Burnt Out Afternoon: Low edit Low delete

I spent a lot of my day writing an e-mail to a friend

when looking for stamps this morning in the closet I found a collection of small figures that would probably fit well on top of my monitor

my friend is my brother, a brother in Christ. When I wrote to him, I responded to questions he asked me about faith and salvation. I am very proud of him. He’s a brother I have admired for a long time. In my college days, he was like an extra conscience to me. He was honest with me, strict with me. Above keeping a harmonious relationship, he prioritized my accountability. We were roommates in the same apartment. His interest in keeping me accountable, being any other roommate, would go about as far as making sure I kept up with my part in the chores. I didn’t. However, he cared about more in my life, from finances to morals. He understood I wasn’t being honest with myself or doing what was best for my life or my relationship with Christ (which now I understand “best for my life”=”relationship with Christ”) and, in his way, questioned me in ways to make me question myself.

swiping off unnecessary thoughts in my brain like applications on an Android

earbuds to block out the extra noise

Serenity, the fields of Eorzea

He was jovial, but serious when he had to be. With me, he sometimes had to be. I’m glad he was. He was an example of brotherly love to me; more than just keeping the peace, he wanted that I should have the peace as the Christian I claimed to be, when it was plain that I was living a life too familiar with the world.

Eyes closed, harp strings, violin crescendo, piano… Shimomura Yoko’s “Legend of Mana” arranged for orchestra, nostalgic, relaxing, chilling, enveloping oooh pizzicato

My brain is a bit burnt out today, it feels like an engine still functioning, or an electrical power supply to a processor that continues to process, fulfilling its tasks with exposed wires sporadically sparking,

how did Yoko Shimomura make two notes so entrancing

glitching on the output to the screen, its results constant and consistent interlaced with

LEVIATHAN

images, imagery, flickering on and into focus, before sparking and returning

He cares and loves. I dreamt about him when he went off to the navy; some of the other guys and I joined another military branch because we heard they’d cross paths in transport on the sea. When we saw him, he asked what we were doing there and we told him we were there to bring him back. He didn’t want to come. I can’t remember. I think we joined him. Or we were sad and left.

Why did Pandora’s battery still power the PSP but have such a specific power over the hardware to override hardcoding

Are humans like that? Are we rewritable through a fault in our power source? Perhaps more susceptible to suggestion on low sleep

resist urge to edit but don’t say his name

this is the inside of my head

hard to think like this

I want to follow this idea of the human power source and corruption of our programming

Now to post this while resisting the urge to proofread or clarify. Sorry if it confuses you, but then, I only have slightly more insight on my thoughts than you.

The Purpose of the Man Cave: Part II

Excavation Blueprint Alterations: Adapting to the Land

I mentioned in my last post that I had a desire to chronicle my thoughts, but my purpose was hazy. I believe the idea came from the suggestion from many fellow Christians to try and keep a journal with my devotionals to track growth. That’s cool, I thought. I know I’m not the same man I was five years ago. I’m not the same man I was when I asked my wife to marry me two years ago. I’m not the man I was during a difficult job transition six months ago. I’m not even the man I was a month ago. I wish I had access to thought logs from each of those periods in my history. I wish I could read through them and see each selfish thought, each self-serving action, and the disappointment I felt at the time. I wish I could read what brought me to repent, what verses spoke to me, and how the Spirit used my surroundings to call me to seek God’s strength to become a better Christian and to love my neighbors.

In all this I thank the work of the Holy Spirit through me and through others, I praise Jesus for His power to transform us and make a new creation in us. He brought forth this growth in His love, and the actions of His Spirit through me were what brought about every positive change and every good work that people may mistakenly credit to me. It was not my willpower or perseverance that changed me, but His love and mercy.

Now, originally, my plan for the blog was to record my growth in different areas. I’d still like to do this. However, I hit a roadblock while thinking about how to go about it. See, around this time I had been questioning what “love” means. Yes, it seems tangential, but it resulted in a change of my worldview that was so radical that I had to rethink my approach to many things, including this journal. If we’re thinking about this in digging terms, I drew up blueprints for a cave before doing a geological survey. After looking deeper, I realized my blueprints needed adjustments. These adjustments would have to be made after a thorough survey.

Digging in Circles

As a Christian, my greatest desire should be to glorify God in all I do. I want my growth to aim for this. I want to grow to focus on God. To chart this growth, I wanted to be able to write candidly and honestly. For this to be possible, I would have to reflect on what I really feel. I would need to examine the state of my heart.

Around that time, during my Bible study and discipleship time with a mentor at church, I kept asking for a definition of love from the Bible. We know the characteristics of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8—it is patient, kind, does not boast, and so on—but characteristics do not necessarily make a definition. I asked my mentor further. He quoted John 13:15: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (NKJV) He concluded for the time that to lay down one’s life is sacrifice, and the greatest love is the greatest sacrifice—sacrificing one’s life for others—so love is self-sacrifice. In light of this definition of love, I started to reexamine my actions.

Naturally, some concerns arose when I thought about how much this self-examination would cause me to focus on myself. It’s very hard to examine something if you don’t focus on it. It’s hard to sacrifice myself (that is, to love) when I am all I focus on. How could I focus on myself when I knew the key to the growth I desire, a God-centered growth, is to focus on and love (sacrifice myself for) God? I had to think about how to view things. I had to know where to look at myself, how to look at myself, and how to know what was from me and what was from God. In essence, I was asking where God ends and where I begin.

If you find this to be a valid question, I need you to understand something. If your desire is to commit your life to Jesus, to live for Him, then unless you are willing to question the question itself, this is not the right question to ask. Yet I asked it. I asked this question seriously and I got stuck. I caught myself in a paradox. How can I know how to focus on myself without knowing where God ends? How can I see the changes He’s made in me without that focus on the self? As for my relationship with Him, how can I, in good conscience, focus on myself when the Bible says to focus completely on Him? How can I focus on and glorify God with a blog that is focused on me?

If I may go back to Minecraft for a moment, I’d like to talk about a bad habit I have when exploring underground. When I find a natural cave formation, I don’t pay much attention to where I’m going. When this happens, I just run straight forward, placing down torches along the way to follow them back. Sometimes as I place torches down, I’ll follow the natural path of the cave and find myself in front of the torches I placed before. Before a friend taught me how to place torches consistently to lead back to the surface, this would, quite literally, throw me for a loop. I would follow the torches down one direction and end up running into the torches again. I’d follow more torches in another direction and find a dead-end. I’d end up stuck underground, running in circles. I would be walking, but I’d be getting nowhere.

When I was caught in my paradox, it was a similar sensation. I would keep looking for the answer and keep running into the same questions. In Minecraft, when I can’t find my path back I must dig myself out from another direction. When our questions lead us in circles, we need to start asking different questions and even questioning our questions. I realized later that my question was not the proper question, but getting caught in circles led me to dig deeper for the proper purpose.

A Christian’s Purpose and Defining Love

As I continued to meditate on love and God’s purpose for us, I looked deeper into the Bible for what Jesus teaches about love. In Matthew 22:37-38, Jesus answers a Pharisee’s question about the greatest commandment. Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment.” Jesus says that we are commanded to love God. Considering my understanding of love at the time, that love is self-sacrifice, meant that to love God with everything that we have and sacrifice everything we are to Him is not just a good idea, it’s the law! It made sense. In Luke 9:23, we are told to do something similar if we are to follow Jesus. “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” Here is the idea of denying, of sacrificing, the self to follow the Lord. All right, I thought. It doesn’t really answer my concerns about the blog, but if I’m to sacrifice everything, I may need to sacrifice the blog. If this is what God wants, I will do it, because my greatest desire must be to follow Him.

Hold on, though. Jesus doesn’t stop there. Jesus continues in Matthew 22:29, “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” I must love my neighbor. Love is self-sacrifice, so let’s read this again. I must sacrifice myself for my neighbor. All right, that makes sense, too. It’s hard to argue that self-sacrifice for the sake of others is not love. Let’s finish looking at the verse, then. You shall sacrifice yourself for your neighbor as you would sacrifice yourself for yourself.

Wait.

Ok, wait.

Ow. Thinking back to this is literally causing a dull pain in the back of my head. My mind is trying to reconcile the idea of sacrificing myself FOR myself. I mean, I can easily say, “For the sake of the health of my body, I will sacrifice my freedom to eat this delicious-looking cheesecake.” That is self-sacrifice for the self. But there’s still a problem! We’re to love our neighbor as we love ourselves! I looked in numerous English translations and the “as” was still the same. “As” didn’t change. “As” has more than one nuance in English, so which one should we be reading into here? I mean, a man can lay down his life for a friend, but this is certainly a greater degree of love than we can afford ourselves, isn’t it? How can we lay down our lives for ourselves in the same way, at the same time?

I decided to study these verses, and I was blessed to find a series of sermons by John Piper on those very verses that helped me understand my current definition of love. In Part III, I will record my findings from John Piper’s message and my own study and relationship with God.

The Purpose of the Man Cave: Part I

Thanks to everyone who has read any of my writing up to this point. I appreciate the patience it takes to read to the end of any large wall of text, if for no other reason than that I also have a hard time doing so.

The more I write, speak, and interact with others, the more I observe and experience the need for purpose. The clearer the purpose is, the more effective the thing made for that purpose—be it action, speech, or tool. Many times I write only for the purpose of chronicling my thoughts. As vivid as these thoughts are when they first appear, they sift out of my brain like water through clasped hands. Because I knew that much about myself, I wanted to observe these thoughts through newer perspectives. The primary purpose of my blog was self-observation, but what drove me to observe myself? Where did the desire to catalog and analyze myself come from? Well, that would be another question of purpose. What purpose does this observation serve? And what does it have to do with “digging a man cave?”

The Man Cave: Digging and Dabbling

When my wife and I were looking for an apartment to start our lives together, I wanted a “man cave.” If you’re not familiar with this term, you may think of it as a room set apart for purposes of primary, if not exclusive, use by a specific man. I believe the “study” served a similar purpose, but without expressly being for a man. I wanted a room set apart for myself to set up my games, computer, entertainment equipment, and other various toys. This is why we went with the term “man cave” instead of “study;” the only studying that would be happening in there would be studying of video game strategies.

The Lord has seen fit to bless me with a wife who enjoys video games, and she liked the idea of having a section of the apartment dedicated to my entertainment equipment, provided we call it the “play cave.” When it came down to finding our first home together, we had to face reality. Our most luxurious choices in our city, price range and cultural access (foreigners face hurdles when finding a place to live in Japan) had enough room to live in, but not enough to dedicate to one party or the other. An isolated man cave is not an option. The only doors with locks inside the apartment are the bathroom door and the shower door. And the shower door isn’t even completely opaque, nor does the lock provide any actual security since you can unlock it with a finger and no tools. Without going to deep into it, this creates anxiety for me whenever anyone else is in my apartment, including my wife.

When one such as I lacks a place to come to disconnect and recharge, he will usually try to make one. I thought about what I would need in a place of my own and what would make it my own, and then thought of how I could make this place, this “man cave.” I did what most people with limited physical options would do: make a place on the internet. Before I knew what to do with it, I started to dig to make space to do what I wanted.

The Minecraft Allegory

If any of you have played Minecraft, but like me are not very artistically creative, you’ll find that the first thing you want to do is explore. A vast land generates in front of you when the game starts, and in the beginning you are provided with one thing: freedom.

There’s a catch, though. Your game starts at noon Minecraft time, and monsters come out at night. When the sun goes down, you’ll need walls to protect you from the things around you.

If you know what you’re doing, you can punch trees, make tools, craft a workbench and furnace and build a house from wooden planks before the end of your first day and be perfectly comfortable before expanding. These are actions a Minecraft player with knowledge of the game would take right away. They are the house builders.

If it’s your first time though, you may get too caught up exploring to get anything done before the first night falls, and that’s when the reality of the game hits you. You may not survive your first night. To survive, you must adapt. Hopefully during your 10 minutes of daylight you learned to break blocks and place them, because the fastest way to be safe that first night is to dig and seal yourself in. These are the cave dwellers.

I am not an efficient house builder. Even now when I start a game of Minecraft I take a bit too long exploring my surroundings and thinking about all the great things I could do in this place, and it starts getting dark. I quickly make some torches and dig a hole in a mountain and wait for sunlight. This becomes my first base. This is where I put my tools and valuables. I have dug a cave, and its walls protect me from what is outside. When the sun comes back up, I can leave the cave and venture out. Exploring is fun, but I feel safest in the cave. Much of my creative work takes place in there, so I dig deeper and the cave expands

When I started my blog, “Digging the Man Cave” (working title), I wanted a place to express myself creatively without worrying about my surroundings. I had things I wanted to do, so many ideas, and nowhere to put them. I had also become increasingly aware that not everyone understood what I was trying to say or how my thought process worked, so I wanted to start recording it. I wanted a place to put my thoughts: my valuables. And recorded is all they will stay until I figure out how to use them. My thoughts are like all the baubles I find in Minecraft before I figure out how to use them. Sometimes I think of a short story or have an internal dialogue that I want to record but don’t know what use it is. Whether it’s a diamond or zombie meat, I pick it up and put it away for later. Maybe I’ll figure out how to use it. And I do all these things in the safety of my man cave.

image used without permission from gamesminecraft.org

State of the Manly: Heavy-Headed

After classes today, my head felt incredibly heavy. I wrote some thoughts down this morning about a friend of mine and couldn’t finish them. My brain feels so incredibly sluggish and prone to wander right now that I can’t confidently express this in any sort of smooth sense, so I’m afraid this will become a ramble.

My head feels physically heavy. My eyelids do, as well. My mind and mouse wander from tab to tab of the browser because my reading drags the sleep beast nearer.

but he’s so fluffy and soft and warm

Don’t start with me, Italix.

I still don’t like that name

If it weren’t for the dualistic nature (I’m not even gonna look up if I’m using that right) of respiration, I feel like I wouldn’t know where one yawn ends and the next begins. I haven’t had sleeping problems recently, but today I feel rather run down.

I don’t feel particularly anxious. I’ve been listening to a Stand-to-Reason lecture called “The Lost Virtue of Happiness” by J.P. Moreland. I’m enjoying it.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately about the connection of a few of my mental deficiencies with our flawed human nature and I want to write about them. I’ll have to pray for coherence!

I think this is probably as close to productive as I’ll get today.

たまには日本語で書いてみようじゃないか

数年くらいの間仕事転勤、転職、引っ越しなどの環境変更のせいかあまり日本語使ってないなと気づいた

日本語能力試験を受かったのは嬉しいけど、能力というより理解力を語ってるな、成績は。

最近日本語で本を読んだり、アニメ見たり、ゲームしたりしてるからある程度理解できるけど、理解できる日本語と実際使える日本語には結構大きなギャップがあると感じる。

日本語で打つ時は時間をかけてしっかり考えてから入力してもいいしパーッと打っておかしい所を編集してもいいし話すより打つのが断然簡単な事だと思う。話そうとすれば、途中で言い方が分からなくなったり、時々何を言おうとしてたかも忘れたり、簡単な単語のど忘れでつまっちゃったりする事は多々ある

悔しい

前の環境が恋しい

8年前の一人暮らしの都会

5年前の村人生活

勘違いしないでほしい。今の環境は神様のめぐみだと分かってる。いい妻に快適な宿にそこそこの収入に愛する兄弟姉妹と一緒に礼拝できる教会。すばらしいと思う。感謝してる。

だが、ここまできて日本語が鈍るのは悔しい。練習したい。ゲームしながらぐだぐだ会話したい。今しようとしたら、あまりにも経ってるから頭が固まってしまうんちゃうかな

それでちょっと恥ずかしいというか怖いというか

いろいろと複雑な気持ち

妻の分も日本語頑張らなきゃならないのに妻といればあまり使う機会がない

なのに家族の生活のための日本語でのやりとりは全部任せられてる。皮肉なもんだ

使う時がきたら緊張して噛んじゃったりど忘れしたり自分が嫌になる

頑張れ、俺。もっとできたはずだ。おまえの能力はこの程度か

というわけで何か工夫して腕を磨きたいと思う。打てば途中で知らない言葉も調べれるからできたら録画・録音がいいな

色々考えて妻と相談してまた報告する

あ、この間教会で証（神様から受けた恵みのスピーチみたいな物）を披露した。これを録音する事で現時点での音読能力のいい記録になるかもしれない。

この文章、できるだけ調べずに書いてみた。編集も押さえてみた。これも現時点の能力の記録の一つになるから。

次回から「記録」よりこの状況に対応する言葉を使えたらちょっとは成長したかなと思えるだろうｗ

Brain Ramblage: Correct or Creative: Choose One

I don’t think I give myself enough credit in terms of creativity. I don’t call myself creative. I don’t have a lot of original ideas, nor do I tend to think outside the proverbial box. It may be the case that I actually function better working in the comfortable confines of the box: defined limits of what can or can’t be done, precedents for ideas that work and ideas that fall short, and visible expectations. I work well with a defined goal, using defined methods, and aiming for a defined result. For all intents and purposes, it feels like I am made of the stuff that makes an awesome follower or laborer but a horrible leader.

There is another side to this coin, one that makes me wonder about alternate possibilities. I work well when directed with definite terms, goals, and methods because I am afraid of making mistakes.

Internal Dialogue 3: Still Not Getting to the Point

In finalizing my last post, I read through it to see what I was getting at and started writing this post to take notes on what I thought.

State of the Manly: February 18th

One thing I want to make sure not to do on this blog is make excuses. I made a lot of excuses growing up, but to make progress I must understand that ultimately I am responsible for my actions and inaction. When I don’t get a post uploaded, it’s because I mismanaged my priorities again. This happens quite often.

Well, sorry for the silence (he said to no one in particular). I’m back. Here’s the State of the Manly address.

State of the Manly: When last he left our intrepid readers…

“May I just say… hi. How ya doin?”

Sorry for the silence, all. Or just you. Hi, you. Happy New Year.

My last post was December 11th, almost two months ago. In the time between then and now, I took the top level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT N1), visited my family back in the homeland, met my adorable niece, took my wife to a neat little hotel and hot spring for her birthday, and taught a whole bunch of classes.

My results for the JLPT N1 came back, too. I passed. No big deal (it’s actually a huge deal to me), just don’t have any higher level JLPTs to take (I could totally take the kanji tests if I weren’t so lazy, so that’s just an excuse to rest on my laurels).

Other than that, I’m not sure what kept me from at least posting an update. I actually did an exercise to help me focus towards the end of last year to push myself through some work. I had an assignment to make for my students and couldn’t get started on it, so I tried to psych myself up. I started by asking myself questions about what I wanted to achieve, and I typed this all out.

Then, I started answering. Not sure how many of you can relate, but I feel like I don’t control the entirety of my brain. When I ask questions internally, sometimes I get answers in a similar voice. I typed the ensuing dialogue out, and italicized the questions. The italicized voice feels more critical but less under my control. The standard text is the voice I feel I have more control over, and it feels more like my own. You can read it after the jump.

今日の作業用BGM – Today’s Work Tracks, December 05, 2014

Introducing a new section called “Today’s Work Tracks.” This time, it’s really just an excuse to put up this photo. In these posts, though, I’ll be introducing music I use to focus during the day. It’s also my first bilingual post for the blog.

This CD is just a little something that came with my copy of Guilty Gear Xrd. This will be helping me focus today.

Maybe.

Today I buckle down to finish studying for JLPT. The test is this coming Sunday. Progress report: I almost made it to the test for chapter three!

…I’m in trouble.

今回紹介する新しいテーマは「今日の作業BGM」。まあ、正直今回はこの写メを貼るためがモチベーションでした。

「今日の作業用BGM」は文字通り今日作業しながら聞く音楽を紹介する投稿です。そしてなんと、当ブログ初のバイリンガル投稿です！

この一枚はギルティー・ギア・イグザード予約特典です。これを聞きながら集中に励みます。多分。

今週日曜に行う日本語能力試験の勉強を終えようと思います。前回からの進歩報告：３章実戦問題まで後少しです！（ほぼ進んでないやんけ！

＼(^o^)／ｵﾜﾀ