The Places in my Dreams

I have a separate blog for some of my memorable dreams. I haven't updated it in a while because I forgot... what a bummer! I'm sure I've had some pretty cool dreams recently that I just forgot after a few days or something. Here it is: http://dreamblogvirus.blogspot.com/

There are some places in my dreams that are the same thing every time. Maybe it's not the same exact thing, some of the rooms might have switched, but it's pretty much the same.

There's a mall with the same department store downstairs. I've gotten chocolate there many, many times. There's a stationery/jewelry store that I always find cute notebooks that are too expensive for me. Cute earrings. There's always a boba store downstairs. There's a section for a movie theater. In one of my dreams there was a huge chasm that just opened up in that area and it was pitch black at the bottom where lots of bloody corpses were, from all the people that fell down.

The school, a mix of my middle and high school. Always the lockers, always the same nurse/guidance counselor section in the middle. Always the really creepy locker room where the lights are off and can turn off at any time. Bathroom stalls, often with multiple toilets in each one. Always period blood in at least one of them. The doors either have huge gaps or aren't big enough so you can just peer over them and watch other people pee or poop.

Airport/business/hotel building. Etc. etc.

So many. Sometimes I have to remind myself that those places are all inside my mind, and they don't exist. It's like, there's a whole world inside my head that I can only access when I'm unconscious and it is really weird. Some dreams I've had are so vivid.

Speaking of vivid dreams, I still get some pretty crazy disturbing ones that I will not put down in Dream Bubble. I don't know why my mind gives me these dreams but it'd be nice if they stop! :(

Sunrise in Sydney

Retreat

The ride up to retreat was relaxing. Stopped by Wild Willies for food. The sweet potato fries there are. Super. Good.

When we arrived at Deer Run, one of the things P. Enoch said was, "There are no counselors, because you are the counselors."

It was meant to be funny, which it was, but to me it also suddenly took me back about seven or eight years, to my first Winter Teen Conference. I was a 7th or 8th grader back then. And then boom, now. P. Enoch also commented, "Hey, it's like WTC but without all the kids." I looked around the room and yeah, it looked exactly like a WTC but without all the kids. Lots of people in the Crossroads and families fellowships are or have been counselors. Weird. I thought, wow, I'm old now. But I'm not that old. Some people will always think I'm old, and other people will always think I'm very young.

I definitely came with the intention to plug myself in by meeting lots of new people. I did try to do that, but I also realized that there were a lot of people that I knew but didn't really know. Lots of old faces that I haven't caught up with in a long time. It's not even anyone's fault, it's just that sometime lives don't cross very often, and maybe both of us are just too lazy to reach out. Just hung around some familiar faces that I don't really get to see outside of church.

My biggest takeaway is to trust God. If God is eternal, then he has long-term plans. Recently, I've been really anxious about my own decisions. I worry if I've made the wrong choices. I worry about all the "what if's" in my life. What if I hadn't done this? What if that didn't have to happen? Where would I be? Through P. Toliver's sermons, small group discussions and talking to people, I realized that worrying so much about "what if" just isn't that practical. It sounds like common sense but sometimes it just happens and I don't realize it doesn't make sense until I stop and think. I'm here now, I'm who I am now, because of everything that's happened. Wondering is okay, it's a mental exercise, but to be so worried as I had been was foolish. There are no alternate universes where my life is perfect. Well maybe there is because you never know, but as far as I know, I'm the only me there is, and I'm here because God planned it.

I hear it all the time, God planned it, God is good, God guided me here, but I often don't know what stuff like that means until it happens. Then I understand a little better. God has the big picture, and I don't. He has this crazy "master plan" (I hear that word all the time too, and it sounds cliche... but not now, when I've experienced part of that) with all these twists and turns. One little twist and I think he's doing something to inconvenience me, to make me struggle. But months later, years later, then I see what he was up to. He was making me stronger. He was teaching me a lesson. Maybe some things I'll never know in my entire life.

God is good... I'm just very small and get full of myself when I can do things by myself. Man, I hear these things all the time, I even get frustrated sometimes hearing it, but when it happens to me, there really are no better words.

Sketchydaily

I just found this subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/SketchDaily

I'm so happy I found it, because it takes away some of the laziness. I had thought about sketching daily before just to practice, but I never knew what to draw and I just stopped after a while because I didn't have inspiration. Now, every day there's something new to draw, so it's good practice! :)

Wonder how long I can keep this up.

Also, I have a habit of buying pretty notebooks especially if they're cheap. I don't even need them. I have so many. I just love the feeling of opening them, smelling the virgin pages. They're blank and waiting to be filled. To become something, a journal, a story, a rage-dumpster, whatever. I had this big sketchbook thing for a while. I thought I would write in it, but recently I'd been writing a lot of things on the computer.

And now, perfect! I have a reason to use it. YAY!

Whimsy