We are Rockets in the Sky

As I write this I just finished playing basketball and I am supposed to be getting ready to go home teaching which is in an hour. And even more so, since I doubt I'm going to get anything to eat at home teaching, and since I haven't eaten all day, I should be eating. But I can't. No, I'm not anorexic. I just lost my appetite. And everything else suddenly doesn't matter.

The curse of being a good listener and a trustworthy person is that people entrust you with their secrets and things they don't tell anyone else. Sure, being a keeper of secrets has it's thrilling parts that comes inherent with secrecy, but there also come agonizing moments when you are torn with what to do when given a secret. This is one of those moments.

Why are friendships so temporary? Why do they not last very long? How can one person hurt you so badly in a way nothing and no one else can? I guess it's because they become such a big part of your life and caring for someone requires sacrificing something that is such an integral part of you. You sacrifice sovereignty and part of your freedom. So when someone that has been a part of your life suddenly leaves, and furthermore, not only disrupts your future but changes your past memories, it cuts. Deep.

And when that someone leaves on relatively good grounds you're left with the bitterness of mystery and the unknown. You question everything and it tears your basic foundations.

So I sit here. And think. And remember that this is both the curse of being a keeper of secrets and for loving/caring for people in general. The hardest part is keeping it to yourself.

But it's ok. We'll survive right? Sometimes, we are just rockets in the sky. forget me, go your own way. It's been a long time since I've felt like this and it's easy to just close yourself up. But things will always be all right. It's been good.

Between Two Worlds

Last Friday I did my traditional (or soon to be traditional) thing I do every two Friday nights. I hung out and played with the VGAME club. Truth be told, it was like going back to 4th grade again and playing Goldeneye with my friends. What does that mean? I just mean that it's been so long since I've played video games with a group of friends (Mike and Luke aside). It was 4 friggin hours of gaming bliss. But at the end of the night, as we were waiting for the President to wrap up the gaming session, the club members were talking about, what else?, GAMES. And I found myself not understanding half the jargon being said. 3/5's (yes, I used an obscure fraction) of the way through this conversation I realized something; am I still considered a gamer? Had I slowly, but surely, lost connection with the gaming mainstream? Granted, I chipped in here and there and felt good about myself, but I realized I had was lost for a large portion of the conversation.

My gaming tendencies still tend to leave me as a gamer when viewed by the general student body (ESPECIALLY at BYU I would say), but after reading Audrey's blog, realizing that no gaming websites are in my top 8 most viewed sites (3 of them are blogs for goodness' sake!), and that most of LightsArmy coming up are gamers (this includes the majority of every teenage girl on LightsArmy, yes I realized I used "majority" followed by "every") I recognized that it's just not as integral a part of me as it used to be, and that I'm neither gamer nor non-gamer (a casual gamer almost!)

The reason why this happened is probably because I'm at BYU where I've been so streamlined into the focus of dating that I've just become this one-dimensional cookie-cutter male student at BYU (and I'm not saying dating isn't a bad thing to focus on). I've kinda become what they want me to become. I guess the real question is then, do I mind? No. Not at all actually. There are attributes that I've developed that I feel are useful to life and this next stage to my life might just be a natural evolution of me. There are some aspects of gaming that I'd rather not return to too.

However, I would like to re-explore my roots though and have more of a balance to my life. A little gaming never hurt anyone.

When Circles Collide

Oh no. Don't tell me that another round of engagements is happening... Wow. It's crazy. That's about three now (Dezzy just got engaged o_o). This might sound mean, but there were two people that I was wondering when they would get married. Euseung Park, my mission trainer, and Desiree Gahr, my good friend from back home. And now knowing they're both gonna be married?? Mind = blown. Am i getting that old? How many real life single friends will I have left?? AH!~ Ugh. When I go back to my single's ward I will have no one to hang out with. AH!

But that's now what I want to address today. I just wanted to say quickly, I'm always so distraught over those moments when you show up at a social gathering and you have different sets of friends wanting you to hang out with them. Who do you hang out with? The first answer is "all of them", and it's usually not too difficult when your friendship with some groups of friends are closer than others. But WHAT if you're equal closeness with all of them? And when you hang with one group you feel like you're betraying another. GAh. Then you wonder if you've somehow lessened the importance of your friendship, but you don't want to ask. When different circles of friends collide it's always kinda stressful for me.

I guess that's why I dislike birthday parties. Ugh.

Darn You Lights

Darn you Lights you did it again. Many times when I have a major reflection her song is somehow in the background. Perhaps it's destiny that Lights' music would illuminate these times in my life. Perhaps it's because God wills it that way. Perhaps it's because I listen to her so darn much. Darn you Lights.

What exactly happened? Well, one of my best friends called me and told me he just got engaged. SWEET! Especially since I played a part in bringing them together. Ka-Ching. Pretty kewl huh? Impressed? Yeah, thought so. My match-making skills are just that impressive. (though an argument could be made that Starcraft did it's part too. Ya know. since it brought Luke and I together. What? Don't judge, one of your bf's came from WoW. YEah. That's right. What now?).

I told my friend that this new fact would only hit me a little later as most big, life-altering things do. But as we ended the call and I hung up a familiar tune played itself out. Oh no? Oh yes. It was Lights' "Last Thing on Your Mind" and it hit me like the feeling when you realize you just forgot to take a midterm last week or, since maybe that doesn't apply to many people but me, the like the feeling of realization that you just moved into a new place away from other people. A sudden realization that things are different and that life has once again shifted. A new era is beginning, and things will never be the same anymore. Again.

Yeah, I admit I'm a big sucker for nostalgia so things like this carry extra potency. However it makes me think. Maybe I should take marriage more seriously and stop just dating for fun. I mean, I never really dated with the intention of getting married. Sure, I would have loved a relationship, but even in those instances it never played out in my mind of culminating in marriage. In my life where I straddle (ok, sorry, weird word choice there) two worlds there is one aspect where I am still young and there is no pressure.

But like i said, the times, they are a changin. And like before, somehow, Lights' songs have always been the one prompting me to feel a certain way and think certain things. Here we go again. ... This should be fun.

W.M.L.H.B.

It's a sad day for my social life (and in my life in general) when one of the people I talk to the most is a 9th grade LightsArmy girl from Ohio. -___-;;

hope she doesn't see this.

Humility

It's a lesson that I've had to learn over and over and over again. Right when I feel like I have it, it slips out of my reach. Right when I think I'm a pretty humble guy, I'm reminded of ways that i am not.

On my mission, it was my biggest goal. To be humble. And it was where I finally, FINALLY, learned what humility was because it's not until you reach a certain level of self-respect and self-understanding that you realize what it means to be humble. It isn't until you come to know who you are and be OK with it that you can be humble.

i learned this the hard way on my mission as I struggled to learn how to be a good missionary. My trainer would tell me things I could improve on, but I always took it as condescending and someone thinking they're better than me. I knew they didn't mean it directly, but I thought it was just subtle, maybe even subconscious, and I took it that way.

The one day, in one of those moments where you suddenly see your life differently, my trainer took me into a room to talk and then to pray. And then I as I was praying it hit me.

Humility is the ability to take what someone else is saying and honestly say, without any snideness or self-defeating notions, "You know what? Maybe he's right. Maybe I AM that way. Maybe I DO need to change. Maybe what I've been doing has been wrong all this time. Maybe.... I'm wrong". You see how you need to understand yourself for this to work? There can't be a feeling of "well, let me try it your way and I'll prove you wrong!" or "I hate myself and I suck, everything i do is not right". That's not humility, it's pride in the former, and ...surprisingly, pride in the latter (because you can't have it your way so you hate everything and give up).

It's always a hard thing to do. Whenever someone says something, even as a suggestion, the FIRST thought that enters our minds is retaliation or retreat. Often times it doesn't even occur to us what was said, but rather how it made us feel. It takes practice to find yourself saying "No. Maybe I got to look at this differently and change my ways" and to do it truthfully to yourself.

favorites

from daphna

cuz i'm bored

Favorite cookie: anything chocolate chip cookie or a variation/combination of it
Favorite flower: um.... i haven't really thought of this...
Favorite pizza: alfredo pizza! yum. or one of those dessert pizzas. :D
Favorite class of all time: high school: English? College: Chinese 101
Favorite book: Book of Mormon :P Next would probably be Bible. :P :P

Favorite color: red
Favorite magazine: Sports Illustrated/Nintendo Power
Favorite day of the week: Friday/Saturday
Favorite cuisine: Mexican
Favorite dish: satay chicken (cuz it's the only real dish i know how to cook haha)
Favorite holiday: Christmas and the season and Valentine's day (jay kay about v-day :P)
Favorite season: Spring
Favorite scent: whatever the girl next to me is wearing. hahahaha.
Favorite movie: 12 Angry Men
Favorite Disney character: blondie/Rapunzel/Flynn/Pascal
Favorite board game: no favorites
Favorite music genre: Electro-Pop/Hip-Hop
Favorite drink: Powerade
Favorite scripture: no favorites. Though John 14:27 is good.
Favorite apostle: President Eyring/Elder Holland

tumblr

since most of my lightsArmy friends are on tumblr, I've created tumblrs. Yes, plural. Two of them. As in it takes "two" to tango. One is ruenarke.tumblr.com which is more like a dream journal. The other is byugle.tumblr.com which is where i will rant about anything BYU and my experience there. The thing is, I'm trying to decide if there is enough stuff to combine the two.

I wanted Ruenarke to be mostly tailored to my secular, LightsArmy, and casual friends, while having Byugle open to anyone and to anyone who wants to say anything as well as a place where I may approach a spiritual topic if I wanted to. Thing is, there are also deep reflections that I want on BOTH tumblrs that I want both my lightsArmy/non-LDS friends and all my other friends to see. Since Ruenarke is supposed to be just a dream journal I also don't want it to be flooded with too many posts outside of just dreams. I also want the Byugle to be more of a formal/semi-objective blog while keeping Ruenarke casual. two separate tumblrs for two separate purposes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I would love it if all my friends followed both and contributed to both, but I just don't think that's reasonable or very convenient. So until I figure something out or until someone has a better idea i'm going to keep up both of them (in addition to this blog :D).