A Belated New Year Post

Working on a school calendar doesn't add to the excitement of January 1. It also makes the setting of resolutions seem like it's coming too late in the game. I've never been a huge new year's resolutions guy anyhow. Yet, contrary to the last three sentences, I continue to take the opportunity of a "new start" and try to refocus my path, sometimes in large ways, but most often in small ones. Perhaps my two favorite resolutions of yesteryears are flossing and stretching. Both attainable, healthy-ish, and quirky.

For some reason, I'm feeling the need to post this year's resolutions. An embarrassing move when they're abandoned in March. But maybe a posting will add a few months to their life.

• Join a small group. Jorjette and I were a part of separate groups last year and that went well. But this year, in a new place, we're looking to join a group from our church. Hopeful outcomes: deeper church relationships, understanding of the Bible/theology, awareness of ourselves.
• Change my morning routine. I'm not a workaholic but most mornings I would check email in bed, a compromise between productivity and laziness. What an awful way to start? Replacing it is an attempt to read through the Book of Common Prayer (with the accompanying scripture).
• In reading articles, limit the quantity and finish the ones I start. Nicholas Carr's The Shallows really got to me (my review here and a better synopsis/thoughts on the subject here). I'm heavily guilty of clicking on five different links from Twitter/Google Reader/Pitchfork/etc. and then only reading half of the first paragraph. I'm  training my brain to wade in shallow thinking. So this year, I'm going to limit the links I click on and then read all the way through the ones I do.
• Listen to music well. I want to sit down and listen through whole albums using my (good) headphones.  I don't do this often but did with a few albums near the end of 2012. Already solid, meaningful albums become much more so when doing so singularly.

There ya go. Here's to growing and maturing. Comment with your own if you feel so inclined.

Resolute

Well it's been a little while and I feel obligated to write something but my new goal for the blog was to continue a steady amount of blogs to practice writing and hopefully commentate on important issues including social, political, spiritual, personal, etc without simply typing words that are only there to fill space. So I'm forcing myself to blog but I hope it encourages real thought and not just ramblings.

New years are filled with resolutions. I suppose I'm in favor of them despite the failure rate I always hear about ("My new year's resolution was to get in shape - I've since gained 15 pounds") and I try and steer clear of totally cliche ones like losing weight or stop smoking... even though those aren't really applicable to me... but I would avoid them anyways if they were applicable because I'm always opposed to the cliche. Last year my two new year's resolution were to start flossing on a regular basis and to not be anal about being on time. I'd say my teeth are cleaner now and I've realized that I will probably never enjoy missing the previews despite living in Latin America for 4 months.

I decided to follow in last year's footsteps and choose one semi-ridiculous one (flossing) and one semi-serious one (being anal about punctuality). So, I decided to start stretching on a daily basis (I've heard it's healthy for you and I've always wondered if I could stretch myself to double-jointedness) and to somehow interact with the poor (this last year I've been reading/listening/talking about how God is a god of the oppressed, how God can be found amongst the poor, and how poverty is one of the major issues Jesus addresses and so I thought it about time to hopefully do something about it).

I've yet to start on either of these but I plan to.

In the last week though as I've been thinking about the new year and new plans and how I want my life to be lived and having to come up with a prayer request every week (Matt Morgan), I've come across one thing that keeps popping up and could possibly be inserted as "new year's resolution #3." Resolution #3 would be that of slowing down. Living in Wengatz (now) is different than living in a home with your own room (last fall, last summer). Although I don't think I took full advantage of having time to myself, I think I was at least able to understand the advantages that spending time alone can offer.

I love living on a wing. There's constantly guys around to hang out with, do stuff with, and just live with. But I will admit that I fall into the trap of sitting on couches telling stories or talking about music and getting distracted from other parts of life. I don't want to downplay hanging out, because I think that's the point of living on a wing - being bored together and hopefully forming relationships. So I'm not saying that talking about the top 50 albums of 2007 is unimportant or even not spiritual. What I do want to say is that there should also be time where I'm not doing that.

My definition of slowing down: being [relatively] alone and forming thought processes that are beneficial to my maturation as a human being.*

This can include but is not limited to journaling, reading a book (Bible or other), praying, or simply thinking. Some might call it a quiet time but in case you forgot, I'm not a fan of cliches (especially Christian subculture terms) and more importantly, I would probably find my slowing down to be different than a quiet time. Why? Because I wouldn't require the Bible or praying part to be necessary to call it slowing down and I also find the term quiet time to suggest that I'm in relationship with God during my quiet time and then I go into some sort of nonspiritual hiatus from God until my next quiet time. Maybe that's not the connotation that's always or generally associated with the term quiet time but it does for me.

The reason I want to slow down is because I don't want to always be immature and I hope that I learn to understand the heart of Jesus while simultaneously understanding myself better. I think the before mentioned actions of slowing down may get me closer to that.

I hope this resolution fares better than most diets do. Gotta be resolute.



*How'd that sound?