Anyone Say Differently?

Hello and welcome to another bout of blogging by your very own, Steven Brown. I know I said there would be at least one more blog post from last semester, but that never made it past an unfinished compilation of jumbled thoughts collecting virtual dust in the “Drafts” archives. I posted it, unfinished, and that's just going to be that. As for those “job woes,” I had a fantastic off-track semester, work-wise. I went back to working for Hand and Ortho as a PRN Technician. Essentially, I was like a mercenary tech. If another technician (AKA aide) needed someone to cover a shift, they could call me. If a team felt like they needed extra help, they could call me in to work with them. I had steady hours at our South Temple clinic, but those accumulated to about 13 hours/week and I needed more work to gear up for another semester. I ended up working more hours than some of the “regulars” did. I even got a little overtime some weeks, which was quite nice. It's nice when you've worked with every therapist in the company except for two. That is a total of twelve therapists, for those who were curious. That's twelve different styles of handwriting (ranging from legible to ancient, forgotten languages), twelve different ways of doing things, almost twelve different names for each and every exercise/activity/procedure/etc, and twelve (divided by four) ways my point has been made. Drowning was not an option. It was still really fun.

Moving on, this semester has had a promising start. What I mean by that is that it's promising to not be the best one ever. Let's see if I can't make it break that little promise, shall we? So far, I have not found any sort of groove for doing school work and that leaves me wandering through the mire of assignments and lessons rather aimlessly; just barely slogging my way through to the next day. That, my faithful readers, is no way to live. The good news is that winding path I've thus forged is providing guidance for what kind of groove to establish. Live and learn, as the adage goes. Still, the most stress-reduced way is to have that groove right away and then maintain the discipline to stick with it. I guess that's not how life is supposed to go, though. We fine-tune ourselves through pushing through the muck and mire that lays before us. Why can't it be a nice meadow or something more often?

I had the recent experience of a long-lasting relationship (who-me? Never!) which terminated after surviving the whole long-distance thing. It was surprising to me that it had lasted the 4 ½ months of being spread over a couple of states considering all previous long-distance relationships went sour after about 2, give or take a couple of weeks. I have felt God's hand throughout the entire process and didn't always follow, I'm sad to say. But, at the beginning of this still fresh semester, I could not ignore what I knew had to happen, so we met somewhere as a pair and left as individuals one stormy night. It didn't make sense to me why it was to last so long being apart only to end the day after seeing each other again, but as I go along, I'm given understanding little by little and only as much as I need to know. I think sometimes we forget just how true Wesley's statement really is.

It's interesting to note, though, that we, like trees, cannot grow strong and sturdy without opposition and pain. Just a little something from the most recent CES Fireside.

On the flip-side of that, life isn't just pain: it's full of wonderful things as well. For instance, my birthday is coming up soon, isn't that something? I don't care who you are, a birthday should be a wonderful thing! Anyway, I'm sure everyone can think of at least 25 things that make life worth living, and then go on with the list. So instead of going on and on about it, I'll just let you all conjure up that list if you so desire. It's a good exercise, anyway. I learned in my statistics class that people who record at least five things they are grateful for every day tend to view their quality of life higher than they would otherwise. It was statistically proven to me...through one study...imagine that.

Anyway, it's time to just post this one, as-is, also. It was supposed to be posted on the 26th of last month...I'm slowly getting into a groove of sorts so I will be able to fit this into my weekly schedule and you will have regular blog posts again. Makes me wonder if people are still reading this nonsense.