Hello?

Anyone still there?

I wouldn't blame you if you're not...

But in case you're interested ------------>  I'm here now.

All the things.

My downfall has always been that I try to do all the things.

[NOT to be confused with "clean all the things" although I try that too, and give up when I realize that it's much easier to lob trash in the general vicinity of my trash can and pick it up later. ]

It's true. Some bizarre and irritating quirk in my nature encourages me daily... Go ahead - take on that one extra thing. You can do it. You are, after all... a superhero! Also, you'd better make a list and make sure to put like 12 things on there. Because of course you can do them all. 

Yeah. It's become a real problem. Especially when I find myself compartmentalizing my life.

Compartment 1: School.
Compartment 2: Music.
Compartment 3: Spiritual life
Compartment 4: Writing
Compartment 5: Hobby #1
Compartment 6: Hobby #2
Compartment 7: Movie-watching and Chocolate-Eating. 
Compartment 7: Being a responsible adult.
 
And so on and so forth, until I am one big compartmentalized freak. And then everything just feels a little bit cardboard-ish, if you know what I mean. Somehow, I don't think God's favorite thing is to be crammed into a little box in my life, and treated like a prayer machine.

So bear with me as I try to de-compartmentalize a little. And in the mean time, tell me...

what do YOU do to simplify when things start to go a little wanky?

 

My Chinese Easter

On Easter Sunday, I visited a Chinese church with a friend.

It was awesome.

I felt very white and kinda tall, but that's nothing out of the norm :) And I can't tell you how cool it was to listen to the sermon one sentence at a time, with Cantonese translated in between.

I was reminded that it's so very, very easy to let our worldview and life perspective shrink to our own small "reality." Sitting in this service, and listening to hymns sung in English and Chinese at the same time, I was also reminded of the plain fact that brothers and sisters not that far away are dying every. single. day for their faith in the same Jesus that I take for granted every. single. day.

So I've been asking myself, when I'm stewing over obnoxious drivers or feeling victimized because I only have 1,523 articles of clothing instead of the 1,524 that I want:

"Is what I'm living for worth Christ dying for?"

The Weekend

It's been respectfully referred to as The Weekend for several months now. Since the very beginning of the idea's inception. (Beginning of the inception... Was that redundant? Sorry.)
That is, until one of us - coughHaleecough - came up with the name "Operation Curse Reverse."

In essence, this is basically code for "a creative getaway for the purpose of total hilarity and hopeful un-blockage of persons afflicted with writer's block." 

Multiple emails have been sent. Much planning has been done (Not on my part. I know not how to plan.) And there has even been talk of tiramisu.

You see, there's this lady. Her name's Halee.

She's one of the coolest people I know. Even though we're a couple of introverts who would probably hole up in our respective writer's caves and not come out for 6 months if left to our own devices, we really click. She's become a close friend and awesome mentor, and I hereby dub her my life coach. (Congratulations, Halee! hehehe...)

Also, she's super stylish, endlessly creative, a total realist, and absolutely hilarious. (And no, I'm not just saying that because she said some super sweet things about me on her blog. Honest.)

We like to go on adventures, most of which involve coffee.

That cute little chicka on the left is Bekah!

Or finding random villages with Lord of the Rings-ish names and taking pictures pretending to be elves.

Ya know. Normal stuff like that.

There's also this other lady. Her name's Faye.

We also go on adventures, such as butt-kicking home improvement exploits, pretending to jump into fountains at Josh Groban concerts, and having official Tuesday night New Girl marathons.

Oh, and throwing Clue-themed costume parties.

She's my sister but also one of my absolute closest friends. She does a pretty good job of keeping me relatively sane and grounded, and I do my sisterly duty and bring some random craziness to her life and sleep on her guest-couch at every possible opportunity.

This weekend, these two stellar ladies and I get to commandeer a beach house for three whole days of writerly, creative, beachy awesomeness.

There will be much coffee, much laughter, and lots of inspiration stirring around and bubbling forth from the little beach town that is our destination. If you live in the general vicinity of The South, keep your eyeballs peeled for three crazies roaming the beach carrying umbrellas, wearing Chucks and generally acting strange. And when you find us, offer us chocolate.

We'll be best friends for life.

My Annual Valentine's Day Manifesto: 2nd Edition

I feel pretty awesome today. Like I could probably do this.

Today, in deference to the holiday perhaps, I wore heels to work.

Now, they don't really count since the heel is like, 2 1/2 inches tall. And it's possible that I cancelled out the awesomeness by wearing socks with them.

Yes, I can actually feel your disapproval right now. But hello! It's chilly and my toes are pale and my nail polish is chipped. No way was I rockin the peep-toed look today. And they were black socks, so that makes it a little better.

Nevertheless, I have newly discovered that, although they're fun to wear, I loathe heels.

In other news, I think I need to work on my "I'm independent and totally not feeling sorry for myself" expression because three different people have walked by the poor, single girl in Starbucks and wished me a benevolent "happy Valentine's day." I wouldn't mind so much if the majority of the benefactors weren't burly, tattooed men.

Oh, and one more thing: I'm sending this Valentine to myself:

Happy Valentine's Day y'all! - cause I'm all about spouting cliches to the masses ;)

Yes. It is I. Don't look so freaked out.

via

What's up?

Yeah. It's me again. That pesky weirdo who keeps popping up with new and strange things to say after several months of semi-silence. You see, I couldn't stand the way my blog was looking. I wanted to give it an overhaul in manner of intense car-overhaul shows that I don't watch because really? Who has time for that when New Girl is on??

Anyway, I didn't have time to sit down and really make things look pretty around here. And since things weren't pretty, I didn't want to think about it. So I just pretended I didn't know how to write anymore. Worked for a while until one dark and stormy night when I was feeling quite on the edge of insanity. I figured I'd better do something.

Also, if we're being honest, I was waiting for... something. A purpose. A sense of direction. Vision. A ministry. A dadgummed book idea!

Ya know. Light, everyday stuff like that.

(And yes, I realize that none of the above should have any bearing on the state of my website, or vice versa. But my reasoning process is a bizarre and curious thing.)

Anyone still out there?? Other than my friendly neighborhood crickets?

:)

the swirling black-hole vortex-thingy

Yeah, just admit it: your eyes are going nuts right now. You're welcome.

So, because I'm of a creative and forgetful nature, I write things down a lot. Ideas pop into my head out of nowhere and I learned the hard way that if I just say I'll remember it and write about it later... it's gone forever.

My brain is a swirling black-hole vortex-thingy of lost thoughts.

So anyway, to avoid idea loss-age due to said vortex-thingy, I began writing things down on post-it notes and sticking them somewhere - usually on my desk. The downside is, I tend to only write a fraction of the thought, thinking it will be enough to twig my memory later.

The result: every 900 days or so, when I clean out my desk drawer, I discover a collection of post-it notes that, when read individually, are quite alarming. Here are a few examples from notes I found just today:

Nights are bad for my mental health (fraud, question)

Have to find the humor in life. If u don't, you'll ugly cry.

Grace and Erasers.

The Girl with Gumption.

Female, single authors (w/ boring names) try to delay, in hopes of marrying ---- outside chance, name like Unitard or Sibelius. Then where would I be?

In my defense... Actually, I have no defense whatsoever for that last one. Like seriously. I truly do not know what on earth I was thinking about when I wrote that down. Apparently, it seemed brilliant at the time. Hey I know - let's have a contest. Fill in the gaps as to what on EARTH I was thinking. Winner gets to pay my therapy bill!

Ready, set, GO!

Okay, I'm just kidding. Sort of.

As a final confession: Today I found myself resuming a thought train with "Anyway, as I was saying to myself..."  Which leads me to my next question: do you ever have those days when you realize that you're just a little... well.... crazy?