040411 -- Love and Honor
Apr. 4th, 2011 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memorialrainbowI should really have a Miami avatar. You think I would have one, considering I went here. But I don't. Maybe I will make one.
If I do make one, it will say something along the lines of "Good things about Miami -- steel band, Bishop Hall, the CPA, and not being there." Not that I hate Miami. Dylan's the one who absolutely abhors Miami right now. But it's not the most perfect place, either, and I understand that. I haven't been back to Miami since November (and the interesting write-in/Navs Thanksgiving insanity), and there were a few things I noticed when I came back this time, after a long winter in the Z.
So, in no particular order, here they are:
1: People need to respect traffic laws. This means you, group of students who are walking out into the middle of the street. In the real world, you would die. Just try and cross Maple Avenue (or heaven forbid Morse Road in Columbus).
2: Every building in Miami is brick. This means they all look the same. I knew that before, it's just very stark to see that in contrast with, again, the real world, in which buildings are actually made out of something else.
3: When you walk down the street in Oxford, people recognize you and wave. When you walk down the street in Zanesville, you're just trying to make it to the Moto Mart in one piece.
Overall, I can't really decide if academia is better than the real world or not. I think they both have their ups and downs. I've grown so much in the past few months being in Zanesville that it's weird to be here. "To think that in such a place I lived such a life," seriously. It is nice to be back in Oxford and not have to worry about where my next meal is coming from.
But again, being free has a nice taste to it. What would life be like if I were able to work part time, to send my novels out to publishing companies and to burn every rejection letter I received, to have the audacity to do the same thing with my music? Where there are groups of people to hang out with, and spontaneous trips to Target actually involve people. At Miami, everybody is moving toward one constant goal: to graduate. In Zanesville, and out in the real world, people want to survive. Everybody's goals are different. You find people whose goals are similar, and you hang out with them.
Perhaps that's the reason I'm so alienated there. I have friends, I just don't hang out with them much. I love hanging out with the Y-City Writers, but most of them are at different stages in their lives, or they live in Cambridge or Crooksville or wherever. It's not like Oxford, where you call and they're just a short walk or bus ride away. I would love to live somewhere where I could do that, where people are all close together. Another reason why a city would be preferable, and why a small town like Oxford would be my next choice after a bigger city.
I love my job, but I know I need a plan. I need to jump out in a big way. I think that's what I'm going to take this Thursday and do. I'll probably go to Polaris again -- mostly because I liked it so much when I went. But I'll go back to the Holy Land, or possibly Panera (yes, Dylan, I found one). Hang out, eat food, relax, walk around, experience all of the lights when the sun goes down, take the lazy road there and back (the road less traveled), and really figure out some sort of plan. I know I want to move this summer, and I know I want to move out of Zanesville. I'm giving myself at LEAST a sixty-mile radius on moving. And it needs to be a big city. So Columbus, at least. Out of Ohio would be great. Even Jake was saying earlier that I need someplace warmer. (We know each other too well, don't we?)
Being comfortable has both its perks and its advantages. I've never really wanted to become comfortable. It just happened. I think comfortable is what happens when you stop deciding what you want to do and you just let it all happen. You move out of your 'childhood' home and into your own apartment. You do your own groceries. You eat something other than ramen and Spaghettios. You hang out with people who are married and have kids. And you start seeing the world from outside the Miami bubble.
I know one thing for a fact, though -- God doesn't call us to be comfortable. Forgive me for getting on my soapbox, but if we're going to sit around for the rest of our lives, then what's the point of it all? And even if we have a full time job and kids and what not, can't we move forward? Can't we push ourselves? It reminds me of what I said earlier, that we can sleep when we're dead. We have one life, and we should spend it doing not only what we want to do, but what we are called to do.
This truth comes to us, more and more, the longer we live -- that in what field, or in what uniform, or with what aims we do our duty matters very little; or even what our duty is, great or small, splendid or obscure...only to find our duty, certainly and somewhere, somehow to do it faithfully, makes us good, strong, happy, and useful, and tunes our lives into a feeble echo of the life of God. (Different punctuation for emphasis. When you recite that all the time, the words and their meaning can get lost to you.)
I've been praying nonstop for a long time now to find my duty. Maybe I spend too much time praying for that. I don't know, those are just some of the thoughts I'm having at Kofenya, the coffee shop in Oxford, before I head back to Zanesville to work for the night. The two separate mes -- the me of Oxford and the me of Zanesville -- have collided here, creating a nuclear reaction completely separate from any meltdown. It is thought-provoking, but more importantly, it creates friction. Black and white together, side by side, like Reshiram and Zekrom. You can see the differences more clearly when they are right side by side.
I also uploaded the new HPP! episode to Soundclick. It will be on YouTube at a later date, because I still need to finish the picture for it. (Not tomorrow. Tomorrow's my Y-City meeting.)
If I do make one, it will say something along the lines of "Good things about Miami -- steel band, Bishop Hall, the CPA, and not being there." Not that I hate Miami. Dylan's the one who absolutely abhors Miami right now. But it's not the most perfect place, either, and I understand that. I haven't been back to Miami since November (and the interesting write-in/Navs Thanksgiving insanity), and there were a few things I noticed when I came back this time, after a long winter in the Z.
So, in no particular order, here they are:
1: People need to respect traffic laws. This means you, group of students who are walking out into the middle of the street. In the real world, you would die. Just try and cross Maple Avenue (or heaven forbid Morse Road in Columbus).
2: Every building in Miami is brick. This means they all look the same. I knew that before, it's just very stark to see that in contrast with, again, the real world, in which buildings are actually made out of something else.
3: When you walk down the street in Oxford, people recognize you and wave. When you walk down the street in Zanesville, you're just trying to make it to the Moto Mart in one piece.
Overall, I can't really decide if academia is better than the real world or not. I think they both have their ups and downs. I've grown so much in the past few months being in Zanesville that it's weird to be here. "To think that in such a place I lived such a life," seriously. It is nice to be back in Oxford and not have to worry about where my next meal is coming from.
But again, being free has a nice taste to it. What would life be like if I were able to work part time, to send my novels out to publishing companies and to burn every rejection letter I received, to have the audacity to do the same thing with my music? Where there are groups of people to hang out with, and spontaneous trips to Target actually involve people. At Miami, everybody is moving toward one constant goal: to graduate. In Zanesville, and out in the real world, people want to survive. Everybody's goals are different. You find people whose goals are similar, and you hang out with them.
Perhaps that's the reason I'm so alienated there. I have friends, I just don't hang out with them much. I love hanging out with the Y-City Writers, but most of them are at different stages in their lives, or they live in Cambridge or Crooksville or wherever. It's not like Oxford, where you call and they're just a short walk or bus ride away. I would love to live somewhere where I could do that, where people are all close together. Another reason why a city would be preferable, and why a small town like Oxford would be my next choice after a bigger city.
I love my job, but I know I need a plan. I need to jump out in a big way. I think that's what I'm going to take this Thursday and do. I'll probably go to Polaris again -- mostly because I liked it so much when I went. But I'll go back to the Holy Land, or possibly Panera (yes, Dylan, I found one). Hang out, eat food, relax, walk around, experience all of the lights when the sun goes down, take the lazy road there and back (the road less traveled), and really figure out some sort of plan. I know I want to move this summer, and I know I want to move out of Zanesville. I'm giving myself at LEAST a sixty-mile radius on moving. And it needs to be a big city. So Columbus, at least. Out of Ohio would be great. Even Jake was saying earlier that I need someplace warmer. (We know each other too well, don't we?)
Being comfortable has both its perks and its advantages. I've never really wanted to become comfortable. It just happened. I think comfortable is what happens when you stop deciding what you want to do and you just let it all happen. You move out of your 'childhood' home and into your own apartment. You do your own groceries. You eat something other than ramen and Spaghettios. You hang out with people who are married and have kids. And you start seeing the world from outside the Miami bubble.
I know one thing for a fact, though -- God doesn't call us to be comfortable. Forgive me for getting on my soapbox, but if we're going to sit around for the rest of our lives, then what's the point of it all? And even if we have a full time job and kids and what not, can't we move forward? Can't we push ourselves? It reminds me of what I said earlier, that we can sleep when we're dead. We have one life, and we should spend it doing not only what we want to do, but what we are called to do.
This truth comes to us, more and more, the longer we live -- that in what field, or in what uniform, or with what aims we do our duty matters very little; or even what our duty is, great or small, splendid or obscure...only to find our duty, certainly and somewhere, somehow to do it faithfully, makes us good, strong, happy, and useful, and tunes our lives into a feeble echo of the life of God. (Different punctuation for emphasis. When you recite that all the time, the words and their meaning can get lost to you.)
I've been praying nonstop for a long time now to find my duty. Maybe I spend too much time praying for that. I don't know, those are just some of the thoughts I'm having at Kofenya, the coffee shop in Oxford, before I head back to Zanesville to work for the night. The two separate mes -- the me of Oxford and the me of Zanesville -- have collided here, creating a nuclear reaction completely separate from any meltdown. It is thought-provoking, but more importantly, it creates friction. Black and white together, side by side, like Reshiram and Zekrom. You can see the differences more clearly when they are right side by side.
I also uploaded the new HPP! episode to Soundclick. It will be on YouTube at a later date, because I still need to finish the picture for it. (Not tomorrow. Tomorrow's my Y-City meeting.)
