MMXVI

HELLO BLOGOSPHERE!!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I blame everything on my English thesis. But now it's done and as, at the moment I am on winter break, I have some time to write other things. Also, I was at a coffee shop listening to a quintet from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra play and I had a mocha shake which usually doesn't affect me, even though I never drink coffee, but this time it did and I am TRIPPING and I think I freaked my friend Savannah out but YOLO. So I probably shouldn't be writing here under the (caffeine) influence, because EVERYTHING SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA, but what the heck, right?

As I was sitting on my bed, contemplating, as one does, it hit me - I have now been blogging for 7 years, which is basically a third of my life. WHAT? That just seems unreal but also totally hilarious. I look back and indulgently chuckle at the self-assuredness of fifteen year old me, but I'm sure that if I am still writing here in another seven years, twenty-nine year old me will be doing the same to all my cutting edge insights now. I remember a quote by Faulkner which goes like, "I never know what I think about something until I read what I' ve written on it." Throughout the past seven years, I've really come to understand that phenomenon. Especially in this past year, when I've begun to really write academically seriously (is that grammatically-correct? I'm a bad English major). Good writing requires the author to put himself in the position of the reader and have a conversation with himself. It forces you to question both your assumptions and ideas, and also the way you communicate them. Sometimes it makes me want to hit my head against the wall, but it is also one of the most rewarding elements of my life. And so I blog on.

I honestly don't know what to think of New Years resolutions anymore - torn between icy cynicism and progressive naïveté optimism - but there are a few ideas I've been toying with for this year. I'm always trying to improve my devotions, so I've decided to pick a book of the Bible each month and read a short commentary along with it in the mornings. Starting off with Hebrews, which I'm become rather fixated on. Again, that's a result of my thesis (boy that paper is instigating all the trouble in my life, I see) - I focussed on the Protestant treatment of metaphors, and along the way, discovered that Hebrews is really all about redemptive history as typology. So much of Calvinist theology puts a heavy emphasis on metaphor: The covenants, the sacraments, even the process of sanctification (the Puritans understood it as a restoration of God's image in us). Hebrews shows how the Christian life now is a picture of what it will be in heaven. Pretty jazzed about this. Maybe it'll turn into another extended writing project, we'll see.

Other goals...read more, travel somewhere I've never been, corral my fellow Reformed Baptist young adults in the area together more often.....festive stuff like that.

Future me is going to hate present me for this, and I'm sure this is the only time this will EVER happen on my blog, but I just discovered I can do emojis on here? What? Like I never even use these in texts because I typically have this exaggerated sense of dignity. 💷🇬🇧🎏(fish on a flagpole???) hahaha! Future reference: ☕️ = 💃

Signing off before I begin to hear colors.