Vida. Life.

Brown, black and white. We will fight.
Brown, black and white. We are Pro-Life!

I want to be a Middle Schooler?!?

So right now I'm sitting in the school library, yes, that does make me sound like a nerd.

Most libraries are silent, or at least somewhat quiet but our library doubles as the "after school care" room so that means it's the opposite of silent and sounds more like a gym than a library.

I guess it's a good thing I'm not trying to work... instead I'm get to use this time as a lab to study middle school students. Yes, that is weird, but today I got to go to two chapels (aka assemblies) one for high school students, and the other for middle school students. Most people would think that would be really boring, but I thought it was kinda cool.

The first chapel was the high school chapel, first thing in the morning singing praise songs with high school students who are too cool to sing doesn't necessarily work too well. I'm not sure why, but for some reason speakers seem to think that high schoolers don't learn through games or activities, or anything exciting at all. Instead they choose to be as boring as possible. Yeah, we might not be as responsive as the middle schoolers to those things, but that doesn't mean we don't want them. Maybe that's want we need to learn... if we want people to be exciting, we have to be responsive. I'm not saying that would work, but maybe we should try it sometime. Anyway, the high school chapel speaker had a good message and the Bible being like a GPS. The Bible is the positioning system for our life, and it was really good... but at the same time it lacked something... but I don't feel like going into theology...

Now moving on to the Middle School chapel. We had choir right after chapel so we decided to stay for their chapel rather than go to class (we had choir, so no we were not skipping). There were two main differences about this chapel, first the chapel was lead by 8th graders who know what their classmates like, and tried to make it fun. Second, the excitement level in the room was WAY higher. I don't mean it was just a little different. I mean, it was like the high school students were on Tylenol p.m. and the middle school students were on coffee that was half sugar. I honestly wished, for probably the first time since getting out of middle school that I could be back there having that much fun just sitting there. When did that change? When did we get too cool to have fun? Yes, I know most people don't like having teachers watch them and really don't want to be there... but does that really mean we have to sit there sulking? Come on, we can have fun even if the teachers are wet blankets... I mean wonderful fun-loving people (p.s. I love you mom).

So that's why I'm gonna try to live like a middle schooler, don't worry I'm not going to purposely tell annoying jokes and then laugh at myself... or yell just for fun, at least not at school... or have a super dramatic fight with my best friend... or start saying lol instead of just laughing... or feel the need to tell stores about what I ate for breakfast to my whole class..or any of those things. I'm just going to try to raise my excitement level a little bit.

That's all I've got, Paisleybokeh <3

p.s. sorry about my over usage of 'schoolers' I just realized that it's not a word... at least not according to the dictionary, but since I use it a lot and I started to change every one to students and I realized how nerdy that sounds since i used the phrase like 6 times in this blog post I'm just going to leave it and you can live with it...

I have a dream...

Or do I? That is the question... or is it?
So lately I've been thinking about two things:

1. What in the world do I want to do with my life?

2. What's the big deal with being positive, and does the Bible actually tell us to be positive or is, that just some American mantra made up by someone who thought it sounded cool?

First of all I've decided to come up with my ultimate dream/job/goal for my life and then from there maybe I'll be able to decide what is actually manageable. So I've decided that my ultimate job would be to travel to every single country in the world as a photographer. Then I would write a blog about it. Then that blog would became famous. Then a popular publishing company would ask to make the blog into a book. Then the book would sell a million copies. And then I would be able to travel all over the world again and meet with all the people I met on the first trip. That is my ultimate dream.

However, I realize that at the rate I'm going it's not going to happen... I'm 5/195's or 1/39th of the way to being finished the first part of my dream (I've been to Canada, the US, Honduras, Mexico, and Papua New Guinea. Also, if you were wondering there are approx. 195 countries in the world at the moment). So how do I make that dream something that is even plausible to dream about, or would it being plausible mean it's not a dream? I know, I have way too many questions. Anyway... I guess the best way to make this a reality would be to continue with my photography, become a pilot, or a missionary pilot, or maybe just get rich doing something entirely different... yes, that could include marrying a really rich cool guy who likes traveling. But I promise I'm not thinking about that quite yet.

Of course, if none of that is in God's plan for my life it's not going to happen, but I don't quite know and probably wont ever know what God's plan for my future is so for know I'm gonna let myself dream. This blog is turning into a really long conversation with myself so feel free to quit reading now. Actually, if you've even gotten to this point, congratulations. Moving on, I think this blog is written exactly how I think on a regularly basis so if you're really confused right now, welcome to my life.

Back to my dream, what does it mean to dream? How many of you guys, all three readers :) have ever had a dream come true? I've always felt like my dreams where not mine, I'm pretty good at copying the people around me. So, even if this dream didn't originate from my own thoughts, it might be the first one that isn't a direct copy of something I heard someone say... it's actually changed and become mine. Does anyone else feel that way? Like everything they like they stole from somebody else... nothing is truly original. And know that I've written more than anyone sane person would read of one blog I'm going to move on to the next topic.

Positivity and the Bible. No, I didn't come up with this topic on my own but I've heard about the whole positivity from more than three people or places in the last couple weeks I decided it was time to think about it. No, I can't think about something without blogging because I just found out how fun blogging is.

First off, I'm going to give you my definition of positivity:
To me being positive is not being negative (I know, that's really obvious), being encouraging, having hope, being willing, having an open mind, and most of all being able to accept the things that other people do that aren't necessarily cool/nice without getting super mad. Yes, that is an extremely strange, complicated, and broad definition of it. I just checked dictionary.com's definition of positive and I was surprised that my definition actually matched (dictionary-positive).

Now that I've decided to on a definition I'm going to compare it to the Bible... or at least I'm going to try. Forgive me if I mess up, this is the first time I've every done this.

1. Not Being Negative... I'm just going to skip this part of the defintion...

2. Being Encouraging- I have no doubt that God wants us to be encouraging. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." Encouraging each other, especially brothers and sisters in Christ, as "missional" Christians seems like something we should put a lot of time into... and you're wondering, actually you're probably not, but then why did I say 'especially brothers and sisters in Christ' I said that because [this is a run-on and I am now going to switch to a new sentence.]. It's not only we who are being "missional"... whatever that means, it's also the other Christians around us, and they need encouragement just like the rest of us. Maybe someday I'll come back to this but this is just getting too long so I'm going to move on to the next part of the definition.

3. Having Hope- 1 Thessalonians 1:13 "We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul was speaking to the Thessalonicans, but we're a lot like them... I think... and endurance is inspired by hope, which means being positive.

4. Being Willing/Having an Open Mind- David said to Solomon, "acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him will a wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts." -1 Chronicles 28:9 So, being positive=a good attitude=being willing (maybe this had to do with dreams too, being willing to follow God's plan even if it isn't your dream).

5. Being Accepting- Does this mean being forgiving? Matthew 5:44-45 says, "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

Now that I've said all that my decision is that yes, being positive is REALLY biblical. Sorry It's so long...

That's all I've got, Paisleybokeh ♥

Honestly, I took this picture like five minutes ago which means by tomorrow morning I probably wont like it... but for now I really like it.

The leopard-cheetah-cat thing (I can't separate the members of the cat family :) and elephant Andrew (http://ahornor.blogspot.com/) got from Africa, and I can't help but want to use them in a picture. I'll try to get one that's more like what I was looking for some other time, when I'm less busy, but for now the lighting in this picture is enough to make me happy with it.

Whenever I think about Africa I think about this song... I personally think this is the best version, but hey, whatever:http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=VVofaVu_yfc


Also, I think I'm going to start writing two blogs a week, one with my random thoughts and another with a picture...

Cupcake

I really don't like the composition of this photo... or the color, but for some reason a cupcake just sounds really good right now. This picture was taken last year on my old camera, which happened to have a broken screen and no viewfinder making it surprising that i even got the cupcake in the shot :).

Blog World... a.k.a. Strangeland

Blogging. Blogging is fun, I'm not sure why, but there's something about it.
I rarely write journals and I never write stories, but for some reason blogging is different. It's not that masses of people are going to read this and be deeply moved by it. I might have a few family members who are going to read what I write, but that's it. It's not that I have so much more to say, in fact the idea that other people might read this actually limits what I can say. Any anecdote I might write down about family should be edited, not that it would be, in order to keep from offending anyone. This would also apply to friends if I felt the need to share that I have a blog with them. So, if I can't blog about family and I can't blog about friends, what's left? Honestly, with my life, not much is left. That's why I continue to wonder why blogging is so wonderful.

Maybe it's the idea that someone, somewhere could one day run across this blog and find what they're looking for. This is highly unlikely because so far I've only put up two pictures.

Could it possibly be that being able to say "I have a blog, you should check it out." makes people feel good? Nope, not me at least. If I was my own friend I would be probably be laughing at myself right now. I mean really, how absurd is it to write down whatever I want to and put it on the internet? Who cares?

What makes blogging so inviting? What about blogging makes me want to write things that I would never sit down and write otherwise? I have established that nothing about blogging makes it different. So why am I sitting here? Why am I typing? Why am I about to click the 'post' button?

This picture was taken on the last day of school last year. My friend and I were bored, so we decided to go to the playground and take a few pictures. This is what happened.

Picture taken from the 60th floor of the Chase Bank building in downtown Houston.