quick post....

First, I need to read and write a lot more than I currently do.

Second: I think I just figured out what I am going to do in college. Thank you Jesus for finally helping me out here.

:-)

to Anonymous

I have A or Several anonymous respondents to some of my posts... but no real way to respond to them. However, seeing as how I really have valued what that person or group of people have said, I will respond to them with a new post.

Here is my response to Anonymous... in response to their comments on my posts: "dreaming", "Overflow of my Brain", and "Title Poem"

I will have to respond to their other remarks later...

First, to "dreaming":

I would LOVE to do what God tells me to do... but first, I would need for Him to tell me what to do... lol. Maybe I talk too much... but thus far in my life, it seems like God prefers to lead me by guiding my actions, rather than by telling me where to go.... to say it another way: God tends to be my steering wheel, but not my GPS or gas pedal.

Right now, I am afraid to hit the gas, because I have no clue what direction I am pointed, nor do I know which directions I should be pointed.

So... DUH ZAC!, just hit the gas and let God steer you may say... well, I am fickle. :-)


Second, to "Overflow of my Brain":

I dont feel like I really was all that exceptional in debate or in soccer... I placed 6th at State in debate... barely, and didnt even make it to the state tournament in soccer (due to my silly red card)

Lastly, to "Title Poem":

I have always thought that it was because I wasnt ready... it will be a total trip if it is because SHE isnt ready... lol.




PS- Thank you for your input Anonymous

Halo

Why is Halo so popular?

I play Marvel Ultimate Alliance in my free time... as I just beat Rainbow Vegas.

I have played these types of video games since I was a kid... and I get addicted to them until I have beaten them.

Understandably, Halo introduces a fluid environment where you can play with other people... making it more challenging.

The question still remains. Why are people addicted to Halo? What does it bring them that make it worth the time sacrifice to play?

And while we are at it... why does everyone love Lost?

[disclaimer: I love both of these things, but I want to know why I am addicted...]

my comet

If you are a fellow One Tree Hill fanatic, you should recognize this post by its title. In the season finally, Lucas finally finishes his second book which is "supposedly" about a boy seeing a comet that brought him energy and life... and then that comet disappearing for nearly all the boys life, causing him to question God and love and faith.

To quote the book: "The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning. And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him."

While I do not know how that book ends, I do know of the parallels that I see to it in my own life. Simply put, I have had a dream of beauty and completion and greatness since before I can even remember....

[Side note: You know, you hear of all these great stories of dreams that people have for life, and they can always link that dream back to one day or experience that started it all. For some reason, I simply can not. I have just always had a dream for to be married to a beautiful woman, to have an incredible family, and to change the world with my influence/greatness. Honestly, I dont even know where it came from. ]

My idol is Batman... and I think that explains more about my life than any post could. To his success and failure, I find my life searching after what Batman had. Batman, in my eye, was this person of power and influence who used all of his resources not for personal enjoyment, but to help the community around him. Ironically, he never gets the girl in the end... or rather, he never stays with the girl in the end. Instead, his personal pleasures are always trumped by the needs of the world around him. To me, Batman is the hero of all heroes because of his willingness to sacrifice his life and love to help others. In Batman, I see this man who loves deeply, who really cares for the world around him... he is a man who is moved by passion and emotion, who wants MORE out of life. And yet, ironically, the world that he lives in, Gotham, more often than not, only sees him as a machine of the night, and often hates him for some reason for another. In that, we see another sacrifice he is willing to make... and the latest Batman movie even demonstraits this... Bruce is willing to even sacrifice his own image and what even those close to him think of him as long as it is benefiting the greater good. To me, Bruce is a man's man, caring more about the world than his own success in it.... Oh the greater good... Alas, I fear I may be damned to such a position... if I am lucky :-)

I recently read through some old stories and poems I wrote in middle school. No worries... writing poetry was not a hobby of mine... rather a bizar school project, lol. Anywho, I thought you all out there (whoever you may be) might enjoy reading this one, as it once again tells you a lot about me and my inner-workings.

This is a poem I wrote when I was 10 years old. I actually remember writing this one... there was about 10 minutes of though, and then I just wrote it straight through, letting my inner (whatever) spill out on the paper. Knowing that I was only 10 when I wrote this really freaks me out... not because of any skill in the work, but rather to the degree that I still feel like I can associate with the emotion... the strong desire for love..... and the sadness of being alone. I do hope that if I ever did find "her" out there, that I would never make this mistake.

The poem is posted below, verbatim as I found it.

***********************************************************************

The Wind That Whispered

I saw a stranger passing by
I looked her straight, dead in the eye

We exchanged look, sights, and sounds
I was going to speak
When my mouth went weak

I opened my mouth
I tried to say
But I'll have to tell her
Some other day

As she left
I heard a whisper
Run, chase
Catch up with her
Ask her to stay nearby

A couple of minutes
For she could change your life
From a dew of a damp
To a lightening slick shine
She could be with
During the hard times

But I let her go
I let her leave
I let her go
She left my heart
With just a whisper of a dream

************************************************************

I have long since dreamed of living my life with such an incredible woman, and I still tragically believe in love at first sight. I am honestly tired of dating, and now I feel like all I am doing is searching. My belief in this woman seems to parallel my belief in God, though I hope they are independent. Both faiths, I do not remember the exact beginning... but I do remember times when that faith was made stronger (and most usually in the face of adversity to the faith).

Right now, I feel like my faith is really being refined. It would be (seemingly) much easier to give up on "the one" and placate myself with cute girls and fun personalities... and perhaps that would still be a healthy alternative to my "all or nothing" motto. However, we all know that I am not going to do that... silly me, the hopeless romantic, refusing to date for such horribly noble reasons as "I do not want to hurt another girl" as well as "I want to be emotionally ready when I do meet her." Sure, these sound like good reasons... but for now, I feel stuck in the BLAH! of life...

For now, I leave you with a quote from Count of Monte Christo:

"Life is a storm my young friend, you will bask in the sunlight one moment be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into the storm as you shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst for I will do mine."

Title Poem

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

apparently my "ideal match"

For those of you who dont know... I am currently using eHarmony... yes, yes, enjoy your laughter... when you are done... continue reading.


Anywho, a strange observation I would like to make... I have taken the whole eHarmony personality test twice now... and I am noticing a strange pattern in the supposed "matches" that I am given. In all honesty, I am not sure what to say about it... so I am just going to throw some general trends out there that I have noticed, just various commonalities between myself and the 3-4 people a day eHarmony matches me with.

1) Almost all of my matches are in some way interested in Nursing... either they are a nurse, or they are wanting to be a nurse, or they are going to nursing school, or they want to be a medical missionary of sorts.

2) This next one is really strange... Another strange pattern I have noticed in my matches is that either they say that they want to have "lots" of kids, or they put "maybe" under the Want Kids category... it is really strange to me. It seems like my matches are all or nothing... Which really makes me think (especially as of late), who puts "maybe" in response to if they want kids. idk, I just find it strange...

3) Most of my matches I find in no way attractive... which has lead me to actually use physical appearance as a primary determining factor as to whether or not I initiate communication... It is horrible. I am really not a shallow guy, but many of these girls have similar personalities, and how much can you really know about a girl from two paragraphs of text... and so, alas, I am now shallow. haha.

4) Lastly... and I just find this amusing... I think it is hilarious that on eHarmony, you put your age and they also ask you how often you drink. The part I think is funny... is that the majority of my matches that are under 21, also state that they drink. idk, it is just funny to me...

Anywho, I want to know if my personality type just attracts nurses who maybe want to have kids... or if that is just the demographic of eHarmony. Ironically, I once dated a girl who wanted to be a nurse... and one of the reasons I knew we wouldnt work out was b/c she wanted to be a nurse, lol. Oh the ironies of life... In truth, it was more-so that I just wanted some-one who really challenged me, and she didnt really do that. Even more ironically, eHarmony actually suggested her as a match... HAHA! I am going to shut up now... lol.

Okay. My eHarmony subscription expires in a month... and thus far, I have only found ammusement. Hopefully this last month will be better than the last several months...

Overflow of my brain

Mental regurgitation, take 1:

I need more time... there is just so much I would like to do and accomplish that I just do not have time for. I need to become more scheduled, or God needs to grant me an exemption from this whole space-time continuum thing... haha.

I have books I want/ need to read. I have people I need to write letters or return emails or blog posts to. I have friends I need to call and chat with. I have debaters that are in need of way more perpetration. I have several songs that I need to be practicing on my guitar. I really need to organize my closet and room. I have tons of wood that still needs to be picked up around our property that I just can not find time for. I need to consistently work out, otherwise I am not going to make my goal. If I do not start organizing soon, I may miss out on life (due to only my own laziness, lol)

I am going to start organizing everything.... Now if I can just find time to do that... hahaha.

Mental regurgitation, take 2:
It was so weird watching Metro play tonight. Apparently, it was like quarter-finals... and the whole school had a pep-rally... and I knew that to those kids, this was the greatest moment in their life thus far. And yet, it was only a game. I remember that feeling though, not too long ago... where one game, or one debate seemed like everything. It is so weird, only being a few years after it, and looking back at kids who are in my exact shoes, and thinking "they are only kids". Now, dont get me wrong... this is a huge moment in their life, and it should be respected as such... but after my failures in debate and soccer, I remember it taking me a while to deal with all of that. Looking back at it now though, it is so much easier to see that one performance does not dictate how you are going to be the rest of your life.

Take for example my debaters. Their success and/or failures in the last two tournaments literally has nothing to do with how they will do in this upcoming regionals event. I do not now how to communicate this to them. In each of the kids that qualified, I see such great potential... they are all so incredibly different, that it is even hard in class to find a way to educate them all at once. And yet, I know that in their minds, they think they are all on the same playing field, only separated by their past performance at tournaments. Ironically, that couldnt be farther from the truth. It is not about being a "better debater", as if there was this stock criterion of exactly how a great debater should be... but rather, in preparation of regionals, the only way they are going to succeed, is if they can capitalize on what type of debater they already are.

At the end of the day, they will succeed or fail because of the effort they put into this preparation. Once the tournament is over, irrelevant of the resultant, I want them to carry that principle over into their personal life... that at the end of the day, it is not about how well you can fit a mold, but rather, how great a version of YOU that you can be. Otherwise, they are completely replaceable in life by a trained monkey... and that would just be silly, lol.

I guess I am saying that I want them to thrive as individuals and not as actors/actresses.

Mental regurgitation, take 3:
I feel completely neutral towards going to the University of Oklahoma. I am not too sure how I feel about that.... quite neutral actually, haha.

Speaking of OU, apparently, I have 3 years of school left... haha. Once again, I actually feel quite neutral towards that fact, lol.


Mental regurgitation, take 4:
I have been taking guitar for about a month now. And it has taught me one very important thing... that my brain can be my biggest obstacle in the way of me doing well in life. When I think too much, I do horribly. When I just chill out and let my fingers go, I am a prodigy... well, almost. :-)

Mental regurgitation, take 5:
I bought a lottery ticket today.... That would be nice. Though honestly, if I won... I wouldnt change much in my life. I would still teach my debate class. I would help my dad when he needed it. I would still finish the work with the trees. I would probably buy a house somewhere and set up an office, library, and reading room that I could call my "inner sanctum", or something of the like :-) I would buy my dad the plane he is looking at getting so that he and I could start learning to fly... and I would continue on my way to learning how to SCUBA dive..... Oh, and I would have to cut one heck of a tithe check, haha. As far as the world was concerned though... I dont think I would tell anyone other than my immediate family. :-)

Mental regurgitation, take 6:
I am tired... as in mentally drained. I look forward to some good rest.


Peace out girl scout. ;-)

book

I have a book in me. I can feel it. Now, it is just a matter of time... either I will find a way to get this out of me, or I will self-destruct.... in 5...4...3...2...