Orange Thoughts

I am not very good at making up titles...

2010-02-21T23:39:00.001-08:00

Five months...
change is necessary but difficult
I am a recovering chemistry major
it's theatre not theater!
Crazy for You?
Crazy for Me...yes
life is like a box of chocolates and mine is full of rocks

i can type without looking
*laughs*
life without recreational usage of a portable external brain can be difficult

looking back at the things I have written gave me hope for a future of finishing
maybe someday,
maybe this summer...

what to do?
what to do?
pity the ladies in waiting..

auditions are at a very inconvenient time
my future is scary
BE AFRAID! BE VERY VERY AFRAID!!!!

done

We Wait

2009-09-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

i wait
absurdity
abstraction
modernisity

busy, busy, dreadfully busy,
more than a bumble bee
more than an ant

abstractionisticly glorious
it doesn't have to make sense,
it just has to make sense
*laughs*

free thought and random word
everything is what it isn't
i am telling the truth in the guise of a lie
but not really

He has saved me and i must rejoice
*smiles*
praise Him
the Holy One

LOVE

sleep alludes me
ah wiel
ale ne
to je alene mile

no sense and yes sense
it for its sake but still
hmm
goodbye

Bridges

2009-08-30T14:57:00.001-07:00

the secret blog about a secret time where a boy and his new found friends went on a secret journey to a secret place and did secret things that changed his life
his life was changed and his path was found
he believed it all and stumbled not...lie
he stumbled some but found his way and true realization came
hunger came but he denied it and conquered the strongest of them all
he desired for the happy place but was denied and therefore could not truly relax but that is ok
busy as a bee yet slow as a sloth
hoo hum the boy sang as he went on his merry way

the sisters of the boy became endangered by it and he was required to play the knight
"He spoke and it was so"
what shall we do when confronted by the dilema of none
shall we sit back and listen to music
as amazing as it may be i think not
dost thou think thine own is exceedingly to thine
help is so far but He is always there
i have given away everything and i desire nothing but this
Him
that is all
LOVE

Alpha

2009-08-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

I am a little bit better now.
I am beginning to get a handle on things (albeit an infinitesimally small handle...)
Alpha has begun and the fears that I had are still present but confidence and excitement have pushed them away for the time being.
I am aware that I am riding a very thin line right now. Satan may have won a lot of battles when I was away and out of my element but I am back in "comfort".
I feel confident and "right".
Everything seems to be good.

...I am wary of an ambush.
The quintessential time to destroy your enemy is when they have hope and a difference seems sure.
My hope has never taken flight. It is always murdered when I feel safe.
Where is safe haven?
...With the Lord, in the shadow of His wings....
Can I be in that shadow when my shame keeps me from even acknowledging His presence?
I am done,

Unrest...

2009-08-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have been being prepared for this moment and every moment to come by all the moments of my current and future past.
Every action, thought, word, intention, has all been for a purpose...
Why am I aware of this path?
What is important about this path that I am only aware of this result?
Am I not the central character in my life?
What could be happening that my life and choices are meant to influence?
Is my life not meant to be right so that others may learn?
I have ultimate control but ultimate control is beyond my grasp.
Something is there that I must find but apparently I am not a Hufflepuff...
I guess you could consider this a poem but it is really a just a poor wretch writing with out inhibitions in a random assortment of codes that mean something to this poor wretch...
The signs tell me that I am meant to feel guilty but the processor does not allow the emoter to function properly
...malfunction...require input...
Input...Ha!...I have enough input to last most people several lifetimes...
The path I am on is not the path I would have chosen.
Why was I allowed to continue?
Does not the fact that I have realization mean anything?
Why can I not take that one small step for man, that giant leap for man's soul...
There is a hole that must be ripped out
A darkness inside that feeds on...on
Me
I see others and wonder
WIZARDS FIRST RULE!!!!
and yet I know I must give them a shadow and a gift
Overly Cryptic Description...
In apropos of nothing
Wolfgang, Ludwig, and Fredric are my savers
Open and more or less willing
but not able apparently
Continued attempts led to disappointment...
Something has failed within me
Something is still the same
I am through with......me
Me is gone,
Me needs to change,
Me will not leave!!
Me is not...ME!
I feel a different one inside and he has told me who that one is but he was wrong.
Who is that one?
Who?
Please tell me!

Time

2009-08-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have had the time to sit down and write a blog entry and I think an update is in order.

So since I have last blogged, I was home for all of June. It was nice being home but Centralia is by no means my home right now. I love seeing all of my friends from Centralia and I love being with my family but Centralia has such a bad (for lack of better word) aura or vibe to it. I don't like who I am when I am in Centralia. It seems to amplify my anger and I flip out at the smallest things.

Anyways, I absolutely love being in Azusa! I am so excited for my friends to all get back so we can see each other.

In July I was in the Czech Republic on a mission trip through APU teaching English at a Young Life camp. We had such a great time and I miss my Czech friends so much. I had a blast teaching English, although, I now know that I don't have the patience to teach middle school kids Haha!
We got the chance to sight see in Prague for a few days and it was amazing. Prague is gorgeous and my team and I had fun trekking through the city on foot and by metro/tram. There are a lot of tourists that go to Prague but we knew what we were doing and we tried not to look like them.

I have been back in Azusa for almost a week now and, like I said, it feels fantastic. I can hardly wait for school to start! There are so many opportunities awaiting me in the next year!

...

2009-05-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

Here I sit, watching Benny and Joon, a movie that has been recommended to me many many times and I am finally watching it.

May term has been the most amazing experience of my life!!

I love all of the people that I am living with and the experiences I have had and the ones that I am going to have.

I am so happy that I got cast in Once Upon A Mattress!!!

Okay, so I think that I am going to have the whole theater/chemistry thing figured out shortly. I have talked to my parents and they are open to the idea.

I just have such weird feelings about who I am and what my life is.

The season finale of House intrigued me very much. It was about a man who had had split brain surgery to stop his seizures. Unlike most patients, who lose the ability to communicate with their right brain and therefore lose that aspect of themselves, this guy's right brain personality, the pat of a human that sees the big picture and holds our creativity (basically the artsy side), became an equal but mute (language and the ability to speak are in the left brain) part of the guy's being.

Okay, pardon the back story rant but in my mind it is very important that you understand this guy's condition because I feel kind of like him. Now obviously, my left hand is not acting of its own accord but I still feel the truth in the analogy that I have somehow separated my left and right brain and that they act slightly independently. Yes this is a crazy notion, but this is just the current solution that I have for my issues.

This is why I have such a strong desire to be a theater major, my whimsical right brain would thrive in that environment, but my analytical left brain is showing me how illogical and impractical it is for me to get a theater degree and it is making me feel guilty as all get out about my desicion.

Anyways, I will finish this thought later because I just closed my eyes to blink and opened them with the realization that I had just taken a two minute nap...

MAY TERM AND MATTRESSES!!!

2009-05-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

So,

Finals were crazy but good. My life has been running like mad ever since I teched 42nd street!!!

So I have an idea that I have run by my parents and they are willing to think about it but even if they cannot support me I am going to find a way to make it happen and I probably have told most people about this because it was my original plan when I wanted to come APU. Okay, now that you are thinking that I have decided to do something crazy and wrong and maybe not completely ethical, I am going to tell you what I plan to do.

I have a strong and intense desire to double major in Chemistry and Theater. After a year of classes here at APU and being involved in both departments, I love chemistry and I do want to be a forensic scientist but I love theater just as much and I feel weird denying that part of me and not living my life truthfully and to the fullest.

I have thought about this for so long and have struggled with it that I feel like it has been a stumbling block for me and I have been unable to fully embrace who I am and what I can be. I feel like, if I choose the path of science, and do not grow as an actor, that I will miss out on an entire section of my life that I won't be able to get back.

I feel like I have some how split my being into to different sections. Both parts are fully me and equal to each other but they are almost the antithesis of each other. I have been struggling with how to combine my left and right brains essentially.
I have a lot of reasons for wanting this and I feel that, because there is such a struggle in me over this idea, that I am being prevented.

Goodness gracious. I need to stop this rant but I just needed to type it out...and my battery is about to die.....

Life is a strange thing...

2009-03-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

My life right now feels like a giant vortex leading into an abyss of nothingness, kind of like a black hole...
This it the first time in my life where I really have no time and I have had to drop things in order to do more important things. Keeping my priorities in order may cost me on the sentimental side, but my academic and financial well being are taking up most of my attention right now and I fit in family and friends where I can.
ho-hum...life is a strange thing.

AGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

2009-03-04T20:25:00.000-08:00

...So I am slightly stressed right now...

42nd street started last night and, while I am very excited to be apart of this show, my teching schedule, plus Mattress rehearsals that will start next week, plus work, friends, projects, homework, tests, advising, housing...AGHHHHHHHH!!! Everything is coming together this month and I am going to be running at break neck speed until...June...AGHHHH!!

It will all be fine, I just keep telling myself to remember retrospective foresight. I already know that I am going to come out fine on the other side of this, it is just going to be a little difficult.

I also have a lot of little errands and responsibilities to keep track of that ruin my organization. That is what is really stressing me...the little stuff...Haha.

My schedule right now is pretty much booked solid. Ironically Wednesday, the day I used to hate with a passion, is now my only day where I have extra time to do stuff.

Fun times...

Theater vs. Theatre??

2009-03-01T13:06:00.001-08:00

MARCH!!! AGHHHHHHH!!!
This is an interesting time in my life. A lot of things are converging this month and I am not sure what is going to happen...

All I can say is that I am sure that I will be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. My brain may decide to perform an emergency shut down at any time so I reserve the right to malfunction without warning.

Rehearsals for Once Upon A Mattress start tomorrow and I am teching 42nd street and that stuff starts this week as well...I also have work, d-group, class, homework...aghh!

I think I can take it all in stride and I will do fine but it is a lot like rafting down a river and you see a level five rapids coming up and you begin to freak out. When you are in the rapids it is still really scary and stressful, but once you are back in calm water, you realize that the rapids were really fun and you would jump back in them in a second. I am going into this month with retrospective foresight, meaning that I am looking at the future knowing that it will soon be the past and I will have loved it.

Laundry

2009-02-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

So I had a strange thought while I was doing the laundry. What if you didn't lose a sock, but you found one instead and that was why there is one extra? Strange...

Life and the lack there of...

2009-02-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

This is kind of weird to write about because I have never been an emotional person in general, nor have I ever felt the need to talk about mortality, but I think now is a time where I can not ignore it.
My German professor, Dr. Spanier, died last night.
I have always thought that the difference between life and death is fascinating. I mean, it is a difficult thing for the mind to understand. One day, a person is alive and well, going about their daily duties with no thought of it ending, and the next day, their spirit is gone from this world and their body is left an empty shell for their loved ones to bury.
I have seen dead bodies before (I worked as an intern in a county coroner's office), and that moment when life ends is so quick and final that my mind can not help but ponder over it.
I wonder about what is next.
I don't mean what is next on the path of a human soul, I mean what is next for me, for the people who are left in this world when someone passes to the next. What is going to have to change and what am I going to have to get used to now that that someone is gone.
What amazes me is the ability...the necessity for life to move on. Those that are left must accept what has passed and continue in our struggle. We must remember what those who have died did but we can not stay in the past.
I talk about this as if Dr. Spanier was a close friend of mine. I would call him a friend and he did have a noteworthy impact on my life, but the fact that death has touched someone I know has cause these thoughts to come to the forefront of my mind.
Death is a strange thing...

So I am just a little bit altruistic...

2009-02-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I donated blood!!! This is the second time I have given blood to the Red Cross and it will not be my last by far. I really enjoy giving blood, knowing that I am saving a life with my donation, and honestly, it is one of the easiest things to donate. All you have to give up is less than an hour of your time and you have done something amazing to help someone else.
This time around I donated with the ALYX machine. The machine pumps out your blood and filters/centrifuges it and pumps the plasma back in, leaving just the red blood cells as your donation. They do this so you can donate a double portion of red blood cells and those are in more demand than whole blood.
I have big veins and no qualms about blood so I figure, why not, give as much as is healthy and keep giving when I am eligible again.
I encourage everyone to give blood if they can, it is a simple and easy way to impact the lives of others!

Book?

2009-01-29T23:41:00.000-08:00

So, I am trying to write a book. I am not one hundred percent motivated to write it but I think that it would be cool and I guess you could say it is on my "before I die" list (isn't that called a bucket list?) and since you never know when your time card is due, I might as well start now.
It will be a fantasy style book because that genre comprises the majority of my reading and I think it will be the easiest genre for me to write in because I am not limited by the known and I don't have to do a tremendous amount of research either!
I am trying to be extremely organized so that I do not get things mixed up so I haven't actually started writing the dialogue yet. I am trying to figure out where I want the story to go and get all of my ideas in order before start to flesh it out.
It appears to be a fairly daunting and time-consuming task. I am not the type of person to sit down and start coming up with idea after idea. I find that thoughts will randomly pop into my head so I write them down and fit them in and, once I have started, it becomes much easier to write. I guess you could say that I have bursts of inspiration. It will probably take me many years to finish this book and I am not sure if I want it to be a single book or in a series but the thought of the future is rather exciting.
Kind of a random and pointless post, but I always forget who I have told things to, so I decided to post this it so that people could read it in case I forgot to tell them.

It's been a long, long time...

2009-01-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it has been a long time. The last time I was here, it was before finals and Christmas break and snow and floods and a long drive and a new semester...there, just told all that happened in the past month or so.
Finals were good, got all A's, we drove home (so stinking long) and it was great to see my family after three months. Literally, the day after we arrived home however, it began to snow, and snow, and snow, we got a record foot and half in my town and I was snowed in for two weeks. After getting cabin fever and driving my family crazy...the snow let up and Christmas and New Years happened. After the holidays, I hooked up with my friends a couple of times, but didn't really get to see as much of them as I had hoped. A couple of days before we were set to leave, it stated raining, and raining, and raining (I think you get where I am going with this subtle cue...). Yes, with all of that record snow fall and the temperature slowly rising, the risk of flooding was imminent. Our estimated time of departure needed to be pulled earlier than expected. The day before our revised ETD, I was taking my sweet time folding clothes and packing them away when my mom called and told me that the flood waters were going to breach the river banks that night and we had to leave...in two hours. After a flurry of packing and rushed goodbyes, we departed from our beloved home. We were lucky to have left when we did because the freeways on our route that were in the food zone were closed two hours after we left!

So...that was my winter break. Since arriving back at school, things have been good. It feels like I never left. APU and Azusa have definitely become like home to me and I enjoy living here. Life has begun to speed up a little bit and I am trying not to stress. I have been fairly successful and have only lost my mind twice and only for a brief period of time!

I know it's lame. All I do is tell you about my life in this blog, but I am not very good at writing about philosophical things or anything like that so, you get what you get.

I do have bursts of inspiration at times and have missed the chance to write them down while I was in the burst and I quickly forget my train of thought so, for the time being, writing about my life, however boring at times, is the only thing I can do.

HOME!

2008-12-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

So...finals have been over for a few days and I made the trek home with my sister, brother-in-law, and two fellow Washingtonian friends from school. Finals were actually really easy this semester. My first two finals were O Chem and German at seven-thirty and nine-forty five respectively...yeah. O Chem was actually easier than I thought it would be. I really like German and the final was nothing special. My theater project nearly cost me my sanity, but I did well.
The trip home from California to Washington took us seventeen hours!! Being crammed in the back of our car was not fun, but being home is worth it.
It is so cold here in Washington! Twenty-eight right now. I am going to freeze my butt off!
Being home is great but I forgot some of the little pet peeves that go along with being home. I feel really bad when something makes me angry because I should be grateful to be home but instead I am being negative towards my family.
I realized as well how much has changed in the past few months. As I was very involved in school, church, and with my friends and now, after being gone for three months, it is almost like people have expected me to be changed so they treat me differently. It was really awkward going back to church. Especially because I have really grown apart from the people in my church and I don't necessarily agree with what my church teaches or how they run things. I have experienced so much after leaving this Podunk little town that now I feel myself being less tolerant of some people and things in my life that annoy me.
There is one person in particular that has the pleasure of being the only person I know that I truly hate. I don't know what it is about this person, but everything that person does annoys the heck out of me. That person is away somewhere and I couldn't be happier. That person being away makes my stay at home much more enjoyable. I am trying not to specify that person's name or gender because a lot of people would be mortified if they knew that I hated this person. All I can say is that I am very good at hiding how I truly feel and putting on a happy face for the audience.
Now that I have fallen into being cynical, I should end this musing...

Last day of the semester!

2008-12-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day of the Fall '08 semester! I have thoroughly enjoyed my first semester away at University. I was really nervous about it during the summer, but it has been a great experience. Living away from home has not been as big of a deal as I thought it might be. I call my parents once or twice a week but I am busy enough that I don't think of home all the time. There are those moments, however, when I see some one that looks kind of like a friend of mine or I catch a whiff of something baking, and I think of home. I am excited to be going back for a month. By this time next week I will be in my old room sleeping in my old bed!
So, yeah...I'll stop now before I start rambling!

Missions

2008-12-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

I am going to the Czech Republic!! On a small scale it was decided for me that I was a member of this team, I was still considering another team, but the deadlines are coming up to quickly for there to be time for the other team to get the information they need from me so... I am going to the Czech Republic!
I am so excited to be fulfilling what I really feel is God's will for me.
When I think of missions, the first thing that pops into my mind is hard work and uncomfortable conditions. This is not what my mission trip is about. Yes we will be working hard and yes it will be uncomfortable, but it will not be the physical labor, sleeping under mosquito nets, not being able to drink the water kind of mission trip that I thought a mission trip had to be in order to be legit. I bet that this is another way for God to yell at me "Andrew...stop putting me in a box!!"
Even though I try my hardest to not define God or unconsciously give Him limits, I always prove myself to be human and end up limiting God some way or another. God works in any and every situation!!
The mission trips that I first wanted to go on were all high intensity, high risk, and high stress, I guess I always thought that it had to be dangerous and foreign and extreme in order for God to be able to do great things. I am so excited for Him to prove me wrong!!
I do not know much about my trip but I kind of have the basics...I think.
The gist of it is that we will be teaching conversational English to a group of Czech youth for about two weeks. We will be provided with a curriculum but we will also be interacting with the kids through drama, art, and athletics.
I am so insanely excited to be apart of this mission trip! God is going to move me in amazing ways that I never expected and I can not wait for my mind to be blown away and my lifestyle to be completely changed!!

Intro

2008-12-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

So, the intro to my blog. I guess I started a blog just to say that I had one. It is kind of a thing now to have a blog. It will now serve as a net for my thoughts.
I do not think that I am an especially good writer so I apologize before I start anything for any ramblings or nonsensicalness in any future blog. As you can see, I make up words sometimes, so do not worry if you get confused.
I know, I really started this for my family. So that I have one if I go on a trip or have a big adventure that I want them to read about. Just keeping people updated on the happenings in my life.
I wonder what I should say in this thing...