Written A Year Apart. What looks to me like growth.

A blog in two parts.

Part 1. (Written Fall 2013)

Let’s talk about Halloween, because I’m annoyed by the phrase “I don’t celebrate/do Halloween, I’m Christian”. And it’s only been this year (last year) that I have actually taken notice of this, though I’m sure that I have been exposed to this phrase or some variation of it before. It could be that now I have a job that is big into Halloween, or that I am listening better, or something else that I haven’t thought of.

I’ve never understood why there are certain things that some (not all) Christians abstain from where as other embrace those same things. Now I say abstain, and it could be assumed that I am talking about sex, alcohol, and specific foods, because that makes sense with biblical law. What I’m talking about in some ways is Christian parents pushing their personal brand of beliefs onto their children. This once again brings me back to Halloween, (or for another example I’ve experienced, modern rock music, regardless of whether or not it is a Christian musician/group or not) because though it does derive it’s origin from the belief that it was the one day of the year that the spirits of the dead return to the mortal realm, or something else ridiculous like that. But now it’s origin, though not forgotten, no stock is put in it, or at least not in common place, and yet there are those who question Halloween and stick to thinking that it was inherently bad and thus forcing this belief on their children being excluded from the average practices surrounding Halloween. The days has now been reclaimed by Western Society as a reason to put on costumes, get or give out candy or even just be someone else for a few hours.

Now if this was a universal practice among Christians I don’t think I would find this to be so irritating. But the disdain for Halloween is only a personal choice or at least that’s what I’ve always thought, seen, and believed. I’ve known pastors who dress up for Halloween, and members of their congregation refuse to even consider that western society’s reclamation removed the paganism from the thing.

Part 2. (Written Fall 2014)

Rereading to the point above I am realizing that almost around a year after writing it what I am doing is bashing how people have taken to making their beliefs their own. I am not saying that I understand why they don’t celebrate it I am saying that I am not angry about it anymore, and that I understand where the lack of uniformity is coming from. Because they’re just doing what I’m doing, in that I myself am making my beliefs my own, and I think more people need to do that, or take a critical look at what they believe including the “rules” that are imposed by their beliefs’ central supposed authority or text.

My only issue now is one that I touched on in part 1 and that is if their beliefs are dictated by what their parents believe and thus just what they did while growing up. Because blindly following your parents’ beliefs are still not making them your own. Blind belief is not a good thing; logically you should know what you believe and why you believe it. Now this might seem like it contradicts the commonly quoted Bible verse “walk by faith, not by sight”, but it is my opinion that belief and faith are two different things. Belief is “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists”, whereas Faith is “belief that is not based on proof”. So the way I see it the verse is closely related to the Switchfoot lyric “Doubt your doubts, and believe your beliefs”.

And that could be the overall message behind this post, or at least one of them. One of the others is being related to learning about your beliefs and not just going with whatever your parents tell you to.

So this was a post written in two parts a year apart from each other. Starting out as a rant about people not celebrating Halloween, and it turned into me going on about how people should not blindly believe things and how people should make their beliefs their own.

Post Script: As always there is probably more that I could add, and more to learn to add, if I come across it I will share it maybe by a new post or by updating this one. Either way if there is more for me to share I will share it. Also I hope that I will have other posts written before this one besides my one on feminism because I am scheduling this one for the week of Halloween.

I don't know about you But I'm feeling 24

So with a new tradition that I started last year when near to my birthday I gave 23 pieces of unsolicited advice. Except this year I can't give you 23 things, so I will share 24 things about me that you probably didn't know before. Or maybe you did in which case. Good for you. (and this is why I don't ad-lib blog posts.) Also I am sorry for my laziness, uninspiration, and general lack of postingness. (And there I go making up words.)

Before I get even more distracted here I go.

1. To keep my hands busy I make paper cranes out of post-it notes.
2. I've taught my tongue to tie cherry stems in knots, because I thought it might make me a better kisser.
3. And yet I've never been kissed.
4. I couldn't snap my fingers until after I graduated High School.
5. I got the scar on my left thumb from a broken glass bottle is what I tell people, what I don't tell them is that I got it because I used to dumpster dive for cans because I couldn't afford to get an allowance.
6. It wasn't until two weeks ago that I owned all 7 Harry Potter novels.
7. Spider-Man and the X-Men have always been my preferred superheroes because they were picked on just like I was.
8. When I was younger I wanted to be the green power ranger because we shared a used name.
9. My first name is Franklin, but i go by Tommy, a contraction of my middle name: Thomas.
10. I cry far more often than I admit.
11. I regret how judgmental I was in high school.
12. My first time drunk I declared that I was Batman my second time drunk I accused my cousin of being an X-Men mutant.
13. My first celebrity crushes were the Olsen twins, my first irl crush was also a pair of twins.
14. I am not worried about losing my mind, I've already accepted that it will happen.
15. I greatly desire to be a father, and no raise a child in a single parent home.
16. I also have name possibilities picked out.
17. I don't drink enough water, and i know this but don't do anything about it.
18. I like going to the movies alone just as much as with people.
19. I've got a "thing" for redheads and before that it was blondes, but realistically hair colour hasn't been all that big of a deal, or at least not as much as eye colour.
20. My attraction to Natalie Portman has a lot to do with her having been in Star Wars, even if it was the prequels.
21. I am convinced that when I see her I will just know. 
22. I don't read/watch the news because it makes me angry, and I feel like I should do something about it. But all I can think to do is deliver vigilante justice.
23. I had a dream last week about teaching the ethical culinary preparation and serving of human meat.
24. I'm worried I won't find someone because I am too worried she would end up getting hurt.

Post Script: I purposely posted this after my birthday, because I felt like after being 24 for a day could help me write this alas I was right-ish.

End of Summer

So with the end of August having just happened, I thought I'd share some summer camp stories, or as I've come to think of them, MountainView Memories. To clarify, the summer camp that I attended most of my summer camp career and where all my camp stories come from is called Camp Mountainview. A camp run by the Salvation Army located in Northern B.C. between the towns of Houston and Smithers.

And so I will tell you of Corey my first camp friend, the brass alarm clock, and the midday shower. I will also share with you photos of my friends and time there.

Before I start I should clarify something, Camp Mountainview has more than just summertime camps, throughout the year there are a few weekend long camps which I also attended. Actually my first time at what I will now refer to as CMV (Camp Mountainview) was during one of those weekend camps. That was when I met Corey, as I mentioned above he was my first camp friend. He was very charismatic, but other than for that reason you wouldn't normally assume that he was a pastor's kid, or at least he didn't fit into one of the stereotypes attributed to being a pastor's kid (but then again that's not odd, seldom have I met one who does). Corey was a player, and he knew how the game worked, now I can't tell you if he still plays or if he has now become a one woman man. Okay, so from time to time he'd need help covering or manipulating the truth so he wouldn't get caught, and that's where I'd come in. I was known to be quite honest or at least more honest than Corey when it came to certain things. So some of the girls he would get involved with would talk to me, confide in me, and ask me about Corey, I would stretch the truth and did this for two reasons.

1. Even though the girls were my friends as well Corey was my friend before they were, and the length of time that someone had been my friend meant something to me.

2. At my core I've always felt like I am a story teller, because telling stories has come easy to me, and even though there is usually a string of truth running through most stories (like the one I'm telling bending subtle facts are easy and simple to do).

So I thought I was helping and I would do what I could to help because that's what friends do. But looking back I regret helping him cheat, but I don't think I'd do it any differently because me and him probably wouldn't have become so friendly, even if we now don't talk.

Okay, so now, the brass alarm clock. This might sound like a joke but this story start like this. This one time at band camp, well okay it was "creative arts" camp technically, but that's because at that time there was very little interest from campers in brass instruments. There were only two of us there for that reason on that year, me a trombone player and this guy named Luke a trumpet player. (A little thing that I should mention is that the last night of camp was once known as prank night, where campers could pull pranks on the other campers or staff on staff. These pranks had to be done before everyone else wakes up, they had to be essentially harmless and it usually ended up being boys versus girls. For example, the female CIT's one year put an aluminum canoe at the top of the stairs blocking the door to the chore boy's cabin; they then knocked on the windows to get the boys attention, but also to taunt them. In retaliation the chore boys were far less creative and the next week they flew one bra belonging to each CIT from the flag pole. Another time the girls cabin spread honey on the door handles and door step and then covered the honey in puffed wheat cereal. And this is what I consider retaliation for that.) How Luke wasn't there for the above stated incident but I was, and it wasn't hard to convince him to help me with my prank because who isn't up for a little summer camp mischief. So what we did was borrowed the alarm clock from one of our counselors and set it to go off at 4:45 am, (enough time for us to wake up, get dressed and outside for 5 am, 2.5 hours before we'd normally be getting up) we grabbed our instruments walked to the outside of the girls cabin, and we made noise with them, because to say we played them would be wrong. We blew into our instruments with the purpose of being loud enough to wake the girls up so much that they couldn't get back to sleep, but that was not the result. We ended up waking up the whole camp and though Luke and I were amused everyone else seemed a bit grumpy until after breakfast and some a bit longer than that.

Now to the midday shower, this happened at the teen camp week on my second to last summer that I attended which would have made me around 16 I believe, maybe 15. It was an early August day, it was around 3 in the afternoon we had just come back from swimming in a local lake and we had free time until dinner. A group of us had just dropped off our towels and started walking down to see if we could find some fresh wild strawberries and then the rain started "the way you fall asleep, first slowly then all at once" to paraphrase John Green. It wasn't a cool rain, but it was a nice warm summer rain. But it wasn't a light rain either but a heavy rain, which gave the group of us an idea; one of us I cannot remember whom but they ran quickly to their cabin and then brought back with them a bottle of shampoo. So we were out there not caring about our clothes getting wet and we were washing our hair with shampoo and a warm heavy rain shower and not long after we had finished washing our hair the rain had stopped, as if it rained just so we could wash the lake out of our hair.

Post Script: Did you ever go to summer camp? If so what are your favourite memories?

Also it this means anything, it was not romantic at all and it didn't mean anything to either of us and it wasn't even all that big of a deal, but that camp was where I touched my first boob.

Above: Me
Left:Corey

2013

Ok I know that I am late in this, but I am going to talk about New Year’s Resolutions. But I don’t believe in NYRs because they are usually hard to stay true to. It’s just like me trying to do NaNoWriMo this past year, I got one page double sided and I kind of gave that up. But I do believe in goal setting.

So I set myself three goals for 2013.

First Goal: I have a bunch of books that have not been read. And so I will be reading, I want to say 20 books leisurely this year; if I do more I will be happy. But the hard part will be choosing which to start with and the subsequent order.

Second Goal: I want to increase the amount of photos I take worthy of putting into a portfolio. And I want to put together a proper portfolio though I know it will be filled primarily with 2013 photos. The hard part for me will be making time and actually going out and taking photos.

Third Goal: Simply enough to continue doing this. By the end of 2013 I hope to have posted twice as many blogs as I did in 2012, which I don’t really see as being all that hard to do especially since I have plenty of ideas.

Goal update: 

Books- 2 started

Photos- Unsure

Blogs- 2^nd posted.

Post Script: The goal updates will not be consecutive but periodic.