nathaniel ogden kidd (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bland_hyssop) wrote,@ 2006-04-21 20:04:00 |
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In Confidence...
Today I went home and I cleaned my room. What a depressing experience. I have so much shit, and my life is pretty much worthless.
It’s not usually something I have to deal with. My room at college is fairly Spartan; I have what I need, and little more. At home, I have the random remnants of ten thousand misadventures. There are two dead computers under my bookshelf, souvenirs and unfinished poems and projects under my bed. I have a crate filled with thirty marble notebooks I filled up during high school with God knows what. What of my past self has survived the turbulent waters of time is fairly random, and almost everything I have done has had no lasting impact on myself or anyone else.
Oh, I have grown much over the past several years, and so has my community, and so have people around me, and I have been blessed to be a part of that growth at times. But it just happens, is done, and I move on. I do not reflect on it, nor do I feel any accountability towards what I learned or experienced, I rarely feel a commitment to the people I was in fellowship with, and the skills I learned rarely translate very easily. They say there is no such thing as a failed experiment, and I agree, but there is such a thing as a forgotten experiment, and that is fairly horrible thing.
But how do I change this? I want my experiences to help me grow and mature, and help me to guide others in that process, rather than groping blindly through life. My first response is to rejuvenate my journaling project, but do it meaningfully and constructively. But who is to say that the things that stick out to me as valuable will in fact be the things I value? And furthermore, I know enough about the Holy Spirit to know that that strictly religious project would begin to become more of a burden than a life-giving endeavor very quickly. (It was, after all, Jesus who said “The wind blows where it wants, and you do not know where it has come from, or where it is going. So shall it be with all who are born of the Spirit.”)
Besides, I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for in terms of “good journaling technology,” but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t exist. Journaling platforms I find on the Internet are heavy on one of two things—either privacy or publicity. And I am not interested in the level to which my thoughts are consumed by others—God bless anyone who has the foolish patience to dig through every ill-conceived word I spin—I am interested in recording the past in such a way that it means something in the present.
I am not done with this question, and, God-willing, I will not finish with it until I have sucked from it the life there is to be had from asking this question. But neither will I resort to frantic activism. What I will do is pray. Though my interests and allegiances have been as sturdy as the wind to all earthly things, they have been solid and steadfast to God. And through God, I will learn this lesson of how each day I can grow a little nearer to Him, walking with Him in the present, out of a known past, into a future, unknown, but secure in Him.
Today I went home and I cleaned my room. What a depressing experience. I have so much shit, and my life is pretty much worthless.
It’s not usually something I have to deal with. My room at college is fairly Spartan; I have what I need, and little more. At home, I have the random remnants of ten thousand misadventures. There are two dead computers under my bookshelf, souvenirs and unfinished poems and projects under my bed. I have a crate filled with thirty marble notebooks I filled up during high school with God knows what. What of my past self has survived the turbulent waters of time is fairly random, and almost everything I have done has had no lasting impact on myself or anyone else.
Oh, I have grown much over the past several years, and so has my community, and so have people around me, and I have been blessed to be a part of that growth at times. But it just happens, is done, and I move on. I do not reflect on it, nor do I feel any accountability towards what I learned or experienced, I rarely feel a commitment to the people I was in fellowship with, and the skills I learned rarely translate very easily. They say there is no such thing as a failed experiment, and I agree, but there is such a thing as a forgotten experiment, and that is fairly horrible thing.
But how do I change this? I want my experiences to help me grow and mature, and help me to guide others in that process, rather than groping blindly through life. My first response is to rejuvenate my journaling project, but do it meaningfully and constructively. But who is to say that the things that stick out to me as valuable will in fact be the things I value? And furthermore, I know enough about the Holy Spirit to know that that strictly religious project would begin to become more of a burden than a life-giving endeavor very quickly. (It was, after all, Jesus who said “The wind blows where it wants, and you do not know where it has come from, or where it is going. So shall it be with all who are born of the Spirit.”)
Besides, I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for in terms of “good journaling technology,” but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t exist. Journaling platforms I find on the Internet are heavy on one of two things—either privacy or publicity. And I am not interested in the level to which my thoughts are consumed by others—God bless anyone who has the foolish patience to dig through every ill-conceived word I spin—I am interested in recording the past in such a way that it means something in the present.
I am not done with this question, and, God-willing, I will not finish with it until I have sucked from it the life there is to be had from asking this question. But neither will I resort to frantic activism. What I will do is pray. Though my interests and allegiances have been as sturdy as the wind to all earthly things, they have been solid and steadfast to God. And through God, I will learn this lesson of how each day I can grow a little nearer to Him, walking with Him in the present, out of a known past, into a future, unknown, but secure in Him.
