Monday, January 31, 2011

homeless ministry and police citations

I'm going to attempt to update my blog daily so that I can get used to writing again. Most days' posts will probably be short and boring, but this should help me to evaluate my day-to-day activities and get me back into the blogging mood. Oh, and I'll start using capital letters to make it a bit more formal (no change for grammar or sentence structure just yet).

Today's post, unfortunately, does have an interesting twist.

My classes started at 8am with organic chemistry.
My classes ended at 10am with metabolic biochemistry.
I baked bacon macaroni and cheese at 12pm.
I ate bacon macaroni and cheese at 2pm.
I studied at the library from 2.30pm-5.30pm with a huge nap in between.

So much for the boring stuff.

6.30pm was homeless ministry with PULSE. I was rather excited to go visit the homeless, especially with a few extra people from my homegroup. Strangely enough, I noticed that God likes to complicate my life in a millions of ways while I'm here on the UCSD campus, and today was no exception.

The first thing I notice is that I lost all the connection I had at PULSE. Why? I don't know, but surely enough I've now become a stranger here. Things don't get better out on the streets either; I've lost the ability to speak anything meaningful to the homeless and they notice. I'm rather unsure as to why my public speaking has diminished so much in the past year that it's now become a full-blown phobia.

And so, the whole time I was out there, I was rather distracted. I was not able to put myself forward, but played a rather insignificant supporting role here. Ashley was on the brink of shedding tears of joy listening to one guy speak; I, on the other hand, felt nothing of it. It's not that Ashley is too emotional, it's that I'm too emotionless. His stories are quite inspiring indeed, but I felt nothing. I'm not trying to be heartless; I'm sympathetic to each of their individual situations, but alas, I feel nothing.

That's one reason why people hate talking to me. Cause they realize that they're talking to the surface level me who pretends to care. Unfortunately, they're usually spot on even if they don't consciously think about it--they see the me I strive to be and not the real me who's frightfully insensitive. There's no true passion in me for anything; it's not my nature. Perhaps I should retrieve my previously discarded dream to be extraordinarily ordinary. To always aim for the minimum. To stay in the shadows. To dream to not dream.

Sigh. That's a depressing thought.

On the trip back to UCSD, an even more frightening event would occur: our car would get pulled over by the police! Now, I've never been in any car that has been pulled over by a police car, and really, really freaked me out. My driver's citation would be not only for speeding, but also for my apparently incredibly indiscrete attempt to put on my seat belt. At least that's what I think: if I hadn't tried to put on my seat belt, he might not have noticed. And so, now I have an incredible guilt looming over my head for causing an extra $142 the driver probably didn't have to pay. As of now, I plan to contribute to the cost of the ticket next time I see her. That won't alleviate the guilt, but I 'spose it'll help to lessen the burden. Sigh... police are really such jerks. I don't respect them at all.

A while ago, I postulated a theory that non-academic bad luck will follow me wherever I go as long as I'm here at UCSD. I honestly don't know why; I'd like to find out for myself. But strangely, bad things most good students don't experience have been happening to me on a regular basis since I entered here. Here's a few I can list off the top of my head: academic misconduct in which case someone copied off my lab report, properly locked bicycle gets stolen in daylight during class, copyright violation caused by torrenting through vpn which I didn't do, and most recently getting jury duty on a day with a midterm here in san diego due to voting last year. And now, I suffer the guilt of not wearing a seat belt.

Looking back at my old posts, my very first one goes like this:
"my goal this year: having faith to pray dangerous prayers."

In all honesty, I still want it... but I'm really afraid.

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