chloejsayers

We are our stories.

There are so many stories here. I noticed this as I walked down the princess staircase this morning. The stained glass streaming light onto this glamorous staircase was a small action shot of a knight riding his horse into battle. If that isn’t the epitome of a classic story…..well, no need for cliches. Any story involving a knight must be a good one. I’ve been walking down that staircase for a few weeks and never even saw the knight before. There are so many stories here.

The best ones aren’t even the ones captured in colored glass. They are the ones in sweatshirts and jeans, hands in their pockets, shuffling past Rockwell. They are the ones that are chatting loudly outside of my window. They are the ones down the hall, around the corner, and next to you in class.

These are stories that defy our English formula for literature. They may have a beginning, but there is no end and while there is much rising action, the climax is yet to be written. No one is really sure who the antagonist is here. We can’t figure out if this is man vs. nature, or nature vs. nature, or why we have to be versus anything at all. Sometimes, we don’t even know who the protagonist is but we hope they are a character that someone would like and want to cheer on.

There are so many unknowns and unwrittens to these stories that we tend to hide them. The most we give out is a 300 word summary or back-of-the-book paragraph that is so vague it could be written about anyone.

College is mostly about learning. Most of my homework is reading. I’m reading about creating good ideas, the fall of Rome, how to record an adjusting entry, and the historical background of the book of Judges. I’ve learned a good deal in the last six weeks and will continue to do so. Yet I want to read more than textbooks or fiction. I want to know more than dates or philosophies. I want to begin with the stories that surround me. After all, we are our stories.

Happiness, Life Lessons, Writing

Logic-less

I really am spending more time writng than I ought. I should be reading and memorizing and studying. I feel that’s a bit unfair though. If I’m expected to keep soaking up information and knowledge, creating these giant stockpiles of thoughts in my brain than I think I should be allowed to turn the tables sometimes and release these ideas.

Besides, my entrepreneurship classes and books are always encouraging us to write and be creative. I like it when I can find other things to justify myself with rather than just my own logic.

I realized lately that I do that a lot. I create these little rules and mannerisms that help guide my life along. No one else follows them but I don’t expect them to. I like the idea that I can create up my own words if the ones I’ve been given aren’t working properly. I like that I can create my own paths if the ones that are offered don’t look like ones I want to sojourn down.

Today, I am in one of the best moods possible as a result of a severe lack of sleep and a good amount of coffee. I am just tired enough where nothing bothers me and have enough caffiene in my system to make everything peaceful and happy. It’s one of those moods where I am almost impossible to knock down. I don’t have to look for the silver lining on days like today. All I can see is the silver, the clouds aren’t even existent. I burned my tongue on my precious coffee today and instead of registering the pain, I smiled because my coffee was still hot. Perhaps this foolish happinness is completely irrational, but I am determined to enjoy it today.

One of those little rules that I have is that I have empowered myself to dictate what kind of day I am going to have. I decide whether it will be a happy day, a tired day, a reflective day, a sad day, and whatnot. The type of day I have is completely distinct from my circumstances. Its some kind of buffer I give myself that is built on a solid foundation of dellusion and denial. It’s probably unhealthy, but it works quite well for me.

That’s another rule: I can do things that don’t make sense but if they work, I can continue doing them. Today is a happy day. As was yesterday. Tomorrow is looking pretty good too. Once I started deciding what kind of day I was going to have (I began this a few months ago) I have found that is very convenient to choose to have happy days the majority of time. If you could pick what your day was going to be like, wouldn’t you go for the best possible?

About Me, Church Life, Friendship, Life Lessons

A Step Back

There is something incredibly powerful about being in community. Its encouraging, enlightening, and empowering. If you are slightly introverted like myself, it is also exhausting. Which is why I have learned the value of taking a step back.

Taking a step back from a stressful situation can reintroduce the big picture into your stream of consciousness.

Taking a step back from your inner turmoil can help you reprioritize.

Taking a step back from the constantly streaming to-do list, post-it notes, deadlines, and responsibilities can help you be human.

Tonight, taking a step back meant sitting in the chapel garden and gazing at underlit leaves that seemed to shine against the pitch black night. Instead of standing shoulder to shoulder in a hot, packed, chapel, I sat alone on a bench and closed my eyes and felt the cool of stillness. In no way am I insinuating that I felt ostracized from worship or this beneficial gathering.

Sometimes, there is greater beauty in the observance than the participation. To be still for a few minutes and hear at least a hundred of my classmates sing that “naught be all else to me save what thou art” was moving to say the least. There is nothing wrong with group worship and it is an amazing thing. Yet sometimes, it makes it too easy for me to focus on me. My worship, my experience, my catharsis. Taking a step back allows me to realign.

I want to walk around seeing the value in everything: every person, experience, and situation instead of walking around only focusing on what will validate me.

About Me

Dusty Old Cabinets

setting: on my friend’s laptop in her room with the remnants of our post-homecoming dance snack (pretzels and peanut butter, goldfish, and the chips I snagged from the Gedunk)

My friend is asleep on the rug but I am most certainly awake. More accurately, I am very full of life. Full of the fullness of a life that is brimming with new people and ideas and memories. I suppose every memory is a new one for a second before it gets filed in a dusty old cabinet in between my 10th birthday party and the conversation I had last week. That’s the odd thing about my memory. It doesn’t prioritize at all. I can remember the large events with the same clarity as the obscure details. I can quote someone I was talking with a month ago word-for-word and recall the moment I learned to ride my bike as if both were synonymous in importance and both happened five minutes ago.

Yet I forget a lot. Or I confuse a lot. I mix up what one person has told me with someone else’s story. Faces can blur together sometimes. I might get the main framework of something right but completely blank out on the details. I’ll remember that you had three tests and a quiz and a potentially awkward confrontation and I’ll even remember to ask you about it afterwards but have no idea what the subjects were in or who the conversation was with.

I did not intend to write upon memory tonight but since I seem to be making memories a mile a minute here, I suppose it was quite appropriate. I will probably remember tonight, for instance. My first homecoming at Grove City College which was quite fun and memorable. I’m hoping I’ll remember a lot of these first four weeks here which is why I need to keep blogging so I can keep an external mental hard drive of sorts. More reflection on college later to come.

Until next time,
Chloe of life

Change, Church Life, God, Life Lessons

Church “Shopping”

I hate the term church shopping. I absolutely hate it but that’s exactly what I’ve done for the past three Sundays. First off, it assumes that I am going to church to get something for myself, like you would go to Meijers to buy food or Target to buy, well, everything. I’m not. I’m going to church to worship God and serve him.

Yet it’s so hard to know what church would be best (see, even the word best assumes some qualifications a church must meet to “suit” me and again, that is not what I want to be doing). So my subconscious starts to create a list of specifications and desires. You don’t want it to be all college students or all grandparents. You don’t want it to be all hymns or all Chris Tomlin. The sermon should be scripture-based not just a self-help guide read out loud. The list goes on and on and it makes me feel like a horrible person for even having it.

Second problem: there is some unspoken rule that you only have about 5 or 6 Sundays to “shop” churches and then you are being too particular or not receptive to the Holy Spirit or whatnot. I would absolutely love for the first church I walk into to be my home church and have a family there and feel like that this is where I need to serve God but it really doesn’t work that way. Considering there are 25+ churches in the area, this puts a lot of pressure on the preliminary church selections and really, there is only so much you can find out about a church from its website. You can’t get to know the people and see how authentic the worship is or if they will glare at you for not going to Sunday School (my experience this morning).

Perhaps the largest problem is that I don’t know where I should be. I’ve grown up in the same church all my life and I’m just now realizing what a blessing and a curse that was. I love that I know almost everyone and have a history there and that the worship is authentic and the preaching is sound but that’s all I’ve ever known. Do I limit myself and possibly God by choosing a church that is as North Oaksish as possible? I don’t think that is smart but I feel like I keep measuring up churches to my home church in the back of my mind. I’m in a new place of life and what was right for me last year might not be the same this year. Or it might be. I honestly have no idea. So I’m back to the drawing board, or more accurately, the praying board.

This concludes my rant on churches and the “shopping experience”. Thank you for reading.

P.S. Signs are really, really helpful and the lack of them is really, really frustrating.

Writing

Just a few disconnected thoughts

Nowadays, I have two motivations for blogging. 1) I have studied in excess and am about to disconnect from this world, its lovely people, and sanity. 2) I am waiting for my laundry to be done. Tonight falls into the latter category. I keep finding new ways to make the laundry process more efficient. This is wonderful as it allows me to spend less money on laundry aka more money on coffee. I don’t have a great point to make or structure to follow tonight. Just a few disconnected thoughts.

It’s funny how you can be with people almost 24/7 and be social and all those good things yet still be completely alone. Perhaps that sounds sad and lonely, but to me, its absolutely wonderful. It’s impossible to engage all the time; learning how to be in your own world while still functioning in the real one is a very valuable skill.

Two things happened to me this week with counteracting effects. First, my headphones completely died. Later that day, my phone decided that it would no longer let me hear whoever I was talking to. Once I realized this, I completely abused my advantage and delivered lovely long-winded monologues to the unfortunate person on the other “end of the line”. I’m sad to say, but my headphones dying was much more inconvenient than my phone. I didn’t realize how often I used them to block out the world. The music I didn’t miss all that much and it wasn’t that I couldn’t find quiet places to study, its just that now I had no legitimate excuse to ignore people. I don’t like this about myself, that I have this intense need to only listen to my thoughts at times. Its really quite selfish.

I am content with a silent world where I can only see the lips moving and the trees swaying and never stop to hear what the people and the wind have to say. Not all the time, mind you, this is only a temporary desire that passes once I find the opportunity to be an introvert. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, by the end of the week, I genuinely missed hearing someone’s voice on the other end of the phone. It may have taken me a week, but at least I got there.

And now, I believe/hope that my laundry is done so I can go to bed.

Until next time,
Chloe of many worlds

About Me, Change, Life Lessons

The Essence of Me

I have a funny habit of running experiments on myself. Before you jump to any conclusions, I do not have little bubbling jars of neon liquids in my room (you’re welcome roommates) Its just that I like to gaze into the abyss that is the future, place myself there, observe how I think I’ll react to a new situation, and then see if my hypothesis is correct in post-future retrospect. That last sentence made absolutely no sense and I will now try to redeem it. Here is a practical example:

When arriving at college, the expectations and reputation that I had gathered as the Chloe of Clarkston disappeared. I knew this would be the case and so I was eagerly anticipating my actions, thoughts, friend choices, etc… to see who I would be. Turns out, I’m quite like the Chloe of Clarkston.

Instead of being disappointed that I didn’t create some whole new personality, I’m quite relieved. I am still spontaneously introverted, mysteriously happy in the morning no matter how much sleep I get, in love with my calender and post-its and color-coding, dedicated to studying to death, addicted to quality conversations, in awe of my amazing God, and loving the people around me.

Not much has changed, yet everything has changed. Everything external is different, new, and changing at a mile a minute. The essence of me; however, has been delightfully consistent. Of course, this means that I still am struggling through the same weaknesses but I have a new courage and drive to defeat them. I am completely open to change (see last post) but do not see myself surrendering my color-coding pens anytime soon. Speaking of, my calender is telling me that its time to continue my Genesis overload.

Until next time,
the Chloe of anywhere

Change, God, Happiness, Life Lessons

Life is wonderful.

I feel like I have lived a month in the past week and could probably write a good deal on first college experiences but I am currently enjoying just living life instead of dissecting it. So for now, I am putting away the scapel. This does not mean that I have nothing to say. My mind is whirling faster than it did before, just more about the width of the Fertile Cresent, how to balance equities, liabilities, and assets, and business plans then my normal introspective thoughts.

The one rather self-reflective thought that has been making its rounds however; is about the way I percieve myself and my surroundings now in contrast to what my viewpoint will be in two years, one month, five days. I certainly know that I am an incredibly different person than when I was in 9th grade, or even the beginning of 12th grade. It only makes sense then, that I will change within the next four years. I will see myself and everything else in this wonderful world very differently. I will probably look back at my state of mind right now and give myself one of those condescending little half-grins. I will probably read this in a year and laugh out loud.

I completely realize how ignorant I am about self-realization, even when I think that I have myself figured out. I used to reassure myself that I least understood myself. Now, I reassure myself that at least I know that I don’t understand myself. At least I am aware that I am unaware.

I am far too happy to end this post on that negative note. I am good, life is wonderful, and God is great.

About Me, Writing

“If Time is of the Essence Then it is the Essence of Time that Ought to Direct our Stumbling Steps”

Before my trusty thumb drive, I used to email myself assignments and essays from school so I could work on them at home. I have some friends who, when they e-mail themselves, they attach a little note so they feel like they are getting email from their past selves. I used to do this, but honestly, I got tired of cyber-talking to myself. I do that enough in real life. I couldn’t bear to send a sad little blank email though. Instead, I started making up quotes and giving them fake authors. They were always delightfully ambiguous. The type of quotes that would be plastered on the wall in a high school English room. The type that people would read, shake their heads thoughtfully, comment on its profoundness, then walk away without any lasting impact made because they mean absolutely nothing.

“The road to success isn’t complete without a few flares along the way” Charles Willson

“The feeling of pain never comes into the station alone–this is what makes it so unbearable. Its friends are some of my worst enemies” George Oversteen

I wondered what it would take to have a quote credited to you. To say something so worthwhile that it ends up plastered all over google when people search for quotes for their essays and speeches. Then I realized, no one will ever quote you unless you have some sort of credentials. For a quote to be truly powerful, then your name has to be powerful first.

This striked me as rather sad. It doesn’t matter so much how beautiful or meaningful the quote is. If the wrong person says the right thing, it means nothing. If the right person says anything, it means everything. Judging the quality of what someone has to say based on who they are instead of what they have to say seems unfair at best. I like to write meaningless quotes with meaningless people attached. Yet if I actually had something of value to say, it wouldn’t matter. My fake quotes would probably be taken more seriously, as long as I used a fake name that looked legitimate.

Happiness, Life Lessons, Writing

Happiness Revisited

It was rather cold this morning for August. Driving with my back windshield fogged up because 1378211213_8f5b7900cd

I’m too lazy to wipe it off and being awake and on the road before 8 in the morning made me feel like I was going to high school again. However, instead of staying in the 50s all day like most school days, the sun came back and summer showed its face again.

Today was probably just as nice as any other day this summer. Playful sunshine and soft breezes, swaying trees and all that wonderful summer beauty. Yet, because I woke up cold and had to put on jeans and a sweatshirt on this morning, changing into a skirt and sandals made the day seem so much more delightful.

I find it sad that I can’t appreciate how wonderful life is until I have something to contrast it with. I don’t see the sunshine until I’ve lived in the shadows. I can’t muster up any happiness if I never feel sad.

Today was probably just as nice as any other day but today was more wonderful than any other day. I have reflected back on my summer and realized it was even better than I thought. Its been a fun experience and perhaps more importantly, a learning experience. Even without test scores and grades to validate me, I am quite assured that I have learned just as much in the last two and a half months of living life than I did over the past year.

I’ve learned how to balance my to do list and organization and obsession with getting things done with enjoying others around me and making the most of my limited time. I’ve learned how to balance listening and talking, being home and being away, hiding in my writings and expressing myself out loud, staying aware of the world while staying delightfully oblivious.

I’ve learned how to deem things irrelevant, such as having a balanced life, so I could live to extremes. Quite obviously, I’ve also perfected the skill of contradicting myself. At the beginning of the school year, I wrote this: http://86400seconds-smiles11.blogspot.com/2010/12/theory-3-happiness-is.html. If you don’t feel like taking the time to read it, I basically said that happiness was a worthless goal in life. I still think joy is way more important yet hard to come by sometimes. I have tested my theory and have lived an equally full life being indifferent to happiness as when I embraced it. I’m not going to make happiness the main focus of my life by any means but there is more value in it than I originally supposed.

Here is what I have found happiness to be good for: Until I let myself feel happy, then I can’t feel sad either. Not feeling sad bothers me more than not feeling happy. I suppose switching the order would make more sense, that it makes more sense to feel sad first so happiness means more when it comes. Either way, a juxtaposition between the two emotions is needed, therefore happiness does have a valuable purpose.

Saying goodbye to family, friends, familiar places and memories in the next two weeks will be sad. Yet it wouldn’t be genuinely sad if those things didn’t represent genuine happiness at one time or another. This heartache is well worth years of happy memories.

Side note: This is my 50th post in the span of roughly a year. Thank you all who make it to the end of these long-winded posts.