Isn't it strange how everything comes together?

Considering it's been 4.5 months since my last post, I suppose I'm nearing the point where I should either delete my blog or actually update. I guess I'll do the latter.

I came back from Spring Break last week, which was loads of fun. I went with some good friends out to Seattle, and we got to spend a few days in Boise on the way back as well. A strange thing happened to me after visiting Boise, which I was not expecting. I realized just how much I had missed Boise, and I did not in the least bit want to go back to Dordt.

Normally at the end of a break, even a very good one, I've been excited, or at least ready to go back to Dordt, but that didn't happen this time. I guess it's a good thing, because I am finally content with moving on to the next stage of life, away from Dordt. Don't get me wrong, I still love Dordt and most of all the people here, but I think I'm very ready to just move on and leave this stage of life behind me. So now I can't wait to finish up this semester and go back to Boise. I'm excited to see the mountains, the city, old friends, and most of all my mom and sister again.

So about two weeks ago, two of my best friends got engaged within the same week, which was awesome. But weird too. I guess I'm at that stage of life where most of the people my age have found their "special someone" and are in the process of sealing the deal. It makes me wonder when/if I will find that person. I shouldn't act like it's a huge concern of mine right now, but I guess the fact that a lot of my friends are either engaged or married now kind of highlights my own status a little more...

On a mostly unrelated note, you should check out Stacy Clark. She's pretty much my favorite right now.

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Now playing: Stacy Clark - Strange

Everybody knows you break your neck to keep your chin up.

*This has been one of the most stressful weeks I've had in a long time.

*I wish money weren't such a big deal.

*I got a letter today that I didn't want to read. I finally brought myself to do so and I'm thrown back into questioning why things had to go the way they did. I realized I'm still angry and bitter.

*I've been deleting pictures from my iPhoto library that I don't want to look at anymore. I feel sort of bad... like I'm editing my past or something, but there's some things I'd just rather not remember.

*She's most likely not coming back next semester. I wish I could understand what she's going through but all I can do is give her a hug, tell her I love her, and pray that someday her life can be normal again. If I could take all the pain and suffering she's experienced in her 18 short years I would do it in a heartbeat.

*Christ, if you're ready to come back, I think I'm ready for you to come back. But if you want to stay wherever exactly it is you are, that's ok too-it's really none of my business. -Aaron Weiss

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Now playing: Mewithoutyou - Carousels

Oh God, I have made such an awful regret of today

I've been told that I need to update, which is probably a good idea since I haven't written anything here for over 3 months. I've begun a few different posts in the meantime, but then deleted them before publishing. I don't even know why. I guess the stuff was too personal to share publicly.

My semester has been going by fast, which is partly good and partly not. I sort of wish the semester were just over because I'm starting to really get burned out on school. If my motivation is this low now, I can't imagine what it will be like next semester. And I've definitely decided I'm not going to grad school next Fall, because I would most definitely get burned out. But besides crossing grad school off the list, I have no idea what I'll be doing after graduation. I'm not too worried about it, because I'm sure something will come up. I suppose I should be more concerned about that, but I'm just not.

I've decided that I suck at relationships. I'm not just talking about romantic relationships, I'm talking about friendships and relationships in general. I could go into details of why I feel this way, but I don't really feel like it right now. But basically I think it mostly comes down to selfishness on my part.

I also suck at managing money and time. I would hope that I would get better at things like this as I get older, but I think I keep getting worse.

My Mom came out for Parent's Weekend which was pretty awesome. The next weekend my Dad came out, which was fun as well, but it was really weird having both parents there one week apart. I know it's not true, but I often feel like the only kid at Dordt with divorced parents. I've had more awkward conversations with people within the last year than I care to remember.

"You're dad's a pastor, right?"
"No, not anymore."
"Not anymore?"
"Well, he had an affair and now my parents are divorced and he's a prison guard."
"Oh, sorry..."

Also, about a month ago I think I became more pissed off than I've ever been in my entire life. And that's all I'll say about that.

Despite the negativity of this post, a lot of things have been going well in my life. I'm doing an internship that I'm really enjoying, I'm in a one-act play that's pretty fun so far, and I'm in Experimental Psych which has been a lot of work but also pretty neat.

Well, hopefully I won't go as long between posts from now on... but that's about all I have to say for now.

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Now playing: Say Anything - An Insult To The Dead

I think I could make better use of my time on land

Ch. 1 Sounds of Summer

So, every summer I listen to a few albums that end up defining my summer, and when I go back to listen to them I remember whatever memories I made that particular summer. This is what I've been listening to this summer.

The Format-Dog Problems I've listened to this one about 20 times and it still hasn't gotten old.
Yellowcard-Paper Walls
PlayRadioPlay!-The Frequency EP
Straylight Run-The Needles, The Space
The Graduate-Anhedonia

Ch. 2 We Don't Own A TV

We got rid of our TV at the beginning of the summer which doesn't really matter to me, but I still have a TV show of the summer-Arrested Development. I now own all three seasons on DVD, and this show is magically delicious.

Ch. 3 Books

I've been trying to read more this summer and I've been somewhat successful. I have a bad habit of starting lots of books without finishing them.

I started the summer by reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Shane started a Christian community called The Simple Way in the "bad" part of Philly. This community strives to live a very simple life (thus, the name). This book is a lot of stories about this community and from his own personal life. He actually went to Calcutta at one point to work with Mother Theresa and the Missionaries of Charity. This book gave me a different perspective on how I live my life and the selfish things that I do without even taking the time to think about it. The book also gave me a lot to think about in terms of Western materialism and individualism, war, poverty, and what my role is in changing things. I'm still trying to figure that out.

The next book I read was Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller. This was also a lot of stories from his life, and it was very well written and very thought provoking. I definitely recommend it.

I also read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, and I can't think of much to say about it except for that Rob Bell is a very wise man and this book is definitely a must read.

I'm currently reading NT Wright's Simply Christian, Kyle Strobel's Metamorpha, and Elie Wiesel's Night. I'm hoping to finish these and a couple more books by the end of summer.

Ch. 4 Life in General

Overall, I feel like life has been pretty good to me lately. I'm enjoying my summer, but I'm also looking forward to being back at Dordt in about a month. I'm excited about my senior year, but not excited that I'll be saying goodbye to a lot of friends at the end of that year.

Work has been going well, albeit a little slow at times. However, God works in amazing ways because it seems like whenever I don't have work at my regular job, something else comes up for me to do. Like I've been doing some carpet cleaning this summer which is actually pretty fun. It's nice to do some manual labor sometimes.

Life, could you be a little softer to me?

Tonight Laura and I broke up after dating for 1 year, 5 months, and 17 days. That's a long time especially considering I'm only 21. I'm not writing this blog so much to let people know or even for sympathy, but for my own sake. I should be in bed right now but there's things I need to process first.

From early on when I met Laura I knew she was special. We hadn't known each other too long before we started hanging out quite a bit, and right before Christmas break of 2005 we went on a few dates. It was amazing and Christmas break seemed to go by so slowly. When we came back to school the next semester, we started dating almost immediately. For that entire semester our relationship steadily grew, and it seemed like there were absolutely no problems. I would hear about other couples with relationship problems and I thought that would never happen to us.

Being apart that summer was also hard, and we spent a lot of hours talking over the phone and over the internet. In August shit hit the fan with my family, and Laura was incredibly supportive through that, since her parents had gotten divorced a few years earlier as well. I guess I started to rely on Laura for a lot of things, to the detriment of some of my other friendships. But our relationship progressed, and it wasn't long before we were talking about marriage and family like it was a for-sure part of our future. Finally in the spring semester we came to the realization that we needed to spend less time with each other because it was hurting our friendships as well as our spiritual lives. We took a break for two weeks, which was incredibly hard. We had, in many ways, become co-dependent.

After our break, I don't think things were ever really the same as they were before. We still went on walks and dates and did a lot of the things we did before, but somehow it wasn't the same. The summer came, and it was again time to say goodbye. This time Laura went to a camp in New York and I came back home. We wouldn't be able to see each other for the entire summer. We knew that it would test our relationship, but we were hoping that it would make it stronger. But over the summer it's been extremely hard to stay connected. She and I are in completely different worlds. The cell phone connection is bad, she has limited internet, and letters take 4-5 days to arrive.

Anyway, (this is the hardest part for me) there are other guys at the camp she works at, one in particular. She feels that I haven't been meeting her needs, not only over the summer, but during our last semester as well. She's apparently somewhat attracted to this guy and some of the other guys at camp make her feel more special that I have been. I don't want to make it sound like she left me for someone, because this was a mutual break-up. I've also recently been feeling like I would rather be single than be in this relationship. I have absolutely no desire to date or flirt, or do any of that stupid crap, it's just that so much of my life has been tied up in this relationship. And in some respects there are a lot of things that a single person can do, like in terms of service (missionary work, etc.) or career that someone in a relationship can't. We both came to the realization that it would be better for us as individuals to break up.

This hurts like hell. I feel like a part of myself has been ripped away. Pretty much everything reminds me of her. She was my first and only relationship.

But I feel like this break up is part of God's plan. I don't regret any of the time I spent with her, because I feel like that was part of God's plan too. I don't know if anything could have or should have been done differently. I just don't know. I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Maybe God has someone else for me. Maybe He wants me to be single. Maybe Laura is the one, and God is just teaching me to rely on him for a while. God knows I need that lesson constantly.

Nothing compares to a quiet evening alone

It's been an obscenely long time since my last blog. I don't even feel like blogging, but I like reading other people's blogs, so hopefully there's a few people out there who like to read this blog.

Being home has been fun and busy and stressful. We are still in the process of getting rid of a lot of stuff and moving stuff around. At this point, mom is living with/taking care of a man who is a quadriplegic as well as his service monkey. I'm serious, the guy has a freakin' monkey. It's great. My sister and I are able to stay in the parsonage until we head off to college, so it's nice that we don't have to move twice in a summer.

Work has been going well. I actually enjoy it quite a bit, and I'm starting to think that I might want to do work like this as a career. Probably not exactly what I'm doing now, but something having to do with working with kids.

I'm finding that there's not many people here that I've stayed great friends with, so I've been spending a lot of time alone. Which isn't all bad. However, in about a week and a half Sam and I will be roadtripping down to Salt Lake City to go camping and see the Warped Tour. It's going to be great. Warped Tour comes through Boise too, but the lineup in Salt Lake is a lot better, and it's a good excuse for a road trip.

Other than that, I've been taking advantage of my 21-year-old status, but not too much. I don't really like beer and I don't like spending too much money, so that kind of limits my drinking options.

It's sad that I can't think of anything else to say... I guess my life is pretty boring.

That's 27,680,400 seconds

Today is my 21st birthday. Huzzah and all that. I didn't have to work today because the United States government decided that my birthday would be a national holiday. That was nice of them.