For You Guys.

My friends aren't confined to a zip code.

It's a strange thought. I have friends that spread all across the world. From Germany, to Italy, to Vermont, to California, to Texas, to Virginia, to right here in Mississippi.

It's a blessing and a curse.

I've fallen in love with their personalities. "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one." ― C.S. Lewis. When you don't see them for days on end, that's all you've got to go on.

I love interacting with these brilliant people. I got in trouble once when I was in 8th grade, because I skyped my friends too much.

They make school, in a way, worth it. Obviously you don't go to school to make friends, but they make it fun. Picture going to school without having friends there. Pretty boring hypothetical. It's multiplied when all you're doing is staring at a screen all day. I'll quote Lewis again, " Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

But the fact remains.

I interact with my friends through a computer.

And that sucks.

I've spent less than twenty days with all of them. Some of them I haven't even spent an hour with.

It's no surprise that those five to six days I get to see them are the highlight of my year. I treasure every moment I get with them. When I look back to that week, it seemed to last forever, and if I had the choice, I'd repeat that week over and over again. It's always the highlight of my year.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss them. 

We, the youth group, joke around about my homeschool-ness all the time. I really enjoy the stereotype jokes actually, they're usually pretty hilarious. But lately one joke in particular has gotten under my skin a little.

I'll give you an example.

A bunch of us guys were hanging out one evening, and one of these guys had gone on a date with a girl, pretty recently. So naturally, being guys, we like to mess with each other. I asked him, "So did you ask her in person or over text?"

"In person." He responded.

/Thumbs up and wink of approval/

But then one of the others chimed in.

"Well at least he doesn't have to go on dates over Skype."

 ...

Ouch. 

No harm done, honestly. It's a joke, pretty witty and funny actually. Yet, it kinda hit a nerve. Just touching on the fact that I don't get to see my friends and classmates but once a year.

 (Just to be clear here, I have NOT gone on dates over skype.)

I guess this turned into a rant, which is alright. But even though sometimes it is hard, and depressing, I'm incredibly thankful for the friendships that I've been able to have. The way that I've made those friendships make that week even better.

"Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone." 
- Vincent van Gogh - 

Stuff on Nerds

I am a nerd.

Go ahead, let out your gasps of surprise.

I'll wait.

I get called a nerd all the time, usually in a joking way. It's pretty funny most of the time, but sometimes it hits a nerve. And that got me thinking, is being called a nerd a bad thing? Is it a good thing? Is it both?

What exactly /is/ a nerd?

Nerds are passionate.

I love film. I love watching it, talking about it, dissecting it, it's all a blast. It's something I'm extremely passionate about. I've told my friends before, "Just stop me whenever, because I could go on for hours."  Talking about how film is our dream share technology, or the imagery of the last battle scene of Gladiator, or the process that went into Indiana Jones' costume, is all something I greatly enjoy. I'm getting jitters just writing about it.

Being passionate isn't a bad thing, not even close. Plenty of people are passionate, but that doesn't necessarily make them nerds.

Would I call one of the many teenage boys in the south who are *extremely* passionate about their trucks nerds?

Uhhh. No.

Nerds take passion a step further.

Nerds are obsessed.

I finished all six seasons, all 118 episodes, of Lost in two months. I couldn't stop, I was completely obsessed. Still am, in fact. It sucked up all my free time. I ate, breathed, and lived Lost.

Part of being obsessed is wanting to share that obsession with others. I can't even imagine how annoyed my friends were with my Lost obsession during those two months. I can just imagine, "Oh boy, here he goes AGAIN."

But part of being obsessed with something, is having this strong desire to share it. We want everyone to be obsessed with us! We think others are missing out, and that by telling them about this thing we're obsessed over, we're doing them a service.

(Just as a side note, I have successfully gotten four people to start watching Lost, and I am not ashamed.)

But yet again, nerds take being obsessed a step further.

Nerds are intelligent.

Nerds are obsessed to the point of wanting to know everything. When Marvel announced they were doing a Guardians of the Galaxy movie at Comic-Con last year, I spent the next three hours Googleing everything I could about the Guardians. Just so as soon as someone asks "Who or what are the Guardians of the Galaxy," I had an answer for them.

Why? Because I wanted them to go see the movie.

Why? Because I'm obsessed.

Why? Because I'm passionate.

It's a chain, it's all connected.

So all this a bad thing?

John Green, the author of the recent best-selling novel, The Fault in our Stars, said this, "Why is being a nerd bad? Saying I notice you’re a nerd is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Linsey Lohan. Why is that?”

No, being a nerd isn't a bad thing at all! In fact, I, personally, take it as a compliment.

Bill Gates takes it one step further, "Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one."

The problem starts when the nerds take it to the extreme.

Nerds are arrogant.

"I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart. I've gone from being bullied by jocks as a kid to being bullied by nerds as an adult." - Chris Hardwick. 

I think Chris hits the nail on the head. I've noticed this in myself, when someone gets some piece of information wrong, I'm very quick to correct them. Especially when it's something I'm passionate about. 

That's when being called a nerd is an insult.

So I'll end my stuff on nerds with a quote from The Doctor. (Aka Matt Smith) 

“I think, that if the world were a bit more like Comic-Con, it would be a better place.”

Stuff on Hard Work

Introductions are hard.

And speaking of hard things, let's talk about hard work.

/I hope you see what I did there/

I was thinking about this today after being asked to do some hard work of my own. Having a job as a farm hard, hard work is something I'm pretty used to, but today was different.

Today was the always coveted, "Day off." Days off are a bright light in the midst of the dark and dreary routine of the normal work week.

So on this coveted day off, i was asked to do some hard work. While I do hard work on the farm, there is still work to do at the house. Now this work that I was asked to do, i just simply didn't want to do. At. All.

So what's the problem here?

I like the way Mike Rowe puts it, "We've declared war on hard work, as a society. All of us. It's a civil war, a cold war really. We didn't set out to do it, and we didn't twist our mustache in some Machiavellian way, but we've done it. We've waged this war on a couple fronts. Certainly in Hollywood, the way we portray working people on TV is laughable. We turn them into hero's or we turn them into punchlines. We've waged this war on Madison Avenue. I mean so many of the commercials that come out there in the way of a message. What's really being said? 'Your life would be better if you could work a little less.' 'If you didn't have to work so hard.' 'If you got home a little earlier.' It's all in there, over and over again and again."

I think we as a society, myself included, have forgotten that we were put on this earth to work. Genesis 1:28, "And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'”

Not just work, but hard work. Having dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth, is a pretty tough job to handle.

But back to the question, what's the problem here? The problem is motivation.

To be completely honest, I wouldn't be out there if it wasn't the other bright light of the week, my paycheck. Most of my job is incredibly boring stuff. I hope and pray that I never have to hold another paint roller in my life. But with the incredibly boring stuff, there is also that ten percent of fun.

Adam Savage, one of the hosts of the popular TV show Mythbusters, puts it like this, "When you're doing this job and ninety percent of it is this crushingly boring stuff, how do you get to that ten percent that's really fun? You get to do it by earning the right to do it, by doing the crushingly boring stuff well."

How do you do the crushingly boring stuff well? Good motivation. The motivation driving you do to the crushingly boring stuff, shouldn't be for the money, it should be doing it for God's glory. Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."

So I'll end my stuff on hard work with a challenge.

How about we get back to work, for the right reasons?