Sigh.....When Does That Life Stuff Happen

It's official, I'm painfully, woefully, and utterly bored. I was planning on skipping summer term and working fulltime. When the transplant stuff came up I figured I'd just have to give up on finding a new job and continue on at the library. I didn't think it would matter much because the transplant would be pretty soon. I've worked about ten hours in the last three weeks and, as of last Friday, I'm all caught up. I have no work to do at work. My boss won't be back for another week, which doesn't help matters.

So at this point, I have no school and three hours of work a week. I've watched TV, I've played my computer, I've read books, and I'm bored out of my skull. I'm thinking that I just need to quit and see if I can get some temp place to hire me. Since I still don't know when the operation is going to be, that's probably the only place that will hire me given I can't guarantee my availability for any real length of time. The worst thing is, with as little expected from me as possible you'd think I could take care of errands and such. I have a library book that is close to a month overdue, but somehow the less I need to do the less I do at all. It feels like my willpower has been in a cast and now it's all shriveled and weak. I hate waiting.

Patting Myself on the Back and Kicking Myself in the Butt

So a friend of mine recently commented that she had been reading some of her old posts and realized her recent entries aren't "up to par". I just went back and read my favorite of my own posts Love is like the deacon two-step, not the waltz and realized my own writing has taken a similar slide. So, both because I have time, and because I think everyone needs a little creativity every day, I'm going to start free writing at least fourteen minutes a day. I once did free writes for seven hours straight to make up for half a semester of slacking so I figure a few minutes shouldn't be too hard. Here's hoping I can get back a little of that style that's bled out of my writing.

Bear in mind the link will take you to the post, but you'll need to scroll down a bit.

Killing Our Own Dreams

I've been reading a talk recently by Bruce Young. I don't remember the title, but it talks about the miracle of faith and the miracle of love. Admittedly, I am a little wary of something being called a miracle. To me, it seems like the word miracle implies not only a fantastic or amazing event, but carries a connotation that that event is fantastic or amazing in part because it was the result of little actual work. In any event, I got past the title and kept reading.

I haven't finished the talk quite yet, but I have to say the ideas in it are provocative. I mean that in a good way, as in: "The talk provoked me to serious reflection." One of the main ideas he posits is that in both faith and love individuals often keep themselves from the very happiness they claim to want. I hated the idea. I still do, except now I think it could be true. It turns out, whether or not I like an idea has little to no impact on the veracity of that idea. His point is that with faith we have confirmations of what is true and yet, at times, we doubt those confirmations. We doubt that such a good thing, such a wonderful thing as the gospel could be true. Why do we doubt that? To paraphrase Bruce Young's idea with my words, we would rather be sure we're going to hell, than unsure if we're going to heaven. It goes back to pride. We don't want to be wrong. We don't want to be disappointed. So to avoid that disappointment we give up hope. I know I'm not the only one who hasn't pursued a relationship because I might be rejected or might be disappointed. Oddly enough I think Wayne Gretzky said it best: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

It seems, at least at times, that people would rather not try and be sure of their failure than risk the possibility of being disappointed after hoping for something, never mind that there is the possibility for success through hope and effort. I think as far as dating goes it's being able to meet someone new and actually think something could come from it. The talk also points out that overanalyzation can kill a relationship.

You know I start posts off fully intending to write about something new, but somehow it comes back to the same things. I've already blogged about the human tendency to choose a crappy certainty over a happy possibility. Guess I'm all out of new ideas.

Reason and Faith are not Mutually Exclusive

I was at my parent's house yesterday and needed something to read while I ate my lunch. I came across this article from Jerry Johnston in the Deseret News and was very impressed. It's an interesting read, here's the link:
Reason and Faith