the night ahead of me
.....is long and cold
.....without your presence
when i pull you close
.....to drink long of your wind and white noise
.....your great warmth wafts
..........near to my frigid extremities
..........but nearer still to my heart
the happy red glow of those ancient coils
.....illuminate my soul
.....freeing the gears of my mind from their hibernation
the hum of your anachronous motor
.....louder and heavier with each use
.....notifies the world that
..........though your technology is not long for this world
..........you will trudge forward
.....blessed in your burden
.....proud of your plight
..........to warm the human race
.....until the last gasp of hot air
..........is expelled from your vents
and when it does
.....those who kept you close
.....will mourn the death
..........of winter's workhorse
____________________________
silly poetry for a worknight. here's to avoiding homework already! :)
Tuesday, January 12
Sunday, January 10
a devotional for a new decade
ok, so four months is a long time to avoid depart from the blog-writing world. but in the spirit of a new year, new decade, new semester, i thought i'd stop by (believe it or not, i did miss it).
like so many harbingers of 2010, i've given a lot of thought to resolutions in recent weeks. specifically, the place they have in our culture and whether or not i'm gonna make any this year. for many people, a new year means a clean slate--a fresh start which should bring with it the opportunity to start anew, casting off old/useless habits and replacing them with new, more healthy/productive ones. usually we start out strong--making lists and plans, signing up for things left and right, making promises to ourselves and proclaiming them to anyone in earshot. but we get tired. we get lazy. we lose steam and inspiration. we find excuses more appealing than the effort it takes to sustain promises to ourselves.
to be honest, i'm not so sure i even want to make any resolutions this year. i feel like i already started 2010 in a much better place than 2009 in lots of ways--why muss it up by promises to be broken? i link my aversion to the resolution to the desire to stave off jinxing the progress i made over the course of 2009, haha.
what would one call a resolution that is more of a continuuation of progress toward a long term goal? i don't want enumerate the areas i've been working on as resolutions for the new year for fear that they will subsequently be treated with the same irreverence as most new year's resolutions--thrown under the bus, swept under the rug, fallen off and dragged unceremoneously behind the wagon. how can i find and harness the zen needed to carry me through the semester?
what seemed to work best in 2009 was the "fake it till you make it" approach to life. my response to most questions was "who me? i'm fine. things are peachy." and most of the time, i was lying a little bit. but, with the rich irony only god's sense of humor can produce, the more i lied, the more it became true. because rather than denying the fact that things were iffy or wallowing in the fact that they were, i just...pretended they weren't that bad and i could totally handle it. regardless of whether this was true to begin with, it eventually was.
i pretended like i could handle school, and surprise! i did great. (even earned my masters this year!) i tried to carve out time for things i wanted to accomplish in my week, which meant not letting things that were "less important" slide, and i ended up in the best physical shape of my life and eating relatively healthily. and all the "more important" things ended up getting accomplished anyway. i've tried to rely on my husband to pick up the slack in the houseworks and he's actually trying. basically, i tried to let go of my perfectionism in all walks of life (in favor of a good faith effort in all parts possible), and ended up doing well in pretty much all parts. amazing how that works!
so i guess my resolution to begin this brand new decade is more of the same: fake it till i make it. i'm ignoring the ever-diminishing voice in the back of my head that says that the other shoe is gonna drop eventually, demolishing the house of cards that faith built. but! for the time being, this (read: walking blindly into the fire and hoping that i grow to be flame-retardant) is working for me. perhaps in the interim, the skills that i am currently "faking" will become solid enough to withstand the winds of change that eventually threaten even the most resolute of resolutions. can the aforementioned house of cards morph into straw and then wood and then brick? isn't that kind of what a graduate program is all about? getting more and more experience, becoming more and more confident and thus more and more solid?
i certainly hope so.
like so many harbingers of 2010, i've given a lot of thought to resolutions in recent weeks. specifically, the place they have in our culture and whether or not i'm gonna make any this year. for many people, a new year means a clean slate--a fresh start which should bring with it the opportunity to start anew, casting off old/useless habits and replacing them with new, more healthy/productive ones. usually we start out strong--making lists and plans, signing up for things left and right, making promises to ourselves and proclaiming them to anyone in earshot. but we get tired. we get lazy. we lose steam and inspiration. we find excuses more appealing than the effort it takes to sustain promises to ourselves.
to be honest, i'm not so sure i even want to make any resolutions this year. i feel like i already started 2010 in a much better place than 2009 in lots of ways--why muss it up by promises to be broken? i link my aversion to the resolution to the desire to stave off jinxing the progress i made over the course of 2009, haha.
what would one call a resolution that is more of a continuuation of progress toward a long term goal? i don't want enumerate the areas i've been working on as resolutions for the new year for fear that they will subsequently be treated with the same irreverence as most new year's resolutions--thrown under the bus, swept under the rug, fallen off and dragged unceremoneously behind the wagon. how can i find and harness the zen needed to carry me through the semester?
what seemed to work best in 2009 was the "fake it till you make it" approach to life. my response to most questions was "who me? i'm fine. things are peachy." and most of the time, i was lying a little bit. but, with the rich irony only god's sense of humor can produce, the more i lied, the more it became true. because rather than denying the fact that things were iffy or wallowing in the fact that they were, i just...pretended they weren't that bad and i could totally handle it. regardless of whether this was true to begin with, it eventually was.
i pretended like i could handle school, and surprise! i did great. (even earned my masters this year!) i tried to carve out time for things i wanted to accomplish in my week, which meant not letting things that were "less important" slide, and i ended up in the best physical shape of my life and eating relatively healthily. and all the "more important" things ended up getting accomplished anyway. i've tried to rely on my husband to pick up the slack in the houseworks and he's actually trying. basically, i tried to let go of my perfectionism in all walks of life (in favor of a good faith effort in all parts possible), and ended up doing well in pretty much all parts. amazing how that works!
so i guess my resolution to begin this brand new decade is more of the same: fake it till i make it. i'm ignoring the ever-diminishing voice in the back of my head that says that the other shoe is gonna drop eventually, demolishing the house of cards that faith built. but! for the time being, this (read: walking blindly into the fire and hoping that i grow to be flame-retardant) is working for me. perhaps in the interim, the skills that i am currently "faking" will become solid enough to withstand the winds of change that eventually threaten even the most resolute of resolutions. can the aforementioned house of cards morph into straw and then wood and then brick? isn't that kind of what a graduate program is all about? getting more and more experience, becoming more and more confident and thus more and more solid?
i certainly hope so.
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