I'm an American!

You Are 58% American

Most times you are proud to be an American. Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

I'm a puppy.

You Are a German Shepherd Puppy

Intelligent, quick witted, and a bit aggressive.You've got the jaw power to take a bite out of anyone you choose.

What Breed of Puppy Are You?

Quotes

I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream. -John Steinbeck

I have died so little today, friend, forgive me. ~Thomas Lux

Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of all eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you. ~Jacques Prévert

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum

Here's the deal

I need to vent. Are you ready? Here's it goes.

I look at life in the long term, in the big picture, and I try to see what's important. what's lasting. what really is going to matter in ten or fifty or a hundred years. is working at sandia labs and making microchips and coming to work every day to sit at a desk and get wafers through the fab in one piece really gonna matter? no. do i really care about this work? no. is having pretty things and finding a house to decorate and live in really going to matter? no. is bickering about who's better at this and why does she act that way and no i don't want to hangout with that person really going to matter? no.

i've been getting this restless feeling. this feeling of wanting to pop out of my skin because there's so much i want to do, so much i want to see, so many places i could go, so much out there. life is too short and there's more important things to be doing and thinking about.

and yet it's those silly things i listed above that confine me. it's the responsibility and the routine of life, the running errands and the paying bills, the work and the bickering. it's the very things i don't think are important that enslave me.

i look around at the people around me (and i don't mean any of this in a condescending or judgemental way) who don't quite get that there's more than this. there's more than paying bills and going to the gym and fixing up a house and going to work every day. there's more than that. i think our world view is so tiny that that's all we see and that's all we think is available. instead of bettering ourselves with moving beyond that, we better ourselves within that with a better house and a better body. instead of realizing that what's bigger and better is actually outside of that box. people get comfortable in that box because we forget that there's something outside of it.

God has been doing a pretty good job lately of opening my huge eyes to what's really out there. there's people on the other side of the world who are living in a completely different culture and a different town with different clothes on that are struggling the same way we are, who are tempted by the same things, who pray to the same God and who stand up to worship him. They worship in different ways and they pray in different ways, but it's the same God and the same Spirit and the same life we are all trying to live. There's work to be done, that's actually commanded us, that is where my heart is, that needs to be done. i'd rather get up every day and go to work doing that work than anything else in the world.

i guess my point is that we shouldn't get comfortable here on earth. thinking that the things of this world (yes, including homes and families and jobs and food) aren't what we live for. they shouldn't be what defines us. there's more. there's heavens more. the Bible says to look to the sky, focus on eternal things. eternal things are the things that are going to matter in ten or fifty or a thousand years.

and so i sit here at work thinking that any day now i'll just pack up and do something about it.