteria. Then they end up like Lori Gottlieb, 40 years old and single, wishing that they would have given that guy a chance, even if he did have red hair.

I think it's important to figure out what you're "Deal Breakers" are. What matters the most to you? What can you not live without? Don't settle on those important things, and quit being so picky on the little things.

I'm only on page 50 so far, but I think I'll probably blog about the things I agree/disagree with just because it could be fun to have a different sort of entry than usual.

"If you had an audience, what would you say?"

possibilities

I want to be a writer. I want to sit at a desk and string words together from 9 to 5. I want to sit in contemplation until I find the perfect verb to take its place center-stage in a sentence. I love writing.

I have to keep telling myself this as I exhaust myself learning about rhetoric, something that I have never even been introduced to before. My saving grace is Annie Dillard, the author that I am doing my Style Analysis Essay on. She gives me hope that there is more to writing than putting commas in the proper place and following the many, many rules of rhetoric.

Here's a quote from Dillard's essay "Contemporary Prose Styles,"

"Fine writing is not a mirror, not a window, not a document, not a surgical tool. It is an artifact and an achievement; it is at once an exploratory craft and the planet it attains; it is a testimony to the possibility of the beauty and penetration of written language."

And I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly. For some people, there is beauty in a completed math equation or a perfectly lit photograph or that light that comes into a student's eye when they finally grasp a before-foreign concept. For me, there is beauty in well-written language, in words that ignite the reader's imagination or enable the reader to put himself into the story line. There is beauty in a sentence that has been constructed, like a puzzle, one delicate piece at a time.

But that's just me. I'm sure you find beauty in whatever it is that you are passionate about. Run after it, dedicate yourself to it and teach yourself to master it. Do something that you love. What if we all pursued our dreams?

SUPERbowl Sunday

The Saints won!

Go underdogs.

I just want to write a quick post telling the whole world that I have really beautiful friends and without them I might not be surviving college... Today was Superbowl Sunday and I had such a great day, despite the two tests that are stressing me out. My two bestest friends and

I made chocolate covered strawberries and then we went all out and dressed up for the game. I went for the Saints and they went for the Colts. My reasoning for choosing the Saints wasn't all that great. My thinking went like this:: Michael is going for the Colts, my roommate is going for the Saints, I don't want to wear blue eyeshadow, I like gold... So I picked the Saints! (And they won).

But the point is that it was really fun taking a break from my weekend of studying to play with them. Here are some pictures to prove how hardcore we were::

I was Bush, Rachel was Manning and Ange was Freeney...

we had not a clue who any of them actually were (besides Peyton Manning, he's kinda famous) but we did good! Bush is actually quite the beast. I always have had a thing for running backs...

And these were the best chocolate covered strawberries in history. Mmmm.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering. I know what the Golgi Apparatus is, what the function of Ribosomes are, and what the difference is between hypertonic and hypotonic solutions is. If you're curious I'll probably be able to quote off information for another 48 hours.

Worry

I'm trying to worry less. I'm a natural worrier, and I always tell people that I have a talent for worrying. And it's true! There's probably a difference between worrying and planning, but I think that when I plan it always turns into worry. I think it is because I have a very vivid imagination and my mind kind of just runs away with itself at times. I can think of a hundred terrible things that could happen in any certain circumstance.

Here's a ridiculous, but true example:

I was sitting in church the first weekend back at John Brown, and the pastor was baptizing a little boy. I suddenly got really distracted and afraid when the pastor went to dunk the little guy in the water. I imagined one of them slipping and hitting their head, or the little boy being too heavy for the pastor, the little boy slipping on his way up the stairs...all kinds of crazy ideas. So I held my breath until the boy had safely exited the tub.

The crazy thing is that a few days later my friend was like, "Oh my goodness did you hear about the pastor who, right before he was about to baptize someone, electrocuted himself with his microphone and died?!"

See? It can happen.

But, the point is that I'm trying to stop worrying.

"Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey!" --Barbara Hoffman

Or, as one of my friend so simply puts it, "Don't worry about it."