Things I learned since last Christmas Eve, 2007

(Posted on New Year's Eve, but following the Christmas Eve tradition)

• Showing love is more than just telling the truth.
• Life is a distraction.
• "And so it Goes" really does say it all.
• I shouldn't try to write poetry.
• There's a difference between healthy normality and unhealthy repetition.
• It's ok to break the mold.
• Paradox is a heavenly language.
• Maturity is graspable, checking yes or no is sweet, Virginia is God's country.
• There's nothing better for me than what I have right now, just like always.
• Heartbreak is like a bubble.
• Love is a serendipitous renouncement.
• Goals have an important place in God's plan.
• Understanding shouldn't be taken for granted.

A Very Indiana Christmas

You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.

Those are C.S. Lewis's words, not mine.

When I read them, I thought it was funny... I have been thinking about this all week.

This past year, "potential" became my least favorite word. I felt like it was misleading: all that potential would just fizzle in the light of things eternal, right? I mean, I had all the potential in the world to change the country, to revamp the court system and be the next great world leader. And so, I determined that those would be my life's goals. "You have such potential!" people would say. Graduation was basically just an opportunity to bask in that fateful word and it's many cohorting synonyms (such great promise, so many things ahead of you, wonderful opportunities, bright future, things to look forward to, etc).

I went through a phase this summer where I challenged that. What the point, I asked myself, to set earthly goals when they could be met and then be discarded? I somehow and wrongly separated earthly actions from glorifying God. If it was an earthly goal, it had become in my mind a second class goal.

Then, while doing the dishes yesterday, I had one of those moments. You know, the ones where you just sort of have the wind knocked right out of you. One of those "I've been so blind" moments when you just want to uproot all the past silly thoughts you've had on a subject and plant a whole new garden of beautiful ideals.

Goals, even dead ones, have a purpose. If we are of the mindset that God works all things out for the good of those who love him, if we acknowledge his all-powerfulness in our everyday lives... how silly it would be for me (or anyone) to assume that goals, ambition and even dreaded potential don't have a place.

It's not, then, the goals that are the problem. It's how we deal with the goals when they are either met or denied. If we wrap ourselves up in some delusion that path we chose is the end all and be all, we are faced with two horrible options: the deep disappointment of having that path be the wrong one or not work out, or having it work out beautifully and being left with nothing to strive for.

It's so simple... and yet so deep. We're given desires, dreams and experiences for a purpose. How foolish to simply throw healthy youthful ambition out the window because it will end. All things end, but wouldn't it be nice to have something to show for the process?

Fun, Food and a beautiful use of the Free Market

Advertisers pay for space on each page you play. That money is used to buy rice to feed hungry people. Also, you get super smart. This wins my "Best idea of the year" award.

A song.

This song by "A Fine Frenzy" is the perfect blend of sweet, sad and simply beautiful. It touches a forgotten part of a broken heart.

On the Topic of Romantic Love and Heartbreak

Without love, there is no heartbreak; without the potential of heartbreak there is no true love.

How refreshingly simple. Love, I guess, can be simplified as, "Here's my heart. Break it if you must. You'd be worth the pain."

People always told me love wasn't a feeling, it was a decision. I still don't think that's quite right.

Maybe a better definition of love would be, simply, a serendipitous renouncement.

Goodnight Moon Grows Up

Goodnight moon.

Goodnight room.

Goodnight stuff on the floor of the room.

Goodnight computer running itunes.

Goodnight bills. Goodnight pills.

Goodnight alarm and goodnight Lucky Charms.

Goodnight favorite blouse. And goodnight Mighty Mouse.

Goodnight cute shoes. Goodnight Google News.

And goodnight to the book about shades of blue.

Goodnight chats.

Goodnight hair.

Goodnight readers everywhere.

Things that won't be nearly so fun now that everyone knows them (but make for a good blog)

I drive barefoot a lot. It sounds scary and illegal, but it's neither. I promise. There's no danger your flip flop or stacked heel will get stuck under the clutch or break if you're wearing neither.

I regularly iron my clothes with my flat-iron (yes, the one I straighten my hair with). It is particularly good for touching up button plackets and pocket flaps after you put the clothing on and see how horribly it needs pressed. It also makes your clothes smell like conditioner, which is nice.

I've listened to "Without Love" from Hairspray 469 times since I bought it in July.

I draw a picture every night before I go to bed. They are in a notebook in my room. Maybe I'll start posting them. They're pretty.

I can't fall asleep without listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack all the way through.

I drive with the windows down even when it's freezing outside. Why not? There's no such thing as "wasting heat" in a car (it comes off the engine anyway...might as well use it).

I watch a lot of TV. I especially watch a lot of Seinfeld, Friends, House, The Office and America's Next Top Model. How unhomeschooley of me.

...and I'm really good at raising children.

11:46pm to 11:57pm.

The only time it hurts enough to keep me awake is when it rains at night in the fall, when I hear that one Gothic Rock song and when I realize how blind I was to have thought it could work.

Am I over it? Yeah. Definitely. It's sort of like this.

You know when you see a Ben Stiller movie, or read through the joke section in a kid's magazine and something just tickles you? You laugh. And then you get over it.

And then, eight months later, you're walking down the street in a different town, drinking coffee from a different cafe, listening to music that didn't even exist eight months prior, and for no particular reason, that punchline comes back to you.

You don't really laugh... you just sort of smile inside.

It's just like that. A bubble inside my memory that inflates and then pops, hardly noticeably, but leaves a residue until I have time to rinse my soul out.

At that point, you just remind yourself that you've seen better movies, that Ben Stiller isn't that funny anyway, and you forget about it. For another eight months, at least.

So, I'm over it. Eight months at a time.

Watch it.

This man has obviously known a few teenage girls... the message of the song is right on. I definitely remember feeling that way. The video is one of the best made music videos I've ever seen. Check it out.

Soundtrack to my life...

...because you just know that someday it'll be a movie.

1. 1234 - Feist
2. Beautiful Disaster - Jon McLaughlin
3. This Ain't a Love Song - Bon Jovi
4. Finally Made Me Happy - Macy Gray
5. Can't Fight this Feeling Anymore - REO Speedwagon
6. Someone to Love - Fountains of Wayne
7. Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love) - Alanis Morissette
8. You you you you you - The 6ths
9. Bubbly - Colbie Caillat
10. Everything - Michael Buble
11. How Can it Be - Forever Thursday
12. Wouldn't it be Nice? - The Beach Boys

You know....

You know it was a good day when there's a break in your sun burn from your dimple.

My, what lovely toast you have!

It's sad how much I want one of these toasters. Can you even imagine having your toaster write "I LOVE YOU" on your toast every morning? I think I would die of giggles.

The Little Untitled Post Who Could

Of all the things I've ever written, I have a distinct favorite. Every time I read it, I can hardly believe I wrote it so well. It captured how I was feeling that evening with every word. If you feel, like I do, that my blogging recently has been less than deep and meaningful, take a gander at this archived classic emsydear post:


Untitled Post [8:46:01]

I'm a sucker for marketing. A happy sucker.

"Jaded is so overrated. Dare to be happy."

44 mpg with a fun look and great pick up? I'm there. Working 14 hour days might just be fun after all.

If you do nothing else this week...

..see this movie.



Absolutely phoneomenal in every way. See it, buy the soundtrack, love it. I plan on going back to see it again at least once before it's off the big screen. Maybe twice. Or three times...

And now...

I'm going to write a book.

On the docket...

into

to spend

on food from

come back and
and then

Elegance...

...is found in simplicity alone.

.

8:45:52
8:45:53
8:45:54
8:45:55
8:45:56
8:45:57
8:45:58
8:45:59
8:45:00
8:45:01....

The clock is stuck. The one in the bathroom. It's 8:45 forever. The second hand keeps moving, but the minutes don't. You can reset it, but the moment that minute hand gets back to 8:45... time stops again.

Usually the ticking of clocks doesn't bother me. Not at all... it's a healthy sound. The sound of seconds passing. It's a reminder to make use of each moment and not let a single second slip away. But as I stood in front of the sink, the still morning buzz around me, I listened.

tick.
tick.
tick.
tick.
tick....

...and it was 8:45 again. Nothing happened. As it happened, no time had passed. It was a sickening sound, a sound of dread. It was the sound of the constant repetition of a lack of accomplishment. If we take dull in it's most vulgar sense, that's what that sound was.

I snapped out of the trance, finished my morning routine by 8:45 and headed downstairs. I poured myself a cup of coffee, checked on the more accurate time of 7:20 on the coffee pot digital clock. I stopped to read for a moment as I whisked a little packed of ballot copies off the counter and into the bag of books on my shoulder.

I want upstairs to turn off the lights and grab my keys. As I reached into the bathroom for the lightswitch, I heard it. Tick. Tick. Tick. Curious, I checked. 8:45:23.

I smiled.


My day continued. The announcer on the radio said 8:10 as I pulled into Starbucks. At 12:40 the lady at the McDonald's window wished me a good afternoon. By 3:56 I was settled down for my four o'clock class. At 6:53 my class ended seven minutes late. My mom asked how my day was as I headed downstairs.

Pretty good.

And all I meant was that the day was normal, which isn't bad at all. Just the same regrets, the same pleasures, the same pains and the same quirks as every other day. The same emotions, both devastating and completely enrapturous. The same places and the same people and the same politics of every day life.

At 11:26 I was blogging about a clock that was stuck in the bathroom. From here I can hear the tick of an endlessly pointless cycle. A shockingly good sci-fi film is fresh in my mind. The clock must mean something.

Of course it does.

It means that the clock's mechanisms finally gave out. That final push of the minute hand from 8:45 to 8:46 just isn't strong enough. It's stuck. The second hand goes around. That's normal. It passes the same numbers as it travels consistently in it's arc. The sound is the same. The same tick that seems so healthy. You could say the second hand is behaving normally.

You could say my day was normal.

The clock is functional to time a 30 second race. It's perfectly fine two times a day. It's ticking is perfectly regulated. But it's stuck, always on the same minute.

My mind's stuck, always on the same thought.

I can hear it ticking from here, missing it's chance to move forward a minute. And from here, I'm missing you, but more importantly, missing my chance to move on without you.

When I hit the "Publish Button" in less than a minute, I'm going to get out of my chair, put my laptop on the desk and walk into the bathroom. I'm going to take that clock off the wall and put it on the counter where it doesn't have to defeat gravity to move on.

At 8:46:01 I'll move on. Between now and then, my heart will be as broken as you left it after this normal day. At 8:46:01 I won't have to defeat your memory to live my life.

But until I finish this post, it's 8:45. And that's not good enough for someone who's willing to change at 11:37.