Forgot Who I Talked to, Sorry

All my coworkers and managers at my job get along well together. We have a really small staff and we all seem to enjoy each other’s company. We have good conversations and I love that when I go to work I can be excited to work with people I can also call my friends. I think I have more friends at this point in my life than I’ve ever really had previously. I have coworker friends and long distance friends and friends at church too. I’m so blessed to have all these people in my life!

Something that happens though, when you do talk to a good number of people on a semi-regular basis, is that you forget who you told what. Or maybe it’s just me that happens to. I forget who I talked to about some things. I can’t count the number of times I’ve started discussing something and I suddenly stop and look at my friend and ask, “Did we talk about this before?” and waaaaayyyyy too often they say yes. Then we laugh about it and lapse into silence unless I have some kind of update on whatever it was.

Obviously, I don’t have my life together enough to mentally keep track of what I tell people. There’s always so much to say to everyone in my life. I care about a lot of people and I want them to take part in my life. I want to have meaningful conversations about current events or drama or about pop culture. So often, I end up talking about the same things and telling the same stories to the same person. But on the flip side, sometimes a semi-major event in my life never even reaches a person I consider very close to me because I tell someone else and then think I told them already. Then sometimes the same friend listens to me tell the same story a hundred times without me realizing I’d told them it 99 times before.

Personally, I don’t get frustrated hearing the same story over again from my friends. If I recognize it early enough on I often try to mention, “Yeah, you told me about this” because I appreciate when others do that for me. I actually get much more frustrated with myself for doing it than others doing it to me. I think it’s just me being me. I don’t like endlessly repeating myself. One of my friends told me she really doesn’t mind hearing the same stories over again, which is very gracious of her! But then again, I just said I don’t mind hearing the same stories from others, because I don’t. I only mind that trait in myself.

I don’t know if my memory is just the worst or if I just get excited to tell my friends things that I mentally gloss over who I talked to before. If I’m looking for advice I think I remember better who I talked to. Because they give a lot more input. But if it’s just a story or an update about something in my life then my brain must go straight into autopilot.

Does anyone else do this? I remember telling the story multiple times but not who I told. I get flustered when my friend tells me I told her already because then I think back and can’t figure out who I did tell. Maybe that’s the more frustrating thing for me. Not so much that I’m repeating information but that I become so unsure about how many people have the information. Or maybe it’s just that it makes me acutely aware of how bad my memory is and I wonder if it’s possible to work on that or if I’m simply doomed to never figure out my life… I’ll have to look that up later, if I remember.

 

Am I too Hard on Myself? Probably.

Recently, a friend of mine told me that when she reads my blog she often feels that I am being too hard on myself. I paused in the moment, considering the genuine concern in her voice. I also had to take a moment to consider I sometimes forget how personal my blogs are and also what kind of image I’m projecting through them.

Obviously a blog post will never perfectly encompass who I am as a person. There will always be something left out or something accidentally misrepresented. I try very hard to be balanced in my posts and to represent myself as realistically as I possibly can. Sometimes, that means being a little harsh, whether to myself or to others. I’m a somewhat harsh person. I call things like they are. I can be very compassionate but I don’t sugarcoat many of my beliefs or opinions. I want to be genuine and real with my audience here.

I get the idea from my friend that sometimes that harshness, toward myself, lacks the compassion that I extend to others. The biggest reason for this, I think, is that I am inside my own head. With others, I only know what they tell me and what they show me through their actions. I am not privy to their inmost thoughts and feelings so I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I don’t always give myself that same benefit because I know my own thoughts and emotions. I know when I’m making stupid excuses or being lazy about getting things done. I am fully aware of many of my own shortcomings and I am frustrated when I allow them to rule me and my life.

I take my life pretty seriously and what I do with it just as seriously. It’s why I make new year resolutions and why I’ve been trying to build good habits this year. It’s why I want to feel productive as much as possible. It’s why I want to work on myself. It’s why, yeah, I can be a little mean to myself.

Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly mean to myself. I’m not doling out “punishments” or getting into ruts of negativity. I get frustrated, sure. I can beat myself up a little internally, sure. But I also know it’s better not to dwell on mistakes. I’ll never move forward if I’m stuck on making myself miserable over not doing enough in my life or making mistakes. I only have one life to live. God put me here for a reason and I will not waste the time given to me messing around. I have a purpose here. When I’m not fulfilling that purpose, when I’m, I guess failing at life, I can feel pretty useless. I am not useless though. Not ever. I know my own worth and I don’t forget it, which just rolls into high expectations for my life.

But I can appear a bit hard on myself. I expect a lot from me. I think I strike a decent enough balance for the most part, though, between high expectations and realism. I know I won’t ever be perfect but I do know I can keep working on myself and be the very best me possible.

Cancel Culture and Not Agreeing on Every Little Thing

If you haven’t been living under a rock then you’ve probably heard of the rampant cancel culture of today. You know how it goes:

Someone gets hired on to a tv show or movie or even just a regular company

A random person on the internet decides they don’t like this person (doesn’t matter the reason)

The random person starts digging through every status, tweet, blog post, interview, vlog, and family picture of the one who got hired until they find something that they don’t like. Something they disagree with.

Random person twists what they found so it is/could be understood as racist, homophobic, antisemitic, transphobic, or just mean.

Random person publicizes said information

The person recently hired is immediately fired

That’s cancel culture. The idea that because someone said something 5 years ago that was maybe wrong, now they don’t deserve to have an okay life. Usually it’s a tweet and it’s almost always a stupid, edgy joke that everyone else was making in the early 2000s that wouldn’t fly today. Or it’s just something that the random person disagrees with. I don’t like cancel culture. It’s stupid. No one is perfect. Dragging someone’s present life through the mud of the past just because you don’t like them is juvenile at best.

Cancel culture doesn’t stop at you, though. As Ellen Degeneres recently found out by having the unmitigated gall to spend time with former president Bush. It quickly became death-by-association. So now you can’t even risk associating with people you don’t 100 percent agree with on literally every issue? This is why everyone feels so divided these days.

But I digress.

I was thinking about cancel culture recently when I decided to become a Patron. If you’re not familiar with the website Patreon, it’s essentially a website designed to support individual creators. Whether they are artists or bloggers or youtubers or they run podcasts, they can use Patreon to get monetary support from their fans. There are usually tiers for support. So if you pledge $5 a month you might get early access to videos and podcasts. If you pledge $25 a month then you might get that early access plus a one-on-one Q&A with the creator. If you pledge $50 a month then maybe you get to pick a topic for a video. The creator gets to pick the tiers/perks.

So I decided to finally become a patron. I’ve never been one before because I’m just a freeloader who doesn’t care about perks. Really, I just haven’t felt like I wanted to put money towards the content I consume, largely because of the cancel culture vibe: if you can’t fully and completely agree with every single thing this person says and does then how dare you associate with them and even GIVE THEM MONEY.

I thought about waiting to give support. I thought, “I should go through all of his content to make sure I agree with it before I pledge any kind of support!” But the more I considered that the more I realized, I wouldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to go through several years worth of 1 1/2+hr podcasts and videos. I wasn’t going to read through years of blog posts and statuses. It just wasn’t going to happen. As much as I like the ministry, it’s unrealistic to think I’d go through all of his content in any reasonable amount of time.

Not just that I couldn’t go through all his content but I realized that, inevitably, I would disagree with him on something. There is NO WAY that he’s putting a ministry out there that I would fully and completely agree with on every single point. I’m not sure I even fully and completely support every word/policy/practice of my own church, yet I tithe every month. Because I believe in our church and I agree and support most (if not all) of the theology/doctrine behind my church. I know the doctrines that I hold to be… I don’t want to say ‘most important’ but I think I’ll go with it anyway, and those are the ones that I know my church also hold to be important. I am 100% behind my church all the time. But I am not 100% in agreement all the time. And I think that’s okay. In terms of ministries, I feel like I just need to trust God. If I’m giving with the right heart attitude then He’ll sort out the rest.

So I chose to put my support out there for this guy on Patreon. I believe in his ministry and what he’s doing. Will I totally agree with every little thing he says/does? Probably not. Does he follow the doctrines that I feel are most important? Yeah, as far as I have seen.

If cancel culture comes my way, maybe this will be the affiliation that is brought to light. Maybe someday this guy will go totally off the rails and become a raging psychopath and I’m forever tied to him through this (possibly limited) support of a whopping $5 a month. I guess I’m willing to take that risk.

The only person you’ll ever completely agree with is yourself. Maybe cut others some slack and don’t treat them like criminals if they’re laughing with your political opponent or maybe said something offensive 8 years ago. We’re only human.

Watching Movies with a Writer

I don’t go see movies by myself. Ever. It’s not because of my previous post about fear of other people or anything like that, I just don’t see the point in watching a movie alone. I want to share the experience with someone else. I do rewatch movies by myself sometimes, generally having them play in the background while I multitask but that’s about it. I will always prefer watching with someone rather than alone.

I feel that way because what I love to do with movies is analyze them. Or at the very least, talk about them. What did we like/dislike? Were the characters developed well? What did you think about the inclusion of that particular scene? Was there a point to that one guy existing? Did I miss something that you noticed? I watch a lot of movie critics on Youtube and feel like I’ve developed an okay sense for how good movies are overall while still acknowledging that there are a lot of subjective elements. There are many movies that I really love but when it comes to even looking at the technical execution of them… well, let’s just say they leave something to be desired.

So obviously people change and grow over time and in college I was really getting into the super sarcastic movie reviewers who were hilarious but harsh. I was probably not the best person to watch a movie with. (I did still often hold back. It’s not like I would go off on twenty minute rants during a film but I could easily go off or make really mean comments without thinking.) I also didn’t, and being honest here, still don’t, connect to characters on the screen very well. So I was literally the worst person to watch movies with: detached, sarcastic, and harsh with a working knowledge of what a movie should be able to reasonably accomplish.

My three roommates, we’ll name them, Jamie, Dawn, and Cheyenne (I’m sure you can guess who you are if you read this) and I lived in a townhouse on campus my last year at school so we had a living room and kitchen etc. Jamie had a TV that was set up in the living room area and Dawn had a Netflix account and an extensive dvd collection.

I was literally banned, by Jamie and Dawn, from watching Tokyo Ghoul with them because I was that terrible to watch things with. But also there was this weird phenomenon that happened in our house where, despite my inability to connect to the characters on the screen in the same way my roommates did, I was actually allowed to ask real questions whereas our fourth roommate, Cheyenne, was not allowed to ask questions under literally any circumstances.

Now, about Cheyenne. I love this girl, she’s a great person, a wonderful human being, really smart. But oh my gracious DO NOT let her walk in on you watching a movie or tv show that she hasn’t seen before! She’s one of those people who will start a movie with you and five minutes in, turn to you and ask, “Why did he do that?” Now imagine she just walked in to a 2 hour film at the hour and a half mark.

The thing that Cheyenne and I have in common is that we’re both writers. She’s more of a poetry person whereas I focus more on prose. But we both write all kinds of things.

If I walk in on a movie or tv show I’ll always wait to ask any questions. I have a decently active imagination and I feel like, for the most part, I can infer the general tone/direction of things going on. If I can’t then I have to decide if I’m interested enough in what I perceive is the concept to ask about it or if I’m just going to keep my peace. Then I can choose a question that will most effectively get me exactly the information I need while minimally disrupting the viewing of my friends.

Cheyenne is naturally inquisitive and she looks at the world in a way that I still don’t fully understand. As soon as a question comes up in her mind she wants to know the answer. She’s impatient too. So while I may analyze your movie to death and maybe make you hate it because now you see flaws that you didn’t before, Cheyenne will just completely derail the entire watching experience if you don’t give her what she wants. I mean, I’ve watched all the light in Dawn’s eyes die as she, for the fifth time, brings up that she is not actually all-knowing and can’t say what will happen next in a movie she’s never seen before.

Not sure where I was going with this story but it makes me feel nostalgic and I laugh a little inside when I think about how royally irritated Jamie and Dawn would get with me and Cheyenne. I just really miss all of them a lot. We still talk to each other but physical distance is hard to deal with sometimes.

If we ever watch a movie together I’ll just sit next to Cheyenne and answer all her questions as quietly as I can while annoying her with analysis. Clearly a win-win situation.

Resolutions Update

Last year I wrote about getting rid of things and how I was thinking about what I would physically leave behind when I die. Then I made some resolutions at the beginning of the year.

Well, it’s been a few months since my decision to downsize and it’s been about a month and a half since my resolutions were made. So how’s that going for me?

In all honesty I felt like I was completely failing until I actually went back and looked at what I wrote for my resolutions. I should probably print that whole post out and tape it to the wall or something. I’m behind on a couple goals and seriously just failing some things.

Let’s review:

I’ve done a little bit of work on both of these things but we’re talking a LITTLE work. I got my little sister to type up one of my friend stories that I was writing by hand and I started to go through it again but haven’t touched it in a few weeks. I had a conversation with my oldest sister about the novel and we worked out some details but I haven’t started putting any of that information into the story yet. When I thought up this goal I thought I was being pretty lenient on myself. Like, maybe I should’ve put a monthly word count or something to really push myself. I’m glad I didn’t do that but at the same time I’m thinking I do need to have something more tangible than this. (Seems as though it’s not as SMART of a goal as I thought!) So now I will impose a word count on myself. It’ll be very small, just something to start me off getting into the swing of things again: 500 words a month. That’s not even a page. It’s like, just over a hundred words a week which is roughly two paragraphs. I almost feel juvenile just putting that teeny tiny goal out there. But hey, it’s something. I don’t know how many words I wrote last month but it might not have even been 500 so I think it’s a good place to start.

This is one I’m utterly failing and I feel like garbage for it. I got through maybe 10 chapters of Psalms so far, off and on, through January. It’s not as though this puts me behind for Psalms since it’s fairly easy to read through the book in a few months if you’re dedicated. I haven’t even really touched Romans yet which puts me dangerously behind on a goal of eight chapters in a year when a month and a half have vanished into the abyss of wasted time. I haven’t asked anyone yet but what I’m going to do is ask a couple friends to help me out with this one. I think having someone who’s not me reminding me about this goal from time to time would help me accomplish it. I would know that I’m not just disappointing myself but also my friend for not working on these things.

This goal is going alright. I’m wearing through my wardrobe pretty well already and I’ve watched quite a few of my movies and tv shows. My books aren’t going super great. I think I’m just learning that I’m not that into rereading. Which is fine, I guess. I’m still working on Shiver from a few weeks ago. It’s not a difficult read or anything it’s just… Like I’m noticing things about it that I probably skimmed over the first read and I don’t necessarily like everything I’ve noticed. I’m finding I don’t like the characters as much because I already know them but they don’t know themselves yet even though they will at the end of the book. So it’s slow going on books. I’m trying. I’m working on it. Hopefully the more I read, the more into the stories I’ll get. I haven’t looked at the boxes of my stored things yet but I’m glad I wrote this update because I completely forgot I was doing that.

 

 

Currently Reading: Shiver

 

**Sorry for the late posting this week! I had time earlier in the week but didn’t use it wisely so I had to write this one fast today!**

Always Don’t Sometimes Mix Your Passion With Making Money But Do

“You should never mix your passion with money.”

“If you want to be a good writer you can’t focus on the money.”

“Don’t think about making a decent living, it’ll get in the way of what you love.”

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT GREED CAN DESTROY MY LIFE?? OH MY WORD! THANK YOU FOR SUCH HEAVY WISDOM! THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT SOMETHING EVERY CHILDREN’S STORY HAS TAUGHT ME SINCE I WAS A SMALL BABY! CLEARLY YOU ARE WISE BEYOND ME AND KNOW SO MUCH MORE ABOUT THE WRITING COMMUNITY THAN I! HERE I WAS WITH MY LOWLY 4 YEAR DEGREE IN THE SUBJECT THINKING I KNEW A THING OR TWO ABOUT WRITING LIFE!

Who doesn’t want to be the next JK Rowling or James Patterson or Veronica Roth? We all want to be successful doing what we love. Yet, there are always those who tell you that you can’t do it. I run into this A LOT with writing although I think it’s true of most creative endeavors. People ‘warn’ me that if I’m not careful I’ll kill all my creativity and start to hate writing. I don’t really get why so many people think that if you make art that you’re some kind of fragile snowflake who needs to be protected from themselves. Like if they don’t warn you of the basic principle that loving money is gonna bite you in the butt then you’re going to run yourself into the ground.

I KNOW I will most likely never be rich, much less rich off my writing. I KNOW it’s hard work to make money off writing/art. I know what I’m getting myself into here. But don’t tell me that I shouldn’t even think about trying to make money off my writing.

I’ve spent basically my whole life writing and making my writing better. I have spent countless hours reading about, analyzing, and understanding how to write. I paid thousands of dollars to go to a university where I could learn even more from people far more experienced than I may ever be. I have WORKED HARD to write and I will NOT be told that everything I have accomplished so far, every late night paper, every annoyance, every failed draft, every frustration,  every finished story, every completed poem, every lesson learned, every dollar spent, was only for my personal enjoyment and I shouldn’t expect to make money.

No.

Shut.

Your.

Mouth.

People don’t say these things to those who want to be accountants. People don’t say it to those who want to be biologists, or doctors, or forensic pathologists. Those people have passion for their work too but are rarely warned about the dangers of making money. Yet writers, painters, etc. we’re told that we can’t expect much. It’s not about hard work for us apparently. Nooooo, if an accountant loves their crappy job they may be obsessed but they’re also driven and dedicated. If an artist loves their crappy job they’re eccentric and obsessed and they’re not seeing the bigger picture and they should get a ‘real’ job.

I don’t even want to be rich. It’d be nice (I mean, come on, tell me you’ve never fantasized about being incredibly wealthy!) but it’s not a necessity. I want to make money off my writing. I want it to be realistic, tangible. I’m working hard toward that goal. Writing is a real job and I’m not a sellout or stupid for wanting to make a living doing it. It is my passion and wanting to make that into a living doesn’t make it any less of that.

 

 

 

 

 

I finished Mogworld and am currently reading: Wolf Stalker by Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson

(I feel like I bit off a little much starting the year with a book over 400 pages long so I’m scaling back and going to read a few shorter, easier reads this week and next.)

Sometimes You Should Give Up

I have tried many things over the course of my life. My mom made me take piano lessons when I was young. Then I tried the clarinet. Then I wanted to be a photographer. Then I tried my hand at magic/slight of hand. I really enjoyed watching Doctor Who until a few years ago. I’ve dabbled in baking, candy-making, book reviewing, knitting, criminology, psychology, etc. I was watching every one of Markiplier’s Youtube videos for a while. I tried to learn a language foreign to me.

All of these things take time. Now that I’m working two jobs I’m seeing what it really means to make time for what you want to do. I’ve only been at both jobs together for a few days but I can already see that 12 hour days are not going to end anytime soon. We all have a limited amount of time on earth and a lot of it is filled with work and other obligations. The time that isn’t filled for us becomes a balancing game between doing things that we want to do and things that we need to do. I want to work on learning Spanish but I need to do laundry, clean, and feed myself. I want to write my for-fun short stories but I need to go to my job and make money for my loans.

“You always make time for what you really want to do.” I’ve heard that for a lot of my life and I still fully believe it. Now, that comes with sacrifices. I’m sacrificing the time I could be writing my short stories so that I can pay off my loans. I want to pay off my loans more than I want to write my stories. I want to write this blog post more than I want to go downstairs and start making lunch. I need to eat so that I don’t die, but I’m not going to starve to death in the next hour. I need to show up at my jobs consistently or I’ll be fired. Life is a constant battle between wants and needs. Sometimes needs outweigh the wants, sometimes it’s the other way around. The saying isn’t meant to be applied to every aspect of life. It’s meant to remind you that your time is your own. What do you do with those moments you have no needs to fill? People like to say they don’t have time to read a book you recommended yet they talk about how they marathoned Orange is the New Black for six hours yesterday. The TV show was a want that outweighed the book.

Christians like to say that they had really busy weeks so they didn’t have time to read the Bible at all. Yet, more than once in that week they had time to sit on Facebook for three hours. Time slips away faster than we realize at times but in the end, you will always make the time for what you really want to do. I make time for this blog every week. Some weekends are crazy busy for me and I don’t write my post until Saturday morning. Some weeks it would be much easier to just not post because I don’t feel like I have anything to say. Yet, here I am. I do it because I want to do it. I don’t need to write this blog. Maybe you would be disappointed if I stopped but the world wouldn’t end.

What does all this have to do with giving up? Well, let’s do what I seem to very consistently do on this blog: circle back to the first thought.

I gave up on things as I grew up because I lost interest or I moved on or I didn’t have time. Sometimes I miss watching Markiplier on Youtube. I think about how maybe I should have pursued criminology. Maybe I could’ve been good at slight of hand if I’d really practiced. But I didn’t want to do those things enough to stick with them. I wanted to get a degree in Creative Writing so I didn’t pursue criminology. I wanted good grades and time for other things so I’ve basically given up watching most let’s players online.

I still have interest in many of the things I gave up on. I enjoy psychology discussions from time to time. I like taking pictures still and I try to better my photography little by little. But these are things I don’t do or plan to do for a lot of my time. I have to sacrifice wants so I can do what I need with my time. Sometimes I sacrifice needs to do wants.

For the life of me I can’t remember if I read about this or if I heard someone talk about it but at some point I learned that a good way to get yourself to manage time well is instead of saying “I didn’t have time for that,” say “It wasn’t a priority.” It’s just like needs/wants. If you really want to do something then it becomes a priority and you make sacrifices to get it done. You have time for everything you need to do and everything you want to do. It doesn’t always feel like that but I firmly believe that it’s true.

I’m still working on balancing my wants and needs and figuring out how to prioritize. I don’t expect to be perfect at it but hopefully I can get better than I am now.

Snapshot of My Life #2

My first post on my blog was a “Life Update” type. That was six months ago which feels crazy. I’ve been maintaining this blog for half a year now! I don’t know if I find that intimidating or encouraging! I’ve been getting more visitors on here from more places around the world which is really cool!

So what have I done in six months? I’m going to update you on what I mentioned in my last Snapshot then move on from there.

Well, I finished the front porch for my dad. It took about 4 weeks longer than I had expected it to and dad had to help me with some of it but it’s done and it looks good. I don’t think I’ll be taking on any more large household projects for a while. I’m going to be living at my parents’ house for a while longer. I had a writing job opportunity that I really wanted to take but when I sat down to figure out what I could afford, I couldn’t pay off my loans and also survive on the pay. So I applied in the area and got a job at a bookstore in the mall half an hour from my house. I am also officially hired at one of the craft stores in the same area though I haven’t started there yet.

The bookstore is pretty good. It’s only 18 hours a week but I’m pretty happy with the work. It’s not writing but with my loan payments starting soon, I need something that’s going to pay that bill. It’s slow right now but business should pick up soon with the holidays rushing closer and closer. I like being around books and it’s encouraged me to get back into reading. It’s even helped my writing because I tend to work on stories during my breaks. I haven’t decided whether I like dealing with customers all the time but my coworkers are great.

If you’ve been following my blog for the last couple months then you know that I finished and published my ebook! I can also finally check some of my stats so I can see I’ve made a few dollars on it already! The stats aren’t up to date (they are only available quarterly) but it’s encouraging to see that I’ve made something off my writing already!

I’m definitely still feeling a bit stagnant. I’m still reminding myself that I’m in a decent place right now. I’m being responsible, trying to pay off as much of my debt as possible before moving out. Although I wish I had decided to do this as soon as I graduated (I could have been working for the last few months instead of waiting so long to find work in the area), I can’t change the past so I’ll be focusing on the future for now. It feels… anticlimactic to have made these decisions five months after graduating. I did things in the last six months, but I didn’t know what I was going to be doing then. I didn’t have a concrete plan beyond writing. Which was an okay plan but I hadn’t really considered how crippling my loans are to my plans of moving out on my own.

Once I get my loans paid down a good amount and hopefully have some savings, I can think about moving out. Oh, also I’ll need to get a car at some point. *sigh*

So I guess I’m moving along, slowly but surely. I’m building a readership, selling a few ebooks here and there, working at a bookstore, helping out around the house some, and still downsizing my room/possessions. There’s not really a lot else to say but that. I feel like it’s all just day to day life now. Like, “What’s new?” Literally nothing. Still doing all the same stuff.

But I’m not discouraged by this. I’m working on my writing, going to start paying off my loans soon, reading a couple new books, participating in my church, and overall just doing well. I don’t know all that the future holds for me right now and though I had wanted to be in a different place by now, I feel like this is where God wants me to be and that’s enough.

As a Christian Who Listens to Non-Christian Music

Recently I heard a short discussion from a few parents about what kind of music they allowed in their homes. It was short because anyone who spoke up agreed: only Christian music allowed in their homes and cars. That’s absolutely their decision and I don’t think it’s a bad one. The two women leading the discussion both have young children and I commend them for taking a stand to protect their kids from, hopefully, the majority of questionable music out there. If I had young kids I would be inclined to make that kind of decision but probably not to the same extent.

In the past, I’ve really loved Christian music: Skillet, Thousand Foot Krutch, Jeremy Camp, News Boys, etc. While I still enjoy some of this music, I find a lot of it, well, boring.

Not to say I find the act of praising God boring. I find the music boring and it lacks a challenge for me.

I enjoy hymns from time to time because I feel like a lot of them seek to challenge the listener/singer. But Christian music these days feels all the same. Same sound, same words, same analogies, same metaphors (I mean, really, we all know God’s love is an ocean, a fire, etc. I don’t need to hear it eighty times in 2 minutes). It’s just so boring to me because I hear the same things over and over. (There’s something good to be said for repetition but I’m not going to say it here.)

When I look beyond our very tight Christian circles I find a rich and diverse land of music that I can really dig into. The band Twenty One Pilots is my favorite right now. They have such an eclectic taste in their songs that I’ve only found a few that I actually dislike. This is the beginning of their song Trees:

I know where you stand
Silent in the trees
And that’s where I am
Silent in the trees.
Why won’t you speak
Where I happen to be?
Silent in the trees
Standing cowardly.

I can feel your breath.
I can feel my death.
I want to know you.
I want to see.
I want to say hello.

THIS speaks to me about God in more ways than reminding me 62 times in 34 seconds that He’s loving. THIS is the struggle of wanting so badly to hear from God yet hearing nothing. Sometimes we aren’t really listening, sometimes He’s already given us the correct path to follow. But sometimes it’s incredibly lonely to feel like you’re doing everything you can to hear Him and yet come up empty. I know where God stands and I’m trying to be there, silent, listening, terrified that I’m going to do everything wrong, yearning so badly for a word yet feeling only a breath.

I read that the singer for Twenty One Pilots was raised Christian. Whether or not he is one, I don’t know. I believe that all art can hold godly meaning regardless of where it comes from. You know what? I don’t know if anyone in “Christian bands” are Christians either. Isn’t that a funny thing? I don’t know if they’re studying scripture to write their songs. I don’t know if they’re in a good place spiritually. I don’t know if they believe in anything they’re telling me. Some songs end up on Christian radio that aren’t by Christian artists at all and no one bats an eye.

The label “Christian” doesn’t guarantee where it came from, just that it’s supposed to be uplifting and non-offensive. A lot of the music I choose to listen to is uplifting and non-offensive, it’s just lacking that Christian label. I listen to it because I feel like it challenges me to really think about things (I also like the style/sound of the music). I find a much deeper discussion of the human condition in secular songs than I do in Christian songs. I find God in songs by some very depraved people and there is both a beauty and horrible brokenness to that. It reminds me of God’s love in a very real and personal way. I have something that fills the emptiness so many artists (and everyday people) feel and hearing them sing about that reminds me I need to share God’s love.

Circling back to that discussion about what music is allowed. I think it’s good to limit music for kids. They often lack the discernment to find messages being sent and they lack the biblical foundation to really analyze those messages. It’s not a bad thing to shelter them so they can have a good knowledge of the Bible before going into the world. At some point though, I don’t see why they can’t be allowed to branch out. I was in high school when I started listening to secular music and then college solidified my love of some bands. I don’t make uninformed choices about what I listen to, I have lines I draw, I don’t listen to garbage and justify that it’s actually poetry because there IS music out there that I believe Christians have no business listening to.

Music can be a touchy subject for a lot of Christians and I wanted my voice to be added. There is a great deal more to say about this and if I feel that I should continue to share then I will. These are just my thoughts for now. I’m not justifying a playlist full of lewd, blasphemous, songs that glorify sex, drugs, and what-have-you. I’m simply open to some great music that doesn’t carry a Christian label. God is very present in a lot of songs. You just have to take a moment to look for Him.

 

 

You can listen to Trees on Youtube here and I pulled the lyrics from AZ Lyrics.

Maybe Got Scammed, Maybe Don’t Care

He came up to me and my sister at the mall (almost walked past us), said he was stranded, trying to get to some town an hour and a half away. Had his wife and two-year-old in the car. Said he tried to use his military ID at Sears to get some kind of discount. No cash. Ten or twelve dollars would probably get them home.

I don’t really believe his story. He has literally EVERY emotional trigger you could have in a story, veteran, father, husband, stranger far from home, stranded. Part of me wants to believe him. I want to help a person in need. So I gave him five bucks.

A nice, older gentleman came up to us after the other guy walked away, “Did he ask you for money? He had just asked me.”

“Yeah, I gave him five bucks.”

“Seemed like he was looking for something else, like a fix. Did you see how he was sweating.”

I shrug. “Five bucks is no skin off my nose.”

We walk away.

I realize, I don’t really care if I gave five dollars to a drug addict. I don’t care if I gave five dollars to a devoted husband just trying to get his family home. I don’t care. Because if I care then I have to analyze and figure out if he was telling the truth or not. I have to justify my actions to myself. I have to make myself believe I did the right thing. But you don’t have to do any of that if you just don’t care about the whole situation.

I was going to say no. Was gonna tell him to move along, especially when he brought up the two-year-old kid in the car. Like, dude. You already had me, I’m grabbing some ones, less is more. But I didn’t. It’s that part of me that wanted to believe him. I’ve been solicited for money before and I’ve said no before. I’m not irresponsible. But I’ve heard far too may stories of people at their lowest, just absolute rock bottom, who were helped by begging ten bucks off a stranger and that ten bucks saved their life. I don’t think I saved any lives. Then again, maybe I did. I’ll never know.

But I’m totally okay with that.

Honestly, I’m a very cynical person. The world is bleak. The economy sucks, my job prospects suck, the presidential candidates suck, environmentally we’re in shambles, the world is infected with war, poverty, hunger; I don’t need more reasons to distrust humanity. Humans are, on the whole, vile. So when a person appearing in need comes up to me and says all he needs is a few bucks to make his life a little better, I figure I can spare some change. Even though I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth, I don’t care. I need to give him the five dollars probably more than he needs it.

So in the end, I gave an untrustworthy person a few dollars because I selfishly need to think that it’s possible he used that money for something good. I acknowledge that it’s also possible he used it for something bad. But I choose not to care either way. I’ll never know and I’ll not dwell on it beyond this. God didn’t call me to be kind only when I’m absolutely sure that everything is going to go perfectly well. He called me to show love and that gets harder and harder every day. Like I said, I don’t do this every day, I don’t hand out money to every person who asks. I research charities before I give, I spend carefully, I try to give material possessions to ensure things will be used and not money spent irresponsibly. But then occasionally times come when you must act and don’t have time to deeply consider (Note: in these times, be responsible with your money. If the guy had asked for twenty, I would have said no without thinking. He asked for a small amount that isn’t going to affect me in the long run).

The more I think about it, the more selfish I become. I did it for myself, not him. I can’t let my only glimmer of kindness toward humanity flicker into darkness just because someone MIGHT not be legitimately in need right this moment. Just because there are people out there who don’t need the money doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who do need it. I can’t let the scammers and drug addicts take away my ability to give. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. And if that love is giving a guy five dollars in the mall because he needs it more than I do, then so be it.