Longing

What do you think fulfillment looks and sounds like? Do you think we ever find completeness and contentment in this life, in this world?
I love my job, I really can say that and I am lucky to be able to. But it doesn't feel like the end.
I used to want to go overseas and do relief work, or to get involved in the big issues: human trafficking, immigration, clean water, etc. I still do. And I still don't: because at heart I am a homebody.
I love words and language: I want to become a writer. I want to sit and let the words pour out of me, and to make the world better with my writing, even if that just means writing a story that both lets someone learn something about themselves and gives them a place to escape. I want to study language, to know things about books and about language far beyond what I know now.
Lately, I've been craving the study of something concrete. I exist in a world of questions and shadows: human services is a land of no right answers. Language is a tenuous and changing thing. I have been wanting, actually deeply desiring, to study science and mathematics, things I used to loathe. I want to dive into something finite, something which contains yes and no, this but not that, something that abides by rules and reason. And yet, I know that the deeper I delve into something of rules and reason the more I will find places where even those rules no longer hold together.
Not to mention that, while fascinated by science and math, I've never been particularly good at either.
I want to travel the world. I want to see new things. I want to pour myself out.
I want to stay where it is safe. I want to surround myself with a small circle of those I intimately love. I want to embrace small moments.
This is what I think Ecclesiastes speaks to: that's why I love that book so much, why I read it beginning to end every couple of months.
If you're like me, you get caught up sometimes in the what ifs and imaginings, and the sheer possibilities make you feel lost in the abyss of a pattern you do not know the start or finish of. You feel as though you wander around blindly, hoping your steps are right, always wondering deep down if there's something more.
I can tell you from one who wanders just as you do: there is a time to cease questioning. There is a time to accept.
I know - we've always lived hearing don't accept, don't settle, don't be content. While we must each try our best, and refuse to accept mediocrity in ourselves, acceptance is at times what life is all about. To know you are doing a good thing - perhaps not the perfect thing, or the very best thing, but a good thing: such knowledge can be a precious gift, if you are content with it. There is no perfect answer - there is no one right path. There is no such thing as a place you cannot return from. Be happy with the place you are in. It is one of many good places.

"I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet^[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³ That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God." Ecclesiastes 3

Gathering

Hello friends! How's things? I decided to sum up life in general in a list, with letters rather than numbers just to shake things up. If you make it through all the way at the end there's a something at the end I need your help with...

a) I finished/won nano!! so exciting :)
b) Work is, I hesitate to say aloud, going pretty well. I feel like I sorta kinda maybe a little bit am getting the knack of it
c) I have failed to eat proper dinner three nights in a row. Suffice it to say that's going in my New Years goals it's gotten so bad.
d) p.s. soon I'll be coming out with a New Years Challenge - plan ahead, you know you'll want in on it!
e) I'm going to bake. Tonight. because I am quite desperate for some sweets! Any spectacular recipe suggestions?
f) I'm going to be doing community theatre - 98% certain. Half of me thinks it will be amazing, and the other half thinks it's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever had!
g) Here's the one I need help with: I've decided to enter some short story competitions, even though I'm usually novel-length verbose. The problem is, as always, ideas: I'm taking nominations for stories you wish would come into existence. Ideas, anyone??

Celebrate and Create

I for one had a marvelously wonderful Thanksgiving. You folks??
It was so wonderful in fact, that I crashed well before ten last night and slept straight on till morning. Thank you very much.
Two notes:
1) My lights are up! and my tree is decorated and my apartment is altogether quite cozy.
2) I behind on my word count for Nano for the first time all month - I haven't touched it since before Thanksgiving. Time to catch up? I'd say so. If only writer's block had not chosen this exact instant to set in. Thoughts? ideas? inspirations? Do help.

do you hear what I hear?

Today did not start out particularly well. I woke up at 6:30, looked at the clock, and thought blissfully to myself - my, how lovely it's Saturday and I can sleep until 7:30 so I am ready to go by 9:00 a.m. What a good morning. The next thing that came into my head was, Why is it so light out? I rolled over and looked at the clock again, and found the display reading 9:15. My hand immediately flew to my curlers and my mind to the issue of the people I was supposed to meet at 9:00, none of whose numbers were in my possession. Problem. I dashed around pulled on jeans and yanking curlers out left and right. Fool things didn't want to come out either! I was hiding in my apartment, pulling myself together, when a knock came at the door. I figured, half-dressed, it was not ideal to answer it and I woulds simply wait until they went away and then apologize on Monday. No such luck. They knocked again and again while I threw curlers madly and tried to find a clean shirt that didn't clash too hideously with my pants. Finally my phone rang, and on the second call I answered it.
So. embarassing. I am ashamed to admit that I did not talk them out of their assumption that I am a deep sleeper. I just went along with it - it was better than admitting that I couldn't answer the door because I had curlers in my hair and my pajamas on.
Anyways, long story short, they waited for me, so we all went to a craft fair where I found a gift for my sister's birthday and a lovely little wreath thing that is sooo cute and is hanging joyously in my living room now.
I also gave in, today, and listened to Christmas music. I've been resisting, stubbornly making myself wait, but I just was not strong enough anymore.
I also watched Elf, made chicken hotdish, and threw together a pumpkin dip to bring to my parents' for Thanksgiving. I had too much pumpkin and not enough cream cheese, so I added a bunch of cool whip - I think it turned out alright!
Tonight though - well let me just say, I fully intend on being asleep by 10:00. I will NOT sleep through another alarm. Tomorrow at least.

Some days...

There are some days that I suspect I am not old enough for my job and ought to run back to school and simple things for about ten years.
Then there are days like today when I know it!

A Month-ish-ly Summary

Well friends - I guess it's time to get all caught up. However, so many things have been happening and I am so exhausted at this point that this may be the most haphazard, twisted, non comprehensible piece of writing known to man. Prepare yourselves.

Part One: How I Know It's NaNoWriMo Season

1) I have stopped using conjunctions and hyphenated words. This adds to one's word count and is therefore essential to the ability to make it through the month.
2) I sit in my apartment and laugh maniacally sometimes - the result of reading the NaNoisms thread, where people post the misspellings and other unfortunate creations resulting from the mad dash to 50,000 words.
3) My dishes have been stacking up since the beginning. Namely, every. single. coffee. mug. I. own. is. dirty. It is VERY exasperating.
4) I have started to be able to block out portions of my day again. This used to happen in college when I existed on five to six hours of sleep and would sometimes come alert at some point knowing I went places and did things, but not quite certain how they occurred.
5) I've started making up words.
6) I use multiple adjectives to describe the most mundane things - the puppy's eyes were big brown pleading and sweet. Which they may have been, but I know for a fact there are less verbose ways to say it!

Part Two: The Return of the Old Me

I don't know if it was just the newness of everything here, but for some time I was doing pretty well - I was looking responsible to other people, I was carrying on in a more or less socially appropriate manner, and things were trucking along decently, if somewhat boringly (see made up words from part one). This has ended. The honeymoon is over, as they say, and my true self is showing it's inappropriate, stumbling, blushing self again.
Allow me to run over a few highlights:
Last week, I had to get an oil change. I brought a friend with me, and we went to Walmart so I could shop at the same time. Dropping the car off was no big deal. However, picking it up - well let's just say that they need to label their doors much more accurately. Basically there was this whole ordeal where we attempted to force a loaded shopping cart through a single-person door marked customer, then not knowing where to go since it led into the shop itself, we went out a side door, only to find ourselves on the opposite end of the shop from the car. So, in full view of no less than three laughing mechanics and possibly a customer, we proceeded to march around the entire building, still pushing a rattling shopping cart overloaded with plastic bags, and reach the car, where we then had to unload all the bags in front of the still-staring and snickering mechanics, then make our escape home.
At work on Thursday, I tripped. On the plain old carpet. In the middle of the giant, wall-length, floor to ceiling windows. Right at the front of our office. Three different times.
Coming home from work Friday night, I tried to open my front door using the beeper for my car. Because if it says unlock, it should unlock, right?
This morning, getting ready for church after a very late night of writing and then that random extra hour of sleep, I tried to use not mousse, but contact solution on my hair. May I point out that this is only November 6? As I tried to explain to my friend after the Oil Change Incident, these things just happen to me. I don't know why.

Part Three: Hearing Things

No, sarcastic person in the back, I heard you, and I am not manifesting my latent insanity. However, I have started an interesting assortment of quotes lately - it must be because I'm writing again, I'm always more attuned to the world then. Because this post is already far too long, I'll just share two of them with you, and then I'll be off.

1) My father, of course:
"Well a rolling stone gathers no moss - and that's Spanish. No más."

2) (Overheard at church)
Pastor: "We brag about many of the blessings God gives us, when they're beyond our control. We even brag about pointless things: My house is bigger than your house. My girlfriend is cuter than your girlfriend."
-Everybody starts laughing-
Pastor: "What? Haven't any of you done that?"
Husband down the row - leans to his wife -: "Is my girlfriend prettier than your girlfriend?"
Wife - backhands husband in the chest, then stage whispers: "I wouldn't know, I've never met her." -Then starts laughing crazily at her own self -

And that, my friends, if life lately.

On Hearing a Story

When you like to write, you sometimes get a teensy bit of a God-complex about your story. You know every tiny detail of every word, thought, and interaction every one of your characters will have from beginning to end.
And then you start to write.
And it allllll falls apart.
I was telling a friend of mine that I am going to do Nanowrimo and convincing her to do it with me, and as we were talking about it I gave her the synopsis of my plot, using your average filler "blah-blah-blah" for the parts i wasn't entirely clear on. When she teased me about it I pronounced my wording epic, and added that I didn't know yet whether the end of the book I've chosen to write is going to be poignant and haunting or sweet and charming. This is what she said:
"I guess it might be one of those instances where you won't know until the end. Let the story speak to you.
And if it says "blah-blah-blah" hold out for something a bit more profound. Because no, it is not epic."