Dorienne's Log

According to this article, making New Year’s resolutions often do more harm than good. What people mostly experience is that they can never live up to the high expectations they set for themselves and become depressed and embittered as the year continues because they fell off this bandwagon or went right back to doing what they had resolved to no longer do. I am quite guilty of making resolutions without having the resolve, willpower, whatever to stick to them and this year I just said, “To heck with it.”

My mother always told me the superstition regarding how one brings in the new year. Essentially, how you bring in the year is how you will live the year. In some regards, this is true. For example, I rang in 2005 drunk, a little depressed and drinking with people I really didn’t like and most of my year was spent drunk, a little depressed and around people I just wanted to punch in the face. On the other hand, I rang in 2006, not wanting to spend another New Year’s in some bar surrounded by people I didn’t like, in the church and ended up joining the church and discovering how awesome God is.

In most cases, though, this idea is all superstition and completely false. Every year since I can remember, I have spent the majority of December 31st cleaning like mad to make sure the house/apartment/townhouse/whatever was as clean as possible to ring in the new year and every year since I can remember, the house/apartment/townhouse/whatever ended up just as dirty throughout the year as it was on December 30th.

This year, rather than say, “Hurray! A new year! Let me make all these resolutions I’ll never stick to and such!” I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing; that is, going for my major goals. The house is a mess right now, but to be honest, cleaning it up on one night was not going to keep it clean all year. I have to be in the mindset to keep it clean daily. I don’t weigh what I want right now, but I’m very healthy and if I keep eating how I should and exercising regularly, my body will adapt. After all, I didn’t put on the weight in a week, so I can’t possibly expect it to come off in a week either. My novel is still not complete, but if I just keep writing something every day my ultimate goal of having a novel published by 9/26/2010 will get accomplished.

I still went to church tonight to ring in my new year, but I also still made sure my daily chapter of the Bible got read and I am still going to do my stomach crunches and light lifting before I go to sleep. There really is no difference between 12/31/08 and 1/1/09; I’m still going to keep doing Dorienne and still strive for my goals. Or, like my pastor often says, I’m going to remember to keep the main thing, the main thing. 😀

Not a day of my life goes by where I don’t run at least one Google Search; today is no different. On the 21st, Google ran a dedication of sorts to the artist Rene Magritte and, by doing so, Google have incited a fire for art that I never knew dwelled within me.

This is the image that started it:

Google-Magritte

From there, a vast part of the day was spent research Rene Magritte and learning what I didn’t know I already knew…the work of Magritte was the pinnacle of brilliance. I found myself staring at this image for minutes at a time (only minutes as I was at work when this epiphany hit) and it was only upon appreciating it that this one made more sense to me and inspired me to create some art of my own.

In the past, I always imagined myself as some kind of artist, but only regarding literary art; my pen as my paintbrush, my blank “New Document” as my canvass, blah, blah, blah. Somewhere in staring at La Condition Humaine 1935, it occurred to me that I could create a visual artwork of my own. As I have no talent with a paintbrush and my childhood “sculptures” are the things from nightmares (or simply paperweights only a mother could love), I knew that I taking up a canvass or buying some clay to create art was out of the question…but manipulating an image in Photoshop is totally up my alley.

The plan is to create La Condition Humaine 1935 with my Abbey Road poster and my hand instead of a canvass stand. I’ll post the creation once it’s complete.

In taking the images I thought necessary to initiate the creation of La Condition de Beatles’ Fan, I noticed my beloved Darth Tater and began experimenting with light, my camera’s flash and shadows on the wall to take some interesting pictures. I’m not sure if this is really just a passing fancy or ordinary OCD within ADHD, but for now…I think I really like this art “thing.”

I realized something fascinating this week…

Throughout most of October, I had made a strong effort to ensure that I read at least one chapter of the Bible every day. I started with Luke, then the Gospel of John, then read Mark. I am currently reading Matthew, but there have been large gaps in my reading in November. I took a temporary position at work that is a nice opportunity, but has thrown my schedule completely out of whack, making me feel the busiest I have ever been. The problem, however, is that somewhere in all of that busyness, I started to forget about my daily chapter. Interestingly enough, once I stopped reading my chapter-a-day, I started feeling stressed again; a stress that was reminiscent of the days before I came back to Christ. The house became messy, I did not seem to have time for anything and I started gaining weight…all because I had neglected to take time to ensure I had time for Jesus.

Over the past few days, I have been working diligently to make sure I took some “me” time somewhere in the day just so that I could make time for Christ. I am still not back into my normal rhythm, but at least I am aware of the root cause of my stress and know how to do something about it…and also ready myself to vow to never let it happen again.

On another note, my favorite author of all time passed away this week. My reaction to the news was with complete shock, though as evidence that I am living in a Post-Edrith and Post-MawMaw psyche where I am almost always “all cried out,” I did not cry. I may yet find myself needing to mourn him with tears, but at this point I don’t really know what to do.

When I was growing up, there was no “Young Adult” genre and so, I went from reading Berenstein Bears to Crichton and King. Crichton’s works have fascinated me more than any other author I have ever read and the thought that there will never be a new Crichton novel leaves me feeling rather…hollow.

There was a point in my life (actually a rather long span of my life) where I wanted to be a black female version of Michael Crichton. I wanted to go to medical school and then begin writing just so that I could take a path similar to his. The only reason I watched the bits of ER that I did was because he had created it and I had fantasized about what kind of show I could create after I was out of medical school and had published a few novels. I have greatly adapted this dream, but the fact remains that it was Crichton and his works that first put the thought of “I could be a writer” in my head. I still see myself years from now saying, “He’s the reason I became a writer.” I already feel the loss.

I have prayed for his family and also that he was at peace with his God before he passed, but I think that some time during these next few weeks, while carving out some “me” time, I will definitely need a moment. I know the older I get, the more often this will occur, so I suppose I should simply ready myself for the inevitable, but I think I may find a new fervor for re-reading each of his works that I have in my possession.

…I’ve missed an episode of SVU and, to top off everything else, I think my undying love for The X-Files is finally starting to take a downturn. I realized the latter a few days ago when I go through old files on my computer and saw I had not updated the TXF site in months. (As I write this, I decided to take a little break and post some kind of update and found that David Duchovny split up with his wife. Does any Hollywood marriage last!?!) It is a strange feeling for me to not have some X-Files story building at the back of my mind or to not have a bits of an episode playing in my daydreams. Lately, I have been writing more often and have had little to no time to watch anything at all, hence the reasoning for missing SVU.

I wonder if this is a sign that I’m getting older. A part of me says “no” since I still play the Sims like it is something I’m paid to do and I watch (emphasis because it usually just plays in the background while I play Sims) Daria and Futurama in non-stop loops as playlists on my computer. Then another part of me causes my head to nod and say…”yep, I’m getting old.”

I turned twenty-four last month and I let the occasion pass without much fanfare partly because I was bracing myself for the one anniversary (I hate using that word to describe this, but there really aren’t any synonyms for it) of Edrith’s passing and partly because I just don’t want my birthday to seem like a big deal anymore. All the “fun” ones have passed and only the old ones remain; 25, 30, 40 etc. I’ve got friends who are living together, friends who are getting married, friends who have got married and are about to start a family, friends who already have several children…I’m getting older and every so often I think about how far I have come, but mostly how little I’ve moved since I turned eighteen and became an “adult.”

Supposing I look at the positives, I am successfully living on my own first the first time. I say successfully because I haven’t got tuition hanging over my head and can actually focus on paying off some debt while still managing my apartment and preparing to add my college loans to the fold. I am also starting to figure out who I am: a writer. It has always been a part of who I am, but I’ve been sensing now more than ever that this is the path on which Jesus has set me, rather than something that I just want to do. When I think about any job or career path I’ve ever had, everything always came back to writing. I somehow found a way to write on the job or found myself working just to support myself while I write. I know it’s best to take advantage of these times now because I know marriage and children would never allow for that kind of behaviour…if I ever get married and change my mind about over-population and my general forecast about the state of humanity. I guess there were some negatives to add, but thank God (literally) they’ve been pushed away by thoughts about this story and that story I’m planning to write.

Something interesting I’ve experienced, however, that has got me really think is the idea of rejection. The closest I came to not getting specifically what I wanted, ie: entrance into a creative writing class at OSU, and the fact that my creations have been rejected multiple times from ModtheSims2 presents a completely foreign sensation to me. I’m not used to dealing with rejection, though I’m happy I haven’t resorted to tears or swearing over something I don’t care about too much, but there is something so unsettling about working so hard at something only to not have it well-received. On the other hand…perhaps this is Jesus’ way of telling me my time is better spent on other things…*rubs chin*

Oh well…this is my second completed written “project” in two days, so here’s to praying that this is one step in the right direction in the way of writing the “Great American Novel.”

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Original link

On a side note — Daggonnit, John! Why couldn’t you start later in the afternoon so that I could make it to Westerville after church!!! I guess I should be somewhat satisfied though because it if was both John and Sarah, I would have to be giving 11:00AM service “my best” as I flew across the city to see them both. Honestly, that is a once in a lifetime event and I met Bush when he was running. Of course, that’s not much to brag about, but still kind of cool on its own…

I’m starting a writing challenge to myself today. Everyday, I will have something done. A chapter, a blog post, a set of notes, a whole story. Something will be completed every single day.

I put myself to this challenge because I really need to work on the craft and just flex my fingers in it any way that I can. I know I get burnt out a lot more often than I should which results in playing the sims for days on end without getting any real work done. And, there’s truly work to be done, now that Flight is almost complete. I think that’s really what’s pushing this new drive; the completion of Flight just frees me up for so many other opportunities I feel like I’m going to burst or my fingers will just fall off before I finish everything I’ve got to say. Either way, I know I’ve got the stamina for this and, if I don’t already, I know I’ve got goals out there that are just itching to be completed. I know for certain I don’t want to wake up at 35 and realize I’ve got nothing accomplished, thus the setting of this challenge.

I’ve got loads of other challenges in the back of my mind, but Damen is the most pressing right now, or simply getting in everything that book will entail. I feel like I’m putting my heart and soul into it right now and every once in a while, I feel discouraged when I look at it because it’s not coming as fast I think it should. Then, Jesus smiles…perhaps just smirks or nods contentedly at me as I pursue this and I get the small signs that tell me I’m on the right track for attempting this. Like today, for example. I’d forgot I’d written my draft for the final lines of the novel and set to work on “creating” them. I realized when my fingers hit the J and F bars for insight, I didn’t know where I wanted to go with the end, only that I needed to go somewhere. Lo and behold! a thought came to me and I pushed it into existence as quick as my hands would move, thinking that I’d come up with something new all by myself and “to heck” with whatever I’d originally thought I should do with the ending…only to discover, while re-reading the notes I’d already written, I’d already written close to the same exact thing months earlier, which makes me honestly believe that this is something I should do, rather than just want. Usually, the bad things I want in life, Christ steers me away from and then, due to this marvelous ADHD He’s blessed me with, I forget whatever bad things I’d intended on doing before I even get to them. When it came to this ending though…He drove me right back to what I wanted to say and with a burst of blessed energy that I’m finally doing the right thing, it’s on now!

Time has been passing me by so quickly these days it seems like I get home from church, then wake up Monday morning and then only a few minutes pass before I’m right back to a new Monday. I suppose the time warp is really not really much more than a combination of procrastination and stress. What is really irritating that is I procrastinate procrastinating and I am stressed over things that really should not be stressing me at all. In fact, it is really all the stress that is slowly but surely eating away at me.

I worry about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I have a lot of dreams, but there are millions of people in this world with dreams just as big if not bigger that go unrealized everyday. Am I doomed to become one of them? What am I going to do if this “writing thing” doesn’t work out? I can see myself slowly disintegrating from the absolute doldrums of a nine to five job that is so boring that every day I wish for death just so I could stop working. I also see myself living that life all alone. I think I could make it without knowing my dreams if I just was not so alone all the time, but it is so hard to separate my “old self” from my “new self” that when I go out to meet people, I end up finding myself attracted to the same old people with whom I shouldn’t be associating. It’s very depressing.

I can’t keep to commitments, even the really important ones that I have every intention of keeping. I chalk this up to procrastination. Even as I type, I procrastinate. It seems to be etched into my very soul and then I realize all the planning I do to keep from procrastinating is just a new form of procrastination in itself. I keep meaning to do this for people, spend time with people, call people, heck, do things for myself, but it never gets done. I suppose I could use the tired excuse of fatigue being the reason I don’t do what I should, but that just feels, for lack of a better word, lame.

It’s been about three or four weeks since I started this post. Sadly not much has changed in my life regards to my recent depression. Actually, that is not quite true. If anything, I feel like I’m spiraling to a new low. I’ve only just now even wanted to write anything. When I get depressed to the point that I don’t even want to write, it just depresses me even more.

I feel like Flight is a disaster. There are points as I re-read it, I just want to pitch the entire project. The reviews I’ve been getting are always positive, but the part of my psyche that judges everything I do too harshly, looks at every word of every chapter as complete tripe. I haven’t updated it in weeks, and while a part of me truly wants to the words, “what’s the point?” keep billowing through my head.

MawMaw died two weeks ago. Her homegoing was last Friday.

I’ll be honest in saying I did not cry as hard as I did for Edrith, but I’m certain it’s because I’m all cried out at this point. When I first heard the malpractice, I wanted to burst into tears right there and then, but as there still seemed like a glimmer of hope existed, I didn’t. I cried when I called Caprica. I could hear her crying on the other end and I just kept thinking, “We just lost Edrith…” I could say that this doesn’t seem fair, but so rarely in my life have I seen anything that could qualify as “fair,” that it is ridiculous for me to get into it. All I can say, is that I’m less saddened by the fact that she’s no longer in pain and no longer struggling. I, however, continue in both regards.

I had a list of things I wanted to talk about in this post: more members of Edrith’s family have joined the church and I burst into tears each time they do; I feel like I’m only going through the motions when it comes to church; the fact that I want to tank the book; my urge to write combined with my lack of motivation and the idea that bipolar disorder could be the cause of my doldrums; I’m not in the mood for any of those.

Something that did happen about three or four weeks ago was mightily troubling, though. We had an afternoon service one Sunday and I’d told myself the Thursday before it that I wasn’t going and that I would not be swayed by a change in mood come Sunday afternoon. And I didn’t. That afternoon, instead of second service, I was in my apartment looking for a church video of our choir singing Stephen Hurd’s “Revelation 19.1” and I had prepared myself for what, or should I say, who I was going to see.

I’d found a video of our choir singing from September. It was the last time Edrith sang with us. I was all right for the first few minutes of forwarding to see which specific service the video was from, but then I burst into tears and continued crying for the rest of the day. The only thing I could to was let the video play and have my own personal, second service as I watched and listened to a sermon from months earlier. I thought I had been prepared to see her, alive and well, but I was not. A part of me wonders if I’ll ever get over this; another part does not want to get over anything because then it feels like she’s gone forever. It’s just still so hard coming to the realization I’ll never see her again in this life. Which brings me back to MawMaw…

When I’d first met her, a year earlier, she’d said to me “Hi. I’m Grandma.” I already had a grandmother, so she was “MawMaw” to me then and had been until two weeks ago. It feels like I can’t properly mourn her because my tears for Edrith have not yet dried. It’s times like these that I’m happy I’m saved because I can’t imagine how else to get through something like this.

My heart hurts, mostly because I couldn’t imagine hurting even more so closely to a previous loss, but there’s more to it. The Mass Choir sang at her homegoing and at one point, her second granddaughter had come to be hugged by her godmother in choir stands. There is something so heartbreaking about listening to a five-year-old cry for the loss of a loved one. You think that someone so young can’t really understand what’s going on, but they really can.

I think what had been bothering me most when I first started writing this post, weeks ago, is that I mourn so thoroughly, but I feel like I don’t even have a right to mourn so hard. Edrith was a friend, but she was not my best. MawMaw was MawMaw, but she wasn’t my grandmother. I feels like I don’t have the right to cry so hard for them, but I can’t help it because I loved them both so much. What’s even worse, is that I cry even harder because I know my time is coming too. I know one day I’ll be sitting in the front row of our church crying over my own mother or my own grandmother, father, step-father, step-brothers, cousins, friends…Death is coming and there’s no way out of it. There’s no escaping it. I hate not having control of something in my life. I don’t fear what happens after death. It’s the act of dying that causes my heartbeat to race like it did when I almost drowned when I was eight years old. The only thing I can do about it is pray for Jesus to give me strength throughout the rest of my Christian walk.

A new fire feels lit, though. I want to write again and I yearn to be published.

Of the six goals, I laid out for myself last January, only one was partially completed. I finished a novel and “submitted” it to the world. Sadly, it’s not publishable, but I still did it. This year, the goals are still very much the same: get fit, graduate, write and stay neat. I will not however dwell over these goals by reading the post several times and forget them as soon as the month of January had ended. I’ll just say that I aim to be a better person and just do it. We’ll see how this goes.

This is the first time I am entering a new year in this deep of a “low” and my hope is that ringing in the new year in the house of the Lord will diminish some of that and pull me up so that I have the desire to do what I need to do.

It’s done! It’s done! It’s finally done! It’s a good two weeks after I had intended on having it done and an hour and forty-three minutes outside of the final deadline I had given myself, but…IT’S DONE!

Flight, a novel is finally complete. It’s weird though…I think I was more excited as I wrote the very last section of it, than I was when I wrote “El Fin” and added a timestamp at the bottom of the book. It’s current, unedited state it stands at 371,393 words and 707 pages in M$ Word. It was completed Thursday September 27, 2007 at 1:43AM EST. Looking over it now, I see it’ll be a couple day’s worth of editing before it’s ready to be viewed by the world, but…I’ve done it. I finished a novel. How many people can say they’ve done that?

Edit (9/30/07): I completed my first “edit” of the book and feel that it is finally ready for others to read. The new word count is 372,036, but still 707 pages. 🙂

I will finish Flight this week.

I will finish Flight this week!

I’ve taken off an entire week from work and I am determined to make the best of it. Aside from cleaning the house and reading in general, I am going to finish Flight this week. My goal was initially my birthday, but I can get it done this week. By the time my birthday rolls around, I will be knee deep in school work and before I know it, the day will have come and gone and the book still won’t be done. Then will come the depression that I couldn’t achieve one of my goals and so on and so forth. I will finish Flight this week…

I’ve been writing a lot recently and thinking about other projects as well, specifically Luka. There is a part of me that wants to dive right into him, but I know I shouldn’t until (if) I’m published. I’ve heard it’s kind of taboo for a writer to begin with a series of novels, not knowing if he or she will ever get signed for a second book. Luka will be a monster five-book process and as much as I want to get to it now, I suppose I’ll just have to wait.

Something fun I’ve been doing in Flight, however, is fleshing out my original characters. That is the trouble with fan fiction. Many of your characters are already set, so if I made any real changes to their personalities, I would be betraying the character. With my own people, however, I can shape and contort them any way I see fit. One benefit of fan fiction, though, is that I can see myself reusing some of my original characters in completely original work. I’m sure I’ll use “Maya” in some other capacity and I’ve already found a use for “Deondre Meekham” and his uncle…It’s just fun to watch this little literary world I’ve created evolve almost on its own.

And speaking of evolution…This week’s Sunday School lesson was on Genesis 1:1-25. The first verse is the most profound and the best:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Just wonderful if you really sit down and think about it. God was there before all; before everything that was or ever could be. It’s almost like if you believe in just one verse, you’re halfway “home” already. What interested me most about the lesson this week was the discussion I had with other teachers on the subject of “day” in this first chapter.

I have been raised in a pragmatic world full of scientific thinkers and although I’ll cannot say what I’ll “never” do, I do no think I will ever see “day” in Genesis as a set of 24 hours and here’s why. A day, the way we as humans see the earth, is comprised of the rising and setting of the sun, around which we revolve as our solar system spins around our galaxy in our corner of God’s universe. Simply put, a day to the earth means that the planet has made one full turn on its axis causing the sun to “rise” and “set.” In Genesis 1:3, God says “Let there be light.” and there was, however, God had not yet created the sun and stars and other entities that create light as we think of it today. Light was there, separate from the dark, because God spoke it, without needing anything to produce. Light was because God wanted it to be.

What is of most importance to understand, however, is that God exists outside of time. Thousands of year or one second could pass to God and it can have the same significance. HE is outside of time. So, God called the light “day” and the dark “night” because humans are finite, practical creature that do exist within the bounds of time and so needed something upon which to understand their world. This is where the concept of “day” comes. If “day” in this biblical sense, was created before the entities by which we measure a day, how can we honestly say that the “day” so referred in Genesis 1:5 meant 24 hours?

Unless God comes before me himself to tell me different, this is something I cannot believe. Science tells and shows me that everything that is on the earth was created over the course of millions of years, not 168 hours. What is important and should be remembered about this text however, is that Genesis is not meant to be a scientific doctrine that dictates every single step God took to create the world. Its purpose is to let us know that in the beginning, God was there and he created everything in the universe. We can argue that evolution is the mechanism used by God to get us where we are today, but God is and always will be the driving force behind everything. He is the answer to the “why” when one asks, “Why did said fish mutate in such a way that it could survive outside water?” or “Why said animal laid an egg with a hard shell that could live outside water thus giving us the first land animals?” There is always a why when it comes to evolution and where the atheists answer the question with pure dumb luck and/or fate, I will always answer it with God.

When you think about it logically, it makes a little more sense doesn’t it? Honestly, which would you believe: that everything this is or was in the world came to be because God has created it in his master plan or, that every beautifully complicated organism from the smallest microbe to the largest whales was founded out of some primordial “ooze” and evolved out of chance? When stood next to one another, one of these options holds far more credence than the other.

Phew…I hadn’t meant to carry on like that today, but when the spirit moves you…:)

I was actually in a happy mood until about three minutes ago, during which time I had to go through pages and pages of spam on my blog. What is it with spammers? What is to be gained by spamming people? The comments go unread and nothing is accomplished. At least with viruses there is the satisfaction that you ruined an unsuspecting person’s machine or with phish, where there is some monetary gain to be had. Spam is just mind-boggling for me…anyway.

My English class is going well, eerily well, it feels. I think I had just grown so accustomed to performing poorly in my classes that I don’t know to feel after coming from an exam with a positive feeling. I have found a new love…well, love is a bit much, but oh well…for Shakespeare. Othello has me frightfully intrigued in every way possible. I have not liked a work this much since reading Fried Green Tomatoes at Whistle Stop Cafe for the first time, however, I feel a bit daunted over the aspect of having to go through some of his historical pieces. I see myself being extremely bored throughout, but I will try to approach the plays with an open mind. I mean, if he wrote them, there had to be some significant story to be told, so there is a possibility that I might just love them. Who knows?

There are so many things I want to do with this life and there simply does not seem to be enough time. I want to write, design websites for every show and book I’ve ever loved, play my sims, write and publish sims stories on my sites, learn to play piano, play the piano, plant trees, knit sweaters, play ddr, go running, write in my blog, implement flash on my church website, be at church, know the Bible, learn some aspects about the Torah, organize all my videos, rip all my shows and movies to my computer, make YouTube videos, watch videos, make up with old friends, contact even older ones, make new friends, be an inspiration to someone somewhere at sometime…

Sigh. There’s just so much to do and there’s no time to do it. That’s the depressing part.

Flight is officially a monster of a book. At 337 pages and more than 177K words, I am wondering just how big it will get. This “part” of the book is moving along in weird spurts of inspiration. I’ll be in the moment and write like crazy and then I get to a point where I just want to scrap the whole thing like I did today with a poem I was attempting to write. I was going on and on about being black instead of an African American and I, quite literally, dragged my pen across the paper and groaned about how ignorant I was sounding. I know what I want to say, and there are times when I think I can communicate those words best through, but I just can’t seem to cut it when it comes to poetry. It sometimes seems like the harder I try, the worst it all sounds. I can hear myself struggling as I re-read the crap…but the fanfic is going as well as it can.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #7
Five months into this, I am still going strong. There are days when it seems almost like second nature, as if I’ve always been living this way. Then, there are others, when all I want to do chow down on chili dogs or grinders, but those days are few and far between. The main thing, however, is that being a full-fledged vegetarian is accomplishing the goal I have set out to do. Slowly, but surely, I have managed to shed ten pounds. Not a huge improvement seeing as how I’ve got so far to go, but the fact is, the scale is going down instead of up for the first time since I was fifteen. I plan on taking my measurements again in another week to see if I’ve made any improvements, but I am astounded how I can eat what I want and just exclude meat, and still get the same results I want. Someone once told me that losing the meat caused the pounds to come off, but I did not believe it as they were wearing a PETA shirt at the time, but now, I do wonder.

What I like about being a vegetarian is the change in me. I feel better and people tell me I look better, too. All in all, I feel like a healthier person and my mother has now dropped meat from her diet. At this rate, PETA might stop eating meat altogether, however, nothing will make me give up cheese. I won’t eat the animal, but cheese, all kinds, is a special treat for me and nothing could make me drop. My body withstands it even through violent lactose intolerance, and yet I still keep going. Oh well. I suppose I should not say what I will and will not do because three years ago, I knew I would never be pro-life and I knew I would never understand why people gave ten percent of their livelihood to the church and so on. God only knows what I’ll know tomorrow.

And, speaking of my Almighty, a year after winning from the church, I finally got my piano. I am so excited by it, I could just scream. There are five broken keys, but I don’t play anywhere near well-enough for those to matter for a bit. I am just so excited to have one that’s all mine and I practice upon until the wee hours of the night. I just love the idea of either getting lessons for it or simply teaching myself how to play. I told my mother that this could be my birthday present because it is simply outstanding. I know I will have years of fun and (to be a bit melodramatic) peace with this instrument and it gets me excited again just thinking about the fact that it sits downstairs waiting for me.

It’s my one-year anniversary of joining my church! I’m so glad I wrote about it here. I don’t think I’ve written it anywhere else, so it’s important to nail down the date because it gives me a point from which I can measure my walk. The exact date is May 14th, but I’m excited about it nonetheless. My mother marveled about it, saying that I had done more in our church during one year than others have done in entire lifetimes, which fascinates me. But, looking back over this past year, I can’t believe how far I’ve come.

Sunday School today was very interesting. It was just me and one student, but we had a very good conversation about the text and about religion altogether. At one point we started talking about gays, and I started to feel the strain of my “old self” and my “new self.” My old self thought of gays and thought, “Okay, to each his own.” however, my new self knows what it says in the Bible and knows what is believed whole-heartedly by all those around me, so the “To each his own” idea just no longer seems appropriate. But still…I’ve learned so much through Sunday School and by teaching and what I’ve learned most more than anything throughout all these texts is that as a Christian, I must love everyone, regardless of their sins because I too am just a big a sinner as the next person.

One of the most poignant things I’ve learned is that sin is sin in God’s eyes. The liar and the murderer have done equal sins; it’s just Man who has made these divisions within sin. Albeit, one could argue that a murder could have a far larger impact on the lives of those around the affected individuals than would a “little white lie,” but the fact remains that sin is sin. I’ve told lies in the past and I’ll undoubtedly tell more before my end. On the subject of gays, I think to myself, “How dare I pass judgment on them, when I’ve sinned too.” and then there’s the idea that even though I may not be able to change how they think, I still don’t have to agree with it. As a Christian, I can be civil with all people, because in God’s eyes, I am no different. My only hope is that with prayer, that they can have salvation and won’t have to suffer the white gates.

I’m not running around with the “I don’t care what you do” mentality any longer, but I’m still nowhere near actually looking down on someone or treating them relatively different because they believe something other than I would believe. As ludicrous as it sounds, I think the Libra in me finds it unfair that I would look down on gays because they don’t follow the Bible, but not look down upon Jews or Hindus or anyone else as well. I’m not willing to take the plunge, so it feels wrong to even take that first step.

Sigh…

On a less melodramatic note, Flight is coming along well. It’s about 80,000 words currently and I’m about in the middle of the first “part,” but I’ve hit a bit of stall. The storyline needs to be changed slightly and I know it will take some time for me to correct what needs to be changed. My hope is that this doesn’t derail me from writing because I’ve been going on at a pretty good clip for a while now, writing at every chance I get.

I’m practically counting down the days before they put up another roadblock for me in regards to writing at work. As long as I have the will, there will always be a way, but it’s that nerve-racking feeling wondering when they’ll pull in the ropes. I won’t be telling anyone, this time, how I’ve been updating my novel, as the last time I spoke up, my primary means of editing was shut down. Hopefully, that will buy me some time. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, but I know somehow, someway, it’ll seem “unproductive” or something when someone looks at my, for lack of a better word, talent, and feels somehow undercut.

It doesn’t matter though. If they cut me off electronically, they can’t prevent me from bringing pen and paper to work and writing the old fashion way. I’d to have to resort back to that since I’ve just now gotten over my lack electronic creativity phobia, but I’ll do what I have to do.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #6
On this 13th day of the month of May, I begin my 13th week of vegetarianism and things couldn’t be going better. Today, I went to dinner with my parents and I barely even considered looking at any dishes with meat. I’ve also decided that I’m not going to be eating fast food this month, which makes the veggie thing all the more easy. Not visiting Wendy’s for even french fries, allays the craving that comes after gazing at the #6 option while at the drive-thru. I’m finally looking at this as a normal part of my life, rather than something I’m just doing for the time being. I’ve even lost all cravings for chicken and I can’t even remember what red meat tastes like. It’s a very cool feeling.