Home

I had Tuesday off from work and the day couldn't have been more needed. There comes a point when you start to not just know that you have limits, but you see them and feel them. They stretch when you push against them like a thin rubber layer surrounding you. Over the last week or two I've been driving full force into them.

On Tuesday, I started to wonder if they would break. For all my efforts to reach out and make myself better I suddenly found myself feeling totally exposed. All of me seemed, in my eyes, to be on display for the world to see. Every decision, every fault, every part of my life that I haven't quite figured out what to do with yet.

In need of somewhere safe to go I turned to what has oddly become my comfort zone: travel. I went to Atlanta and explored the malls, but with the exception of a really awesome chair store there was nothing really worth note. Even the software in the apple store seemed oddly unappealing. It was late in the day when I headed to Rome. The open highway was nice and getting to surprise Scott was even better. That night I discovered a comfort zone that I didn't realize I had left at Berry, my friends. I knew they were there, but to sit down and to actually just be able to enjoy people's company without imposing on their time or having "something that we need to talk about" turned out to be something that I need.

Now, I've never been home sick, and you couldn't pay me enough to want to go back to school, but when I sat down and played a round of BS with Kaitlin, Scott and the others in Krannert it felt like home. I was more at home in that moment then I've probably been the whole time at home.

I guess the old adage is true when it says that it is the people who make the home.

I am still going to go out and stretch my boundaries, and knowing me I will eventually stretch them too far, but now I know where I feel at home.

My meditation room is behind the steering wheel.

My bedroom is wherever I may wake-up in peace.

My dining room is on a beat-up couch in a student center.

My home is wherever I am where I have friends that accept me as is and allow me to accept them for all that they are, and all that they can be.

I once told a man that I wanted to live a life without regrets. I still do. In the meantime though, it is good to know where home is.

What am I doing?

So, for all my talk about how I'm not at Berry this semester, I ended out deciding to make a visit on the first day of classes.  It was nice to see everybody again, even if half the people I saw thought I was still at Berry.  Ha ha.

In a way, I felt almost guilty knowing that I was there actually having fun while everybody else hurried to go to class, bought the overpriced books and came to the startling realization that their "fun class" had a 12 page syllabus.  I've been there, got the t-shirt, won't be going back.  

The unanimous questions among friends seem to be: Where have I been going this summer? And where am I going in the future?  

Big questions, and what can I say?  This summer I updated my blog about half as much as I did during the school year, but I still feel good about those posts that I did make.  I got a job with zero prestige, but I'll be making more this year then I was previously figuring on making with a degree.  (Money isn't the only consideration on the job though, presently the job is funding my artistic pursuits, and the funding is always low for such things.)  Besides that I've basically cooked a little and tried to catch-up with friends whenever possible.

So basically, I've been doing what I was trying to get away to do: I got away from the stresses of school for a while and sat down and asked myself some important questions.  What have I found?  Basically what I already knew more or less on some level anyway.  What I want to do with my life is make something beautiful that will change the world in a way that will help people to be better people.   Now, I just have to narrow that down from Milky Way sized to, oh I dunno, the size of Jupiter. 

I've been trying to figure out a direction, and while I still don't know where I'm going, I'm trying to do the next best thing and go with the decisions that feel right.  I have made some pretty good intuitive decisions in the past, and in the face of the one large generalization that I have about what I want to do with my life, intuition seems best.

So, what are my plans?  Short term, I'll continue to write, paint, cook, plan the wedding and get together with friends as often as possible.  Long term, I'll... do something that I can be proud of.  I just hope that I can meet my own high expectations of myself.  I am my own harshest critic and my own biggest fan.  As such, I refuse to do anything less then incredible with this short time that I have on this little blue, green planet.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."  -Mahatma Gandhi

Why I'm not going back to Berry this semester

"You really need to think about going back to school soon," my uncle told me in his most serious voice today after lunch.  Funny, I don't think anyone realizes just how much they're asking when they suggest that I return to school.

Flash back to spring:  I'm packing up all my stuff in the dorm.  I run across a second doctor's prescription for anti-depressants.  It had never been filled and never would be.  I through it in the trash with a slight flash of a grin at what the school shrink would think if he knew what I did with all his prescriptions.

Things were going downhill fast at school.  I kept falling asleep in class as professors droned on about the same s*** that was taught in high school, and when I didn't fall asleep I just zoned out for the whole class time.  It wasn't even that I didn't care so much as I couldn't seem to find a reason to care about the constant review.

I wanted to do something, create something and see things, meet people, all that jazz.  I still do.  That is why, the night after I went swimming in the Ford fountains at 3 am, I decided that I was leaving college and wasn't coming back unless somebody gave me a damn good reason why college counts for then a piece of paper saying that you went to class, did the reading and managed not to sleep through the final.

3 months later I don't know what to do.  I have painted a few things, cooked a little, and even worked on my drawing skills, but nothing major has been accomplished.  I have simply satisfied the the minimum requirements for not getting kicked out of the house.  I am still looking for direction, but in the very least I know where I'm not going.  I am not going to endure another 2 years of mind numbing torture for a piece of paper.  

There is a better way, and I will find it.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. 

-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

What do you do with a BA in English... or Communication for that matter?

First off, props to Avenue Q.  It has some great songs. 

Secondly, I bare news.  I have decided to stop putting off the inevitable and go try to do something with my life and my talents.  (Limited though they are.)  So, I guess I may never know what one does with a B.A. because I'm opting out of the process in favor of doing something that I love.  Once I actually figure out a plausible way to make money from sketching, writing and acting as an unofficial tour guide...

The best part of the whole thing is the role reversal though.  For the last year or more I've been asking myself what the **** I was doing in a hyper structured system while the family told me how wonderful it was that I had submitted myself to that system.  Now the family is asking me what on earth I'm thinking to leave the well paved path, but I'm practically (and sometimes literally) jumping for joy to be able to move in the direction of my dreams.  

It's not much but it's a start.  And as my fiancee reminded me as I pulled out of Berry's parking lot, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Lao Tzo)  This is my first step.  I'm scared to death, and excited beyond reason.  This is going to be one hell of a journey.

Talking to the President

Tuesday night, Berry opened up to questions from its students about new dorm policies among other things.  

What the meeting came down to though was a form of free speech that is to often forgotten in this age of political apathy.  All students who went to the meeting got to voice their opinions and ask whatever questions they felt were appropriate.  There was no time limit.  No over-riding censorship (though a few comments by the administration were self-censored).  No topics barred.  It was wonderful.

Now lets just hope that the administration listens to what was said because if it doesn't then this great conversation means nothing.  The meeting would be nothing more then dumb show and noise.  A nice gesture, as they pick our pockets of whatever money we, the student body have left.

Bonfire

On Sunday night, Mount Berry Church hosted a bonfire in the Clara Bowl.  The event was highlighted with singing, a sermon, s'mores and hot chocolate.  Their was a good student turn out for the bonfire, and even after the bonfire collapsed, a crowd of students pushed in together as they sang next to the fading embers.

The message was on the nature of the Holy Spirit.  A special offering was taken up to help fund one student's voyage on a ship delivering educational and devotional books to countries overseas.

Students by the fire

Hot chocolate

The bonfire at its high point