THE INNER WORKINGS...

my overactive thoughts

Well, I've been at it again. This happens every time that I read from a good writer. Or simply a writer with style. I owe this overload of inspiration to Donald Miller and his book "Through Painted Deserts". I'm not trying to plug a book, I'm just explaining what started it all.

So between the time that Euge woke me up with a phone call (which was, undoubtedly, the best way I could have been woken up this morning) and now... sitting outside (because I needed a change of venue and because I did not anticipate how difficult it would be to see the computer screen in sunlight), showered, groomed, and eating my breakfast of cheez-its and apple juice... I have written at least a dozen essays in my head. Well, it's really unfair to say "written". I've started them.

This honestly happens to me more than one would think. For most of my adult life (which spans only six years by legal terms), I thought that this practice was completely normal. It's not that I assumed that everyone, when inspired, wrote opinion pieces for the LA Times in their heads... I suppose I just didn't really think about it. I live in my reality and in it, I create the standard of "normal". But not too long ago, I let the cat slip out of the bag. Admitting to I-don't-remember-who about my subtle and imperceptibly conscious practice of writing tag lines, pieces of op-ed articles, or entire essays in my head garnered a very different response than what I had imagined. The long and the short of it is that I-don't-remember-who opened my eyes to the fact that I was unique in this area.

So in the nearly two hours that I've been awake, I've conjured up so many blog topics that it's impossible to choose one to develop. And so, as a cop-out, I'm going to list them. Maybe this list will serve as a reminder to me on those inspirationless days and will get those old proverbial wheels spinning. Or maybe it will just sit here... untouched. In any case, I've got to prove that there's some fruit in mind-writing... my two hours of quiet contemplation must be accounted for. Perhaps (quizas) if I haven't run out of steam from this blog, I'll actually tackle one of the topics. But don't get your hopes up, oh non-existent reader, because I'll probably be steam-free after these ramblings.

So here is the list of blog (or essay or column) topics that were mulling this morning, in the order that they rise to the surface of my sea of thoughts (poetic, isn't it?):

- Predicting how each member of my STINT team along with our Argentine friends would behave at an amusement park if we all went as a big group.

- Observing how Iri rides roller coasters and Mel understands them. And admitting that I have a lot to learn from them both.

- Adding an addendum to my last blog (the one about being fully alive). I wrote it because I needed to write something, and John Ortberg's comment about wanting to be fully alive kept swimming around in my head.

- Postulating that being fully alive is not like flying, rather it's like dismounting from a horse of false perceptions and phoniness and having your feet firmly planted in reality, casting a hopeful gaze to the sky.

- Admitting that you and I have no right to say what it means to be fully alive (therefore negating the last blog topic), because we might get it tragically wrong. Just as a jet might say that being fully alive is speeding down the runway when we all know a jet was created to soar. The only way we can know what it is to be fully alive is to ask our Creator.

- Fantasizing about sitting in the press room aboard Air Force One, writing the lead political story for the New York Times. Then analyzing the fantasy.

- Sharing my "The Gambia" test. (I have a friend that's there trying to understand Western Africa with the Peace Corps.) It's my version of my old discipler's 1,000 year test. She would ask, "In a thousand years, is this - what I'm doing - going to matter?" I ask, "Does this - what I'm doing - matter to someone in a village of the Gambia?" In the blog, I would write about how this is an unfair question (because God calls us to all sorts of things... more than just missions and pharmaceutical work... which, in my poorly-informed book, are the only things that truly matter in impoverished Africa). Then I would talk about how spiritually wise people call this sort of test "eternal perspective".

- Bumbling through a self-exploration, deciding definitively whether or not I know myself.

- Rambling about how if anyone reads this blog truly does matter to me, although I want to act like it doesn't. But people write to be read. Right?

- Observing the nuances of the culture of the US... from an outsiders'/insiders' perspective. Griping about not wanting to play the same game.

I'm sure there were more topics. Maybe I'll share them as they come. But for now, the Southern-California sun is getting too warm for my hard-to-see screen and I. Plus, my Dad invited me to an early lunch. And that's a pretty darn good offer. So I'm off.

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posted by Courtney @ 2:28 PM