Hot Summer Nights

I got to experience The Modern Antiques live for the first time tonight.  I only got to hear a few songs, but it was a good start.  Great stuff! :)  A perfect way to start the weekend...

I feel like July is going to be good.

Nearly 24 years later...

I'll write more tomorrow, but for now, I just wanted to tell an interesting story:

I was talking to my friend Aaron tonight.  Granted, I don't know Aaron entirely well, but the times that I've talked to him, I've found that I've enjoyed the time, so we'll let that slide.

Anyhow, Aaron was telling me how he is doing an internship in Racine and I mentioned that I was from Burlington, which is very close.  He then mentioned how he has family in Burlington, and slowly, 2 and 2 started to come together.  His last name....Burlington...

So I asked if his grandpa was a doctor and sure enough, he was, but retired about a decade ago.  

As chance would have it, his grandfather was the man who delivered me into this world almost 24 years ago.  We are talking the first human touch that I ever felt was this guy's grandpa.

It's almost serendipitous, isn't it?

didn't even make it 3 days

My attempt to not think for a week has failed.  I guess I should have gone with a more realistic goal.  A week was just something that was not attainable.  I simply set myself up for failure.

I'm not going to lie.  I feel like crap.  It's just been a bad few days.  

And I've slept 2 hours out of the last 40, so that's just making things all the worse.  And it doesn't look like there's too much hope in sight for a whole lot more sleep tonight.  

This is one of those times when I'd really like to find a way for myself to escape myself.  

Hopefully this will all pass quickly.  

what.the.crap.

is it really only tuesday?  

i'm really hoping that this week takes a turn somewhere.  

the pesky mosquito in my room

there is currently a horribly pesky mosquito flying around my room.  i can't seem to kill it but it has bitten me about 6 times.

oh what a metaphor for life right now...

i suck at this.  what "this" is...well... yeah.

what the crap?!

Ok, so out of boredom, I went on facebook and was browsing around. 

 You know all of those applications that everyone adds and then, as if them adding them wasn't bad enough, but they send you 320,984,302 invitations to do the same?  We've all been there.  We've all unfriended someone due to their compulsion to continue to send invitations that you care nothing about.  (Don't lie.  You know you've done it.)

Well I've got a daunting number for you.  Aside from the Zombie application, Funwall! (as if the other wall is boring?) and MyStarbucks, did you know that there are 29,681 other applications that can be added to your Facebook page?  Made you throw up a little bit in your mouth, didn't it?

I think there should be an application that allows you to view the people that have the most applications.  I almost want to add as many as I can just to see how many facebook will allow me to have.  

i think way too much

I have come to the conclusion that I think entirely too much.  

And that I also use the word "incredible" so frivolously that it doesn't even maintain its originally because everything has been brought up to that level.  

So in an attempt to lighten the mood, I will write of nothing serious for....we'll try a week.  I'm curious as to whether I can actually do it.  I tend to only be inspired to write by things of significance.  But maybe this will be a cool challenge to myself.

So here goes...

Day 1

....

.......

Ok, I think I've got something.  I asked someone what their biggest pet peeve was today.  Their response was "I don't really have any pet peeves.  I guess my biggest pet peeve is when people ask me what my biggest pet peeve is."  I'm sure that they thought by answering this way that they were being clever and sarcastic.  Doesn't that just seem like a self-defeating pet peeve, though?  Irony at its finest.  The shear fact that biggest pet peeves are their pet peeves.  Wait what?  That's even too much for me to think about.  Ouch.  That one hurt a little bit.

I have no idea what I'm babbling about right now.

I'm going to end up with skin cancer.  Even in my attempts to put sunscreen on every morning when I get out of the shower won't keep me from forgetting some area of my body that is inevitably going to be exposed that day.  Saturday, I went fishing with my parents on the lake near our house for about 3 hours and managed to burn the upper part of my legs, a little part of my shoulder where I didn't get sunscreen and my shirt moved, the upper part of my forehead that wasn't covered by my bandana and that I missed with sunscreen, and the nice little strip on my lower back where my shirt came up while sitting.  I either need to get better at putting on sunscreen, or I need to wear clothing that complete covers my body and is all one piece.  (hmm...I wonder what that would look like...)

On the upside, I caught 4 fish and learned how to fillet them!

Alright.  That's enough for now.  I'd better stop before I come up with some metaphor for how filleting a fish relates to my life.

discovering the difference

Ok, this entry has a possibility of coming across a little ...odd.  So please bear with me and try to understand while I rant a little bit.

I went down to the Terrace tonight to hear a little bit of the open mic night and just about half a quarter life crisis.  I realized how different life is compared to how it used to be in college and I really started to become nostalgic...but almost sick for it.  

After a little bit of analyzation and a quick 20 minute chat with Dave (it's good that he's getting used to hearing me ramble, picking out the meaningful points and elaborating on them now :P ) I have figured out that it was the people in that time period of life that made the difference.  

Let me try to elaborate here...

First of all, in college, people who are a bit more free-spirited tend to be found more often.  But as you ease out of college, people get 9 to 5's...the SUV...the 2.5 kids...and they lose that freedom.  But the fact is, I can never lose that.  I will never lose that.  There's nothing wrong with being that person.  In fact, these people are essential and provide balance to my life and the world.  (And from a ministry perspective, they are so important in proving to be "insiders" in ministry and providing resources for those of us who cannot quite fit into that role.)  But it is just that it is not in my nature to be that.  I will never be that, even though there are times when I wish I could be.  My soul would literally die in that situation.  

But along with that, people who are that look at me and see that I am different.  This has been affirmed so many times, especially recently, that I can't even keep count.  I will always be the free-spirited, strawberry-picking, floppy hat-wearing, sit-on-the-front-porch-in-a-rocking-chair-drinking-lemonade Rae that I am.  I will write and look at people differently and see metaphors in trees.  I will seek out adventures and get stir crazy when I'm stagnant.  

This is my nature and who I am.  I love who I am.  And I love that people find me interesting because of that.  I love that that is the reason people like me.  (I think...?)

But then there comes this aspect.  And this is where this subject could get touchy.  Let me just preface this by saying that I LOVE my friends that I have and value them beyond a point that they will never understand.  I appreciate the things I have learned because of them and the way that they have stood by me as I have figured anything and everything out about myself.  But the fact is, I feel like there are only a very very few who are similar to me in this aspect.  And I think that most of my friends would agree with this.  There are not many people that I can connect with on this level.  Even when I think about the girls that I consider my best friends, they are not like me in this respect.  

See, the ones that are like me in this area move away.  Because that is in their nature.  To seek out new adventures, too.  And that is beautiful!  But where does it leave us?  

My Myers-Briggs personality test revealed that I have the personality type known as "the inspirer."  When I heard this, you should have seen the imaginative things that went through my head.  And when friends have heart to hearts with me about who I am, this is the general idea behind the conversations.  That the way that I am...the ways that I am different...do inspire.  This is something that came as a great surprise to me and still does, but when I think about it, I love the idea that I can play this role sometimes.  

But it comes with a dilemma:  

If people look at me and become inspired or motivated, that's amazing.  But where do I get that inspiration from?  

It's like having the O Negative blood that I have.  It is a universal donor but can only receive from itself. 

I need people like myself around me.  I need that balance of having the people that aren't like me and the people that really understand and see the world the same way that I do.  But the conundrum is that it is not in the nature of people like me to stay put for very long...

So I guess the point of this is that I feel like I really only know a few people at this point in my life who are similar to me in this way and I'm craving more, but I have no place to find them.  They were easy to find in college because everyone seems to have some element of this in them in college, plus, universities just seem to be a thriving place for these people.  But then they leave...

or they change...

So I am stuck at a stalemate, I guess.

I hope that this didn't come across in a bad way at all.  It wasn't meant to by any means, but merely to point out a difference in types of people and the consequences that it can have on the various types. 

Again, I LOVE the friends I have.  I would be no where without them.  But I think they would all agree the things I had to get out here.  

oh my

So in the midst of all of this crazy weather, I was trying to figure out a place that I could go with Habitat in some random foreign country to go and build and serve.  My need to get out of this country and experience another culture has been growing greatly with the 1 year anniversary of the last time I exited our boarders.  

And then I got smacked in the face with something the other day.  

We've got a HUGE need within an hour of Madison.  So with that, I'm working on organizing a group to go do some flood relief work.  So we decided last night at about 10:30pm that we should really try to get on this and within 12 hours, it has all really come together.  

So if you are reading this, in the Madison area and looking for the opportunity to go love a community that is hurting, let me know.  We're moving on it. :)

On the other side of it, the last 24 hours have just been in.sane.  I only slept for about 4.5 hours last night because I was working about 3940283 things that needed to be done, but I woke up feeling like I drank 6 cups of coffee on an empty stomach.  

And it was the first night of restless sleep that I think I've had in like a year or something like that.  I usually sleep hard and fast, but last night, I tossed and turned all night.  Something must really be riling me up.  

On another front: Support raising is moving along.  I've got a first stab at a support letter and a list of about 100 people that I'd like to send it out to, but only about half of those addresses.  We'll give it a first run though after I get another draft of a letter done.  

Ok!  Time to jump in the shower and take a break from all of this by going to work. :P