"Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say" King Lear, Shakespeare

I'm really not the type to make New Years Resolutions because I know I will fail, but mostly: forget. I have, however, since 2007, whilst in the company of 25,000+ youth in St. Louis/Urbana, Missouri have had yearly character reflections. I remember that year it was tenacity. I had chronicled those character reflections on LJ, and perhaps, Facebook. I remember having studied compassion, love/warmth?, trust, joy, and temperance (for the last two years!). Yes, temperance is a big thing, moderation is chalked up in there as well.

With that in mind, I am thinking of this coming year's character reflection. I learned many things this year about myself; about my abilities, and how far my journey with, within, and toward God has grown. I also learned to put my money where my mouth is, and failed at something purposefully. There is a rationale to this, and this exercise is definitely multifaceted, but this one is what I feel comfortable sharing: failure comes the hardest when we least expect it, so why not allow yourself to? This thought stems from a sermon I heard about change. There are two ways to change, one in which wisdom guides you to make changes out of your own volition, or where foolishness drags you kicking and screaming through the mire to learn your lesson. I prefer the prior, always the prior.

Digressing, I know through Psychological study readings, that we have bias in perception about ourselves and our past. We distance the bad -- "But that was what I felt/knew/learnt about myself X-time ago... and this is what I know/feel/learn now." (There was a funny comic my professor included in the lecture slide). So, what about this year's character reflection? What will I be focusing on? I want to be able to say: responsibilities. I'm too scared to say righteousness or graciousness, because those things court a steadfastness that I don't think I'm willing to commit to. Perhaps, commitment? Maybe I need to learn to be wholly and truly committed to something. One of the lessons I learned--rather, remembered, is that I do not like putting all my eggs in the basket.

Commitment. I feel like I've tried to work this as a character reflection, though not officially, but I'm not entirely sure.

"Take pains; be perfect." Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare. "If you are faithful in the little things, you will be faithful in the large ones. But if you are dishonest in the little things, you won't be honest with the greater responsibilities." Luke 16:10, NLT.

At this point, I feel like I suck as a person because I have never been as faithful as I should be in the small things. I don't take things as seriously as they should be. Yes, I've a streak of irreverence, I admit to this. Alas, I must carry on.

Do we really change? I hope so.

That's the transformative power of Jesus at work.

Preparing for 2014

This year I will endeavor to:

Blog more: there was a time, probably during High School, when I blogged almost daily on Xanga. I have since abandoned, dare I say, deleted that blog and moved on to the Live Journal community. I didn't blog much about myself in LJ, but I did join comms for reading and interacting with brilliant people. I met one of my best friends there. Alas, that blog also went down.

I don't really hope for much with this new blog, I just hope to get off of Facebook--stop wasting time with inanities. I hope to post up substantial thoughts and pondering, I do love to ponder upon things. I usually blurb stuff on Twitter--who says one can't be poignant in 150 characters? I hope to post up more art work since it has been far too long since I did anything with my hands. I hope to post up more photographs, although I guess I have my Instagram for that. I hope to write more original works. Studying psychology hasn't really afforded me any insight to human behavior, but blessedly, it has afforded me the ability to understand my capacity to care, which says a lot.

I don't really know… I just want to post up parts of myself that I haven't let shine in a while. I know the statistic, only about 1% of people actually reply to a post

Get offline

Hug people

Go to museums: always a lovely guilty pleasure.

Express myself through art: painting, photography, and writing… I used to do a lot more things. It was a total lie when I convinced myself that I couldn't do art because of my studies. No, I just numbed out on Netflix, or Amazon Prime Instant.

Be more true: true to myself, true to people, true to the nature of compassion. Most especially, true to God.


So here's to the New Year. I will be suffering withdrawal, I think. But I that's understandable after I've spent the better part of the last decade plugged in. What is one year, right?

"Advance toward me, brethren."

Translation: Bring it.