my 2AM bedtime

yar.

I can't wait to go home...2 more days. then 3 full days of sleeping in and eating good food and hanging out w/ the fambam.

then back to the grind.

Class is great. Work is awesome. I'm just really tired....

yar.

breathe

To use an analogy from exercising...: I've been doing this workout called !Insanity, and in the videos, the instructor is always telling us to remember to breathe. We're always taking deep breaths in and deep breaths out during the stretching time as our bodies go through recovery periods. Sometimes throughout the workout though, I'll get so caught up keeping up with the exercises that I forget to breathe, and my body suddenly gets really tired. But, when he reminds us to breathe and I take a moment to finally let out all that stale air and replenish my cells with fresh air, my body gets a boost of energy again. It tastes oh so sweet when that crisp, clean oxygen fills my depleted lungs.

It's like that with life. Over the past.... (I can't even place a date), I've been feeling really busy. I've really come to notice the detrimental effects it has been having on my life these past few weeks when things got busier with the start of work and people graduating and whatnot. My schedule always manages to get filled with something, and I come home late, exhausted, with no time to process anything. It's go go go, do do do, cook cook cook, allllll day long. The conversation I had with a friend last week really set something off in my brain, and I realized more and more that I really lost sight of who I am. I got so caught up doing that I forgot to let out all that stale air and replenish it with some fresh air.

Today, I think I was very close to a mental overload-induced-breakdown. Yesterday, after a week of being sick, a day of stressing over my pastillage cake stand project, hanging out with my relatives who are visiting, celebrating two different birthdays, then watching a movie with my old&current roommates, I fell asleep around 1:30 thinking about the upcoming 7 days and all of its busyness. On my way to meet my cousin&aunt&uncle this morning, I realized that I had a lot to do today, and I was wondering how I could possibly juggle everything that I personally had to take care of along with hanging out w/ them all day. After a loooong day of walking around the city, I told my relatives I couldn't eat dinner with them, and scooted home around 5 to collapse on my bed. It was a weird sensation when I woke up from my nap -- it felt like my brain had died and turned into mush, along with my muscles. Pretty scary....I'm still the process of letting out all that stale air and replenishing it with fresh air. It might take a few days to recover...

Anyway, moral to my story: Breathe. Slow down. I think I have this bad, bad, notion that the value of my life is directly correlated to how much I accomplish every day. But, today, God reminded me that taking the sabbath is a command He gives us-- and for good reason! It's for our own good. The sabbath was created for man, for us to be able to enjoy God. (Mark 2; Psalm 23) It's all interconnected -- the more I am in tune with God, the more I am in tune with myself. Maybe once I realign the rhythm of my life to take my sabbath-time seriously, I can get back on the track to rediscovering myself, along with getting my body&mind back up to 100% health.

(PS - There are a lot of links in this post -- a sermon by Matt Chandler about taking the sabbath, an article that was shared on greader, bible passages.... take a look and a listen! :] )

pleasant surprise deja vu

As you may (or may not) recall from my post while I was in Taiwan, I had absolutely no expectation of being paid for my work there, especially since the boss was doing me a favor in letting me even come. But one day, a month into the job, the HR lady told me in a very "duh" tone, "of COURSE you're getting paid! Don't be silly." It wasn't much -- a measly $2.50 USD / hour, at best, but it was still God's grace, in paper form ;)

Yesterday, while at work, the HR guy happens to walk by the pastry dept., not even intending to talk to any of us, but he accidentally mistakes me as someone else, and upon realizing that I'm not that person, asks "who is that?"

My sous-chef responds, "Oh, that's Nancy. She's our new extern."

"What?! How long has she been here?"

"Oh, about three weeks?"

"How did I not know about this? She was supposed to have filled out paperwork three weeks ago then. Nancy, can I talk to you?"

HR guy: "I'm sorry that you have to be caught up in this, but I just want to make sure we do things the right way. [blah blah blah],... and we have to make sure we pay you, even if it is minimum wage"

Me, thinking: "whaaaaaaaaa???? interns get paid?!?!?! COOL!"

I met with him today to complete the paperwork, and turns out I'm going to get paid for the 3 weeks of work that I already completed! He was right though -- it is just minimum wage, but still, considering I totally wasn't expecting to get paid (and I KNOW that my classmates in other internships don't get paid), I'm so thankful for God's grace, in paper form yet again. :)

becoming robotic?

Hm. So I had a verryy interesting conversation with a friend tonight about life, but more specifically, church, and it made me think. a lot. about a lot of things...(which I shall articulate in blog-form at a later time, hopefully)

I'm still processing through all that was said, but one thing that I think hit me was that I definitely don't think as much I used to. I've developed this habit of just accepting things as they are and not challenging myself to look beyond the surface and critically ask if everything is actually okay for everyone involved. Life got routine, I got comfortable, and maybe that's when I stopped caring as much and just went with the flow. But sadly, I feel like a part of me, me, died, and I turned into this robotic being that has default feelings and responses to situations...

Where did Nancy go?! I must figure out how I can see the world outside the lines I've colored in before I lose all sense of humanness.

tears of the saints

watch it. now.

Tears of the Saints from HistoryMaker on Vimeo.