The Comet's Flame

There are some things that I want to try to commit to in the new year:

• Listen to the advice of those older and wiser than I (this, I think, deserves an entire blog entry, so I will try to write one at a later date).
• Live more healthy (I have wanted to be a vegetarian for a long time, so I’m going to actually try to do that. Also, I want to try to exercise consistently).
• Practice piano regularly (my current practicing routine consists of learning a random song by ear every other month or so, which is not so good… I want to start developing a repertoire of actual written piano pieces).
• Study the Bible regularly (I am reading through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology as a part of my daily devotions, and it is just great. It is a theology textbook that is exciting and fun to read, and it makes me want to be a better student of the Bible).
• Read more books (I have an ever-present list of books I want to read, but I need to actually do it… to help me accomplish this, I want to watch less TV and fewer movies).
• Stop being a jerk (at times I feel like I’m displaying an arrogant and condescending persona, and that’s not a godly way to live).

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

–Oswald Chambers

Well, it has been nearly a year since I wrote the previous installment of my treatise on marriage. I’ve been thinking that two is not a good number (when it comes to installments, that is), so I am undertaking an attempt at a final chapter in what can now be termed a trilogy.

It seems that most of my friends and relatives, even people younger than I, are pairing off with members of the opposite sex and getting married. I, as you may have noticed, am not. At first, I dismissed my deviation from the norm as a byproduct of my own idealistic selectiveness (what can be more romantic than to tragically sigh, “I am surrounded by women who are beneath me”). But now, I am starting to feel a bit unsettled by the fact that, in the course of the past twenty-some years, not a single female has showed even the slightest bit of interest in me. Now I’m starting to notice the handwriting on the wall. The writing that says, in giant, bold, underlined block letters, “You, sir, are hopeless.”

So I think I have two choices.  I could lower my expectations, and go find some girl who’s stupid enough to overlook my apparent fundamental unattractiveness.  Or, I can say “forget this” and pledge my time and affection to some heartless Siren like Science.

When I try to imagine the grown-up Jed, or even the elderly Jed, try as I might, I cannot visualize myself bouncing kids on my knee, or pleasantly conversing with neighbors over a white picket fence.  I can, however, easily visualize myself as a stooped old eccentric, toiling over calculations in a stuffy lab.  So, I think that option Two is the obvious choice in the above list.  I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I just want to do something reasonably productive with my life, and stop wasting time pursuing idealistic pipe dreams that are totally incompatible with who I am.

There, I think that I’ve done an acceptable job of shrugging off the shroud of romanticism that encompassed my previous posts on this topic!  Readers take note… I do not wish to read comments such as, “Oh Jed, you are a special young man, and someday some young lady will realize that.”  This is a strictly no-fairy-tale zone.  Also, I don’t want anything to stand in the way of my feeling sorry for myself.

My family and I had a nice Christmas.  I attempted to chronicle some of the day’s events in pictorial form.

Merry Christmas, everyone!  This post is going to be exceedingly short, because I am rather tired, but I just wanted to wish you all a blessed day.

Christmas is my favourite holiday… there’s nothing better than a celebration of God’s Gift to humankind.  I pray that it brings you as much joy and excitement as it brings me!

I’m seriously considering moving back home… not because I can’t handle living on my own, but because I’m starting to wonder why I ever wanted to at this point in my life.

It’s lonely.  It’s expensive.  I miss seeing the people I care about on a daily basis.

So yeah… I wish I wouldn’t have had to pay a small fortune’s worth of rent in order to figure that out, but I hope that it hasn’t been a total waste, and that I have learned some life lessons.

It was late, and I was in a weird mood.  So I wrote this.

We shared a silent moment.
You smiled, but
You were looking past me
Into an ever-present mirror,
A self-consciousness grown into
Self-adoration.
You say you need someone, but I say
Look no further…
You have already found her.
May your love for each other blossom and grow.
May it light up the universe like a star,
And collapse into a dense aggregate of identical souls.
Many will bask in the brilliance of its light
Before yielding to the call of its irresistible horizon.

Lots of things have happened in my life recently, and I haven’t really had the time or energy to write about them.  Hopefully that will change now that I’m finished with my co-op position and winter break has begun!  So stay tuned, and I will try to post some new content ASAP. For now, I’ll share some random details that popped into my head.

• Today I’m in North Liberty with my family, celebrating my mom’s birthday (happy birthday, Mom!!).
• Yesterday, I found Carl Sandburg’s first collection of poetry (Chicago Poems) for less than $1 at Half Price Books… it is really great.
• I watched Kung Fu Panda and was pleasantly surprised!  The animation/artwork is beautiful, the characters are funny, and there is even a Gnarls Barkley song at the end!

Check out this song by Icelandic band Sigur Rós. It is absolutely heavenly. I think that the glockenspiel is one of my favorite instruments.

I deactivated my Facebook account a few weeks ago… I haven’t noticed any positive things that have resulted from that action. I think some people were a bit disappointed/offended that I suddenly disappeared from their list of friends. Plus, I probably have wasted more time wrestling with the question of whether or not to re-activate my account than I did actually using Facebook!

Thus, my account is going back online! Sorry for the absence, Facebook friends.