My Portable Heart.

Late last night I was reading part of the Bible and I got inspired to make this new blog. It’s meant to be a place to discuss, so anyone can submit posts or ask questions, I explained it in detail on the blog. I hope some of you check it out, and we get some discussion going.

http://readingtheword.tumblr.com/

I decided to write this because there have been a lot of youtube videos lately trying to get more people watching great videos made by people with much too small of audiences. Also because there isn’t enough community on here, and there is never enough love. Today I want to talk about ‘lifein2011’ (who has a real name as well, which is Melinda).

I don’t think I should spend too much time trying to talk about a person I don’t know, because whatever I say is going to either be slightly, or completely wrong, instead you should go watch her videos and talk to her to discover that for yourself. Her videos are interesting and thoughtful and there is always a sweet simplicity to them, which is a nice relief.

Lately I’ve been getting easily discouraged, wanting to slip into the solitude of my room behind my computer screen, with my books and music and just stay there and ignore everything. I’ve been able to get easily bored and despair; convincing myself that there is nothing to do. Allowing myself to forget the good things that are all around me has been quite common lately. There are lots of things that I can do to get back to feeling good like God, reading good books, listening to good music, watching a movie, or watching videos on youtube from some of my favourite people; Melinda(lifein2011) being one of them.

I’m reminded of a simple kind of gratitude that I can often forget. I know this is definitely going to sound sappy, but I’m trying to be honest and sincere. Your attitude is refreshing. I woke up and watched one of your videos and I forgot the overwhelming feeling of worry and was motivated to write this overly complex attempt at a compliment – my brain tends to think that if it adds a bunch of words, what I’m trying to say will come across better, but it doesn’t work out that way. Your videos remind me of the satisfaction of looking for meaning and answers rather than worrying about not having any now; like when you read a good book, watch a good movie or listen to an interesting person (which I guess includes you) that create discussion.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that the last few months have been difficult and I can usually find ways to make things seem harder than they actually are. As is expected with being in University I have times when I have doubted and questioned what I’m doing and there are really only a few things that I come back to where I don’t doubt, those being God, philosophy, music and stories/writing. Among the few things that make me feel better (to feel joy and gratitude) is your personality which comes through in your wonderful videos.

Thank you.

:)

Everyone reading this should go look at her youtube videos.

I went to bed last night and for some reason I just started smiling. I don’t really know why, it just happened. Eventually I started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn’t help myself. I even started tearing up a little a few times. I wasn’t thinking of anything funny, and I hadn’t watched anything funny before going to bed. It was just a feeling of joy. The best explanation I can think of is a few ideas that came to me yesterday. *I sort of felt like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol when he’s really happy but he doesn’t really know what to do so he just goes out on the street and laughs and throws money to people :) Except I was just lying in my bed laughing.

:)

Has this ever happened to any of you?

Optimism is like looking through a lens that when you look through it your focus is slightly shifted to the side; everything is slightly out of focus. It’s when you look at every situation like it will turn out according to plan and turn out all right. Pessimism is what you’re left with when optimism fails. You start to see every situation as if it will never work out, and you should have no expectations. Pessimism is also a lens with which you can choose to view the world, but like optimism it isn’t quite in focus; it is warped in the opposite way to optimism. If neither of these are reliable ways to view the world then what is left? Like many things the middle ground, or mean point is the correct one – in this case I suggest Hope.

Hope is not looking to the bright side of things and thinking that everything will turn out okay and according to plan since that’s what defines optimism, and optimism is a flawed way to looked at things. Hope rather, is recognizing – even standing in – the darkness and acknowledging the challenge and knowing that if you make it through that you’ll be stronger. Hope is looking at the whole story, not particular details, and understanding that the parts where the story gets interesting – the parts that carry meaning – are the parts where everything is falling apart. Hope is acknowledging that there are going to be days where you will feel like giving up, where everything is falling apart and some things are becoming too heavy to handle.

You won’t find your ‘break in the clouds’ if you refuse to acknowledge there are any clouds at all, conversely, if it comes and you’re too busy feeding your pessimism and cynicism you’ll be too lost in your own head to notice it.

Come out angels, come out ghosts Come out darkness bring everyone you know

P.S. I think I might have posted this a while ago, but I can’t find it now. Regardless, here it is again.

This blog is a response to a video on youtube, you should watch it before reading this.

First of all, thank you ‘lifein2011’ for giving me a topic to write about after not being able to finish who knows how many (I do, there are a lot).

The question is this, what memory would you use to cast the Patronus spell?

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I’ve been playing with this idea for a while now and when I looked at John Mayer’s blog title it hit me, everything came together and I decided I was going to change. The whole reason John made his tumblr was to share ‘thoughts’ that were too large to fit into a tweet, hence the title, ‘one forty plus’ so I’m taking my inspiration from that. Let’s say starting from my ‘Cool Hand Luke’ post on I’m going to make my blog simpler, with fewer but longer posts.

I remember hearing something a few days ago (I can’t remember where at the moment) about how nothing now has time to settle and ideas (or anything really) never get to live out the course of their life in full. We jump from idea to idea or song to song, feeling to feeling at an instant and never just sit with one for a while and let it play out its course naturally. That is part of the reason for this change.

So I decided to ‘streamline’ my blog and only post things if I want them to stay there are have some sort of relevance, whatever that means. But I don’t want to just fill my blog with numerous little things that I come across while scrolling through the internet. I’ve looked back on my posts in my archive and remember quotes that I re-blogged that were so significantly relevant at the time. I don’t like the feeling that it left me with. I really felt impacted by some of them, but they got lost in piles of re-blogs of mildly amusing things, that were ultimately forgettable without any real lasting value.

I think things get too complicated when I rush through them, moving from topic to topic. You need to let things sit with you for a while so you can break them down into their simplest forms, because that’s when they become part of you; when you don’t have to think about them and keep track of all of their components in your head. They just become natural.

It’s sort of like a rock star lifestyle, where you burn fast and hard and just keeping moving forward in a blur and consume everything you see. Instead I want a slow and steady system where one post has a longer lifespan than the next reblog.

This is more for my own sake than anything else, so hopefully you don’t get bored and move on to blogs that require less justification.

I get inspired by a movie and decide to take the time to write about it, from my own thoughts, and try to get other people to share in the experience in a hope that it might change the way they think about something, or help them through something in their life or at the least expose them to great film making and what do I get? 1 like. But slap down a sentence from John Mayer and the internet flocks to your post.

xP I’m just kidding… kinda…