This Does Put A Smile On My Face

I guess it never really was a secret. I mean what ever was a secret on this blog anyways? If I had really wanted to keep it secret, I would've just not posted it at all..... or so I think.

I guess now that I know the truth, you can know it as well. Also to who this is kinda about, sorry, but I'm just really excited and happy that this is the way things are.

If you know me for any given length of time, I probably at some point have poked fun at the fact that I'm still single and that I'm on a track record of 16 crushes and 7 rejections (because I didn't act on most of the crushes). So imagine that after reject or crush that led to nowhere one after another that eventually I'd find someone who eventually "caught them feelys" and reciprocated.

For those gamers of old, imagine getting your first 25 kill streak in Call of Duty and calling in that tactical nuke to end the game on your terms.

That's what this felt like. An explosion of overwhelming joy and happiness. I knew that in God's timing that I'd find someone, and that I probably shouldn't have tried so many times before, but here we are. All I can do now is to be thankful and praise God for everything. For the patience to wait this one out, and for the guidance to keep going even if past crushes have led to nothing.

Now I don't mean to say that anything is set in stone just yet, but I can't help but think about the overwhelming joy I feel.

I honestly don't really know how I want to articulate this post, so I'm coming up with words and sentences as I go along. Hopefully some of this makes sense. It probably doesn't, but I'll write an update post/another post to organize everything once my brain calms down. I mean I don't want to get rid of this feeling so soon, but you know, it's not exactly helping me write coherent thoughts.

What I'm trying to say, if you haven't pieced it together by now, is that the girl I've been crushing on for the past 2 maybe close to 3 months reciprocates the feelings. And this has never happened to me before. I feel ecstatic. I feel alive. I feel joy.

All I know now is that I should pray to God, to thank Him, to glorify Him, and to ask Him to help me center any relationship that comes out of this on Him. To have guidance from Him to know what I need to do to treat this girl to the very best of my abilities, if not beyond my abilities and force myself to grow to treat her like the priceless person that she is. Because the Lord our God has made each and every human being priceless and beyond putting a price tag on. We just got to recognize that and know our intrinsic value, and that even if the world says we're worthless, there is a God Almighty who says we are worth everything.

To the girl, who shall remain unnamed for now, I hope that I can be the person you deserve. I have fears of not being enough or being less than what you deserve, but I want to give it my best shot. Thank you for being such a good friend up to now, and for bringing so much joy to my life.

Vaping

I got an email forwarded to me by my dad (who is a doctor) and it contained information about a 17 year old male who had to get a double lung transplant because of vaping.

The only people at that young of an age who should be getting any transplant of any kind should be people who were born with an illness or has something that was caused not by something of their own actions. Vaping is a choice. An expensive one, which is another reason why I don't vape aside from the fact that the only thing I want to put into my lungs is the relative clean air surrounding me.

I don't get why anyone thinks that vaping is cool. It's not. It's originally designed to help heavy smokers work their way off from smoking since smoking has a lot of studied lethal effects/health endangering effects. Vaping has little to no scientific research, so I suppose one could argue that my stance is dumb or illogical, but then how can you argue my viewpoint when there are cases in which there have been transplants as well as surgeries as a result of vaping?

It also saddens me to know that one of my cousins has picked up vaping. She posted about it once on her instagram story I think in reference to her boyfriend's birthday or something, but regardless, I just fear for her health and safety. I know it's not my place to judge, and it's not my place to tell her how to live her life (of which might be a little hard for her to hear since her father left her at very young age). But why would one ever think that vaping is a good idea? To purposefully put chemicals into your body? That's pretty dumb if you ask me.

All I know is that with each new case of a surgery or what have you that arises because of vaping is another reason I will stay far away from vaping.

To any of my friends who may vape (I don't think I have any friends who do, but in case there are some), I don't mean to come off as rude or disrespectful. And you've probably heard it a million times that we're just "looking out for your health", but if you really are struggling and if you want to quit, then by all means, reach out to me. I'll do what I can to help.

To my friends who don't vape but know people who do, let's help encourage them to drop these behaviors since science doesn't even know all of the downsides to vaping.

Vaping is not cool, and it never will be.

You can't change my mind on this one.

Update: "Should've Known Better"

Okay so I feel just a little better because I helped the process, but I still feel awful about it happening in the first place.

So shortly after I wrote my last post, I went out and drove my friend to a phone repair shop. I decided that I should probably help pay for the repairs since I semi-caused it. It's kinda a good thing I did. And I don't say that to make myself sound noble or anything, but I would absolutely feel even worse than I already do if I hadn't helped. The total cost ends up being $169.99. Like wow that is a large chunk of money for a college student to have to pay. I'm not entirely sure how much I actually did help because I gave my friend a couple of Visa gift cards that I have an idea of what the value was, but had no idea on checking on it because I apparently registered the cards online and TD Bank never sent me the log in info when I requested it. So hopefully whatever was on those 2 cards actually helped. And hopefully that there wasn't some lame "maintenance fee" that some cards have where if you don't use the funds on the card by a certain date, then they would charge $2.50/month. If they degraded, they are way less than what I thought they are.

Nonetheless, I still feel awful that all of this happened. I wish I really weren't on my phone and that I could've avoided this situation altogether. I still feel bad for causing this, and I probably will feel a bit bad about it for a good while. I think I've decided that once I can get a good flow of income or at least get some funds, I will attempt to reimburse my friend the full amount because it's not fair to her that she had to pay so much when she's trying to save money and it's something that could've easily been avoided.

Prayers for peace of mind and just wisdom on what I can do to avoid situations like this again and any ideas for how I can try to compensate my friend for the time being would be appreciated. More updates to follow if there are any more updates.

Should've Known Better

I'm a hypocrite. And sure that might not be news to some people, but let me get you up to speed.

Sometimes while I'm walking around campus, I get a little irked or whatever you'd call it when someone it about to walk into me because they simply aren't looking up at least every now and then from their phones while walking. Sometimes I'd just say something like "heads up" and then get them to move sorta last minute (or would it be second?) before what would've been an impact. I mean I also don't mean to come off as some brute who would muscle my way through everything or just slam into people, but at the same time, just common sense.

But guess who was lacking common sense today? Me. Yup. I totally did the thing that I try to correct other people on. I neglected to look up from my phone more often than I should be if I'm even on my phone. I mean sure, you could argue, "well Geoff, you shouldn't even be on your phone while walking," and you'd be right. Part of me tries to justify that I am a little more aware than others, but that's probably just some misconception I keep telling myself.

So today, I was walking down the weird stairs outside the library (they're weird because it's 2-3 steps, then a maybe 5-6 foot landing before the next grouping of stairs; not sure if that was for stylistic purposes or what, but I digress) and I was, as you probably guessed, on my phone. One of my friends came right up to me and said "boo" to which I was caught off guard and since I wasn't paying attention, I almost run into her. The next few moments were a blur, but all I know is that I probably and most likely caused her to drop her phone. And it decides to land screen first on the concrete/stone pathway.

You can probably guess the end results of a glass screen hitting a stone pathway. But if you can't, I'll give you a moment........... Did you figure it out yet? Well, if not, here I go. The screen shattered. Huge spiderweb crack on it.

And I feel absolutely terrible. I caused this. Had I not been dumb and on my phone while walking, down stairs nonetheless, and this wouldn't have happened. Had I just heeded my own advice to be more aware of my surroundings, it wouldn't have happened. Had I just had common sense and figure that whatever was on my phone or whatever I wanted to do on it could wait until I got to my destination or at least just stop on the side of the walkway, this would not have happened.

I feel like it's all my fault. I don't know what to do, and I let instinct kick in and when my friend was talking to someone (probably a classmate, but that's insignificant to my actions) I just darted away. Fight or flight kicked in (I'm assuming), and my body chose flight. I vanished, went back to my dorm, and now I'm here on my blog. Venting about it, because of how bad I feel.

To my friend who's phone I absolutely destroyed, I am so so sorry. If there's anything I can do to make it up, I'll try to make ends meet so that I can at least try to compensate you for the damages that I caused.

To anyone else reading this, I don't really know what I expect you to do aside from read this, but if you're feeling bold, comment on this post on what you think I should do. If you don't want to have this traced to you (well from surface value anyways plus I don't know enough computer science to trace you) I think the comments should allow for anonymous comments.

I just wish I had remembered common sense.

I should've known better.

Priorities

If you've been following this blog for awhile, you'd know that for the most part I've been doing a lot of work to make myself into the best physical shape as possible.

Well, for the last 3 weeks, I've neglected the gym. First week was because the gym was too crowded and then I didn't make it the rest of the week. The next 2 weeks were just because I apparently prioritized playing Minecraft with my friends instead of putting down the video games and working out.

It's been several hard months of training, yet I am also tempted to just stop altogether. But at the same time there are parts of me that wants to keep going. I realized now that between either laziness or lack or priorities or vacation, I've missed a total of 7 full weeks of working out over the past 8 months. That's almost 2 months of not working out.

I really do need to get back into it, but will I be able to get myself to the gym? Or will I keep booking myself up with activities and pushing off gym time to the point where I absolutely lose all progress?

Colder Than Expected

Honestly, not going to lie, but the temperatures outside have kinda caught me off guard a bit. I mean it's not as cold as home is, but it's getting colder faster than I thought it would. Either that or my perception of time has hastened to the point where I'm not acknowledging the fast passage of time, so my perception goes to think that not much time has passed.

I mean when I walked out of Doc's last night 'round 10:30 p.m., it was a nippy 28 degrees Fahrenheit. 4 degrees below freezing, and it's only just past the first week of November. Apparently home was around 25 degrees. I mean a few degrees difference doesn't make too much of difference for now, but I guess it depends on how much time you're spending outside or what activities you're doing. I only know of the home temperatures because my sister was telling me about how she had to go to a football game since she's a part of the marching band back home. I've had my fair share of marching band days, and it can get pretty cold if you're just sitting there waiting to play music as pep tunes and there's not exactly much you can do to keep warm.

I guess I'll have to just put on more layers accordingly, or at least check the temperature a bit more often and also take a look at what the temperature forecast is supposed to be if I plan on being outside for longer than just walking from point A to point B.

Northern Resistance

I always joke that being from the North gives me extra tolerance to the cold in comparison to people from around LYH. But even with that being said, I'm not from anywhere incredibly far north. I'm just north enough where the winters here are nothing I can't handle. Most of the time the temps are in the 20s to 30s.

But tonight was rather cold. It's only November 3rd, and the temp as of right now at 10:51 pm is 33 degrees Fahrenheit. Just barely above freezing temperatures. I made sure to put on some layers to keep myself from absolutely freezing outside, but I didn't really need all that much. But I think just about freezing is my limit as to when I start breaking out the heavier clothing.

For reference, all I wore was jeans, t-shirt, fleece jacket, and leather gloves that have a cashmere lining. The gloves aren't really the warmest but they do help keep some heat in. I was shivering a little bit, but once I get walking for 10-15 minutes, I'm good to go for the most part. Had there been any wind, and maybe not so well off because fleece jackets are terrible for cutting through wind, in fact the wind would cut through the jacket. My ears were fine, and so was my face and neck.

If it consistently reaches freezing temperature or any lower, I might have to put on a second jacket over my fleece one, or just a jacket over a sweatshirt or something. I probably won't need a hat or scarf unless it gets down to 20, but we'll see. I do have my winter coat here, so I should be fine for the most part.

11

Honestly, I'm not sure how many of these blog posts I'll be making with just the number of the month, since eventually we'll come full circle, but here we go nonetheless.

It felt like it was a good while ago that I wrote "10" for October. But looking back, it also feels like it really wasn't that long ago. How did 31 days go by so quickly? So much has happened. Ups and downs, hills and valleys, and I also got a haircut (don't ask me how that tied into anything).

I feel like that in several of these posts that kind of kick off my posting for the month always say "ups and downs", but I feel like that while redundant, it is very much true. I mean that's life, isn't it? You get your good days, your high points, but just like everything else, it only lasts for a short while (hence why you should enjoy everything to its fullest when it happens because you'll never know when the "good times" are "good times" until they're gone). The low points naturally suck. I've hit some lows this past month, but I made it, and here I am in November of 2019, powering on. This is the last November of the 2010's, and it's odd. 2 more months, and we'll be in a whole 'nother decade.

I guess to avoid being super redundant, I'd just like to take a moment to thank God for this past month. While in one of my lows, to the point where I was thinking of dark thoughts (again), I came back to the dorm and found a lovely surprise. I went to shower and when I came out of the shower, I saw my good friend Marcus Mercer, who was my RS (resident shepherd for anyone who's not a LU student reading this) for the past 2 years. We've bonded over the past 2 years, and it was just heartwarming and comforting to see him. It helped to tend to my spirit and keep my fire going. I'm not sure why, but when I saw him, I felt this sense of "everything's going to be okay, regardless of my shortcomings and my failures, that I needn't worry about what's the come or what has been done, but that my Father in Heaven still has me".

I don't know how that feeling came about. Maybe because on my way back to the dorm from Doc's, I was praying and just begging for help. Begging to know where the next step of my life is, or at least for guidance in the direction that I should be going. Maybe because of the fact that I had no idea that Marcus was coming to visit the hall for a few days. I mean some people knew, but I didn't. It really felt like an answered prayer.

There's a special connection between Marcus and I. I remember that last semester, when I was going through a spell of depression like sadness and down feeling, that while we were worshiping God around a bonfire we had going, he just came over to my side and just put his arm around me. That time was the first time in which I had ever really gotten super emotional during worship and that I actually cried a bit. But through that worship and through the comfort of my friend, I felt my burdens of sadness and worry get lifted off of me. When I had asked him what made him walk over to me during worship, he told me that he felt God tell him to. I guess through Marcus, the Spirit of the Lord is making moves in my life.

Anyhow, to not linger on one story for too long as this preemptive post to the month of November, I just know that the Lord my God is on my side, and even when I am lazy or apathetic, that as long as I stay faithful that everything will work out for my good. He's always working for my good, no matter if I don't see Him or if I don't feel Him working.

So as we enter November, here's to staying true to my faith and to do as much damage control as possible in the areas that I still have time to fix whatever I can. Here's to the final 2 months of the 2010 decade, and here's to a life dedicated to Christ.