First Post - That's Exciting 05/03/14

A few days ago I moved to Tucson AZ, from Grafton WI. It’s a drastic change, not only did I leave behind friends and some family, but I left the place where I did most of my growing up. Grafton shaped me into who I am today, so leaving it, in my mind, is a whole new start, because I don’t know who I am going to be here in Tucson yet. So while I figure that out, I decided to start writing again. But starting a whole new life deserves a whole new blog, a whole new story, and maybe even a whole new way of thinking, and to keep that all straight in my head, I need to write it all out as I go.

I hope to make a new post every day, but I don’t know if I can keep that up, not because I am not motivated to write, but because I get the feeling that I will lead a very non exciting life while here in Tucson.

What is on my mind right now that I feel the need to talk about is the church service I went to a few hours ago. I am not big on church for a few reasons.
One, I don’t believe that there is a distinct being that can be called God, I believe more in a force of fate, sort of, I call it the Hive Mind usually. The Hive Mind, to me, is, to put it simply, a sphere centered around me and my life, and everything that is supposed to happen to me, will come to be through the push and pull of the hive mind. I will write more on this later.
Two, in my experience, and this is not 100%, maybe more like 98%, of all of the people I have met, religious people have been the most judgmental. I know that everybody judges, even if they try not to, and I know that this is pretty much a judgment, but it is hard to feel accepted by people who tell me that the things I think are wrong because my thoughts aren’t the same as theirs. I might write more on this later.
Three, I was raised in a church, so I feel that a lot of the time I go to church because I have to, or am expected to, not because I choose to go. I know this is just my outlook on a situation, and I am trying to change that opinion. I will not write more on this later.

I also have a few reasons that I do like going to church, the music, because I like almost all music, religious or not, I do enjoy the atmosphere of relief that almost always occurs at churches I go to, most of the people are friendly, but the main reason I do like church services is that I can always find something in the sermon, even if it is just one sentence, that I can identify to my life or something I have been thinking about recently.

Today, the sermon, I hesitate to call it a sermon because there was very little tie in to the bible, was about marriage and love. The part that surprised me the most about this sermon, was that the first thing the pastor said on the subject of marriage was that love isn’t enough. He went on to say, in a nutshell, that even if you love your spouse, your marriage will not work out unless you are constantly working at it. I disagreed with a lot that he said because I have my own opinions about love and all that stuff.

For the past month or so, I have been thinking on and off about marriage and love and things like that, because it seems like things in my life are always pushing me toward those thoughts, I went through a break up, not a bad one, and I am at the age where most of the people I went to high school with are engaged or starting families. Every time I think about life in the long term, it includes marriage and kids and a house, because that is loosely what I want out of life, at the moment anyway. But I always get stuck at the thought that I had the opportunity to have all of that in the past, but I threw it away because I was scared of the idea of settling down, though now that is all that I seem to want. Since I threw away that chance, I have not been in love, I have not thought about my future in the long run, and I have basically tried to forget about how happy I could have been, if I wasn’t so stupid at the time.
Anyway, I got sidetracked there, sorry. The service I went to earlier was long and boring, much like this post has become, but near the end of it, the pastor said “Love isn’t something you just fall into and fall out of on a whim, love is a decision, you have to consciously decide that you want to let yourself love someone, or decide not to.” I wasn’t listening to whatever came before that, so I am not sure of the context, but that sentence just stuck with me. And after the service was over, the family members I went with commented that it was an unusual service.

So to me, the Hive Mind put me in the exact circumstance to be there today and hear that one sentence. I’m not sure why yet, maybe it’s time for me to put my past regrets behind me and start looking for that love again, or maybe I just have to think about making the conscious decision to stop worrying about the hurt that was caused by throwing away my potential life and start focusing on the future. I don’t know yet, but it felt important.