Matt’s Blog

So almost every afternoon the guys from the lab upstairs ask me to play cards or go out or something. No problems here I like playing cards, I like going out, and I usually like somethings. Furthermore, I like the guys from the lab upstairs. Even when the something they ask me to go to is the strip club and I have to awkwardly explain that while I am into girls, I’m not into naked ones that I am not married to. The problem is that we get to talking and playing, drinking, whatever and before you know it I’ve spent 4 hours doing nothing productive. That’s half a work day (or 1/6 a grad student work day). The whole time I’m trying to enjoy hanging out and being social I’m thinking, “man, I really need to be working.” But if I don’t go play I just sit there at the computer and think, “man, I really want to be hanging out.”

It’s gotten to the point now that I’ve decided it’s better not to know what else could be going on so I don’t have to make a choice and feel guilty. I’m pretty sure this is not normal…

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/stuff-white-people-like-the-book/

A few weeks ago Joel Thomas gave a sermon at Buckhead Church than talked about the three factors that makeup a person’s identity:

• Who You Know
• What You Do
• Who You Are

Joel, in typical “let’s talk about me” fashion (ok he has been getting better… somewhat) described how we often focus all our effort and energy on the first two while neglecting the third. Society places far more emphasis on what we do and who we know than what makes up who we are. After all, when you introduce yourself you usually say, “Hi, I’m Matt and I’m a Civil Engineer” or, “Hi, I’m Matt and I work with …” What we don’t say is, “Hi, I’m Matt and I’m an honest, hard-working guy.”

Joel related a story (surprise!) about how when he was younger and single a mentor of his asked if he had a written list of values he was looking for in a spouse, which, like most single Christian men he had probably not only written down, but also agonized over for hours days months years. His mentor then asked how many of the traits on his list could be applied to him. Ouch. Joel explained that he saw this list as an opportunity to define who he wanted to “be” without the baggage of what he did or who he knew. To define his true identity. I like the tie in with what you are looking for in a spouse, because I think that often-times we are more willing to demand positive traits in our future significant other that we are unwilling to work on in ourselves.

The challenge, which was followed up with a blog post, was for each of us to determine “who we are” in the same fason. Honestly, I hadn’t written much down about who I wanted to be, so this was an interesting oppourtunity for personal exploration. Here’s my list:

• God-Fearing/Spiritually Mature
• Wise/Intelligent
• Attractive (Physical, Emotional, Spiritual)
• Caring/Self-Sacrificing
• Steady
• Fun(ny)

In the next few days I’d like to expand upon each one of those traits.

So at one time I planned to use the default wordpress theme for the blog until I was able to get my own design out of my head and into the computer. Clearly that will involve more work than I have time for right now, so I decided to go with this theme which I found while browsing Eric’s Blog. And that’s all I’m going to say about that because I have this thing about people talking about their blog… on their blog.

Heh…