My Brain

It may as well be goo. For the past week, I've been attempting to actually accomplish things, and instead, whenever I sit down to do them, my body gets all tired and my eyes hurt and my brain feels fogged up. Heck, even playing Kingdom Hearts was too much for me this past week!

And meanwhile, I'm counting down the days until our floor is quarantined due to health reasons. Alaina and Dana brought something back from their trip to Jamestown, Shelly's got a sinus infection, Erin's been coughing like no ones business for the past few days, and Kara had a fever a few days back.

I can't wait for break. The ability to sleep in will probably do wonders for my body. And a good meal - I cannot wait for that. Houghton had their Thanksgiving dinner tonight, and, it was okay. A few steps above what they normally offer, but nothing phenomenal. It made me yearn for the real Thanksgiving meal I'll get when I go home and my mom's cooking.

So, November has been National Novel Writing Month; or NaNoWriMo for short (don't ask me, I didn't make up the name). And originally, Alaina and I were going to attempt to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in that time frame; one month. And on paper, it sounds great. And it would have been. I did write about 12,000 words for my second book, and got me started on the ideas that will eventually fill the contents of it, but, as my brain has been mush recently, I haven't been able to get much past that.

I went home with Shelly over the weekend and had this grand plan to work on my book and get a good chunk done so I could feel accomplished. Instead, whenver I got that freaking laptop in my lap, I would start to write, and realized that it was crap that I was writing! So at one point, I remember I reread what I had written and hit the save button and muttered, "Well, that's all going to be rewritten in the future."

So I'm thinking, at the very least, I can keep attempting to plug away at it and try to get ideas down onto paper. The problem is, I don't actually know where some of these events are taking place yet. Oops. Yeah, that's the problem with this grand idea to make my story global. I don't want it to be a steryotypical story of "America is awesome so we only have the superpowered people on our side" idea. I want it to be something that would, idealy, unify the world through seven people that had never met before.

We'll see how that works out. Right now, I really should be working on my book. Which I think I'm going to scrap for now and go to bed, so I can get up tomorrow and go to breakfast since my stomach is gnawing at itself right now for something akin to food that isn't unhealthy, and then write after having some breakfast.

Look at that; I wrote more than one entry for the month. Go me! Let's shoot for another one and see where that takes me.

Quite Bad

I really am. At least in regards to this. I guess I just don't set aside enough time to actually call this a blog.

Okay, so. Life. Yeah, about that. So, I've been at Houghton approximately two months. Give or take a week. And, as weird as it sounds, I feel like I've known the people that have come to inhabit my life in these past two months a whole lot longer than the said time frame. I feel as though I've known them for...years. Or my whole life. It feels bizarre to think of it that way, but I do.

What brings it out? I dunno. I just live here.

But what's attracting me more is the fact that I'm actually growing. Not just mentally or physically, but spiritually. I haven't felt this...alive...in years. I look around a room and I feel God. Last night/this morning Kara and I were in the mood for a late night walk and wound up down by the track field. And God was gracious enough to turn out the lights so I could look up at the stars and have my breath taken away.

A sense of peace - real peace - filled me and I just said, to no one in particular, "Oh God, can I fly up there some day?" Kara answered my rhetorical question, but I don't remember what she said. All I remember is laughing and letting tears fill my eyes at the pure beauty of the night sky. I very well may have seen the stars like that before, but I don't remember it. I could see stars - millions of them - and multiple constellations. It was cold, and the air was chilling to breathe, but I felt so awake and completely in that God spot.

I didn't see any shooting stars, but I felt God. And that's what I needed. I needed to feel him alive in me and not just words on a page.

I've decided that I'm going to have to live somewhere like here - not necessarily here in Houghton or in New York - but somewhere where, on any given clear night, I can walk out onto my porch and look up, and see the stars. I get lost in them, and find in myself the peace of my soul I need. And I'm so thankful for that half hour of wandering around the track dwelling in God's grace and His peace.

I know I haven't reached the peak of my spiritual being yet, because I feel Him often - more than I knew possible - but I don't feel Him all the time. And until I learn that, I can't be the effective tool for the world He wants me to be. I'll get there, I know I will, and I'm content to travel along that path with Him as my guide.

And my future? I'm content, almost happy, at the ability to say, "Here ya go!" and hand it over to Him. In fact, just today, I was feeling His spirit compel me to open up to one of my floormates about my dreams - some of which I've never told anyone about. And it felt good to say, out loud, the things of my heart. Even if they're trivial. It was awesome to hear myself say what I had longed to say for years. I couldn't help but smile as I was speaking, because I could say it, and I knew she was listening.

What a feeling! It's so foreign to me, to speak and be heard. I've felt through so much of my life as though I speak and no one hears me, but all this time I've discovered that He's always been listening and waiting to let me be heard by other people at the right moments.

*Sigh* I could keep going, but for now, I am getting ready to commit to sleep. And I need to go scrub a drawing of a zombie platapus off my arm.