This is a journal entry from this morning.
I’ve been feeling the urge to write recently.
I’ve been reading a bit lately. Just finished Blue Like Jazz and started The Shack today. Don Miller talks about the life of a writer in Blue Like Jazz. Authors go about reading books and writing and not feeling productive all day, he says. And they make about a dollar. I feel like I’ve been living the life of a writer the past several days.
Sometimes I feel called to writing. Not sure what I’d write about though. Perhaps I’d criticize other people’s writing instead. Or music, or other form of media. Or food. I’d enjoy that. It’s a lot easier to criticize something than to produce something.
There are people outside my window talking about someone taking this fantastic journey from San Diego, CA down here to San Jose, Costa Rica. They’ll drive a van the whole way. Someone else once drove from Miami, another voice says. It took him four months. He must have taken a roundabout way, I think to myself. Maybe I should do that – take some fantastic journey.
I’m on one right now, come to think of it. But it doesn’t really feel like one. It feels like I’m lying on this bed writing in my journal because I don’t know what else to do with myself. Or don’t want to do something else with myself.
Instead of going somewhere, meeting people at the park, or at least praying for them, I just think. And write. I think, like I am now, about how I could be doing that, but instead I’m not. And is it wrong? No. I don’t think so. Unless it’s unbalanced (this subject comes into play quite a bit these days). There’s a healthy level of everything to be found and had. Or so I keep telling myself.
This is just one moment in my day. But it’s a representation of the way I perceive my future. I don’t have much of a clue what I’ll do with myself. I don’t even know what I’m terribly passionate about. Specifically. Like what I want to live my life accomplishing.
It seems like this whole trip has been a tearing down and reconstruction of myself. I’ve got the more general stuff, or I understand what I need to go after and am going after it. I know how I ought to behave and live basically. How I ought to love God and love others. And I’ll be trying to get that down the rest of my life. But I have no clue what I’ll do practically. Thank God I’ve got friends like Aaron Bruner to walk thru this with me.
I’m not freaking out. I know God’ll provide the rest when I seek first his Kingdom. And that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s just I wish I knew my gifts so I could focus on a particular area. It seems for a while now I’ve been going down the list, checking off things I’m not gifted in or passionate about. For some, that gift and passion comes out naturally. Like with my sister Emily. She knows she wants to act and she’s good at it. She’s pursuing it and she’ll get her dream. She’s got it made. What a wonderful sister.
Another concern of mine: I’m a little over $1,000 short right now in my support raising for the World Race. If anyone would like to contribute, please feel free. I’m not sure about what I think of putting this on my blog. But I know some of you will care and give and so I thank you. This is the church. I welcome any opinions on the issue.
