Reflecting

Why is it that every year winter comes as a shock? It's not as if I haven't lived through winter 22 times before. Every year the cold rushes in at the end of the year and somehow catches me by surprise with its jarring chill.

Although I despise being cold and regret not being able to bike as I did the past few months, winter will surely afford me plenty of time for reading and reflecting, as I have been doing the past few hours in my cozy dorm room.

Right now, I am sitting in my fuzzy brown chair in the nook under my bed with a mug of peppermint tea at hand. I have been looking over old blog entries from the past year and realizing how much I have changed in a short amount of time. It was just last year that I was in Vienna hanging out with Julian and his buddies, riding the U-Bahn all over the city, and always having new adventures. And it was only a little over a year ago that I was searching for a job after my anti-climatic graduation from WKU, which consisted of receiving my diploma in the mail after returning from Europe. And it was just about a year ago that I got the Academy job and started re-establishing friendships in Bowling Green that had been on hold while I was in Austria.

I find it amazing that God has brought me back to Bowling Green, a place that I was sure I would never live in again after graduation. I imagined myself living in a Latin American country or a big city somewhere in the US, like Portland or Seattle... just not in Kentucky. Crazy. Crazy how now, all those ambitions I held to be so important before have kind of faded. I have learned to be content with where I am, to trust that this is where I should be, to be joyous. I still desire to go to South America, to improve my Spanish, but I'm not so sure anymore that that is my ideal living situation. It is not the location that matters, but the people. In Bowling Green I have a very healthy church community, a great group of friends, and that has made all the difference.

Things are going much better with my job this year. The experience from last year and generally focusing my attention on finding spiritual direction rather than trying to do everything perfectly at work has helped me put my job into perspective. I see work now as a means of growing in discipline and virtue, learning patience, freeing myself of destructive idleness, and gaining valuable skills for future jobs and dealing with people.

Of course, I still have my frustrations with my job. Namely, I am getting very tired of living in a residence hall. I can't cook for myself as I would like. I can't invite friends over to hang out any time I want to. Most nights that I work, I basically have an 8:00 curfew. Study hours run from 7 to 9, and I have to check the girls on my wing to make sure they are abiding by study hours. Then, I have "student development time" from 9 to 12, where I have to have my door propped open to be accessible to students. While I make use of a lot of that time for reading, I am getting tired of being confined. I am just tired. Worn out. I am VERY glad to have Thanksgiving break this week.

..I have so many more thoughts on my mind that I could share, but I'm not sure how to put them into words. Hence another wordy, superficial post. I hope this brief update shall suffice for the time being.

I also need to think of a new title for my blog. I feel like I've entered a new era of my life which demands a new heading. But nothing comes to mind at the present moment.