innocence

Today as I was flipping through Proverbs I noted a verse that I had underlined:

All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord. (Proverbs 16:2)

What! This is terrible news! I can be going through life thinking I'm doing everything great but apparently something as silly as my motivation can trip me up. Unfair! Now this verse reminded me of a passage in 1 Corinthians that I studied last semester, so off I went to the back of my bible in search of a connection. Here's what I found:

My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God. (1 Corinthians 4:4-5)

I felt like this provided some more insight to the seeming condemnation in Proverbs...after all, if your ways only seem innocent to you that implies that they are in fact not innocent. I do like this idea, and I think that it's true in my own life an awful lot of the time, but it's still an unpleasant thought. No matter how hard I try to align myself with what is right, I am often motivated by the effect of my actions on my image or other transient things; it doesn't matter if all of my thoughts and actions are "innocent" if they're just focused on me, because that is not an innocent motivation--it is very sinful to only consider myself, as sinning is just another way of saying that I'm putting myself before God. So even when I do a good deed or try to consider others above myself, if I'm doing that out of my own pride it is no good--God will instantly see through that.

But Paul's letter gives us more to chew on. First, he brings up the Lord's return and judgment. Second, he explicitly says that other people can't judge your heart, and neither can you judge any hearts; however, the motivations which drive us will be exposed, implying that you really can't hide selfishness from yourself or anyone else forever. Third, though, is that everyone will essentially receive what is due to them. I don't think this in any way implies legalism--that people who are "better" Christians, follow the law, don't sin "as much," etc. will earn their salvation while other people won't. But it does bring me some relief to know that what I do and think matters--that God sees and knows that, and that he does have a reward for people with good intentions and motives, because (let's be honest here) it sometimes frustrates me that everyone is entitled to the same salvation should they choose to accept it. I feel like no reward could be better than being more like Christ and knowing the Lord more intimately, but if there is some other reward that awaits us then that's cool too. I guess it doesn't matter, but I liked the way that this was positively framed instead of saying that after he judges our hearts he'll punish us accordingly.

Anyway, it's just more reason to be aware of my motivations and to be conscious of the fact that I'm responsible for more than my actions. As we see continually throughout scripture, God cares way more about our hearts (the conditions they're in...who we're letting control them...etc.) than our adherence to rules. I have to tend to my heart as well as my behavior, aligning my feelings with his heart and letting Christ's example (of innocence and purity) shape my every intention and consideration.

october 2012

In October 2012, something quite unusual happened. Although I'm used to having a team to root for in the MLB playoffs (namely, the Cardinals), for the first time in my life the only three teams I've ever cared about could all be found playing games in October. I'm not used to this kind of conflicting emotion.

When I was little I watched the Orioles play (and lose) a lot. I read their statistics in the newspaper at least four times a week (some days I didn't remember to check). I waited and waited for their winning percentage to break above .4-- and I mourned when playoffs came and they weren't even close to the Wild Card position (it was only a little bit of mourning; I never really expected them to make it so I wasn't that disappointed). But they were not my team. They were just the team that played closest to my home. I did own an Orioles sweatshirt, but that was only because I went to Camden Yards and sat up way at the top and froze while the O's lost 10-5 to the Braves and my dad pitied my 8 year old self and bought me a sweatshirt.

My team was and always has been the Cardinals. And I liked them before Mark McGwire thankyouverymuch. I can't quite pinpoint my reason for adopting this franchise as my own (though I think it has something to do with our local minor league team), but in any case I was there when Big Mac became a home run king and I was there (fruitlessly) cheering on the continuation of the Curse of the Bambino in 2004 and I've been there for every playoff loss (and win...) for the past 13 years (because for the first few years of my fanhood, the Astros were stellar). It was incredible to experience them playing a home game, albeit slightly disillusioning because I also realized that they have the same kinds of vendors that everyone else has--but whatever, they're still rock stars to me.

And then one day in late 2004 I read in the Washington Post (my only source for baseball statistics and really any other news) that the Montreal Expos were moving to D.C. They were trying to become my home team and I would not have it. But it was ok, I eventually realized, because they were not trying to be better than the Orioles: they were in fact almost decidedly worse. I've now been to a few games in their new stadium, and I admit that I like having a team within Metro distance and whose players I can follow with a little bit more interest than the O's (who, after retiring Cal Ripken, have made no significant impact on my life). The Nats have been truly inspiring this season, going from literally never having a winning season (as the Nats) to having the best record in baseball this year. It's clear that they've been going through major changes and improvements every season but I still didn't expect them to make it to the playoffs until I was old and had kids of my own.

So this leaves me with a lot of conflict. I can clearly root for the O's (I could cheer for anyone against the Yankees let's be real); despite their loss tonight I have hope. I'm at a loss for the Cards-Nats series because I can't really watch either of them lose because then I can't be happy for the winning team, so I'm going to settle for cheering on the winner after they've made it through this week. But if it comes down to it, I'm not going to lie, I want to see the Orioles on top. After losing every season since their loss in the first playoffs I ever watched (1997 Marlins whatupppp), I think it's time...and as much as I'd like to wait another 15 years to see them succeed I would really just like for them to win already. But if they have to lose, hopefully one of my NL teams will be around to avenge them in the World Series.

rest

It's ironic that I'm blogging about rest because I have a midterm tomorrow for which I haven't begun studying and I spent the day at Busch Gardens and I spent the weekend catching up on sleep. It sounds pretty much like I have this whole rest thing down pat. But I think instead of rest, what I've been doing is not worrying. I know that I have work to do. I've done the work that absolutely needs to get done and I'll get around to the rest when it needs to happen (studying for this test probably being the first priority, after this blog). I just haven't been worrying about it.

But that's not really rest. Instead of worrying about work I've been running around having fun, being social, taking care of IV business and pretending to do Monroe work (priority number two at this point...it actually needs to be finished on Tuesday though for a presentation). It's certainly a good thing that I haven't been tryna do these things and worry about work, but these things aren't a good replacement for work/worry. Rest is. Just rest. Resting in who I am and who God has made me to be. Resting in his word and his purposes and his love. It takes work--it isn't easy to turn off our brains, to stop worrying, to become unavailable in cases of emergency, to say no to hanging out...but ultimately it is refreshing and necessary and so wonderful.

After this Monroe thing I'm going to need to soak up some more rest. Until then I'll continue to let my value be derived in Jesus and try to not let that demotivate me from studying.

Also if you feel unsatisfied by this post read this other post on the same topic!

first class

I'm currently sitting in class waiting for the professor to show up. It's been 19 minutes and so far no one has left. If this were an experiment testing our patience I think I would win...but only because I have a class next door immediately after this class, and I don't want to leave for 15 minutes only to return 15 minutes later. So really my laziness would be a confounding factor in this hypothetical experiment. You'd also have to factor in the access to computers, since I probably wouldn't be interested in sitting somewhere for an hour unless I had a computer or a place to nap (or something interesting to read, but who brings light reading to the first day of class?)...

Curious. Anyway. Great start to the semester!

the you-don't-know-me quiz

1. What is my number one fear? (hint: I first thought of it in ninth grade and probably only one person knows it)
2. Name three things I said I'd never do, but then ended up doing them.
3. What kind of house would I like to live in, if I have to live in a house? (hint: I've mentioned a few kinds on my blog)
4. What is my favorite thing about myself? (there are a lot, but really only two of them are acceptable answers)
5. Name my five favorite movies. (this is easy)
6. Name ten things I don't do on principle.
7. When I was little and played pretend, what did I pretend my name was?
8. What is the most upsetting thing to me?
9. What is my favorite fictional family and why?


There's no one who can answer these questions correctly except for me, and I'd be pretty impressed with anyone who could answer two of them because I purposely picked stumpers. This is starting to sound ridiculous so I'll get to my point. I'm often torn between wanting people to fully understand me and wanting to be super secretive and mysterious. For the most part I like to be mysterious, but I also believe in the power of vulnerability. I don't want people to really know me, I guess for fear of rejection, but I want to know them because I'm curious and like to know things so I have to let them know me. And when I do I realize that it's not a super big deal to reveal things...it's a way bigger deal to me than to anyone else, so hiding things really only hurts me and no one else.

The thing is, God knows all these things and way more about me--things that I don't know about my future and purpose and things that I've forgotten already--and he still loves me. But this really isn't enough for him: he wants us to fully rely on him, but he also wants us to interact with and love and confess our sins to each other. Being closed-off and secretive doesn't help anyone get anywhere. It isolates us and allows us to feel like we're in control of some small aspect of life. Openness, honesty, real vulnerable love--these are very frightening but so worth it. I can't really say anything more about that. Just do it. Open up. The only person holding you back from deep relationships is you.

Bonus fact for reading this: my favorite fictional family is the Glass family from J.D. Salinger's short stories. I think they're pretty baller and I think if you read the stories you'd understand why.

on pre-senioritis

I am afraid that I've reached that point: I'm not really looking forward to classes starting. Everyone said that this would eventually happen to me, but I doubted them right up until the end of last semester when I burned myself out writing papers and taking exams between worrying about my friends graduating and my extracurricular obligations. Let's just say that I'm still tired when I think of that first week of finals! So much so that I'd like another break before I have to do it again...unfortunately this week I do have to take a test and I do have to write a paper and these are things which I've already spent a good part of my summer preparing for--which makes it not much of a summer break. I thought that I would enjoy more academics in the summer, and that I would like an extra challenge, but I misjudged the amount of tired I would be after the spring. I do think it's better to have something interesting to do than nothing at all, but summer just hasn't been as restful as I need it to be.

Anyway, instead of chalking it up to my research project I'll blame senioritis. I also never thought that this disease would affect me: I actually did better my senior year of high school than all my others despite taking 7 AP exams and leading three clubs and already being admitted to W&M for the majority of the year. Naturally I assumed that I just performed well under pressure, a hypothesis which all of my college experience also validates (more credits=higher gpa, more responsibility=better test scores, etc.).

But currently I'm at a point where I'm not eagerly looking forward to the next academic challenge. I'm ready to learn more about living life and taking responsibility, not about history (thank goodness I'm done with those GER4s!). Perhaps once I'm done with my summer responsibilities and once I've purchased new notebooks I'll start getting excited about textbooks and syllabi, but right now those are looking like some big hurdles and I'm feeling like taking a nap instead. Nine days is plenty of time to write a paper. Or five half-days. Or a night or two. Right? As long as I can get some rest in, instead of spending all these days worrying about not writing that paper, I think I'll be okay.

I don't catch

If you've spent an extended period of time with me, or for some reason have tried throwing something at me to catch, you will undoubtedly have heard the words "I don't catch" come out of my mouth. This is the most extreme form of operant conditioning which I practice on myself and I deemed it worthy of its own post.

To be fair, I also don't throw things. This is really where the subject became a matter of principle so I will have to talk about the two rules in tandem. Travel back with me to senior year of high school. At this point in my life, I have spent years trying and failing to catch things that are thrown at me. I am terrible at softball; I will drop your keys; in short, it is embarrassing for me to attempt to (and fail to) catch literally anything that is thrown my way. Yes, I am naturally extremely uncoordinated. You wouldn't think so to look at my wardrobe (yes, that was a play on words). So 17-year-old Marisa still has some level of patience with attempting to catch things because of social expectations.

Enter the newspaper room now and find everyone throwing things everywhere. Now, these are not important things to be thrown: they are not typically jump drives or folders; rather, they are footballs and wads of paper. This is not ok with me. This is unproductive. This is dangerous. According to my teacher, someone got a pencil stuck in their arm once! This is not ok with me. Being editor-in-chief means that I make the rules. And my number one rule pretty quickly becomes: no throwing. By my nature I do not choose to throw things, so "I don't throw things" isn't so much a rule as it is an explanation. But pretty soon I have to adopt the "I don't catch things" rule in order to be consistent in my life.

Today, four years later, I no longer have to pretend that I think I have the chance of catching something; it's clear that I'm not going to do it and I make no pretenses about it. At this point I think my reflexes are so bad that it would take me years to learn to catch again, if it's even possible anymore. Indeed, instead of dodging something thrown my way I now let it hit me so that the thrower feels bad for not remembering my rule. I am more than happy to cross the room to get/give something, so it's not even a matter of inconvenience for the thrower! Some people still insist on throwing things and I insist on letting them hit me. Maybe it's really silly of me, but it's important to me to stand by your principles, even if it means getting some bruises and getting made fun of--at least I'm minimizing my therbligs.

500 days of somebody that I wished would call me maybe

Interesting thought exercise: suppose for a moment that Carly Rae Jepsen and Gotye were singing about the same relationship. You can pretty easily see how expectations would lead to drastically different results for each of them. While Carly Rae is looking for a fun time, she's also portraying a pretty indifferent side to this guy who she wants to call her (maybe being the operative word here). Gotye was looking for something serious and when that didn't pan out he got seriously depressed and introspective.

Even more interesting thought exercise: look for the similarities between these popularly embraced emotions and the gender roles in the 2009 film 500 Days of Summer (which is one of my favorite favorite favorite movies). In both of these scenarios, the girl is the one looking for independence and the guy is the one looking to settle down. I think this really resonates with our culture because we do value both of these things, but when it comes in the opposite form (girls looking for stability and guys seeking independence) we brush it off as normal or even antiquated. This theme is also featured prominently in How I Met Your Mother in Ted and Robin's characters. Our culture really likes strong women and sensitive men, I think because for so long that just wasn't the standard. When people who are already like this see it in pop culture it validates their feelings! I love Robin's character because, despite or perhaps because of some of her extreme problems from childhood and unhealthy lack of vulnerability, she seems real, and like an extreme version of me. And I can see aspects of Ted in my friends and I think that's great that some people (especially men) can hold on to ideals of romance.

I guess my point was that this is all fine and good in pop culture, but in real life you need to have a clear idea of and honest communication about your expectations if you want to avoid playing Somebody That I Used To Know on repeat for a week and crying every time. Or if you don't want to spend 500 days pining over someone. Or if you don't want to put someone else in that situation. (I'm looking at you, Summer. And Robin. And Carly Rae.)

12 days of bryan

I move out of Bryan in 12 days, and after that I'm home for a bit then right back to Williamsburg to move into Ludwell! Ludwell (or Studwell, as we've deemed it) is an apartment complex that is technically on-campus housing, though it is located off-campus. I'll have access to reslife perks like an RA, a laundry room and fun door tags, but it will still be a huge departure from the dormlife experience I've had for the past three years. This is my last time living in a dorm-dorm, maybe forever? So I'm going to make the most of these days. Here are some things I'll miss (numbers are all approximations):

• 12 cookers cooking (simultaneously in a small kitchen)
• 11 cockroach scares
• 10-degree fluctuations
• 9 Glee parties
• 8 missing forks
• 7 Wawa runs (a week)
• 6-hour conversations
• 5-minute showers
• 4 different roommates
• 3 stalls in every bathroom
• 2 sweet suitemates
• and a pokemon competition!

you didn't build that

I've seen a lot of people recently getting mad at President Obama for his comments in Roanoke, so I thought I would find out the context of his controversial words and I ended up reading his entire speech. Here's the relevant part, with my thoughts to follow:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.) If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

Not gonna lie, this is pretty persuasive to me. I recognize that some businesses have been created from the ground up, not from any government handouts, but the fact remains that they simply could not have been founded in many other times or places. The American system really is great and people often forget about the "free" services and conveniences we have access to, which allow this to be possible. And Obama is correct--we did not build anything from scratch. Every business in this country has, intentionally or not, benefited from some of the "basic freedoms" guaranteed to citizens, whether that's from public education, copyright laws, or basic infrastructure, because every citizen has benefited from these things. Although businesses may be started without explicit government help, the American government has set up all the necessary conditions and provided the necessary tools for businesses/individuals to thrive (like tax cuts for small business owners and every single American history class which teach us the value of entrepreneurship and breed us for the pursuit of the American Dream).

While I'm fairly certain that some NGO's helped develop the internet and that individuals (and not The Government) have made the most progress or the most significant effects on any particular person's life (like the idea of a great teacher somewhere along the road), there is such a thing as a positive externality and the government has capitalized on some great efficiencies (like fire-fighting). This is common enough in the first world today that we don't consider what our life would look like without a lot of government support (post office, police, national security, highways, etc. would be left to the free market and I think a lot of people would find it extremely inconvenient....imagine having to pay a fee for every road you drive on! This used to happen and it was terrible). I don't know much about health care but I'd like to think that it's a similarly efficient step toward freeing people to pursue the so-called American Dream, and I'd like to trust my politicians to know what's the most efficient and fair use of my tax money.

I'm currently reading Radical by David Platt, which calls the American Dream the antithesis to the gospel (disclaimer: I am not done reading it and therefore cannot articulate a complete analysis). While it seems self-absorbed and hypocritical of a Christian to say that they got where they did simply because of their own smartness/work ethic, I think that the American Dream that President Obama is talking about is not a bad thing. Although it doesn't explicitly acknowledge our dependence on God, it does on each other and on the system that we were born into. (I think it's important to note that a lot of people were born in America and feel entitled to certain things, being American citizens, but never acknowledge that their freedom exists because of a lot of spilled blood. This idea has been brought to you by an analogy to the gospel introduced to me by my pastor.) I don't think that the gospel and the American Dream, as outlined below, are mutually exclusive.

And what this reminded me of was that, at the heart of this country, its central idea is the idea that in this country, if you’re willing to work hard, if you’re willing to take responsibility, you can make it if you try.  (Applause.)  That you can find a job that supports a family and find a home you can make your own; that you won’t go bankrupt when you get sick.  That maybe you can take a little vacation with your family once in a while -- nothing fancy, but just time to spend with those you love.  Maybe see the country a little bit, maybe come down to Roanoke.  (Applause.)  That your kids can get a great education, and if they’re willing to work hard, then they can achieve things that you wouldn’t have even imagined achieving.  And then you can maybe retire with some dignity and some respect, and be part of a community and give something back.  (Applause.) That’s the idea of America.  It doesn’t matter what you look like.  It doesn’t matter where you come from.  It doesn’t matter what your last name is.  You can live out the American Dream.  That’s what binds us all together. 

His remarks can be found here.

While I certainly think that living life in response to God and relying on him is more important than relying on my own ability to work hard and then vacation, I really think that our country is great and I am so grateful to live in a place where I trust that my education is relatively unbiased and affordable, and my work prospects are decent. I don't know where I stand politically or who I'll vote for in November, but I thought that this was some interesting rhetoric to consider. I'm not all about the Taking Video Clips Out of Context strategy to select my candidate of choice (or to find things to get upset about).

operant conditioning

I am currently training myself to develop a number of habits, for reasons somewhat ambiguous even to me. I just know that I like being kind of quirky, and that means having weird habits. In order to achieve this goal I have been employing the psychological concept of operant conditioning. Here are some of the things I'm working on:

• take calcium gummies > brush teeth > go to sleep. I have a lot of difficulty making myself go to sleep because I just want to stay awake and be productive or think, even when the lights are off and I should be resting. So I'm trying to wait to take my calcium until I'm very sleepy so that in the future when I take it my body will immediately want to go to bed. So far this has been entirely inefficient. 
• feel nervous > bend fingers. I tend to rip my nails a lot because a) I have weak nails (see:needing calcium gummies) and b) I get bored/nervous and need something to do with my hands. So recently I've been bending my ring fingers as far forward as possible, giving me a distraction and my hands something fun to do (I feel so flexible afterwards!). Status: way too successful. I find myself doing it unintentionally a lot. Unfortunately I'm still ripping my nails, but the positive externality is that the new habit has been really helpful in identifying times when I'm feeling stressed out (as opposed to just bored) due to me intentionally only doing it when I am stressed. Perfect! I love being able to analyze and understand myself. 
• write the letter "a" > put a hat on it (like they appear in times new roman or basically any legit font). I actually gave up on this about two years ago, but I spent a year training myself to do it very consciously so that by the end of the year it came naturally. I thought it would be good because I think that sometimes they look more professional, but I realized that it was just too much work (I have two of them in my name...I'm not about spending up to 20% more time every time I write my name). When I one day stopped doing it, I congratulated myself on a successful year and never looked back. 
• get bored? > drink camelbak. all day erry day drink my camelbak. I used to be really bad at hydrating myself, but ever since the purchase of my camelbak I have seen a significant increase in my water imbibition. I even reach for it (and sip it) when there's no water left (a few drops of water are better than no water...?). I just need to remember to fill it up more often/motivate myself to go all the way downstairs to the water fountain, and I'll be able to call this a success. 
• lock car > sing the chorus to Miike Snow's Animal. I'm not sure why this started but it has been wildly successful. I sometimes start singing it without noticing that I just locked my car and it may take me a few minutes to understand why it's playing in my head. The sound of my beeping lock just reminds me of the song, ok?

Habits that would be more useful but less interesting:

• any kind of exercise
• reading before bed
• reading when I wake up
• good posture
• always eating breakfast
• etc.

And obviously this is one of many instances in which I prefer interesting to useful.

day in the life

I'm going to tell the internet about my day. It wasn't a particularly exciting day, and it's actually not an accurate depiction of my summer because I usually decide to get dressed and do things with other people (coffee dates, gym, grocery store, bank, work, lab, meals, etc.), but not today. Nope. Today was a stay-in-bed day and I am so grateful for that. Sometimes you just need a day of rest!


10:30-12:30
Woke up from a dream about my sister calling me and making unusual demands which I couldn't satisfy, all while being attacked by a cat (and I think a bear) and at the grocery store. It turns out my friend was calling me to let her in the building, so I had to wake up and let her in. Did my daily bible reading, wondered how many more lists of names I was going to have to read. Did some life/IV organizing! Made a master agenda for the fall, thought about goals, sent some emails, played with some google docs. Read all of my journal thoughts from the past semester and pondered them.

12:30-2:30
Ate a delicious sandwich on free bread from The Crust! But then found out the turkey may have been starting to mold. Felt a little funny, but probably only for psychological reasons. Did some facebook stalking. Watched the season 2 premiere of Falling Skies and played minesweeper.

2:30-3:30
Did some Monroe things re:recruiting participants for my experiment. (See, I do research.) Finished reading Ordering Your Private World which totally confirmed my need for rest today.

3:30-4:30
Napped.

4:30-now
Read another chapter in The Hobbit. Blogged about my research. Started writing this post.


Now it's time for dinner (bagel bites and salad with Taylor) and then more relaxing!

patience

Random thoughts on patience:

• Can you be patient for something you're unsure of? Or is that just trusting God/being peaceful?
• Patience is like a muscle which requires exercising to improve its strength. But sometimes we're called to exert more than we think we can handle.
• Patience and peace can cause each other or be intricately related, but they're not the same thing.
• God was first patient with us (love is patient...only God can perfectly love).
• Corollary: true, pure patience (not self-interested) can only come from God.
• Why is patience so important in love? Is it about respecting other people? Is it about respecting God's timing? Is it about forgiveness--being patient with faults? Is it always temporal, or can it be about something less tangible like being patient for someone's maturity?
• Patience can shed light on an abundance of other topics in our lives or virtues which we aspire to attain. So many things require patience first. Patience is sometimes just about letting go of the illusion of control.

Hmmmmm.

4th of July

I love the 4th of July. It's the perfect day of summer: everyone wears the same colors, everyone enjoys the warm nights, and everyone gets crazy by trying to plan the best celebration ever. Some of the my most vivid memories come from the 4th, from midnight swimming to getting stuck in a museum exhibit featuring lots of bones during a thunderstorm/power outage (it was pitch black and I was a little more than terrified). But the most interesting 4th has to be from my childhood:

Circa 1996 we celebrated at my grandma's house and we all took family pictures and my sister and I wore matching dresses. We had these dolls named Rachel and Rebekah who had matching dresses as well (which my mom made). Rachel was about the size of an American Girl doll and she had curly blonde hair and a squishy body. Rebekah had lighter blonde hair in two braids and she was a little bit bigger than a Barbie. Now Rebekah was the best doll in the world. I have no memories of her aside from this day, but for at least the duration of the day I was obsessed with her. In our family pictures my sister got to hold Rebekah (I think because she was the littler doll) and I had to hold Rachel, and I was not happy about it. I was upset and didn't want to be in the picture but my parents somehow made me sit down and hold Rachel (I think I cried a lot before relenting). But there was one thing that they could not make me do: smile. So in our family pictures, instead of making an angry face or sucking it up and smiling, I just looked passively away from the camera into the distance with a meaningless expression. Hipster child in the making.

Almost every 4th since then has been spent with my sister in some fashion, whether in our neighborhood or in DC or in Williamsburg (the first year I went to DC she stayed at home and we got rained on forever--I think that's been our only separation). So it's very strange to me to not have her with me to play cards and find overpriced food and go for a swim...I'm missing her a lot. :/

Anyway, personal and historical significance, it's just a great day of summer. There's a lot of pressure on it to be the best day ever, but random adventures make it the most fun and it's one of the few times when I support a complete lack of planning. Also, the fireworks in CW this year may have been the best fireworks I've ever seen, no pressure 2013.

halfway there!

The year is halfway over! Recently I've been worrying about a lot of things that are coming up...applying to graduate school, figuring out how to balance my time when it's senior year and I just want to hang out and do senior things, to honors thesis or not to honors thesis (I'm turning it into a verb don't even worry), Urbana, NomCom, apartment; you name it and I've been worried about it. Last year I felt really convicted to "be where I am" and that thought occurred again to me when I realized that the year was only halfway over, and yet I was sitting here worrying about the next six months...in reality, I think the next six months can take care of themselves as they get here.

What reminded me of this fact (aside from it being July--I couldn't get my calendar to hang up so it's not even a new page that's reminding me) is that I'm reading through the Bible this year with Katie (/Katie's home church). We just finished the book of Psalms and are about to start reading it again (everything else we're only reading once). I thought about where I would likely be the next time I finished reading Psalms--at Urbana, my grad school apps will be done, the new IV exec will be decided, sleepover month will have been a success and (I hope) most of my friends will still like me and still hang out with me. I'll be content. Or maybe I'll be miserable, or maybe I still won't know what I'm doing after college, or maybe I'll be voted out of my apartment for making too many cupcakes. Wherever I am, I'll be praising God.

How do I know this? Because the God who inspired the Psalms doesn't change. He is praiseworthy all the time, and his goodness does not depend on my happiness (or on my existence--hey, the world could end before I even get my Christmas presents). Even if I'm in a different place than I expect, God will be just as good. I will have the same need for grace (probably more of it). And I hope that my desire for him will be stronger than ever, despite the uncertainties I'll continue to face in 2013.

It's so easy to say that I trust God but hard to put into practice, but hopefully blogging about this will remind me every time I read a psalm to put my faith in the Lord and not in myself--not in my contingency plans, not in my rationality, and certainly not in my ability to keep calm and carry on throughout the challenges facing me.

interesting things

One of the reasons I haven't been posting a lot on my blog is that I'm pretty sure my life is devoid of interesting things. I'm not experiencing a new culture or making a huge transition, and you might think: this is strange, since Marisa had possibly the most boring summer ever last year and still managed to entertain people with her blog. I guess that's because I was blogging about thoughts instead of experiences? In any case, I started to feel particularly boring, so here are some things that I've been up to and I suppose qualify as interesting, if you're really into the slightly mundane aspects of life:

• I took the GRE last Saturday, and everyone wants to know how I did and where I want to go to grad school, and I have neither of those answers. Of course I immediately looked up the initial score they gave me (it's a computer-based test, so they give you an estimate of how you did immediately upon completion...scary!)--but I don't really know if it's good enough for where I want to go, since I don't really know where I want to go. (This is all regarding obtaining a PhD in economics.)
• I purchased checks for the first time! They're pretty cool, and I actually know how to write them thanks to the IV checking account. I'm so grown up. I had to go to the bank twice to accomplish this.
• I'm keeping a super organized account of my spending for the summer, which basically serves to make me feel like a terrible person all the time. I love keeping a budget but I just keep spending money and I can't stop because they're all necessary things. 
• I discovered this really neat website, TeuxDeux, which I can use for my daily tasks (laundry, library, emailing, etc.). It's really clean and organized and much better than Google tasks or sticky notes at keeping me on-task.
• I finished watching Community! Sad day.
• I read like half of Jane Eyre the day before/of my GRE test, because it was the second half and I needed to know what happened. I think Charlotte Bronte examined part of my soul before writing that book; yes, it was that good.
• My legs hurt all the time from standing at work/occasionally working out. I've also learned that I can read The Hobbit while on the elliptical...score!
• There was a minor ant infestation in our room in Bryan last night, but it was pretty contained...just frightening.
• There's a new store in New Town that's basically a novelty/candy store which is really cool, but I haven't bought anything there yet.
• Taylor (roommate) and I developed a checklist of things to do over the summer, which we will eventually make it though, promise! Mostly they're related to food, but also of note: go to the zoo (this weekend!) and get buff (by the end of the summer, as measured by our pull-up ability).
• Research is going swimmingly--we should be ready to recruit participants come second summer session (which is to say, July). Until then it's experiment design and coding time! I've been spending a good amount of time in my lab working on this either in the morning or afternoon any given day, depending on my work schedule or other important commitments...like coffee dates. :)
• Relevant (my church) is going through some changes, which is nice to see--they just announced their new leadership team and are looking into a new building. Although it's a smaller crowd without most of the students, it's been fun to hang out more with the regulars/adults.
• I joined a small group that's studying the fruit of the spirit, facilitated by none other than Catherine Townes! (Sidenote: she has a really cute apartment! I shouldn't have expected any less.) It's exciting; I love that in the summer you do have a smaller group of people around so that it's easier to spend time with people you might not have time for throughout the year.
• At work I've learned how to chop all kinds of foods! Also, yesterday I gave in and made myself a falafel pita because everyone else was (don't worry, we still had to pay...half-price!). It was super yummy! I tried like three things I hadn't ever eaten before, but they were really good! I think I'm growing up, but actually. Like, I even got green peppers on there. So now I know that I can fully recommend this pita, in addition to the others I've tried (which are only the caesar and buffalo chicken...eeep). But I just want to eat all of them all the time!
• I'm trying to cook more but it's difficult when I work a lot at dinner time. So far Taylor and I have made fajitas, bacon/cheese bagels and lots and lots of pasta, but when I cooked with Jamie we did manage to include some vegetables. On the bright side, we just eat sandwiches for lunch so that's always something yummy and cheap to get by on (99 cent bread!).

That's mostly it for Williamsburg--some rain this afternoon, some people visiting soon, and lots and lots of sleep. Maybe boring, but I'll take it.

things I still don't understand

• the Libor-OIS spread
• Tim Tebow
• hummus
• why I stay up so late
• why I regularly dream about pokemon
• why Adam Levine's voice is so soothing
• pre-meds
• color catchers (I don't trust them)

...to be continued.

(part one)

work!

I haven't had a job since 2008 so you might think that I would hate working now, but you'd be wrong. I've been at my new place of employment for almost two weeks and think it's great! I'm only there for a few hours at a time and I get free froyo, but aside from those perks, I actually have really enjoyed the tasks assigned to me (from cleaning vents to slicing onions). I feel like a productive member of society!

My past work experience is pretty scattered, and though I've had odd jobs (from designing layouts for a newspaper to constructing shelves) which provided me with some extra cash, it's really nice to be earning real money again. And my first job was working at an after-school center, so though it was a step up from babysitting it wasn't exactly food service. Here are some of the new things I'm experiencing which I think will really be helpful in developing my character into a more mature adult:

• Having an irregular work schedule. This is making me dependent on my employers and is throwing my idea of order and schedules out the window! I won't know what next week will look like until the end of this week, and it's kind of scary but kind of nice to not have to worry about it and just do what I'm told.
• Being new at things. I have to ask for help with all kinds of tasks (yesterday, it was working the sink!). This is great for keeping me humble!
• Having a uniform(ish). This is super new to me! I have to do so much laundry, which is good because it keeps me from putting it off all the time.

Otherwise I'm a pretty responsible being already, and I think I've always known the value of hard work, but it is neat to get a new experience reinforcing that. I really like doing what I'm told in an efficient manner (see: homework, every volunteer experience ever, etc. etc.) so it's not really surprising to me that I enjoy being a good worker.

The other major task of my summer is my research project, which I should technically be working on right now because I'm sitting in my private lab in Morton, but more on that later.

roommate bonding

I've been lucky to have a string of incredible roommates throughout college, and let me tell you, there is nothing in the world quite like roommate bonding (except for realizing that your friend is suddenly your best friend, that's great too!). Sometimes it takes effort, sometimes it's natural, gradual, discrete or immediate; sometimes you're already friends but still need to go to the next level. Maybe other people have more uniform relationships with different roommates, but mine have all been pretty different. I think the best kind of story is one of friendship, and the unique experience of living with someone--being with them during exciting times, seeing them at their worst, knowing their schedule almost like it's yours, discovering quirks, dealing with bugs, describing dreams--can form some of the deepest friendship bonds I've known.

I have been incredibly lucky to live with some of my best friends, both during the academic year and during the summer sessions in Williamsburg. Summer roommates are fantastic because schedules are chill, late nights are possible and cooking adventures abound. With so few people around campus, it's great to have someone who you can rely on to force you into some minimal social interaction (even if that's just watching TLC together). And because it's for such a short time, it's easy to live with friends; habits can remain quirks instead of developing into peeves.

My roommate for the past two years is one of my favorite people...and one of my favorite stories. We lived on the same freshman hall and decided quickly after meeting each other that we were compatible and would make great roommates. Throughout the year we didn't spend much time together, yet somehow ended up signing up to live in a suite with a pair of roommates from our hall who we each knew better than we knew each other. The first semester was kind of awkward. We talked some, mostly about economics and APO, which we were both joining. We watched a lot of tv separately and didn't interact much, but we didn't have any complaints with each other. At this point I don't remember what it was that pushed us over the edge--what made us friends rather than just cohabitants--but we both agreed that we had a weird first semester together. After we mutually noted the awkwardness, it went away. We've had a lot of bonding times since then, helped a lot by living in a normal double rather than a suite the following year when we realized how great we were at being roommates (not to brag or anything). Between having economist brains, loving dresses and loving great television, I'm super sad to not live with her again but am so grateful for her friendship--which would, let's face it, be nonexistent if we hadn't had great late night conversations.

But, on the plus side, next year I get to share an apartment with three great girls and am so excited to see how our friendships develop. (Disclaimer: my future roomie is already my other half.) And in the meantime I get to live with another friend over the summer! We've already dealt with a cockroach corpse and I'm sure have much more bonding to accomplish before August rolls around. :)

On top of great relationships, I've learned so many life lessons from striving to be a great roommate, from what is uncompromiseble to how rewarding it is to sacrifice my time for the benefit of someone else...and also that it's important to eat fruit, call your parents, read, go to the gym, confront conflict, keep someone's trust, listen intently, live purposefully, sleep occasionally and just take out the trash if it bothers you so much.

rockbridge recap

As you may have noted in the past two years, after finals intervarsity folk head to the mountains to this camp called Rockbridge. I hesitate to call it a camp because we live in some fine dorms and get amazing food (I finally figured out we get the same menu every year, hahhhh), but nonetheless we do have scheduled time and then free time and there are like 500 people there. After my freshmen year I was required to go for small group leader training; last year I couldn't stay away and did a track called "identity transformed" (this was also a transformational time for my blog because I for the first time got more than 15 readers: read that post); this year I was also required to go, being on exec. My scheduled time included a lot of talking to the rest of our exec, assessing our chapter, setting goals for the next year, praying over our campus, etc. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of spiritual growth, since all of that sounds like a lot of business.

I was planning for a week of business, relaxation and emotional draining because in the past exec seemed to be very tired after talking about priorities all day. And then after that they were incredibly kind to me--even though I was pretty sure they were the ones in need of some personal care, many of them spent time hanging out with me and listening to me work through problems. I greatly appreciated this and considered it then my duty to do the same for others. I confess that I was not particularly looking forward to being the advice-giver after a semester of already holding this position (or, more like a lifetime; I have been \gifted in terms of listening ability).

But let me tell you how that expectation was changed. I knew already that this year's exec got along really well. Although we have had tremendously long meetings, everyone's been a trooper about them, knowing that it's better for us to discuss important topics than for them to fester. We love hanging out together! Even though we have different social circles we've found time to eat giant bowls of ice cream or watch New Girl together, which has been very fun. So this week was looking pretty good: I got to have a week of exec meetings!! I feel like we never have enough time to talk about business, so it was great to talk through some of the things that we didn't have time for last semester. We also had fun together (we had an impromptu photoshoot so that we were sure to get pictures with Sharese, who had to leave early). :)

In the middle of the week I started getting overwhelmed with the amount of things we were expected to do and the very little time we had for them, so I kind of checked out. I thought: I can take care of this in the summer. I'll have so much time! But then I started getting overwhelmed at the thought of handling everything myself. Between planning events, thinking about the purpose behind everything we do, coordinating volunteers and so many more things to think about, I realized that would be impossible. I knew I wasn't supposed to do it on my own and yet I was still selfish enough to think that I could.

That's when God comes into the picture. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace during worship the last night and I suddenly realized what I had been doing wrong. God's got my back! Exec's got my back, too! For the logistical things, there's a reason that we have a team of people and not just a dictator/president/single student leader. It's helpful to talk about events and work through all the details and perspectives, and even if it doesn't feel productive, it's absolutely necessary. And for the scope of things I have to handle, from interpersonal issues to complaints to secrets (like Kennis coming to Rockbridge!!!), I'm not strong enough to rely on myself; even though I want to rely on exec, sometimes that doesn't work either. That's where I need God most. I want someone who I can share all of my stress and troubles and thoughts with? Sometimes friends say that they want that but I think we can all agree that it would take an INCREDIBLE friend to withstand all of our anger, pride, sorrow--not to mention joy--and to still be sympathetic and loving. Welp, I don't have to count on one person to do all that, and sometimes I can't find an impartial person to share that with, and that's when I just need to press in to who God is and accept his love. He wants to be my support and I am so grateful for that.

Other great things about Rockbridge:

• Kennis was back from Paris!
• Hanging out with  freshmen sophomores! I'm so excited for people who are newish in our community and there were a lot of newish faces, which was great! I wish I had more time to hang out with everyone :(
• The Big Ten
• The slides! I used to be scared of them, but actually they are probably the least scary thing about camp
• Semi-learning how to wobble
• Hunger Games and our best-dressed tributes
• Hanging out with Marty! Marty is such a huge blessing and great friend. I was so glad he got to be with us during track time!
• Chapter time; I love you allllll :)
• Picture time - many thanks for indulging my request to have pictures with as many people as possible!
• Graduates - so glad I got to see you guys for a week before you headed off to real life
• Worship - so good!  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL37B4C301EE7E918E&feature=view_all (especially 10,000 reasons!)
• God was so present in so many people's lives and I loved hearing about it! Keep telling your stories!

whatup summer 2012

Yeah, I'm back to blogging, maybe for realzies if I find enough time. What's that implication? Marisa won't  have much free time? Allow me to explain.

Things I'm doing this summer:

• Living on campus for both summer sessions
• Conducting upperclass Monroe research project involving economic experiments
• Starting work at Pita Pit
• Taking GRE
• Road tripping to Carlo's bakery
• Making cake pops
• READING (Jane Eyre/The Hobbit/Northanger Abbey/Shakespearean tragedies)
• Picking grad schools
• Cooking (learning how to make things other than just chicken and pasta)
• Tryna find a bible study
• Hanging out with my summer roommate (Tayrawr!) and other friends in the Burg
• Watching The Glee Project!!!
• Actually exploring CW
• Tanning? Or at least beaching
• Maybe seeing Tim Tebow if I'm forced to

So if you're tryna keep in touch, there are a variety of ways to do so:

• Read my blog
• Write me letters or give me your address and I'll write you letters!
• Visit me in the Burg (no guarantee I'll have free time, but it's a pleasant enough place)....but seriously if you want to see me come visit!
• Skype OR hang out on google+ (you know you want to)
• Facebook stalk
• Text/call/email/facebook/tweet/etc.
• Wait until August (not recommended)

spring 2012 accomplishments // notable moments

• Making turtles
• Helping Jamie pack her room
• Not crying at 50/50
• All of the coffee dates
• Running into LJ+grandma while shopping with Mom
• Miss Jones taught me English...
• Learning yoga, preferring pilates
• Late night Kelliann encounters
• So many cupcakes (per usue)
• Campus golf? so mainstream...
• Baking, blogging, tweeting...anything to avoid mathing
• Avoiding pudding wrestling
• Florida nbd
• Maybe getting tan?
• But definitely getting attacked by a seagull
• Hunger Games consumption
• "Let's be friends!"
• Getting adopted at Relevant
• Phone tag, Jamie style...also skyping while driving?!
• Emceeing large group
• Co-starring in three IV videos (bet you can't find the third)
• Joanna's birthday
• Monopoly beast
• Eating like 1/3 of an ice cream cake in one sitting
• Mad about chocolate...yum
• Getting my first applied-for job
• Joining Mortar Board
• Best dress week ever
• Painting out
• Losing twin appreciation week to the best twin ever
• Breaking the world record for most people spooning
• Establishing the term "studwellian"
• Late night exec timez (sometimes unintentionally)
• Hanging out with Katie all of the days...and also reading the beeblay all of the days
• Not getting mono for Rockbridge
• Actually being able to go outside for Blowout
• Writing 16 pages of non-fiction (which is to say a super long paper) in two days...most of which was written between dinner and lunch with a final in between
• Not failing any classes! (yet)

music loves

I have a new playlist on spotify called music loves. This is to distinguish songs from mere "music crushes" which are perfectly pleasant songs, but could come or go in my graces. A song now has to graduate from music crushes, and either goes to "music loves" or goes back into the oblivion of all music ever. I'm really excited about this new development in my organization of music and I hope successfully helps me differentiate songs!

Side note: this does not directly relate to starred songs, which could be on either or neither playlist. Music crushes are like new, popular, catchy songs that I like but that need some testing time to see if I can stand them for several months. Music loves are obviously great songs that make me happy to listen to them (even if they're sad songs). Starred songs are all good songs that I generally approve of, but haven't especially distinguished themselves. And nope, JBiebs hasn't made it to music loves.

Check it outttt!

a note to myself on a good day from C.S. Lewis

"If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as is. 'Why drag God into it?' you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognise their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are 'rich' in this sense to enter the Kingdom."

- C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

best econ pick up lines

• Is that a supply curve in your pocket?

...I'm sorry, I should have said best econ pick up line, because nothing can top that.

career planes

Today I was thinking about the major culture shock I experienced when I went from being homeschooled to attending a public high school of 2800 students. Aside from waking up early, meeting new people, making friends, having strict deadlines and figuring out PE, probably the roughest thing for me was figuring out the expectations I was supposed to be fulfilling. While some teachers would give us a detailed syllabus, I still had difficulty figuring out what was required reading, how to prepare for an exam and--most frustrating--how long they actually meant for my papers to be (does "4 pages" mean double-spaced or single-spaced? Do I count references or headers?). I really just wanted explicit directions before I could get started.

This got me thinking about an analogy for life. We start with some toys and we slowly begin to learn various unrelated things--the color wheel, multiplication, subject-verb agreement, the water cycle. These are tools that we all need at some point in our life but which may seem pointless and frustrating when you first learn them. This is analogous to learning a set of instructions for a task that you don't understand; you just know some basic math, communication skills and safety precautions.

So then you get to high school. You're expected to analyze situations and formulate opinions, but you're still expanding on that initial set of instructions that you learned. You're finding out the reason that they work but you still don't understand why you need them. At this time, you're introduced to the task that you're going to be expected to complete: you get an idea in your head that you're going to have to find a job, but you can't picture it and all of your work is highly irrelevant to that task of choosing a career.

Here's where things diverge. Either you go to college or you find a job, but in either case you're expected to begin the process of self-sufficiency. So you have your set of instructions and as soon as you graduate high school you can clearly see the task in front of you. In our analogy let us picture this as an airplane; up until this point you were picturing the planes your parents fly but you didn't know what yours would look like. You hop into the plane and expect everything to be great, but realize that there are a lot of things that your training didn't cover.

Suppose you go to college and realize that you have some time before your plane has to take off. You might find a co-pilot somewhere along the way, but even they can't tell you where you're flying. You spend some time learning new things: how to live with other people, how to complete ambiguous assignments, how to speak Russian, whatever. And while these are more practical than your previous experiences, they don't tell you how to navigate a plane at all. By the time you get to senior year, the engines are revving up and you're moving to the runway. Everything is shaky and scary and you suddenly have a fear of being up in the air even though you know that you've been training for this for years and that everyone else seems to handle it just fine. But every time you've been in another airplane, your parents were there and they knew how to figure out insurance and groceries and rent and taxes; this time, it seems like you have to know everything.

Once you're in the air, you remember that you still don't know where your destination is. So you just start flying and it feels great but you're burning up fuel. You may have to transfer flights halfway through your journey, and this is terrifying on the descent but once you're in the new plane you realize that this is a much nicer ride and that you really needed that extra fuel. Eventually you have to land. You've come as far as the plane can take you and you think you're ready to just get off. But as you near the ground you start thinking about the future and start wondering what it will be like without the comfort of your cockpit: you know everything you need to about flying a plane but now it's of little use to anyone. Even if you try to tell your kids about it, you realize that they need to fly by themselves in order to get anything out of it. So you land--it might be bumpy--and then you get out of the plane and you stare at it for a little while. You don't know who you are without it. You turn your back and walk away but you can't help but think of it when the morning comes and there aren't any switches to flip or people to call.

Here's the thing. I can't even see my plane. I don't know if it's an economy-sized plane or what. I'm going to climb into it in a year and I know it will be fine, but when it comes time to land I don't want to look back and realize that because I'm retired I no longer have an identity. Don't let your career/plane/destination define you...you spend most of your time making little decisions or even making small talk, and when you're up in the air, the color of the plane and the travel route really don't make any difference. What matters is how closely you're listening to your air traffic controller: are you taking directions from your gut or from someone who can see the big picture? We all have these big plans for our flights but if we all just go at it alone, sooner or later someone will get hurt. You're not always going to get explicit directions; you will have to rely on your previous training. But if you listen closely you may be able to avoid a crash.

What it comes down to is this: can you trust someone who you can't even see? Do you trust God or are you really tryna fly solo?

the hunger games

I will freely admit that one of the reasons I didn't read The Hunger Games last summer when everyone was obsessing over it was that I hate appearing mainstream. I don't want to take the popular opinion of society and adopt it on my own; I don't want to get involved in a movement precisely because other people are doing it. I like being my own person and making my own decisions.

But the other reason I didn't want to read it was that I have an obsessive personality when it comes to fiction. I revisit books, movies and tv shows because I love the characters; because I sometimes think they're real; because I get a kick out of experiencing the same emotions over and over again (Harry Potter anyone?). I had heard that The Hunger Games was an emotionally-charged series and I knew that I should steer clear of it if I wanted to be able to sleep at night.

So when I picked it up last week to read it, I knew full well what I was getting myself into--but I couldn't stand to be left out of the conversations that were happening with greater frequency as the movie release approached. And I knew I couldn't go see the movie without reading the book as that would offend my literary nature.

Once I finished reading the book and watching the movie (both occurring last weekend), there I was in my obsessive state. I couldn't sleep for at least an hour as I mulled over thoughts of Peeta's motivations, Katniss's coldness and the implications they had for my life (and the rest of the books which I have yet to get my hands on). I just kept thinking of what they must have been feeling and wondered what could possibly move the characters from where they were at the end of the book to where they would be at the end of the series (it's already been told to me nbd).

I realized that I would have to put an end to this thinking before I started thinking that they were more real than my real life. The challenge this week for ReLENTless ACT:S of Sacrifice is to sacrifice what consumes you so my goal is to stop being consumed by The Hunger Games. I'm not tryna read the rest of the series in one day; I'll do it when I have the time and when I know it's ok for me to get lost in a fictional world for a day or two. But this will be hard...whenever my mind stops to wander around I end up thinking of the last interaction Peeta and Katniss had and the abundance of emotions that entailed. And here's the thing...I know it's a story, I know it's an overused plot device, I know the bigger implications are about society--and I think about those too, about the situation that the Capitol is in and how they don't know any better than to enjoy murder because that's how they were raised. Could any human be conditioned to that or do they, somewhere inside, know that it's wrong? Is there any room for absolutes in Panem? Or is it the relative decadence versus poverty that makes it all seem so bad?

So now that those thoughts are out there, maybe I can try and think about real life and real justice and real absolutes this week instead of a girl whose idea of radical is to honor an ally's death while ignoring a victim twenty feet away. She may have been sending a rebellious message to the Capitol but if you ask me, putting some flowers around that other kill would have been the coolest thing since Harry Potter "saved" Gabrielle Delacour. I guess Katniss doesn't have a hero complex, just a survival instinct.

bad habits

What I'm about to write might not rub you the right way. You may disagree with me completely, or find me lacking some nuanced understanding of habits/addiction/etc.

I'm still going to say it:

Being "addicted to coffee" is just as unhealthy as being addicted to alcohol.

I don't want to see my friends (or myself) falling into patterns of addiction to anything that isn't wholly and completely good for them, and I can only think of one thing that you can't have too much of: God. Even being addicted to drinking out of my camelbak is pretty unhealthy when you think about it. I still sip it even when I know I've run out of water 30 minutes prior - how messed up is that? It's a habit that has ceased feeding me good things (water) - but if I did have water in there, I would keep drinking until I literally became overhydrated. (I am 95% convinced that this would happen if I had unlimited water and if I didn't have to consciously refill my bottle.) I have so little self control!

I drink coffee every day even though I really have no need for it...it tastes good and gives me a little boost that I could have gotten just by allowing myself to sleep properly. I spend money, time and energy getting this drink that I have no physical need for but the one that I created myself by starting to drink it.

This can also describe alcohol. I love the taste of wine - it's enjoyable to drink with friends - but again I have no need for it. Similar to coffee, it's not bad in itself or in moderation. But when I start to desire something - whether it's every time I go to the grocery store or walk by the Daily Grind - I'm starting a habit that is really difficult to break. I'm certainly capable of stopping and saying, "If I really wanted more energy I would just go for a run." But if more often than not I'm reaching for my wallet to get a $1.50 small Italian roast from the Grind, I think that's unhealthy. I think everything in moderation is fine. But if I make a habit of drinking coffee every morning (or having a glass of wine every time I cook dinner) isn't that going beyond a moderate consumption - and verging toward dependence? If I'm going to be in a terrible mood if I don't get my coffee, then wouldn't it be better to just not have any and start depending not on caffeine but on my relationship with God?

Food for thought. But I think I need to start evaluating my "need" for coffee more regularly.

growing up is hard to do

Matthew 5:43-48

The Message (MSG)

^43-47"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

⁴⁸"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."

ethical dilemma

I have an ethical dilemma which will sound at first terrible, then like not a big deal, then really truly horrible again as I walk through my explanation of it.

Terrible: I am all about taking things that don't belong to me.

But, not actually a big deal: What I mean to say is that I compulsively grab extra napkins, utensils, packs of sugar, samples, pencils, mints - anything I can get for no cost. It's kind of bad, but everyone does it to some extent...and after all, those sugar packets at Wawa are there for the customer, right? Is there a line between acceptable and unacceptable consumption of free products? My behavior certainly isn't extreme enough to catch the attention of an employee. Also, as a utility-maximizing individual I obviously don't want to spend money on that which is freely available to me, as I could easily use it on other items which I would enjoy having.

I have two problems with this which make it really, truly horrible:

1. If I have learned anything from high school and college, it's that Garrett Hardin is probably the most influential article-namer ever and that ecology somehow relates to every subject there is. People love talking about the "Tragedy of the Commons" - the idea that people exploit a limited resource (land...or plastic...or sugar) because they don't own it and don't get to a) reap the benefits of leftovers or b) observe just how much is being consumed. Knowing this, I experience a lot of cognitive dissonance because I know that everyone faces the same incentives as I do and only education can get people to stop over-consuming, barring a total restructuring of free giveaways (eg keeping napkins behind the counter and making people ask for them). So that's the purely cognitive reason I feel bad.
2. I don't think that I'm just a physical being who exists for a while and then ceases to exist. I think humans have a responsibility to maintain their health, help those around them and work to leave their environment better than it was when they found it. We have thoughts and emotions for a reason and we have guilty consciences for a purpose - because there's something that we ought to do and we feel bad when we don't. Collectively, we're the stewards of this planet - so my little part, whether it's recycling or just not wasting material that doesn't (or does...) belong to me, is kind of a big deal. How can I hold others to this standard if I myself don't show that I value it through my actions?

So would it solve my problem if I just paid for these things? Wouldn't that also be wasteful? Shouldn't I stop using sugar in my coffee altogether if I'm really worried about waste?

Yes and no. No, because sugar can and should be enjoyed if it's properly obtained. Paying for it gives more information to grocery stores or other providers and helps markets determine the actual demand and the price that it should sell at in order to be sold in sustainable amounts. I'm not sure if it matters whether Wawa buys it or I do - but Wawa isn't making a profit from it so we can assume that I would probably have a higher willingness to pay, since I actually care whether I get it or not. If everyone just bought their own sugar (I don't think this shift would have a large effect), then perhaps the prices on all goods at Wawa would fall to better reflect their operating costs and this could reduce inefficiency. Similarly sugar prices could rise just a little bit when sold straight to consumers which would probably benefit everyone.

But yes, I should pay for these things, because I could significantly cut back on my waste if I suddenly had an incentive not to use plastic bags for my groceries or not to get a plastic fork at a restaurant - because suddenly, I wouldn't be willing to take them. I have bags and forks at home! So being forced to pay for these things would probably be good all around. [Let me clarify: I'm not saying free mints are a bad thing and that they ruin the market for after-dinner mints. But there are clearly some products which are available for free which don't need to be used at all (grocery store bags, for example) and there are some products which could be consumed at more reasonable levels if they had a cost attached to them (like sugar packets or online movies or what have you).]

Is this blog post going to significantly affect any markets or the well-being of the planet? Definitely not. Will it alter my behavior? Maybe. I can't estimate the magnitude of effects these actions have, but I can say that I'll be living a more fulfilling life by honoring God and thinking a minute about how to honor both his creation and his commands of stewardship.

head vs. heart

I'm going to continue to quote lyrics to make my points for me. See Death Cab for Cutie's Crooked Teeth:

I'm a war of head versus heart,

and it's always this way.

My head is weak, my heart always speaks

before I know what it will say.

I love this song. I used to think that this directly applied to me, like Ben Gibbard was singing to my soul. I enjoy being a very rational person but of course I have emotions and sometimes I felt like I was just following those instead of my logic. I felt like there were two opposing sides to me: Spock and Kirk, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, Economics and English, and probably most significantly: student and Christian.

But religion isn't all about emotions just like it isn't all about singing songs or making cookies. The real struggle is between the natural self and the supernatural - my nature is to act based on a combination of my changing mood and my logic (which is essentially focused on maximizing utility). That is a terrible natural state to be in! My mood can go haywire at the mention of one word and my logic is really dumb considering the fact that I value my personal utility/comfort/health/pleasure like 10 times higher than anyone else's utility. If I stop listening to my natural self and start listening to something that's more wise than my wisdom and more understanding than my limited scope of emotions - then that's when we're getting somewhere. I'm not just talking about the goodness of my heart, because let's face it, that's pretty self-centered. I'm talking about the Holy Spirit.

When I start listening to him I start making really good decisions because I stop caring about appearing consistent or perfect to other people and I don't have to debate which side of me I should give more weight to. Obviously I still use reasoning and I let compassion motivate me but I should never have to decide between a "rational choice" and an "emotional choice," listening to my head OR to my heart. God can use both of them to show me what to do and in the end they shouldn't have to conflict - listening to the Spirit might not lead me to something that I want to do but it will always lead me to something that I know both in my head AND in my heart is good because it aligns with the nature of God - which is pure goodness.

If you're curious - this is what made me start thinking about this:

1 Corinthians 2:10b-16

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. ¹³This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. ¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. ¹⁵ The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, ¹⁶ for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

paradoxes

I love a good paradox. In Comedy, Tragedy and Religion (yeah that's a class here; be jelly), we're learning about how comedy always comes out of tragedy: humor is just another way to look at an incongruity in life and can only be found after a misfortune. So really, being silly or humorous is having the ability to turn a bad situation good. I'm okay with that assessment...it makes sense, then, that a similar sense of humor is so important in a friend! But it's an odd thought - I would naturally think that comedy comes exclusively out of good situations and tragedy of bad.

There are some really interesting mathematical or logical paradoxes out there, including one of my favorite statistics exercises: the Monty Hall problem (read on your own if you're unfamiliar; this blog ain't no stats textbook).

There are some paradoxes that make total sense on an emotional level and zero sense on a rational level, which can often be found in lyrics that are ridiculous but still resonate with you. As you should know I've recently been listening to a lot of Third Eye Blind, and I have it on good authority (the interwebs) that one of their best concert songs is Motorcycle Drive By. It sounds pretty cool and there's some good raw emotion (both sad and somewhat angry/happy?). But more interestingly, the lyrics remind me of one of my favorite songs by Something Corporate. Compare:

Chorus in I Woke Up in a Car:

Well I woke up in a car

I traced away the fog

so I could see the Mississippi on her knees

I've never been so lost

I've never felt so much at home

please write my folks and throw away my keys

Chorus in Motorcycle Drive By:

And there's this burning

like there's always been

I've never been so alone

and I've, I've never been so alive

Okay, so maybe this isn't a study of great lyrics; they're both rather whiny and adolescent punk songs about not being in love which were each popular ages ago (2002/1997) and reference both NYC and driving. Regardless, it's an interesting sentiment. Why should being alone make you alive or feeling lost make you feel at home? Obviously the point is that it's when you're forced to fend for yourself that you truly grow up, whether you want to or not. It's a kind of sad realization but it's necessary and that's what the songs say (not just with their words but with their tones).

At this point I probably sound just as melodramatic as Andrew McMahon, so let me continue. I don't think it's necessary to go and live life on your own and not have relationships - but I also don't think it's a good idea to become entirely codependent on someone as the protagonists previously were (on parents and on this girl), letting yourself or your happiness be defined by them. That's really where paradoxes get intriguing to me. We have to invest in relationships but we can't lose the will to live when they eventually fail us. How can you say you're really invested if you're anticipating an end? This is one of the many reasons that having a relationship with God matters - he never lets go and he doesn't change or get a new boyfriend who takes up all his time or suddenly decide that your friendship isn't mature/fun/easy/good enough. Rooting yourself in a relationship with him enables you to invest in relationships without having to worry about getting burned - because those other relationships can't define you.

This bears emphasizing: faith that God exists and faith that he'll provide for me don't define me either. The series of decisions that I make to listen to his voice, learn about his character, follow his commands, mimic his love and spend time with him every day - these are what define me. These are what make a relationship: not just a commitment or a proclamation of faith but innumerable actions and attitude adjustments, some conscious and some not. Theology can be tricky but, as with all paradoxes, studying it yields truth rather than easy answers, which is fitting for a world full of difficult questions.

concerts

I'm one of those really awkward people who for the most part avoids concerts because I have to stand or dance or jump and I basically just feel like I have to appear cool all the time because for some reason I assume that everyone is looking at me and can tell that I don't know how to have fun.

That said, I think that live music is really cool and so I generally have to weigh the pros and cons of my expected experience in order to pick the option (between going and not going) that will maximize my utility. Yes, some people actually think like this. No, I don't think it's entirely healthy. Anyway, for the most part I have really positive memories associated with the concerts I've attended with the exception of a really weird free rap concert at Lake Matoaka. My all-time favorite concert has to be Something Corporate's reunion tour, which came as the culmination of listening to nothing but SoCo and Maroon 5 for three months. I obviously knew every single song and almost every single word and Andrew McMahon is basically just amazing.

This experience has led me to believe that if I listen to enough of a band I will never be disappointed by their concerts. I don't think that this is true to real life (see: Owl City, come on Adam Young you're just awkward). But in any case I'm listening to as much Third Eye Blind as I can for the next week and a half in preparation for Charter Day. Considering the fact that almost all of their songs are kind of secretly about drugs I'm not sure if this is a good plan or not, but I figure I'll at least consider my $15 well-spent and will attempt to circumvent any cognitive dissonance or yearning to win back my opportunity cost of having a Saturday night in.

If you're also thinking about going, here's my advice: just listen to Motorcycle Driveby five times and you'll be convinced that they're a good band, obviously memorize Semi-Charmed Life and Jumper so you don't feel uncultured, and don't pay attention to the lyrics in Slow Motion or you'll be kind of weirded out.

winter break

Today I got a postcard from my friend in Taiwan. I know she reads my blog so instead of responding to her via postcard/facebook, let me just say now: I miss you, I hope you have great stories about adjusting to Taiwanese culture, and I'll see you soon! Unfortunately my break doesn't have any interesting stories...in fact, I can pretty quickly give you a detailed account of my entire break!

• Returned home, slept, ate, watched Lost
• Went to Maggie's grad party!
• An entire week of sleeping, eating and watching a variety of things including the Mission Impossibles (1-4) and Friends...and more Lost
• Christmas!
• Used new kitchen torch to slightly burn delicacies
• Rediscovered my gameboy, defeated Brock using only Charmander, felt victorious
• Went to New York to half-sleep, eat and watch the ball drop
• Went to Corinne's house and hung out, volunteered, met the cutest 3-4 year old kids ever, read, decorated a detailed gingerbread house, etc.
• Came home, slept, ate, watched Lost and Portlandia and reintroduced reading to my life

Also, I've actually been reading and praying and hanging out with my family, so even though I've been bumming around...it's slightly productive bumming.

In summary, I like break but I miss school - a typical W&M sentiment, I assume. :)

the oscars

Oscar season is finally about to be upon us. This is a big deal to me, not because I really care whose dress Anne Hathaway is wearing or because I really need to know which movies the entertainment industry deems the best of the year - it's a big deal because it's always been a big deal. Like normal families and sports, my family gravitates toward entertainment news. We read Entertainment Weekly, we disagree with Ann Hornaday's always negative reviews in the Post, we watch trailers when they come out and you'd better believe that we watch every bit of bonus material on every DVD that comes our way. I don't mean that I care if someone's engaged or pregnant or supposedly cheating - but I do care if one of my favorite directors is in the talks to produce an adaptation of some book!

It probably started with Lord of the Rings, so let's travel back to 2001. We didn't have cable, Cartoon Network, etc. so we grew up on classics - some Bugs Bunny, Veggie Tales, sure, but also Star Wars, The African Queen, The Court Jester. We had this big book of movie reviews, and if something got 3-4 stars my mom would consider getting the VHS at a used book store (if it got less than 3 stars, then fat chance ever seeing that movie!). We accumulated hundreds of VHS tapes over the years.

But then in 2001 we saw Lord of the Rings. We were obviously obsessed. It was the first DVD we ever got (Christmas 2002) and after seeing the extended edition and watching hours of "making of" material of all three movies, it would be foolish of you to think that we agreed with the Academy's decisions to snub the first two of their deserved accolades (because purportedly, best sound editing does not equal best picture). So for the 2004 Academy Awards, my family was ready for some payoff, and we were quite pleased with the results (11/11 wins for Return of the King). Ever since then, I have been emotionally invested in the Oscars beyond reason - even when I hadn't seen any of the nominated films, I had definite opinions about who should have won. Of course, if a movie I've seen produces a Best Actor win, I feel some sort of victory (it's like I picked the best performance to watch!).

So now I do my best to see the best movies of the year so that I can make my predictions and then feel fantastic when my picks win and angry when they don't. It's kind of silly, but it's what I do. Two weeks to nominations!!

nyc

I'm at the point in my life where everywhere is a potential future home. I am constantly weighing the pros and cons of an apartment, a brick house, a picket fence, a suburb, a commute, a city, a small town - wherever I am, I am making up a new rule for my life. Some of the rules I have drafted:

• For the majority of my life, eggs need to be less than 5 minutes away from me (including bundling up and traveling to the store and shopping and paying - I need to be back to my kitchen within 5 minutes). I find it so inconvenient when I am baking and then in the middle of mixing realize I'm out of an ingredient! So this technically rules in both cities and farms.
• At some point I would like to live in a brick building (that is not a dorm).
• If I own a house it is going to get a silly color somewhere on the outside. Brown houses are so boring! Why not have a blue roof?
• I need to live at least a year in a place where I can travel completely car-free to everywhere I need to go.

Anyway, I was thinking about some of these things when I was in New York for New Year's Eve, and I think I've concluded that I like visiting the city but I don't want to live there. I would, however, still like to live in a slightly less busy/touristy/hectic city for a while.

But more importantly, I was in New York for NYE! I made some new friends, ate some classic NY food, saw fireworks, balloons and the ball drop, stayed up all night - oh yeah and spent the late morning sleeping/freezing on the chilly floor of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and I can now personally attest to the fact that it is the busiest bus station in the world. Nbd. I did not see JB but I almost saw Hugh Jackman? Also I am even more convinced that I will never finish the SA's little instructions for life at W&M, because there is no way I will ever be able to pull off an all-nighter, seeing as my body almost literally shuts down after like 23 hours awake. Also I will never have the patience or time (or interest) to become a sixth man.