July 2015 (25x25)

Two months down! And I am quite excited to report that I have now officially crossed two things off of my list.

#10 Waterski twice this summer
#21 Visit Atlanta

And here's proof:

There's nothing like gliding over a still lake.

Atlanta involved seeing two friends and visits to the World of Coca-Cola, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, and the Georgia Aquarium.

So much sugar!

Still friends even though we haven't seen each other in 2.5 years.

Whale sharks! And manta rays!

I also started reading The Silmarillion. Life doesn't get much better than reading about elves in a hammock in the woods of Maine.

Oh, right, and there was that thing about my sister getting married on July 4.

June 2015 (25x25)

Here's my post for June!

So one-ish months in, how am I doing with my list? Great! Here's the low-down:

After all the suggestions that I got for #25, I decided two things. 1. A trip to visit my college friends in the midwest needs to happen sometime, but that probably won't be until next summer (after my 25th bday). 2. I realized that #25 needed to involve me learning how to do new things. So my goal is going to be trying one new thing each month. For example, my June one was going to a spinning class for the first time ever with a friend last Tuesday. Loud music, dark room, very energetic spinners - I was overwhelmed at first but eventually mostly figured out what I was doing. Sooooo, I'll keep you posted each month about what my one new thing is.

Journalling every day has been a really good thing. I don't know about you, but I process my life by writing words (hence also this blog). For years growing up I did a good job of making that happen, but lately I wasn't making it a priority. All the thoughts and words inside my head just kept building up. Writing them down each night helps me process life to keep moving and growing. I haven't been perfect about doing it every single day, but the days I've missed have been few and far between. I'm not going to beat myself up over the missed days - I just want to work on making it a good, consistent habit.

Disney! I have had my pass for less than a month and I've already spent 4 days there - with 4 different people. Sometimes I think I'm crazy to go to Disney that much in the central Florida heat of June, but if I drink enough water and duck in and out of all the air conditioning, it works out fine.

Here's to another month of challenging myself, growing, and spending time with cool people!

A Confession

So I haven't posted in a really long time. I don't really have an excuse, but if I was to give one, it would go something like this:

My family came down for Christmas and I spent two and a half weeks with them. So many wonderful things happened while they were here that I was overwhelmed thinking about writing about everything. Then more wonderful things happened in January. But I hadn't written about Christmas yet so I didn't write about January. And now it's February and that line of thinking has to stop.

In order to remedy this situation, I'm going to write up little posts more often, rather than one big one that would probably totally overwhelm me as a writer and you as a reader.

With all that out of the way, my mom is down here this week with my grandparents, helping them get a To Do list done. And they ended up coming down to visit me yesterday. Yay! So my grandparents finally had a chance to see the Discovery Center at Wycliffe, I gave them a tour of where I work, they visited my house, and we had a lovely visit.

My family is funny. And when I say that I mean it in both senses of the word. They are both funny - strange and complex in their own way - and funny - extremely hilarious and amusing. I love to laugh and I always laugh when I'm with my family. That is a very good thing.

Biking, Baking, Beach Time, Traveling

This is a two-week post, since I didn't post last week. Let's see...what's newsworthy? Well, here are some highlights:

I bought a bicycle. This fact in itself makes me super happy because I've been saying that I want to buy a bike since January. Now that I live in Florida, it's perfect that I waited until the fall to get a bike because it's way too hot to go bike riding here during the summer and now I will be able to use it all winter long. True confessions: I hate running. I don't care what you say, running is a form of torture. I love being outside and getting exercise, though, so now I can do that on my bike. And there are even several bike trails in Orlando so I can go use those. Life is good. 

When one of my coworkers left our department in September to go to grad school, her absence made everyone sad for several reasons. One of those reasons is that she's an awesome person. Another reason was that every Thursday she would bring in cupcakes or some other delicious form of baked sugar so that we could have a Sweet Thursday. Luckily, I like baking for people - and it's always better to know that other people will be there to help eat the deliciousness - so I've taken up the continuation of Sweet Thursdays upon myself.

So far I've made beaver houses (you might know them better as no-bake cookies), chocolate covered strawberries, white chocolate chip banana muffins, and pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting. Tomorrow's treat is brownies, half of which have coconut. I'll put a picture up if I make anything particularly interesting looking - then you can all drool and wish you worked with me.

Last weekend my church had their young adult retreat at a hotel in Cocoa Beach. The retreat was an awesome time on many levels, particularly on the levels of 'getting to know other people' and 'God being SUPER awesome like he always is.' The theme verse of the weekend was Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Interestingly, this was the theme verse for New England Camp Cedarbrook my last summer working there. What if followers of Christ actually took time to think about what this verse means and intentionally lived with it in mind each day?

One thing I noticed this weekend is that, in my mind, a retreat equals cabins, woods, lake, hills, and probably cooler weather. Not so in Florida. Here a retreat is hotel, sand, beach, flat, and sunny blue sky days. Not bad, just different.

And to close out with a super happy thought, in about 36 hours I will be Southern California with my mother and my youngest sister! Why? you might ask. Because I have the best job ever. A Wycliffe missionary couple, John and Bonnie Nystrom, who worked in Papua New Guinea, wrote a book called Sleeping Coconuts, and I'm going to be traveling with them around SoCal next week selling books while they speak at different college and church events as part of a book tour.

When I found out that I might be going on this trip, I called my lovely sister, who is a freshman at Biola (one of the colleges the Nystroms are speaking at), to ask her what she was doing the last weekend in October, she said, 'Oh, that's the weekend Mom's coming out to visit me.' Mini family reunion coming up!

Because of this trip, it is possible that I might not write a blog post next week - we'll see. I'm sure a post-California post will have lots of good stories, though. 

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, I've been to California once before, but I was only six years old. I went with my paternal grandparents to visit my aunt, her husband, and my baby cousin. We stayed in a time share in San Diego. Mostly what I remember is my uncle teaching me how to do handstands in a pool. And having a tea party with my aunt and my grandmother.

I am a Writer

A friend asked me recently to explain what I mean when I say that I am a writer. I wrote this for him, and then when I was done, I figured what I had written would actually make a pretty good blog post.

I am a non-fiction writer. I wrote fiction in middle/high school when it was assigned, but it is not something that I feel compelled to do or talented in. The stories I do love to share are true stories of people around the world who are making a positive difference in the lives of people around them. That is why I wanted to work in the communications department of a Christian non-profit.  There are so many amazing stories of what God’s people are doing around the world, and I want to be part of the crew of people who get to hear those stories and write them in accessible and compelling ways for readers.

Foundationally, I like writing because I love reading. I grew up reading as many books as I could – mostly fiction but I also would read biographies and books containing the stories of important social movements. I found this second group of books inspiring and challenging. They called me to be a part of a world bigger than myself and far more exciting than I could imagine as a girl in grade school.

It is quite ironic, actually, because when I was in elementary school my mom basically gave up on making me write. I was homeschooled starting in first grade. Sometime that year, we went to the zoo. When we arrived home, my mother asked me to write one sentence about what I had seen at the zoo. I started crying hysterically and hid under the dining room table. At a loss, my mother decided to just encourage my reading and hoped that I would absorb spelling, grammar, sentence construction, etc. (all the basic building blocks of writing) for the time when I would need to write in middle school and beyond. Her plan worked.

For me, saying “I am a writer” means more than “I write.” I love words. I love well-constructed sentences and paragraphs. A well-used vocabulary word, a properly placed comma, and a complicated thought made clear in an understandable sentence all give me joy.

I am an internal-processer – there are so many times when all the thoughts inside my head get jumbled up and won’t sort themselves out. When I take time to write it all down, my thoughts start to make sense. Rather than being overwhelmed by what’s going on inside my brain, I can start to own my thoughts and harness the power in them to positively change my life and encourage change in the people around me. As a writer, writing and thinking are inseparable. But I am certainly not a philosopher. Philosophy, thinking about thinking, theoretical propositions – all these either confused me terribly or bore me to death. I am interested in practical life application.

Right now, most of the writing I do is journaling. I also have this blog, on which I mostly share anecdotes from my life. I love making people smile – I think my sense of humor comes out differently in my writing. I’m not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I have the ability to use words to show the humor in situations.

Overall, though, I feel that in journaling and blogging, most of the writing I’m doing is actually for myself. At some point I may feel called to write more for other people, but right now still have so many questions about life and so few answers that it would feel presumptuous for me to write authoritatively on any subject, other than my own life and experiences. I don’t think I will ever write a book – certainly not fiction and non-fiction is still unlikely. I am definitely the kind of person who wants to live life myself, not just write about it for other people.

So there you have it.

Just because, here's a photo of my Maine island. True confessions: I miss it.