A Few Brilliant Ideas...: Blog Challenge

Showing posts with label Blog Challenge. Show all posts

When I started this blog challenge I had high hopes for writing lots of creative fiction. I really was looking forward into pouring myself into my writing, but as time went on, it never really happened. I was so excited to do that when I started. So what happened?

It's not like I don't want to do it. I do, just as much as I did then. Life just gets in the way. In the beginning I was going strong, but I started running out of stamina. Literally. I was up past midnight every night of that first week, writing, which was great in terms of creation, but took a toll on me during the day at work. I didn't want that to happen, so I started trying to write faster, earlier. This is great in theory, but it turned out that I ended up writing things that are a lot less complete. I wanted to create fiction, but my fiction takes time to cultivate and explore. This is something I'm not able to do in a blog format, sadly. I could write the entire story and post bit by bit, but at that point, you might as well post the entire thing.

So it is with a heavy heart I resign my desire to write piece-by-piece fiction via my blog. This is by no means a resignation of writing fiction. I will write fiction, but it has to be long term with a project style to it. I need to see the big picture before I post a piece. I can work on setting "scenes," emotions, settings, and feelings with my blog. This is something I've seen my friend Dara Hayes do over at Ink and Imagination, and something I feel might be beneficial to practice. If you haven't read her blog yet, do that. It'll inspire and captivate you.

Something you guys may or may not know is that I really want to write a fantasy novel. I've wanted to for years. I want to do this, but I always forget about it, or grow too discontent with what I've already written. I need you guys to hold me accountable to this vision and desire though. I'm not strong or focused enough to make it happen by myself. I need you all to come with me.

My fiction isn't dead, it's merely waiting for the right moment to awake,

I forgot to add Will to the list, that has been updated. You can find his blog at: http://contemplativewhimsy.blogspot.com/. Due to my failure to remember to list his name, I gave him the very special title of Patrick Star, who is very near and dear to my heart. Also, I accept Simeon's Subchallenge. It is was a hard day one, we lost quite a few: Tirzah, Nathan, Aaron, Na'chelle, Nick. That brings our number down from 18 to 13. However, in Nick and Nathan's defense, they did tell me they planned on posting semi-regularly these next couple weeks. Allen Lai has a questionable post dated February 2nd, but I'll let it slide, because it was there when I checked at 12:30 and it's the first day. The rest of you however... Bom voyage.

I talk to people a lot. You probably do too. This a good thing.

I can often predict what my friend and family members will say because I've spent a lot of time talking to them. I've also spent a lot of timing listening. That's how friendships are built, this communication back and forth, verbal or otherwise. People could rock climb every day, side by side, but if they never talk, they don't know each other. They're not friends.

Friends talk. Friends listen. Friends communicate.

I have a friend named Valerie Niemann who I used to go running with my freshman year of college. We talked a lot about all kinds of things and after a while she said to me, 'Stevie you're not listening to me.' At the time it was meant more jokingly, but as the joke was repeated, I became aware of how serious this really was. My statement always started, "No, I'm listening, but what the point I'm trying to make is..." Too many but's. I don't always listen. Worse, I don't always hear, or take the time to understand what people are trying to tell me. And listening is so fundamental to a good friendship. I'm super thankful for that lesson that Val taught me. So if you're reading this, thanks Val. God used you to show me how little I really did listen.

There's a repeated statement by Jesus in the book of Mark, "He who has ears let him hear." Which means some of have ears, but we're not hearing.

As I've learned how important listening is, and how vital it is to my friendships, God has taught me some of the differences between a true friendship.

Listening is certainly part of it, but there's a particular type of listening that I want to examine that defines a deeper level of friendship.

Each person is divided into two segments: the person they are and the person they want to become.

Simply put, a friend is a person who knows who you want to be, not just who you are.

It's hard for me to demonstrate what this looks like without a specific example, but the details of describing who someone I know wants to be is a very personal thing. I wouldn't feel right in explaining this without specific permission, so I'll use a dummy-case to prove my point.

I have a friend named Jake. Jake loves to play the piano, he works for Irregular Mechanics, he spends a lot of time with his girlfriend Jessie, he is emotionally unstable, and he really likes pretzels.

That's great, I know who Jake is. This might let me buy things for Jake when he's feeling down. It helps me talk to Jake because I know where he works, and so I can start conversation about his work. I even know that Jake may flip out on me because he's emotionally unstable, so I'm totally prepared for that moment.

Yet, is knowing who Jake is enough to help me care for Jake the way a real friend would?

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Knowing that Jake dreams of being a professional writer, that he wants to be the type of guy that his girlfriend can lean on for support, knowing that Jake wants to see himself grow up and stand for what he thinks is right. Without these, instead of helping Jake be who he wants to be, at best I'm doing damage control. At worst, I could actually be encouraging him away from his dreams, crushing his hopes.

We've all had that person, who doesn't really know how important something is to us, and yet tells us that we're not very good at something. It hurts, and you begin to wonder whether that person is truly your friend. Sometimes they're loving you by telling you the truth, but in many cases they say what they say out of ignorance. There are cases where the most loving thing you can do for a person is to speak unwanted to truth in their lives. But in order to do it with wisdom, you have to know who that person wants to be. Sometimes people want to be things they shouldn't, but as a true friend it becomes your responsibility to help them avoid those things, rather than get them.

I talk a lot, and I've been learning how to listen. I want to know who you want to be, friends. I want to tell you who I want to be. Together, maybe we can help each other become those people, or stop each other from becoming the people we ought not be.

Christian, together, maybe we can become a little bit more like Christ, because that's ultimately who we want to be like, but we're complex creatures with many troubles and needs, and it's beautiful.

Let's be friends, shall we?

You walk up the alleyway to the door. You don't remember what you're doing here.

You look down and find yourself in a blue outfit. On your shirt is a pin.

The pin reads:

Blog Challenge

Participant #

You look up, and see the metal handle, covered in rust. Reaching for it, you pull and the door screeches open. Behind the door you see a man with dark glasses in a black suit standing in a dimly lit hallway. You try to ask questions, but your hear no words leave your mouth. The man hands you a paper and gestures down the hallway. You again try to ask a question, but with no success. You turn your attention to the paper. It reads:

Welcome to the Blog Challenge of February, 2015. This is most likely your first experience with the Blog Challenge. This is okay. All things begin with a first attempt. It's important that you know that what you gain from this experiment is entirely up to you. You will not remember this, but you volunteered to participate in this experiment. You are not being forced to do this against your will, remember that. The mission as prescribed, is to write a post on a blog every single day for an entire month.

You look up to ask the man a question but, to your astonishment, he is gone. You did not hear him leave. You glance around, then turn your attention back to the paper.

What you choose to put on this blog is your own decision. The purpose of this experiment is to test if the current generation is capable of creating content, or merely capable of consuming it. This having been said, the simple reposting of things you find on the internet is highly discouraged. We are not legally allowed to say that there will be consequences for your actions. If you do choose to do this, we recommend doing it in a way that is in and of itself, creative. Your content creation is not limited to writing, but can also be in other forms of media. We wish you the best of luck, and hope to see you make it to the other side.

On the bottom was signed the initials A.K. You're not sure what this means, perhaps with a bit more thought, it will become clear to you. Folding the paper, you place it in your pocket and walk down the hallway. At the end of the hallway is a door. You open the door and inside it is completely dark. You hesitate, then step inside. The door shuts behind you. The lights flicker and come on. You see that the room is simply decorated, with a desk, a chair and a couch with a pillow and a blanket. The door behind you appears to have a metal steering wheel on it that might unlock it, but there is no handle visible. You wrench at the wheel, but it won't budge. You are stuck. Surveying the room, you notice an ample supply of canned food and water bottles. Looking at the supplies, you believe it may be enough to survive a month. On the desk there is a laptop. Walking over, you see that a page is pulled up. You see the browser url is: afewbrilliantideas.blogspot.com/p/blog-challenge.html.

Scanning down it, you see the following list of participants:

(Stevie) Ash Ketchum @

http://afewbrilliantideas.blogspot.com/
http://platonicinterlude.blogspot.com/

http://wemusttellthem.blogspot.com/

(Davina) Dot @

http://showers-of-rain.blogspot.com/

http://poeticly3.blogspot.com/

(Na'chelle) Rita @

freedomtojourney.wordpress.com

(Ben) Spongebob @

http://unconventionalspeculations.blogspot.com/

(Simeon) Pinky @

http://fountainoverflow.blogspot.com/

(Erica) Carmen Sandiego @

http://stuckinmyhead2000.blogspot.com/

(Haleigh) Dee Dee @

http://sites.psu.edu/haleighswansen/

(Allen) Dexter @

https://allenplai.wordpress.com/

(Joanne) Misty @

http://mymomshere.blogspot.com/

(Jon) The Brain @

http://storiesandshortworks.blogspot.com/

(Moriah) Angelica Pickels @

http://thelordismyteacher.blogspot.com/

(Franki) Bubbles @

http://dogdaysareovermeow.blogspot.com/

(Tirzah) Sandy @

http://wwwgoldfishbowl.blogspot.com/

(Dani) Buttercup @

http://hispeculiartreasures.blogspot.com/

(Aaron) James @

http://tvandsuch.blogspot.com/

(Nathan) Nigel Thornberry @

http://nathanklee.wordpress.com/

(Nick) Johnny Bravo @

http://thissentencecontainswords.blogspot.com/

(Will) Patrick Star @

http://contemplativewhimsy.blogspot.com/

Some of them appear familiar to you, like you should know them, but your head still hurts. Others you've never seen before. You do recognize their nicknames though, they appear to be nineties cartoon characters. You look down at the bottom left of your screen. It's February first. You're not sure what will happen to you if you don't write a post. You urge your fingers to type, but with no success. The page remains blank except the words "best of luck." Sighing, you decide you'd best take a nap and lay on the couch. The world fades black.

Pianowizzy has officially lost the competition as I was actually able to get in contact with her. She was sick.

Which I don't see as a valid excuse. Type a word. Post. Sorry Meglo. Have fun in the blog-afterlife.

Now to the real post...

Hey ladies and gents! How was your Christmas? Mine was great, I got shot in the eye.

Yeah. I got shot in the eye with a nerf gun. Every year my family does a white elephant, and one of the gifts I contributed was a nerf gun. My nephew ended up getting it. Was it my nephew that shot me? Of course not! My older brother decided to go all Rambo on me. The eye shot was pretty epic.

I saw the dark streak come toward my eye. It went all slow-mo for both him and me. It was a lot like this.

Unfortunately, my eye doesn't bounce bullets like Superman. Superman is a jerk. Showoff. It's actually incredible that my brother even managed to shoot me in the eye. Lucky bullet-slinger. Revenge will come someday Leo, watch your back. O_O
Haha.
N-E-Ways.

Recently we've been having our bathroom demolished and consequently reconstructed with a hot tub and awesome stuff like that. We have a couple of guys doin' the job for us. They're both pretty cool dudes. Anyways, I imagined that they're nice because we chose them. Obviously they're gonna be amazing. However, I was quickly shown my falsehood. We went down to our local home depot, for like the 4th time that week to get supplies for the contractor peeps. We picked up a cart in the parking lot with a gimpy wheel and made our way in casually to the bang and clatter of the faulty cart. Smooth.

We walked over to get ourselves some "Hardybacker" (drywall stuffs) and there were two men just about to grab some of their own. So, prepared to wait patiently, we settled down to wait our turn. However, instead of taking it to their cart, they took it to ours. They then proceeded to ask us how many we needed and carried them all and set them on the truck-cart-randomthingwithwheels. We thanked them, and I must say, this made my perspective of contractors only rise from my previous positive attitude toward them. I was already like, "omGeee(osh), they are soo coolio."

We then bought our boards and walked out, again thanking them, when my dad realized that he had forgotten to get something and ran back into the Home Dee-pot. I nonchalantly pushed my very loud cart over towards the car and when I reached it, prepared to wait. I got bored after about 10 seconds, looked at the boards, the car, and the boards again. You know that's right.

"Challenge accepted."

I then popped the hatch and began to slide the board off the cart into the car, probably not the smartest idea because they were really heavy, in retrospect. At the time it seemed like a phenomenal idea. "Then my dad will think I'm a real man!" Yeah. Right. Anyway, I managed one in and was working on my second after removing the shopping cart so a car could get by when one of the guys who was just about to get into his car paused. He could have been watching me for quite a bit, it was probably amusing for him. The point being that he began to walk over: "Hey, you need some help with that?"
"Nah!" I grunted from under the board. "My dad's coming." Right on time, I looked over and saw my dad walking in the distance across the endless parking lot. "There he is," I said pointing.
The man got back into his car and drove away like he didn't have a care in the world while I struggled with the board. But it was okay. My heart was really happy. My thoughts were pretty much: I LOVE CONTRACTORS. Sheesh, I couldn't get this kind of service from people who worked at other places. Cough, Microsoft, cough. So yeah, basically I've decided that contractors are amazing and they should all be commended for extended levels of awesomeness, kindness, and relative swagger.