Couple reasons. First of all, I felt that anything I would write would be contrived, preachy, and blase' as of late due to life circumstances. I, the omni-journaler, hardly wrote a word of self reflection over Christmas break. Nary a peep. If you asked me who Katie Strommen was for most of December, I would answer "no clue". Sometimes I just don't write in my journal because it is too plain hard; sometimes waves of emotions are so strong they are better held at bay because to give them ink time on a page would unleash an ocean that would never be satisfactorily defined, never appropriately explored - a writer's worst nightmare is inadequate work. So. I had plenty of things I wanted to journal or blog about, but I was so out of touch with myself that it would have been a bunch of surface-y mumbo jumbo if I tried to express it on here.
Second of all, one of my core personal philosophies is a philosophy of passion. What is life without passion? It's dead. Colorless. Not worth living. Passion gives life meaning, passion makes me get out of bed in the morning, passion and care would fix a lot of problems in the world, and passion is an intrinsic part of belief, (I'm currently speaking from a semi-secular point of view and not necessarily about belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus. Stay with me here.) If I wrote anything just for the sake of writing but I did not believe it, if I did not wholeheartedly think and care about the words I was saying, there would be perhaps more words in more entries on this blog, but they would be totally frivolous at best, and at worst, they would be hypocritical. I think that in this life, you gotta be all in. We only get like 80 years here - live it up! Carpe Diem! Why do anything for the sake of just doing it? Why waste any time? Live, and live to the utmost.
HR told me one time, "Katie, never stop loving hard" and I love that she said that so much I toyed with the idea for 3o seconds of getting it tattooed under my armpit where every other girl seems to be getting tattoos these days. (I won't, my tattoo days are over, never fear...) Love hard. Good motto, right? Love is hard, but only because it is the strongest emotion out of all of them, and that much emotional currency balanced on such a volatile scale seems well poised to inherently do some damage. Anger can blaze, jealousy can worm away your soul, sadness can crush, but love will always conquer these. Never stop loving hard - never stop loving your friends and family hard, never stop loving things you're passionate about (writing) hard, never stop loving who you are hard, and most of all, never stop loving your Jesus hard. To do anything less and go through the motions is hypocrisy, the trait I hate most in life (and sometimes practice the most in life...) Never stop loving hard.
On this topic, have you ever gone on thinkexist.com? I love their quotes on there. With the whole carpe diem-mentality I try and practice, I often look up quotes to reinforce what I'm thinking about, and here are a couple good ones:
"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for yourself. Act for yourself. Face the truth."
-Katherine Mansfield
"You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on in the process"
-Ray Bradbury
A couple other things happened over Christmas that made blogging hard. Most obviously, my Uncle Skip died after a bout with leukemia. He was a strong Christian man so I have no doubt of his hereafter, but events like this always make you feel sorrow for the people left behind. Uncle Skip wasn't really my uncle - he was my mother's cousin - but that side of the family is closer to us Strommen's than the other side of our relations, and the looks on the faces on the three daughters and wife he left behind are enough to make anyone feel bad for awhile. Death always also raises tons of other questions about your own existence as you stare at that polished urn and, with a sucker-punch, remember that urn is all you are. We're only ashes and we're only here for a hair's-breadth of time - why are we wasting our time with pointless quibbles and squabbles about this and that? WHY?! Most importantly, does it not just ASTOUND you that someday you are going to die? Doesn't that absolutely blow your mind? We all live like we have forever, but forever may be up tomorrow. You're going to DIE. I'M going to DIE. Ethel down the street is going to DIE, the grocery clerk is going to DIE, and in 60 years, everyone you are sitting in a classroom with right now with probably be moldering in their graves or at least well on their way there. People stop breathing and we put them in a box and shove it in the ground and then slowly forget about them.
"Most people can do extraordinary things if they have confidence or take risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever."
- Philip Andrew Adams
"To die will be an awfully big adventure"
- Aristotle
Life is so weird.As if that wasn't enough to keep my brain occupied all break, my friend's lives are very dramatic and being home always throws us college students into the midst of potentially very hurtful family dynamics they can avoid whilst at school... throw in family Christmas parties, a WELS College rally, New Years, coffee dates all over Milwaukee, and making time for like 50 people you really want to see before going 7 hours away for another 4 months, and there was hardly any downtime to breathe, not to mention think. Christmas vacation? More like ChristmasSTRESSOUT. Phew. Just thinking about it all again is making me stressed!
Anywho, then I came back to MLC early in January and I'm in my second week of school already, but life has simmered down to a much more manageable pace. Kinda. The same stressors are definitely still there, but just living on your own when you can confront your own issues on your own time and in your own way make things so much more do-able... not having to ask your mom to borrow the car reaffirms that yes, Katie, you ARE an adult and can make your own choices, and that invaluable to me. Pride much? Ahhh, resolutions are calling my name.
So now it's 2011 and I have successfully just rambled on here with no form or structure, just passionate feelings. Normally I like posts to have somewhat of a thesis or overall, unifying theme to them, but for once I thought I'd give the ol' "stream of consciousness" method a try. This is the product. To catch up:
1) I haven't written for over a month because:
a. I wasn't personally reflecting and was not in touch with my personal life
b. I hate when I write things that I do not feel passionately about
2) Passion! Passion in life is grand and great and lovely! Passionless life and just going through the motions is hypocritical.
3) Never stop loving hard.
4) Quotes about risk and life and love!
5) Death is weird and makes you go swim in the well of deep, morbid thought.
6) We're all gonna die
7) Christmas was stressful but I am back at MLC and life is good.
Hmmm yes that's about it. Thanks for dealing with these apologetic rambles. Which leads to the title - band names! Lots of really juxtaposed things make terribly awesome band names. Apologetic Rambles? Or Apologetic Ramble? Awesome name. A couple days ago at lunch we decided "Bloody Lemons" would be a swell metal band. I think "Midnight Trampolines" is a legitimate awesome band name - it's copyrighted here so now you can't use it! I just think it's funny that these days, anything can be band name - "The Stale Pretzels?" Indie. You could go all day. I got a guitar for Christmas and I'm gonna be a big deal in 5 years... so I'm gonna need a great band name. Got any for me?
"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong" - I Corinthians 1:27
No comments:
Post a Comment