Post 14: Where Ya' Been?

I must have four or five draft entries that haven't been posted because I haven't had the time to clean them up and submit them. I've been busy with college work, which has been eating up the majority of my time. Work continues to be exhausting and gets a little less fun every day. I'm becoming more active in the church scene - operating an online site for the youth group as well as getting into my ministry role.

Also, thoughts that would otherwise go here are being diverted to a new place, a personal wiki I set up not too long ago. My thoughts are actually very interwoven and only a wiki is able to let me write out my thoughts and conveniently link them together.

If any of you have heard of Minecraft, then you know that it's amazingly addictive and a good way to lose free time. If not, it's awesome.

Carry on. Comment at will.

Post 10: Kansas: Year One

June 26, 2009: Graduation. I was #3 out of a class of 249. I joked how there was valedictorian, salutatorian, but no fancy name for the person in third place. Trinitorian? Anyway, it was really life changing.

June 27, 2009: I woke up in my practically barren bedroom and met up with my grandma and my extremely irate mother and went to the bus station. For the next 28 hours we changed buses with little sleep until we arrived at our destination.

June 28, 2009: Arrived at a bus terminal somewhere in Oklahoma. Transferred, rode to Coffeyville, Kansas. Transferred, entered Independence, Kansas. Start of a new life. New house. New friends. New job. New city. New college. New everything.

It's just amazing how much I've changed since showing up in this little city a year ago. Just in the past twelve months, so many things have started or ended that it's almost mind blowing.

My relationship with God through Jesus Christ has expanded and deepened and will continue to do so throughout my life. I've recently started putting emphasis on the relationship aspect and am currently learning how to talk to and hear from God. The sooner is much easier than the latter, although there are many ways that God talks to us. That's a whole 'nother blog entry.

I have now been working at McDonald's for over nine months and I must be one of the few people there that really enjoys the work. Granted it does get mundane at times but the nature of the work provides me ample time for introspection and critical thinking. After three months I was given the Outstanding New Employee award and in March I was Employee of the Month.

A few days ago I completed the last piece of work that I needed to do for college. I was ahead of schedule right from the start and finished with six days left before the class ended. It was an online course about something that I've been doing for six years - HTML and related technologies. Nevertheless I did learn quite a bit. I'm enrolled in three courses for the fall semester and the remaining two that I intend on taking are currently under question so I have to wait until that's resolved. It looks like I'll be taken an all-online route for this semester because I ride my bike everywhere and it's a 3.4 mile distance between home and college. 

I'm also heading up the Bible study. Because my style of teaching and speaking was really boring it almost died out right away. The problem comes from the fact that I'm naturally highly logical and I think differently than most of the kids that go to that place. I failed to connect with them at an emotional level. However that's going to change. I have an evangelistic streak plus a knack for retaining knowledge for a reason.

In addition, I have made plenty of friends. When I'm new to any place, I appear to be someone who is slow to open up to others. I realized a couple days ago that this doesn't mean that I'm unsociable, but rather that I take longer to make friends than most people. However, when I do speak I'm very open and answer most questions about myself. I also noticed that when talking to people online, it's not normal - nor easy - for me to pose questions to learn about someone else.

Next in the list is this: I acquired my own Internet access. Up until then I had been going to libraries to use the Internet on their computers, but now I have full access except in situations where the weather goes bad and kills my wireless Internet. I clock in as much as 8 or more hours a day on the Web, limited only by other things that I must do. However it has been a huge asset for me because with the unlimited access, I've been able to work on my website and other yearnings I've had for a long time.

Sometime around March of this year, I began going to the Haven. This place has been a major help for me socially. I'm the sort of person that will stay home if I don't have work or church. It's natural for me to stay alone and on the computer. But loneliness is hard to deal with and upon hearing about the Haven from my youth group friends, I decided that I would go there. I sort of expected a place with white walls and several rooms, like the Town Boys' and Girls' Club that I used to go to, but I found something completely different. It's primarily one huge room with a snack stand, a smaller blue room with costumes and two small bathrooms. The size and shape of the building is irrelevant, however; what matters are the people. Most of them are not Christians, but there is a core of people including the families of the founders who are of the faith and have become my friends. It's been my way of socializing and connecting to others. They have many concerts which I don't attend because it's not my thing, but they have so many other things that it's totally worth it. 

Now for my concluding statements. This has only been my first year. The second one has already begun, and things are guaranteed not to remain the same. Life is rarely static and if it is, don't get used to it because things change faster than the blink of an eye, I can tell you that right now. I can look forward to an ever-increasing growth in my relationship with God, as well as more college education to clog my hours and more time and experiences at work. Hopefully my Bible study will continue to improve to the point where I'm drawing in more people and maybe be able to save a few more souls for the kingdom. I have no clever final sentence so this is the end of it.

Post 6: Wisdom from a Cemetery, and Other Places

THEME: Death is not the end, but what you do now will affect you later.

A few days ago my parents took me, a family friend and her son 14 miles south of here to a cemetery in Coffeyville. They were looking at the graves of those who died as a result of a bank robbery decades, maybe a century ago when Kansas was still considered the wild wild west. And while they were enjoying the famous landmarks (which I didn't personally find to be all that exciting, but interesting nonetheless), my thinking was elsewhere.

As I often do when considering things, I look at the world from an atheist/agnostic viewpoint. I considered death and its finality. I imagined the tombstone of a friend of mine and what it might look like. Then I pictured my mother's, and my father's and finally my own.

"That's it?" I asked myself. We work our butts off for years on end and then we die and none of it matters. What good does it do that I enjoyed my pizza or that I was a good computer programmer? All I was doing is trying to accumulate enough money so I could live an easy life. But then I would die and that would be the end of it. In one instant, as my body shut down, everything I had done becomes irrelevant. Nothing matters. Nothing.

"Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!"

For some reason I always wind up at that verse. Ever since I moved to Kansas, that statement has found a strong truthfulness in my life. I labored for thirteen years in school - for what? The moment high school graduation ended, the number of A's I got on those tests became pointless. I could have had a total average that was 10-15 points lower than what I got and most colleges still would have accepted me. And in my daily battle with slight gluttony, I frequently think, "Why bother eating extra? I'm just going to get hungry again."

But I know that death isn't the end for me. There is a meaning for what I do. What I do now in this life won't just affect me in later years but also into eternity. I'm not working 17+ hours a week for no reason. I don't attend church every Sunday just to keep appearances up. There is a reason I've committed myself to higher education and why I want so badly to effectively use every second I have left on this earth and pour so much energy into my passions and the people I love.

When I was younger, death scared me. Now I'm not afraid. (Not to sound suicidal but I gladly await death, when I can get into Heaven and be happy forever.) Still, I'm often aware of my own mortality and the fact that yes I will one day die. I want to live for God and enjoy myself in the time that remains for me. Death is my motivator. Knowing that eventually I won't be able to do anything here in this life makes me work all the more harder.

Another thing this makes me realize is that what I do now will affect me in my later years, just as Solomon discovered. He led a wordly, materialistic life and in his final ones he found himself to be unsatisfied with life. He felt as though that time was wasted. As as youngster, I didn't like to brush my teeth. I put the blame on the way toothpaste tasted. Now I brush daily, but those years of not caring for them have become clear. My teeth are stained and somewhat sensitive. I don't smile with teeth showing for that reason. I know that what I do with money now is going to decide how I handle it when I'm older. Every second of the now has influence on the later.

So why, oh why, don't I let this fact really get into me and change how I act? There are times when it does, when I choose to look past the immediate and focus on the long-run. How am I going to come out given my current habits? I'm hooked on a game called Starfleet Commander and I plan on playing it for a long time, although in a few years it will probably lose the popularity it has and wither out of existence. So why continue to play it now?

Because it's fun! OK look, what are the most important things in my life right now? My faith, my work, and getting into college. But I have a whole lot of free time during the week and focusing exclusively on those three things would be downright exhausting. I play this game because it entertains me, it allows me to think and deal with real people. Yes eventually the game will lose steam and die out. But until then, I'm going to try and make it to the #1 position on its leaderboard!

Post 4: Everything is Made New!

2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

In the latter half of 2009, my whole life pretty much changed forever. I graduated high school, the place where I began the journey of fulfilling what I want to be for the rest of my life. I left my hometown, where I lived for 15 of my then 17 years, for a city 1/30th the size of it. I found a new church family and new little brothers and sisters in the faith. I got a job working at McDonalds where everyone seems to agree that I'm a pretty darn good worker - rather quiet, but nevertheless amiable. Heck, I even got Internet.

That is why I'm calling the theme for 2010 Everything is Made New. My life is vastly different from how it was New Years 2009. I have changed and matured so much since then. This year will largely be about growing into my new life, including when I begin college in the fall.

Post 3: A New Leaf in an Old Year

This post will mostly contain updates that I deem worthy of putting in the weblog. I know it's been a few months since I've added anything, and there have been several changes during that time.

First of all I should mention that I got a job, and I've had it for nearly three months at this point. I work at McDonalds as a maintenance worker - or at least, that is the title I use to describe it. My shift comes during the lunch hour. In the past it was quite variable as to what days I would be on and off, recently the top manager made an official schedule that I would follow regardless of what was printed on the paper. Tuesday through Saturday I would work from 11 to whenever, usually 3, and I'd have the other two days off. This works perfect for me because of my ISTJ personality, which means I love having things organized and scheduled out. Many would feel dead having everything timed out to the last minute, but I feel dead if it's not like that.

McDonalds has its quirks, good and bad. The good part is the relative simplicity of the work. I sweep the floors almost neurotically, I wipe down the tables, I change the garbage bags in the lobby when they get full, and I also keep the windows clean, take trays to the back when they get piled high enough, and maintain the bathrooms. It also provides me with a stable income, as there aren't too many other people who would do this job. Even though I'm only getting $7.25 an hour, it still means a $200+ paycheck every other Tuesday. Hardly enough to sustain an independent individual, but I still live with my parents. And since I'm a conservative person with money, it doesn't disappear very fast. Plus, I typically get a break around 1:30-2:00, during which I eat the free employee meal. On the down side, the place can get really, really busy which tires me, and my feet and lower back ache after an hour or two.

The people at McDonalds are quite diverse in appearance and personality. The highest-ranking person is Dave, who seems to resemble Vince McMahon. He's a quiet but agreeable person. Miss Daphne is the highest level manager and is equally kind and tough. She recently lost her 23-year-old daughter Tori, who was one of her subordinate managers. Jennifer is another manager. Isaac is one of the other few maintainers. Unique is how I describe him. Annoying is another. He runs his mouth and doesn't think before he speaks. He has several different terms he's called me by: "Jimmy Dean", "Daniel Boone", "Peanut", "F*cknut". However, he is clearly an excellent and skilled worker, having been there for 13(?) years. Brandon is a weekend worker with a satiric sense of humor. He also does sounds and impersonations. Rambo (I think his real name is Robert) is another veteran of the place, now in his 4th year. He is also very funny. Then there are others who I find less notable: Vicky, Connie, Nycole and her boyfriend James, Eleanna, Brenda, Miranda, etc...

Second of all, I've decided to put off college until fall 2010. The main reason for that is the fact that they don't answer the phone at Independence Community College. These statistics are estimates, but by no means exaggerations. I have a 10% chance of getting an answer, another 10% chance that they'll call back if I leave a message, and an 80% chance that nothing will ever happen. I missed the date for turning in the financial aid forms because of outdated information on their website, and in any case I still needed to schedule orientation and it just seemed off to start in spring 2010. So I'm out of school for another 9 months. I really will be taking a year off of school then.

I'm already thinking about what my New Year's Resolutions will be. Currently they include: 1) Living more godly; 2) Being more in-depth in my Bible study; 3) Pray more; 4) Use better posture and eye care when using the computer, since I'm usually on it most of the day.

My review of "Ben 10: Alien Swarm": Out of 100, I have to give it an 82. The movie had a good plot and sequence of events. It added two good items to the Ben 10 mythology. First was the fact that Plumbers ride motorcycles. These were seen extensively in the movie. Second was the futuristic-looking command center that was in the back (and presumably underground) of a car repair shop/gas station. The female actors were very cute. But I did have a few quibbles with it. The plot itself was cliche: the main character goes against the established order to act on a hunch. This could also be questionable to parents, since if they let their kids see this, then their children might get some ideas. About 15 minutes into the movie, there's an argument between Grandpa Max and Ben, and Max gives in way too easily. Of course, without that scene, the rest of the film would have been worthless. BTW, I noticed Ben and Gwen kept calling him "Max", not "Grandpa Max". The movie could have used a little bit more light in it. And probably my biggest issue with it - which shows how it's a minor one anyhow - is the fact that these kids are 16 years old, and yet their actors are all at least 23. Even Daniel Radcliffe was about the same age as the character Harry Potter he portrayed. But all in all, this was a good movie.

[EDIT: 1/1/2010: I originally, accidentally, said I had put off college until 2012. No, I mean 2010! Ugh, this whole end-of-the-world scare is messing my typing up!]