Full Throttle

Weakness and a sermon

The weakness is my lack of writing for the competition. The sermon was my father's. I spent the weekend out at my parents' house, wishing my mum a happy birthday. Today my father, an Elder at his church, gave a terrific sermon on the need to be spiritual and not religious. This is a major peeve of mine. Too many times, I see young kids accepting Christianity and then wanting to strongarm everyone else into their newfound "cause". That's the trouble with youth, they bullrush into making everything happen on their own strength rather then relying on a bit of a faith. Strength of the flesh rather then the strength of faith. That's a long entry for another time, a lengthy rant upon my own failings as a person. Onwards and ever upwards, so we toil.

Speaking of failings, I failed to get a chunk of writing done, as I spent most of time today and yesterday with my parents and little brother, who I do not get to see as often as I'd like. Since they live in the country, it's tough to get together and see everyone. So it was a nice interlude from the busy life, getting out to Valley. Going to church today reminded me I desperately need to find my own church out here in the city. I need good spiritual people around me, I miss that fellowship.

As I hung out with my folks, we talked about the next several years and the things upcoming; my father wants to bring his RV up to the state, our desire to build some form of vehicle, tuition costs and financial status, my plans to move to Seattle after the University and so on. It dawned on me that I will be 21 next year. Twenty and one. My parents had been married for one year at that point.

I think I'm at the point where I want some form of long-term committed relationship. I don't think I was really ready at other points, what a long-term relationship really meant hadn't dawned on me. Now as I look at where I'm at in life and realize I'm looking at the start of a career by next year, I think I'm ready for the next step. I want... stability. I want foundation. I'm living here in the city by myself, with a steady job and solid educational framework. Next year I can pick up a more lucrative career with the police department as a reserve or part-time officer.

We'll see what's in store. I have faith, I've learned (through some very bitter and painful lessons) that whatever the Lord has in store is what I want. So it's cruise control for me, just lean back and have faith. No managing, no strong-arming. I will not create what I think I want. I will simply follow the path before me. Doors are opening faster then I can go through them, so it's working. The next few years will be very interesting.

I just hope I'm ultimately in Seattle by 2010 with a wife, a Seattle Police Department job and a hectic Master's degree program at University of Washington.

I also hope that tomorrow you will see my 1,000 words. I have yet to see Jay's go up, so hopefully I'm not horribly behind.

In living,

- Caleb 

And so it Begins!

Well, Jay and I have embarked upon a massive contest. A marathon struggle of will, as it were. We are going to conduct a mini NaNo WriMo write-off. We have until the end of July to finish a novella, with the goal of 1,000 words per three days. An easy amount, since we each like incredibly intense and busy schedules. So we are off on our own race, with the goal of finishing a nice, tidy story at the end of July. It can provide practice for NaNo WriMo and get us back into the groove of fiction writing. Lord knows, I've stepped away from writing too long and I find the concept of past participles foreign and remote.

From now on, I'll be posting updates every three days, with the passage that I've completed for that writing window. Each window of three days I must finish at least 1,000 words. Each of us will be posting our status via our personal blogs and this status bar will be updated with every 1k of words I write. If I do the minimum of 1,000 words every three days, I should hit around 17,000 by the end of July.

0 / 17 (0.0%)

I'm currently figuring what exactly my story should be. It'll either be a story about an emperor's daughter, an Irish mobster or a loose retelling of the Odyssey set in the future and Odysseus as an Arabic Catholic space captain.

Follow my progress here and follow Jay's progress here!

The Minors

Work has been extremely hectic. My major project, creation and publication of the UAA freshmen booklet called the Paw Print and it finally got back from the printers. I did the covers, complete layout, numerous logos and over a dozen pages of content on the inside. All together, it's a 63-page softbound book. It was a good project, it added Adobe InDesign CS2 to my portfolio and expanded on my capabilities with Illustrator CS3. I then shifted to making contact with incoming students, providing advice on what their next step is now that they started the admission process and pushing them towards signing up for orientation. I got around 30 students clocked into orientation, the office staff joked that I should be a telemarketing.

What a lofty ability.

Now I'm looking at running the entire office tomorrow as we cram to get ready for our next set of orientations. Confirm participants and speakers, working on creating placecards for our resource fair, running the other orientation leaders through our introduction routines and selecting videos for our entertainment section all has to get done tomorrow. Working late again. Grumble.

However, I'm getting good training. They sent me to a several-hour seminar on Final Cut Studio Pro 2, talking about the new features in it and how to use them. I now really want the new Final Cut Pro, especially the color-grading tool they just released called Color. That's awesome. Next few weeks I'm going to get training on Banner, the Oracle software that we use to track the database of all incoming students. Now I can assist students in their academic status and admission process when I'm talking to them on the phone. Eventually I'll be focusing on the major project, the huge video resource they want done that covers a "virtual orientation". That's going to be a major job.

But that's boring. What's exciting is I finally got all my paperwork in for my major, and now I'm also in the Honors College. An awesome guy in Enrollment Services, with a click of a button, destroyed the roadblock that was keeping me from being approved. I've chosen to get two minors, one in Spanish and one in History. This adds over four Spanish classes, three History classes and four Honors classes. I'll be here three years instead of the two I wanted but eh, it's not so bad. I'll be coming out of UAA with the education I want and the means to go to Graduate School, so perhaps it is all for the best. I shifted my schedule around to create an extremely busy semester now. Insanity will be my watchword. Plus, factor in workouts, College Republican meetings, Union of Students meetings work at New Student Orientation and Alaska State Defense Force unit drills.

 

Monday: 10:00pm-15am Modern Economic History

     11:30-12:45am [Honors] Enduring Books: Churchill's Marlborough

Tuesday: 8:30am-9:45am Trigonometry

                4:00pm-5:40pm Elementary Spanish II

Wednesday: 10:00pm-15am Modern Economic History

      11:30-12:45am [Honors] Enduring Books: Churchill's Marlborough

Thursday: 8:30am-9:45am Trigonometry

                 4:00pm-5:40pm Elementary Spanish II

                 7:00pm-8:40pm Fingerstyle Guitar I

 

I've also decided to run as a Student Senator and start assisting the student government here. The University is essentially controlled by a single fraternity and for the past seven years they've placed their people in student government as student president. With the election of John Roberson, a non-frat president, it appears that the balance of power may be shifting. So, it should get very interesting.

Well, that's pretty much what's happening right now. At some point this blog will be more then a simple recap of my life but for right now it is merely a pool in which I leak my wonderful life.

I've leave you with that wonderful mental image.