Hair

My hair looks like this after a full day of wearing a beanie.

Whenever (by laziness, not design) my hair gets this long, I hear a call from the dark side whispering "Hey, long hair was fun, remember? Do it again!" But let's be honest, I'll probably get it cut soon. But let's be honest; a haircut is loooow on my priorities list at the moment.

Thank God for financial aid fee deferment. Thanks to good old Calgrant A, school this semester is going to cost a whopping $470! An incredible blessing, especially because my family has an incredible amount of bills that we are strugglin' to pay at the moment.

Also, by buying books online I saved myself about 126 dollars, which is no small amount considering the total cost from the Spartan bookstore would have been 335. Still a bummer to have to spend 200 dollars, but I'm happy that it at least cost less than it would have originally.

Also My awesome schedule happens to work so that I only have to make the trek up to SJSU twice a week. And that's with fifteen units of classes! It should be an interesting bunch of classes this semester.

The time for me to put my foot down about what my future career path will be is coming a lot closer.

Community

incarnate faith was wonderful tonight. From start to finish everything was so fantastic.

I love leading worship at iF. There's something about hearing all of the voices singing along that makes me lose my intellectual and cognitive connection to the music and really feel it instead. It becomes emotion; a real connection between myself and God and all of the others worshiping along with me.

Then an unexpected person was baptized. I remember him from highschool; I had at least one class with him every year I was at Gilroy High. He's been coming consistently since the if started, and last approached Mike and told him that he was ready to be baptized. sitting in the water he said that he repented of his sins, and believed that Jesus had forgiven him and become his father, because his own father had abandoned him. He said he was ready to follow Jesus.

Sometimes He just reaches out for someone. Someone you might completely write off.

Then Isaac spoke. He talked about how churches and Christians are accused of being fake, and that it's a valid accusation. He talked about the fact that when you come into a church, you are surrounded by fake happy faces, and the fact that churches make people feel like they can't be transparent; that they need to put on a happy face and not open up about the pain and struggles they are feeling. He said it's time for that to change; for Christians and churches as communities to be there for eachother, and to really be a safe place for people to open their wounds and be healed. He cried as he exemplified this by sharing his own struggles with his self image. How he can't look in the mirror without seeing the 250 pound 'ugly' person he used to be. He talked about how Mike (in a previous sermon) had told the congregation that he struggled with clinical depression and communication problems with his wife.

They are truly leading by example. And Isaac is right, the church needs to be a place where people can heal and be healed. Where people can take off their masks and love eachother, unafraid. Where people ask "how are you doing?" without expecting the obligatory "fine, thank you."

I think we can do it.

Writing spree

Since I started writing songs, I've had a track record of writing them extremely slowly. My critical nature, especially when it comes to art (and ESPECIALLY when it comes to music) makes it difficult for me to stamp something of mine with my approval. So in the past, it's taken me literally months to complete songs. (If ever. I have a whole album worth of incomplete songs that either got violently 'scratched' or just gradually faded away without ever being finished.'

However, lately this has changed completely. In the past month or two, I have written six songs (which, ironically, is exactly the number that I had written in ALL the time previous to that not including LFTE songs... about a year). Lately, I have written songs in a day or two, or in a couple of cases, in one sitting. Music and lyrics. This is absolutely unheard of for me, and wonderful.

They're not only being written faster, but differently as well. I'm writing lyrics and music simultaneously (in most cases) instead of one before the other. I'm doing this mainly because I have always had my primary goal be to convey a clear and consistent emotion and message in songs that I write; I want the words and the music to mesh emotionally so that they music supports and contributes to the meaning of the song. I want my songs to be honest and carry weight and meaning. I hope I'm accomplishing that.

Sooner or later I may work up the gumption to throw up some rough recordings/video/lyrics of the songs for some feedback(?)