A question has been running through my mind the last several days, or months or years: Are some people's personalities simply less likely ever to fall in love? I wonder this because in the cursory reading I've done about those with my personality type (which I'm fairly certain is conveyed by the Myers-Briggs letters INTP ) I've seen that people with these characteristics tend not to do relationships easily (or well). Friendships are hard enough, but romantic relationships tax us such that sometimes we wonder whether they're worth bothering about at all ( as one website notes ). I firmly believe I have never been "in love" and I sometimes doubt if I'm even capable of that kind of love... and it's rather disheartening. Because at the same time, I feel (not think, feel) that a committed romantic relationship constitutes an emotional dimension I am completely ignorant of. And if I ever do fall in love, it'll be completely new territory... I'm...

Note: The following was written three minutes before the end of my 24th birthday. One of the things I hadn't quite figured out was how to celebrate a birthday as an adult. When you're not close enough to your immediate family to just do the whole special homemade-to-order dinner that you've been used to for years, that is. In college, I usually made it home for some weekend around my birthday and we had my favorite dinner -- crabmeat casserole. When I turned 21 I spent half the day doing some spec work for the editor who would end up hiring me for my first job post-college. Then that first year after college, I volunteered at a church dinner on the day I turned 22 (and, of course, ate more than my full of delicious potluck food). I still lived near my family, but I think they were all working or otherwise inescapably occupied. The day I turned 23 -- last year -- I had to work. I managed to escape for a lunch date with my two closest cousins at my favorite restaurant (...

I began pondering a question last week. What do you do when you’re not yet 22 and you’ve already achieved a major career goal? My dream before I graduated was this: Someday I wanted to have a job I loved, in a little town I enjoyed, and to have my own place. I wanted it to be full time and pay enough for me to live on and have a few adventures. I wanted to be challenged and never to be bored. Guess what my first job after graduation has been? At the risk of repeating what I’ve said in earlier posts, allow me to summarize for you the position I started in the day before graduation. First, it’s taken care of the tangible requirements—it’s full time and I earn enough to rent an apartment on my own that’s “practically perfect in every way.” I have enough funds that I can save some, contribute to my church, and still take road trips to Boston every now and then. Then there are the intangibles—what some would say are the more important pieces to job satisfaction. I have a fantastic boss,...

The church I’ve started attending since moving into my apartment is near enough that I can walk there if I want. Granted, I went to a residential campus college and rather enjoy the slower modes of transportation to start with, so my estimation of “close enough to walk” may vary from that of others, but this distance, I think, would generally be considered a decent walking distance. So, I do walk to church, about 95 percent of the time. (Once it was raining, and another time I was leaving straight for the next town over after church, so I drove in those cases.) And nearly every day after church, I am asked, “do you need a ride?” What kind folks! I thank them graciously but briefly explain that, really, I like to walk, and besides it’s a nice day out. I’ve been rather obstinate on this one too, walking even in the chilly weather and after dark. The cold will eventually get to me—I’d rather be in Costa Rica—but the dark, that isn’t a problem. In fact, it casts a whole different glow ...

I can hardly believe I’ve spent two and a half months… make that four months… in my apartment, and have been working at the paper for nearly four… rather, over five months. It doesn’t seem like it’s been nearly that long. I suppose that’s what adulthood feels like—the days smush into each other, the weeks blur together and the months pass before you know it. Case in point: When I wrote those two paragraphs, I had titled this post “Halfway through September.” And it’s already November 1st.

It so happens that I started my first job out of college this week. Pretty exciting—especially since, gracias a Dios, this is a full-time job in my intended career field, and I got it straight out of college. One consequence of getting a full-time job is that I am too busy during the week to write things for which I’m not paid. But, that’s what weekends are for! Thought #1: Last Sunday, I was made a witness to the wonders of modern technology and its potential to further missions work. My church’s associate pastor coordinated a Skype call with a missionary out in Russia, and lo and behold, we were able to transcend thousands of miles to learn about a tentmaking-type ministry being launched there, info coming straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. I know this next phrase is cliché, but “something stirred in my heart” while hearing the pastor-missionary speak on the big screen up front. Since going to college I’ve not had much money to do anything besides pay school bills. So,...

I wrote a related post on my college admissions/marketing blog earlier, but I think it warrants one more essay... A recent blog post on Boundless passed on some "promises of life" that a Willow Creek Church youth leader had said "gives a person the ability to live in the world as a grown up." Those were: 1. Life is hard. 2. You are not that important. 3. Your life is not about you. 4. You’re not in control. 5. You’re going to die. The list rings true, though it also sounds pessimistic.... and the idea was that, once one understood these five truths, one could really be called an adult. I can tell you that "life is hard" sounds like "life isn't fair," what my parents have been telling me since I was old enough to understand spoken English. And frankly, though I may play a major role in certain people's lives (my sister, for example, or my roommate), my role in the lives of most others is minor--I'm not that important. My...

Want to know what I do during the linguistics class in which I could almost see myself falling asleep? Well… This past summer I linked to an article helping introverts find their place in church. Guess what? There’s a whole book about introversion and church-going, called Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh ( Evangelical Outpost review here ). It was on the new-books display case at my college library so I picked it up. The paperback isn’t too big so it fits right on top of my linguistics notebook, and I read it for, oh, the first forty or so minutes of class, while the monotone professor goes over the homework. I got through over a hundred pages that way (while still participating in some of the class homework discussions). However, it’s now spring break and I can read it in more extended segments. I’ll likely finish the book tonight. But before I forget (or get sidetracked by other parts of the book), I wanted to comment on what I just read a few minutes ago: Some int...

At least I made it halfway through my senior year of college before caving, right? Yes, I went with a new service provider this week, one that will cost barely four dollars more a month and give me twice the minutes I used to have available, plus lots of texting (not unlimited though). I figured that was cheap enough to warrant the switch, plus I wouldn’t have to sacrifice the great cell coverage around here. I’ve always been “the one” among my friends who doesn’t even have texting (not just limited, but none, nada, zip). Even my Quaker friend without the Facebook page has texting. So, it’s kind of a big deal for me to be doing this, at least for my roommate. (She has said for months she always wants to text me random things she thinks of, or observations, or whatnot.) So far I appreciate the additional method of communication; it comes in handy in certain situations. I do, however, worry about being consumed by the texting culture. Number one, I’ve seen so many friends randomly tex...

Where have all the young men gone? I know the original song was an anti-war song; but every time I read something of this sort , it’s what runs through my mind. “The Death of the Grown-up,” you say? What about the death of the young man? I’m five months away from graduating from a Christian college. I’ve been here nearly four years—and my complaint is that so many people here don’t seem to be very grown up. It’s the subtle difference between girls and women; between guys and men. Guys, you see, are not bad or anything; they’re kinda fun, decent, don’t necessarily slack off on their schoolwork or anything. But men—well, the men are capable of long-range planning, for starters. They’re fun and decent, too, but they also have more wisdom. They can restrain their spending to be able to afford books next semester, for example. Or they are conscious that the opinions they currently have might change in the future. They know what they want to do with their lives, and they’re pursuing that....

I don’t have texting. Yet I have a Twitter account. I accomplish this via a desktop widget on my laptop. Of course, this means I use Twitter only when I’m at my laptop. Sometimes I think of something that I want to post on Twitter—a quick reflection on a piece of news, or whatever—but I realize that, because of Twitter’s extremely time-sensitive nature, it doesn’t really make sense to post anything about it even just a couple hours after the fact. I’d just be behind the times. Then there are other instances when I can think of something to write that is quite timely, but much too long for a Twitter update, even if it comes to me in response to something I saw on Twitter. So these are my problems: Twitter has a memory of about thirty seconds; no long-term memory exists for it. Twitter allows thoughts about ten seconds long, no more. No logical, well-developed conclusions can be permitted; they’re just too long. And that is why I still haven’t abandoned my personal blog.

Yeah—community is a buzzword in Christian circles (and octagons for that matter). People wonder how to define it, how to create it, how to nurture it—I do too. Who doesn’t want community? But it’s elusive. Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree, though, by focusing on community itself. If it’s anything like humility, the moment you turn your attention to it in and of itself it begins to break down… Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. --A.W. Tozer, towards the end of the chapt...

Remember how I used to post fairly often on my blog, before I was a junior in college? And then how it all dropped off sometime last school year, and I haven’t yet learned to pick the pace up a bit? That was the days before a lot of homework that involved my computer. Also before the days when I got really distracted during said homework, browsing Facebook and re-watching favorite YouTube videos. I bring this up to provide the background for this past week. Over Thanksgiving break—just one week from today, I believe—my brother and I determined that the power supply for my laptop had basically died. Without my laptop, I was forced to rely on the school library’s computers for most of my homework. That was great incentive to do it efficiently—who really wants to spend all day in the library? And then, after getting back to my apartment after supper (or whenever), I was without my laptop all night. It was pleasant—I read, I wrote in my journal, I talked to my friends, I read some mor...

It’s been a while. Question: Why do I feel dumber and dumber every day? Is Facebook sucking my intellect from me? Question #2: Why can I never remember what I wanted to blog about? Question #3: How in the world did I forget my purse when I left? Feel free to answer any or all of the questions, as you please.

I read an article today on the Boundless Webzine called “An Introvert Goes to Church.” At the risk of sounding cliche and vague, it resonated with me—by which I mean, I felt like I could have written this. A few of my favorite parts: Much of our common church life is geared toward extroverts. We're encouraged to talk openly about everything God might be doing in our lives, pray out loud for long periods of time, shout out answers to questions asked from the pulpit, get involved in many different activities, "reach out," mix 'n' mingle, and enjoy goofy games with the singles group. In many ways, the church is an extroverts' world. I am fairly certain that even if you could give me a million years' worth of Sunday morning gatherings, I would never connect significantly with anyone in them. If I'm going to make friends and enter into church life, I have to take steps to get to know people in a smaller and more up-close environment. Filling a role, ...

And so much for posting digests. The first week of the Boundless Summer Challenge was “Relationships Week.” Meaning, most of the challenges had to do with “significant others,” as if that kind of relationship constituted 9/10ths of the relationships in life. No comment on how unimpressed I was by this beginning. But I did it anyway (mostly). I won’t post the notes I wrote on Facebook here. Instead, a few links with a few thoughts: First/second challenge involved reading 38 pages of dating advice . Really. No, I don’t agree with some of what he said. The guy advocates a courtship model, essentially, and some of it comes across as if he’s saying “this is what the Bible says, no ifs, ands or buts” though he does say that good Christians disagree on interpretations. I think he’s legalistic, but he does make good points about where dating as commonly practiced tends to fail us. Third challenge was to memorize Romans 12:9-13: Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what ...

As you know, this blog has basically no point. It is simply the airing of various observations, fascinations, and rants that find their source in the fount of my mind. That is, I write whatever I feel like writing. But I do not write every time I feel like doing so… not on this blog, at least. Much of my writing is instead left in my journal, or on scrap paper in notebooks strewn about my room. That’s because I often write to clear my head and to organize my thoughts. Most of my writing is, in fact, private—not for public consumption. Some think that to write is to be read—that there is no purpose to writing if the words on paper (or screen) are never intended to be read by someone else—but I think those who write will understand an article I found linked off of some blog or other that I frequent (I don’t remember which one right now). For many of us who love the act of writing—even when we are writing against a deadline with an editor waiting for the copy—there is something mon...