Knock Knock, will you listen?

My mind started wandering about new blog topics, how riveting! Emily requested that i blog more, so here's an attempt...

i was about to go to bed when i heard a knock on the door, i knew who it was, the only person that ever knocks on our door at 12:30am. There is a student who comes to our house to visit the couple i live with. He is as troubled as a teen could get, the usual drugs, drinking, disconnected parents, going-no-where friends... etc etc. My friend used to work at a church nearby our house, and she has talked with this particular student about spirituality and God many times over. Basically this guy comes to our house at the oddest hours of the day and night to seek parenting, guidance, and direction. Sometimes he is high and sometimes he's not. What is interesting to me, is that my friends give him honest answers every time, sometimes they scold him, but they always end up challenging him to take responsibility for his actions. My limited observation is that with each new generation comes a whole new level of unwillingness to accept their own actions, it is always someone else's fault. For some reason this kid keeps coming back for more, desiring to make his life right but never quite sure how.

"They" say (who is the undefined 'they' anyways?) that people only make changes to their lives when they're ready, and it often takes a whole lot of terrible circumstances for people to arrive at that place of willingness. When we are content, we typically aren't focused on change. Everyone's level of contentedness is different, which can define an individual's catalyst for change, so it's an important thing. What is fascinating to me, is how people arrive at this place in different ways that vary in severity. For instance, the catalyst for change in my life occurred when 2 friends committed suicide, at that moment I began the journey to understand the spiritual aspect of our humanity and nothing could stop me from searching and changing. Sometimes I wonder if that incident wouldn't have happened, at what point in my life would I have sought change? What is also intriguing, are the people out there who do good in this world without ever having a severe moment that invoked a change, are some people simply disposed to creating good while others are not?

This particular question has been on my mind a lot the last few weeks. Actually, I've been thinking a lot about this student who stumbles to our doorstep so frequently to find someone to talk to that will listen. I've been wondering at what point can we make judgments about others? Can we discern who is "good" and who is "bad." Everything in me wants to slap a label on this kid that says "hopeless". I know that sounds harsh, but one can only take so many of his criminal stories before feeling justified to make a call on his character. But he keeps coming back, to talk and to try and sort out his life. And each time the couple i live with drops everything to sit and offer advice, but mostly they stop and listen.

Does Faith Fit?

It started with an awkward moment. I walked into the kitchen at work with my "Cleveland" mug (you know those blue hued ones from Starbucks) in hand ready to grab some hot water for some tea. When I walked in a fellow co-worker giggled. I looked at her confused as she said:

"Cleveland. What a weird city to put on a mug."

"Oh you think?"

"Yeah. It's not that cool."

"It's where I grew up."

"Oh...ha...um well I always think of the song about Cleveland rocking."

Awkward! But I have to admit, I was comforted because it's usually me who says stupid things to people in the kitchen. On my lunch break I called Emily, since the mug was a gift from her, and told her about the run in. Immediately after we shared some laughs, she mentioned I should blog again. Then we continued to tell each other all about our lives biggest frustrations within a five minute period. (note: this is a sign of true friendship...no fluff...right to the stuff waiting in the que to be spilled onto the other.) She revealed some life issues and mine really revolved around the issues of faith.

Growing up, I was always a very, lets say, passionate person. A risky person. An all or nothing type. Searching for meaning in everything, I was excited to get out into the world and do something of substance. Many of us have learned that often it takes a lot of work and dedication to build yourself up into the perfect job, or life scenario that you'd always imagined and hoped. After going through a really strange, odd, unexplainable year of confusion, questions, and waiting, I've catapulted myself into the 9 to 5 in a position I do honestly enjoy. The 9 to 5 life is really interesting, it's almost like an alternate universe, a world within a world. It's strange and outrageously normal.

But where does faith fit into this compartmentalized life? What is it that I should be hoping for and how much of my accomplishments will be because of prayer and asking as opposed to doing and acting. And how much strength and divine intervention do I really need to create an online course at work? I used to look at working people and wonder where the passion went? Was it ever there? So few people live their life with joy and fulfillment and risk. Now I'm realizing that it's hard to determine what faith looks like in a world without much risk, without much uncertainty. What is to much to hope and ask for? And what if you don't recieve that which you consistently hope and ask God for? What happens then to your heart and dreams?

These questions could be answered from different angles, from different people. But these are the things that I believe hurt those people of faith who have routine and consistency as a cornerstone in their lives. So these are all the issues of faith we explored in five minutes before I walked back on campus and into my cubicle.

plans are for sissys

This blog is comin at cha straight from my work computer on campus. It's Halloween, so NO one works. I'm (finally) in the Halloween "spirit" today AND loving my job all at the same time. Our whole day was filled with eating, walking around to the different departments to see everyone's costume, and teaching Chinese students in our specific college how to carve pumpkins. (Some of them were cutting half of the pumpkin off to dig out the guts...) Who knew, America still has some customs! We also had a "fall festival" for the foreign students, they all thought the employees' costumes were hilarious and took a plethora of pictures. Oh and I was a hula girl.

But enough about Halloween and onto the life update.... This is the first era of my life when I have absolutely NO PLAN and I am perfectly okay. Really. I always have a plan. There are some goals and things I want to do, but for now...I'm plugging away at the 9 - 5 working in my college's continuing education department doing online stuff and design. It's a great place to start. Although the routine and hum drum that often is associated with office life does affect me, I'm really thankful for what I have and who I have in my life. Complaining gets real old, although I have a tendency to see drawbacks, for the first time in my life I'm content in the now. This era could be called "Thankfully without a plan" for those of you who enjoy titles. Don't confuse this with "comfortable - not growing" because I'm still on the journey. I just realized that you don't have to run through it, you might walk, meander, skip, gallup, or stand still for a time. I can't believe it's taken me a quarter of a decade to realize this. Standing still does not necessarily equal stagnant.

We Never Change, Do We?

I made two entertaining yet comforting discoveries this week.

The first discovery was made after I was done painting for the day. Emily came over, I think to get out of her house, and also help me paint. By "help me paint" I'm referring to splattering the roller a few times on a wall interupted by disappearances to drink tea and read by the deck. I didn't mind though, the company of someone else in the old house and the scattered conversation was openly welcomed. Afterwards we laid on the floor and the horribly 80's couch complete with intersecting diagonal red and yellow lines offset by a fuzzy grey background, and talked about the same things we always talk about. I decided to torture her and show her old family photos that I just couldn't throw away. Some of the people were strangers to me, but something about their quintessential American lifestyles was captured so elegantly by mistake, that I couldn't bring myself to toss them.

She soon got bored by those and my baby pictures. So I riffled through the stack of Life magazines from 1948 that had been collecting dust (understatement) in the corner. Back in April my Aunt almost sold the whole collection along with scores of vinyl to a collector for 50 bucks. I flipped through the magazine amazed...reading mundane articles to Emily she fell asleep on the 80's couch, but I kept reading aloud anyways.

What I discovered is that we haven't evolved much since the 1940's.
The US was still worried about oil and it's relation to war:


Advertisers let people know that buying new stuff will make them awesome and well liked:


Women loved new fridgerators:


The Cleveland Indians were in the news:)



And finally...they were worried about the breakdown of the family, I was really shocked by this. Especially since the stereotype of "Leave it to Beaver" comes to my mind whenever older people complain that things aren't as wholesomes as they used to be. This is an exerpt from the article, I think if you control c, control p'd it into an article today, it'd be just as relevant:
"One of the most powerful forces at work today distrupting and disillusioning the atomistic family is the romantic dream fostered by movies, magazines, national advertising and radio soap operas. Young people have tended to rely impulsively on physical attraction with an idealistic belief in romantic love as basis for marriage. Today it has been perverted until everyone is reminded constantly from all directions that wives must continue to be charming enough and husbands dandruff free in order to be rechosen every day at breakfast."



The article went on to give statistics about divorce rates and the lack of need the family has for each other when they don't live and work together on farms. The city family "chooses" to be together, but exist in seperate worlds, said the article. People have been operating like this for over 50 years now? I thought this was a new concept we discovered in the 80's.

Perhaps this isn't overtly comforting, this fact we as a country have relived our mistakes for the past five decades is absolutely ubsurd. But the good thing is that with all the stupid stuff we do, someone else has already made the same mistakes before. We aren't crazy! We're just humans, humans who've apparently evolved into self adoring islands since we left the farm.

This old find really did prove that people rarely change.

Yea, I think I'm gonna wait to post discovery number duex.

Here, There and Then Back Here

You know how people say "don't worry, you're not the only one" and expect the phrase brings some level of comfort to the person in a debacle? I've been thinking about this phrase today and if it is actually true in my situation. Honestly, I really wish I knew someone else who has been back and forth between Northern California and Northern Ohio as much as I have. Someone else who is 25 and has to decide what the heck to do with someone's estate? What does that even mean? I would implore them to sit with me and tell me about the choices they made, and if they regretted any.

All these questions lead me to the following pondersome moment... What kind of person am I amongst these adult-esque decisions? Am I a little child kicking and screaming to get her way? Lamenting, "I must live in California! I want perfect weather, opportunity, adventure, and my old life back. I don't want to stay in Cleveland...whine whine whine" Or am I a fearless fighter? Tauting typical movie premises, "I will fight for what I want, I had a setback but that shouldn't stop me from living the life I've dreamed. An idyllic life is worth fighting for."

I can't tell which I am. I'm hoping the later.

Rain

I woke up today and it was thundering and lightening! It was nice to hear the rain until I realized that my windows were down in Xerxes. When I got back my student called me and AGAIN he cancelled on his tutoring appointment...his excuse was he was once hit by electricity and gets nervous going outside. Maybe. But he also has an assignment due... Now I had some extra time on my hands and had been wanting to see Garden State again. Perhaps not the best movie for me to watch (dealing with returing home, family, death, finding purpose). So I guess I'm going to go home today, to the one place that I still feel a sense of home. I'm gonna go to my coffee shop and to my house, work, drink coffee, and talk to some folks. I have a lot of work to do.



i don't know how it hit me this morning that this really is my last semblence and recognition of that "feeling" of home.

Okay so i tried to find a good lil clip of the movie when it talks about what it is like to come home after a long time, but alas...there was just a bunch of people remaking their own trailers and alternative ending posts on youtube. but i like this one too: (ha. why does the rain make me so nostalgic?!)

Scams

Like most quarter lifers I have never experienced a society with some level of "trust". Never have quarter-lifers known what it was like to trust their employer, their news systems, or their neighbor. We are conditioned to disect everything we hear and question it's validity.

The reason I am so stuck on the trust issue today is because I am having to make a lot of decisions on important matters (in areas outside my expertise) by relying on the words of others. And by "others" I mean people who would benefit financially if I take their advice. So what's a part-recovering-college-kid-part-adult to do? Go on their gut, past experiences, and the (in my case limited) knowledge of friends and relatives. There isn't anyone's opinion I trust. So I'm out here navigating on my own, with only mistakes to guide. It would be nice to know a world where we didn't need to get two or three second opinions on everything we do.

Another thing that has really got me goin...is scammers. Scammers these days don't just prey off of the elderly and stay at home moms to review emails, but now they are scamming job hunters. Now I've gotten a few *too good to be true* email job offers that I just never applied for. Not because I thought they were scams, but because surely no one would pay me 90,000 bones in Salt Lake City
to be a .net developer. At least not at this stage in the game.

I did get a job offer that sounded reasonable, and I took the bait. The site is goodgradesnow.com and they had sent me a few emails telling of their needs for tutors. Since I am a tutor and have my resume blasted all over cyberspace, it wasn't too crazy to think they had somehow tracked me down. So I fill out the application online and hit submit. Two weeks later I get a phone message saying that they want to do a phone interview and they gave me a reference number. I called back and something just seemed off about the whole deal. So I did what anyone in their quarter life would do and googled "goodgradesnow scam" and sure enough I got some hits that connected the site to an Egyptian immigrant who has hordes of phishing sites, including those tailored to enticed eager job seekers and use sites like monster and yahoo hot jobs to gather info. (Although referenced by wikipedia...still...something's shady here.) Apparently the scamming business is not so lucrative anymore if it has been reduced to tutor trickery.

Sadly if it sounds to good to be true, it's probably a huge falsehood at your expense.

Here are some other sites that are apparent frauds by this egyptian dude:
www.veriresume.com/
www.ebandsearch.com/
www.adminsolutionsgroup.net/

If you think you are being scammed search the business or site at scam.com for some interesting or at least entertaining reading.