Bridge building

So, this is technically supposed to be Wednesday's post, but I had to finish up some reading and wasn't able to write it before I got too tired and just went to bed. On the other hand, it was reading Nietzsche, so I think that was a pretty good tradeoff. It does raise a question, though:

Why, as someone who's supposed to be a Christian, do I love Nietzsche so?

Aside from the overly snarky note that “supposed to be” doesn’t mean “is,” the best answer I have yet thought of is simply that it’s encouraging. In my experience, Christianity has always been a guilt inducing, depressing, sucky sort of thing. I know there’s a huge amount of grace and love, and none of the condemnation sort of stuff, but in all honesty I’ve always found more encouragement from non-Christian places (sometimes, dramatically un- or anti-Christian) than I’ve ever found in the church.

I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll probably talk about it a lot more. Church, in all my experience, has always been a place of smiling happy people. Maybe I’ve not been going to the right churches, or I’ve been misreading people, or maybe I’m just not involved enough with small groups and am just a member of the regular church. But, regardless, I’ve never found a single person at a single church who is truly honest (well, except for maybe one, but we’re not on speaking terms, so that’s beside the point).

Maybe it’s just that I’m not honest. Maybe if I opened up a bit more then I’d find more people who were also open. I guess that’s a bit of why I’m writing here in the first place. Is this like actually talking face to face with a real, live, person? Nah, I’m not stupid enough to think that. But, it’s a step up from talking to myself, which is where I’ve been for so long. Even if no one is reading this, it’s still out there. I’m trying to be a bit more real about who and what I am. I probably could be keeping a journal, but really, how is that different from talking to myself? The only difference is that it takes longer. This takes longer, but it runs the risk that someone I actually know will read it. I guess the potential danger makes it exciting. J

More in line with the supposed-purpose of this blog, I didn’t go walking today. The various exercise areas were closed “until further notice” and never reopened. So, I got a day to try to heal up a bit. In any case, I’ve done 25 miles in 6 days. If I’d been exactly on track, I would have done a bit more than 22, so I’m still happy. I may wind up doing a 5 day on, 1 day off schedule, but we’ll see.

Wishing you all honesty in love,

Felix

Nice guys finish...eventually

Be warned, this post is rated at about a 4 out of 5 on the "Danger of Self Pity" scale.

So, with 20 miles (2%) of my goal down in 4 days, I’m doing pretty well. If I keep up this pace, I’ll actually finish my goal sometime in March, but we’ll see if that actually does anything. I even got complimented for a nice run at the end, and wasn’t feeling quite as horribly tired after my .2 miles of running at the end. Tomorrow, assuming I can move my feet, I’ll probably go for .3. Anyhow, on to the “my thoughts” part of this blog!

I am the perennial nice guy.

I am an incredibly easy-going sort of person. Getting me to say stuff I want to do or get for my birthday or Christmas or whatever is practically like pulling teeth. Even when there’s something I really, greatly, desire (like asking someone to the Liberty Ball) it takes an enormous effort of will for me to actually do it. The closest I ever get in normal life to asking for what I want is dropping the occasional hint or pointing at what I want with my normal sarcasm. I also really enjoy making other people happier, whether it’s through humor, or doing nice things for them, or whatever I can think of at the moment. Even if all I’m doing is providing someone they can bitch at, like happened some last semester with the whole D&D controversy. However, I’ve never quite figured out how to make me happy.

This probably comes from the roles “gentleman” and “pushover” mixed up in my brain. I have no real fear of death or anything, and would gladly leap into action to beat the crap out of anyone hurting either one of my friends or essentially any woman. I’m not the “oh, you can do anything to anyone and I’ll just hang back” sort of pushover. I have a very violent temper, but it’s on a very few issues and I can generally contain it. However, I’ve never quite figured out how to transfer the energy or enthusiasm I have in other things to relationships. Friendships are usually enjoyable to me, but I find them extremely hard to maintain properly. Relationships are even worse. Don’t even get me started on relationship with God.

For instance, for relationships in my little worldview, to win a girl a guy must have some really amazing qualities. He can have one or two flaws (even major ones), but in the end if a guy has a lot to offer and hasn’t raped a kitten or something, then he gets the girl. Yes, I watched a lot of romantic comedies growing up, including huge amounts of Pride and Prejudice. Essentially, if the guy isn’t a huge jerk (or even if he is, but realizes it and fixes it), then a guy with pretty much any good qualities can get a girl.

Delving a little bit deeper (and here’s where the *real* risk of self-pity comes in), I am one of those people entirely unable to think anything good about themselves. If I get an A-minus in a class, I think “Gee, I should have gotten an A” even if it’s a stupidly hard class. This isn’t just the normal “it’s hard for me to take compliments” thing like a lot of people have, but I find it next to impossible to even say something nice about me in my own head, even when I probably actually deserve it. I have basically 0 self confidence, which is probably the root of a lot of my problems. And, even then, that’s probably rooted in my lack of good relationship with God somehow. The thing is, though, that even when I was a teenage and had the periodic bits of really good relationship with God, I never had a great view of myself.

I believed that “being humble” was a good thing, and that “being humble” was best accomplished by beating myself up all the time (sometimes literally. Mom was never happy about that). The weird thing was, I was always the best at almost everything. I always won debates, got As on papers, was the top piano player in my little school, and just generally did great on everything. And I always felt a little awful inside about it. When I first got to PHC, I still had that streak of “I can do anything” confidence, which was quickly squooshed. However, when I wasn’t the best at everything anymore, that just let the little internal voice get louder, because it had more ammo. Basically, in the battle between self-confidence and self-criticism which had been at a standstill in high school, self-criticism won after a semester or two and I’ve been having battles with it ever since.

Anyhow, I think I’m just rambling at this point anyways. Thanks for peering into the inner-workings of my mind. I hope it helps you understand me more (assuming there’s anyone reading this at all). I have no idea what I’ll write about tomorrow. We’ll just see how it goes when it gets there.

Peace,

Felix

The middling life.

I wound up sitting along in the little prayer chapel on my campus as I took a break from walking (and let a girl run instead, because evidently I'm too creepy to have walking around while girls are running) and the thought that kept coming up was how much I've lived a middling life. I've never had any huge, crushing failures, but I've never had any vast successes, either. Yeah, I've had highs and lows, but compared to most people (at least, most people as I picture them in my mind, which usually has about as much depth as a badly-written sitcom character) I've never wandered that far from the middle. Even in my spritual life, I keep cruising the middle. The thing that originally inspired this post (and warning, potential TMI ahead) as I was sitting there in the little prayer chapel is how, even when I started going too far in an earlier relationship, the worse I've ever done is sleep with a girl. Literally, sleep with, not bang, hump, have sex, or whatever else, but simply sleep beside a woman. Even when I'm sinning, it seems like I can't bother to go all out.

It's way overused, but all I can think of is that verse to the Laodiceans about how they were neither hot or cold (you're yes and you're no, you're in and you're out...sorry, that's Katy Perry) but always sorta middling. I would have sworn I've hit rock bottom and tried to climb back up to an actual, decent, relationship with God a dozen times, but I've always rebounded and then promptly found a new low to sink to. I guess in the same way Patton said that success is how high you bounce once you've hit rock bottom, failure is how low I fall after I smack into the ceiling like a bird into a window.

Even the way I phrased that last bit shows where I really think my problem is. It's never God lifting me out, it's always me climbing out. I always try to learn the lessons I should and try to get just that much higher the next time. And, to be honest, I do get better. I keep climbing just a bit higher, being just a bit more dedicated, know juts that much more, get that much of a better grade, overuse that bit of rhetoric even more, but I know that it's never going to be enough. Really, all I'm hoping for is that I can rely enough on God that I can skip the next horrible fall. Even then, however, is that "I'm doing it for me" idea. I don't want to follow God because it's the right thing to do, or because it's what I was made for, or because I'll create the most good in the universe that way. I want to do it because it'll hurt the least. I don't even know if it quite makes sense, but I got screwed up by economics at an early age and have a very hard time thinking of things in a way that isn't "this will provide the most benefit and least pain to me."

So, now what? Honestly? I don't know. I keep expecting to be utterly smacked by something around basically every corner, but I have no idea what it might be. I get the feeling God is going to keep trying to break me until I finally give up trying on my own, but that's something that has huge problems of its own. I've even thought about trying to hasten the process by getting wrapped up in booze, or drugs, or whatever else that's self destructive. To go back to the analogy, since I don't seem to be able to make the leap from lukewarm to hot, I want to try the jump from lukewarm to cold (which in this case probably means "completely screwed up," though the analogy never made much sense to me. I would much rather have cold water in my mouth than hot, but maybe I'm just weird) but I get the feeling that's a bad idea.

Honestly, though? I've always been a Nice Guy (a bit of a technical term) and have never been able to bring myself to do something like that. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the whole Nice Guy syndrome, from the perspective of a guy who really doesn't want to be one.

One step closer to crazy,

-Felix

Caveat Lector

Well, with two days and 10 miles down, this is actually looking a little bit hopeful. Granted, the countdown gadgets seem to hate me with a passion, but that's a minor problem. As I was walking today, I thought that I should probably note what kind of blog this is going to be before anyone gets too involved with it.

This is not going to be a happy blog, though it will probably have happy moments. It's not going to be a sad blog either, although it's likely to have abundances of that as well. I don't plan on linking to every nifty little thing I find here, though if something is absolutely, life-changingly, outstanding I probably will.

This is just going to be my thoughts about whatever. For the past several months (9 and 4 days, but who's counting?) I have been trying to distract myself with every means I could find. I played video games, hung out with friends, wrote, sang, just about everything I could think of to keep myself from actually thinking. Since my mind was one of about 3 attributes of myself I like(hair, and leg strength being the other two), this was a bit stupid of me. So, having gotten my head minorly cleared in recent days, I'm trying to take steps to get out of the fuzzy muck I've been in for the past while.

Be warned that I have a tendency to try "attention seeking" behavior. So, if I'm retardedly depressed some days as I'm writing, it's about an even chance that I'm actually fine and just want someone to pay attention to me. This little aspect of my personality deserves its own post some day, but that day isn't today. I would, however, appreciate people calling me out when they see it so I can do it a bit less.

The one thing that I especially am trying to do is be just completely, brutally honest about what I'm thinking and feeling. I'm not going to put on the Christian Happy Face(tm) here like I do on Facebook. This is going to be the spot where I articulate when I hate God, when I am in absolute ecstacy, when I'm at the verge of suicide (which, so far, has come around at finals time every semester except my first here), or whatever else I'm actually like any given day. Thus, the title of the post, "Caveat Lector," Reader Beware.

And, if I haven't scared you off yet, maybe you'll stick around for tomorrow's post. I'm hoping to write about the "Middling Life," and boy, would Aristotle be mad.

A journey of a thousand miles...

Well, here's the start of my little blog. This thing is vaguly inspired by three sources. First, a bit of motivational advice I've heard, namely that to really get something accomplished, a person should get a big calendar and make a big red "X" on it every day they've done what they wanted to do. Lacking a ginormous wall calendar, or any place to put it for that matter, a blog is the next best thing. Second, the "Julie&Julia" movie. It planted the idea of using a blog as motivator in my head. Who knows, some people might even want to read this some day, but this is mostly for me. :-) Third is the song "I'm Gonna Be" by the proclaimers. In case you haven't heard of it, the singers talk about how they would walk 500 miles, and then they'd walk 500 more "just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door."

I've always loved that song, especially when I had a girlfriend who actually was just about 1000 miles away from me. However, I never reall attached it to any concrete sort of objective. Since I'm massively unfit, and in order to do pretty much anything in my life I'd want to be more fir, I've decided to actually try to walk (or run, once I'm more fit) a thousand miles before I get out of college. Counting today, I have 266 days until I graduate. With the amazing convenience of a indoor running track in my school's newest building, I walked a total of 5 miles this evening. So, with just 265 days and 995 miles left to go, I'm happily a bit ahead of track, which is where I want to be in case of any major illness, inconvenience, or just plain lack of time.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to take care of my blisters...