That friggin book.

I've been reading The Journey of Desire by John Elderidge. Now I've realized that, once again, I've been sitting over here in my little corner settling for what I deem is a nice, secure, stable life--but that's the problem. That idea is merely "nice." Meanwhile, there is something deep within my soul that occasionally manages to break through the settling-for-"nice" and washes over me like a wave, and I realize that my deepest passion is NOT to settle down, have a stable life, be conventional, whatever. And that is a good thing. What Mr. Elderidge is saying in his book is that human beings are creatures of desire; we long for a better world--essentially, for the paradise that was lost--and we spiritually kill ourselves when we merely settle for mindless living. What Jesus was offering, he points out, was Life--appealing to that desire inside of us; whereas the Pharisees were offering religion as a kind of duty--following rules and obeying regulations as a means to "life."

So then I come to this realization that, hey, I'm doing this too--focusing more on religion as an anti-sin than religion as Life. And yes, there is a difference. A big one. Then when I'm reading this book I realize that I'm merely settling in my own head: There is so much more that I want to do than to have a steady job and live in a nice little apartment and sit around, go to work, come home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up the next day, repeat. I've been doing that all summer (minus the nice little apartment, I guess =P) and I realize that I've wasted two months of my life. There is nothing I fear more than waking up one day, being forty-two years old, realizing that I'm tied down by things that I thought would satisfy me and that I've pissed away half my life without having ever truly lived. I guess that's everyone's fear, but now it's got me more strongly than ever--well, maybe not in fear form, but in "I just realized that this is not what I want" form.

And then another part of me realizes that in planning my life so extensively, I'm afraid that I might be trying to pull Aaron down into that murk with me. And that terrifies me. I want him to Live too, not to be stuck in some job that just pays the bills in order to make him and/or me happy. I feel like I've been subversive in some way that even I wasn't fully conscious of ...

I dunno. I guess I need to finish reading my book and see this thing through to the end.

I haven't blogged in a while.

Aaron's back. Sometimes it's odd to think that I actually get to see him once a week. =P After going for so long without getting to see him, I'm just like ... "Hey, I get to see him again? Sweet." =P

Still working at the library. Still loving it. Carts of children's books, however, are brutal, because you can fit five or six in the space that a mid-sized fiction book would take up, so it takes about twice as long to do one children's cart. And that's about all I had to do today. >.< Urgh. But hey, I could be having to ... I dunno ... work in a tannery. I saw that on Dirty Jobs the other night. I don't think that I would survive.

So I checked out "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting a Tattoo" from the library yesterday just because it was interesting (I'm not planning on getting a tattoo anytime soon ... that's a little further down the road =P). Did you know that it stays in place because the phagocytes (little organelles that "eat" invaders of the cell) eat the ink and hold it in place? I didn't know that. Thought it was pretty interesting.

I'm on a bit of a Hellboy kick. I still kind of want to go to Hastings and see if they've gotten the movie back in yet, but I don't feel like driving across town ... darn.

I also feel like writing stories again, but the worst part is trying to start them--and I can't get past that. It's been driving me crazy. Maybe at some point I'll be able to break the writer's block and get a decent story going ... oh well.

Yep. That's about all that's been up recently.