Getting down to business

Today was less of a lazy day for me, which is a good thing.  It was still a little laid back, but I got more done than usual.  I’m really getting somewhere in my goal to be less lazy without crashing and burning!  I think I’m learning to gradually do things instead of just changing everything right now.  That’s how I’ve accomplish so many things my life.

Hopefully, I will use this to become more responsible.  I want to design a program (I know a bit of computer programming) that will help students to organize their lives a lot easier.  I have a lot of ideas that will help me out a lot.  Hopefully, because of that, it will help several other students my age.  Maybe it can expand to college students too.

Anyway, I’m trying to step up and take control of my life.  My gmail and desk are loaded with messages from colleges trying to advertise themselves to me.  Lately, I’ve been wasting a lot of my time with several things, and I’m trying to cut that out.  (Especially with Tumblr and Facebook.)  But I want that to change.  Lately, my grades have been less then they should.  I am in the top eighty-something percent of my state in math, and yet I’m getting C’s in math.  There are probably so many people that would give so much to have what I have, and yet I don’t use it.  So I am really going to start pushing to improve myself academically.

I also need to do the same for religion.  Both have to be gradual, and I’m not sure I can manage two at one time very easily.  I’m scared I may give in, crash, and burn once again.

Human nature?

You remember that blog about sleep I made yesterday?  I so went against that.

I haven’t been sleeping properly the past two weeks.  Now that this trimester is over, that needs to change, along with several of my other disorganizational habits.  The only problem is, if I try to change so many things at once, I’m afraid that it will all collapse like it has in the past.  I keep trying to improve myself and say, “No fooling around.  I really need to give it 100% of my strength.”  When I try to do that, though, I suddenly lose all strength and any progress I made just crashes and burns.

Anyway, I didn’t go to bed until, like, 11:30.  I’ve kept making excuses for why I haven’t been going to bed at the right time, but last night was pretty ridiculous.  I stayed up photoshopping.  I mean, I’d ‘a gone to bed had I not decided to take my shower so late.  I just can’t go to bed with wet hair.  It bothers me.  (I should get in the shower soon.)

And I know that isn’t that much of a big deal, but I basically said “Don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to want to sleep when you’re obligated to something,” and immediately after that, I put myself in a position where I was going to want to sleep when I was obligated to do something.  In fact, the very thing I was obligated to do the next day was the most important (?) test of the entire trimester.

When I do things like this, I can’t help but to ponder on human nature.  Humans are intelligent creatures, but confusing.  I can’t really say anything about it because I’m confusing myself.

But this pondering does help me gain wisdom.  I am no where near wise—I don’t spend a lot of my time in scriptures—but I do have wisdom in areas other people my age don’t.  And often times, teens end up doing things that take huge chunks of their lives.  There is quite a lot of suffering in our world.  With the wisdom God has granted me, I can help people, and I plan on doing that.

Good night friends.  If you do need help, I can willfully help you.  There are several ways you can contact me, one of them being through my prayer request site http://tinyurl.com/prayerrequest.

Sleep… I'm so tired

This is the second of my three posts for today. I'm splitting them out because they're all about different things.

Today and then be teaching you about sleep. That is a funny thing to teach about, but there is a little bit you can learn to it.

I know a lot of our generation has been shunned because, “we’re the laziest ever, and all we ever do is sleep.” For some of us that's true, but as I've said before, teens are often misunderstood. With the stuff I've committed myself too—and several people have committed themselves to more than I have—I've become very tired and not been able to sleep as much as I've wanted to. I don't really like taking naps, but it's gotten so bad, that I just had to today. It didn't really help, it was just a waste of time. But I will probably go to bed early, I'm tired of always wanting to fall asleep in all of my classes.

And I do actually have some scripture on sleeping as well. In Matthew 26, Jesus went to a place called Gethsemane to pray. He told his disciples to wait in a spot and went farther down.

⁴⁰Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch for one hour?” he asked Peter. ⁴¹“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

When you're at home and you have no obligations, it's fine to take a nap. I still don't like to because I never know what may come up. But it actually says in the Bible (in a different way), “If you snooze, you lose.” So if your sleeping in class or sleeping 12 hours every day, believe it or not, your going against Biblical text.

Hopefully, I can get to bed pretty early today. This is the one reason I love finals.

A fragile life.

A lot of people have been dying around here lately. It kinda sucks.

Fortunately, not a lot of people close to me have died, but the amount of that's happening lately has been quite ominous. Just this morning, two students from a nearby school died in on related accidents. What is even more ironic is that they were best friends.

Our school has faced three deaths in the last two years. The most recent one is Nate Savieo. He was the boyfriend of someone close to me, and very popular in my school. Half the school was devastated when they found out he died, including much of the staff.

A lot of parents siblings and pets have been dying as well. Quite honestly I see it as a sign or something. If you read Matthew 24-25, you'll see what I'm talking about all of these deaths symbolizing. I don't really think that God is killing people to tell us something, but he may be beginning his judgment and in that warning us that the judgment day is near.

I'm not saying I'm right, in fact I could be wrong. I don't even believe this to be 100% true, but that is just my theory on what God is doing. Even if it is not true, we all should be repenting and following the Lord.

And even if it is not true, these deaths still show us how fragile life is. You make one mistake, and it's over for good. You don't get a second chance. Often, we get a sense of immortality, but that is not true. We shall not let our lives waste away, for these are the very lives that God has given us. We never know how long we have left; Satan could be right behind you right now, ready to take your life.

And death is a hard thing to deal with. I can only imagine; I've never really had to deal with the death of a loved one that was really close to me. But I do know that all of these things in life are things you can learn from. Yes, the death of a person is sad, but although they've died in body, they don't have to die in spirit. If their death has come unexpectedly, it may be up to you to keep their spirit alive. If I died today, I would want the people that believed in me to carry on the things I wanted to do: to offer people my hand, help them, and take a small part making this world a better place. Someone could rip my head off, destroy my body, and throw it in a ditch, but my soul would still be happy if someone took my life upon them and through God gained a passion to help every struggling person they could. However, if I died a very quick but peaceful death; but all my stuff was sold, I was forgotten, and everyone stopped caring, my soul could not possibly be at rest.

Please do the same and a loved one near you dies.

Finals

I have a lot to write about today, and so I'm gonna have to split up the posts. This is the first of them.

This first post is gonna be about school. Today we had finals, and if we have school tomorrow, we're going to have them again. It's snowing right now, but I'm not getting my hopes up on anything.

The way our school's final test system (and our school system, for that matter) is really weird. You may find the fact that we're doing finals now really weird. We are on a system of “trimesters,” meaning there are three semesters in the school year. This trimester has one day left, and that is last day of finals. I will no longer be going to my first or second period class. The way our school does it, the first day of finals goes 1 2 3 1 2. We review for one, two, and three, and then test for one and two. The second day goes 4 5 3 4 5, reviewing four and five, and testing three, four, and five. I never really have much trouble in school, and the test I should have the most trouble on is in my forth period. World History just isn't my subject.

If anyone goes to my school or is taking their finals tomorrow, I wish you the best of luck. I've heard a lot of complaining about how the finals suck, and for a lot of people they can be pretty hard. I really hope the most if you didn't just blow it. I'm praying for all of you that you can do well and not be too stressed out. Just try your best; that's all they can ever be expected from you.

Love

I need to go to bed soon, but I haven't made a post in forever, and I need to make one.

And this one is going to be about something that has been on my mind a lot lately: love; especially with the youth of my generation today.

Obviously, there's a lot that teens today don't understand that they should. In fact, it's so obvious, I can't even name it. It's like trying to prove that something is blue. But I think there is so much that the adults--the authority of the teens--don't understand as well that they should. Maybe I'll blog about that later.

But I wanna talk about my perspective on love. It's not just because my youth pastor is talking about it in church (although that may have been in part what triggered it). But what has really triggered it is the fact that all of my friends are really falling flat on their face, especially the girls.

First of all, guys, let me say that women are not toys. They are not something you take pride in. Yes, a girl loves it when you go around saying, "I'm in love with [putnamehere], and she is awesome!" but they don't exactly enjoy it when you tell your "bud's" in the locker room, "Man I am so going to hit that." and take pride in how fine your girl's ass is. My pastor really puts that in a good perspective, too. He says that the way relationships are, especially with girls, they hold on to whatever is there because they don't wanna break up. Often, the relational part has disappeared, and the only thing left to hold on to is the physicality.

And that's what we've turned relationships into today. A lot of us, at least. We have a boy/girl by our sides, that means we love them. "The more time I spend with him, the more he loves me. I feel so loved. This is what it's all about." The truth is, it really isn't. I've seen so many of my friends fall looking for love. It's because they're looking for a guy/girl that will love them enough to be considered boyfriend and girlfriend. Often, it gets old, and once again it all goes bad because it's like two magnets that are both the same (meaning they are being repelled from each other) trying to be pushed together. It really hurts when you have to risk so much just to keep your relationship that's hanging by a thread. I love that my youth pastor is doing this series, because he gives me so much to support this with.

He gave me this idea, and I will pass it on to you. This is what I want you to do:

• Imagine the best guy/girl for you. You can think about the looks, but I really would like you to think of the personality. Think deep.
• Imagine the perfect date that you could possibly go on. What would make you the most happy?
• After reading this bullet, for a few minutes, close your eyes, and think about you going on this perfect date with this totally ideal guy/girl. Think about the good times, and how he/she treats you, and everything.

You think about it? Now that you have this in your mind, I have a question for you.

Why would you settle for something less?

That is kind of what is messed up about our youth and dating. We're sorta just looking for something to fill our void; and I know, because I've done it.

But in my experience, I've learned a lot, and there are three really important things I think teens should know.

1. In a healthy relationship, there is equal risk and equal compromise. For example, if the girl is giving her all for the guy to love her, it won't go well. If both are holding from each other things that they fear might hurt the other person, that will not go well either; there is no risk at all.
2. In your teen years, it's not really about getting yourself ready to be married to a certain person, it's about finding what you like. I'm not saying go on a date and ditch, but you really learn a lot if you give yourself the opportunity to.
3. Marriage and dating are not the same thing. Melissa Marksberry (A.K.A. Mell) from Remedy.FM gave me some advice that I also would like to tell you. Relationships were made the way they were for a reason, you aren't supposed to give 100% to someone you think you will may. Once you get in a relationship, you should give about 20-40%. By the time you're engaged, you still want to keep it to about 80%; you don't want to give that 100% until you are married.

Relationships aren't made to be the easiest thing ever, and break-ups won't be either. If they are, I'm a bit concerned. But you should not be in a relationship where you are being torn apart or have bad thoughts about it. Just think about the context of things. Relationships should mean love.

In summary, don't go out looking for someone to love you. Wait for love to find you; if God wills it, it will happen.

EDIT:

Just to add to that third point, the more you give of yourself, the more it's like glue. You are gluing yourself to that person to become one, and that especially comes in with marriage. If you give so much of yourself to someone, you are glued together, and you end up ripped up when one pulls apart.