Monday Monday

Happy Monday, everyone!

It's the start of another week full of opportunities. The excitement and anticipation is almost enough to make going back to work/school worth it! :D (Of course, I have the day off. We don't get Good Friday off; we can only get one day and this way, no one has to travel back to school on Easter Sunday.)

I discovered that my dear old SLR camera suffers from a light leak. This explains why a band of light shows up on some of my negatives. I took my camera with me when I bought more film and dropped some off for developing. The guy running the store said the foam that's supposed to keep the light out had almost completely disappeared, just dried out and blown away over the years. Luckily, another guy at the store said he knows someone who repairs cameras as a hobby (for money), and he gave me this man's name and number. I'm going to call him up today to see if he can do anything for me, or at least meet me and check out my camera. It's an old thing, but I like it a lot, and I want to be able to keep using it.

My first real post to the other blog was a little rough. It's quickly becoming clear to me that blogging about something I care about and want to represent well is going to take work. I'm fine when it comes to an analytic research paper, but writing a blog post that keeps reader interest? Ha. Well, practice practice practice. :) And I got some good advice from a friend who has good blog posts (when he posts), as well as some resources for more tips. I'll try to put some of them into practice Wednesday.

So... I went and saw The Hunger Games for the midnight premier. And then two more times this weekend, once on Friday with one group of friends and once on Saturday with another group. Unless someone pays for me, there's no way I'm going to the theaters for it again! Tickets are so expensive. :( But, the movie is still great after 3 viewings. And each time I watch it, I'm able to look at it from a different angle, which keeps things interesting. I got some music out of the 2 extra viewings, too: a remix of "Seven Nation Army" that plays during the GI Joe: Retaliation trailer, and the 4 notes for Rue's and Katniss's mockingjay signals (which of course I tried to play on my ukulele). Yay, for music!!

In other nerdy news, I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender again. They have the whole series on Netflix instant. It's such a great show. It's funny and light, but also has a lot of wisdom woven into the characters and what they say. Even the intro to the show is meaningful if you listen: "Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire nation attacked. Only the avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them..." Elements in balance, pride pushing one nation (element) to disrupt the balance, the only one who can restore balance is the avatar, reincarnated master of all 4 elements... Makes you think.

And with that, I wish you well on your journey into the new week! You've already completed one day!! :D

(Easter post coming later. I wanted to get this up relatively close to the "Monday" time limit.)

Playing Catch-Up

     The last time I actually updated y'all with life events, I was going to Step Sing, making prints in the darkroom for the first time, still thinking about whether to go on a mission trip and where, practicing ukulele, reading, and watching a ton of movies. (All the super-exciting details here!) My, what a difference a month and a half makes!

     Step Sing was incredible. For those of you who don't know, Step Sing is a Samford-wide song and dance competition. There are different groups that come up with a theme for their show, then practice for 40 hours over the course of about 2 weeks before they reveal to the Samford community the fruits of their hard work. Each group makes a banner about their show, chooses their own costumes, arranges their music, and choreographs their dance moves. It's a huge chunk of work for the teams that lead each group, but oh so much fun. A new group this year won second place; they dressed as nuns and sang songs like "Living on a Prayer," "Fanatic" (Lecrae), and a couple from The Sound of Music. It was a hilarious show with great singing and choreography, and hopefully next year will be even better. :)

     We can now go into the darkroom on our own, which makes me super happy - I've got a lot of prints to make, and not a lot of time during class. I took advantage of this privilege on Saturday and did alright. It took me over 2 hours to end up with 2 contact proof sheets and 2 prints, though. Some perfectly good print paper was lost to my lack of attention, turned nearly black because I forgot to change the amount of light coming down. That paper isn't cheap either, which compounded my frustration. But, sometimes you just gotta learn the hard way. Now I know what to absolutely make sure I remember. (The prints came out pretty well once I got everything right.) We're going back in during class today, and I'm hoping to make another print.

     Along the same vein, I did my first ever photo shoot over Spring Break. The idea to use some of my dojo friends actually came from another friend's profile picture. My friend is in his gi (uniform), and it's a panning shot of him punching.

le example of ye olde panning shot

One of the prints we absolutely have to have is a panning shot, so I thought, "Why not get some of my friends with swords to go at it? I'll get a good shot out of that, for sure." And the photo shoot just evolved from there. We went up to Monte Sano state park and set up in the Japanese tea garden they've got. The story for the shoot wound up being pretty exciting, mostly because none of us knew how it was going to end. We started off with the idea that they were ninjas from different employers, but had been given the same task: retrieve the scroll. Obviously, only one can succeed. Which one will it be? (I ran out of film halfway through, so I used one of their iPhones for the rest of the shoot. Those photos are up on Facebook, and you can see them there if we're 'friends.')

     I didn't get any clear sense of which mission trip to go on - or even whether I should go - so I decided to focus on getting a job instead. But I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open, both for opportunities and for God's prompting.

     Ukulele practice goes as it has. I've got about 3 songs I can play pretty well, so I focus on those to practice that whole sing-and-strum-at-the-same-time thing. It's not too bad when I'm doing my own strum, but now I'm practicing other kinds of strum patterns, and it's almost like starting over. Plus I'm trying to transition away from using the pick. It's challenging, but I enjoy it and it'll be worth it. :)

     I haven't picked up Lord of Chaos since that last update in February, but I did recently start re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy. It's been over a year since I last read them, so I figured I'm overdue, especially after watching the movie and realizing how much I've forgotten. It's as good as it was before, even though I'm able to stop in the middle of crucial scenes now. (Seriously. Katniss was just starting to run from the wall of fire, and I remembered something I had to do, so I put it down and just left. No way that would've happened the first time through.)

     My Blockbuster free trial ran out about a month ago, and I just now got all 3 DVDs that were out sent back in. (I was still within the grace period, I think.) It was great watching them. Hopefully I'll have enough time to start another free trial over the summer, so I can finish out my list. In the meantime, I still have Netflix instant streaming, and there are plenty of movies on that list. But, the odds I'll watch them before summer are pretty slim; my suitemates and I are going through all 6 Star Wars movies (in order of release), and our schedules dictate that we only do one a week. So it'll be finals week before we finish them, if we keep that pace. (I'm hoping we'll get an extra one in every once in a while. Love those movies!!)
     And, of course, I went and saw the midnight premier of The Hunger Games. Definitely gonna have to catch it again as a matinee or in the dollar theater. Such a great movie, and it handles the book's details so well.

     Now that I've bridged the gap between a month-and-a-half ago and now, I can say a little bit about what's going on currently and toward the future! (Next week's update won't be so packed, I promise.) Today I sent out my cover letter and resume to a temp agency my granddad is connected with. This seems like a pretty promising door, so I'm excited to hear back. The plan for now is to work back home in Huntsville as an administrative assistant or technical writer (or something else, if a door unexpectedly opens), save up some money, and go to Nashville or Raleigh for an internship in a publication house in 5-10 years.
     Upon further thought, I've decided to not make a third blog just yet. Keeping up with two will be enough work as it is, especially as the semester starts to pick up speed and barrel in toward finals. So, if I have any poems or short stories, I'll just post them on my deviantART page; if you're interested in reading them, you can do so there. (It's mostly Dragonball Z fan-fiction right now, plus one recent poem. Yes, I'm a nerd. I embrace it.)
     The budo blog has been updated with bits from posts on this blog (those bits are now replaced with either brief summaries or links to the full post on the other blog). The first current, [hopefully] thoughtful post will go up on Wednesday. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about yet, so it'll be a surprise for all of us! :)

     One last random thing. I've decided I'm going to dress as Katniss Everdeen, heroine of the Hunger Games trilogy, for Halloween this year. I'm already growing out my hair; now I have a goal! And that should keep me from chopping it all off again. ...Maybe.

Peace out!

Transitions

I've been thinking about this for while, and the sudden widening of my audience pushed me to go ahead and do it. I started a different blog for my Bujinkan-related thoughts and musings; I hope to start another one soon for more literature-oriented things (poetry, reviews, things of that nature). This blog will remain something to update with the sometimes-interesting tedium of my life. Just something to keep those who are interested up to speed on my life, basically.

The new blog can be found here: http://onegaishimasu-kaitlin.blogspot.com/. I'll be moving some of the posts in this blog to that one over the next few days.

Something else that recently came to my attention (multiple times) is regularity. I haven't been very consistent with updates, which kind of defeats the purpose of a blog, I guess. I'm just going to start out with one new post a week, since I will, in theory, have 3 blogs at the same time. (I favor organization over messy simplicity. Can you tell?) I'll update this one on Mondays, and probably recap the previous week. The budo blog I'll update on Wednesdays. And the other one, whenever I get it made, will probably be on Fridays.

Anyway, that's what's up. You can follow all of them if you want, or choose one that's more relevant to what you're interested in. (I do want readers and their feedback for the new blog, though, please!)

Peace.

Mad World

The business of defending yourself is a necessity in today's world. But that doesn't mean I like the idea.

I'm a martial artist, training in an art that is designed to significantly improve your chance of survival in a real-world conflict. I'm also a peaceful Christian. I like to horse around with my friends, but I don't want to hurt people. It is never my intention to harm.

So I find myself in an uncomfortable position when faced with a self-defense or defense of others scenario. As soon as I put myself in that situation mentally, even though it's just a training exercise, I always feel the aggression kick in. That "you shall not pass" feeling permeates my body, fills my mind, and galvanizes me. It's not usually fueled by anger or pride - though I can't rule those factors out for future scenarios - yet I find myself wondering in the aftermath, "Why?"

Why does it have to be this way? Why would someone come up to me and try to rob me or rape me? Why do I take every chance I get to tell my girl friends to at least take a self-defense class?

The answer is simple, and it breaks my heart: This world is broken.

I firmly believe that it was never supposed to be this way. Crime and violence are not hardwired into us. No, instead we all have some barrier that has to be crossed or simply removed. It's called a conscience. No one becomes a criminal overnight - they have to gradually desensitize themselves to the idea of using violence just to get what they want. That tells me that there is something to desensitize. This gives me hope, but it also makes me grieve for the thousands of criminals who've buried their conscience, some of them so well that they may never get it back.

What would possibly possess a human to go through this desensitization, anyway? Selfishness. There are several factors that could be listed, but I'm willing to bet money (poor college student money) that they all boil down to being solely concerned with oneself. Everyone else is just someone to exploit to get what you want. (Remember, I'm thinking of hardened, career criminals and anyone committing armed crimes. I do think there are people who commit crimes because it seems to be the only way to accomplish a good thing, but they are not the subjects at hand.)

I believe that this ability to think of ourselves is a side effect of having free will ("What do I want? What do I feel?"). And when we become the lord of our own lives, centering everything around our wants and desires, we lose something. But when we freely choose to order our lives in service to others, something is gained. What is it?

Love.

"Love your neighbor as you love yourself."
"No greater love has man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends."
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength."

Saint Augustine describes the Trinity in terms of love. The Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved, and the Spirit is the power of love. The important thing about this illustration is the dimensions it highlights. Two people loving each other will be in a world of their own. We've all seen this with new couples, I'm sure; they seem to suddenly forget there's a world around them. The third person of the Trinity directs this love outward, so that it both pours out onto others and draws others into it. "Love" is not complete until there is an outward motion.

It's possible that even criminals try, in their own warped way, to show concern and love for those who are close to them. This just further goes to show that they aren't animals; they're humans who've missed the mark on what it means to truly love.

Yet all of us miss that mark. It's easy to love ourselves, but it becomes more difficult to extend that same love to others. We try, but it's awkward and ungainly most of the time. The end result is functional, obviously, but incomplete. Only God can teach us what it means to truly love.

What's my point in all this? I went off on a few tangents, and if you're still with me, I applaud and thank you. My point is that this world is broken. There are people who desensitize themselves to their nature of love for the sake of satiating their selfish desires. It breaks my heart to think about it, but I have hope that some of them may be shown the light and love of Christ, and that they would follow him instead of themselves.

And so what does that mean for me as a Christian and as any other human? As a Christian, it means I am driven to pray for these men (and women) who think life is only about themselves and that it can't be anything more than what they've always seen. It also means that I need to be constantly checking myself and keeping myself in check, so that I'm exercising the love of Christ and others, and not just the love of myself. And as a human, a polite passerby on the street? Well, it means that I need to be able to protect myself efficiently and effectively with only the amount of force necessary for the situation. It means that I need to keep training so that I can learn to control my power and use it to inflict the least amount of harm necessary. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I accept that I may have to in this broken world.

Come, Lord Jesus.