The Tale of Two Flowers

My friend Adam recently asked me to write him a story.
SO, this morning I sat down after two mini college fairs and let myself write.
Without pretense or goal.
And, for the first time in a very long time, I wrote a little.
Here for your mid-Thursday morning's amusement, I present to you, "The Tale of Two Flowers".

Once upon a time, there was a flower.

The flower was neither particularly beautiful nor particularly ugly, just enough of both that it was able to maintain its presence in the garden without being pulled for either reason.

Then, one day, a boot. The boot meant no harm, but harm it caused, and the flower’s stem went snap!

The gardener, working away at his weeding, didn’t notice the flower for some time, but when he did, he was very sad, for he remembered the day he had planted that flower, just as he remembered planting each one of his flowers.

The black tulips he had thought were purple upon purchase of the bulbs.

The rhododendron which had begun to dominate the back corner.

The daffodils.

He looked at the flower, wondering if a stint would sustain its life.

Such a break could not be amended, though.

Then, the gardener had a thought, and he cut the bloom right at its crease, took it into the kitchen and put it in a slender vase.

Hours later, inside the house, a girl awoke to a dark and damp morning: a lonely day needing tea.

She flopped her feet to the floor, found her slippers, grabbed a sweatshirt, and made her way down the hall to the kitchen.

The girl was homesick and heartsick and in need of…

A flower.

Left with its mates in the bed, the little bloom would never have been noticed or loved. But there, in the little green vase on the cold, metal counter in the great big house, in the dark, wet country, it was more beautiful and more wanted than any other petal on the grounds.

A good gardener knows his flowers. 

Hearing Voices

Recently, I became an associate editor for a very small publishing company,  called Kharis.

Someone in my office asked me how I dig my way through manuscripts written by non-writers.

Editing is like music to grammar-y people. In more ways than one.

For me, when I hear music, it's difficult for me to keep track of the actual melody. To do so takes conscious effort. More often, I naturally hear the harmony.

In the same way, when I read a paper or manuscript, I don't hear the content. I hear the grammar. So for me, it isn't a question of agreeing with the information being said, so long as that information is being communicated in the clearest, cleanest way possible.

And, like music, each voice has a different tone.
When you are listening to the radio, you can tell by various clues and the texture of the music whose it is, even if there are no vocals.

The longer you "listen" to any particular writer, the more you know their voice. And, the more you know their voice, the more you "learn" them. You anticipate particular errors or writing patterns, favorite words. When you need to add in a section to provide more clarity, you know the language structure to use in order to graft in the new piece seamlessly.

Like most things, I find that I get re-directed to God when I get into my land of metaphors, as he, too, understands this. He knows my tendencies toward both sin and saintliness. He knows the posture of my language and my heart. And, like any good editor, he knows how to redirect in order to gain the best possible outcome. It's up to the owner of the manuscript, though, to accept the edits.

Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'

My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.

The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.

Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.

You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:

It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.

My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.

More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.

If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.

The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.

By the end, I could do it. I did do it.

Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.

Then it was tidal waved out of my life.

There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".

My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.

Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it  makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.

Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.

Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.

My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.

There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.

Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.

Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?

Yeah.

There is.

I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.

Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.

After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.

Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.

Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.

That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.

It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.

I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.

Remember Your Editor

I have now worked at JBU for exactly a year.

It's fitting that today I should find myself helping to train our new counselor: sending her informational emails/templates/codes, helping her learn the day to day and mark her calendar for different fairs and school events.

In this year, I have learned a lot.
Basics such as how to look like a professional (still a work in progress), how to plan for travel season, how to fill my desk days. I've also learned how to make a shower floor shine white, how to plan a weekly food menu, and how to solve my lava-hot room problem by picking out functional (and cute) thermal curtains.

It's been a good chapter, but it didn't start out that way.

During the first draft, there were late mornings, nose rings, frozen chimichangas, late nights, and a lot of energetic flailing.

Each month, each chapter section, brought changes wrought by many editors: my bosses, my housemates, my family, my friends, my God, and myself.

A good writer recognizes the reality of the "shitty first draft". The SFD is the first go-round of thoughts in the book writing process, and usually the most excitable.
Ink pours out of you, as new characters, setting details, and big picture ideas spurt into your right brain.

There's all this stuff!! All this new!! And for a while, you think it's the best thing ever brought into creation.
Until you meet your editor.

Enter: opposition.

They give you feedback you usually aren't ready to accept graciously (or at all), and you emotionally recoil and fight back vehemently, defending your paragraphs like a banshee.

All alone later, though, you take a look back at what you've created.
There's been enough distance now that, "Oh gosh...my editor was right", and you start implementing their corrections, awkwardly at first until you learn to merge your voice with their ideas. You practice and you correct till it begins to feel natural, as though it had been you all along.

We finish and we forget: this chapter isn't ours.
Without our editors, we would have pages full of microwaveable Mexican food, unprofessional-ism, the wrong addresses, lethargy, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Our editors bring with them momentary anxiety, frustration, pain, and sometimes embarrassment, but they are the ones who turn our outlines into books.

Advice for Aspiring Writers

It's rather ironic that I'm writing this considering that I haven't written creatively in two years now. Nevertheless,

1.) Spend some time each day reading. Read everything. Read non-fiction, fiction, newspapers, smut magazines (People is my favorite), poetry, prose, essays, philosophy, theology, modern, classic, contemporary. Broaden your scope as widely as you can. Inspiration comes from collaboration.

2.) Find a writing friend. My best guy friend for a very long time was named Peter. He is bursting with passion and ideas and words and talking to him is like plugging in to to a supercharger. Every time we would meet up for coffee, I would leave buzzing with residual energy, ready to write volumes of work. Actually, it was after he took me to Panera for my birthday that Woodsy was born. It's my favorite thing I've written, a short novel for a class. Bounce ideas off your friend, exchange pieces with one another for critique and accountability. Friends help you build and keep momentum.

3.) Schedule. Each and every day, whether it's in a notebook or a computer, write. Every day. Preferably during the same time slot every day but at least half an hour every single day. Journal, write a vignette of someone, copy down a conversation you overheard, paint a word picture, music and restaurant and coffee shop reviews, something.

4.) Stay away from screens. Speaking from experience, screens suck out your brain, soul, and creative energy. If you have to be glued to a screen for work, write in a journal for a change of pace.

5.) Get out. Leave your house. Leave the office. Go sit in the lawn and garden section or Walmart, go sit in a coffee shop, go to a local art fair, go to a local flea market, go people watch! Talk to strangers, non-stalkerly watch and listen to strangers, volunteer at nursing homes and talk to old people, babysit, go to museums and make up stories about the people in different paintings or the people who painted them, take a foreign language class at the community college, take a pottery class, go to a wine/painting session (Pinot's Palate is fun). Go, do, collect stories.

6.) If you're a recent college graduate especially, get a job straight out of college that has absolutely nothing to do with your english degree and don't take any crap for it. Work as a dental assistant, waitress, night guard at a museum, do something that will force you to build experience outside of the pages of a book. Collect stories. Make up stories. Re-vision stories you have lived.

7.) "Write shitty first drafts" (in the words of my college writing professor). Don't worry if what you're writing is worth a Pulitzer prize. It's not. Accept it and have fun creating without self-consciousness. You can revise and redesign later.

8.) Write everything. Write poems and prose and non-fiction essays and fiction chapters and short stories and children's stories. Write about the construction and maintenance of garage doors, about the men who maintenance them, about the families of the men who maintenance them, about the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the adventures of imaginary friends in the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the glitter pony unicorn pets of the imaginary friends in the  hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors.

If you run out of creative juices, remind yourself that you are a creative person because you were creatively made. It's in your genes, in your very DNA. Sometimes it just needs be a little teased out into the open again.

I guess that's where I am, in the phase of telling myself, "I have written, I can write, I will write again."

Theology of Suffering

This semester, I'm taking a class with one of my favorite college professors. Part because I miss school and part because it's his last semester, and I never got to take this course.

It's called Critical Concerns with Adolescents. I justified taking it because, hey, I work with adolescents, right?

It's a more interactive, feelingsy style class structure than I was anticipating or like, but it's been nice to get out from behind my desk.

For one of our recent meetings, we had to write our personal theology of suffering.
He wanted our answer to the question: "What do you believe about suffering?"

My definition of suffering.

I think of this a lot, as I have since I was small and trying to reconcile my own feelings of social isolation with the more "pertinent" suffering of my best friend with her rough neighborhood and her parents that yelled.

That struggle continues now, as I see the ways that I have "suffered", which seem so...insignificant in comparison to my friends and people I love a lot.

How do you bring something to the table if you don't believe in its validity while, at the same time, can't help but feel its effects?

I didn't know my answer when I started typing, but that's often how it is with me. Give me a pen, and I can tell me my thoughts. I swear my mind is trapped in ink.

What I came up with is this:

 Suffering is anything that causes division, be that be division of self, division of mind, or division of emotion.
It is a felt, abstract concept, not one that can be put in a concrete way. Because of this, there is no empirical way to measure suffering on a straight measure.
What is suffering for one might be nothing for another. However, both of them get to “count.”
I come into contact with this word and my own struggles of literalism when I talk to my boyfriend.
Neither one of us have very clean stories. But they’re both messed up in different ways. And those differences affect us and our relationship strongly, as we struggle to work out our past hurts.
We have both suffered.
But when I come to the table with an area of woundedness, I feel as though my pain is insufficient compared to his and, therefore, doesn’t get to be counted as legitimate.
I was never married. I have never struggled with addiction.
I had some rough relationships. I was desperately lonely for a very long time. I know what it feels like to crawl into myself and die a little.
But those are not measurable to one another because we are different people. We have different stories.
I don’t know what it feels like to have a spouse leave or really anything else that he’s experienced.
But we both know what it feels like to have your heart divided. We both know what it feels like to be divided from those we love. We both know what it is to have our minds turn against us, to lose control, to feel a chasm open up between ourselves and the Lord.
For other people, it’s a literal division from body parts, division from the capacity to function “normally”, division from social spheres, division of parents, division from whole families, division of self. We feel it all. So, while we may not understand everyone’s exact point of “suffering”, we all know what it is to feel something less than whole. 

Something Old, Something New

Frequently, I think up a phrase or really good word or, I don't know, a whole paragraph's description of something and don't have a pen on me. Or paper. So, into my phone they go.

I try to delete it out of there once it's been used.

Today I found an email that I had kept for reference.
I liked it.
So I'll share it because it's encouraging, especially since lately I've been feeling a little lonely. It's amazing. I have friends all over the world but just not one in my state. Funny how our own words can encourage us more than other people's.

Last year in February, a professor of mine sent me an email asking several questions about how I am. It took me about a month to respond. And this is what I said:

"I have indeed found my rhythm. It turns out, we're all kinda lonely. And when you realize that, it's not so hard to find your boldness. I've deepened two of my four friendships from last semester and befriended three of my four coursemates. We hang out now, get coffee, make plans to have weekend getaways and horseback riding days. I can't tell you how many times (I could, actually. It's five) I've heard another person here say the phrase, 'I've found it really difficult to make friends here and am often alone' in the past month and a half. It's crazy how similar so many of us are without realizing it. And yet, we all assume we're the only ones.
I'm able to enjoy my classes more now, am doing less of the actual homework (wow, what? Prioritizing relationships over tasks? Me?!), am giving some serious thought to sending out a couple papers for publishing, and do a lot of baking. They love my baking and apparently, Americans are known for loving (and rocking at) baking. Who knew?!
The Lord is good. What I have experienced since being back could be described as nothing short of a supernatural miracle in teh social sphere. Could never have anticipated or even asked for hte level of grace and favor and love and even "like" I have been given. Wow.
In the past week, I've had three different people, whose last Jamie sighting was December, see me and kind of wig out about how different I look, how alive I look. One Irish lady shock me hard and told me about my exuding 'vim'. Haha. It was so cute. I blogged about it. And the thing is, I feel alive. I wasn't ready to come back. I was a little better, but I was still rocked to my core. Now, though, I could not feel more separated. There wasn't a sudden moment of change; it was gradual, but I am alive. Very. And very passionately. And very thankfully.
So that's my very long and probably very ungrammatical answer. I am well. Praise Jesus."

Culture shock, man. It really does take about half a year to start feeling at home, at peace, and get some gumption to go get 'em.
And when you forget that, it's easy to be discouraged.

I'm starting to finally feel settled enough to think again.
I'm reading, I'm forcing myself to journal a bit each night, the fog in my head is starting to clear up.

Even things at work seem to be getting better.

The reception I hosted in Texas last week was well attended, and the board of trustees seemed to have a really good time bonding with my wonderful, wonderful Texan students.

And, in a couple weeks, school counselors from all over the states will come to our school for an event, and over half are mine. There are even some new ones that have never come to our event before. I'm so excited.

Finally, I learned yesterday that a chunk of the Trifecta is coming back to me.
My six best friends are scattered across the globe. Just...so far away. Colorado, Oklahoma, Australia, Washington DC, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

And, after a job offer to her husband yesterday, my Caity Ruth is moving back to Tulsa. Still an Oklahoma away, but an hour and a half closer than where she is now, and that's where my family is located.

The past few years have been hard for us. It's just difficult to keep someone your best friend when, I mean, they aren't there in a literal way. You aren't doing life with them on the daily. I feel like I'm getting my best friend back. That is a really good feeling.

Blank Space

That new T-Swift song is great, but I've got a completely unrelated story.

I'm a writer, right? I'm designed to be a bit broody and ruminate and turn that into words.

So maybe it's my disposition toward slow processing that's made my experiences of last fall so difficult for me to...get out of my system.

There's a lot I don't remember. There's a lot I do remember.

Last year: three weeks of silence and one week of fighting to complete November, the waiting month. Sometimes, good things don't happen to those who wait.

A whole host of awful happened after. Awful that I only found out in segments. Awful that I still don't understand. And I don't need to. And I probably won't ever.

I came out of chapel today to see the retreating figure of a girl I have spent nearly a year's worth of energy and thoughts and behaviors in practical hatred.

And, though I had contemplated it before and decided against more than once, it was finally the right moment.

It does not matter what happened last year.
Or how it happened.

My response to it has been entirely my own to own.
And I have allowed myself to hate and behave in every manner contrary to the grace that I have been shown in my own life.

That ends today.

Today I apologized for my sin.
Didn't wake up thinking I would.
Still kind of shocked that I did.
And I've got that just-graduated feeling where you're having to readjust to not having homework hanging over your head or dreading the homework that will be hanging over your head.
All this space.
All this opportunity.

I don't know if I did it right or if I would go back and revise to make it perfect, but it was sincere and hard and time.

God is good.
God redeems.

Without that one catalyst (and all the ones that followed), literally everything in my life would be different. I would not be in Arkansas, I would not be with Julius, and I may not be who I want to be, but thanks be to God I'm not who I was.

The journey continues.
And it's slow and annoying and endless feeling, but I'm really thankful for these kinds of moments, when I see how God is making good on pain and moving me forward.

A Three Post Day: Mastered

Timing is everything.

It was this time last year that the lights started closing in on me. 

All manners of darkness swam into my heart, and, folks, to be frank, my very life is a miracle. 

By the Grace of God, I am what I am. 

I was delivered via airplane into the arms of my parents and friends, who were unnerved by the damage a few months had wrought on me. 

My first semester papers scored poorly, but I am shocked they were even brought into existence. 

My memories of those 40 days at home are few. The depression I fought so terribly hard against while away consumed me when it realized I was back in safety (literally). 

But Belfast was where God had sent me. 

And he hadn't unsent me. I just needed fuel. 

February first had me back and miracles happened. Four months of miracles followed four months (plus one) of nightmares. 

I was resurrected but I wasn't the same. 

Since December, I haven't been able to complete a single book, not in full. 

My second semester papers were written, but it was with difficulty. 

Writing that thesis was one of the most challenging academic experiences of my life. Culture shock, a new job, facing old realities with new perspective, a new relationship, finding friends, just...struggle. 

But sentence by sentence, God pulled those paragraphs out of me, and I turned it in. 

Now, three months later, I am so humbled to announce that I have passed, with flying colors and every synonym for the word "eccentric" written on my paper's critiques. 

I am proud not because I accomplished anything. 

Last December gives every indication that when I rely on my own strength, I run out, to the point of near death or permanent destruction. 

This work, friends, was the Lord's. 

"When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as men who dreamed. Their heart's were filled with laughter, their tongues with shouts of praise. 

Then it was said among the nations, 'The Lord has done great things for them!'

Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy." 

PSL

It's that season again, when all the white girls in The States don their nike shorts, ugg boots, and head on over to Starbucks to take selfies with their pumpkin spice lattes.

It is one of my dearest pleasures to inwardly (and now bloggily) mock those humans.
At the same time, I admit that there are few things that are more delightful than a good pumpkin spice latte. Or really anything pumpkin flavoured.

Aldi carries so many strange and wonderful pumpkin products during the halloween season including, but not excluded to, pumpkin cream cheese, pumpkin yogurt, and pumpkin pancake mix.

And, I'm not sure if you're quite aware, but Northern Ireland is not known for its pumpkin-flavoured anything.

Not even their Starbucks carried the PSL.
Finally, after days and days of searching, I found one in Sinnamon on Stranmillis. (If you're ever in the UK in the fall and get desperate. I understand. We all have needs.

To me, at that time, I needed pumpkin because it tasted like home: jumping in crisp, fire-coloured leaves, the smell of the ozark mountains changing seasons, and carving pumpkins with my friends. All things I had been stripped of. All things I now have again.

Currently, I'm sitting in Starbucks in Rogers, 45 minutes away from my Siloam, finishing up some office work and drinking a PSL in the rainy weather.

Why?
Partly because I needed to do office work.
Partly because if I chose Rogers instead of Fayetteville, I can see the boyfriend after he gets off work.
Partly in celebration.

Today, I submitted the single most strenuous and single most important paper of my academic career. That's right; the Master's thesis has been officially turned-in. Now, all that's left to do is wait and hope my little American, literary voice is understood.

Two For The Books (or blog)

What do we not see in this picture, folks? 

Can anybody tell me? 

An obnoxious, red "MaintReq" light. 

Baby's first oil change! 

Day 2 of adulting went indefinitely different than Day 1. 

I boldly walked into Benton County Tires, (with my car key pre-taken off the ring), announced my name and appointment time, told them the year and make of Beastie (my Rav), handed over the keys and my coupon, and took a seat while the professionals did their thing. 

Now, I have a light-less car and may have even had my tires rotated. Still not sure why that is a helpful thing, but mostly I'm excited about the light being off. 

To temper my "adult" move, here's a picture of how I accidentally closed a tree branch into my car door. 

While we're on the topic of being a responsible adult, here's another small win that I've been waiting to reveal until it became a pattern, not an idea.

I wake up at the ungodly time of 5:30.
I started this last week during MomWeek2014.
Except this time, I was the mom.
TO MY DOG

Needless to say, it was magical. I could smatter this whole post with pictures of our moments together, but that would reveal just how obsessed I am with my small creature...

ANYWAY, little man wakes up at 5:30 (ish).
So, I started waking up them, feeding him, taking a bike ride, coming home to do my morning devos, then writing my thesis for an hour before getting ready for work.

I am still behind on submission schedule (was meant to submit a first full draft last saturday) but I edited my first chapter and wrote a second one doing this system.

What it's gonna take to get this done is channeling crazy college jamie.
There's a lot about her that I hope to never, never revive, but college jamie knew how to get crap done. That's for sure.

Goal finish date for chapter 1 is Monday.
Ready go.

It's All In Your Head

No, I haven't been writing.

No, I haven't been writing at all.

Not letters, not content for my job, not in my journal, not on my blog.

The only word document that's gotten any love from me over the last month is my dissertation.

Let's be honest, it isn't going very well.

Sure, the research is done and the brainstorming has happened, and I've organized all my quotes and primary sources, but the actuality of writing this is just not coming along.

Wrote 4400 words.
Submitted them.
Received comments back saying it was interesting but needed an entirely different focus and direction.

I have a secret for you.
Please don't tell.
The literary community as a whole will for sure judge and ostracize me.

I don't get it.
I don't get literature.
Or its purpose.
Or why anyone would spend years of their life writing about literary theory.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love literature--to a fault really.
I also enjoy reading up on the theory of it.

But what is the purpose?
I can't find it.

And because I can't find it, I can't write it.

Somehow, literary theory is like math to me.
And results in very near hysteria from me.
Okay, so not "very near".
Actual hysteria.
The hissy fit kind.

The truth is, professor, that I can't write on how the knowledge of family structure and mental health illuminates a global understanding of the literature because I don't know myself.

It's the same struggle I have with other human beings.
I can see when they are feeling something, but I don't know what it is or why or how to go about deciphering it.

My vision is so literal. It isn't for lack of study or effort on my part. It feels as though I am blind and deaf to that sort of thinking.

So yes. This is me admitting that I have spent four years of university coping, finding alternative strategies to writing my literature papers in order to avoid literary theory.

Remember that "impostor syndrome"?
In this area, it really isn't so much of a syndrome so much as it that I really have been tricking people into thinking I know what I'm doing and have now been found out.
I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm doing.


So yes, my life is full of wonderful things.
I'm so glad to be here in Siloam.
I love my job.
I like being around my friends and housemates so so much.
My blog writing will probably be filled primarily with strategies, small wins, and struggles of writing a dissertation for a few weeks.

Preconception's Pretty Wrong

Aside from my day of editing scheduled for tomorrow (I say "scheduled" but really I mean that's the only day left available to me), I am done with my papers.

Yes, as of two minutes ago, my final paper (an extended and annotated bibliography) was completed.

When I originally started it, I thought that that particular paper would be the easiest of the three to complete. However, I quickly learned that just absolutely was not the case.

It seemed to me the more I researched, the shorter my paper became. At one point 1,000 words, then down to 600, then up to 800, then down to 400 before it steadily began to climb back up.

It was a process of refinement, and a necessary one at that, as most processes of refinement are.

I had in my mind this grandiose concept of what I wanted my dissertation to be and how I wanted to get there. Then, when I started working out the details with Eamonn, it started to look less plausible than I had imagined, especially within my 15,000 word limit.

When the actual research part came around, then, I discovered that only so much was available to me in the area I had chosen to pursue. That's kind of normal for me, as my papers are usually a bit on the "eccentric" side, but you have to have something to work with.

What I've finally structured my dissertation around and outfitted with appropriate research bears resemblance to my original idea but it is also a new creation altogether.

The outline, the subjects, and the primary texts have all changed but one.

However, what I've ended up with is better than what I'd originally mapped out for myself.

And, thanks to the intensity of the research I've had to do, my actual dissertation writing shouldn't be that hefty at all. In fact, I'm not certain that I'll have to do any further research at all, aside from completing a couple books I've started on the matter.

I thought this class was a joke and an annoyance.
I thought this project would be a breeze.

I was wrong on both counts, but I'm also very glad I was. My next step doesn't seem so scary now.

Write What You Live What You Know

Oswald Chambers talks about the dangers of "morbid introspection."
The way that sometimes the sound of the life of the mind can produce clouds of vaporous acid rain.

I'm a Writer.

Morbid Introspect is the encyclopedic definition.

Speaking on Chambers' behalf, I am not under the impression that he's thinking "morbid" as in fantasies involving the death of loved ones, but rather getting so caught up in one's mind that you forget to participate in anything else.

Don't mind my pronoun-antecedent error in that last line.

To a certain extent, I have to disagree with Chambers.

Without writing and without a regular dose of morbid introspection by which I process the world in me and the world around me, I cease to be able to engage with the world around me. Derek Mahon would call it a case of "cloud thoughts."

My gaze gets hazy, and I say and do things that aren't me. Because I'm not thinking, I'm living. I have a lot of friends who are so thoughtless. They GO and ACT and DO and so many people respect and admire them for this, but all it does is make me a little sad.

Yes, for a while I'm jealous of them (as I am also a little jealous of the GOACTDO Jamie when I'm not her), but then I can't help but to think that they go and act and do without really knowing why. And that makes me sad.

Too much in the head kills you but too little in the head causes a build-up...and kills you.

I call for a balance, for the freedom to pro-con list and journal about your feelings and fears but also with a mighty spill-in of risk and spontaneity and glitter.

The ideal is a mix: outrospection with an understanding of why you do what you do.

In that way, you would be able to keep yourself fun and tender-hearted but not so self-absorbed that you become selfish and forgetful of the needs of those around you.

Along a similar line, as a writer, I also know that we have a tendency to record only that which requires meditation.
But when you go back and read later, you may forget all the periods of great fun in-between the "deep" times.

Any writer can ink a sob story all over a page.
It takes great skill and discipline to write well about joy.

Record all of it.
Remember all of it.

F is for Friendship

For the past few Sunday evenings, I’ve attended Newtonbreda Baptist with my friends. And, afterward, gone out for ice cream before landing back in my living room.

Have I mentioned that I am now the sole Lady of the Manor these days? I’ve got to admit: it feels pretty good.

It also feels good to have friends to host.

Last evening, we sat around chatting and, randomly, one of the guys decided it was a good idea to have a circle of testimonies time (while I pinterested one of the girl’s hair).

It was pretty fitting, since the morning message at Vineyard was about the power of sharing stories. On 

Easter, as they did baptisms, each person had a friend read aloud the baptee’s cliffnotes spiritual journey.

I cried pretty steadily through the whole thing. The power and encouragement which comes from hearing of 

God’s good work is more than emotional walls can withstand.

So we went around the circle and shared our spiritual journey with Jesus.

Stories and handwriting are similar.

I’ve got this handwriting analysis book (no memory of where I got it or why I have it) that I used to use to casually analyse the handwriting of my friends. It’s pretty dead on, surprisingly. Or, rather, not surprisingly. Either way.

It’s part of why I miss letters. 70% of communication is non-verbal. Emails and type face just don’t get across the same kinds of things a pen can.

When people tell their story, the way in which they construct it reveals just as much about them as the content. It also demonstrates their level of comfortability with their cohorts and with themselves.

What do they include? Are they jittery when they speak? Eye contact? Tone? Do they even share at all?

For an hour or so, I got to hear the honest hearts of my friends as they told of heartbreaks and inconsistencies and screwups and the desperate knowledge of their need for Jesus. It amazed me yet again of how different we, as humans, all are. And at the same time, how very similarly we fall apart.The circumstances may all be different (or eerily similar), but all people hurt the same. We're pretty fragile things. 

Every day here I all more in love with Jesus and this country and these friendships.

And there’s a part of me that wonders how and why I didn’t have these people 8 months ago when I was so desperate for them. At the same time, I maintain that I would have been incapable of engaging in their friendship. Emotionally unavailable, as someone once told me.

Day by day, I come more alive and my spirit more free. There’s still that voice and my calendar which remind me of the tick tick ticking of my countdown here, but I refuse to live inhibited by the fear of that. I serve a God of anomalies and impossible things. What I have right now is what I thought was an impossible thing. I’m gonna revel in it.

Ain’t that good? Isn’t he just so good?

One Step Closer

I like word searches.
I don't know why; there's no particular skill set needed to complete them (aside from basic literacy..but not really even that), but I find I have a knack for the thing.

Well, writing research papers, for me, is just like a really long (way more literate, hopefully) word search.
The word search is even in it.

Now, you've endured reading my complaints about that all-inclusive poetic list of every.single.notation of weather-related terms in Derek Mahon's poetry and also my long and instructive post about my theories about the most effective way to write a research paper.

Today, I actually completed one.
(and everybody said "AMEN!")

5 days, 1,000 words per day, and here we are, folks. Alive and well.

And, thank goodness, it turned out that that personal file of meteorological facts came so so much in handy.

I'm a little neurotic about writing papers.
And everything.

There has to be a method to it.
It doesn't have to be my method, but it has to be a method.
Preferably a my method...

It may be an ISTJ thing. 

a. I make a Quotes Page
b. (particular to this paper) I had my weather notes
c. "The Draft"
d. a clean, unsaved, new document which acts as the "under construction" page.
e. Later, there is a "final" page.

Nothing is to be written on the actual drafts page. I try sometimes. Then my mind just gets cluttered and overwhelmed with how much crap is going on.

Section at a time.

I write a section, pulling all the quotes I think I may want from my quotes page, as well as their citations, and write my paragraph(s). When that's done, I take both the paragraphs and the citation and insert it into the draft. Only there is it formatted.

Delete draft page.

Make new draft page (important for some weird reason).
Piece by piece, I work my word search.

By the end, I have a beautifully color-coded Works Cited page, a single-spaced (double is overwhelming) draft, and my name at the top.

Wait a week (so I can catch errors more easily).

Copy and paste all of that into a new document, put it in a weird font (so I can catch errors more easily), read it aloud to somebody (so I can catch errors more easily), edit the heck out of it, making sure everything is correctly punctuated and referenced, change my Works Cited page to black, change all of it to double spacing, and SAVE.

Submit.

I'm currently in the waiting phase, but my 5,000 words are carved and crafted and waiting to be cleaned.
This is such a good feeling.

One more 3,000 word paper.
One 3,000 word bibliography (which weirdly and wonderfully counts as a paper).

Then I get to fly home.

Hallelujah!!!

Scrambles

Logged 6 more hours into poetry notes.
Finished about 60 pages.

At this point, I'm starting to realize that what I'm doing may not actually benefit me in the long run.

However, it is forcing me to stay focused and read the poems without skimming (much).

...and also I'm too OCD tendencied to stop mid-book. I'm over halfway now. Progress has been made!!

In other news, dry cereal, potatoes, and pinterest.

I need groceries.
I leave the country for a week on Monday.

Dry cereal.
And potatoes.

Smashed potatoes, to be specific. Kira first taught me how, then I looked it up on Pinterest (my personal addiction and resource for recipes).
-Boil as many little potatoes as you like until you can stick a fork into them.
-Drizzle olive oil (or any oil) on a baking sheet.
-Potatoes on sheet.
-Smash. (it calls for a potato masher to do this. I used a cup).
-Drizzle with oil.
-Douse with your personal combo of salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. Or whatever looks good to you at the time.
-Bake at 425 for 25 minutes or until sizzly and brown.

Did I eat 10 in one day?
Yes.
Yes I did.
It was really very Irish of me.

However, I had forgotten to eat the rest of the day and I chased it with a bottle of water and a bell pepper. In my mind, that equals zero calories.

My Pinteresting today has been with actual purpose!

It's time to get serious about business casual.

[Sidebar: Once, in high school, I was in a Junior Achievement Investment Challenge with a couple of my buddies from finance class and we called ourselves "Team Business Casual." My mates chose by math and logic. I chose by companies with names I liked. It was great. We also won and laughed through the entire awards ceremony at the irony that the team with the Mathless Wonder (me...) would take the gold.]

Went through my entire "style" board. What did I find? Super loose tops, lacey dresses, rings in nature-related shapes. Great.

It's come to that time in my life when I actually have to start dressing like a professional human. Is it sad that wouldn't even know where to start if not for Pinterest?

All right, well. I think it's becoming very apparent that I've been staring at words and screens too long today.

168 pages of poetry to go.
1.25 days until I leave for Austria.

Flower Power

Do you ever have one of those ideas that you think is really good at the time...and then stops being good the second you start in on it?

I'm having one of those moments.
However, I am having one of those moments while drinking a really delicious, nutritious smoothie involving greek yogurt, milk, vanilla, honey, and a frozen half banana/can of pineapple combo. So that part is encouraging.

No, I decided to write a paper for poetry class about Derek Mahon's excessive use of weather terms in his poetry. No big deal, I think. I'll just give a skim through the poems and jot down the references.

Five double-column single-spaced color-coded word document pages later and 9 hours later...I have made it through 152 pages of 387. I'm gonna need more smoothie.

Spring is officially here in Belfast! My allergies told me so this morning. But take a gander at these flowers. The sniffles are totally worth it. Keep in mind, there are no edits to these pictures.

Okay so these ones aren't from my yard, but double-bell daffodils? Come on. Gorgeous. 

From this enormous Rhododendron (pronounced road-ee-den-dron by David) out back.  

David made me a bouquet 

 Do not I live in the most magical place? Seriously, those blooms!!!

David I guess saw me outside from a window and walked behind me (trying to seem like he was minding his own business and just happened to be going the same direction as me) and casually asked if I had already noticed/photographed various flowers.

He told me how the squirrels last year had eaten all the bulbs and it had killed so many of the tulips but they were all back again. New bulbs, you see. I will mention, 300 new bulbs that he planted, though he would not tell you so. :)

He came back into the house a few minutes after I did and found me in the kitchen (my haunting [and hunting] grounds) with blossoms in hand and arranged them into a jar I pulled down.

I did a wee slideshow of "flowers in review" after taking a shot of the vase, and I think he was pleased. And that pleases me. David is kind. And has dang good taste in flowers.

"The 9-5" or "Working Girl"

Back when I lifeguarded, the joke amongst us used to be that if you described our job without actually saying what it is that we did, we'd sound a whole lot like hookers.

Feel free to think that's crass, but so many more things are funny after extended sun exposure and dehydration.

Either way, in college, I was in this creative writing poetry class, and designed a trixy poem doing just that: poetically describing the lifeguarding lifestyle, all without actually saying the word "lifeguard" until the very final line. Personally, I thought it was hilarious and so did my classmates. My professor so did not understand it. Mood. Killer.

I've got "Working Girl" on the mind because I am currently in the early stages of interviews to become part of the adult working community. However, my life as of now is so totally unstructured so as to make a 9-5 job sound absolutely terrible.

I've never been quite resigned to the idea of that sort of stifling routine. It was one of the main reasons the block schedule of University suited me so much better than the regularity of High School. There's room to breathe and flex.

My daddy did have an excellent strategy for University life, though, and it was this: treat every day like a work day. 9-5 focus, then after, you can play.

Time management leaning toward the study side has always been my strength, but by following his system, I am actually forced to put down the pencil/mop/keyboard/book and do something that refreshes me for the rest of the evening, even if that is a 15 hour nap. A set end time prevents burnout.

Since living here, I've had almost no form to my schedule at all, which means I've had no pressure to really do anything, which means I either read for 9 hours straight or do absolutely nothing for 9 days straight. Very few of my days here have I felt proud of the way that I've divvied up my hours. There are just way too many of them for me to handle sometimes.

Now it has come time to buckle down, though, and get me prepped and ready for the real world. That, and I really, really need to start writing my final papers.

Therefore, I have a new system, which is actually an old system.

"Work" starts at 9.
The phone stays off, Facebook and Pinterest don't get pulled up at all, and I have a full list of every sort of thing that could be considered "work" that I can feel free to engage in from 9-1:30.

1:30-2:30 is lunch break, then back to business until 5.

It's day two of my system, and I've written an additional 3 articles about garage doors, made substantial headway into one of my resources for my thesis, cleaned and mopped the kitchen, made five beds, organized three shelves, and gone to class/smallgroup/skypedate.

I've got flexibility in that I can choose what I spend my time doing but defined enough structure and pressure that I am actually inclined to do it. My mind feels clear and energized, and I finish every day feeling satisfied that I've been a good steward of the time allotted me.

Go team.

But is it? Is it really?

One single concluding paragraph separates me from fully completing my first semester (and first half) of my Master's degree.

I can't think of anything at all to say in that concluding paragraph, though. At one point in my academic career, this would be call for a total meltdown of failure. 

Not only would that be an absurd response from me right now, as the paper is actually quite good other than its lack of final statements, it also wouldn't fit with my current ideas of failure. 

Failure or the fear of failing is ultimately what drives us in our interactions with other humans, or even in our personal decisions. 

I don't think what we view as failure is an accurate description of what failure is. 

We think that if we're not good at something or we totally tank in an attempt then we are failures or we have failed. I just don't think that's true, especially when we are making those statements in comparison to other people.

Not only do we all have varying skill sets, we also have varying degrees of experience. 

In order to "fail" at something, there has to be a certain degree of experience already gained in that area. 

Think of it like this: If you've never tried something before, it is as though you are standing on the solid ground. If you aren't stellar at your first try, so what? You've nowhere to fall really. 

It's when you've practiced at something, gained skill and ability, that you walk up the stairs. Then, if you a horrible job, you actually fall pretty far. That is failure. 

Am I making sense? 

There's got to be cognizance and awareness. 

For instance, I used to say often what a failure of a friend or girlfriend or person I was. 

However, I wasn't at a place where I could understand what it meant to be good at any of those things. I knew nothing other than what I was doing. It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't failure. I wasn't a failure. 

Rather than thinking back and saying, "I failed" then, I think it's more accurate to say that I was not yet at a place where I could be able to succeed. 

I was yet to be equipped with the strength, stability, maturity, or even information at how to be good at any of those things. 

Maybe a better example would be academia. If I'd started this program at Queen's at the age of 18, I would have flunked out. 

Well duh!! I was 18 and without the brutal writing boot-camp Patty Kirk put me through during my undergraduate degree. I would have "failed" at Queen's because I did not yet have any of the training necessary to succeed in a Master's program. 

Those are just my vague, procrastinatory thoughts, but I think that mental shift in definitions is worth further consideration.