Ambition

In which I sheepishly admit:

There once was a girl who had SO much to write.

She was gonna pace herself and just do two articles a week.

HA.

And then she got lazy one day and decided she couldn't make time to do what she loved...write. And the next day, and the day after that, and the week after that, she was still too "busy".

(Ahem:
 Busy: Verb. That state in which someone decides they would much rather use their free time to read books, browse the Internet, read other blogs, and do other, slightly less taxing pastimes than writing. Yeah. Busy)

Meet yours truly, the Royal Queen of procrastination.

The every day, tired girly who smells like pizza...you're welcome?

Hi.

Apologies for the absence, and anyone who might have seen the funky chalkboard header I was experimenting with. *Shudders*. Not sure what I was thinking there.

Anyhoo.

Like with anything, anything, musician, athlete, dancer,  photographer, writer...we've got to keep up with what we do.

 Just do it. (Thanks Nike)

Don't stop. 

Don't let the muscle get stiff. Not if it's something  your passionate about  and really want to pursue. It's like our brains are all fired up to be the greatest at what we absolutely love...and our resolve is this pathetic little balloon that all to easily just kinda...deflates. With lots of whining and lame excuses. 

If you really love what it is you are trying to improve on or learn more about, forcing yourself to actually do it will be hard for like, the first 3 minutes. I promise.

Then...BAM.

"Oh, yeah, I love playing music. Writing unlocks the creative genius dancing around in there. Man, this is fun. I should do this all the time and just live in creative bliss!"

Ever think about how much a human being is actually capable of accomplishing in one days time?

A normal human being like you and me. We have, what, about 14 to 16 waking hours in a day?

I believe God created us with a lot more potential for productivity and passion, than the vast majority of us ever bother to unlock.

If you were the most productive version of yourself, how do you see your life going? What would you be doing differently if you were not hindered by procrastination and laziness(like me)?

Seriously, though, think about that one.

Day

In which are musings to change the way we think of day.

 Day. A strange, quirky, fascinating journey.

Just.

 Think about it.

In the morning, it's kind of all slow and foggy and still a little dark. Things are cool and fresh and smell like coffee shops and sound like birds just starting to chirp. We listen to different music than we do at night. Your mood in the morning? It's not going to happen at any other time of the day.

But by the time night comes around, our senses are fully alive. We are ready to wrap up a day that was a roller coaster of life and food and conversations. It was full of boring moments. Sad moments.  Hysterical laughter. Impatience. Frustration.

We may have just interacted with a surprisingly large amount of people as this day went on. We probably impacted even more people than we will ever know.

So all the sudden, only hours later, we are in a completely different world than we were in hours before. And in a few hours, it will start all over again. Some days are a long journey, a day that was an eon...by nightfall, morning really did feel like it was years ago.

Sometimes we may feel like it gets a little old. Like days need to be longer, because we have to make breakfast and get up and take another shower and brush our teeth again, even though we just did it yesterday and a thousand yesterdays before that.

But that's just it. We have taken these thousands of journeys, from dewy, clean mornings to emotional, volatile night time. Over and over. Its like our life is splintered up into countless little lives, that pass in a brief 24 hour period.

So think of that next time you open your curtains in the morning, or end your night with weary eyes. Think of all the billions of things you'll do, just in that day, or all the millions of emotions you traveled though, as your eyelids droop with fatigue.

Think of how a day is like a little lifetime. You are born into the morning, your eyes opening, blinking at the light. You stretch. You will grow, however slowly. You will be hurt. You will be loved. You will discover. You will want to give up on something. You grow weary. You die into the night. But you will try your life all over again the next day.

Think of that. Think of the beauty in that. The wonder and strangeness. Change your perspective.

And don't even get me started on nighttime. 

Pieces Of Me...J.C

Look guys. I made a quote. Since this, my blog, is a place for me to throw all my literary scribbles and random creativity at the world, sometimes, stuff like this is just gonna happen.

Take it or leave it. I don't care.

It's just a piece of me...J.C.

Mad World Mash Up

In which I mash up a song with outlooks on life...and then mash up outlooks on life.

All Around me are familiar faces,

Worn out places, 

Worn out faces,

Bright and early for their daily races 

Going nowhere,

Going....nowhere

 It's nothing really special or extraordinary when someone in their late teens or early twenties has widened the horizons of their mind and has started thinking about life and the world.

I mean, when you get past school, and all your clear set goals (high school, college or whatnot) have been completed, at some point you have to think about how you want to live your life, and how you should be living it.

And you know, I'm not really talking about the career that you may want to have or where you want to live, how much money you would like to earn. Or whether or not you want to get married, what kind of foods you'll eat, the type of ministries you would like to be involved in. Whether or not you will be a morning person or a night owl. No, that's not really what I'm getting at. To me, all that stuff is secondary.

You want to know what comes first? You've got to know how you are going to get through day to day, in and out, and what your attitude about your daily life is going to be.

Their tears are filling up their glasses

no expression, no expression

Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow 

No tomorrow, no tomorrow

We've got to find out, with Bibles in hand, how we are going to going to get through this life in our minds and souls.
 Because I could run around and "do" a million things, fill up my life with work to be done and books to read and people to minister to. I could cram in all sorts of stuff to keep me busy all my life, if I wanted to. But I could either hate every minute of it, survive every minute of it, or try to enjoy all of it, boring or busy as it may be.

It's like saying that whoever you marry, you could have two views about. You could say it's an amazing thing that you met the very person that you married, out of all the six billion people in the world, and you got to meet someone as special and unique and as perfect for you, as they are. You could just be thrilled that you get to marry someone like them, because there is no one out their in the world like that, and say wow thank you Lord I got to marry someone who matches up with my funny quirks and moods, this is so awesome!

Or, you could just kind of say that out of all the billions of people in the world, there are probably several out there who are compatible with you, so when you get married, you just found one of those many people who are compatible enough with you. And you get life done with them because you have to get life done. (FYI, I tend to like the first outlook a lot better. But I can see myself sliding into the second outlook, too)

I could either be the happy little housewife straight from the fifties, all frilly aprons and baking cookies and dressing up her little babies and hanging her clothes on the line in domestic bliss, budgeting and knitting and "nesting" with a fierce relish . Trust me, some days in life I get in a uncontrollable nesting mood. I bake those cookies with a vigor and it's glorious.

Or I could just clean the house because it must be done, and take the kids to the park because it's what people do, all the while torn between questions, my life literally seeming to pull at itself, tearing itself apart. For these questions always hang in my mind: Why does my life matter? How much does this life of mine matter? and because of that, How should I conduct my life? Can I look at it with joy?

I find it kind of funny,

I  find it kind of sad,

the dreams in which I'm dying

Are the best I've ever had

 
If I believe I am saved by God, a God who loved me enough to send His son to die for me, than my life is eternal and precious. What I do, How I spend my time here on earth is thus very important, as I must use this time to further Gods kingdom. Everything I do, every action I take, (or don't take) is drastically important. After all, I am a child of God and it grieves this God when I am doing nothing the the life that He gave me, when I am mediocre, selfish, or lazy. Everything becomes hugely important and I have a high, (and scary) calling to always strive to be holier. Because on that day when I get called home, my deeds in christian life will have been held of great importance, and if my life be a disappointment, I can only equivalent the pain of that remorse and disappointment to the earth exploding inside my chest, fracturing out into an infinity of pieces and hurting all those around me. This is much pressure. This is high calling. This takes otherworldly discipline.

What about this:
I know I am saved by a grace so great that it keeps forgiving me. I see my life as minuscule. After all, if you look at things on a cosmic scale, one significant christian is not much to be considered. To God, a thousand years is like a day. Say I live to be 95. As long a time as that may seem to exist, it is nothing, nothing....a mere snippet in time. So all the  the hundreds of millions of things that I do...lifestyle, my job, my acts of kindness, my sinful acts of selfishness, what I do with my life, how productive it ends up being...well, all of that is just a blink to God. Should I take myself so seriously?

Or perhaps each of these views should be mashed together, and I should find a balance between them all.

Just thinking out loud, folks. 

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles

It's a very very

mad world

mad world 

These are excerpts from a song called "Mad World", and while it is not a christian song, it speaks of a very real message of the emptiness of this world we keep running around and doing our daily races in. I love Jasmine Thompsons cover. So haunting and true. I think I've listened this one to death over the past couple weeks.