chloejsayers

The Drawer

It’s full of odds and ends. The junk drawer. Where obscure items get shoved when your mom tells you to clean off the table. In my house, there is this weird thing where we refuse to acknowledge that we have such a drawer. But we do. Just no one wants to admit it.

Good job, you made it through the intro. This post is an odds and ends drawer. A few random thoughts that are not quite meaty enough to have their very own post. So they end up here.

#11. Random Acts of Kindness
Guess what?!? It is Random Acts of Kindness week next week!! This is extremely exciting for me. While it makes a nice theme for a week, it really is something that should be done year-round. Give a friendly smile to a stranger, pay for the person behind you, clear off the windshield of the person next to you. Come up with your own ideas! There are some on the RAK website but they are pretty lame, more like things you should be doing everyday.

#86. Valentine’s Day

If you are expecting some angry, bitter post on how Valentine’s Day is just a day to make everyone who doesn’t have a “special someone” feel horrible about themselves and that it is just Hallmark’s sneaky way of making everyone buy their overpriced pieces of card stock…..look elsewhere. This is a positive outlook on the very controversial idea of love. Everyone has had those impossible crushes. Where you like someone one that has no clue or will never like you in return. My friend describes it in a good way….you spend all the time when you are with them wanting them to notice you. And then they leave. And part of you slinks behind them. It is at these times when love seems hopeless. As Charlie Brown put it, “Nothing takes the taste out of a peanut better sandwich like unrequited love.” So, when you think about it….two people being in love is pretty much a miracle. The fact that two people could both like each other and gather up the courage to admit it and take that first step…..love is powerful, wonderful, and dangerous. But I’m just talking about two people. Zoom out. There is a God who loves you like crazy. He created this incredible universe for us, and as a thank you we screw up. All the time. He is under no obligation to continue loving us or saving us. But He does. And His love isn’t just that highschooly crush-type stuff. It’s the real thing. He loves me even though I could never reciprocate fully while I consistently prove myself unworthy. Mind. Blown.

#24. Polychromatic Emotions.
“And how does that make you feel?” That infamous psychologist line is very difficult for me to answer. I don’t just have one emotion about ANYTHING. It’s a mixture, a blend of colors and tones and hues and saturations. I feel pretty purply with a splash of lime green and periwinkle. How do you like me now Dr. Phil? I’m pretty sure others feel the way I do. Not only do emotions come in vivid bright colors (forget the boring black and white stuff) there is a full range of colors. They mix and mingle with each other, the pigments smudging over the futile boundaries that we set up. If I am happy, I am not simply happy. I’m most likely joyful and ecstatic but maybe a little apprehensive since happiness rarely feels sincere for me. Every decision comes with an entire palette of emotions, one for each pro and con on my flip chart.

#49. An Uncharacteristically Stereotypical Blog Post
Usually, my blogs are about my thoughts and philosophies. This little scrap is just about me.
I’m getting really excited for college. There are so many possibilities that I am simultaneously delirious with happiness and paralyzed with fear. Kind of a fuchsia feeling with some neon yellow mixed in.
I love Narnia. I’ve loved the idea of another world ever since I started creating one when I was five (I’ll save that for another post someday). I am a huge C.S. Lewis fan. I have not read all of his books but am working through his essays currently. I very much enjoy his logical way of presenting confusing ideas.
I have amazing friends. I don’t have a group since I haven’t really stuck with one “extracurricular activity” long enough. It’s more an eclectic cluster of people that inspire me, love me, and make me wish I could be a better friend to all of them.
Okay, my incredibly egotistical writing is done now. Tell me something about you.

Life Lessons

The Land of Angst

*Disclaimer* This is meant to be satirical. The following opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the writer. You may proceed.

In the land of Angst, the people are governed by rules far different from our own. During the day, they are divided into rooms with further internal divisions based on physical appearance and personal contacts. Not obeying the buzzers results in serious punishment. This is very similar to our very own factories, except the buzzers control machines and not—although some may question their humanity—actual humans.

The transportation system is a very odd one. Completely disorganized, any rules of the road are disregarded. I shudder to think how many accidents would occur if our own road ways were run in such a way. I desired to speak with one of these people and so naturally I attempted to make eye contact and initiate a discussion. Every pair of eyes would flit over mine in an effort to avoid eye contact. The muddied floor, yellowing ceiling tiles, worn-out shoes, trash: everything and anything seemed to be more appealing to look at than my eyes. As I wondered at how I could be that repulsive, my drive to communicate with these beings grew even stronger. Finally, I grabbed one by the arm and inquired as to why no one would make eye contact with me.

“It’s like an unspoken rule. If you make eye contact, it becomes an Awkward Moment.” This seemed like a feather light excuse to me but when I made similar inquires of others I received the same response. All efforts must be put into avoiding the Awkward Moment. What that was exactly, I wasn’t sure. No one seemed capable of explaining it. It seemed to be very undesirable and extremely contagious. The best I could figure was that it was some sort of horrific disease like the small pox and that making eye contact only spread the virus of the Awkward Moment.

Another disease was upon these poor afflicted people. They were all ridden with a strong case of aloneaphobia. The effects of it were everywhere. Everyone traveled in pairs. The compulsive need to be surrounded by people is one of the indicators of aloneaphobia. I had seen it before in the very weak and insecure of the nation but never before in such a large quantity and concentration. Occasionally, you would see a person traveling down the passageways alone, yet still suffering from the disease. Their eyes skitted from wall to wall, desperately searching for a comrade, desperate to be released from the state of being alone. There must be something very powerful and deep within their thoughts that they are afraid that if they are alone they might discover who they really are. Perhaps they are some sort of monsters in disguise, and this is why they must be with others: they need to presence of others to effectively feign their own normalcy.

I wondered as to why they did not leave. There must be something that keeps them within the building that was suffocating them. As I searched for the reason, I found a sign attached with sticky tack on a cold cinder block wall. Wads of gum decorated the majority of the surface. But what I could make out underneath the layer of gum, dirt, and fingerprints was this:
Our Mission is to ensure learning while challenging all individuals to exceed their own expectations.

Exactly whose mission was this? This certainly wasn’t a reflection of the majority of students whom I had overheard cursing the place. Their expectations seemed only to be survival. Survival of the diseases that threaten to kill their identity, survival of the restraints that threaten to limit their imaginations. Anyone exceeding those minimalistic expectations was not looked upon with favor. Instead, the rare instance where an inhabitant attempted to actually learn was often ridiculed by the others. Their own inability to break beyond mere survival had warped their thinking. They couldn’t see another way other than their own. When a foreign substance is introduced in one’s body, the red blood sells and good bacteria are up in arms to defend. When the foreign idea of going beyond mediocrity arose, the carrier of that idea was attacked in the same way.

I remained in the Land of Angst for as long as I could bear. But slowly, I could feel more own senses beginning to deaden, the first hints of apathy begin to creep into my soul. So I fled that place and bid farewell to the inhabitants of the land, with my sincerest hopes that one day they too will break free.

Life Lessons

Confidently Incompetent

“You know, the really great thing is that at least he is confident in his beliefs,” my friend whispered to me as we sat at a motivational seminar listening to a 23 year old in an oversized suit waste five hours of our day talking to excess. With effects quite as damaging as if he was simply drinking to excess. Instead, his main intention seemed to be using the catch phrase “we are who we want to be” as many possible times within a single sentence. I counted seven times as his all time high.

While I quickly forgot his inspirational fluff, my friend’s words stuck with me. Was it possible that confidence made up for lack of competence? If as long as you are sure of yourself, is it a good idea to make yourself look like an idiot—albeit a confident one? For your dignity’s sake, I would say no.

I am confident that the military of the United States army will protect me. I am confident that this chair is structurally sound and will support me. I am confident that my God is all-knowing and that His sovereignty can be seen almost everywhere I look. This type of confidence is warranted and quite possibly a sign of sanity. A man who is so unconfident of his life and the world he lives in would be walking around trembling for fear the ceiling was about to fall down or that his life was about to collapse. That man would be seen as mentally unstable. Yet there is another type of mental instability that goes largely unchecked. It was this type of instability the motivational speaker suffered from.

Hubris is an ancient Greek word that means false overconfidence. While being simply overconfident will lead to one being thought of as pretentious and presumptuous, false overconfidence has much worse consequences. What of the man who is unshakably sure that he will have what he needs when he needs simply as a result of that need? He wholeheartedly believes that necessity is the mother of invention. This hubristic fellow will find that his exceptional confidence won’t save him when he jumps off a cliff, sure that his need to be able to fly will allow him to sprout wings.

You may say that I am being ridiculous, that that would never happen. Tell me the difference between that scenario and this one: a man is so confident that he can change his circumstances by simply imagining they were different. He spends his entire life pretending to live in a world that isn’t real, forsaking real relationships and real experiences in the meanwhile. The only thing that separates him from our cliff-jumping friend is that his is a slow and gradual death rather than a fatal plummet. Both were blinded by their overconfidence. I’m afraid that is the fate of our well-intentioned and hubris-afflicted motivational speaker.

If a man claims to be a bird, we would think him deranged. The sincerity of his belief would not change the fact that he was incorrect in his thinking. No matter how genuine a person is, their confidence in their insanity will not make him the least bit saner. Confidence is invaluable; it inspires armies and sets uneasy minds at rest. It is only when we are overly sure of things that are utterly false that we run the risk of jumping wing-less off of a cliff.

About Me, Writing

The One Thing Unfathomable

Music is moving. It can move souls. It can transform lives. It can save lives. It can bring a nation to tears. It can bring a stadium to its feet. It can define a generation. It can define a human being. The one thing that this all-powerful music can’t move? Me.

I’ve tried so hard to get into music. I see how many people enjoy it and I see what a strong influence it can have. But try as I might, music really doesn’t move me. You might say this is because I don’t understand music. You would be right. My brain loves making supply and demand graphs and writing essays, but it can’t wrap itself around music. This is how it usually goes down:

Me: “Listen to it. Feel it. How does the music make me feel right now?”
Brain: “Hungry. Oh wait, that’s just because you were too lazy to eat breakfast.”
Me: “No! Try again! What different instruments do you hear? How do they blend together?”
Brain: “Its all one thing! Music: •an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner”
Me: “I didn’t ask for a definition. Let the music move you. Connect with the music!”

At this point, my annoyingly sarcastic brain starts ignoring me and begins hatching some new plan on how to make an underwater trans-Atlantic highway leaving me quite alone to just stand there, straining to hear something that my brain refuses to listen to. It’s frustrating to say the least.

The best I can do is concentrate on the lyrics. See, what melodies and notes and the essence of all that is music is to you, is what words are to me. The way they blend together, play off of each other, create meanings and skew meanings, that is beautiful to me. I’m not just talking about poetry (which happens to be my least favorite genre). Writing can say so much or so little. It just is. So, the music that I truly enjoy is the music that has lyrics that I find the most significant. I realize that good lyrics doesn’t mean good music but focusing on the words is the only way music and I can maintain a semi-amicable relationship.

It doesn’t help that my entire family was sprinkled with magical music dust at birth. My dad has his degree in audio engineering, my mom can play various instruments, and my sister dances as her career. The extended family is equally gifted (masters in music, organ players, violin players, soon-to-be in an orchestra trombone players). Everyone……except for me.

If you are like my family and have a super deep connection with music, good for you. Please don’t hate me or this blog. Instead, go and listen or play some incredible music and enjoy it to its full capacity for me. I’ll be sitting here with my words, typing……….and typing………..still typing…..

About Me, Organization

ONCE UPON A TIME AT OFFICE DEPOT

If you were looking for a semi-somber, mostly introspective, and completely philosophical post, look elsewhere. Today I am going to write about Office Depot.

Once upon a time a girl was traveling around the territories of Clarkston in her ’97 Mali-mobile. One brightly lit neon sign caught her attention. Office Depot Those gleaming words attracted her. Not like one enchanted; instead, she felt as if guided by an invisible hand through those glass double doors. Here is where the happy violin music in the background stops. For this was an abandoned, lonely Office Depot. The employees gathered in small clumps and lit up at the sight of the newcomer.

“Do you need any assistance?”
“Can I help you?”
“What are you looking for today?”
“How can I be of assistance to you?”

The questions flew at the girl at 100 miles per hour and nearly knocked her off her feet, and worse, her mission. She gathered her wits however and with a smile and “no thank you” she pointed her feet towards her destination. It was a magical journey.

Walking past the brightly covered thumbtacks, she glanced longingly back yet continued on. The planners were even a harder temptation. Harder still, the graphic organizers made her stumble a moment as she stopped to examine the new arrivals. Finally, she found her sought after item. A pack of beautiful, pre-sharpened Ticonderoga pencils. The packaging advertised that they were the best in the world. “How true that is,” she thought. The way back was equally enthralling. Mountains of brightly stacked post-it notes filled her heart with joy. A rainbow of sharpies unfolded around her. Her face was filled with wide-eyed wonder as she skipped through the aisle of paper. College-ruled, neon colors, journals, notebooks, wide-ruled, hole-punched and red-lined. All seemed to call out to her. The only thing that dampened this glorious journey was the pack of desperate employees that seemed to be around every turn, eager to be of assistance. She found it particular that no other consumers seemed to be enjoying this beautiful land of office supplies.

Five hours later, she made it out of this wonderland and back to the desolate parking lot. Her trip was over, life must go on. yet she forever stored those images of organization and color-coded goodness in her mind and heart.

The End.

All right, I had my fun. I clearly avoided anything deep or revealing. Give me this then, just one new year’s resolution. My resolution is to be less organized. I’m too likely to compartmentalize my time and my relationships. I believe I am in danger of requesting my friends to wear certain colors so I can color code them more easily. I have a tendency to live by my to do list, which really isn’t living at all. Even computers can obey a program. My desire to is live with less lists and less spreadsheets. Please try to hold me to it. I promise I won’t brand you with my sharpies.

Happiness, Life Lessons

Theory #3 Happiness is….

Happiness is……..unnecessary? No, I believe it serves a purpose. Self-serving? Most often, its a peanuts_happiness

personal prize. The meaning of life? Definitely not. It’s so easy to get caught up in the life-long pursuit of happiness. Obviously, it is something deemed important even by our forefathers, but is it really a fulfilling prize? Happiness comes in many shapes and forms but ultimately it is self-seeking. Also, it tends to be very exclusive. The things that make me happy won’t necessarily make others around me happy. It usually only benefits yourself.

So often, happiness has become the underlying motivation behind the majority of our actions. Yet we are never truly satisfied. There is always that yearning for something more, something a bit greater than ourselves, something a bit better than what there could ever be. Happiness never travels alone, it constantly coupled with expectations. We are happy when our expectations are met and we are unhappy when they are not met. The problem is: people, weather, circumstances, opportunities, the ice cream flavor of the day, events, and life is rarely as we would have it be. This results in disappointments which results in unhappiness which results in an insignificant life? Incorrect.

The goal of our lives is not to be as happy as possible at all possible moments as we attempt to store up happiness for those unhappy days that always seem to be around the corner and cast a shadow on the happiness that we are happily enjoying in those happy moments. (happy appeared six times in the last sentence if you were wondering) For me, the goal of my life is to serve my Creator and the one who gave His life to save mine.

All this to say, my third theory of life is as follows: Happiness should not be the center of our lives (it is a nice perk) as it will usually disappoint and can be quite hollow.

Oh look! Below are lyrics that wrap it up quite nicely. You could have just read them instead of my long-winded post.

“Happiness is overrated

It always lets me down

It’s artificially inflated

She’s a flirts and she burns me every time

Happiness is just a dream and nothings what it seems”

Church Life, Life Lessons

A Very Honest Christmas Message

I was thinking about starting this blog off with some blithe remarks on how fast time is going, the beauty of Christmas lights, or how awesome the Thai food was that I just ate this evening. But honestly, that has nothing to do with what I want to say and will just waste your time. So enough with pleasant descriptions.

The truth is, I’ve lost Christmas in the act of celebrating Christmas. The busyness of the season has distracted me so that I’ve spent less time with the person that the holiday is celebrating. It’s ironic and completely wrong. Unfortunately, this problem isn’t limited to Christmas. I might have just as well have said: the busyness of my life has distracted me so that I’ve spent less time with the person that my life is supposed to serve. It is so messed up, it feels wrong even typing it. I’ve recently felt very torn with the different relationships in my life. No matter what I do, I feel that I am disappointing someone. It doesn’t have to be that way. The selfish head in my voice says “That’s right! If everyone could just adjust and be less demanding and more understanding, then things would be better!”

Shut up.

Changing others is not the way and it won’t work. At this moment, I feel like one of those bendy people I used to play with. Everything and everyone is tugging me in opposite directions. I can’t keep up this game of tug of war, I’m about to snap. So I’m giving this inflexible self to God. I know I can’t keep squeezing God into my life anymore. I have to choose if I’m going to go all the way in for God or not at all. So here it is: I’ve decided to go all the way in. I feel like who I am in my actions and interactions with others isn’t even close to who I am on the inside. I need to make those two match up better and I think giving the whole Chloe to God will do the trick. I’m giving my whole self to God and I’m going to let Him sort out the relationships. He can do a much better job than my muddled blumbering has done.

Maybe you feel like me. Maybe you think that I am insane and should go to bed. Nevertheless, here is the best gift you will ever receive. It’s freedom from death and sin. It’s not based on works or merit badges. Because you see, God doesn’t grade us on a curve. He doesn’t grade us at all. We are all share a sinful nature and the punishment of death that should be ours was taken away by the death of Jesus for everyone. Did you catch that? For everyone. Not just the “top ten percent” of humanity, or those with the most gold stars. There is no grading scale for God. You either believe in Him, accept His gift of salvation and spend eternity with God or you deny Him and spend an eternity separated from Him. It isn’t based on the amount of good things you’ve done, the amount of money given to charities, the bad things you’ve avoided, or even the sins that you’ve committed (thank goodness).

It doesn’t get any better than that. Merry Christmas everyone!

Change, Life Lessons, Pain

You’ll play lonely games too.

“Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win ’cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Wheter you like it or not,
Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.”
~Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Suess~

Fame is exciting, motivating, whimsical, depressing, destructive, and wonderful. People have gone to the ends of the earth to find it and hold onto it. I love the reality check that Dr. Seuss throws in here. “Except when they don’t because sometimes they won’t”. Life can’t always be a mountain top view. Being at the top is fun, but completely unrealistic. No one gets a free helicopter ride to the peak of the mountains of life. You have to get out the grapple and hook and start climbing. And once you get there, what are you going to do? Stay there forever? In order to move on with life, you must keep moving. Sometimes that means going back down to the valleys. Sometimes that means finding an even bigger mountain to climb. However, it is times “when they don’t” praise you and applaud you that really let you live. Those are the times when you aren’t living for someone else. Those lonely games can teach the most valuable lessons. God’s will and your own personal expectations should be the only benchmarks for success. Comparing yourself to others won’t get you anywhere, expect maybe into a deep abyss of insecurity and unhapiness. Don’t go there. That is not a neccessary part of the journey. Rise above the temptation to base your own success on someone else’s failure. Or worse, the temptation to label your own efforts as worthless because of what you see others doing. It’s a waste of time, energy, talent, and a perfectly wonderful you.

About Me

Random Rant

For some reason, I have a strange compulsion to share about myself. I have all these thoughts spinning around in my head and I’m starting to get dizzy. Plus, I am not focusing on my art history like I should. So perhaps this will help.

I am a dreamer. I dream almost constantly. Not just when I’m sleeping and not just nice “here is what my future will look like” dreams. I imagine every scenario in my head, realistic or otherwise. It’s my type of escape. The only problem is, I often forget to come back to reality. So if you hear me talking or gesturing and I seem completely disconnected that’s probably exactly what has happened. I disconnect when things aren’t going well. I know eventually I’ll have to always live in this world but I don’t know what I’d do without my dreams.
I have a bad habit of trying to make everyone happy. Not because it isn’t a noble goal, but because it is impossible. I try to be everything to everyone and I end up burned out. But I know I also am quite selfish. So its not that I am always giving or anything like that. I just change who I am to fill in voids way too easily.
I love my job. Even though I rarely want to go, spending time with kids can make my day so much better. I like the fact that I’m needed and that there is someone always asking “Chloe, can I show you something?”
I am horrible at lying to other people but amazing at lying to myself. I have figured out how to change my memories. While this helps with the rough patches in life, it also makes me doubt what really happened and can be quite confusing. I can seperate who I really and who I am being so I end up unsure of which is real. I’m sure I’ll figure it out someday soon.

I have more to say, but I think I’ve sufficiently emptied out my brain so I can now memorize more pieces of art. ta ta for now.