So I'm still thinking about this being still thing. I've been a weird jumble of things these last two weeks, and I haven't been able to put my finger on one specific reason yet, though I suspect that's because it's just a number of things. You know when one thing on its own wouldn't necessarily bother you or you'd be able to go on ahead through it but then several of them are going on at once and you start to get pulled down? I know that's vague. But the word I'm thinking for all of this is heavy.
And you know--just because I've been meaning to say this for a while and haven't--this blog is far from where I'd orginally intended it. I've been blogging for years now. "Blogging." I've had this online journal thing since 2004 that I still actually have but thankfully is password protected and heaven forbid that thing ever surface, because oh goodness I was an angsty adolescent.
But this! This was going to be different. Love to the nations! I think it was January when I started, so I had Romania ahead of me this summer and then was intending to have Chile in either spring or fall of 2010. And then, I'm always always going on about Colombia. And these thoughts about traveling and going out to the world and who knows about missions except for I just can't stop thinking or talking or writing about any of it. So a blog about all of it! And then I wouldn't have to make a new one while in Chile, but it also wouldn't have any of that crazy stuff I wrote when I was younger (...or more recently).
But then I found out I won't be able to blog while I'm in Romania (which is fine, and of course I'll be writing while I'm over there) and now I've made the decision to hold off on Chile. So I have this blog that was supposed to be centered around all of that. Except lately it's just my thoughts. Which is great, no problem at all. But I feel like I've done the name a bit of a disservice.
I never really defined too well what this whole thing was supposed to be about, but I'm redefining it anyway. Getting excited for or concerned about or going to these countries, this world--these will be the dots. My analytical, sometimes moody, sometimes overuse of words like hope, with sentences like a comma factory blew up and grammar like I burned my copy of Strunk & White--this, these day-to-day thoughts will be the in-between, the connect-the-dots. I think I'm okay with that.
And I digress. Good gracious. If any of you ever get through to the ends of these and actually read the whole thing, you deserve a medal and lots of money. When I'm writing something for real, length is always an issue--I feel like when I write it's usually dense but never long, and how the heck am I supposed to ever write anything novel-length? But here. Here there are no bounds to my long-windedness and ability to tangentialize (I realize this isn't a word, but for the sake of continuity I think my point is further proved if I use it). Here I go again.
So being still. Feeling pulled down by life in general, ready to be finished with school for the semester. Not really knowing what my deal is lately, or rather, not being certain what my deal has been and wanting to understand it. I went down to the beach last night to do that, and it was wonderful. I just laid in the sand, city glow above the dunes, the sky a different color dark than everything else. And how when I was laying there looking up, the sky like a bowl above me and grass reaching up at the edges--it was beautiful and made me want to write and--and I couldn't be still.
I couldn't sit for an hour out there and think. I'm pretty confident I have no diagnoses of ADD or ADHD or anything, and after all those years in the system it almost certainly would have been caught. But I'll tell you what. It wasn't until I was driving--until I was doing something, until I was moving--that I could work things out in my head. And once I was doing that I felt a ton better. I feel like the go-go-go of school and life and reading two minute long blogs and news articles have absolutely shot my ability to do one task at a time (as opposed to constantly multi-tasking). I noticed it over Christmas when I finally had a chance to read again after the craziness of the semester was over, and I was reading The Fellowship of the Ring and I could hardly go twenty (dense) pages before having to put it down, do something, and then come back. The longer I read the easier it got to go for a while, but it's so hard to be still now. I have to ease back into it.
So that is my very long way of saying: it's time for me to slow down, to be one-track for a while. As much as I'm (still) wanting to go to Colombia for two weeks this summer (plane tickets are the cheapest I've ever seen them, oh man it's so hard), I'm going to spend the weeks leading up to Romania working and having fun, yes, but reading and relaxing and being still.
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