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 13: The Colony Season 2!

Unfortunately I missed it until it had already begun, but Discovery Channel is airing the second season of "The Colony". It's a reality show with a major twist. There are no competing teams in the normal sense, nor are there cash prizes or free cars being doled out.

"The Colony" is a social experiment where eight people from various background are selected to survive 60 days in a simulated post-apocalyptic scenario. In season one, they were put in the industrial section of Los Angeles near the LA river. In this season they're in a rundown section of New Orleans, near the bayou. Even though they're given medial treatment off camera, their initial 72 hour isolation period and then being dropped in a devastated area with no outside help, coupled with the stress, fatigue and desperation that ensues, makes it all too real of a thing for them. Each episodes is comprised of various Phases, in which they are given a task to accomplish, like building a smokehouse from wood or fending off attackers.

The first season was really interesting. They made it through the two months, but not without a lot of drama. People criticized it because it seem faked. The confession videos, which are used throughout the series, seemed to be more acted than genuine. The final episode, which featured raiders launching an all-out attack, a flamethrower built from scratch, and a heck of a lot of action, looked particularly scripted. However, my willing suspension of disbelief was in play and I didn't notice these things until after I had watched the episode and read others' comments on it.

Now season two. I missed the first two episodes so I'll have to catch up on those someday. I've already noticed some parallels between the two seasons. Each one has a relatively old dude. In season one, it was Vlad, the 60-something war veteran/oil engineer. In season two, we have Robert, a 70 year old. Both seasons also have someone who makes up ingenious plans to build things and do stuff. Season one had self-proclaimed mad scientist John Cohn, who I was intrigued by. Season two looks like George will assume this role. He even kinda looks like John.

Things like this interest me. As I child, I enjoyed - and still do enjoy - stories about people making it on their own. I liked books such as "Hatchet", "My Side of the Mountain", and "Ender's Game", where a young man had to make it on his own. These inspired me to write my first novella, where a young man and young woman survive in a world where the death of adults has created complete chaos. The whole post-apocalyptic theme leaves me imagining would could happen.

Post 12: A Wiser 18

Well, check it  out. It's my birthday. Nineteen years. There's really nothing special about turning 19. You aren't a newly instated legal adult like when you turn 18. You aren't a full adult like when you turn 21. I suppose the two distinctive things about it are how it's the last of the teen years (although I consider 18 to be the last teen year, after which you become an adult. The fact that 19 ends with "-teen" is just the way our language works.) and it's like 18, but with a little more experience.

The festivities of my 19th birthday actually began last night. I used to play Starfleet Commander but I have retired from the game, and I still browse the message board associated with the game. One of the other players had made a thread about me being 19 and I've had several people wish me happy birthday. Also, at the Christian chat site I visit, I was given more early happy birthdays. Then today I woke up and eventually heard the "Happy Birthday" song from my mother, and then later proceeded to work as usual. Over the course of the 3 hours I worked there, I had five coworkers congratulate me on my 19th. I ordered a frappe because I wanted to spend my birthday money on something (my parents, at a loss of what to get me, gave me $40) and the manager at the cash register let me have it for free.

At the place I work, there is a prank that a couple of the managers like to pull on the birthday person if he/she is noted for being loud or comical. When the person is doing his or her business, they'll discreetly take a paper plate and put whipped cream on it, tap on the person's shoulder and when the birthday person turns around, gets the place of cream in their face. I had told said managers a couple months beforehand not to do this, because knowing me I would get very upset and have a hissy fit. Thankfully they kept this in mind because despite a couple moments of paranoia on my part, there were no attempts on me. It was a busy day.

After work, me and many of the other employees ordered our employee meals (which we get for free) and paychecks. I then walked to the bank and deposited not just that check but also a check that my grandparents from Florida or the like sent me. From there I walked home.

One of the things I was carrying with me was an MP3 player/FM radio that I had won in a raffle at the company picnic the Sunday before. It's a nice 2 GB device which I could possibly use to replace my current 4 GB one because the buttons on my current player are becoming unresponsive. The only downside: it's powered by AAA batteries, which means they'll need to be replaced probably every few days.

I get home. I had a bottle of root bear from McDonald's. I put the food in the refrigerator and grab some ice from the freezer. When my mother hears the door she's like "You did not just go in the freezer?" because evidently she has something in there she doesn't want me to see. I had noticed a red box that wasn't there before but, seeing as my target was the ice next to it, I paid no attention to it. However, after she said that, I made the connection: ice cream cake!

As part of my normal routine, I hopped in the shower to get rid of the layer of sweat on my skin. When I got out of it, my mom showed me a bag that was on the couch beside her. I said, "Wow! A bag!" being facetious and when I looked inside, there was a pack of new socks. That morning I had asked for a pair to replace the very holey pairs I had (and my mom made a pun about how holey they were: "Do you wear them to church?") . I sampled one of them, found it to be acceptable, and threw out the holey ones and put them in my dresser. Ironically, I had been asked a week ago what I wanted and didn't think of it until today.

Then my grandma, who now lives in New York, called to say Happy Birthday to me. After that, my mom dialed another number and then called my brother who lives in California. Now, there's a big rift between in my family, which is why I'm in Kansas and my siblings in California. That's a slightly difficult thing to explain and I was cautious in talking to him. Luckily, it only lasted two minutes before the conversation ended.

Then things got weird. See, my grandma's bank account had been accessed unauthorized and bought video games, as well as several instances of bounced checks. We got a call from a state official and my father talked to the man. As suspected suspects (redundant?) we'll be getting separate letters in the mail about it. I'm not concerned really. My record is clean and I'll comply unless I have really good reason not to. Even if they snoop a little, I'll probably have no problem.

Some time later, my mom shouted "Cake time!". We all assembled in the kitchen, and my mom asked "Should we sing Happy Birthday?". My reply: "It's optional". They opted not to, and I took the large knife and stuck it in the cake. My mom's birthday is next so she pulled it out and my father started cutting it up.  I was going to get a fairly small piece but my dad decided, "Heck, he's 19! He can handle an adult-size piece of cake" and gave me a slice that was almost as long as the small plate's diameter. We ate the cake and continued on with our days. Oh, and my father gave me another $20, out of the $40 I give my parents out of my paycheck in exchange for Internet access.

About four hours later I became hungry again and acquired another slice of the cake. Then I did some serious remodeling of my website, http://shawntc.x10hosting.com. I've been meaning to redesign it for quite some time and I'm taking advantage of the free time I still have before fall semester begins on 17 August.

Fast forward to now. I'm sleepy and nearing the last hour of my 19th birthday. I chronologically turned nineteen at 6:35 PM CST. So let's see what year 19 has in store for me...

Birthday Gifts, Totals:

* $85

* 10 new pairs of socks.

* A new MP3 player (sort of, it just happened to fall on my birthday)

Post 11: Farsighted Faith

During my preteen years I was in a depression that required me to go to counseling to get out of. One of my habits was sitting close to the TV, maybe a yard or two away from it. As a result of this habit my eyesight was ruined. I wear glasses now so I can see and when my eyes were last checked, my vision was around 20/85. It has probably degraded further because of all the time I've spent in front of computers, however recently I've begun taking preemptive measures to stop the damage.

I'm short-sighted. A fancier term for that would be "myopia". If I take my glasses off, I can see up close things just fine, and usually take off my glasses when reading. However, without my glasses distant things start to blur. The glasses put everything in perspective for me.

Surely if you have more than ten brain cells, you should be able to see the analogy I just made here.

Something I noticed either today or yesterday that really struck me: on one of the message boards that I visit regularly, there was this one dude who really pushed the limits as to what he could and couldn't say. I have a Christian name on the forum and he sent me mean private messages and made two threads badmouthing Christianity. Simply put, he was a troll. And for the longest time he didn't get punished because he had held back just enough to not break the rules. However recently he was banned. Now he has a new account and is less questionable.

Often people will spend years waiting for God to fulfill a prayer and help them out of something, and it's very easy to get frustrated and give up. For example, I have fought on and off to gain control of my words. I'm normally quite impulsive when I speak and there have been plenty of times where the results were disasterous. Yet I haven't been able to fully capture control over what I say. Many times I've lost patience and given up.

My faith, and unfortunately I'd say the faith of most of the body of Christ, is short-sighted. Our spiritual myopia causes us to want instant results. It's human nature to want everything done right away, ASAP. Sometimes, God will do that. But many times, things are delayed for months or years. 

The banning of that troll demonstrated that even when nothing seems to be happening, justice will be carried through. Your healing will be done. That loved one you pray for will be saved. What is needed is for us, and this includes myself, to be in a sense farsighted.  Look ahead into the future. Picture the problem being solved. Believe God will have what need to be done accomplished. Start doing what needs to be done to ensure that it'll be accomplished. And between the time you start that step of faith and God makes that move that brings that desire to realization, just keep chugging. Keep doing what needs to be done. Don't focus on current situations that seem to indicate failure or nothing at all happening. The future is an uncertain thing. You never actually know what lies ahead until you experience it. Not every outcome has signs to indicate that change is coming. I didn't know that I would be told how much I was messing up my Bible study, when I was planning to speak on what a relationship with Jesus is.

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 9: Readers Do Me a Favor

Nearly 450,000 visits to my blog! WOW! Hey if you are a regular visitor to this blog or just going through, could you spare a minute and post a comment on this entry? I'm very curious to see how many actually take the time to read. Just say "hi" or whatever in the comment. Thanks!

Post 8: Less Shawn, More God

The past few days have been pretty intense, spiritually. New things are popping up (I just love all of this new stuff!) and I would like to share them.

For starters, I've come to find just how much of a sinner I still am. There are many problems that I have. I'm a complainer, selfish, glutton, and pervert to name a few. I expect myself to be able to act in a way that promotes God. I have the desire to be an excellent witness. And while my standards for myself aren't perfection (because I can never achieve that) or so I believe, whatever they are I still fall short of them.

I don't act godly because I'm trying to win God's favor. I have been in His favor for 2.5 years, starting the moment I agreed to make Jesus Christ (in Hebrew "Yeshua Messiah", which in English means "Jesus the Anointed One") the leader of my life and acknowledged what he did on the cross. I do these things out of a love and desire to be obedient to God's commands, and also because it is to my benefit.

Yet the problem I have had stems from the fact that I constantly rate how I am doing based upon that standard I have set for myself... and I always fail. The answer came on unintentionally. A friend of mine, whose blog can be found here, calls himself a Zen Christian. At the time, I didn't want to ask him about it directly as I didn't know how personal an explanation would have to be. I came across another blog, and this person had a creative solution: just BE Christian, and don't beat yourself up when you fail. Let the love of Jesus flow out through you.

I like this way of doing things. Then I wondered, "How can I bring my personality to match Jesus'?" See, at work, home and (eventually) school, I'm likely the closest thing that the lost ones around me will see to Jesus. If you remember a post from a while back, I mention my Myers-Briggs personality type: ISTJ. I'm organized, practical and factual. The disciple Thomas (aka the doubter) was ISTJ. Jesus on the other hand was not an ISTJ. It's hard to tell exactly what his type is, but based on observations from the Gospels it seems he is an -NF-, possibly INFP. (I guessed ENFJ.) My interests are probably not what Jesus would have liked. For instance, I play an interstellar combat game, Starfleet Commander, something Jesus wouldn't play. I want to go to college for computer science and am a sci-fi writer - two things unlike Jesus.

My conclusion was that my personality should not be a carbon copy of Christ's. God put in me these differences - a love for sci-fi, technological know-how, a desire to write - for the purpose of spreading the Gospel in whatever unique areas I may find myself in. The reconciliation of personalities comes in how I behave in these areas. The traits of Jesus - holiness, kindness, wisdom, patience, purity - these are the things that are to flow out of me.

Something else I wanted to happen was a greater amount of experiencing God. Faith is nice and I'm sure I have a good amount of it, but I don't want to coast on that all my life. I desire to see God act more in my life, do things that unmistakably point to him. I wrote down some ways:

• Miraculous events - always nice.
• Meditating on the Bible - understanding who God is by how he is recorded in the Bible.
• Worship - this can lead to more obvious, tangible experiences.
• "Hearing" God through thoughts - I have had situations where a thought has entered my mind that has such authority behind it that it can only have come from God.
• Conscience - that little voice in the back of your head is God prompting you.
• Feeling God's presence - not sure how this is done.
• Letting characteristics of God flow through you.
• Observing how God is working in the world and your life - coincidence? Maybe not.

In related, but different news, I am going to be heading up a Bible discussion group at the Christian youth center I attend, the Haven House. It'll be on alternating Thursdays, and it'll have prayer, inspirational real life stories and discussions on Bible topics. This works really well for me because I've always had a bit of a teacher streak in me, in the spiritual sense of the word. I'm good at analyzing things to find out what they are and then relaying that information to others. Now is my chance.

Sorry, I wrote this entry on two separate days. I may not have said everything I originally intended to. If so, then I'll just edit this post and add the info.