Summer: The Best Yet To Come...
Those of you who know me know that I am a pessimist and know that I focus on the one or two bad things that happen instead of the many other good things. Thus, it was slightly depressing to look at my Rainlendar calendar to see that today is the last day of June and that my summer break is 1/2 gone. But I am reminded by Paul to be joyful always and so I cling to the hope that, in the remaining two months, the best is yet to come. I guess I can be thankful that we have a long weekend to kick off July.
Early on in my summer break (May 2, 2006 at 5:21pm to be exact) I posted up a summer goals "Top Ten" on a forum. Halftime is a great time to take a bathroom break, grab some more food/drink, check out the highlights from the first half and come up with a strategy on how to make the second even better...
1. Read 5 books. Yes, I know, some of you could probably read 5 books in a week but I hardly read at all so I figured I'd aim low.
I finished the Da Vinci Code back before the movie came out. That was a very quick read but not that satisfying due to the high expectations I had going into it. I thought the movie was very poorly done. I'm still trying to finish "Love Your God With All Your Mind" by JP Moreland. I had to restart the book since it was months since I read it and I had forgotten everything. It has been put on hold though. I should be done "Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People's Hearts the Way Jesus Did" by Randy Newman this weekend. A good friend of mine gave it to me and it has been an excellent read. I read a bunch of chapters right before God provided me with the opportunity to plant the seed for goal #8 below. The next book I'm going to read is called "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity". It was recommended to me by a religious studies professor who is teaching a course on modern Christianity in the 2007 Winter semester. Since I have not taken any religious studies courses and this is a 400 level course, I would need to read this book to provide a minimal background on what will be covered. The fifth book will hopefully be "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. I've already given it to a few friends so maybe I'll have to borrow their copies when they are finished with them. :D Still have a long ways to go to meet this goal.
2. Start up a semi-regular work-out routine. I think I'm going to try to get access to the weight room here in the health sciences building. I think it's a lot cheaper than the main campus and more convenient (much crappier though).
This one has been a failure. I've definitely gained a lot of "bad weight" over the last half a year of little to no physical exertion. The occasional floor hockey on Monday nights, some random football/soccer and badminton twice was all that I did in the last few months. I've started up a floor hockey team for July and August so that will provide 1 hr of fun every week. Still have much to improve here.
3. Learn a bunch of United songs off their United We Stand and Look To You albums with people at church.
My excuse for not making any progress here was that the high school kids have just finished school. So this was "made for the second half". I'm debating on what to work on...as I know that many people aren't huge fans of United's latest release. Maybe some Starfield perhaps? I really love their newest album and it is really making me regret not getting tickets to see them in Calgary in a couple weeks...
4. Research and purchase a distortion pedal.
This was done with my latest GAS attacks. Bought a ProCo RAT2 pedal off ebay. Great sound, great sustain, no tone lossage and no noise. The versatility I was looking for.
5. Write the OAT.
This is likely not going to happen. I've realized that my passion is not in optometry at this moment. More on this topic later...
6. Memorize all of Philippians.
Done! I may not be able to recite it all word for word now but i definitely remember all of the major themes. We are now moving through the book of Proverbs.
7. Go see Tomlin/Starfield/Third Day
Too expensive really. I think Tomlin is an awesome songwriter and would have loved to see/hear him live. I have also recently become a Starfield fan. But Third Day is the main feature and I'm not too crazy about them. I remember being a bit disappointed going to watch Delirious open for Michael W. Smith and I don't think i'm going to take a chance on that again. Still should be an awesome show.
8. Share the gospel with Jason (at work)
As I alluded to earlier, this has been done. We spent about 3 hrs after work on day talking about God, Christianity, heaven/hell, etc. It was good and he was really open about everything. He admitted he didn't know too much and I basically shared with him what I believed. That book really helped. With prayer and petition, who knows...maybe he'll change his views.
9. Spend more time with my brother
Not doing so well with this. Aside from some Xbox and trying to setup a LAN to play computer games, I haven't done much with him. He seems very bored now that he's done school so maybe there will be more opportunities for me to improve here.
10. Write a song.
Hehe, still waiting for that divine inspiration. Possible themes include discipleship and waiting/searching for that girl to marry...two recurrent themes in recent times. Probably write the words first and then stick a tune to it. Who knows. This is very low on my priority list and more of a general "life goal" that may be accomplished this summer.
So I've only done 3/10. Slow start to a strong finish perhaps?
Early on in my summer break (May 2, 2006 at 5:21pm to be exact) I posted up a summer goals "Top Ten" on a forum. Halftime is a great time to take a bathroom break, grab some more food/drink, check out the highlights from the first half and come up with a strategy on how to make the second even better...
1. Read 5 books. Yes, I know, some of you could probably read 5 books in a week but I hardly read at all so I figured I'd aim low.
I finished the Da Vinci Code back before the movie came out. That was a very quick read but not that satisfying due to the high expectations I had going into it. I thought the movie was very poorly done. I'm still trying to finish "Love Your God With All Your Mind" by JP Moreland. I had to restart the book since it was months since I read it and I had forgotten everything. It has been put on hold though. I should be done "Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People's Hearts the Way Jesus Did" by Randy Newman this weekend. A good friend of mine gave it to me and it has been an excellent read. I read a bunch of chapters right before God provided me with the opportunity to plant the seed for goal #8 below. The next book I'm going to read is called "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity". It was recommended to me by a religious studies professor who is teaching a course on modern Christianity in the 2007 Winter semester. Since I have not taken any religious studies courses and this is a 400 level course, I would need to read this book to provide a minimal background on what will be covered. The fifth book will hopefully be "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. I've already given it to a few friends so maybe I'll have to borrow their copies when they are finished with them. :D Still have a long ways to go to meet this goal.
2. Start up a semi-regular work-out routine. I think I'm going to try to get access to the weight room here in the health sciences building. I think it's a lot cheaper than the main campus and more convenient (much crappier though).
This one has been a failure. I've definitely gained a lot of "bad weight" over the last half a year of little to no physical exertion. The occasional floor hockey on Monday nights, some random football/soccer and badminton twice was all that I did in the last few months. I've started up a floor hockey team for July and August so that will provide 1 hr of fun every week. Still have much to improve here.
3. Learn a bunch of United songs off their United We Stand and Look To You albums with people at church.
My excuse for not making any progress here was that the high school kids have just finished school. So this was "made for the second half". I'm debating on what to work on...as I know that many people aren't huge fans of United's latest release. Maybe some Starfield perhaps? I really love their newest album and it is really making me regret not getting tickets to see them in Calgary in a couple weeks...
4. Research and purchase a distortion pedal.
This was done with my latest GAS attacks. Bought a ProCo RAT2 pedal off ebay. Great sound, great sustain, no tone lossage and no noise. The versatility I was looking for.
5. Write the OAT.
This is likely not going to happen. I've realized that my passion is not in optometry at this moment. More on this topic later...
6. Memorize all of Philippians.
Done! I may not be able to recite it all word for word now but i definitely remember all of the major themes. We are now moving through the book of Proverbs.
7. Go see Tomlin/Starfield/Third Day
Too expensive really. I think Tomlin is an awesome songwriter and would have loved to see/hear him live. I have also recently become a Starfield fan. But Third Day is the main feature and I'm not too crazy about them. I remember being a bit disappointed going to watch Delirious open for Michael W. Smith and I don't think i'm going to take a chance on that again. Still should be an awesome show.
8. Share the gospel with Jason (at work)
As I alluded to earlier, this has been done. We spent about 3 hrs after work on day talking about God, Christianity, heaven/hell, etc. It was good and he was really open about everything. He admitted he didn't know too much and I basically shared with him what I believed. That book really helped. With prayer and petition, who knows...maybe he'll change his views.
9. Spend more time with my brother
Not doing so well with this. Aside from some Xbox and trying to setup a LAN to play computer games, I haven't done much with him. He seems very bored now that he's done school so maybe there will be more opportunities for me to improve here.
10. Write a song.
Hehe, still waiting for that divine inspiration. Possible themes include discipleship and waiting/searching for that girl to marry...two recurrent themes in recent times. Probably write the words first and then stick a tune to it. Who knows. This is very low on my priority list and more of a general "life goal" that may be accomplished this summer.
So I've only done 3/10. Slow start to a strong finish perhaps?
Labels: Personal Reflection
posted by Matt at 4:18 PM
1 Comments:
1. Reading is good. I basically stopped reading since I moved, unfortunately. But books are good friends, make more of them.
2. Ya, I should really do the same. Maybe we can go work out together upcoming semester? I think I've said this before... multiple times? Ya, I'm lazy :P
3. Starfield played at First one Sunday and they were pretty good. Regretting not getting tickets is, in general, a regret I hope I don't feel too many more times.
8. Awesome.
9. I should really spend more time with my brother too.
10. Writing a song is like writing a poem, with music. So it's like twice as much effort for twice as much reward. I like writing poems. If I could write music I would probably write songs too.
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