At the library on Daytona 500 afternoon. No church today. That’s kinda too bad but at the same time I was not quite awake this morning. I mean I could’ve but I set my alarms to be awake and it just failed miserably. At times in life I have been a morning person but that ain’t the case now. Perhaps next week I will go with the nice neighbor couple who keeps offering. They know I am a saved Christian but they keep asking from time to time. On Thanksgiving I went with them to their church for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. It was held in the church’s gymnasium. (I think they’re a school, too.) Apparently, the church itself seats around 800? Something like that. The people that day seemed nice but a church that big is way too big for me. I just don’t want to belong to a church where it’s difficult to get to know everyone, not that I’d belong to this church that I’d’ve gone to this morning and might next Sunday . . . I guess my prevailing feeling is I’d be uncomfortable in a church that big even if for one day. Part (most) of this has to do with the first church I went to back during senior year of high school. I only went so that I could be near Juliet who went there. My friend’s mom took me since I was living at their house. Actually, the living took place two summers after high school (I think) but I went to church sometimes before that, all just to possibly see Juliet, a girl I was so in love with. That church was held in a chapel built onto the back of a house where the pastor and his family lived. The total church body any given Sunday: around 20-25. That was awesome. So it’s from that experience that I don’t want to regularly go to a large church. However, maybe for one Sunday it won’t be that bad. I guess being homeless and/or on a long distance hiking trail, my church choices would be mucho limited so maybe it’s something to get used to. It’s probably very difficult to find such small churches. I’m not talkin’ 20-25 people again like once upon a time, but less than 100, thank you. A few churches I have been to in the past decade have been much larger than 100 and I did not love it. In this life I would ideally love to love church and love going to church. I’m not sure how easy that will be . . . or if I will live to be able to.
This bizarre loco life has got me all depressed again. I’m not a sad person by nature. Depression is not something I suffer from. But circumstances bring me down and right now I am down. A big NASCAR fan I am not but I’d rather be at home this afternoon, sitting at the small living room desk, spending time on the internet and with the Daytona 500 on TV. I don’t have a favorite driver, I don’t care who wins, but sometimes I like having a race on. I am a man, after all. I’d be pulling for Danica Patrick, no doubt, or maybe Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (I thought I didn’t have a favorite driver! Maybe I do but following things from race to race is not me.) But sitting at home using the internet with the TV is on is not an option for me in life right now. I don’t know how I got to this point without cable television or internet access (or electricity.) It isn’t the worst thing in the world but it helps bring me down. I do listen to radio on my mp3 player so I have that. For the longest time -- the first few months of this life-turned-upside-down -- I didn’t listen to the radio at all until I remembered I could by using my small mp3 player’s (tiny) speaker. Previously I listened to a sermon or two a day using ear buds. But now, in addition to needing to charge my phone up somehow every day, I need to charge my mp3 player, too. Four or five hours of radio and a sermon or two really runs the battery down. But at least I have radio. Sermons and gaining wisdom in the Word of God should be all I need . . . but I tell you that radio sure helps break up the quiet monotony of the currently horribly dull life when I am at home. Is TV something I need? No. In fact, I kinda like not having it . . . so long as I have the internet. Without TV, I miss the news and I miss debate on issues and knowing what’s happening in U.S. politics and in the world. I could (and do) get some of that from news stories on the internet, but TV brings the visual and the debate and discussion from both sides. Not having TV, using the internet I can download pretty much any t.v. series and movies I want which has helped to fill my jobless hours. Of course those hours could be filled with studying the Bible . . . but I am a creature of comfort and movies and t.v. still comforts me in this life as a Christian. Maybe when I became a Christian 11 years ago I should have thrown those cares away. But I haven’t. Fortunately, though, I can live okay without them. That I have learned since last Fall. When I lost my internet access at home, I survived on movies and t.v. series episodes that I had saved to disc. But when I lost electricity, almost two months later, well, that was that. Every now and then I’d catch a movie at the laundromat plus there were the few weeks I spent with my brother that I got to watch movies. Unfortunately living there with him until I get on my feet is not an option. How could that be? Just too many people living in the apartment he lives in. When I was there I had to sleep on the floor. Not fun.
So here I am. It’s nice the library is open on Sunday. It’s just 1 to 5 but a few hours here helps me eat up some of my day. I get to plug my phone in here on the side Word Processing computer while waiting to see if the corner internet computer becomes free -- bright, bright red sweatshirt is my “target.” Soon as that person walks out, I can save this document and head in there and plug my phone in again. Stoopid phone, doesn’t charge through the USB port and I need to plug it in. Man, that is inconvenient otherwise I could charge here at any internet computer while I’m on the ol’ www for two hours. And if I don’t then it’s two hours sitting at the laundromat. More not fun as I veg out on t.v. there feeling quite uncomfortable when the owner walks in and doesn’t talk to me. In fact, I’ll be there after the library closes, just to eat up some more of my day and top off my phone’s battery. Such a barrel of fun this life is. I hate it. But I keep trudging through, day after day. Jesus gives me hope. It’s only the slightest glimmer of hope, really not much at all, but it’s there and it keeps me going. He keeps me going. Maybe one day, somehow, in some totally unbeknownst way, I’ll see the other side of this darkness. Maybe my life can turn back around and I can get to a place of comfort again, a place of normalcy. I’ve always strived to live outside of the norm but here I am craving it. We’ll see. I just want to live. I’m not ready to give up. I sure want to, I do, I so very much want this to end . . . but 51% to 49 I desire to find once again a life worth living. Maybe it’s out there. I just don’t want to be homeless.
This bizarre loco life has got me all depressed again. I’m not a sad person by nature. Depression is not something I suffer from. But circumstances bring me down and right now I am down. A big NASCAR fan I am not but I’d rather be at home this afternoon, sitting at the small living room desk, spending time on the internet and with the Daytona 500 on TV. I don’t have a favorite driver, I don’t care who wins, but sometimes I like having a race on. I am a man, after all. I’d be pulling for Danica Patrick, no doubt, or maybe Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (I thought I didn’t have a favorite driver! Maybe I do but following things from race to race is not me.) But sitting at home using the internet with the TV is on is not an option for me in life right now. I don’t know how I got to this point without cable television or internet access (or electricity.) It isn’t the worst thing in the world but it helps bring me down. I do listen to radio on my mp3 player so I have that. For the longest time -- the first few months of this life-turned-upside-down -- I didn’t listen to the radio at all until I remembered I could by using my small mp3 player’s (tiny) speaker. Previously I listened to a sermon or two a day using ear buds. But now, in addition to needing to charge my phone up somehow every day, I need to charge my mp3 player, too. Four or five hours of radio and a sermon or two really runs the battery down. But at least I have radio. Sermons and gaining wisdom in the Word of God should be all I need . . . but I tell you that radio sure helps break up the quiet monotony of the currently horribly dull life when I am at home. Is TV something I need? No. In fact, I kinda like not having it . . . so long as I have the internet. Without TV, I miss the news and I miss debate on issues and knowing what’s happening in U.S. politics and in the world. I could (and do) get some of that from news stories on the internet, but TV brings the visual and the debate and discussion from both sides. Not having TV, using the internet I can download pretty much any t.v. series and movies I want which has helped to fill my jobless hours. Of course those hours could be filled with studying the Bible . . . but I am a creature of comfort and movies and t.v. still comforts me in this life as a Christian. Maybe when I became a Christian 11 years ago I should have thrown those cares away. But I haven’t. Fortunately, though, I can live okay without them. That I have learned since last Fall. When I lost my internet access at home, I survived on movies and t.v. series episodes that I had saved to disc. But when I lost electricity, almost two months later, well, that was that. Every now and then I’d catch a movie at the laundromat plus there were the few weeks I spent with my brother that I got to watch movies. Unfortunately living there with him until I get on my feet is not an option. How could that be? Just too many people living in the apartment he lives in. When I was there I had to sleep on the floor. Not fun.
So here I am. It’s nice the library is open on Sunday. It’s just 1 to 5 but a few hours here helps me eat up some of my day. I get to plug my phone in here on the side Word Processing computer while waiting to see if the corner internet computer becomes free -- bright, bright red sweatshirt is my “target.” Soon as that person walks out, I can save this document and head in there and plug my phone in again. Stoopid phone, doesn’t charge through the USB port and I need to plug it in. Man, that is inconvenient otherwise I could charge here at any internet computer while I’m on the ol’ www for two hours. And if I don’t then it’s two hours sitting at the laundromat. More not fun as I veg out on t.v. there feeling quite uncomfortable when the owner walks in and doesn’t talk to me. In fact, I’ll be there after the library closes, just to eat up some more of my day and top off my phone’s battery. Such a barrel of fun this life is. I hate it. But I keep trudging through, day after day. Jesus gives me hope. It’s only the slightest glimmer of hope, really not much at all, but it’s there and it keeps me going. He keeps me going. Maybe one day, somehow, in some totally unbeknownst way, I’ll see the other side of this darkness. Maybe my life can turn back around and I can get to a place of comfort again, a place of normalcy. I’ve always strived to live outside of the norm but here I am craving it. We’ll see. I just want to live. I’m not ready to give up. I sure want to, I do, I so very much want this to end . . . but 51% to 49 I desire to find once again a life worth living. Maybe it’s out there. I just don’t want to be homeless.
