direction and brain vomit

first, direction.

I think I need to figure out a direction. Sad to say, but I think I wander from thing to thing, like a child who's entertained by a toy, then quickly kicks it out of the way once he's bored. Even though I'm back to taking four classes now, they don't seem that time consuming. I seem to be relatively keeping up without having no time to breathe -- which is great. It's just I waste my leftover time. 

Or maybe not waste, but I kind of aimlessly do things. Taking pictures seems fun, I'll do that. I should probably be working out, maybe I'll do that. Oh, these people are playing League, I'll join them.

I think direction is important though, and it's easy to see if you're aiming for something during these times of rest. During times of busyness, you might not have time to rest, so you may feel like you're not wasting time, even if you are, because what you are doing has nothing to deal with your direction. 

So, I need to think about that, or else this quarter will slip by like the others do.

second, brain vomit. (this is where I advise you to stop reading.)

Going to New Com's event on Friday was really eye-opening for me, really pushing me to seek more than I seek. People wrap themselves in blankets under a bridge on a 0 degree night, while I'm bored entertaining myself in my fancy apartment. 

And aaiv. Oh aaiv. Something about us is just not good. And I don't know what to do about it, or if there are things to do about it. Maybe it's just meant to be the way it is, but it's so easy to look to the past, or look to other fellowships, and say, "Why not us?" Of course (and this is becoming one of my favorite sayings), the grass is greener on the other side. Maybe we're too big. Maybe we have too much structure -- and more structure incoming? 

So there's ways in way we fail and suck, so in order to combat our failures we create structure around that to make sure we don't suck and fail. I get that. I word it very negatively, but essentially that might be why the structure of a church exists. Or prayer meetings, or small group, etc. But when you have a structure to every part of Christian life, something seems off. I'm a cynic though, I seem to against most ideas that come up. 

But I don't blame core, and I don't blame anyone specific. If there's anyone I should blame, it's ourselves, and in that -- it's me. Our fellowship is not perfect, and if it were, well Jesus would be here too. Perhaps I just wish the gospel reconciliation were easier.

But, as Nick says, if ain't hard, it ain't worth it. Okay, he didn't use "ain't," but I kind of like the southernness of that for some reason. I think that applies to most (all?) things. Because man, it's hard to yearn after Christ, to seek holiness, to pray for others, to seek reconciliation, to wait .... but if it was easy would it be worth it?

"It's about the journey." lol. These sayings that we see as cheesy now were probably thought of by some deep philosopher way back when -- there's much truth to them. I remember reading Chris Nho's post, saying something like what if God gave you all that you wanted right now. Would we still seek Him? Would we have reason to trust him? Or would we be like, peace God, thanks for the _____. 

And I idolize adventure. After visiting LA and Seattle this past summer, both of which were great, I have this strong sense of wanderlust, and wanderlust isn't bad. The problem is (and back to the grass is greener on the other side) that I always want to be somewhere else. But that's so dumb. When my friends from DE came to visit me in here, that just made me realize how lucky I am to go here, and live here. I'm sure they have a case of GG (greener grass) too, but it just put things in perspective for me.

I think for the first time today, it hit me about my future. Like wow, I will be here for another 3 years. And college will be no more. That's it. This thing that people hype up, "your college experience," will be over. Well, first I think hype is bad, and life is to be enjoyed at all times, in different ways. But still, now is a time when 8000 people, similarly aged, from all around the country (edit: WORLD), live in this little square mile and live life. And we're all connected largely by being a Northwestern student, and there are smaller subgroups on subgroups, from the Asian/Asian American groups on campus, to AAIV, etc. Yes, direction, Rich.

When you code, there's usually a lot of googling. Let's say I'm writing something that reads twitter data about ...idk, the snow. Let's say you're trying to predict which regions are getting the most snow just off twitter data. (Actually kind of an interesting idea...). There are parts of the project that you really don't know, that every developer ends up googling -- how do you get an API key to twitter, how does their API work. But there's a certain point where you can start taking the knowledge you've gained and making your own decisions on how to code. Or you can be a laziness ass/crappy developer and find really specific code that does exactly what you need to do. 

And I think the same goes for direction in life. While I see people around me and pictures online of people doing extremely cool stuff in life, I need to pave my own path. While sure, it's not that I can't do repeats of what other people are doing, it's just we're all different, and we each have different paths and directions and mine is mine, and yours is yours. 

All that being said, I'm still excited to travel to LA for spring break. I need to pay back my parents some day.