My generation, meet the economy

As much as I’m sick of talking about the state of our economy, I’m going to talk about it right now, because it’s teaching me something.

I’m 23. I graduated college with honors 1 year ago and have multiple part-time jobs. I cannot find a full-time job; I can’t even get an interview for a full-time job. Even ones I’m qualified for.

Many of my friends are in very similar situations. They are working very low ball jobs that there are overqualified for. Did you know the new Red Robin in Exeter had 5,000 applicants, some of whom had their masters degrees, they were applying to be servers.

What does that do besides cause a lot of frustration? Well for people my age in a similar situation as myself, I think it will teach us a little bit about humility.

It teaches me humility to be bossed around by rude customers on a busy Friday lunch where I walk out with $40 and they yell at me for forgetting their coleslaw. It teaches me humility to push around our mailroom cart at Sweet Street, making copies, and shipping out marketing supplies when I’m qualified to be helping make decisions about marketing materials.

Eventually I will move out of these part-time jobs and get a career, but hopefully I will see the people below me in a new light because I was them. I will have more respect for the restaurant cleaning lady who’s done it for 20 years, for the factory workers who can’t find the opportunity to ever have a job in a different field and the people who simply may be below me in a future job.

We are getting a fine taste of what it’s like to be under qualified, unemployed, or just trying to get by. We may complain, we may get upset, but let’s take on some humility.

Eventually we will get our shot and move up in the working world. I hope it is then we can realize that those people in our former positions are no less of people than we are. Let us realize, we are not too good for any job and not above any task. We are all humans who deserve respect, regardless of our careers and our paycheck. Let’s remember that when we reach the top.

Why We All Hate Soccer

Why We All Hate Soccer

Currently I’m reading a book by Chuck Klosterman called “Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs”. I know what you’re thinking and don’t worry, you don’t not have to discredit my logic about the game of soccer because I am not quoting my reasons from this book. But, Chuck dedicates a chapter to the idea that Americans hate soccer. I think his reasoning is valid, but I don’t think he quite grasps the real reason we hate soccer…and he couldn’t know either, he’s not an athlete.

Chuck’s idea as to why we hate soccer
~First off, tons of kids play soccer. In fact it is the No. 1 youth participation sport in the U.S. according to Soccer Industry Council of America (probably really unbiased). On the surface this might make you think that soccer will make a comeback in this country, but that is just nonsense. The reason so many kids play youth soccer is not because they love it, and are really good at it, it’s because kids can completely suck at it and no one really notices. It’s not like baseball where every kid has to bat, and face the embarrassing truth to themselves and all bystands that they have no hand-eye coordinator and look like a dummy missing every ball that blows by them. In basketball with only 5 kids on the court, again, a kid that’s got no game is going to look like a moron when he can’t dribble to save his life and throws the ball away when it hits his hands (not to mention the embarrassment of air balls).

BUT, in soccer, if a kid is awfully unathletic and terrible, he can hit this by simple never touching the ball. It’s a win-win. The kid wins because he gets to be part of a team and feel like one of the gang, and he gets to please his parents by being involved in an extra-curricular, all while hiding the fact that he secretly is a horrible soccer player (which could also be considered a win. So Michael Scott would categorize this situation as a “win-win-win”. It’s the only sport of it’s kind. That sums up Chuck’s theory.

The real reason we hate soccer (My reasoning):
~Normal American athletes suck at it. That’s it.

Think about it: great athletes in this country are defined by being great at one of the following top American sports: Football, Baseball, Basketball. All of these sports are played with heavily hand-eye coordination skills. Sure, there is some foot coordination involved in these sports. Take defense for example (but we don’t hold up these players as high as we do the scorers, let’s be honest). Largely, these sports are based on passing, catching, shooting, hitting, throwing – all hand-eye. These are our great athletes – the men and women who succeed in these skills. We love them, we worship them…then there is soccer.

Soccer makes an idiot of our hand-eye athlete friends. They suck at soccer. If I’m a football player and decide to try out basketball, I will realize, hey – I’m really not bad at this. Same goes with any of these sports, even tennis works like this. But soccer is different. There is no hand-eye coordination in soccer, so all of the athletes we hold to the highest are horrible at it, therefore dismiss it completely.

We’re not raised as a people kicking a ball back and forth with our fathers; we’re raised playing catch with our dads, honing the skills of a future basketball star. We’re almost natural good at these sports due to our culture. Since we naturally suck at soccer, we don’t play it. We’re Americans! We hate being bad at stuff, especially sports.

Me, being a basketball, volleyball, hand-eye coordination nut: I hate soccer. My advice: let’s just get rid of it completely. None of the real athletes in this country are any good at it anyway.

The Body

Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about for the past 4 months (obviously I haven’t been writing about it). I’ve been thinking about the body. Not my body or your body, but the Body of Christ. Who we are, why we exist and how we could/should go about existing together. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be the body in the context of the church and how they are one in the same. Recently I’ve picked up a few books that have challenged my view of The Body/The Church and they are: Pagan Christianity, Reimagining Church & Organic Church.

I haven’t been sharing my views on this blog because they are kind of out-of-the-box and a tad scandalous, being that I am a community group (aka small group) leader in my church. This is why I haven’t been writing.

I’m going to be honest: I believe church is done wrong. I think the church should not be composed of a lofty budget, staff members, and a center stage. These are my thoughts without going into incredible amounts of detail. If you have questions and want to talk to me because you know me personally, feel free. As for now, hopefully, I will move my thoughts in a direction that is more open/sharable and bloggable.

My Hot Object

It’s black and silver with a small red rectangle on the side. The top of the black object has a silver round circle that can be pressed to release a silver blade with a cut out squiggly line. It’s my key.

My key is my hot object. My key represents my green Jetta parked in front of my apartment. It’s more than just my method of transportation. To me it represents God’s providence and care for my life. I went on a trip two summers ago that I did not want to go on, but I felt called to go. I did not have enough money for a car when I left, but I was promised that I would receive a car with every option I wanted, with so many gadgets I wouldn’t know what to do with them all when I returned. When I came back from the trip, I landed on my car – it has blue and red interior lights, a smooth drive and heated seats.

When I get behind the wheel and thank God for my day, I can’t help but remember the special attention and love I have been given from God. I know I’m no different from you. That’s my hot object.

(The idea of the hot object is from Season 1, Episode 2 of Felicity. When I started writing, Ben couldn’t think of an object, so I started thinking about what mind would be. I finished writing and Ben went to his class with his object. Ironically, it was also a key.)

Also crazy side note: I just found out that Zack, otherwise known as the “pink guy” is Devon Gummersall, who also played Brian Krakow in My So-Called Life. I can’t believe I never caught that.

Blogging: Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

I have almost succeeded in dropping off the face of the blogging world. I’ve been a blogger for about 4 years.

I used to blog very consistenly in college about topics such as: spirituality, day-to-day human observation and whatever other ridiculous thoughts I had running through my brain. Siince then blogging has been on and off depending on how much time I’ve had. I’ve recently found that there have been several consequences I’ve faced simply because I’ve put blogging on the backseat. Here are a few:

1. My writing/speaking skills have dropped off a bit. Because I haven’t been practicing writing especially, I feel like I’ve lost my touch. Writing is something I really enjoy and value as medium of communication and I want to continue to practice and improve my skills.

2. I am not fulling expressing my thoughts and sharing my life experiences in a public way. I like sharing insights I’ve gained through my experiences. I appreciate feedback I receive in comment form. I think there is value in helping eachother on our life journeys and reading/listening to eachother’s stories. We are, in fact, in this life together. It’s best if we try to live that way.

3. A combo of 1 & 2: I really like blogging, probably because I really like writing. It encourages me to entertain intelligent thinking. It’s my outlet.

So hopefully, here I go, I will begin again. I will try to blog regularly, hopefully shooting for a couple times a week. Readers welcome, opinions/comments appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Free dates, shaven legs: advantages & disadvantages to being a woman

I had a conversation yesterday with a couple esteemed male friends about the advantages and disadvantages to being a woman. Here’s what we came up:

Being a woman means
+ free dates, and no pressure dating. Woman don’t have to do any of the asking.
+ being treated like a lady. Men open our doors, give us first dibs on stuff, tell us we’re beautiful – you get the idea.
+less hair on our body. Apparently the guys thought this was an advantage. I’m not a guy, so I’m going to trust them on this one.

It also means

-it is assumed that we are automatically less athletic than any man. Reactions (directed at me, personally in the past 10 months) include
“we can’t have two girls next to each other (on the volleyball court)”
“Pheww, thank God the woman are separated…we can’t have two women on the SAME team”
::sees that I’m on his team and lets out a strangled moan::
-we have to shave our legs, armpits, and it is unacceptable to have hair anywhere on our face besides our eyebrows. This takes work.
-we are more catty with other women. We judge each other, we gossip about each other, we are easily jealous and oftentimes we straight up hate each other for stupid reasons.
-career-wise, we have to deal with the glass ceiling

I think the biggest disadvantage is our relationships with other women. It’s not uncommon for us to treat each other badly. I have to say it comes from our own insecurities about our looks, personality and our worth. Gossiping and judging are our tools for tearing each other down, but at the end of the day, we’re still stuck with our own body and our own fears to stare us in the face. And as a result, since we’ve been skeptical of everyone else, we apply those judgments to ourselves. We know that we aren’t perfect either and so we start to hate ourselves. Our lives become about who has the tightest stomach and the best nose. If we can start to understand and accept other women as beautiful, we will care less about the ways we judged ourselves because we will set a new standard.

Women, don’t get wrapped up in things that don’t matter. Let’s learn to love each other and lift each other up and we can create a whole new perspective on beauty and our own self-worth, that is not be based on looks.

Let’s clean up this spirituality mess!

I hate the word “messy”. It bothers me. I like things to be neat & tidy, easy to fix & change. More and more I’m finding that so many things need to be talked out, organized, revamped, prodded & challenged within our own perspectives for practical, concrete changes to be made.

I like the way some things are easy to change. You can change your clothes, clean your room, organize a filing cabinet, or go grocery shopping. All these things can be done in one stride – finished – ready to run with, changed for the better. On the other hand, people can’t be changed in a stride. Our thoughts, motives, understanding, and even our own movement takes time, energy, sometimes pain & with small steps towards healing. To me this seems impractical, frustrating & time consuming, but people are complicated and need to hash out their moves.

This week at Penn State, we had a “God…why?” event where we talked about answers God might give to important life questions such as “What is my purpose?”, “What does God think about sex”, “How do I communicate with God/how does He communicate with me?”. When we finished the discussion, we had everyone to fill out a feedback form. Many students indicated on the form that they would like to pursue a closer relationship with God, and are interested in joining a study to know more about him through the person of Jesus.

It reminded me of how our spiritual journey – being transformed by God – is so much different than other things we can change about ourselves. If I want to become a basketball player, I can just sign up and join a team – BAM – I’m a basketball player. If I want to become an artist – I join an art class and start practicing my artform – BAM – I’m an artist.

If I want to pursue a relationship with God, I can go to Bible study, I can go to church, but it’s more than that. Something about my heart, the way I live, my passions, my desires – all change, they become transformed. I can’t tell if you’ve been transformed. I can’t change you. I can only encourage you, invite you, challenge you – but I can’t make you a person who can communicate with God, know his desires, or understand his heart. It’s something you need to throw on yourself. As much as spirituality is communal, it has to be individualized or it doesn’t really exist. It starts inside of us and I can’t light your fire.

Woes of City #2

My car got broken into again. I wasn’t going to post about this at first, but there are some striking similiarities between the two incidents…some of it seems kinda creepy, some it makes more sense.

Both times:
1. I was sick for two days and missed work.
2. I parked in almost the same parking spot.
3. I walked out to my car with dirty laundry in hand.
4. I did not have to go to work until later that day when I walked out to my car.
5. I walked out to my car with Megan.
6. It was a beautiful day when I discover my car, but it precipitated within 24 hours (while I  have no window).
6. The first time I went home to exchange my car after it  happened, my little sister tried to sell me her volleyball teams sweat pants, the second time, I went home my sister showed me her new team sweat pants that she happened to be wearing, and asked me if I wanted to buy a pair again.

I get more frustrated that my car is not safe regardless of what’s in it…maybe they will start breaking the window for the fun of it.

This time they stole my stereo. My iPod was in my center console and when they hopped in to rip out my stero, they threw back the center console and my iPod flew in the back seat, so they missed it, suckers.   I do plan on changing where I park for now,  but there is nothing left for them to take. I will start carrying my iPod around so they can’t take it if they do break in again.

I will say, it’s almost refreshing having these material possessions ripped from me.  As much as I liked them, they weren’t really necessary. I will do just fine with my factorytape deck…and just as well with Mapquest…ok that’s a lie – Mapquest sucks..

The woes of the city

Today I walked out to my car and found my window busted in, with glass shattered across my two front seats. My glove compartment was wide open, and surprise, my GPS was gone.

I admit that I’m a person that trusts people a lot and can sometimes be unaware of lurking danger. Until it happens to me, I can be pretty oblivious. Part of that is because it’s hard for to understand why people do awful things until I see it done…so I try to pretend it doesn’t really happen (lots of these things are way more awful then my car or GPS).

Tonight I got back from my parents house and I was walking to my apartment and I just felt really unsafe all of a sudden. Every other night, I would just walk back to my car thinking that it was a beautiful night and singing the last song played on my stereo. Tonight, I was convinced that someone was going to jump me, and I started thinking about what I was carrying and how much it would suck to replace it when I got robbed.

I can understand where stereotypes start about the city. It starts with a break in.

Someone has to make it seem cool

I’m finishing up this book right now called “Here’s to Hindsight” by Tara Leigh Cobble. She’s actually an amazing artist who performed at Gravity and has a couple books. It’s basically a spiritual memoir. In the chapter called “Leaking Light” Tara talks about the concept of being cool and being Christian, something I struggled with in high & middle school.

I always tried to make myself seem cool. I dabbled with swearing and talking outside of my faith because I thought I was doing Jesus a favor. I mean, somebody’s got to make Christianity look cool enough to join. Cobble talks about the book of Mark where Jesus meets the rich, young ruler. Jesus is infrequently seen in the Bible communicating with really powerful, important people. Here, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asked him what he’s got to do to follow him.

What’s interesting about this encounter is that Jesus doesn’t try to recruit the popular, rich kid by telling him that joining him will make his life way better and increase his wealth. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat the message. He tells him what he has to do. He has to sell his stuff, give away his money, reverse his identity, and follow Jesus. He presents the gospel as is, not the everyone-friendly Joel Olsteen message which tells you that your life will get better, you will make more money and you will be really happy (while this may happen as a result of a relationship with Jesus, that’s not all there is to it)

We can do a lot of things to try to attract people to Jesus and the gospel. We can have flashy powerpoint presentations, free pizza or coffee, or have really cool, attractive people attend our church. The truth is, when we do things like that purposely to attract people, we’re saying that Jesus isn’t enough.
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John 12:32 (Jesus speaking) “If I am lifted up from the Earth, I will draw all men to myself”