could've been me

So... today I impulsively bid on a cheap i-pod on e-bay. I've never done that before, I mean, I've never really bid on anything before, let alone an i-pod, but it was only $35 (the old clunky kind, but still an i-pod, so fabulous, right?), so I let loose and bid.

The auction was closing in something like 20 min, so I waited with piqued anticipation as I watched the bidding... I had it at about $43, and nobody else was making a move... then I got scared. What if I actually WON? Then I'd have to buy it. I wasn't sure that was what I really wanted, so I started to secretly hope someone would show up in the last 14 min and bid and bid a lot.

And that's precisely what happened. Somebody bid it up to $50+, so I was off the hook and I think they now have a confirmed win on that i-pod (which I noticed after bidding, comes with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING--no charger cord, no manual, no... well, anything).

***

I think it's often in my life that I take a little step in a direction, and then am terrified of what I've done. Can't it be undone? Can't I change my mind? Won't somebody please bail me out of my impulsive or foolish decisions?

It's all too common in my life to think and behave this way, and it's really annoying! If I am a calculated person (like I think I am), why do I lack discipline so much in areas of my life where stepping out in faith is such a fearful experience? I think I need to discipline myself to embrace the fear and go for it... I need to make conscious efforts to put myself into terrifying situations that stretch my comfort zone so I can prove to myself that I can hack it, and thereby make my comfort zone a little bigger.

I am going to begin stretching myself.

this time, i mean it!

If you are a faithful reader of this blog, you will recall when (last fall) I started running with my roommate, Mindy. Life was supposed to be different, I was going to be a runner.

Well, guess what? I'm not. I currently still stink at it, and it's all because we let our desire to run be trampled by a herd of nasty laziness. Those buggers are pretty good at trampling things.

I've been thinking for nearly this whole time how crappy it is that I'm not a runner. I really want to be a runner, but the part I stink at is simply... the running part. Anyhow, Mindy and I are giving it another go, but using some weekly plans I found online, which have us start from ground zero: walking. So far, the end of day 1, we are totally on-track, and feeling great. :) Tomorrow we go for round 2, then a day off, then some more Friday. Sunday we start the REAL DEAL and beginning the running/walking intervals (week 1 is just endurance walking).

Now, of course, if I'm going to be serious about this, and I plan on that, I decided I need to make more than just a mental/verbal commitment to do it. Especially since I'm moving home to Michigan soon, I feel a need to invest in this by putting my money where my mouth is, and that means I'm signing up for a 5K race. In the next couple of days I'm going to pick my race, pay my money, and start to really own this. I will be a runner.

the end of the world as we know it?

I've been reflecting a lot lately on the world, the goings on within it, and the attitude about said goings on possessed by people around the world. I think it's fair to say that things are not as they used to be, and yet remain the same. Why the paradoxical statement?

Simply put, we see changes in nearly every aspect of our daily lives as we move through the technological advances of the current age and the newness of adjusting our living to meet with those standards, while remaining essentially the same, with the sameness of our desires, values (to an extent, more on this later), habits, and general ideologies. We change as the world changes, but despite all of the change, we're essentially the same. (Consider the rest in the context of the American lifestyle and cultural belief system. I don't claim to know about much more than that.)

It's crazy to imagine a "simpler time" as many consider any time before the present. In our nostalgic reminiscing, we even categorize the WWII era as "simpler". Why? People were still being killed daily, genocide was still an enemy we thought heinous enough to wage war against. People still engaged in both the good and the bad, and still longed for something even better. And what about the classic pioneering era of the 1800s? Those really were simpler, weren't they? After all, they had no televisions, no credit cards, no 401ks to worry about.... I still wonder, though, how simple these times were. Most of us (or maybe even all of us) would not find it easy to tend to a herd of cattle, to milk cows by hand at 5 a.m., to travel across thousands of miles in a covered wagon without roads to smooth out the bumpy terrain. I'd venture to say that most of us would not be lounging on a sofa if we had, in fact, lived in that era, and if nothing else, would know even more than at present, the value of hard work, self-sacrifice (and do we really know anything about this at all?), and endurance.

Mourning probably is the best course of action when considering what our society has come to:

• indulgence of every kind (materialism, gluttony, sloth, sexual immorality, adultery)
• absence of compassion, mercy
• feeling of superiority, apathy regarding others' pain/suffering
• devaluation of human life ("justified" murder, apathy when faced with blatant genocide, war for its own sake...)
• pride of tremendous proportions
• consumerism--take whatever I want because I deserve it, accrue debts I cannot pay because need things, hoarding what I still have for myself
• miserly attitude v. generous one
• self-righteous attitude toward others and rest of the world

It is very sad, indeed.