Usually I associate that phrase with some terrible office rally speech, or some new sales pitch at Wal-mart, or Bdubs' 11th sauce that has yet to rear it's ugly head. Instead today marks the day when I want to set aside 30 minutes to document my thoughts, feelings and feeble accomplishments every day.
Reading this one blog that I subscribe to and realizing he has now limited himself to 2 hours per day for blogging, I understand why some peoples' blogs are so superior to mine. But then there are people like my dearest Amanda who still post meaningful and recently especially good blogs and yet don't spend half of their life in doing it. I'm looking for this next couple of months to be a period of growth for my blog which launches it into a larger readership and more frequented category. Mind you, that means it has to become less obviously personal. I don't like to share my personal thoughts and feelings with nearly anyone and for this reason don't even keep a journal. However, I can still keep all of my best friends informed via this blog on what's going on in my life whilst entertaining the other readers on this blog and I think if you know me well enough you'll be able to read between the lines and hopefully piece together a more personal biography of me and my life during grad school. Who knows, I might even start a new blog specifically for grad school just like I did the off-shoot for my agricultural discussions. Who knows, I might even really start into ad and reviews on here as well, even though I doubt you actually make any money doing that stuff.
As this week begins and I am no longer sick, I decided I needed to take the time and sit back and reflect on how this summer is going. I'm not here to fill you in on all of the details, but I am really surprised by how fast the summer flew by. And while I'm finally over the fact that my undergraduate years are gone, it was a hard shock to have Gail come down and visit for the last time last week before she moves out to Minnesota. I think that really struck the reality in my that I'm into a new stage of my life in school. Obviously the wedding did that but my life with Amanda seems so natural and wonderful that I wouldn't describe it as a harsh shock at all. Sure, it's crazy at times around here - I really wonder what our neighbors must think of us - but it's been as seamless of a transition as I could've asked for and every day I thank God for her.
What I really mean to say is though that as I've gotten older, every year has had more and more of a routine to it. It seems like just yesterday that I was starting my summer on pig farms and the sun was coming up earlier and earlier. Well, by the time that the novelty of my new job had worn off (and trust me, that didn't take long) I started into the pattern of just counting the samples, and calculating the time required for jobs. Well, then came the chores around the house. Sweeping the floors or putting away the dishes just fit itself into the other facets of my everyday life so conveniently that it wasn't long before we'd broken into the double digits on washer and dryer uses and the DVR didn't seem like anything other than a way to record the weekly series. (By the way, my weekly series is definitely The Colony. Sure it still has an element of control that I don't think a reality series should have, but given the camera footage captured, it has been an entertaining summer show to watch.) Then the TV fit into the idea that I was just getting from one show to the next, or looking forward to the next evening when I fed the fish, or the next Sunday when I went to church. Family, friends and Amanda have been the only breaks to this onslaught of life this summer that is relentless in its pursuit of tomorrow. Every second that I can spend with them is the time that is precious, captured in the moment and they are what have made this summer so great. Without them it has just been an endless progression towards the start of the school year and a repetitive monotony that I think has just made the summer blur together until it finally seems to have flown by.
And that gets back to just why I think this blog is going to be so important. This is a way for me to express myself to people in the next few months and will serve as my experiment to truly evaluate publicly what I am doing and is an opportunity for me to focus on those things which make me happy. I think we only truly realize how happy we are once we're looking back, and I want to appreciate life as it comes instead of spending so much time in the past.
On that note, my movie review for today is "Rachel Getting Married". Yeah... no offense to anyone who found this either introspective or entertaining, but I found little meaning or comfort in a movie so poorly shot and terribly scripted. There are few movies that Amanda and I give up on, but this is definitely one of them. I've sat through my share of cheap movies, but it's the not the budget the limits this. It seems as if the directors went for this subtle approach to portraying a family in its dysfunctionality, but this has already been done a million times. And besides, doesn't Brothers and Sisters do this so much better? Instead, this show has scenes that drag on forever with it unwitty script while you're forced to endure inferences at topics which should seem to be critical to an actual plotline if there had been one. The choppy cinematography did nothing but exacerbate the problems this movie already had. In summary, don't watch, but if you must, you can borrow it from us. :)
Hopefully some storms can show up this week to lower the temperatures and humidity before Chris and I suffer through a 200 mile Pelotonia this weekend. The current temperatures and humidity have been combining for weather that stifles the body and soul.
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