Ah…I hate myself for being so stupid and with such immature people skills.

I’m very afraid to spend time alone these days. That’s because I would stare into space and start thinking about things, and the more I think, the more depressed I get. I even got caught by Berkant for doing that today in the office…anyway.

No more meals from V1 for me.

I think too much…but I believe this kind of thinking is absolutely necessary, even though it distracts from the work that needs to get done. I was reading the book Traveling Light by Eugene Peterson today, and he was talking about the freedom to fail. That got me thinking a lot…I definitely fear failure, in fact I’m the total opposite of a risk taker. But is that really restricting the freedom that I have supposedly gained from Christ? Take a sort-of related example, I try to keep an outward appearance that is totally different from my inner personality, for fear that revealing my true self would risk friendships. However, I hate this keeping up an appearance thing, and it really restricts me from saying and doing a lot of things. Hmm…I’m confused. Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot more than that lately, so maybe my thoughts would be materials for future posts…

No MYF today, so I suddenly had the inspiration to go to school and mark assignments. It really didn’t go well, actually, but I eventually managed to get it done just now. I guess I can do things during the weekend…occasionally.

Friday evening, love feast from church. I brought some chicken that I wasn’t planning to eat at home. Then, when we got there, I just felt really depressed, again. I didn’t want to take part in sitting around chatting aimlessly, I wasn’t hungry anyway, and I had absolutely no appetite. So I went out into my car, locked myself in, and did some more thinking. It went nowhere, obviously. I was pretty much in the same depressed mood throughout the night, even during the evangelizing thingie and the prayer for Elaine thingie. (By the way, for some reason, I really don’t like groups prayers…I usually don’t know what to say, and I had to sort of prepare what I plan to say while the others were praying…which sort of defeats the purpose of prayers, I guess. Anyway, I think it’s just my problem.) Eventually at the end of the evening, I sent Samuel to the SLC and he asked me what’s going on. I wasn’t able to answer, and let him go, even though I really wanted to talk to him more. Anyway, that’s the sad story of the night.

Spiritual pain does transfer to physical pain… I’ve been emotionally very unstable this evening, twice crying and many times unable to get the necessary work done. You know, Abraham waited 25 years for his promised son. I don’t want to wait that long for God to fix me…

I did indeed get the marking done. It wasn’t hard to mark, just too many distractions mentioned above. Net marking time is probably around 2 hours, but it took me a whole day to finish…

I think I had a pretty empty childhood, hence the childishness that I still exhibit these days.

2 cities, 9.5 hours, 4 quarters, 1 overtime, 4 cups of tea, -13 degrees, 287.6 kilometres. That’s the trip to Toronto yesterday with Samuel to witness my first ever NBA game, and then some. Now I have to say that I really despise basketball, so I went there mostly because I really don’t want to spend another night alone doing nothing. It was between Toronto and San Antonio, and the first three quarters were kind of boring, with Toronto always lagging behind. But in the fourth quarter, things got interesting, eventually getting a tie, electrifying the crowd (except me). Then the overtime was anticlimatic as Toronto finally lost. After the game, Samuel had 2 friends come over and we played a game of where-to-get-something-to-eat-at-ten-thirty-in-the-evening. After long deliberation, we ventured into downtown and got ourselves some bubble tea thingie. We started to go home at around 12:30 (!), and eventually got back at 2am. Yikes. In any case, I still enjoy the company of Samuel, so that was a pretty good trip.

These recent disturbances in my spiritual life have really paralyzed me. I couldn’t do anything without pause and think what a disaster that is. I finally made a move in sharing this with someone else, but that didn’t seem to help. Sigh…prayer requested.

Long night of marking ahead.

I’ve bought more puzzle books from Japan this morning. Along with the five books of Eugene Peterson that arrived today (to be picked up tomorrow), this basically covers two months of my frivolous spending budget. It’s all for the good of the world, I say to myself…

Got a surprise phone call from Samuel this morning telling me that Laura is treating people to ice cream this afternoon. Of course I couldn’t pass that up, so I went (despite being behind in my research work). Anything other than spending time alone would be good for me. I had a huge sundae, and that pretty much ruined my stomach, I think. I had a good time, I think. The three of them are all very aggresive talkers, so a lot of times I just stare at my sundae and eat it slowly… I don’t know, I’m really not a social person, and I really have no people skills. In any case, it appears that we may do this three more times…

After knowing that my depressive state comes from a mandatory testing from the Lord, I think I’m feeling slightly better now. I hope I will come out of it a better person.

I was walking around DC yesterday and accidentally saw Kai and Sophie walked out of the library. I decided to follow them, and when I caught up, only Kai remained, so I decided to scare him a little. It was kind of fun, actually…anyway, that’s the exciting part of the day which I had trouble doing work.

One big disadvantage of working at school is the lack of good options for lunch. I simply couldn’t make myself eat the kinds of things they sell at C&D and DC food court. If I want to go to the plaza, then I really don’t want to go alone. However, there is very little chance of finding somebody to go with me. So…I often go hungry at school, and that wasn’t really pleasant. With that said, I’m working at home today…I think that might be a bit dangerous…

Laura sent me and Ed an email that included the following horrific two-word phrase: “Uncle Martin.” Nooooooooo! And that caught on to other people now…sigh… On the slightly bright side, I’m now apparently in the same generation as Samuel and Michael…so yeah. Laura was leading the Bible study yesterday, and there are a couple of things she said which I’ll record here as “Wisdoms of Laura”: (1) She used this metaphor for spiritual training…”If you want to lift more weight, then you need to train in running.” (2) On the effectiveness of reading the scripture in public: “It works 10 out of 5 times.”

Strangely, woke up this morning at around 4am. Probably because of the physical uncomfortableness. After that, I couldn’t sleep anymore. So that made for a pretty sleepy morning service… An interesting episode this morning where I was supposed to get Alice, and because of the snow storm, I planned to go out at around 7:30. Then she contacted me at around 7:26 saying that she couldn’t go…and I was kind of not happy. A couple of minutes later, Ingrid called and asked me to pick up Steven instead. Nice timing, actually, and it all worked out pretty good. Anyway, moral of the story: there’s no moral to the story. In other news, the PowerPoint thingie was screwed up, so there was this episode of me trying to transfer the lyrics from one PP file to the standard PP file, while they were singing the first songs, and then typing up the verse for the call for worship. This required multitasking, which I wasn’t really good at, quite frankly. It was madness, I tell you. At the same time, it was kind of fun.

After church service, there was this big breakfast lunch thingie at Benny’s. I think we got around 15 people there, and made a spectacle of ourselves. Then again, I think I pretty much made a fool of myself with some of the things I’ve said and done…so that wasn’t really good for me.

I saw the worst (as in possibly the funniest) pun on CNN early this morning. They were talking about illegal immigrants to the U.S. and stuff. The last line of that report: “Illegal immigrants make up 5% of the American workforce…and climbing” (while showing a bunch of people climbing over the wall forming part of the border between Mexico and America). Yes, I’m a sucker for these kinds of puns.

Strange physical conditions: a bit of tightness around the chess; shortness of breath; empty stomach, yet there’s no appetite for anything; lots of gas build up inside me. I think that’s just bad.

Strange spiritual conditions: I would get so stressed over my spiritual conditions that I would simply start doing other things like watching TV and doing puzzles to get away from thinking about them. Now I need to learn to control these impulses.

Strange weather: It’s still snowing outside, but the sky is really bright, at least much brighter than a normal night.

I almost had a heart attack. That stems from the terrible driving conditions outside… A ton of snow on the ground (I would estimate around 15-20cm), and snow was still falling. And I sent 4 people home after fellowship. Took about an hour on a what normally would have been a 20-minute trip. Very slow going, lots of slippery stuff, some plowing, and risky turns. Anyway, I’m safe and sound at home, and will try again tomorrow morning for the Sunday service…

Actually, the day’s activities started earlier, leaving home at around 12:40pm. First, moving some stuff for Harry. Then, waited a while and finally got the coworkers meeting. After that, more moving (where the snow was already really bad). Then, picking up people, fellowship, and sending people home. It’s now 8:40pm. So…that’s the day it’s been.

Continuing with the theme of sadness from the previous days, I still feel very very bad right now, for undescribable reasons.

I was just in an extremely bad mood all day long. I don’t really understand why I do the things I do, like going to school and do no work, waiting to see if I can go out for lunch again, which I was disappointed again. Came home to sleep, and really wasting a ton of time. Anyway, not a good day to remember, certainly.

And with that bad mood, it really wasn’t good for me to attend the pre-study for Saturday’s Bible study tonight. I’m just too controlling, too much of a perfectionist, and made too much trouble. So much so that the pre-study lasted around 4 hours. Yikes. And the product is something that is still very under prepared, which is kind of disappointing. I don’t have the material, so I was hoping that everyone would prepare ahead of time to get a good picture of the passage, but that’s really a false hope. So when the time come for the pre-study, the thing just felt flat, like very focused on the linguistic side of the scripture instead of what the message is. So I wasn’t very happy about much of the time, and they will probably avoid me for the rest of their lives. Sigh…I don’t know. It’s not been a good day, as I have said.

I really have nothing good to say these days, am I not?

Woke up a bit too early this morning, at 6:30 or so, and I went to bed at around 1:30. Couldn’t sleep, so I had breakfast, do the usual morning stuff, and then did the laundry. By the time I’m done laundry, it was around 10:30. Being inspired once again for no particular reason, I went to my office…on a Thursday…an off day… At the office, I did nothing. I guess I was looking to eat out or something, but that didn’t work out, so I went home in extreme hunger and disappointment, wondering why in the world did I go to the office in the first place. Once home, there was lunch, sleep, exercise, and tons and tons of puzzles, with no regards to the serious work. Oh yeah, and I tried hard to avoid falling into temptation again, but that didn’t work… So that’s my sad life.

So what prevents me from discussing my spiritual problems with others? Probably to save face, which is a pretty bad excuse, quite frankly.

I sort of knew that my initial excitement for the Bible reading plan would fade away really quickly. I’m now quite reluctant to read my Bible. Probably because each study takes a long long time, about 1.5 to 2 hours. Also probably because I really wanted to read all the commentaries in the study Bible. So…there’s a trade off somewhere in there. Meanwhile, I bought some Eugene Peterson books off Amazon tonight, hoping that they would be helpful somewhat.

I’ve just seen one of the most interesting Jeopardy ever. At the end of DJ, two contestants were tied for the lead with the third contestant quite a distant behind. Then FJ came. The third-place contestant got it right and bet it all, so she was $2000 away from the lead. One of the lead contestant got it wrong and bet it all, so he went to $0. The last lead contestant got it wrong, but unexpectedly bet $2000, hence we had a tie between the two, and we will be seeing the two ladies again tomorrow. Very funny and highly coincidental how this end up happening…

The highlight for today was the job fair that I went to with Samuel and Francis. Ok, so I wasn’t looking for a job, nor was I looking for the freebies, so why was I there? I have no idea. Maybe it’s because I was just bored? Yeah, probably. I guess it’s always nice to spend time with these two. The interesting story is that we got back a bit late for my 2pm office hour, so I had a “brisk walk” instead of a “run” that Samuel insisted that I do. Ended up late for 15 minutes, but only two students came, each only occupying about a minute, so that was that.

It’s really hard to focus on research work when supervisor’s away for a week…