A break... finally

So basically, it kind of seems like this blog had died. It went more than a month without anything of a substantial update. That's a huge no-no. But even though I let this aspect of my digital life slip, I'm glad that my good old flesh and blood life has been picking up quite nicely.

The pro-life club I'm in is now planning a pro-life conference, which will hopefully turn into a statewide thing. If anyone knows any people in Pennsylvania that are interested in hearing quite a few pro-life speakers and showing their support, tell them to drop me a line. It'll be on Friday, April 4, at Penn State and the next day, Peter Kreeft will also be speaking at Penn State courtesy of another group on campus I'm involved with.

Speaking of that other group, I was recently voted in as the secretary for the Newman club on campus. Newman is a Catholic student organization I've been a part of since my freshman year, and apparently the members think well enough of me that they'd like me to be the secretary this next semester while the previous secretary goes to study abroad.

Onto another club on campus, Penn State's Paranormal Research Society's TV show just started, Paranormal State, and I'm proud to say I know some of the people on the show. So far the show has been good, it's a lot of helping people, not so much running around with cameras a la Blair Witch, like you might expect of a show dealing with college kids and the paranormal. All of the episodes so far are good, but for my more religious readers, the 2nd and 3rd episodes, The Name and The Devil in Syracuse are both fairly religious-y, having to do with demonology and such. There's even a deliverance (a lesser form of exorcism) in one of the episodes. It's usually on Mondays at 10 pm on A&E, but this week there is no show, new episodes are starting back up on the 31st. So, if it's New Year's Eve and you want something fun to do at 10:00, turn on A&E.

Classes and final exams finished for me as of Friday, and I found out that this is the first semester I got all As! Four As and one A- (I probably should have showed up to more mythology lectures.) All in all, a great semester, but even greater for this next reason.

And now, for the biggest announcement, I have a girlfriend. Shannon and I have been going out for almost three weeks now, but unfortunately for me, we live 2.5 hours apart when not at college, so I don't know if we'll get a chance to see each other over the break. Also, our one month anniversary is the day I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out. Now how's that for a present?

What I'm sorry for

So I am sorry that I haven't been posting here as often as I should, and I kind of gave up on Nanowrimo because I've been having to write all sorts of nonfiction and poetry for my creative writing class. What I'm really sorry for is this:

I'm sorry that I don't live closer to my friends, so that I could give them hugs when they're feeling crappy.

Day 2

As of Day 2: 1,453

Yeah, I know I'm a bit behind, but I do at least have some sort of help, come Thanksgiving, I can get one of my journals from home and put in a big old chunk of it in as an introduction to set up one of the plot devices.

Oh, and because I forgot in the last entry, here's the link to the official Nanowrimo website: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Nanowrimo

This month I will probably be even less available than usual, partly due to many exams and final projects happening, but also due in large part to Nanowrimo.

Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The objective is to write a 50,000 word nanonovel over the course of November. It's fun, but this being my third time attempting this challenge, I'm hoping that I'll actually finish this year, for the first time.

As of Day 1: 605 words

Seven Random Facts About Me.

1. I have slept outside in sub-zero weather.
2. I have a sugar packet collection. Currently, it numbers in at least the 100s.
3. My favorite book is "Choke" by Chuck Pahlaniuk, the same guy that wrote "Fight Club." It's a story about a recovering (sort-of) sexaholic who has problems with his mother (who is in a nursing home on his expense), and spends a fair part of the book thinking "What would Jesus not do?" And then he does that.
4. I used to wear glasses for an astigmatism, but then my eyes got better (I'm not sure how either). Now I've actually got better than 20/20 in my left eye, and 20/20 in my right, which is cool, but it kind of messes with
my depth perception a bit.
5. The first full song I learned to play on the guitar was "Eleanor Rigby," by The Beatles.
6. I have a roommate who is currently sick with a fever of 103. He has shivers, and every once in a while he'll have a coughing fit in his sleep.
7. This past Saturday, I went out drinking with one of the stars of a show on Court TV going into its second season. The stereotypical "stars are stuck up" thing definitely did not apply to this guy, as he was ridiculously cool and easy to chill with.
8. (number six was kind of a cop-out) Right now I have no backspace key, just a little funny rubber thing where the center of my backspace key should have been.

In response to Ariel's post.

Me, in the news!

I've been on the TV and in the newspaper several times, and the most recent was this Friday, after I had given a speech about why I was pro-life at a candle-light vigil for Penn State Students for Life. You can check out the full (front page) article here (but you might want to read my speech below here first): Students For Life Shed Light On Issue.

And here is the transcript of my full speech, because the Daily Collegian (understandably) cuts it down quite a bit.

Hello everyone. I'm John Montgomery, and I'm going to tell you why I'm pro-life. Sometimes I don't really know why I'm here doing all of this, being pro-life and trying to make the world more like that. I've never gotten a girl pregnant. I've never gotten pregnant either. None of my friends have ever had to think about dealing with an abortion, or ever really worry about getting pregnant.

No one close to me has ever had to choose whether or not they'd end an infant's life. So why am I here?

I have a friend, and she is awesome. Literally, it is amazing what she does. She's probably one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and that's more than skin deep beauty, even though she's won state beauty pageants. She's got brains too, because she was the valedictorian of her high school class. If she was up here instead of me, she could talk circles around me. She competed in forensics, giving speeches, on a national level. She's kind and funny and she's the kind of person you'd want to have as a friend, and be a friend to.

She's never gotten pregnant. Like me, she also has not had people close to her who have dealt with all of the hardships and difficulties of abortion and pregnancy. However, despite all of that, she is the reason why I am pro-life. She is the reason why I am up here today talking to you all.

A few years ago, this friend of mine went on a retreat, and while there, she got a letter from her mom. Her mom told my friend that she loved her, but she also told her a secret. She had planned on aborting my friend when she had gotten pregnant with her. One choice, and my friend could have never been born.

Because of her, every time I think to myself, "What am I doing here? Why am I putting in my time to something that seems to make so little of a difference in the world? I'm only one person." But then I remember my friend. I think about her smile and the way she laughs and how she inspires people, including me. And I think about how I never would have known any of that if her mother had changed her mind on just one decision. One little choice, and my friend would have been gone. The world would have been that much darker if her mother had decided to abort her.

She's only one person too, but I care about her, and that makes all of this, every second, worthwhile.

Oh, and yes, the article isn't lying, I really was close to crying, both during my speech, and afterwards for quite some time. Real men aren't afraid to cry.

The Lighter Dark Side of Reconciliation

So this weekend, I spent all of my time exhausting myself, and most of that time was spent working at Univ-Con, the USA's largest paranormal conference. It was ridiculously fun, but ridiculously tiring, considering pretty much all of my free time from last Wednesday to Friday night was spent helping get this conference working, and I still haven't fully rested back up from how fatigued it made me.

Excluding all of that, we had an interesting pair of keynote speakers Friday night at Univ-Con, Lorraine Warren, wife and partner to the only Vatican-recognized lay demonologist (the late Ed Warren), and Father James LeBar, a former exorcist. I had heard Lorraine Warren speak at Univ-Con last year, and had read a few books about some of her and her husbands more publicized cases, and I was not disappointed in any of it. There is a real existence of demons in this world, and anyone who doubts should talk to one of these people.

That being said, demons are smart, and they know things they shouldn't be able to know (preternatural knowledge, as they call it, I believe). These spirits know the dark things you have done in your life, and may mock, ridicule, and harass you with their knowledge of your sins and the times you have failed God. However, as an interesting note, they don't seem to have any knowledge of sins that have been confessed.

I guess when you go to reconciliation, that old Bible verse really is true.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed his transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

It's kind of nice to know that when we say "forgive and forget," that God takes it kind of literally, at least in terms of applying it to his angels (both fallen and otherwise).

When Forgiveness gets you in trouble

So on Sunday night into early Monday morning, I was a bit... out of it. And in this "state," I made some phone calls, and I wanted to call a girl I knew, but I didn't want to wake her up, because it was like, four in the morning. So instead, I texted her.

The next day, I forgot all about the text, and this girl kept looking over at me while she sang at the front of the room as part of our music part of our Catholic club. I was kind of confused/suspicious, but she's a pretty girl, and she's really cool, so I was fine with the attention.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, I discovered the text message I had forgotten about. It really wasn't a bad text message at all, I just told her that she was awesome, and I respect her as a person and that she should keep living the way that she is. And I used perfect spelling and grammar. Relatively speaking, I'm a really nice guy when I'm in this state. So I figured that was why she had been acting the way she had.

I had a board meeting with her for our pro-life club on Wednesday, and it was still kind of awkward, so late Thursday night/early Friday morning I wrote her a facebook message, apologizing for potentially waking her up and for the awkwardness of texting her while in that "state." My guilty conscience just kept bugging me too much.

Friday afternoon, I got a reply from her. Apparently, her phone doesn't get text messages, but she said if I really needed to talk that I could call her at any time. Oh, and she wanted to know what the message said. I figured it would be better to tell her the truth than to have her imagine some kind of idiotic or perverted message, and since then, I haven't gotten a reply back.

Tsk, tsk, if my conscience just left well enough alone, I would have been out of this mess scot-free.

Loooooong week

Want to know why I've been saying nothing here for a while? Well, Jay over at Adventures of a Christian Collegian put it excellently in his list of things he has learned at college.

Professors are knowingly and incontrovertibly in an evil alliance to assign all quizzes, tests, and major papers during the same exact week. This cannot be avoided no matter what professors you pick. Even the ones you thought were cool (because they were younger and perhaps only went by their first name, which was something usually along the lines of "Mark" or "Jenny") are in on this conspiracy.

I had three tests this week, a quiz, and two major assignments. Throw into that my job working at the commons, helping to plan a pro-life rally in the spring, staying up late trying to keep my potentially concussed roommate awake, and fitting a religious retreat into my schedule, it's been a hectic week. I've had about four nights out of the past seven that have only had about four to five hours of sleep.

In the past 24 hours, I got 15 hours of sleep. I went on a run with one of my friends too, and I feel awesome, even though I'm helping to run a table to promote a pro-life speaker tomorrow, and I'm not entirely sure what's all going on with that. But that's not all of why I feel awesome.

Friday night at the retreat, we had faith sharing. Now, this scares the ever-loving hell out of me (I like using "ever-loving" as a swear modifier, but it doesn't really make as much sense here). I love faith sharing though. It feels so good to be able to talk to people and feel like they understand you, and maybe to get some things off of your chest. My usual policy with faith sharing is that once I think of something I want to talk about, I always wait fifteen seconds after the last speaker, to give someone who maybe urgently wants to talk the chance to get up there and speak. Plus, it kind of makes it easier to avoid going up front too if I give myself that time period.

God however, had different plans than for me to sit quiet that night though. After a couple of people went up (including one of my close friends, that had a problem he hadn't told me about, but I'm glad he let it out), I was doing my counting thing, and I got up past twenty. Nobody was making any moves, and finally I just said "screw it" to my insecurities and I stood up. Once you stand up, you can't really sit back down without people noticing, so I was locked in.

A lot of people had been talking about prayer and what it's done for them, so I started there. I said how what prayer does is awesome, but what prayer is is even better. I talked about how great it is to be able to talk to God whenever you wanted to, and my favorite ways to pray. And then I said how there was one prayer I wasn't sure about. Whenever I say it, I wonder if I'm saying or using it right or whatever.

That prayer is the Our Father. There's a line in it that says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." But as I told them, I have a huge grudge. There is someone that I haven't forgiven, and I don't know how to forgive him. I don't know where he is or what he's doing or whether he's even sorry or not, and I don't know how to get closure and let go of this whole situation. If I'm doing well, I don't usually think about it, but when I start getting tired or stressed out, if I have nothing else to distract me, it will be the only thing I think about. Just on and on through my mind, as many bad thoughts about all of this as I can think of. I told them how sometimes I just can't function right because of it. And I apologized to my friend Dan, because the "problem" I talked about in this post had to do with how I can't forgive this person. I've been praying about this, but I still haven't found a solution.

Afterwards, people were hugging me, and I kept bursting out into tears. My friends told me to just keep praying, and that God never gives us more than we can handle. One of my friends told me I was beautiful, because that was the first thing that popped into her head. I definitely felt a lot more beautiful than I had in a while.

For the first time in almost three years since this grudge started, I actually talked to someone about it. Sure, I didn't go deep into it, and when Dan wanted to ask me more about it, I had to tell him that I'm sworn to secrecy about the specifics (which is the truth, until I ask for that promise to be given back to me). But I did bring it up. I finally told people about it. In my daily journal that night, I think I wrote "I did it!" close to eighteen times in a row, I was just that happy.

It may not be much, but it's a start, and that's how healing works, a little bit at a time.

I knew this would happen

YES! College is getting into full-swing, and I am tired and swamped. My computer science homework had me up until 6 in the morning last night, and it was really just to solve unsolvable (at least with our current knowledge) things that the teacher never told us we'd come up against. Fun stuff.

Also, I cut my thumb on a shard of glass that was embedded in the sole of my shoe. I just thought it was a pebble, go sue me. I have to slow down on the guitar practicing until at least tomorrow night, I think.

My friend is doing good, he came back after the weekend, and I had supper with him and some other people. He didn't come to the Catholic meeting after supper, but I'm glad he's at least well enough to hang out with people on some degree.

I am seriously behind on my responsibilities as a webmaster for the pro-life club on campus, Students For Life. I'm starting to feel really guilty. I definitely need to change some things, like, everything on the resource page and most of "What we've done" and the board page. That, and I just need to create a new layout in general. The website makes me feel like I'm browsing the internet in a cave. It needs to be cheerier. The rest of the club is doing admirably, and we're hoping to get Jason Evert and/or Christopher West to give a speech on campus, with help in part due to Generation Life. We've got a life rally being planned for the spring as well, with Peter Kreeft showing up on the final day of it.

I've also been having guilty dreams about not exercising enough. In the past three days, I've had two dreams about old coaches of mine berating me for not being in shape as well as I was, or telling me about various opportunities I have on campus to exercise. So, I'm going for a run. Right now. Bye.

Why no post?

This is probably one of the longer gaps I've gone without posting anything. I'm sure all four of you (and I can't even count something cheesy like my mom, because she doesn't even know about this) were extremely worried.

Well, I'll explain in probably one of the best lines from Scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I'd like to slightly amend that for the purpose of explaining things. "There is no(t many) greater fatigues than to fear for the life of a friend."

One of my friends, who will remain unnamed, came to me late Wednesday night, and wanted to talk to me in person. Then when we met up, he wanted to talk to me somewhere more private.

Apparently his sister had gone through a complete psychological breakdown about a week ago, and his parents had never told him. He was really worried about his sister, and he was worried about how his parents would react (his parents don't exactly rate high in parenting). He has problems of his own too, so he was worrying that he was going to have a breakdown too, that he would just wake up the next morning and not care about anything.

So, I hung out with him that night. We went exploring the basement of one of the commons, got some cheeseburgers at McDonald's (protein is always good for depression, although that was unintended), and then we made a mash-up of two posters we found in the commons, a blood donation poster, and an ad for a big dinner being held by a frat. Imagine a poster where they try to get you to donate blood by showing a huge black guy with a football helmet on trying to eat the biggest damn hamburger you may have ever seen. And we hung it up. And at least one of them is still hanging up in my commons, because I guess no one has realized yet that it's a spoof.

Like this, only with a helmet on too.

Staying up late killed me though, because once I was done hanging out with him at around 2:30, I had to study for a French test, which I did pretty well on, despite being sleep deprived and stressed out. Later that night, my friend called me again, said he had talked to a psychologist today, but he was worried that his parents had gotten a 302 (involuntary commitment) for his sister, and that they would do the same. In the course of the conversation, he also told me that his psychologist said he was going through "suicidal ideation," which means he's been thinking about committing suicide, without any actual plans or intent to commit suicide.

Luckily, he decided to go home for the weekend, and he's getting help there, but I'm still worried about him. After hanging out with my friends who came up for the football game last night, I slept for ten hours straight, and I still feel kind of tired. So, if you could, please pray for my friend.

Funny and Serious

My blog is rated PG-13! I'm glad, because I was rather worried I might cross over into an R rating. PG-13 is not bad though, I can live with that comfortably. Although it did flag me for using the word "hurt" 5 times. Oops, now six.

As for less comfortable things, since my friend Randi is resigning from the role of president, and I just found out that James, or vice president, is also heavily burdened with schoolwork and will be resigning either at the end of the semester or in a month, people will soon need to be stepping up to take leadership positions. The question I've been asking myself is whether or not I could manage to do that, and also more importantly, whether or not I should. It would be a big commitment, but it's also an important job, especially on our campus. I just hope my prayers will be answered and I'll have some idea about what to do.

Just FYI

I am a one-armed god of programming (metaphorically speaking, of course). Technically, it was more like one-handed with a thumb, but still. Last night my hands got scratched up, and I bandaged them, but it became that everything but my thumb on my left hand is stuck in a clenched position so as not to crack open my wounds (which is not good), and the ring finger on my right hand as well.

This morning, I had my first computer science test of the semester. I was really worried about it. There was a written part, then a programming part. I got around 18/20 on the written part, I'd guess, and I was one of the first people to hand that section in.

When I got to the programming section, I was pretty nervous, but it seemed like I finished the entire program with half an hour to spare. I was confused. Only one other person had finished, and he had only given back his sheet a few seconds before I finished writing my code. I took an extra five minutes just to make sure I had everything that was asked of me. Amazingly enough, I did. So I handed in my paper, and was the second person finished. I beat like, 95% of my class to finishing, and I only had about four fingers to type with (I don't really use my pinkies).

Maybe I might have a future in computer science after all. Thank you God for gifting me and helping me out. I definitely had some help, because there was a word bank that I was not expecting and that totally saved me in the writing section.

How Am I Not Myself? #2

I totally realized yesterday that I had been forgetting about these. I really liked the idea, and I feel kind of bad that I let such a nifty idea slip out of my mind. Anyways, on to the real entry.

I have a friend who went through some very traumatic situations a few years back. I helped this friend through a lot of these problems. I feel very strongly about these sort of things that my friend was thrown into.

Very rarely do I go a week, or most of the time even a day, without part of what I learned from my friend cropping up somehow in my life. It makes it hard to forget my friend. It makes it hard to forget what my friend went through.

However, sometimes I do forget. I forget in a bad way. Worse, sometimes I just choose to ignore the pain my friend experienced. What I sometimes let myself do is just a big "screw you" to my friend.

Very rarely do I ever hate myself, but the times that I feel that way, it's usually when I've chosen to forget about my friend.

How am I not myself?

I am not myself when I forget the pain of my friends.

Help a Brother (or Sister) out!

Over at Andy's blog, I first saw an entry about questioning what you're going through because of all of the difficulties in your life. Check it out. It links to another blog post on one of his friend's blogs, and you can either follow the link train, or just check it out here. I guess this blog post is kind of part three in this series.

We all know that sometimes life is hell. Andy saw that, and it's true, but you still keep making your way through all of it. Will, Andy's friend, has been working hard at trying to make the church he is in better, and that's very hard too.

I guess what I really want to say here is to help out. Help out groups you're in, help out your church, your sports team, your business group, anything. Help out the people in charge, because while they may seem like they're totally in control and invincible, secretly, like Andy and Will, they're really having a difficult time.

I'm the webmaster of a pro-life club here on campus, and because of that, I go to the board meetings we have to plan stuff. My friend Randi, she is the president of the club, and this is pretty much the first big leadership position she's had. I knew she was nervous and scared, but she's been doing a really good job with everything in the club, especially considering that she and the rest of the board are practically rebuilding the club from scratch.

We had a board meeting on Wednesday, and Randi said she wanted to see all of the board members after the meeting (some people from the Catholic club on campus were there as well). I figured she just wanted to talk to us alone to discuss the influence the Catholic club was having on us (it's a secular pro-life club, so we can't really be overtly supporting one religion). She had a much more pressing issue to discuss.

My friend Randi had gone through two panic attacks over the past few days over everything she had been worrying about for being president, not to mention all the pressures of just being a college student. She really just wanted to know that if she decided to resign, that someone else would step up and take her place. We all pretty much told her that the club would definitely be in good hands if she decided to resign, and that if she felt like she had too much work, she should have told us. We would have helped more if she needed it. Heck, as the webmaster, I do almost nothing. I easily could help a lot more, and I told her that.

Leaders aren't invulnerable. They need help too, but more importantly, they need to know that there are people available to help, people they can call on. So even if you just tell someone that you'd be willing to help with events in the future, that'd be quite a burden off of their backs.

I'm sorry for my problems

Tonight I screwed up a bit. My friend Dan thinks it was because of alcohol, which is good, because he thinks it's an outside problem instead of just me. I was supposed to bring "The Truman Show" to his dorm and watch it there with him and some other people. I showed up finally about two hours late, and Dan just advised me that he would "let this go, but you should probably just go home now John." Dan had called my cell phone much earlier, when I was only a little late, and while I took a quick poll about what to do, one of my other friends took my phone and told Dan that he had stolen my phone.

Myself, I don't know whose fault it was. It definitely wasn't the alcohol. I was thinking about not going to Dan's dorm before I started drinking at all. I just didn't want to see him. It's a long story, and I can't decide if it's my fault, his fault, or someone else's fault entirely.

Like I said a few posts back, I have a problem. Usually it's nothing. This week has been crappy, and something Dan had said a week or two back had sort of set off flags in my mind. It wasn't until today though that what he had said really had an effect on me. I read something in a book every student had been given at our high school graduation. I just didn't want to deal with what was bubbling up inside me, so I fell asleep at my bed so I wouldn't have to deal with anything. That always seems like the best option to me. Do nothing, hide away from your problems. They'll go away in a little while if you get some rest.

I know I should apologize to him, but right now I'm just trying to figure out who to blame. He doesn't know what's wrong with me, so I can't really blame him for something he didn't realize he was doing. I think I should blame myself, but my mind is telling me that's not right either. Maybe I should be getting more help with this problem. Usually it's no trouble at all. I went through the entire summer without a single hitch, I just think the stress of a new semester of school and a lack of sleep is getting to me.

Right now, Dan is IMing me, implying how he feels hurt, and I just don't know what to say. He said he felt hurt, and I said I was sorry. I told him I didn't know how to explain, but that I did feel like an ass. Then he had to head to sleep.

If there's one thing that I definitely know is my fault, it's this: I'm sorry that I don't know how to deal with this better. For all of my smarts, I'm still in the dark. I'm sorry that I can't figure out how to deal with this.

Under the influence

Right now, I'm still sort of getting rid of a bit of tipsiness. My fingers feel a bit weird as I'm typing this out, like the letters on the screen are appearing faster than they should.

As a person of strong resistance to alcohol, I rather had to hit myself hard to get into this state. By hitting myself hard, I mean I took six shots of vodka in a row, in less than a minute, and a shot of Southern Comfort later. It left my stomach feeling a bit weird, but once it calmed down, I was good.

It's funny the things that you'll do when you're not as much in control of yourself. We were planning on going to a toga party, but we went to a dance party some members of a Catholic club on campus were hosting. The other members of my group got bored and left, but I stayed. Dancing is fun. Who needs to get drunk and try to pick up girls? Techno music and dancing with no inhibitions is where the real fun is at. I'm glad I didn't leave.

At some point, I went into their kitchen to get a drink, and I decided to make a message out of the magnets they had on their fridge. You know the magnets I'm talking about, those little white ones with words and suffixes on them? Over what seemed like a very long time of searching and deliberating, probably made long by my slightly handicapped state, I finally made my message. I sent it in a text message to myself, so I wouldn't forget it. It said:

Together we give honest friendship. Share the heart. Smile, believe, trust your companions.

Really, in a perfect world, it would be difficult to find truer words.

Jesus saves us... from unexpected things.

So the other day, I went to the first meeting of the semester of the anime club. I hadn't been there in about 8 months, considering last semester I worked during the meeting time, but I got to go and chill out and watch anime. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd.

Isn't it just so cool how people think up these crazy ideas? I mean, I would love to be able to do the stuff people do in animes. Give me control over paper to make it into creatures and bows and arrows and stuff? I'm game. Lightning-fast samurai skills? Sign me up.

I was sitting next to a guy that I had just met, and he was new up at this campus. I felt like I had helped him feel comfortable, and able to relax more and have a good time. Whenever I think about meeting new people and making them feel like they're in a group of friends they just haven't seen since before they were born, it makes me think about doing the good work of Jesus.

Suddenly, an amazing idea hit me! Wouldn't it be awesome if Jesus did stuff like in the animes? I want Jesus to be some badass warrior who slices and dices vampires in a post-nuclear, post apocalyptic end time. I want the Knights Templar to be revived as a mercenary organization that searches for ancient relics, all while shooting up zombies and werewolves and stopping demons from taking over the world.

...

What's that you say silent shouter? You say these sort of things already exist? You say that Jesus fights vampires and Mass just becomes watching Jesus whoop ass on a big screen TV? You're telling me that the Knights Templar really do become a group of holy mercenaries, and they also have to deal with bombs fueled by the powers of Hell?


I didn't believe the silent shouter either, but I checked out his sources, and they're legit. This is some awesome religious comic-bookery. If you're ever bored and want to be entertained by some awesomeness that is good for your soul (well, maybe all the blood and violence isn't, but, eh), check out those comics. You may have some trouble finding Loaded Bible, because you'd have to buy it someplace like here. Or download it illegally. Not that I'm encouraging that.

Thank You God

I have a problem that luckily enough, I haven't had to deal with for the past two months or so, but going to mass tonight, it got really bad. I was trying to fight off tears during mass, and I was trying to make sure I didn't look like anything was wrong with me. During my quiet time after receiving communion, I was praying to God to help me with what was going on.

Walking home from mass, I was just trying to keep from having a panic attack. I breathed through the fabric of my shirt once or twice to slow down some hyperventilation. My plan pretty much was just to go to sleep and try to cry into my corner without my roommate hearing or noticing me, if he was even there.

I got back to my room, and there were like, nine people in it, 6 of them girls. My roommate was pregaming, and I got convinced to go along with them. We went to a frat, and while I'm not really a frat kind of guy, I had a pretty good time just hanging out, getting less awkward with my roommate, and being a good wingman to all of the people in our group, guys and girls alike.

Right now, maybe it's just from a little bit of alcohol still floating around in my system, but I feel so much better. I don't know if it was just letting off steam or something else, but somehow, it's like my prayers were answered. Through drinking and partying.

Weird.

I'm a hypocrite.

I realized I was a hypocrite just moments ago. Now, most people are hypocrites in one way or another, but sometimes we don't realize what it is that we do that is hypocritical. Through a wide range of "coincidences," I came to realize that the last post I made is hypocritical.

I was pissed off at my friend Alex. I had to drag him back to safety for an hour and a half. It left me feeling tired and weary, to say the least. I felt like he didn't respect me in my relationship, that if he really was my friend, that he wouldn't do stuff like this to me. We were together a lot today working at a concession stand at Beaver Stadium (Go Penn State!), and we managed to make things all right. I sort of implied that I felt hurt by all that I had to do, and I didn't want to do it again, and Alex implied that he wouldn't drink so much that I would have to do that.

There is someone I treat in the very same way as Alex treated me last night. That person is Jesus.

I went to a religious group meeting, and the leader talked about how we need to develop a relationship with Jesus, that a relationship with Him, God, and the Holy Spirit is really the core of our religion. Getting towards the end of finishing Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" has also reinforced this idea in my head of a relationship with Jesus.

I realized that most of the time, I am being a total jerk to Jesus. I am drunk and angry and heading towards trouble in His eyes, but I still want Him to let me go. Jesus, however, just keeps on pulling me back. He's been dragging me back to safety and away from a much more serious punishment than a fine for probably a good 10-15 years. Yet He still keeps on pulling me along. Some of my other friends might say about me "Let's just leave him here, he might be okay." Jesus tells them no. He wants to bring me home. A lot of the time I fight Him, I pull up my legs so He's forced to carry me, I try to run out of His supporting arms and into a frat house so I can just party some more. Each time, He comes running to help me. Many times I feel angry about His help. I'll yell at God and Jesus because I don't understand why they won't let me go do the things that I want.

But in the end, God knows what is best for me. I just have to learn how to accept that.

I'm sorry, but I just can't deal with you right now

Tonight I got a chance to hang out with some of my good friends for the first time since last year at school. We are a group of guys that was affectionately dubbed "The Freshman Guys" by the Catholic group we were in. I had some ridiculously fun times with these guys last year. Sometimes things would get a bit out of hand, and usually I would be the one to try to sort things out, because I have the highest tolerance to alcohol out of our group, I'd say I'm probably the most patient, and I like to think I'm good at defusing situations (Seriously though, how many people have actually used the line "Bros before Hos" to stop an argument?). I'm happy to help out, because I like to see my friends have a good time, and I just like helping people too and helping make peace between people.

Tonight though, has pushed me past my limits. Me, Alex, Brian, Dan, and two other guys all were drinking a bit in Alex and his roommate's dorm. Alex, somehow being the biggest lightweight ever, was already pretty tipsy off of probably a small amount of alcohol (I had gotten there late). Me, I had a straight shot of 190 proof alcohol, several shots of whiskey, and I quite literally felt nothing.

Eventually, one frat and a house party later, I figured Alex had had enough to drink, and needed to go home and sober up. This was at around the time he took off his shirt and pants during a one-man dance to "Greased Lightning." Don't worry, he still had his boxers on, but still.

Long story short, Alex didn't want to leave. He just wanted to go party more. He fought with me, Brian, and Dan the entire. An hour and a half I fought with him to try to get him home and keep him from getting an underage citation. Dan wanted to leave him. Brian wanted to leave him. I said no. He was my friend, and I was going to get him home safe.

He bled on me, he almost got me beat up by frat boys, he had me carry him quite a few times, and just in general he was a absolute asshole at letting me help him. If there was a way for him to slow things down, he did it, excluding actually getting into a fight with me.

I eventually got him home with Dan and Brian's help, but he just wouldn't go to sleep. I was so tired. I had done most of the carrying of Alex this entire time, as Brian was still kind of tipsy, and Dan's idea of getting Alex to come along was telling ridiculous lies and hoping he'd believe it. We sat in his dorm room for a while, hoping he'd sleep, but he just didn't want to. Eventually, he needed to go to the bathroom, but he wouldn't let anyone come with him. I knew this was code for "I'm going to run off to the commons or something because I still want to have fun," but I had endured enough. I let him go. I had gotten him back on campus, I had gotten him back to his room, and if he wanted to screw it up from there, I would let him. I left just a few moments after Alex left his room, and already there was no sight of him down the hallway. I made my way outside, and just stopped in the stairwell to pray for him.

I had done this sort of thing, praying for Alex when he drinks too much and runs off. The last time I was worried he would get hypothermia and die outside somewhere, but luckily, my prayers somehow were answered and I found him after searching for close to an hour. He had been in a lounge drunk dialing people.

I started walking, but still praying, and I started getting sort of vindictive. Maybe he needed to get caught. I prayed to God to let the right thing happen, whether it be keeping Alex free from the campus police, or whether it was him getting a citation so he'd learn a lesson.

Walking back though, I realized something. Taking care of Alex the way I had was not something I wanted to do. Sure, if he happens to drink too much and starts puking, hell, I'd be right there with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water. The entire time I was helping him, he just disregarded everything I did for him. He forced me into situations where I had to use force against him to try to help him because I was pissed off and I couldn't think of any other way. Thinking about that started drawing me into a panic attack, because I hate getting mad at people. I hate getting mad, because usually when I'm really pissed off, I end up hurting someone I love. I so rarely get mad, but I just wanted to beat the living hell out of Alex tonight.

He's my friend! I'm supposed to love him! I just felt like a bad person because I wanted to hurt my friend and I couldn't think of anyone to call or talk to because it was already two in the morning, and most of my friends were probably already asleep, and I didn't want to wake them up just to listen to me rant and end up crying on the phone to them. So instead, I walked the eight minutes or so back to my dorm room, completely alone, scouring my mind for who to turn to while trying to hold back tears in front of the people I walked past.

I need to talk to him about this, but I worry it will just degrade into me telling him how much I think he was a shitty friend and that what he did shows he doesn't care about me and that he has an alcohol problem or something, and I'd end up yelling all of this in front of a bunch of people who don't really know how we drink and whatnot, and it'd just be shameful for him, and I don't want to do that to him. I can't just let this go and keep on looking after him when he can't manage to control himself, and basically, that is how he got so out of control. He never put any sort of limit on what he drank, he just kept on going.

He called while I was writing this, and told me he was heading back to his dorm after going to probably one of the furthest places on campus from his dorm. I told him it was all okay, and he thanked me for helping him out and dealing with him, but he doesn't realize or even really remember everything I had to go through helping him out.

I guess the real question is, how do I go about figuring out this situation? How do I forgive all of that? He said we'd hang out tomorrow night, and he definitely wouldn't drink as much, but I don't really believe him. Even drinking half as much would put him in the same state. I don't want to be in that situation again but I don't want Alex to get in trouble and I just don't know what to do. He hurt me deeply tonight (this is my third draft for this entry, and most of this one has just been filled with me crying as I typed). I just don't know what to do here.

Three darts is just too much!

Okay, so the title is a cheesy Ace Ventura line, but still. Three posts is a lot. I should be studying or writing or something productive with my schoolwork (not that blogging isn't productive). However, I really would like to write this.

The title for this entire blog is "Forgiveness." I really like the idea of a blog based around forgiveness, but I really feel the urge to write about other stuff. I mean, I'm a practicing Catholic at the number two party school in the nation. That's not exactly a common type of person. It makes for a lot of strange thoughts and situations.

I don't know. Maybe I'll just let these thoughts ferment a bit. I know there are other things I want to write about forgiveness, but I don't know what to do about this other stuff I want to write about as well. Should I sort of alter the theme and title of this blog? Should I have a separate blog as well to talk about other stuff? What do you, my readers, think?

Courage to Speak

Like I said in an earlier blog post, I have trouble talking to people. I was manning a pro-life club's stand at a student involvement fair alone for a while this morning, and I had like, a billion flyers to hand out to people. However, it's tough to just approach people with a flyer. I think I managed about one out of every ten or so students. I would let the ones that sort of moved as far away from my stand as possible while walking by go on without a pamphlet. Most people that looked me in the eye as they walked by, I felt too sheepish to give them a flyer, I just nodded and said hello. I really only got the people that just flat-out walked up to my stand, or people that looked at the stand but didn't look at me. I felt kind of like I wasn't doing my job well enough because I couldn't approach people. Luckily, I was only there for about 15 minutes out of the 5 hours that students were allowed in (I did all of the pre-student setup though, I'm no slacker).

Later that night, I went to a meeting with a Catholic club I'm in on campus. There were a lot of new faces because they had been advertising at the involvement fair as well. As I walked in, I headed around a crowd of new people talking to the club leaders, and headed for a group of my friends. On the way there though, I had to pass by a new person who was just standing alone watching the other people talk from afar.

As I walked towards him, I debated introducing myself, but I pushed the thought away and kept heading for my friends. Right when I walked past him though, I thought "I could just ignore him and let him be alone, or I could talk to him." Suddenly it seemed like there was an obvious choice, even though it was unpleasant. I turned around and introduced myself to him. His name was Phil.

We started talking, and slowly some of my other friends came over to say hi to me, and I got the chance to introduce them to my new freshman friend, Phil. Soon the boy who had been standing alone watching the small crowds of people had become a part of one of those crowds.

He sat with me and my friends throughout the meeting, and at the end of it, during the pizza and socializing part, he walked up to one of the club leaders and started talking to him. He worked his way back over to us eventually, but I felt like he had a really good time and was a lot more comfortable now.

Waiting in line for pizza, I also found the courage to introduce myself to a freshman named Michael. He left to go to the email sign-up paper, but when he came back and sort of stood awkwardly at the edge of me and my circle of friends, I made sure to try to get him involved in the conversation.

I don't know how important it was that I introduced myself to these people and gave them a chance to talk and be welcomed. They may never come back for another meeting (although I certainly hope that's not the case). The one thing I do know was that I made the right decision in talking to them. It was a good choice.

College classes, day one

I finally started classes today. My roommate and I have been getting along more, as we slowly get used to each other. What can I say, we're guys, we don't just go hug and start talking about everything we can think of right off the bat. It'll come in time though.

Today I had to set up a stand for a pro-life group that I am the webmaster of at a student involvement fair. I was the only board member of the club that could make it there during the setup time, so I got drafted/I volunteered. However, what I failed to remember was how soon my first class, elementary French, started after the involvement fair began. My replacement came, and after getting him some much needed info from our website, I checked my schedule and realized I was already about 15 minutes late for my French class. Oops.

Luckily, I apologized to the teacher after class, and she was okay with that lateness because I had a good excuse. However, I am more afraid of taking French now. The teacher plans on speaking in French for most of the class. I have ZERO French experience. She seems very nice though, so I'm still hoping for the best.

Second class, mythology, was good. It's non-Western (i.e. no Greek or Roman) and it's a large lecture class, with 100+ people. However, I managed to participate a fair amount because really, everyone has thoughts, they're just too afraid to say them. Heck, we got asked what we thought someone who had seen God would say what He looked like, and someone suggested "Like Willie Nelson." You know that kid will get a good participation grade.

That's all the classes I had so far, but tomorrow will be much bigger. I have intermediate programming, French again, Social Psychology, and Creative Writing. The programming language is C++, which I never was too good with, so it kind of looks like I'm learning two languages this semester, haha. I'm worried about creative writing though. The syllabus says we'll probably have to write about what scares us, and, well, I'm scared to do that.

One More

One last post here before college starts up and starts slowing this down.

Cleaning up my room and packing today, I found a little booklet of Lenten Reflections from 2007. I had never really read it. I did, however, save it, because right before I threw it away, I scanned through it, and realized that this booklet had been made by some of my friends, and other students on campus.

Well, finding it this morning, I flipped through until I found a reflection by one of my friends, a fellow freshman last year, and ironically enough, it was about forgiveness. So here it is.

Matthew 18: 21-35

"Forgiveness is never easy. It may feel sometimes that it is all we ever do. Sometimes we think that we just can't forgive again. But when reading this passage, a whole new light is shed on the concept of forgiveness. We must be like the king Jesus describes. While it may seem that someone has used up all of their chances, we need to forgive again. If we stop forgiving, not only do we risk our relationships on earth, but also our relationship with God. After all, Jesus forgave His persecutors for whipping Him, ridiculing Him, and nailing Him to a cross. If someone can do that and still wholly give of Himself for us, why is forgiveness so hard? Perhaps it is not as difficult as we believe."

An Ounce of Prevention

One of those older sayings people use is "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Yesterday made me think of this saying in terms of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a special kind of cure that helps with ailments medicine can't cure. Well, unless it's psychiatric medicine, maybe.

Forgiveness cures guilt. It cures sorrow and grief and pain. It cures shame and hate. It heals the rifts between warring friends, fighting families, and feuding countries. It cures sickness in the soul and patches up the tattered remains of consciences. I'm almost certain it lowers your blood pressure too.

If forgiveness is the cure, then what is the prevention? You could obviously say "not sinning," but that'd be like telling someone the best way to stay healthy is to not get sick. It really doesn't help much unless you teach them how to keep themselves safe from sickness.

Well, aren't you in luck, because I happen to have a good strategy for avoiding things that would require you to seek forgiveness. It's short but means a lot and might need some explaining and examples.

Live.

I'm not talking about breathing and pumping blood through your body. That is existing, that's surviving. Living is about being happy and having friends and feeling good about yourself and working towards your dreams.

Yesterday was a day that I lived.

I hung out with my friend Dave all day. We got Chik-fil-a at the mall and played DDR and Wii, and we saw a bunch of our friends, coworkers, and some ex-coworkers I hadn't seen in months.

We went out to dinner at Panera's with my family, and explored a Jewish Community Center and swung on their swingset while waiting to pick up my brother from practice. I am a CHAMPION swinger.

I was reverse roundhouse kicked in the face by my little sister. We were in the kitchen, and she was trying to punch me in the stomach while I tried to poke her. She tried to kick me in the stomach, but I made a lightning-fast save and caught her foot. However, she grabbed onto a counter and swung her other foot around behind her, connecting right along my left jaw. She didn't think she'd actually be able to hit me, and I was just so impressed by her pulling it off that I just couldn't be angry at her. Although it did give me a headache for a little while.

After I dropped my friend Dave off at his house, I went out to my friend Luke's house and bought a bass guitar, amp, cords, case, and stand off of him for $120 bucks. I don't really know if I'll be able to fit it into my dorm with my acoustic guitar though.

Then I helped my dad clear out the fish and water in the tank I had been watching for my friend, which he picked up after work.

It was a day filled with good, clean fun between friends and family. I never had the chance or urge to do anything bad because I was distracted by being happy. That's the way to live.

P.S. Does anyone know how to cut off your posts and add in a "Read more..." button in Blogger? I'm a bit new to Blogger, and I haven't figured it out yet.

How Am I Myself? #1

Well, I said it was going to be positive, so I guess I'll just focus on a good aspect of me.

I was laying on a couch, thinking about what to write, when I brushed up against a fluffy pink blanket draped over the top of the couch. It's a really comfy blanket, so I pulled it down and felt like falling asleep there, and wondered why I couldn't feel like this when I wanted to go to bed. Most times when I go to bed, my blanket (not the pink one) feels uncomfortable, and I have to fight with it and my pillow to get into a good sleeping spot.

Waking up is another story. I don't know about anyone else, but for all the trouble I have getting comfortable at night, I feel absolutely perfect in the morning. Everything just feels right, and I just want to lay there and bask in that feeling. I really think that should be the other way around, I should want to leave when I need to wake up, and want to stay when I need to sleep.

I feel comfortable in weird places. Another place I feel so comfortable in is when I'm just wearing long pants, no shirt or socks, and I'm about to start working out. It makes me feel like a cowboy, or a kung fu master, depending on the type of fabric the pants are made out of.

One place I don't feel comfortable is with people. I don't feel like I'm a good conversationalist. I worry that my small talk is overly boring and annoying to people. If I ever do get past all of that and I actually start talking on a deeper level with people, then all of the big alarms go off. My stomach starts to turn and my hands and my whole body start to shake and it's a struggle to keep myself calm. Even with people that I love, trust, and respect, the same thing happens. I just don't deal with it well at all, even though I love the feeling of talking to people on a deep level. I can't speak my real mind because I'm always afraid of what other people will think of me, and whether my friends will like me less because of the way I really am, not just the masks I put up so I can pretend to be pretty normal.

This is why I find it highly ironic that one of the things people like most about me, the real me, is that I'm easy to talk to. They say that I set people at ease. People feel like it's easier to be themselves around me.

I went on a religious retreat last semester. That was scary. Three days of faith sharing and heart-to-heart discussion is one of my worst nightmares, and one of my greatest dreams. However, I faced my fears, I opened up, and I let the real me shine out. One of my friends, one of the group leaders, she wrote me a letter at the end of the retreat. In part of it, she was telling me some of the things she admired most about me. One of those things was that the way I act, the things I say, they make me easy to connect to. She told me that without people like me, the other retreatants might have never opened up. That makes me so happy, because I know exactly how it feels to not be able to open up to others.

How am I myself?

I am truly myself when I help make others feel like they can be themselves, their true selves, as well.

And that's the whole truth.

Quick update

Sorry I haven't been updating, life has been trying to make up for the fact that I leave for college and schoolwork in less than a week. So, a quick series of updates.

Cats suck. Being allergic to cats sucks even more. It feels good to go on runs again. Superbad was SUPERAWESOME! Except for the bum reel our theatre got. For about three minutes, the screen would go sporadically dark green, and the sound would drop out. We have a new reel that was sent to us now though. Velvet Marauder is awesome and addicting superhero goodness. I need to find a copy of C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," because not only did Ariel recommend it, but I also randomly found a review of it in a blog of one of VM's commentors. Two coincidences means I'm probably meant to read it.

Only two more work shifts and then my summer is free until I'm back up at school.

If you're really starved for forgiveness writing, I found a blog post about forgiveness. It takes a view of God's forgiveness in a different way that you don't really see too often.

I'm a Menace to Society

Well, kind of funny, kind of not.

I may have accidentally set some of the internal workings of a very large corporation into anywhere from a mild concern to a slight level of panic. I think they're afraid some of their products could theoretically kill people. They want me to call them and discuss the situation with them directly.

Woops.

I really should feel worse, but this sounds like something out of a Disney channel TV show. Try to help a friend and instead get a huge panic around the little lie you told so you wouldn't sound like an idiot.

I'd decide to do something about this, but I read the email between waking up this morning and going back to bed, so I didn't remember it all day, and I work all of tomorrow during their calling hours. So I guess I have at least until Friday to figure out what to do. Fun stuff.

World Forgiveness Day

Did you know that there is a World Forgiveness Day? I didn't either, until I typed "Try Forgiveness" into Google. The only bad thing is, I missed it, but oh well, there's always next year.

International Forgiveness Day is scheduled for the first Sunday of August, which was August 5th this year. In 2006 it had official celebrations in 7 countries on five different continents, including eleven locations across the United States. They choose to recognize Heroes of Forgiveness, people who have shown near superhuman courage in letting go of wrongs done to them. One such person is Michael Berg, whose son was decapitated on television by terrorist leaders in Afghanistan. I had seen the initial story in the news, but I hadn't seen the follow-up that I found through Forgiveness day.

Michael Berg was devastated when his son, Nicholas, was beheaded on videotape by terrorist leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. So when Zarqawi was killed by U.S. military forces in Iraq, people expected Michael to celebrate his death. His reaction surprised many when he told the world that he mourns the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as he would the death of any man. Berg stated, “He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.” When interviewed recently on CNN, news anchor Soledad O’Brien expressed surprise at his reaction. His reply was, “Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.”

That is truly amazing. How many times have we held grudges for things like money or people holding you up at a traffic light or anything else insignificant compared to what Michael went through? We could all learn from the example of people like this.

And here's a Youtube video about International Forgiveness Day!

The Dark Side of Reconciliation

The title of this post makes me think of Star Wars and Pink Floyd. Sorry, I just wanted to get that out of my system.

Quick intro for non-Catholics: The sacrament of Reconciliation is basically one of Catholicisms official ways to be forgiven, and is one of very few ways that Catholics believe they can be forgiven of mortal sins. Mortal sins are sins that are seriously wrong, you know that the sin is seriously wrong as you're doing it, but still you do it freely and willingly. I feel that Reconciliation is awesome, and is probably my favorite sacrament that I've received so far, even though it always scares the hell out of me.

The last time I received the sacrament of Reconciliation, I was on a religious retreat with a Catholic club on my campus. It had been about a year since the last time I had confessed my sins, and the past year had not been a good one for me, at least in terms of all of the bad things I had done. I was writing down a list of my biggest sins so that I wouldn't forget them when I came face to face with the priest, but I managed to have enough courage to confess all of them. The priest gave me a psalm to read for my penance, so I went outside and sat on a picnic table away from the rest of the retreatants.

While sitting there, I at first felt good. I had been forgiven of everything bad I had done! I was a new man! That is the part I love so much about reconciliation. As I sat there further in prayer, I thought about all that I had gotten off of my conscience, and my heart started sinking. What sort of man had God just forgiven? If I had met someone who I knew had done everything that I had done, I would probably hate him. I would probably want to hit him, and I might even do it. I started feeling depressed and hopeless for myself.

I sat in this way for a little while, wallowing in my own sins and sadness. I thought to myself "You're a bad person." That was the last straw. My soul had taken enough of a beating, and it was ready to help me bounce back. "No, you're a good person," I thought to myself. My mind jumped to something good I had done on that retreat, just being myself and helping other people open up and talk. I thought of all of the good things I had done since my last confession. I had given a friend comfort and hope that he wasn't the only one who felt the way he did. I had been chosen as a leader on a religious retreat in high school (even though the retreat was eventually cancelled), so obviously I made enough of an impact on people that they saw me as a good religious leader. I had comforted friends and been a good employee and I may have even saved people's lives.

The litany of sins I had been reciting to myself were now overshadowed by all of the good I had done in the world. I had gotten rid of those sins for a reason, and one of them was because they didn't reflect who I really was. The good things I do are who I really am.

The dark side of Reconciliation that I found that day was that focusing so much on the things we've done wrong can make us forget the things we have done right.

If all we choose to look for is the darkness in life, that's all we'll see.

In terms of this blog, I think my topics have been rather dark for maybe a bit too long. Forgiveness is a joyful thing. It's not something that should always have us feeling ashamed and feeling like bad people. So, I am vowing for the next week straight to only post positive things to this blog. I've had enough of the shadows for now, it's time to let the light shine in!

Oh, but the "How Am I Not Myself?" this upcoming week will probably still be dark. I don't know how I can make that light, unless anyone has any suggestions?

Half-truths and honesty

A few posts back, I mentioned about myself telling half-truths, and in the comments, I and a new friend discussed me holding back the truth. You can see it here: One of the Problems I Have

The last post I wrote, someone praised me for my honesty.

However, the last post I wrote was originally quite a bit longer than what is currently up there. I had looked at what I had written, and just as with my friend that I had been untruthful with, I said "They don't need to know that," and I deleted it. This time I didn't even have the excuse of wanting to protect someone from being hurt. I just wanted to save face and not look worse in other people's eyes. So now you'll get to hear the rest of the story, because a half-truth is also half-lie.

There is a reason why I specifically started with that way that I am not myself. I wrote how there was something I had regretted doing earlier this week, and that thing that I did was taking advantage of a friend's feelings for me. It was after we had watched I Heart Huckabees as well, which was yet another reason why I wanted to start with that first way I am not myself.

So, I'm sorry for not being honest with you all before. I pray that I will do better in the future.

How Am I Not Myself? # 1

One of the movies that I really like is I Heart Huckabees. It is one of those movies that makes you think and touches you on the inside in ways that you don't quite understand. I love it, but the first time watching it, my dad watched for about a half an hour, then decided he couldn't take all of the weirdness of the movie. It's not a movie for everyone, that's for sure.

One of the parts that I like the most is when the two existential detectives are asking the "bad" guy about how he feels about himself, and he simply yells "How am I not myself?" The two detectives say the question aloud and the bad guy repeats himself so they're clear. "How am I not myself?" They say nothing but this, and start looking at each other confusedly. The bad guy leaves, and as he's being asked questions and given memos in his workplace, the only thing that keeps running through his head is "How am I not myself?" This leads to the first part of his breakdown.

At the end of the movies, after the credits are done rolling, the question, "How am I not myself?" appears on the screen. It made me think about myself and finding the true me. I once wrote a personal reflection on that question and the book "The Game." Today, I'm doing something different with it.

Everyone wants to figure out who they are, including myself. For as long as I can keep thinking of things, I'm going to try to figure out what I am not. Maybe if I stop all of the things that I know are not part of the real me, I'll be left with only the right things for me to do. I can only hope to be so lucky.

How am I not myself?

I am not myself when I take advantage of girls' feelings for me to get them to do sexual things with me.

Work Today

As Flanders started to say in the Simpsons Movie, "The good Lord is telling me to confess! To a modest sense of pride in our community!" I am here to confess to a modest sense of pride at how awesome my work shift was today. Okay, so I don't really think being happy about my work is a sin, but I wanted to talk about it but my blog is titled forgiveness. :-P

I was checker from 2:30 to 11:00, and I was wearing my confusing shorts (they're just regular shorts, but they have all sorts of absolutely pointless straps hanging out in the pockets, which confuses me as to why they are there), and I also had on my "BFFs" t-shirt from Threadless.

I walked around watching movies for a while, as per my job description, then I went into the concessions area to get some popcorn and soda. While there, I noticed that in the candy spot right next to the butter dispenser, there was an entire stack of Kit Kat bars, eleven to be precise. Now, no one is supposed to put candy there because it is hot from the butter warmer and that melts the candy. There's even a large sign right next to the candy spot telling you not to put candy there. These Kit Kat bars were pretty much mush, so we couldn't sell them to the customers. They got put into the back refrigerator for managers and projectionists to eat (which I indulged in one of the bars later that night).

I then decided I wanted to stop this problem once and for all. So, I grabbed a cardboard box, found some duct tape and scissors, and started building a cardboard box insert to put in that candy slot so no one could use it. This took me about a half an hour of good old architectural fun, and the box fit perfectly. I was so impressed with myself. "Jury-rigging" is one of my favorite words, and for a good reason. I love making my own solutions to problems.

Then they sent me on break once I finished that box, and I went home and had some spaghetti, cheesy bread, and some strawberries and cantaloupe. I came back to work, and I was told to watch the Rush Hour 3 theatre, because the managers expected there might be problems. I got to stand there and watch the whole movie, and I only had to tell one person to put his cell phone away. It was pretty cool.

Then I got to have my work shift extended by helping one of my fellow projectionists count and close up shop for the night. Then I went home. So, for the price of about one hour of actual work, I was paid for about nine. Life is good.

Stardust

And now for a totally nerdy interruption to our usual morals-related material.

I am a HUGE Neil Gaiman fan. I was interested in his work ever since I heard about Sandman. However, I didn't really become a true fanboy until I started reading his fiction. Amazon recommended me to "American Gods" and I saw "Anansi Boys" there too, and I ordered them with "The Gunslinger" by Stephen King and some book on journaling. I read American Gods, and totally fell in love with his storytelling. His mix of the real with the fantastic is top-notch.

Stardust was a good book. I should know, because I read it this morning. In my eight hour projectionist shift, I managed to read all of Stardust. Now, it is shorter than his other novels, and is in fact considered a novella, but it was still a good read. Definitely big on romance too.

I knew Stardust would have to be changed for when it went onto the big screen. I wanted to read the book first so I could see it how it was originally meant to be (although I didn't see any pictures, the original Stardust was almost part comic book). I knew some aspects of Stardust would never work for the big screen. I knew Robert De Niro's character would play a much greater role in the movie than in the book (he's only there for about 12 pages, out of 287).

Happily enough, they managed to keep much more of the original story than I expected. Sure, some details were changed, and for the most part, these managed to be minor and didn't change the major plot, for time and stories are like rubber bands, you can stretch them and change them, but they'll still keep their original shape. This was still a love story, and there was still awesome fantasy moments, some taken practically perfectly from the book.

All in all, this movie was good. Some parts never got explained, like the Babylon candles, but like the manager sitting next to me said "well, we could figure out what it was doing." Robert De Niro's character, which appeared in a much more important role, was absolutely amazing. The movie might have been worth it just to see the things he did.

I highly recommend this movie.

One of the Problems I Have

In the past 24 hours, I have done something that I really regret. I won't get into the specifics, but someone should have, at least in my opinion, rather disliked me, to say the very least.

However, I lied and I told some half-truths, and this person is now totally okay with me. But I'm not okay with myself.

The problem I've realized that I have is that either through my own actions or my own nature, I am too easily forgivable for my own good. I punish myself (no cutting or anything like that though, don't worry), but the people I hurt are never out to get me. I never feel like they get their just desserts, or their revenge, or whatever they should have.

Maybe it's better that way. If these people did just decide to beat me up or something, I would just be able to feel okay afterwards, because "Oh, I got what was coming to me and now I can go on my happy way." This way, I feel guilty, and maybe I learn from my mistakes.

Maybe this way is better too for another reason. I started this blog because I thought there should be more forgiveness in the world, and here I'm being shown forgiveness. Why should I be so bitter to that? The only answer I can think to give to that is these people don't know what they're forgiving me of, because of the half-truths. Would they still forgive me if they knew what I knew? I don't know, but I guess I should hope so. Otherwise, I'm just being a hypocrite with this blog.

Strange Dream #1

Sorry that this post is so long.

There has been a person that I've been wanting to talk about here, because he's the center point of one of the proudest moments of forgiveness I've ever had. His name is James, and I have been thinking about him recently because I haven't seen him in over a year. The last time I saw him, he had run away from a home he was in, and I bought him a ticket for a rated R movie he was seeing with his friends at the movie theatre. It was a good rated R movie though. I gave him my phone number, but I didn't think to get his, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.

He was friends with my little brother, and he was the adopted little brother of one of my classmates. He was adopted around the age of five or so after living in foster homes for a few years, I think. He was a pretty hyper kid, and I think he might have had a little ADD, but he was a good kid. Some people couldn't deal with him when he got really annoying, but if you wanted him to stop, all you had to do was ask him politely. He would listen to you if you were polite to him, which is funny, because you'd think it would be common sense to ask politely, but most people didn't think to do that.

He ended up in my scout troop, and I was one of the cool older kids, and I was one of the only liked Senior Patrol Leaders. He got to be pretty close with our scoutmaster, which pretty much any cool person did because our scoutmaster is pretty much the best person ever.

Then he started having problems at home, and he snuck away to a friend's house for a weekend without telling his parents, and his parents had enough so they sent him to a juvenile delinquent home nearby. Our scoutmaster went to his family and asked how he was, and they said he was doing well, and that he missed the scout meetings and the troop. And then he started having problems there, and he ran away, which leads back to the last time I saw him.

Last night I had a dream about him. I was Spiderman, only I had some other superpowers too. I was standing in a room that was either for a banquet or a press conference, because I was standing on the one side of it in front of a long table on a raised platform. The president was seated at the table, with what I'm guessing was his cabinet, and maybe some family.

I was terrorizing them. I didn't really hurt anyone too bad. Someone tried to throw some black rock or piece of food or something at me, and I let out some kind of sonic yell that knocked them back into the wall behind the table. I slashed my right arm forward and some kind of psychic or invisible wave knocked several people off of their feet.

Now, behind me, pretty much everyone had already ran. But one person who was still seated about 3/4 of the way back was James, and I noticed him as he just shook his head, stood up, and started trudging slowly out the back door with his head down. I was so happy to see him, I ran back to him and tried to say hi. He just kept walking. I asked him what was up, and he just kept walking, not looking up, but said something like "You shouldn't be doing that, it's not right."

I sort of laughed incredulously at what he said, and shot back "Come on man, you used to get angry and do stuff like that all the time." James whipped his head left to look me straight in the eye. His face was a mixture of hurt and anger. "I don't do that stuff anymore," was all he said. Then he turned and started his slow walk out the door again.

I was taken aback, and I felt ashamed of myself. This was a person that I thought had looked up to me, at least somewhat, and now he's practically too ashamed of me to even look at me. I felt horrible. I followed by his side, but I couldn't think of anything to say. He walked out the back door, and up a vertigo-esque stairwell. I followed him. After he went up a couple of floors, he finally stopped, turned to me with a half-hearted smile, and asked "Do you want to play a board game?" "Sure," I said meekly.

I just sat there as he started demurely setting up and explaining the rules of the game to me. I felt so ashamed of myself and so little. Then we started playing the game, and that's all of the dream I remember.

Aside from everything with my long-lost friend, this dream has an important meaning in it that I rediscovered. I can't just let myself sink down to other people's levels. Just because my friends sometimes do bad things doesn't mean it's all right for me to do those same bad things.

Also, very much more importantly, I miss James.

The Irony Does Not Escape Me

So at mass today, during the part about the forgiveness of sins (which I just found out is called "the penitential act"), the priest, instead of saying "let us call to mind the times that we have sinned," he added "let us call to mind the times that we have sinned, and let us especially remember to forgive those that have sinned against us." It was something like that. Believe me, with what I talked about in my post last night, the irony was not lost on me.

Oh, and last night, I actually ended up looking at blogs until 4:00, then taking a shower and going to bed. Nothing too scary happened, except when I went to turn off the last light down in the basement, I heard what sounded like shaky voices yelling from far away. As I walked back upstairs, the only thing I was thinking was "Oh please God, don't let me die, please let nothing happen."

I am definitely still alive, and I actually had a ridiculously long and awesome dream about a zombie apocalypse.

It's late and I'm scared

Right now it just recently turned 3:00 in the morning, and I am pretty freaked out right now. I started reading a scary book today, and I didn't exactly behave in the best manner tonight, not at all. So what with it being this bad hour and all of that, I'm a little scared. My house also makes funny noises at night, and half the time it sounds like people talking or walking around when I'm in the kitchen or the bathroom or some other place where I could be easily snuck up on.

I said an Our Father and some other prayers, but the Our Father says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." I thought of someone that I still haven't fully forgiven for something, and it made me think that I had to forgive him before I could be forgiven. But the only reason I wanted to forgive him just then was because I was so scared for myself. I don't think that can count as a real pardon.

So now I'm going to take a shower and try to get to sleep in a decent amount of time. I have to wake up for mass tomorrow, and I've got some sins to be thinking of during that forgiveness of sins part and after I get communion, so I really shouldn't be falling asleep in mass.

Forming New Habits

I was reading something about getting into the habit of exercising, and it said to never go two days without doing something that you're trying to make a habit. One day every now and then is easy to miss, and okay, but once you miss two days in a row, it's so easy to blow off doing something the next day. And as a new blog, this is the third day since I last put something up.

I think there's a lot of truth to that statement, because I kept thinking about making this blog post tonight, then never getting around to it. So now here I am writing it but I have writer's block. Okay, so I'm lying a bit, but I want this to be a short entry.

Maybe there is some kind of habit I can try to take up that will help me be more forgiving to people. Oh yeah, I just realized, those are called "virtues" and someone already invented them. I need to come up with something different.

I'm in a bit of a bad mood right now. My body is just not working the way I want it to. I think it's getting close to the point of where I can be diagnosed as having "hypersomnia," which is also known as excessive daytime sleepiness. I want to sleep all the time, and it's like, never enough for my body.

But here I am, up late, and I work in the morning! Well, to get rid of my angstiness, I found a snarky forgiveness quote. Just one more reason to love your enemies.

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." ~Oscar Wilde

Really not the best quote for a serious forgiveness blog, but what can you expect from me at a time like this?

A Dad's Road to Hidden Forgiveness

I have a dad that is in the broad scheme of things a pretty awesome dad, but a lot of the time he bugs me because he's a bit of a control freak and that has messed around with important parts of my life before. I don't entirely know what all of it is that I dislike, there's just a lot of memories I have with him that turned out really sad or angry or traumatizing or whatever for me. I don't really even think he meant for me to feel that way 99% of the time, and I think he doesn't realize it makes me feel that way about at least 80% of the time.

Don't get me wrong, I love my dad, but I feel like I can't be myself around him because he'll look down on it or something.

Today, he woke me up from a nap I've gotten into the habit of taking after Sunday lunch to have me help him transport a patio set from a warehouse to our house.

Long story short, after a few trips, and a bout of disassembling the table frame because it wouldn't fit in the back of the U-Haul truck we rented, we were done bringing everything back home. Dad was about to take the U-Haul truck back, and I threw him the keys to the truck that he had left on the porch. As I turned around to head back inside, he said, "Thanks for your help John."

Just that. "Thanks for your help John."

Really, that's not such a big thank you. It's not like I saved his life or anything. It was different for me though, because it told me that he didn't think me helping was something a son does just because a dad asks. It said "We were equals on this, partners, and I'm glad you decided to help me when I asked." It was like I wasn't being treated like a little kid; I was a man, and I would be thanked like one.

Just like all those times I had problems with my dad and he didn't realize what he had done, I doubt he knows what he did this time. It may not have been much, especially not to him, but today he's helped me become just a little bit closer to dropping my hidden grudge and forgiving him.

Another work story

Today you all get to know facts 3 and 4 about me. I have a little brother. My little brother works at the movie theatre with me (but I get paid more than him, because I've been there longer).

Today, he was working as checker. For those not in the lingo, a checker is the guy that makes sure the movies are running right and that no one is breaking the rules or being a nuisance in the theatre. Our checkers are allowed to dress in regular clothes and sit down in the theatres, so as to better spy on the people we're watching.

So he goes into the theatre we have the Harry Potter movie in, and sits down in the closest seat he can find. Later, he gets up, and his butt feels wet. He gets some of it on his hand and sniffs it, and what does he smell?

Urine.

Someone pissed in their seat, and just moved and didn't tell anyone. How do you manage to pull that off? He/she didn't even attempt to clean up after their mess at all! Why would you do that?

My brother got to go home, shower, and get into some new clothes while still on the clock. That's at least one good thing of this. I've never gotten paid to take a shower, I'm jealous.

Movie Theatre Issues

Today we are introduced to fact number two about me: I work at a movie theatre during the summer and school breaks (fact one was my name, listed at the bottom of every entry).

Anyways, tonight I was working at the movie theatre on door (that's the ticket-taker, for those of you not in the lingo). Later in the night, at around 9:15-ish or so, some young teenage kid jokes with me that he was given a free trial to the theatre, and that he's allowed to go in for free. I played along and told him that was all right, but he had to take it up with the box people to get a ticket for me to rip. He said he was kidding and left.

He came back a bit later and said "Here's my free ticket," and tried to put a dollar into my hand. Instinctively, I jerked away in surprise and said "no, man." I thought for an instant, then said "Which movie do you want to go see?" He told me Chuck and Larry. I looked down at my time sheet, and I saw it was already an hour into the movie. They had missed a lot of the movie, almost half of it. "Heck, just go on back if you want to see it."

Surprised, the boy turned, and got his friend who had been hiding behind a Dippin' Dots machine in front of me. I let them both go, but I at least made them throw out the outside drinks they had before I let them go back.

Later in the night, two older guys asked about going in for free, saying that one of the other employees had said I would hook them up. The guy they were talking about was a good kid, and when I found out they wanted to see Harry Potter instead of Simpsons like I expected, I was relieved. Harry Potter would accommodate extra people much better than the packed Simpsons theatres. I told them they could go in, and they left to get two more people, a cousin and a friend to bring in, for a total of four.

Now, was all of this really so bad? The first two kids couldn't have bought tickets even if they had tried, the movies fall out of the ticket purchasing system 45 minutes after the start of the movie. There should have been a copy of Chuck and Larry running when they came, but it was cancelled due to "technical difficulties." In reality, it was cancelled so the Simpsons movie could be interlocked in that theatre, doubling the number of tickets we could sell for that movie. The kids thanked me, when they went in and when they came out after it ended. The other people were friends with one of my friends. I've thrown my weight around to help my friends at work. Just the night before, I had switched my friends from the crowded Simpsons theatre to the almost empty Simpsons theatre so they could get a better seat that wasn't right in front of the movie screen. My head manager had been being a bit of a pain to everyone that day, so maybe it was just revenge too. However, I didn't think of all of this at the time. I just thought "Ah hell, why not?"

I think the very fact that I have to try to think of revenge to justify my actions shows that it wasn't the best choice. I don't know if I'm really sorry about that though. I think I'd do the same thing again. I know it wasn't too good, but the bad I do seems like it's outweighed by the enjoyment I'm letting others have.

In any case, I have to be back at work in less than 6 hours. I think the lack of sleep might be punishment enough for what I did.

What is this all about?

Who has a blog entitled "Forgiveness?" Well, I do for the time being. I was having a bit of a personal reflection crisis a few days back, and I realized I couldn't forgive myself for certain things. I know God would forgive me, and other people might do it too, but for the time being, I couldn't just let go what I had done.

I thought to myself about it, and I can't remember all that I was thinking about, but I do remember wondering if other people feel the same way. So in my little computer nerd mind, the best idea I had was to make a blog. About forgiveness.

Really, I hadn't given the idea much thought past that. What would I do with this blog? Would I be forgiving myself of something in every entry? Would other people submit things they're sorry about? How often would I be able to write in here?

These are all things I still must figure out, but I really just felt that people need to feel forgiven. People need to forgive. There's too many grudges and too much bad blood between people in the world. Hell, most of the fighting in the Gaza strip seems to me to be getting to the point of "Well, somebody bombed us, so we should go bomb some of them." Both sides are too hard-headed or too angry to actually talk to the other side and try to work out peace. Nobody wants to die. All we need is a bit of forgiveness and understanding.

Somehow this "I don't know what I'm doing" post actually got somewhat of a purpose. Will I be able to be this lucky every day? I doubt it. I need to work out some ideas. So, I would like to apologize to you, my audience, because I have no idea what I am doing. I hope you can forgive me.