My blogs have been mopey again. They have a tendency to do that. It’s not a fair reflection on me. When I’m in a good mood, I go out and do stuff. When I’m in a bad mood, I sit at a computer and write. Naturally, the bad moods are dominant in my writing. I’ll try to throw a little sunshine your way.

God realized that he gave us an absolutely miserable October. He decided to make up for it by blessing us with a truly lovely first week of November. I hope he keeps it up with the nice weather. I’m pretty sure I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (cleverly acronymed SAD). Only instead of seasonal, mine is more up and down. I have Weather Affective Disorder, which I just made up. When the weather is bad, I am unhappy even if things are going well for me. When the weather is nice, I’m downright giddy, even if things are otherwise going poorly. I should move to Hawaii and live my days in bliss. Hawaii has everything: mountains, ocean, forests and warm weather. It rains for five minutes every day, but the sun keeps shining. There are lots of rainbows. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’d kill myself within a month in Seattle. All that rain. Just dreary. Thank God Missouri has everything. It keeps you on your toes. The bad days remind you to appreciate the good ones.

I haven’t talked about anything but the weather so far. This is why I don’t write when I’m happy. I have other things I could be doing. I’m going outside now for a bike ride, or perhaps to Capen for a hike. Enough of this computer screen.

There’s no denying that my generation has developed an unprecedented dependency on the internet. But just how far does that dependency go? Can Google give us everything we need?

WordPress Dashboard shows me what people typed into their searches that brought up my blog. One of the recent searches was “im a student what should i do if”…

I’m sure there was more, but I guess WordPress has a limit to how many words of a search it will show me. The ambiguity intrigues me. I very much want to finish the sentence. I see this search as a desperate cry to the internet to answer some burning question, seek some sage advice. Dear Google, help! I don’t know where else to turn. Let’s brainstorm.

I’m a student. What should I do if…

• I have swine flu
• I don’t know what I want out of life
• I’m failing
• I’m pregnant
• I want to ask him/her out
• There’s a rabid squirrel in my room

OK, so those are just a few possibilities. What should this person do? We know it’s a student. We know the student doesn’t know what to do. We know they turned to the internet for answers and we know that their search yielded my blog as a result.

I have this sinking feeling that I didn’t help the searching student. How could I? Can the internet really do for us what we’re now turning to it for? I’m sure I’m blowing this out of proportion, but the wording of it just made it feel like the beginning of a Dear Abby letter to me. Maybe this is the new technological progression of the Dear Abby column. What does it mean? We can’t go to our own friends and family for advice. We feel isolated and alone. We want someone to talk to, but who can we trust, if not those closest to us? At least Abby had a real person, albeit a stranger, writing back to us on the other end. What does the internet give us? Automatically generated electronic results from a multitude of known and unknown sources. Cold, impersonal, computerized suggestions that may or may not apply to our question.

I know I’m not the first to say this, but I do believe that the more technologically “connected” we become, the more disconnected we become in our personal lives outside the computer screen. Why call when you could text? Why text when you could Facebook? Why ask a real person when you could get a million more answers from a search engine? I hope we never lose our personal connections– it would be a steep, steep price to pay for progress.

“Days go by, I can feel them flying like a hand out the window in the wind. The cars go by, yeah it’s all we’ve been given so you’d better start living right now… We talk about tomorrow, then it slips away.”  -Keith Urban, Days Go By

Today I registered for the final semester of my senior year of college. I might not ever register for classes again. I’ve been in school since I was 3 years old. Finishing college might be a big deal. I’m only 3 classes away from fulfilling all my requirements, so I get to pick a totally random fourth class just for the sake of maintaining my full-time status and keeping my scholarships. I’m looking at a scuba class, but it’s really too expensive.

The passage of time has forced me into decision-making, something I generally put off as long as humanly possible. I finally decided last  week to apply for Advanced Writing as my primary capstone choice and for Magazine Staff as my secondary choice. I got my first choice, so that means I’m a writer and not an editor. I rode the fence between the two for at least a year. Editing seemed like less legwork. I’m decent at it, perhaps even good. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t get past the thought that I would truly miss writing if I wasn’t doing it, despite all the stress and work of reporting. It may be the first time in a very long time that I chose the path that seemed more difficult. I feel pretty good about it. More work and less money– I must be pursuing my passion.

That being said, I still have no idea what I want to do when I graduate in seven months. I’ve been considering becoming a teacher. That, of course, is the degree I chose to pass by for journalism. I would have to get an alternative teacher’s certification, which I could do in one and a half to two years and possibly be teaching during part of that time. I would also probably want to go to the seminary to get certified as synodically trained by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod so that I could teach in a Lutheran junior high or high school. I don’t know how long that takes, or how much all of this would cost, or if it is what I am meant to do. But it’s out there, so I can’t yet say with confidence that I’m almost done with school forever.

I’ve also considered going into some sort of church work. I would love to do something like staff with Campus Crusade for Christ or work with high school youth groups. I might consider becoming a DCE (Director of Christian Education) or a Deaconess, or just trying to find a church that would let me do ministerial work. I’ve always wanted to be a pastor, but as it turns out I’m a little too much of a girl for that job in my church. I’d probably be thrilled to be a full-time housewife and mother if the economy would allow it. My only concern would be getting bored when my kids are too old to want/need me around constantly. I get restless.

All of this is to say that ready or not, life is coming at me fast. I know that God has I plan for me. I hope he lets me in on the secret someday.

Pandora online radio is totally brilliant. If you spend time on the internet when you can be listening to music and you’re not using Pandora, check it out right now. It’s like iTunes Genius except you don’t have to own any of the music. You create your own stations by selecting either a song or an artist. For example, I have a Beatles-inspired station and an “Accidentally in Love” (Counting Crows) inspired station. Then Pandora plays songs that have a similar style to your selection. You can pause a song or skip a song.

You can give each song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It will never play something you’ve given the thumbs-down to. The site uses your approvals and rejections to further hone in on exactly what you’re looking for. To further customize, you can add variety by selecting secondary artists or songs for each station. Pandora remembers you every time you come back and you can save and edit as many stations as your little heart desires.

The website will give you all kinds of information about the bands and songs you’re listening to. You can get the lyrics, band bio, history, album information, suggestions of stuff that’s like it. There are a lot of features that I haven’t played around with, like sharing stations with other people and finding other fans. I don’t have time for all of that. I just want to listen to the music.

I’ve noticed a few little flaws. I don’t know why, but on my Beatles station Pandora prefers to play the Paul McCartney solo performances of Beatles songs. I love Paul, but him singing alone (and sometimes his voice is sounding a bit old) is just not the same. I want to hear the original Beatles songs. It plays them, too, just not as much as I’d expect. Also, if you create a song-based station, it doesn’t play that song right away. In fact, I listened to the “Accidentally in Love” station for about two days before I actually heard that song. Why not play it first? But if that’s all that’s wrong with Pandora, I won’t complain.

Pandora is perfect if you’re tired of all the music you own, if you want to try something new without buying it, or just love variety. My roommate has been using Pandora for over a year, but for some reason I didn’t try it til recently. Now I’m addicted. It panders to all my different moods. Right now I’m rocking out to my newly-created Nsync-inspired station. Yeah, that’s right. It’s all 90s pop music. I feel like I’m in junior high. Nsync, Backstreet Boys, Usher, pre-skank Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Destiny’s Child…they’re all on this station. Glorious!

My other current stations: The Beach Boys, Keith Urban, All-American Rejects with Jimmy Eat World, Ludo with Jimmy Eat World and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and the stations I mentioned above. I listen to the Beatles station the most. I found out that I really like George Harrison’s solo work and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Bottom line: I give Pandora Radio the thumbs-up.

“The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.” –Claude Monet

Capen-

I love it here when the leaves are changing. There are no real reds or pinks, mostly burnt orange and browning yellow – true autumnal colors. I only wish the cliff faced the west as the sun sinks behind a veil of trees at my back. But the sunset is still gently pinking the underbellies of clouds before me as they stretch out across the sky like cool-whip. It’s so quiet here, except for the undertones of crickets and the overtones of the creek below. The wind whispers coyly to the drying leaves and they purr their best response. The rock has a personality, though I can’t tell what it is. It is always here for me, ready to calm me, ready to coax me from whatever facade I am in back to myself for a while.

Even now, I don’t really know what it means to be myself. But at the moment I don’t mind the ambiguity. I breathe in air and I see and feel and hear and know this place and myself for whatever we are. Whatever we are, it is beautiful. I let myself forget that I am sometimes. My heart knows it’s true, but my mind tells me otherwise.

I wish I could find a job where they’d pay me to write about myself. Not in a self-serving way, but in a self-searching way. Maybe if people read it they would learn something about themselves as well. I could spend a lifetime on sabbatical searching myself and maybe before I died I would discover something to write on a resume cover letter. Me, I am intangible. The tangible part is just a package that holds it all together so that you can look at me and judge what you see and totally misunderstand the deeper meaning.

I suspect that God makes us too complex to grasp. Our souls are unattainable to us right now. Human beings hate not knowing, especially about ourselves. That’s why we get so uptight about it and bs like we’ve really got it all figured out. Sometimes we’re all just a bunch of sissies and liars. But that’s collectively. Individually, we’re beautiful and in strife. I know the strife will pass away someday and only the beauty will be left. But that part is heaven and I don’t know much about it yet.

I wish I could learn how to forgive myself more. I’m much better at forgiving other people, though sometimes that’s hard, too. For myself, I’m afraid to let go of the past in case I haven’t learned from it yet. Forgiving myself seems akin to not caring how I’ve botched things up and hurt people. But I always care, so I carry my mistakes with me.

I often wish that I could live a double life. I’m sure I’m misinformed in this- people who do it don’t seem to enjoy it all that much. But sometimes I just can’t decide about things. I want to try each choice, but that’s usually not an option. Selecting one choice negates other choices. They go away and you can never get them back. It’s all so final. What if, pressed by the moment and with little experience to back me up, I make the wrong choice?

People tell me to trust God and follow his plan, and I believe that’s good advice. But most of the time I can’t tell what God’s plan for me is. I almost wish I were a prophet so God would speak to me directly and tell me exactly what’s up. But that wish is misinformed, too. One look at the Bible shows that prophets usually don’t get off very easy. God asks them to do very difficult, unpleasant things. Since they heard it straight form the source, they better do it. Sometimes prophets need to be led like horses. God had to spell everything out for Moses- every time he had to think on his feet he messed it up. Maybe God hasn’t made me a prophet because he knows it’s not for me. Maybe he’s leaving my options open so I’ll learn to think for myself.

It’s getting dark and a cluster of high school kids have showed up with a guitar. Time for me to leave.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew…” -Robert Burns, To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with a Plough

This weekend, most of my schemes have fallen apart, but it’s been nice anyway. Phi Lamb’s Active Retreat was Friday night til Saturday morning. After this, I planned to head to Rolla to spend the rest of the weekend with Michael. But at the last minute, we decided he was too busy with projects and I had a lot to get done here, so we stayed in our respective towns. I ended up cleaning my whole house, which gives me a great sense of satisfaction whenever I look at it. I also got to have a lovely movie night with my friend Ashley…girls nights are few and far between, so I’m really glad we got to do it. Today, a friend from home and her boyfriend came to church with me. Well, they brought themselves but came at my invitation.

Seeing as it was so nice outside, I got the harebrained idea that Michael and I should each drive halfway to each other and meet in the middle for a hike/picnic. I discovered Painted Rock Conservation Area, 7 miles southwest of Westphalia, exactly halfway between Rolla and Columbia. Sure, it’d be almost an hour drive for each of us and we’d have very little time together. Michael had to be back in Rolla at 6 for a project meeting. But we were undaunted. Plans were made and off we went.

I never made it Westphalia. It all went swimmingly until I got a flat tire in Jefferson City. I’m not a very girly girl, so it is with great shame that I admit I’ve never changed a tire before. I know how to jump a car and I know where most of the key components are in an engine, but I’ve just never had to change a flat yet. I called Michael, who volunteered to drive the rest of the way to Jeff City and change the tire for me. While I waited for him, I walked a couple of miles down to the Missouri River since this was supposed to be a hiking excursion. I watched a farmer harvest his corn. I threw a stick into the river and watched it get swept away by the muddy current. Seeing the ripples spread brought to mind how things fall into our lives that we don’t ask for, and have long-lasting effects that we might not foresee. This metaphor considered, I walked back to my car where Michael had already begun changing my tire. He did pretty much all the work, but showed me and let me try every step, so I now know how to change my own tire.

At this point, we didn’t exactly have time to carry out our plans, but still wanted to eat the picnic we’d brought. After a false start at a winery that wouldn’t allow outside food, we ended up huddled in a pavilion at a run-down Jeff City park that boasted one sad baseball field. Despite all this, we enjoyed the cheese, crackers, grapes and apple. Most importantly, we enjoyed seeing each other briefly. It was certainly brief. As the sun began to sink, we knew he had to leave. He wasn’t going to make it back by 6…or 7. In fact, his group canceled their meeting all together. Oh well.

My favorite part is how we made the whole thing into a pleasant little excursion despite its disaster potential. My other favorite part is how sweet Michael was about it all. He never complained, though he had to drive farther than he’d planned and didn’t get to do what we came to do. He called me shortly after we parted to remind me not to drive over 50 mph on my doughnut. He called me again when I was in Ashland to make sure everything was going all right, that I still had 4 tires and that no one was hassling me for driving 50. He called me again when he made it to Rolla so I’d know. The moral? Every day’s a good day when you’re with the one who loves you.

I’m slightly less sick now. Thanks to all of you faithful blog followers who have been diligently bringing up this site, waiting to see if I’ve turned into a swine. I don’t want to disappoint any gamblers who might have been betting against me, but I’m still just a short caucasian girl with a runny nose. I blow things out of proportion sometimes. However, I still think Meredith might die. She rides her bike to school in the rain, so she hasn’t gotten better yet.

I’m reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon right now. That book is a trip. I think I might understand it better if I were smoking something while I read it. But it’s not a pleasant trip like something you’d get from listening to the Beatles (though it was written in the 60s). It’s a grungy sort of feeling that leaves me wishing the world weren’t so…blech. Maybe I just don’t get it. I’m only on the third chapter, so I can’t fairly jump to any conclusions yet. I just need to get into a Pynchon state of mind (a frightening thought).

My professor talked about how Pynchon is Postmodern. His description of Postmodernism sounded like a mess of sameness, shallowness, flat functionality, and ugly, practical architecture. Me, I’m a fan of Modernism. Modernism had TS Eliot and Yeats. Those are my boys. They looked at life and said, hey, why are we so alienated? We’re alienated from each other, we’re alienated from nature, heck, we’re even alienated from our selves. We don’t know who we are or what we’re here for.

I can feel that in my own life. I feel the most myself when I’m in nature. I don’t have to perform for anyone or worry about society or who I’m supposed to be. I feel most at peace and closest to God when I’m in nature. It always gives me the sense that if everything else fell down around me, as long as I could run off into the woods or the mountains, I would be content. When I sit on the bank of a creek and listen to the natural sounds of life, Psalm 46:10’s admonition is easy: “Be still and know that I am God.” Then, if only briefly, I know who I am and what I’m here for. Since part of what I’m here for is to love, I try not to be alienated from people either. I’m a story teller. I love talking to people and telling them everything in my head and on my heart. As much as I love nature, I wouldn’t survive long without genuine interactions with other people. When I manage to shut my mouth for a while, I love to listen to people too. But I know what Eliot is getting at about alienation in Prufrock when he says,

“And I have known the eyes already, known them all– The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?”

Existentialism might be a bit much for me, but I do like to think about it, too. Sometimes I go through life just trying to be functional, but it always leaves me feeling empty and antsy for something else, something different, something more. I know there’s more to life than existence. I don’t want to just be here.

This class- The Rise and Triumph of the Novel- is the best ever, by the way. Call me predictable, but my favorite so far is The Great Gatsby, which I somehow didn’t read in high school. But now it’s time to get back to Pynchon. Maybe my eyes will be opened.

Swine flu. I don’t believe the hype…or do I?

I don’t think I have it, but I feel like death warmed over. I hardly got out of bed today. Class? Forget about it. A brief history: since August I’ve had off and on variations of sore throat, cough, congestion, sneezing, watery eyes, etc. This weekend the sore throat was prominent. Now it’s the congestion. I can’t breath. I’ve blown through a whole roll of toilet paper today, and my nose is ready to fall off. My head is in a vice grip and I’m lightheaded when attempting to walk.

Who should I blame? Nebraska: Surely this is a result of suffering through that miserable football game in the cold and rain. I am suffering from pneumonia and hurt pride. The swine: Surely they have brought this upon me. My friends: Meredith, Aaron, and Jeremy are also sick. Michael and Becca are surviving so far, though she had a sore throat yesterday and he has a headache today. There are people in most of my classes with swine flu, including one of the TAs. There’s at least one girl in my sorority with swine flu. With all of that illness going around, how could I avoid it?

I don’t know who to blame, so what should I do next? Should I go to the Student Health Center? I don’t trust them. I’m sure they’re swine flu crazy. They’ll probably diagnose anyone who walks in the door. Besides, I haven’t had the best experiences with them in the past. When I go to Student Health, I get the distinct impression that they are practicing on me so that someday they can get real jobs. Maybe that’s an unfair analysis, but you can never be too careful with your health. I don’t have another doctor, plus the university is forcing me to pay for Student Health through built-in fees, so my visit would be “free.” Hmmm. It would give me a reason to skip class. More nobly, it would avert the risk of me potentially infecting all of my classmates if I do somehow end up having the dreaded swine flu (I really don’t think I have it.)

Did I mention that I hate taking medicine? Hate it. I don’t trust the stuff. I’d much sooner suck down copious amounts of tea, soup, orange juice, and vitamins and pray for miraculous healing than pop pills with a laundry list of potential complications and side effects. Someday they’ll discover that ibuprofen causes cancer. Well, probably not. But you never know what that stuff is doing to you. Admittedly, I’ve already strayed from my anti-medicine ways with this one. I bought chloraseptic throat spray, aka, liquid heaven. I also took both Dayquil and Nyquil yesterday (the cheap knock-off versions, of course), but they didn’t seem to help much except for adding to my grogginess and lethargy.

If I never blog again, anyone reading this should assume I have turned into a pig. It’s probably difficult to type with hooves rather than fingers. Of course, I’m most likely just being a big baby over a common cold. But you never can be too sure these days.

Perhaps this was my first mistake.

{Another LVR staff blog}

Once upon a time, Steve Johnson wanted to be Quick Draw. It quickly morphed in QD, which is often misheard as “Cutie.” But watch out, ladies, the camp director of LVR is happily married to his wife Angie, aka Bam. They have 3 adorable boys – Sam, Mason, and Joe – who are growing up in the ideal, rambunctious lifestyle of camp kids.

QD is the kind of guy you can’t picture doing anything other than working at LVR. Except for one day a week going into town to play softball, he doesn’t go for civilization that much. If he had to drive into town for errands, he would relieve at least one staff member of their duties if they could be spared so he wouldn’t have to go alone. When I was lucky enough to ride along on an errand run, he bought me and Moptop Sonic drinks, then BBQ for dinner. That, the break from work, and hitting up the outdoor shop and army surplus store made it a pretty sweet trip.

He told us to “go play with kids and talk about Jesus” at the end of staff meeting every day. That’s all he asked of us. Well, and a ton of other duties related to that. But he always wanted us to remember the heart of why we were there. He’s as much a mentor as a boss, taking deep interest in our personal lives and dedicating the time to listen and counsel anyone who needed it. Though QD isn’t what I would call strict, he is very serious about what he does and about what his staff does. We knew when we screwed up. But the consequences/lectures always ended with, “it’s forgiven.” Once he said that, it was done.

QD won’t shy away from making an unpopular call when he believes it’s best for the staff and for the camp. He has the strength and resolve a good leader needs to keep things running smoothly. He didn’t hesitate to completely revoke our wireless internet when he felt that we weren’t getting enough rest. I remember this vividly because it forced me to give up my connection with my family, friends, and Michael without any warning. I was pissed. But after I lost that form of communication I got much closer to the staff and developed a healthy level of independence from those I’d left behind. I didn’t think I needed more independence, but I learned to value my private time with God and my quiet time with myself and my thoughts. It’s much easier to focus on those things when stripped of technology and surrounded by the breathtakingly vast wilderness of the mountains.

When QD sensed tension and trust issues within the staff, he made us stay on a Friday afternoon when we expected to be off work so that we could work through it.  I remember it vividly because it was the weekend Michael flew from Missouri to Colorado to see me. I had asked off for the weekend, but learned that afternoon that I would not be excused from this activity. QD didn’t care that we were almost all mad. He didn’t shrink from my bitter glares. He did what he believed we needed. We went out into the woods. QD took us aside one at a time to talk to us. After someone finished their private conference, the person would return to the group and climb onto a platform 5 feet off the ground between 2 trees. The rest of us stretched out our arms to catch the person when they fell backwards off the platform. One of us would volunteer to lay on the ground underneath the catching arms. After we all fell and caught each other, we sat on the pine needle-coated ground and had a long heart-to-heart. When I realized that we only had four weeks left as summer staff and that I have the rest of my life to spend with Michael, my anger softened a bit. If I didn’t always like his decisions, I certainly respected the man who led us through the summer that felt like a lifetime yet ended with shocking suddenness.

“My experience was not just the homosexual thing, it’s the story of a radically transformed life,” Alan Toigo says. “I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.”

This is the story I sought to capture. A deep struggle, a life lived in confusion and lies and the ultimate peace and comfort that one man found.

A whole year after I first proposed the story to John Fennell, is is finally published in Vox Magazine. I wrote the article for Fennell’s Intermediate Writing class last fall. This semester, he pitched it to Vox and they were interested.

For about a month, I’ve been diligently updating, doing additional reporting and re-writing it as my Vox editors have requested. I wrote seven different versions for Vox, ranging from 3,700 words to 1,500 words. Happily, we settled on an in-between length. I’m quite satisfied with the final product. The pictures look great and the print layout is wonderful.

Unfortunately, I find the online version a little short of an eyesore. The whole article is presented in a long, narrow column that offers little-to-no breaks for the eye. Alas, the online version is the one I’ll be sharing with everyone who doesn’t happen to be in Columbia. So here is the link. If you have the ability to actually get your hands on the print version of Vox, I would highly recommend it.

With no further ado, I give you my most recent publication:

http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/10/01/sexual-resolution/