The irritating people I used to call my friends

I probably developed some brilliant treatise on the way to or from work or school and now that I'm somewhere that I can actually write it down, I have forgotten it. Ok, here's something of which I was thinking recently.
I have found that I really don't trust people. Not in the least.
At any given time there may be one or two people with which I might be comfortable sharing my feelings, and so far all of those have backfired as people have disappeared. When I look at the really negative things about my life and my social network (or lack thereof) I can only think that it has some distinct advantages. And this comes naturally in my train of thought.
I start out thinking, "Dang, my family has left me, my other family has essentially cut me off, and the friends that caused them to do so have found other faults with me and likewise disappeared. The people and organizations to which I have given the most of my recent life have assured me that I was wasting my time. bla bla bla. I have nowhere to go no one to which I could turn. There is no safety net if everything goes wrong. I have nothing and nobody." at this point I have to append the disclaimer in the anticipation that if I were ever to attempt to air this out loud and had not up to this point been interrupted, I would most certainly now be interrupted by one of my spiritual siblings with a sugary-dripping standard platitude. This is the kind of thing that comes from people that mean well but have never known the hard battle against depression or the reality of homelessness. They mean well and they want to cheer you up and they succeed only in asserting their sense of spiritual superiority by committing the brownie-point scoring act of quoting a classic to you in the moment when it will be least helpful and has the least to do with what you are feeling. It's almost going to be something like, "You have God." Actually, that's probably exactly what he (I have a specific person in mind at this point) would say.
And I would refrain from punching him because, despite his pointing out indisputably by schooling me with this fact that I must be an entirely lost heathen that needs to hear the message, make the choice, pray the prayer and do the chicken dance of salvation because I forgot I had God, I really am a Christian.
So yes, my train of thought usually turns toward the necessary disclaimer to hold at bay those who would jump all over me with their sermons about how I need more of various fruits of the spirit.
And from there I would go on to think about how God is so much more real to me than he is to most of my friends that have several layers of safety between themselves and , well, the void where I almost live. Most of my friends have parents. I don't know any that don't at least have one, and as far as I know it's a good one. Many of them have homes where they still live with their good parents, or if not, in the event of disaster they could return there for safe haven.
i have no such thing. My parents are gone. If I lost my job and got kicked out of my apartment, I would really have nowhere familial to go. I feel like we live in a high pressure undersea dome. There are layers of strong bulkhead keeping the water out. If I had parents, they would be like one layer of bulkhead. If I had a great job, that would be another. Maybe if I had my own car it would be part of another. If I had savings or insurance or rich extended relatives, that would be another. But I have none of that. My friends and associates see walls of protection when they look around, and generally feel so safe that they forget about the water, unless an undersea storm shakes the dome and makes the wall groan. Then they look up, panicked, watch the walls hold, and go back to life.
But I see the water all the time, because I have no walls. All I can see it some supernatural force holding back the water in a perfect hemisphere above me, and I see it shake all the time. I see all the creepy fish with swimming by with their gaping mouths and giant glowing eyes. There are really constant storms, but the water always stays back.
in reality, all of the domes are held up this way, just by the power of God, not with the walls. The walls cannot actually hold the water up, but they do make their inhabitants feel safe. There is more to this but I really have to go home.

Whoops. the real thing

So the real story, by all means, has come about, and it appears to work very well. It doesn't much compare with the first story, but it is much better organized.
I don't find the story of Conner, Gail, Brandon, Leila, Kate, Sarah and others anywhere near as compelling as that of Lily Grace, Erin, Eric, Charles, Nell and the others.I think even many of the conversations and sequences are just ineffective, especially in the conversations between Janice and whoever. It draws too near to direct quoting, which is unfortunate.

Well That was infuriating, for a moment

dress4lessdiva.com

that's my friend's website, dress4lessdiva.com I hope it will be a huge success.

So I wonder how the new story will come about.

And I also hope noone reads this crap.

Oh, no! A whole nine days without posting?

pshaw, I'll show them.
So, Why is my life in a constant and incredibly painful state of flux? Why does it seem like I can't do anything right no matter how hard I try? Why do I try so hard to do the right thing and end up making things worse. Why do I want so badly to help other people, and all I do is make them mad? Why am I aware of so little? Why am I so far from people? Why am I a dangerous person, not a safe one?
Why does everything I do make me sick? Why do I want to vomit everywhere whenever I talk to the people who were my friends? Well, there's only the one or two that make me feel that way.
Yeah, what have I done? how did I do it without realizing I was doing it? How did I mess up my life so badly?

About this feeling-like-crap thing

Well, it appears to still be a problem. I lamented all day in my journal about how what really bothers me is being misunderstood. I think what is truly most distressing is the fact that what I write is even less comprehensible than what I say. Most upsetting for a writer.

This was a cool week.

Everytime I go to prayer, I get blessed. I'm going tomorrow. That's not the only reason why, though. A lot has canged recently. I'm really glad to be back in the community. I've seen a lot of people's lives changes and connect. It's a good thing.

whooo

yeah, when I am upset, but I avoid situations that might have me doing something catastrophic, I am glad when I am done being upset. Imagine what could have happened.

crap

I've really got to call my roommate

I knew it would happen.

Well, I knew but I believed it only about 70% on a good day. Well, no, I believed it all the time, but it was hard not to worry at all.
Well, not much has happened, but it is something, and it is in the right direction.
For the past six months my financial sitation has gotten consistently worse. maybe it has even been worse than that. All the same, I have watched my life wiped out by a wave of debt and sucked away into a subsequent undertow. It was like a chair with no legs, a cart with no wheels, and a small boat on a river headed toward a waterfall with no paddles. I thought this whole time how I needed to use the disaster I brought on myself as an opportunity to grow in faith. so I did. I prayed and I worked diligently toward meeting my increasing need for income. now I have found some small relief. But it is still a relief. I am about 80-90% likely to get a small job. It will not pay much, but it will pay. I also got a disbursement check. That will help a little, too. So now it is as if I have a chair with one leg, a cart with one wheel, and a single, weak paddler against the current. The paddler still doesn't have a chance, the cart still can't move without damaging itself, and the chair is still worthless for sitting on. But if I will stay faithful and acknowledge that, first, there is hope and second, I am not done yet. I must continue in hope for another weak paddler. Two are still not enough to save the boat. Likewise, another leg won't stabilize the chair and another wheel won't mobilize the cart. I will need all four on all points. So I can't give up on the one I have, and I have to get three more, so when I get the last wheel, paddler or leg, I will have a reliable place to sit, a decent little cart and a team of paddlers or even rowers who can reach safety.
I am still in danger and will probably never be able to rest. Sometime having a little hope is less wearying than having none, because the man with no paddle just sits and awaits his death or his small chance of survival. The tired man with one small paddle still can't stop the same fate, only slowing it down, but he can't possibly sit as idly as the first man. He must expend all his futile strength trying, even if it won't help a bit.
The two extremed are easy to handle. Most of the range is easy to handle. When you are powerless, you are without respnsibility. When you are completely adequately equipped, you don't even worry beccause you have four strong paddlers, or even better, rowers who can easily overcome the current and get wherver you want to go. It's just when there is a shorage, the greater the worse. Where there is hope, constantly decreasing, it pulls you along. And you can't give up, because you can make it, if you get a miracle.
I still like this better than being unemployed, though. I'd rather paddle than sit.

Uh, I really like this "For us, the Living"

Although it would be easy to confuse with Rand's "We the Living."
This is the best I have ever seen anyone present a manifesto thinly veiled as a novel. Even if there are many things I disagree with, I like this execution and explanation even better than Rand, Tepper and Butler, my three other philosophical novelist favorites.
The best part so far is the new law for declaration of war. It's even better than the modest proposal I devised a few years ago. My idea was that any congressman who votes in favor of declaring war must be willing to send a son, daughter or other family member into the war. I was thinking about that today and thought that this would require every candidate for a legislative position must, as a qualification for the office, have such a person in mind. So, for example, to run for congress, besides having the age and citizenship requirements, you must also submit the identity of your nearest relative, preferably a direct offspring, who is at the time eligible for conscription. Thus, in the event that you must vote about declaration of war, if you vote in favor, you must be willing to send this young person right away. If, however, you are unwilling or unable to offer kin or any other approved relation for this person, a provision in the law also gives you the option of being able to hold your office but forfeit the right to vote in favor of a war. You can still vote against or withhold your ballot.

I think Heinlein's proposal is equally good and less complicated. War declaring policy stays the same for events in which the country itself is attacked. But if the motion is on the offensive, the people must vote directly on it. And the only people eligible are those who are eligible for the service. All who vote in favor are then automatically the first drafted. The ballot even informs them of where to report the next day. All who don't vote are next, and those who vote against are after that. I thought it was brilliant. Though, at the time Heinlein wrote this, it must have been before the advent of servicewomen because the section on this law had the characters discussing the exclusion of women in the vote.

What I think differs most between his idea and mine is that he took the concept a step further than I did. I thought of it in the context of a system in place, still leaving the decision with the legislature but adding a direct personal sacrifice. It also draws on the value of family and relational ties. The direct vote approach, on the other hand stays with individuals, and may be more reflective on the ways Americans think. It would be more impactful for one of us to volunteer himself than his child, so perhaps the effort to avoid unnecessary war would be more effective that way.

Another extremely socially disruptive law motion would be to protect minorities as well as young people. But that may defeat the purpose of choice.

So it still hasn't changed.

So i'm still unemployed. So I still get mercy. So I still don't panic, so I still keep trying. That's how it goes.

So It's winter Again.

Yes, that means that life is going to be difficult for a while.

The big day

So I am once again greatly encouraged by the onset of school. I have made a lot of effort in a lot of different area, but hopefully something will pay off soon.

School arriving

I get more full of optimistic energy every time I go to a meeting to plan for the coming school year. There is no sense of fatigue or relunctance to get these projects rolling. There are several movements on campus in which I am involved and I have never seen them look stronger.

Crouching Toilet, Hidden Shower: The China experience

I just couldn't help myself. The thought crossed my mind of such clever wording that I just couldn't let it pass by unrecorded.
So, yes, that is the only word there is for Chinese dorm bathrooms. It greatly added to the adventure of the month at QHNU and I was excited to learn new skills. Honest. My fear is that describing the difference in the respect between the two sides of the world would come across as complaining. I remember when someone affirmed my family group member, Tim, commending that he never once complained. Hearing that made me feel a surge of wanting to be that kind of person, who never even makes jokes which I assume many of my teammates mistook for complaints. So, in my assessment of Chinese bathrooms, I really appreciated them. I appreciated the opportunity to do things differently.
That may have been the best thing in the travel experience, that so many things that Americans take for granted as needing to be done a certain way were actually undertaken with a completely contrasting method. Things that I have always done differently tend to make me as a standout in a bad way and causes me to be perpetually and constantly misunderstood, but in China it was readily assumed that we would be so varied and so my unusual behaviors either escaped notice or simply failed to erect barriers the way they do here. Which is why I love China.

Arbitrary

Once again I am eagerly counting down the two months remaining before NaNoWriMo. It's going to be an interesting time.

letter writing has suddenly become easy

In the past couple of weeks I have written all manner of letter. I have sent out prayer/support letters. I have sent the follow up. Actually, there have also been a couple of hadnwritten letters I had to do, as well, even before that. I have done a resume and cover letters. I have done official statements. I am planning on starting to write press released soon, and I will also need to get ready to start sending letters to publishers. So much writing! So amazing.
I think one thing that I suffer greatly from missing every now and then is writing. I filled up a journal in the last couple of months. That was my goal. Last year I fell far short of my intention to record the summer. I really do miss out when I don't write. So I am eagerly awaiting November and the National Novel Writing Month. I can't think of anything better than feeling obligated to write for an hour a day. I wonder what the story will be this time around.
I haven't finished editing the last one. I have a couple of months.
It's amazing how it used to intimidate me to write. But now I have done speeches, sermons, newspaper articles, and this endless array of letters, it really isn't a challenge to write anything anymore. It just happens now.

Heinlein, or what I read now that Harry is out of the picture.

I doubt I could fully express my gratitude to Dave for introducing me to the genius of Heinlein during that fateful train ride. And I think that if the many others aboard the train--who were able to enjoy the silence they would have missed has I not been reading--knew that Dave was responsible for the fact that I was not talking for most of the ride, they would thank him, too. (See you can tell I've been reading and writing a lot because the more I do so, the more the use of run-on sentences gets out of hand.)
So, because of this incident, I have discovered another favorite Sci-fi author to go with Tepper and Butler.
Even though there are several cliches that have come up in all three of the novels I have read so far, I am still not disappointed by plot or the underlying message. The main-character stereotype is making me a little weary, but other than that and the inevitable denunciation of faith, I am happy.
But I miss Harry!
I am so glad that November is approaching. Slowly.

So much for Harry

So it's over, it's all over. I read the final installment of our dear Harry Potter. Now, how do I go about trying to write a decent review without any spoilers? Hmmm.
Well I am vey happy and impressed with the ending and the final wrapping up, although there are some things I had hoped to see at the end and that are absent, leaving me with the feeling that these small matters are a little unresolved. My comfort is from the fact that I can always turn to fanfic for a decently projected solution to these feelings of incomplete details.
But, overall, the ending was as it should be, the climax was cleanly set up, the finale was right. It wasn't that there needed to be surprise. Maybe the intention was to surprise and shock many of the readers, but the sense I got was that although I didn't predict much to turn out the way that it did, to solve things a certain way, there was a sense of familiarity to it all. While I may not have seen much of it coming, it slid along well with the attitude of, well of course Harry is doing that, that's the kind of think Harry does. The best way to say it is that the story stayed true to its character and its characters. Harry was himself, and so was the story.
And the treatment by the author of the final interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist? That, too, though no one really could have predicted it entirely, was as it should be.
When the hero and the villain come to the end of a very long series, it is a great author's responsibility to be real, to be reasonable, and to resolve. I think Rowling is a great author and I think she did her duty. The whole book is painful, never letting up and never being less than perfectly real. The interaction is reasonable, it is honest about humanity as the plot has always been. And it resolved. The most important questions were answered. Catharsis was pushed if not reached. We felt all the humor, what could be left of it at this point. We felt all the tragedy and cruelty. We saw heroic people at their best and we were crushed with them in their woes. We got angry when people did stupid or unfair things. And we celebrated whenever something went right, no matter how small and no matter how much more of the great journey remained.

I was able for the last time to slip into Harry's world and feel everything with him, and to wonder, as he did what would happen. Now that world is dead to me. With the closing of the story, I can no longer be part of it. I can no longer wonder about the many plot lines and predict what the next book will reveal, because there can be no next book. That is the truly sad thing. To those of you who haven't read it yet and don't know whether or not the boy lives, that actually isn't important. There is no way to follow him any further, nor any of the others. With the final words of the book they go their way and I go mine.
A story like this is once in a life time. There are other stories and many surpass this one in different ways. There will be more still, and some will bring me the same feelings of camraderie with the plot that Harry did. Some will be so rich as to engulf me in a world like the one I entered for seven books here. Some will be this well written and yet simply expressed enough that Children can access and understand even as Adults are drawn in and not bored.
I hope to write something like that. I have never thought before of writing a series. But such a thing is possible. All of my favorites wrote series, and I hope to be my best. Perhaps the greatest extent is among their lot.
Finally, the last connection I can have with my newly departed friends in Harry's world is that I can learn from them. I have learned the value of bravery, of doing what is right, of applying my education to a great adventure. And I have been charged to be myself. I hope that the climax of my life will be a moment in which I do my duty and stay true to my character. I hope that my own life will be real, reasonable and resolved.

Well, dang! Three months-

Well that's all there is to it, but with new Nanorwrimo on the way, this might not be so bad.

More Than a Little Frustrating

So, I have to wait at most three months and at least...I don't know how long before things get really interesting. I need to change my settings so facebook stops recieving everything.

why doesn't this work any other way?

I really Can't think of anything to say.

This concept of trying to write on demand isn't going so well.