C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Oh, dear Lord, what is happening?Maybe it's a good thing, at least for him, that things didn't get more serious before Ed bailed... I wouldn't've minded having him here to help me through all this.... but bailing after getting through would be even worse. The good news is this: things are better at work, or rather my attitude is better again, and I care less about the things that bothered me before, and I'm hoping my orders don't get cancelled and if they don't, I'm leave in six months, so nothing can bother me because when I get bothered I put my orders at risk. The not-so-good news is this: work is the only area things are better in. The other good news is this: I still have my longterm friends who have loved me through all the good news and all the not-so-good news before, and I will hopefully see many of them before leaving. So, has there perhaps been talk of a MidWest (re)union type gathering so that I can meet up with that particular group all at once? Atlantic coast folks are all set... I'm going to do at least a driving tour before going. Though my contact with Atlantic folks seems to be drifting more and more each day... And then there's my family. I don't know what's happening in some areas of my life...... Dear Lord, please help me to understand what I need to, and please help me to let go. (4) comments Sunday, April 08, 2007
I worked out yesterday, a lot.Maybe a little too lot. I'm REALLY sore. (0) comments Friday, April 06, 2007
Steve: Right, RSS, sure..... :) ... Pictures, I hope, will be next. I've been wanting to add those for a while. Maybe on Monday, or hopefully sometime this week.... This week has been, hands down, the hardest of my last three years, and I am really wondering what the snot I was thinking three years ago. I don't know for sure anymore that this was God's will for me at all. I am so completely broken. I think that my new Chief cares more about his Sailors than many past Chiefs I have had, and I think that he is the much more balanced and honest perspective that I so greatly need.... as I've said in past blogs, I can't change if people don't really tell me what's wrong or what they tell me isn't accurate. I got put under such a Chief late enough, though, that I am already so messed up for the military lifestyle, so pruned in one direction that I guess he's having to break me apart completely in order to remold me into what I was supposed to be as such a junior person. I am not paid to think. I am not here to improve processes. I am not one with opinions or options. I need to do what I'm told when I'm told without questions, including questions that I think I am asking only to clarify what I'm being told, because others see those as questioning their authority or why I am being told to do the task. So if I do it wrong and I get yelled at, that is just part of being a junior person.. clarifying ahead of time is not my job. I will just redo it. I'm getting paid the same whether I do a really good job or a barely-cutting-it job, and whether I spend five hours on the same task because of redoing it or spend one hour doing it right. So I should be doing my job in light of my low rank and short time in, and not be trying to do the best job I'm capable of because others may feel I am stepping outside of my rank or I am acting like I've got more time in than I really do. I am more than halfway there. I can almost see the light at the end. It's not just work, either, that has made this week so bad... I am really hurting, but this, too, shall pass. And I have so much good stuff in my life now with photography and hopefully future travel, and I can throw myself into those. And I can afford art supplies, good food, and fun events much more often than I could before. I love my apartment. I love my car. I love my friends and my family. I have renewed connections with my extended family. I have so many experiences ahead of me in life, all the richness of this world (natural beauty and other cultures) yet to be lived. I should get started on my drive to Grampa's now. (0) comments Tuesday, April 03, 2007
First:I was right to be peeved at Congress for up and changing the daylight savings time. All the electronic items that did not get the memo changed ahead their hour early on April 1, including our phones at work (which had finally been manually set to the proper time a week after Congress' time change, and as of yet haven't been manually set back to the new proper time.) So this was a working weekend for us, and I had the duty on Saturday, which means from 8-9 Saturday morning to 8-9 Sunday morning (as in, sometime in that hour you swap with the other person). It includes locking up the building that night and opening the building the next morning, which makes for a later night than usual sometimes and always for a VERY early morning. I had a later night Saturday night, too, because of a gallery opening that about 7 of my friends were displaying work in and want me to display my stuff at the next show in a few months. I'd taken a nap in the evening, and I did leave the gallery early enough to still get a good amount of sleep, and I made ABSOLUTELY certain to set my cell phone alarm to 0512 to be at the building in time. (I normally have it set between 0612 and 0633, since I live not terribly-erribly far from the base.) So Sunday morning, I wake up and look at my VCR, and it's already 0612, so I first panic outta my mind because I was supposed to be at the building before then and others would be arriving at the building before I could possibly get there, and I thought my alarm clock change didn't save or something. Then I looked at my cell and it said 0512, so I relaxed a little but then wondered why my VCR was a different time... and honestly my first (creeped-out) thought was that someone had been in my house somehow and left a little sign for me, but then I realized that it's just because Congress decided to friggin' change Daylight Savings time.... *le sigh* . Second: The story that my Uncle Arthur shared during my trip to Boston (the details of which I've probably already gotten all mixed up, but the gist is as follows): I was something like 3 years old and speaking pretty well, when my Uncle and the rest of the family were sitting around the table one evening and going over the different titles for people in their relationship to one-another with my brothers and I. They explained that a single man is called a bachelor. My older brother asked if Uncle Arthur was a bachelor, and he said that he was. I very matter-of-factly piped up, "I don't like bachelors. ... They taste funny." . After a good laugh, they figured that I must have been thinking vegetables or broccoli or something, though to my memory and all the other stories, I always liked vegetables... but whatever it was, my little three year old self was very confused at why everyone was laughing at what I just said. . My life really does go in roller-coaster patterns; not too extreme very often, but I do tend to get nervous during good times knowing they'll only last so long, but by the same token feel some comfort during down times knowing that they too shall pass. Work stanketh this week, with a really big STANK. Well, not just this week, last week, too. Since returning from leave, really. It's part of why I don't go on leave much. I'm still hoping for explanations that I know will never come. I'm still waiting for my eval, which is now even later than last year's... we were theoretically supposed to sign them on 15 March. I'm nervous, yes, because of how much is hinging on this particular eval cycle. I am not optimistic. I know what I worked for, I know what I earned, but I also know politics will always play at least an equal part with reality if not greater. I will have been here for three years when I leave for a very different venture, and I'm just not feeling like I have accomplished so much, or if I did I certainly didn't get the positive reinforcement needed to keep a person like me going after working such long hours and fixing so many complicated problems. I got told today that my reputation around the command is very high, but they must save all of that for closed doors and away from me, because the only parts that really reach me are nuetral at best, or from manipulative folk which certainly limits its validity. The hard part about being true to myself is that I am one of those people who can, when I really want to or when I no longer care (which is a BAD sign because it takes so long to get there), smile through anything and still be friendly and not take my emotions out on innocent bystanders. So even when I'm really upset about something, some will think that everything is just fine and it's ok to keep treating me in such-and-such a way or to go on with the lack of reinforcement or to outright hurt me. It is a catch-22 in conceptual thinking, because it is my maturity that keeps my actions from being negatively impacted by the atmosphere, and since no mature methods of bringing this atmosphere to the attention of those who could change it have had any effect, the only ways that will work to clue them in would be sacrificing maturity in one way or another. That's ok, it's six or seven months left depending on how you count it. I've been here for about four times that long already. But the longer that I am here, the more ingrained this thinking becomes, and the less likely that even a very positive experience at my next command will change my thoughts on me making this a career. I can only assume that it's not God's will for me and so He's allowing this to combat any chance I would get seduced by the financial security and retirement benefits. . I did start working out again last week in a formal (read: command) setting, and was very surprised at how much I was able to do after a six month period of only very informal workouts, if that. I will be able to do our fitness test at the end of this month, I am sure, and I think I may even do fairly well on it. Probably not as well as I had been doing before my breathing got too bad or dangerous, but at least I'll be able to do it. It felt GREAT to be running again, and I did something like 70 pushups throughout the workout, and almost all of the excersizes led by the command fitness leader. I did a country report on Bahrain today for my International Relations class, and we only have about four class sessions left there, including my group's project on Israel. I've got a birthday party and then a little concert tonight, and then photography class again tomorrow, and there's a student art competition that I plan to enter (we were highly encouraged as a class to do at least something for it), and other than work this week is looking prett good, and this upcoming weekend is Not a working weekend, being Easter and all, so I'm glad for that. I will probably be going down to be with my Grampa, but if not I will just sit at home and rest and I really, really, really hope that I will clean at least some. I need to, somethin' awful... So, I am going to get ready for the birthday party now. Have yourself a great evenin'! (3) comments |
Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
