um, how does this thing work again?

ok, i can't resist. here's a pic of my niece. let's not ask about how she got here, but let's just focus on the fact that she exists makes the world a little more exciting.

=)

another year, another adventure...

mood
it feels like i cheated with a one night stand,
because now i feel awkward and we have nothing to talk about.
it makes me re-evaluating relationships

work
i work as a hostess at a resturant. its still considered a part time job, but i'm pretty much there six days a week. hours vary. at first i was annoyed, but now i'm used to it. i'm learning a lot about people, and dealing with people at work has taught me to roll my eyes. i seriously have never done it til recently. but in a way i'm kind of glad to be in a non-christian world. it makes my mission seem more relavent being in an openly broken and lost world.

influences
passion LA was subconciously motivating. i dropped a lot of junk, only i probably picked up some of it a week later. people aren't really aware of the things they drop on you sometimes, but i guess that's life. i was very encouraged and for a moment i remembered what it was like to believe and to be free. God is good.

new year thought
some things are just the way it is. i want to be okay with that.

maturity
i'm a little better now because i'm trying to be okay with it, but then i get thrown a curveball and i've struck out every time. it gets on my nerves and  i become rude. and then i become annoyed that i'm rude. and then i want to apologize for being rude, only to have it get on my nerves again. what a lousy cycle. i'll have to come up with a new strategy for this one.

i haven't really been on xanga for awhile, and so when i came back, there are all these new features i can use. its like features overload for me. (i feel old saying that.) i really don't feel like taking the time to utilize it, or else i'd become addicted and things would get pretty ugly.

life wasn't been very eventful when i didn't have stuff to do so when i finally got cracking, everything happened all at once and i've realized a few things about myself:

1.) commitment issues
its either that or indecision. so i was desperate for work, and i was looking for work in a whole lot of places. as a result, i ended up with two jobs. then i agreed to some other things and  now i have four 'jobs'. (note: commitment to jobs are not in order. they pretty much just all happened within two weeks.)

2.) weak stamina
i'm really tired by the end of the day. but this also leads to...

3.) poor time management
when you got no time, sleeping late is not a good idea.

4.) sinful nature
one of the most important things for one of my jobs is to be nice to people. i have to keep at it for about four hours straight. after about a week of this, i'm experiencing crazy road rage on the way home. exhaustion may contribute to it, but now i feel a lot less patient, and a bit more cynical. i just want to shut myself up and not talk to anyone, lest i go postal on people. i speculate that i may just be pretending to be nice, and that in reality i'm just masking as a nice person.

and this year i'd thought i matured a great deal. yet, as i look at these flaws, they were the same ones i was trying to deal with at the beginning of the year. maturity is pretty much all just a cycle, only with different situations, and with different degrees of it. but in the end, it always ends up with the same theme. if last year was with level 1, i'd say i'm on level 2 right now. and i''ll probably spend the next year working to get to level 3.

so if my life were a book, this coming year would be like chapter 25 or something.

previous chapters:
chapter 18 - freedom
chapter 19 - adjustment
chapter 20 - stepping out
chapter 21 - passion
chapter 22 - graduation
chapter 23 - growing up
chapter 24 - work

not that i haven't been maturing in my lifetime, its just that i haven't really paid attention to it til the last few years or so.

my new years resolution would be to fix these things about myself, but i have a feeling that i'd just be upgrading to some more advanced problems.

I had my computer checked out recently and I found out that one of the hard drives was dying. For the longest time it has been making this super loud sound that I can hear from the next room.  So after finding out the problem, I decided that now may be a good time to upgrade on some parts like RAM and stuff.

But then I also found out that my whole computer is like, ANCIENT in the PC world, and that the parts I need to "upgrade" were ultimately unnecessary, and it would probably be cheaper to just get a whole new computer from Dell.

I kind of like my computer. In a way, its like, my only friend. And for awhile I've been quite glad of its existence. After hearing a news like how its not up to par with the world made me a bit sad, and even annoyed. I mean, its been doing fine for the things I need, I can go online, it opens programs quickly, play music, movies, and games. The only thing "wrong" with it is that its just old.

Needless to say, I think I may have to deal with some addiction issues.

So, as life is often full of lessons, I have deducted something from it:

The world will continue to move, zoom past you and all that fun stuff. Often it is hard to keep up, and even if you do fall behind, it doesn't necessary leave you incapacitated to function. There is always a chance to catch up, and somehow life is supposed to be a journey, not a short sprint (most of the time). Shame is something that other people impose on you, and as long as you faith in what you believe in, with some common sense, who cares what others think!

Now, if only I can get myself to believe that.

Which leads me to the concept of trust...

i visited an "open house" at a seminary today. the orientation was kind of boring, because they talked about what degrees you can take and what classes are part of it. i wasn't that interested because i still didn't know how going to seminary was even necessary for me, much less possible for me yet. 
nonetheless i decided to sit in a theology course that afternoon, and i totally enjoyed it. i got to see how education is at a higher level, where that knowledge isn't quite unattainable, but still pretty high up there. i had to focus all my attention on the professor just so i can get an idea of what he was talking about. and what i got was some good stuff. i keep forgetting how much depth there is to God, and that reminder today in class really encouraged me to think a lot more about God's power of atonement and restoration through Jesus Christ. today's talk answered some questions i had about evangelism, and i learned that theology isn't really comprehendible to someone who hasn't grown up at church. so i guess, to me, theology is like steak for the brain: its unpractical, but sooo good.
during the second half i visited a hermeneutics class. i heard it was supposed to be super hard. so i felt challenged to be see if i can get it. but unfortunately, it was a bit slower than i had anticipated, and i probably would have enjoyed it more if the professor got past the course requirements and into the actual lesson before the break. i guess i can't expect much, because it was the first day for that course. but by then it was five, and i was ready to go home.