crowns vs. crayons
So I'm bored at home today, but Laura sent me this fun
accent test.
The results: I am 86% Dixie and might possibly still use Confederate money. I'm sure you're shocked.
changes, passions, and dreams
I remember telling a friend the last summer I worked at camp that I thrive on change. How I lacked self-awareness! At the time, I think that change was a way for me to not have to be vulnerable, to not have my relationships get too deep, to not really have to commit to people. On a surface-y level, I do love change! I get bored easily, I like things to change to keep my attention, I get bored driving the same way to work every day. On a deeper level, I no longer harbor any illusions that I like change.
Change is HARD. There's a stress-level indicator test I've taken a number of times that asks you to check off things that have happened to you in the last year. All of the things listed are changes: moving, new job, loss of a family member. The more that you have experienced, the higher your stress level. For the last 5 or so years, I've ranked above the stress level where you are extremely likely to have a heart attack. Great.
However, my life is about to undergo more change when I move. In deciding whether to stay in my comfortable apartment, just barely ITP, or to move back into the city, I felt like I was making a choice that encompassed a lot more than just a mailing address. I felt like I was making a choice between staying in my comfortable life, plodding along and enjoying my life, and stepping out there and pursuing what I've said are my passions and dreams.
I'm going to include an excerpt from an essay I first wrote for Teach for America. It explains some of the sources of these passions I speak of, written at a time when they were fresher.
If you had asked me in tenth grade what I was going to do when I grew up, I
would have responded, “I am going to teach in an inner city high school and
coach the girl’s basketball team so I can have a significant impact on a few
students’ lives.” However, by the time I went to college, I had forgotten
this dream. Early in my college career, an older friend asked me what my
passions were. I had no idea how to respond. Then I had an
experience the summer after my junior year that changed everything.
I spent the month of July working as an intern with Desire Street Ministries in the
Desire Street Housing Project in New Orleans. As a part of the internship,
I spent two hours every afternoon tutoring football players from the
neighborhood high school in preparation for the ACT. As I helped these
rising seniors struggle to understand the basics of pre-algebra and watched
others labor to read even Dr. Seuss, in an un-air-conditioned cafeteria in the
middle of a humid New Orleans July, I found my passions and remembered my
dream.
I fell in love with the city and becamse passionate about gospel-driven social justice. For me, this was education as a means to breaking the poverty cycle. These passions and dreams have turned into teaching in Atlanta's public schools and mentoring a few students. For me, it also meant living in the city. When moving from Auburn to Atlanta, I said that I would never live in a gated community. Well, the last 2 years living in one have not totally changed who I am or what I believe in. However, the decision to move back into the city is much more than a change of address for me.
I'm really nervous about it. Though I've lived in town before, I anticipate that I'm about to have to put my money where my mouth is in a more real way than I ever have before. That scares me. I am at a crossroads that I feel will affect the course of the rest of my life. Am I really as passionate about those things that I say I am passionate about or will I be content to stay in my comfortable Christian box, at a new address? Will I be religious in the sense that James describes it, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world?"
new abode
I'm moving in a little less than a month. While I'm sad to be leaving my present roommate, I'm pretty excited about the new place, the new roommates, and the new area of town. More about that later, and
Kate has described it well, too. I went down there today to measure a few things and take a few pictures. Here are some of them.
From across the street
Front porch- My swing is really looking forward to its new home.
The kitchen with chop block counters, a 6 burner commercial stove, and a lovely tile floor.
The dining room, awaiting the foosball table. I love all the shelves around the ceiling!
The living room- gonna have to do something about the fireplace that clashes with my red couch.
And my bedroom. I've never seen such enormous shelves!
ENFP
I've taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test a bijillion times and pretty consistently, I test as an
ENFP. Why a bijillion times? I take online quizzes when I get bored- I took every quiz on emode multiple times before it turned into
Tickle and I lost interest. I remember quite a few of the qeustions on the Meyers-Briggs or the various versions of it I have taken. For a long time, the question that stuck out most in my mind was "When the phone rings, do you run to answer it?" Yes, of course I do!
On another question I had never really been sure what my answer should be though. "Are you more comfortable before or after a decision is made?" I'm pretty decisive. When it comes time to eat dinner or see a movie, I usually know what I want to eat or what movie I want to see. Those are minor things though. I am realizing that when it comes to the big things, I am more comfortable
before a decision is made. Afterwards I'm all nervous- what if I made the wrong decision? What if this turns out horribly? I believe in the sovereignty of God, but as I see it, this all boils down to my unbelief in the goodness of God.
next vacation
Though I just returned from one vacation, I am super-excited about my next vacation. I will be joining Kate on the
last leg of her
cross-country trip. There are yet 24 days until I leave for this trip, but Kate left last Friday and I'm getting some things together to send to her via Elizabeth, so it's at the forefront of my mind.
I fly to Seattle on July 15 and we should return to Atlanta on August 1 or 2. We will spend a few days on Vancouver Island, then head to a series of National Parks: Mount Ranier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Black Hills, and the Badlands. From there, through Sioux Falls and on to Chicago for a couple of days before heading home to Atlanta.
I was unable to accomplish my goal of visiting a new state every year in 2005, so I will make up for it in 2006 by visiting 8 new states: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin or Iowa, and Indiana. That will leave me with only 18 states to visit!!
I can hardly wait!!
Labels: travel
vacation
I'm back in Atlanta from a two week vacation at home and various other places with my parents. Its good to be back and there are a million bloggable thoughts running through my head. I'll try to post them in readable chunks.
It was good to be away for awhile. I got to do many of my favorite things: play tennis, racquetball, hike, read, watch mindless movies, see a performance of
As You Like It, water ski, play on the jetski, lie in the sun, read some more. I return home exhausted and the last few days at the lake linger with me- too much time on the water I guess, because the room still feels like its bobbing up and down as if the dock were rocking...
Labels: travel
I am a hypocrite
We joke at school that I have the word "sucker" plastered across my forehead because I have trouble saying "no" when people ask me to be on committees. Its seems more appropriate to me that I should have "hypocrite" plastered across my forehead.
I am a Christian. I know that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what that really means, at least intellectually. And, in my arrogance, I usually think that I have a pretty good handle on the daily living out of loving my neighbor. "Certainly better than most people," I think to myself. "I teach in a public school- now that's
really loving my neighbor," arrogant me proclaims.
This weekend, a friend shared with me how much a particular pastor had impacted and furthered her thinking about loving her neighbor. Because of his teaching, she now knows her neighbors and invites them into her home. "That's so awesome," I thought to myself. "I want to do that when I live in a real neighborhood!" As if the people living in my apartment complex don't qualify as my neighbors.
Then today, in house-hunting with my future roommates, we looked around intown, SES and racially diverse neighborhoods. I thought, "This is where I've wanted to live. This is the city. This is a place where I can really love my neighbors!"
Tonight, back at my apartment complex, I played tennis. An older man stood watching us play and began asking if we would have any interest in playing with him some other time. We averted our eyes from him and each other and mumbled answers to decline. He persisted. We declined. He shuffled off.
I have seen this man before in the parking lot. Something was going on with my car and he tried to help me out. I was a little weirded out by him, but he was just trying to be helpful. And tonight, he tried to be my neighbor. He didn't specifically ask me to play, but I just stood there, silent, awkward, not sure what to do.
Except that I
was sure what to do. I knew this was just a lonely old man who was looking for someone to be his neighbor. I knew I should say "I'll play with you." But I am a hypocrite.
random thoughts and Harry Potter
So, here it is. My first official day of summer. And, of course, I don't know what to do with myself. I brought home all of my school files and plan to reorganize them. I have about 15 books to read. My bedroom is a disaster area. The pool is calling my name. My iPod needs tending to. But for now, I will enjoy doing
absolutely nothing, for a few hours at least.
As I caught up on my blog-reading this morning, my thoughts turned to Harry Potter. I was overwhelmed by a desire to read the seventh book. One of my students' greatest fears is that JK Rowling will perish before the last book is finished. I understand this fear. I find it lamentable that this is my first summer without school in 3 years, and there is no Harry Potter book or movie to be released. I'm ready for it, I've got the time to see/ read it the first day, and I get nothing.
Kim said...
From across the street
Front porch- My swing is really looking forward to its new home.
The kitchen with chop block counters, a 6 burner commercial stove, and a lovely tile floor.
The dining room, awaiting the foosball table. I love all the shelves around the ceiling!
The living room- gonna have to do something about the fireplace that clashes with my red couch.
And my bedroom. I've never seen such enormous shelves!
said...
1 Comments:
Carol and I were just talking about this. I'm 29% dixie. A "dandy yankee doodle". Carol was only 20%. Maybe we can 'remedy' this if she goes to Covenant. But doubtful, because she just got in to Wheaton! Today!
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