So I’m sitting here in the study just chilling like a villain and wondering where the summer went. I’m also thinking about why the frigg it’s been so long since I’ve last blogged. I’ve got tons of stuff I could write about. TONS. I could go over the Corn Capital Days V-ball tournament where (once again) my team got blasted out in the first elimination round. Or perhaps speaking a bit of my experiences fishing or shooting this summer would be valid Maybe even a nice, little review of THE GREATEST DAY EVER: THE MEINTS WEDDING would be sufficient. There are so many things that could easily be talked about. But there’s a fairly-large sized chunk of me right now that wants to write a little something something about the concept of awesomeness.
What do you mean by “awesomeness,” you ask? Well… honestly, I’m not entirely sure. There’s a lot of different definitions of such a concept, I imagine. Heck, as I’m writing this, I’ve got the TV on; there’s an episode of Sports Science going on, and currently they’re talking about how much force it takes to break a basketball backboard. Now let me be straight wit chu for a sec here. Breaking backboards is AWESOMENESS personified… well… not really personified at all. That doesn’t make any sense. But I know you’re tracking with me on this. One thing I do know, though, that’s not awesomeness is the layer of skin missing from my tailbone right now. Yeah, that’s probably not something you want to hear about; is it, my faithful reader(s)? My apologies, but it’s bothering that Smurf out of me ahora. Wait. Back up a minuto. How’d you manage to do that? Well, on a very rare occasion this occurs due to doing a boatload of situps on a surface that’s…pues… really friggin’ hard (my tailbone acts as the pivot point when I do those). Now I’m not too big on the situps because there be a lot better ab exercises out there for my to rock, but I do do (ha - doodoo) them once a week. I keep the reps low, though [(3 sets with 20 reps tops (depending on the weight I use with them)]. That’s a fairly chill rep scheme for such a thing to occur, BUT I do them on my basement floor, which is made of cement. And since I happened to up the weight last week, I was pushing a bit harder than I had previous weeks. This no doubt affected my form, and thus led to tailbone pwnage. So now basically every time I move whilst sitting, it stings like when a standard girl from MSU pees. Yeah. I went there. This especially sucks because it’s ab day again today. Not cement situp day, though thankfully (not until Wednesday), so hopefully it won’t be too horrid to get through. But we’ll see. There’s no way that this entry’ll get posted before it‘s time to rock my workout, though, so I get back to you guys on this one. *update* Just finished my workout, and I’m happy to say that there were no issues. Fantastic. Just to be safe, though, before I started I put a Band-Aid over the afflicted area. Let me axe you something, you ever try place a Band-Aid over a fairly small area on your butt? Difficult. The mirror kept playing tricks on me, and my hands would block the target so yeah with that. What an ordeal. On the plus side, though, I can now say that there’s currently a Sesame Street Band-Aid on my rump.
Anyways, back to the matter at hand. Awesomeness. I feel like a 4th grader writing some weak essay - What is awesomeness to you? *shakes head* I digress. Well, not really at all. I’m about to go somewhere with this. Awesomeness (redundant, much?) is going to be this year at school. I’m moving back up to the greatness that is Minneapolis on Tuesday. I’m throwing some crap into the my new house, and then coming back for a couple more days before moving back up there for realsies next Sunday (the 6th), which is one week from today. I’m super-mega psyched for this year to kick off. Not so much for the classes and the like but for everything else. I’m going to be living with my boys Geoff and Jon again this year. Y’all already know Geoff from a multitude of blog entries, and Jon’s a decent cat as well. They were both my suitemates from sophomore year, so I already know that I can live with them, and that it’s going to be money. Along with this, my gangsta Spain friend Laura’s going to be living less than two blocks from me as well! Then throw in all my other peeps, and this a~o’s going to be phenomenal.
*another aside* You may notice the “~” mark I just used. That’s the shortcut that a lot of Spanish speakers use for the “n” with the tilde over top of it. You know what I’m talking about. Just picture the “n” with… well… ~ above it and you totally got it. BUT I’m typing this on the family desktop right now, which is unfortunate. I wrote the zombie blog on my laptop, saved it to a flashdrive, and then transferred it over to the desktop to get it online (because I can’t get internet on my laptop whilst at home). Sadly, I can’t do this anymore because I use Word on the mini comp and Notepad on the big one, and the whole compatibility thing doesn’t work. The only reason it could funcionar before was because I finally used that 60 day free Word trial on the desktop. And debido a the fact that I suck at blogging, that has since expired. So I’m back to rolling like this. Ergo, you can probably expect a fair amount of grammar/spelling errors and general lack of cool Spanish characters because of this. Please accept my condolences.
Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a bunch of things. And they all seem to wrap themselves up into a neat, little package. Among these things are (1) faith, (2) social dynamics, and basically the concept of (3) making it happen. Of course faith gets the cheese for being talked about first for obvious reasons. Now I’m not going to lie, I’ve been slacking bad on reading the Bible these past couple months. I’ve been uber busy going on and living the dream basically every night, and as such, my Biblia reading has suffered. Now that’s clearly not excuse for that. At all. That has to change when I get back to school. No doubt. But in specific I’ve been pondering something my Bible study leader Steven said a few whiles back. Paraphrased, he said that putting yourself into situations where you’ll fail if the Holy Spirit does show up (as in, you don’t rely on Him) is a good thing.
What am I talking about? Well, when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus said that the first was to love the Lord your God with all your heart. The second, He said, was to love your neighbor as yourself. Now as different as these two commandments may seem on the surface level, they basically lead right into each other (I speak from a Christian perspective, obviously). How do you love God? By glorifying Him, by living for Him and according to his purpose. What’s God’s greatest desire? That every person come to know Him, that none shall perish. Thus, to love the Lord your God with all your heart means to share the Word/Gospel with people, so that they may come to Him and be saved. Saved? Yeah, as in spend eternity with God. God of course being the all-knowing, all-powerful, just, LOVING Lord of the universe. In short, God’s the coolest being ever, and He wants to hang out with YOU! What does that mean? Well, my friend(s), it means that the best way that I can show you (my neighbors) love is to share his word because the God of EVERYTHING wants to know you and chill with you. Think of it like this, I’ve got this really cool friend that I want you to meet. Or I’m going to this tight party, and I want you to come with. You’re cool. He’s cool. Y’all should hang because I love you both and I know it’ll work.
Where am I going with this? Only the Holy Spirit (AKA God) can change people’s hearts, and if I’m hanging out in a way that I’m not letting Him speak through me, I’m pretty much failing both of those commandments. John Piper once said, “Being made in the image of God means we should at least image forth God.” Baller. But the issue is that perhaps I’m receiving all sorts of positive feedback from people by not completing these desires of the Lord. I’m failing at my duty, but I’m succeeding from a worldly perspective. The problem, of course, is that worldly success ultimately means nothing (Be in the world, not of the world. - somewhere in the book of John, I believe; also, “Anyone who loves the world does not love Me.” - somewhere in the back of that book :p). Does that mean that I need to be out preaching the Good News all the time? No. But hold on; that’s definitely the eventual goal. The idea at any one time is that I need to put myself out there with everyone in a way that’s glorifying to God. They have to know somehow that I’m a Christian, and perhaps that’ll cause me to get rejected/made fun of/whatever. But the point is, I need to go places socially where I’ll fail if I don’t rely on God. And the fact of the matter is, that I don’t fail very often when it comes to people. At all. Now maybe you could say that I’m fully focusing on God’s commandments, and that’s why I’m succeeding. You’d be wrong. The vast majority of my friends know that I’m a Christian, but have I had an honest discussion with them about religion? Some, yes. Most, probs not. And don’t even get me started on people that are just acquaintances and the like.Now there’s always that fear that people are going to just ignore you and perhaps even forget about you if you become “that guy” who talks about God all the time. I don’t want to become that guy. I’ll be honest, I don’t think that’s the way to live your life. There are better ways (in my opinion) of sharing the Gospel than constantly talking about it with everyone. I do believe, though, that it’s important to ACT in a manner that’s always befitting to the Christian faith (which no one should have any fear of - heck, God‘s got your back either way, so fear in that sense shouldn’t exist anyway). People will see that you’re a normal, chill person, BUT they should also be able to see that there’s something different about you. Something that stands out. Hopefully that’ll lead to a legit religious discussion at some point where Jesus-awesomeness is talked about. Now most of my CLOSE friends and I have shared a discussion at some point about God, and that’s great. But there’s still a long way to go. How does one go about fixing this (good gravy, I’m asking a lot of questions in this post)? Why awesomeness, of course! So this all means that I need to up my awesome game a bit. I mean, it’s already pretty friggin’ high, let’s not lie, but there’s always room for improvement :p
This brings me into the second thing that I’ve been thinking about recently: social dynamics. As weird as this sounds, I’ve been reading a bit, watching videos, and studying conversations in general. I’ve always had an interest in such things and have prided myself on my ability to basically talk to anyone for pretty much any length of time, but I’m starting to better understand little things about how people work and what they want in life. What posture, hand motions, eye movements, and the like mean in conversation.
This brings me into the second thing that I’ve been thinking about recently: social dynamics. As weird as this sounds, I’ve been reading a bit, watching videos, and studying conversations in general. I’ve always had an interest in such things and have prided myself on my ability to basically talk to anyone for pretty much any length of time, but I’m starting to better understand little things about how people work and what they want in life. What posture, hand motions, eye movements, and the like mean in conversation.I suppose a lot of this originally came from my love of poker. Poker’s great because it’s basically a micro version of life. Everything that people do in that game transfers over to the real world. And you start to pick these little things up over time. An easy example is that new players tend to lean back in their chair when they have a good hand. Obviously, this then connotes confidence (ignoring the concept of bluffing and such). This means the same thing if you’re talking to me about your favorite type of cheese while we sit on the couch and watch a re-run of Family Matters as it does at the table while you holding a full house. The thing is, just like Christianity, you can’t just know these things, you have to use them. You have to realize WHO you’re talking to and what the best way to go about talking to them is. Now this all seems like basic stuff. And… well… it is. Just think about it, most people probably don’t so much ponder over these things, but they make sense if they’re explained, and you’ll see how two people who are having a good conversation typically match each other’s level of excitement and body posture without any real idea that they’re doing it. Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but they’re not worth getting into right now; the point remains.
BUT going back to how most people know this, watch your average dude try to approach and talk to a hot girl (be it at a bar, class, or anywhere). Most likely it’s going to end up as some sort of hilarious event where the guy gets completely blown off because he has no idea how to do such a thing. Things somehow become a whole lot less obvious when you’re thrown out of your comfort zone.
BUT going back to how most people know this, watch your average dude try to approach and talk to a hot girl (be it at a bar, class, or anywhere). Most likely it’s going to end up as some sort of hilarious event where the guy gets completely blown off because he has no idea how to do such a thing. Things somehow become a whole lot less obvious when you’re thrown out of your comfort zone.So awesomeness. Awesomeness is going up to ANYONE in any circumstance and being awesome. It’s going out of your comfort zone so many times that eventually there becomes no such thing as ANY item being out of said zone. It’s relying on the Holy Spirit and knowing that He’s got your back. - putting yourself into positions where you can fail. Go forth in your life and be happy knowing this. Arm yourself with Him, do some studying, make some observations, and BE friggin’ confident. Set the mood wherever you are. If you’re hanging out with others and you’re laughing, cracking jokes, and just being legit (all of this, definitely without being a douche-waffle), the other people are going to be hard-pressed to not feel the same way. Think about it, you’ve got friends like this who are always cool and having fun. How do you feel around them? Probs pretty friggin’ good. Usually, I’m one of these chill cats, but my issue (and that with most people) is being that broheim when it’s just me and someone I don’t really know that well/at all. Then things can start to get quiet. That’s not awesomeness.
So how does one get over this little fear? A nice little way is to study up on some social dynamics and start observing people (preferably in a non-creepy fashion :p), but eventually, like I said, you have to go out of your comfort zone. As mentioned before, it’s not enough to know that Jesus is your savior. You have to accept his gift of salvation. With that, you can’t just know all sorts of great ways to talk to people. You have to APPLY them. Rely on God. Maybe you have to start slowly at first but just roll with it and be cool about it. Confidence is one of those things that just snowballs once it gets going. So push yourself down the hill and rock it. Set the tone and BE MONEY. You’ll start to learn that most people are actually pretty darn cool and are more than happy to chill with you. And you never know what kind of effect you can have if you just walk across the room to the one dude standing by himself in the corner.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhmcJ7Zg5ko Context, people! :p
So with this, my point of this very short post was to lead up to some sort of goals for the semester. Obviously, I want to live for God first and foremost. How am I going to go about doing this? By being awesome! New Years resolution for the win (right, Amy? :p)! I want to meet tons of new people and develop close relationships with them, I want to get closer to those that I already know, I want to do things I’ve never done before and erase my zone of non-comfort. I could talk for a loooooong time about my experiences and thoughts about social dynamics and how to talk to people and such, but none of that means anything unless I/you learn from what I/you’ve done and go out and keep doing it up. With that, I’m going to continue to wear the armor of the Lord and sharpen my sword in every fashion possible.
This brings me to my third and final thought: make it happen. I say this to myself all the time when I’m working out. I’ll be between sets or something and just tired as frigg, sweating pools that alligators could live in (which is convenient for the moat I'm building - what?), and wondering what I’m doing to myself when I just think “make it happen.” Champions do things that others won’t. Don’t sit around waiting for the perfect moment. The closest thing to the perfect moment is literally NOW. Make it happen.
So how does one get over this little fear? A nice little way is to study up on some social dynamics and start observing people (preferably in a non-creepy fashion :p), but eventually, like I said, you have to go out of your comfort zone. As mentioned before, it’s not enough to know that Jesus is your savior. You have to accept his gift of salvation. With that, you can’t just know all sorts of great ways to talk to people. You have to APPLY them. Rely on God. Maybe you have to start slowly at first but just roll with it and be cool about it. Confidence is one of those things that just snowballs once it gets going. So push yourself down the hill and rock it. Set the tone and BE MONEY. You’ll start to learn that most people are actually pretty darn cool and are more than happy to chill with you. And you never know what kind of effect you can have if you just walk across the room to the one dude standing by himself in the corner.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhmcJ7Zg5ko Context, people! :pSo with this, my point of this very short post was to lead up to some sort of goals for the semester. Obviously, I want to live for God first and foremost. How am I going to go about doing this? By being awesome! New Years resolution for the win (right, Amy? :p)! I want to meet tons of new people and develop close relationships with them, I want to get closer to those that I already know, I want to do things I’ve never done before and erase my zone of non-comfort. I could talk for a loooooong time about my experiences and thoughts about social dynamics and how to talk to people and such, but none of that means anything unless I/you learn from what I/you’ve done and go out and keep doing it up. With that, I’m going to continue to wear the armor of the Lord and sharpen my sword in every fashion possible.This brings me to my third and final thought: make it happen. I say this to myself all the time when I’m working out. I’ll be between sets or something and just tired as frigg, sweating pools that alligators could live in (which is convenient for the moat I'm building - what?), and wondering what I’m doing to myself when I just think “make it happen.” Champions do things that others won’t. Don’t sit around waiting for the perfect moment. The closest thing to the perfect moment is literally NOW. Make it happen.
