so it's been a good six months since the last update, I think that

it's time for a new edition.  I know that my moon has been missing me a least if no one

else has.  Further, I need to find a creative outlet for all this energy, I don't think that Nashville can handle all that I have to dish out. 

So you call yourself an artist?  What is an artist really?  There are many different interpretations to this proposition.  Let's see what a poet has to say about the word: 

“being an artist means:  not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come.  It does come.  But it comes only to those who are patient…..patience is everything! (rainer Maria Rilke).”

Rilke speaks of being an artist being connected to our very being and the process of growth that individual's endure in their lives.  Patience, waiting, he proclaims is part of the process of becoming an artist.  What does this waiting look like is my question? 

Perhaps not becoming disillusioned or discouraged at struggles or difficulties in life, but facing them and believing with hope that life will not continue on the same forever.  That there is a journey and a process of change that is occuring if you are seeking for this change, for truth, for love in its puriest and most lovely forms. 

This is my first thought about the idea of being an artist. 

batteries

so......another story with the MP3 player............

I exchanged my first MP3 player for a new one when it malfunctioned.....

so I tried out my new MP3 player by putting on my favorite music selection...as I sat in my car to listen to my music (currently I drive while listening to headphones as my car radio/CD player died a horrifying and grivious death.....is that illegal or dangerous?)

anyways, back to the MP3 player...so I was sitting in my car with a malfunctioning car radio/CD thingy, cruising and attempted to press the on button on my MP3 player...it doesn't work.  nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, not again.  no music the entire car ride again.

so I go back to Best Buy for the third or fifth time (who counts anyways).

the Geek Squad is very friendly and attentive and they take my MP3 player to their scientific and very technical equipment in order to solve the problem, I am sent to the MP3 section in order to pick out a new MP3 player (obviously it is poor manufacturing)

three minutes later a saleswoman approaches me to tell me that the Geek Squad figured out the problem........

of course, the battery was dead.  I gave the technilogical experts a dead battery MP3 player.  what is wrong with my life?

so, this is my new metaphor to life.  when something breaks in your life, check your batteries.  or check your perspective on the breakage, maybe it really isn't broken like you think or imagine, maybe you are in the best possible position for breakthrough and something amazing in your life at the time that you think something is dead.

God is a God of the impossible, a God of breathing new life into dead things....not just kind of dead things but really dead things.

So do you have any dead things in your life?  Ask God to breath new life into the dead stuff.  He will.  He is pretty much the best Geek Squad technilogical life expert you will ever meet or know........

go Geek Squad!!

(if anyone finds this offensive, I want to make a discolsure statement:  I, in fact, love geeks.  I consider myself a geek and if I was smarter in things like batteries I would be a member of the Geek Squad.)

so...........i have had an MP3 player since Christmas and I finally sat down to figure out

how to use it, thinking that it would be incredibly intense and difficult; yet, when I sat down I found the process to be pleasantly easy and smooth.  Now I have a working MP3 player!  yea! 

Just got back from Nashville Monday and it was amazing!  It renewed my love for Nashville, for my Nashville friends, and my desire to return to Nashville come as soon as I raise my support team!  yea!

So impending upon a big change, big undertaking I am feeling a little strange.  So there is my family, who does not understand what I am doing with my life.  and then there is me, who knows what I want to do with my life, trying to communicate it to people who don't understand the words that come out of my mouth half of the time.  Words suck sometimes.  I feel completely inadequate to describe to someone my experience and desire to be a campus minister, especially someone who has not had the same experience and desire ever.  It's like trying to describe to someone why you love peas and want to eat them all the time to someone who never tasted real peas, thought they had tasted real peas and that they were the worst experience they had ever had eating food.

Actually, the peas analogy does not really work.  Okay, I love ice cream.  It would be like trying to describe to someone why you love ice cream so much and why you want to eat it all the time, when their experience with ice cream has either been non-existent, or they ate a lot of ice cream with freezer burn all around it, or they would eat it really really fast and get major debilitating ice cream headaches.......it would be really hard to convince that person with words what you experience when you think about eating ice cream, when you eat ice cream without trying to shove the most amazing tasting real ice cream down their throats.........

anyways, this is how I feel sometimes.  I think I am writing more for me on this site.  One of my friends said that I have a "secret" xanga site simply because no one reads my site.  That's okay with me.  I probably deserve it.  I haven't been a very faithful or committed xanga member.  It has been much to sporadic to deserve an audience. 

It helps me a lot to write about my life in metaphors, it is like giving myself metaphor therapy. 

get excited!  more metaphors to come!

okay okay.  Moving might be harsh. or a little bit rash. I think that I was a little emotional when I wrote my last xanga entry. 

I have decided, in a less emotional moment, not to move.  I will move at a more appropriate, less spontaneous time.

However, if something opens up in Malta, I'm moving there.  (I've been practicing making, eating, and studying malts lately)

So tonight, I think that I played the funniest "sport" that I have ever played.  I played on my father's curling team.  It's on ice.  You have to get reallly low, push off of a little footie thing, slide, and throw a huge 30 lb. rock down to the other end hoping to hit the blue bullsize.  I feel twice.  pretty hilarious stuff.  I am not sure if you can count curling as a sport, but it is an olympic event.

Speaking of olympic events, I am coming to Nashville soon!  YEA!  get ready Nashville!  (yes, Sjirah, my parents okayed me driving by myself)

What will I do first you ask? 

Well, I will stop at Culver's and eat a malt on the way (they make their malts with eggs, hardcore)...............then I will pick up Sjirah, my friend (it's Jirah with an S in front of it) anyways, then we will drive for many hours, with the windows down blasting Shania Twain.  We will explode in Nashville at Wendy and Rachael's doorstep.  then hit the town running. 

starbucks.  starbucks.  there are not enough in Minnesota (too many Caribu's)....

if you are from Nashville and care about seeing me, call me

or if you are from any city that is on the way to Nashville, holla, I love making pit stops on the way and my goal is to take a record amount of time in driving down to Nashville (stopping in Miwalkee, Chicago (twice) (hopefully seeing the Blue Man show, my friend Holly and my friend Meg Nemeth, and possibly I will stop in Kansas)  (is Kansas on the way?  I don't know, I have never been). 

so I am thinking of moving. 

I have a couple of options.  My friend Julie invited me to move to Dallas, where I can join in on their mascarade party on New Years Eve.  The only problem is that it is eighty degrees in Dallas and I would miss the snow and frigid air too much.  Also, I really don't like how big the state of Texas is.  It is ginormous.  And beyond that, it is not a very friendly place for a cautious, ex-vegetarian, still on the verge of being vegetarian eater.  However, for some reason, I have a lot of friends who are Texan.  It is quite interesting how many Texans I have attracted (or have attracted me) as friends.  I don't understand, we are all quite different. 

The other option would be to move to Chicago.  One of my closest friends, Holly, lives in Chicago as well as my friend Meg.  My most favorite restaurant is there as well as the quaint, cuty Old Town.  Chicago really is an ideal city.  The only problem is that there are no Wild games there or Gopher games, I would probably miss watching hockey a whole lot.

Okay, then there is New York.  My best friend  in the whole world is there, Miss Rebecca Giefer.  I love walking the streets of New York and going to Central Park.  The only problem with New York is what and I quote, my best friend, Becca, assessed of New York, "it is making me mean."  I guess I don't want to live in a city that has the potential of making me mean (whatever that means).

Well, let's see here, there is Nashville.  I was planning on moving there in August anyways, a lot of my friends are living there already, so I could live with some of my friends there until I have enough money to buy an apartment.  that would be so much fun!  I do miss Nashville and the people who are living in Nashville right now..............I guess Nashville sounds like the best option so far.

But there is also the island of Malta.  I love the island of Malta and I always talk about the Maltanese people.  It would be great to live there, all they do is make malts, eat malts, and talk about malts.  It sounds very relaxing, friendly, and delicious!  The only problem is that they have pools full of malt that everyone jumps in during the hot season.  I don't really like getting sticky all that much and I think that a pool full of malt could make someone very slimy and sticky.

well, I will keep on pondering where I should move to, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know where a good place to move would be.