Let's just pretend it hasn't been two months: Faith and Fruit and Stuff

I was asked to be a "featured writer" for June's issue of my church's newsletter. Here's what I came up with.


I think most college students can give testament to the fact that it isn’t always easy to remember the things that are most important, like basic hygiene, eating fruit (because pizza will always be more readily available than grapes), calling home, and especially God.

There are several contributing factors to explain this. Firstly, being plunged head first into an atmosphere of utter freedom can be mildly disorienting. There is no one telling you to do your homework, but also no one to hug you when you get your first bad grade. No curfew, no one to buy you pop-tarts when you run out, and no one asking you to sing praise songs in church.

You are surrounded by a multitude of new, interesting and exciting people. But some of them will be lazy, smelly, have weird hair and awkward birthmarks, and refuse to eat animal by-products and still may or may not be handling their own freedom more gracefully than you.

Perhaps the most dismal of the reasons: relying entirely on oneself can foster an attitude of inflated self-importance. Please note that this can be an unconscious survival mechanism, or a motivator, like “I will ace my classes because I am so ridiculously awesome.” Or, “I cannot go home this weekend because I have so much to do and I value my own happiness above others.” Living in your own head all the time, all of a sudden making choices that seemingly only affect you, with total control over your time; time that is completely yours to waste or otherwise, can amount to a very selfish four years (or five).

Secondly, not only does the “important stuff” get swished back into a dust-bunny scattered corner of your brain to make room for deciding what to do with all the time on your hands, there are also all the external influences. You know what I’m talking about, the kind that most parents of college kids lay awake at night worrying about. But for most, Thursday does not automatically mean “thirsty Thursday,” and more often than not, one’s roommate does not smoke pot or know a guy named Hank who can get you some.

Except…it is college and let’s be honest, those characters are running rampant. If one was to seek them out, one would no doubt encounter the stuff that makes up scary, worst-case scenario parental thoughts.

But the point is, amidst this atmosphere of all-inclusive freedom, the “it’s all about me!” mentality, and the sad truth that bad choices are waiting to jump out at you from behind the bushes, it is hard to remember to “take it to the Lord in prayer” like the lyrics of my favorite hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” suggests.

It would not be an overstatement to claim that 80% of the prayers I made during my third year of college happened while I was on my way to take a test. Although God may not have a presence in my every day thoughts like I wish he would, he is always there in the dark times. Like when I’m convinced that I’m all alone and worthless. Or inconvenient times, like when I tell my grandma about 21st birthday plans to check out a bar, and she asks if I’ve thought about what the Lord would think, or when I’m about to flirt with a boy who I know is bad news. Or even when I’m complaining about something I don’t have and I hear a voice in my head saying to be grateful for the many things I do have that I did nothing to deserve.

In today’s material world, the physical reminders often have more of an effect, even just receiving the newsletter in my college apartment helped serve as a reminder for the things that once forgotten, make falling prey to temptation that much more likely. I actively attempt to be around people who build up my faith and I’ve started placing my bible on my night stand instead of on the top shelf of my closet where my mind makes it way too easy to forget the access I have to words of wisdom, hope, and love. Also, I bought some grapes the other day.

Whine Tasting

While I'm still at it, this is a column I wrote that appeared in this week's Issue of The Advocate (MSUM's campus newspaper)


I think we can all relate to the fact that over the course of a semester, vocally being annoyed becomes increasingly easy.

There’s the Facebook-induced whining. “I just spent nine hours on Facebook and I have a test to study for!” Or whining because Facebook has turned you into a creeper, or the famous, whining because someone doesn’t have Facebook.

Or of course, the obligatory academic whining, like about the class with course objectives clearly stating, “will make student want to injure self and others.” Or the ever-present “My professor must get sick pleasure from this.”

Another favorite is campus-related whining. Personally, picking up litter causes angry muttering to bubble up from the depths of my being. Or the “There’s nobody in the Wellness Center!” As opposed to, “The Wellness Center is packed!”

It’s not hard to complain about insensitive people in the library and computer lab. “Do those guys really need to be breathing so loud/playing that game that involves laser noises and assault rifles on FULL VOLUME!? “ My favorite though is the dude having the apparently hilarious online conversation.

I was in the lab really late one night, hating my life and writing 17 papers simultaneously. The girl next to me was playing Internet pinochle. For some unexplainable reason, it made me so angry that I was worried for her life.

This leads me to other complaining I’m personally guilty of, or rather, just general things I tend to complain about: Paula Abdul, wallowing in my own clutter, restaurant forks whose tines don’t line up, when people pronounce my last name wrong on purpose (it’s love-ah-chee-uh), expiration dates, when you’re passing a car on the interstate and the driver looks over at you. Etc. etc.

Although the frequency of whining is pretty intense right now, no worries, it will soon morph into a whole other animal – being bored over the summer.

Reasoned like a true English Major.

Sometimes I disappoint myself. I hope I am not alone in this. I acknowledge that I'm probably not. Alone, that is...in disappointing myself.

After maybe the initial 1/8 of the semester sneaks past, my ambition and optimism sneak away into the popcorn of my bedroom ceiling. It never fails. (I don't either, which I always half-way expect slash think if I did I would go catatonic if ever my seeming laziness amounted to the dreaded 6th letter of the alphabet.)

So lately, I've been overwhelmingly dragged/sucked into that familiar downward spiral which seems to culminate in tears, self-loathing, yelling, and hair loss/other severe stress-related afflictions.

Deja Vu, right?

But to place myself as the object of the sentence above ("So lately..."), implies that I am a victim in a situation or have no way of impacting my lowly circumstances. This is simply farce. Although I can visualize myself as the innocent college student being plagued by that awfully mean procrastination (picture that word embodied in a silent movie, Charlie Chaplan-esque bad-guy-who-ties-the-pretty-woman-to-the-railroad-tracks-and-giggles-silently-while-frantically dramatic-piano-trills-are-heard) which can materialize in any number of enjoyable distractions (kind of like Satan?), it is ESSENTIAL that I remember I am not an object here (of a sentence). I'm the SUBJECT; I'M THE VERB. Translation: it's all on me, baby.

So after a particularly horrible week, today I have started over. I will consciously make positive decisions. I will blog every day, if even just tossing a new-found, appreciated word. I'm in the process of cleaning my room at 4:16 in the morning because it's at the top of my "things I've been not doing for eons" to-do list.

To be promptly followed by emptying the dishwasher, scrubbing the mascara off of my bathroom mirror, and writing a letter to my grandma.


Synecdoche (sin-eck-duh-key) n.
when one uses a part to represent the whole (literary term)

Example: mouths to feed, or a set of wheels

Restless on the homefront

Tomorrow I will have been here for a week already. I miss my apartment with its moderately bare walls and large emptily awkward spaces, its nine different kinds of cereal, its inconspicuous amount of t.v. channels, and large bathroom mirror desperately in need of a streak-free wipe-down. I've been banished from the place I speak of, banished to my parents' home which is not actually (despite a good number of arguments from my mother) my home. And I'm not allowed back yet.

It's been lovely spending time with my baby sister (who's almost 16 and itching to purchase her first prom dress) and having spare hours for things like eating food I didn't buy, getting oil changes I'm not paying for, wearing a new pair of jeans that didn't come out of my pocket (no puns here), and maybe best of all, having those phone conversations with my boy.

You know, the achingly ridiculous "I miss you so much!" phone conversations. And when he calls after a drunken late night of risk which he lost (seeming to prove an incapability for dominating the world) even a "You're my princess, you know." As much as I really do dislike this time away, I also am hesitant to admit that I cherish times like this. Being that we live in the same city the majority of the time, getting to miss someone and feel excited about seeing him again is a thrill.

Other time-occupying activities I've participated in on my seemingly unnecessary week off of school are drinking the taste-bud-tinglingly endorphin-releasing Sunkist (carbonated lemonade = drink of the Gods), putting off posting facebook albums (among other things I've been putting off), making itunes playlists, and reading a wonderful book called "Beloved" written by Toni Morrison.

The main character, a slave named Sethe (Seth-uh), ran away to Ohio with her four children. When the master comes to retreive them, she kills her baby to save it from a life of slavery and is about to kill the others when she's stopped. Twenty years later when the book takes place, the baby is still haunting Sethe's house.

So I give the plot of the book a B, but if asked to describe the actual writing style of the novel I'd say it's - fricken beautiful.

Some random snip-its:

"Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut , but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, ( she had sex with the headstone engraver for seven letters - Beloved) were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil."

"Denver stood on the bottom step and was suddenly hot and shy. It had been a long time since anybody sat at their table, sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes."

"They sang it out and beat it up, garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so that their syllables yeilded up other meanings."

Sadly however, "read enjoyable literature" is the only homeworkly task I can cross off the list. Come tomorrow, my head will finish forgetting what the point of school is. Sunday's my day to remember.


micawber n.
one who is poor but lives in optimistic expectation of a better fortune

ihurt

It seems I am much more popular when I am asleep. Pretty sad, really that I can't be awake/alive to experience it. Last night, at home (home home = not college home) I was bothered a whopping four times by a telephone nestled somewhere between the back of my neck and my sore arms (sore from joining the attempt to stave off the angry, converging rivers of the valley) set on vibrate. I vaguely remember being roused an annoying amount of time to halfway notice that someone had called me or these two so-and-so's had texted me.

You see, although I acknowledge that it was probably incredibly vital information people were trying to bring to my indisposed attention, when I actually lifted my groggy head and tried to maneuver my anguished back to find my phone at 10:30 this morning, it's weak little battery was quite dead.

So I'm left thinking two gloomy things: none of this actually happened and I dreamed the whole episode, inflating my self-awareness to mean that I'm cooler and/or in higher demand than I really am, or, the info was so dire that my phone's memory simply could not handle it and I will forever be left to wonder.


mubblefubbles n.
depression for no reason

Ho and Hum and the depths of the ocean

So I feel as if reading a blog in which many productive happenings took place may be enjoyable/inspiring in some way. Sadly, that is not March 23rd's tale. Not for this blonde collegian.

I could lie and spout fanciful nonsense about things I have not actually done. But that would be fake, empty, and just plain silly.

Today I awakened at precisely 9:24 a.m.(on the couch). What ensued was a dismal day. I watched my two roommates venture off to attempt to save the world (or more particularly, certain partially under-water Moorhead neighborhoods) and return home muddy, shivering, riddled with back aches, versions of themselves. I facebook-chatted with my globe-trotting bestie, managed to fold some long-dry clothes in between being vaguely annoyed with my boy who has this really great habit of inviting me to things, and when I say something like, "Don't feel obligated to ask me to come," to which he'll quickly follow with something to the effect of "Ok, well I'll call you later." Seriously!?

I also filled the sink with water (which has assumed a funky taste for some unknown reason) in preparation for an ass-kicking dish-washing session, and watched Jeopardy!, Cash Cab, and a stirring installment of Planet Earth. Oh, and I showered.

BUT all hope is not lost! I am a firm believer in to-do lists and the fact that they often lead to ridiculous, unthinkable success.

So tomorrow's goals: properly train boyfriend, wash those damn dishes, finish establishing some kind of order to my things/making my room resemble a room again, shower, make up for not running today (I'm totally training for a 5K...yeah, I know, I'm flabby and delusional), fill out super-vital, important-looking job-related paperwork, invent a more efficient way of blowing glass, spell a mind-bogglingly awesome word with the rag tag N's, Y's, I's, V, an X and an F magnets on my fridge, buy more milk, consume that milk, and write a clever song rivaling anything "The Flight of the Conchords" has thought up.

Also, eke out a pair of rubber boots from the Fargo/Moorhead retail community in order to help save the world.


fidimplicitary
1. adj. fully trusting someone
2. n. a person who has implicit faith

Holly, meet blog. Blog, Holly.

Having just returned from spending my third of three Spring Breaks saving the world on the Pay It Forward Tour, I suddenly feel stricken with the urge to spill my soul onto empty, anticipatingly virtual pages.

My favorite part about that statement is the "empty" part - completely and hopelessly blank and unbridled by stale thoughts or forgotten ambitions. Brand new. Like a new Bonneville or even better, a fresh-off-the-shelf-at-Barnes-and-Noble piece of literature, simmering with hours of inspiration and adventure.

So in closing my very first posting of what will surely prove to be a ponderous, educational excursion of epic proportions, here is my favorite word, as of today.


splendent adj.
1. shining or lustrous; brilliant
2. admired by many; illustrious