i love reading. i love writing. i love people watching. i love playing piano. i love listening to really good worship music - and by good i mean something i've connected to. i love talking to people i love. i love talking to people that love me. i love talking to random people when i can be my random self. i love listening to people talk about something they are passionate about.

i don't love when people around me are hurting. i don't love feeling so far away. i don't love feeling useless. i don't love feeling my passion dripping away.

but back to the reading...

i think that i've had a nose stuck in a book for my whole growing up years - i will read almost anything: chick lit, christian chick lit, fiction, non-fiction, the classics, trashy romances, poetry, adventure, whatever... if you look at the list running down the side of my blog you will see what i have on my shelf in north bay - oh wait - and that was before christmas and i added a bunch of books to the stack - i will read anything.

i think that i've been watching people forever as well. i think it's a natural part of life. i think that working in an environment where watching people was part of the job really heightened this in all aspects of my life and i quickly forget to look away when people catch me staring... it's a job hazard - not my fault :P

in the past couple of years i've started to read and write in blogs. i love reading peoples' blogs. it's like a combination of my favourite things - i get to read, and i get to watch them. there are blogs that i read as often as they are updated, and others that i find that i read from start to finish and never look at again. i like reading about other peoples' journeys. i feel i can comprehend other situations and i can see how someone dealt with it and i can then modify their reaction to suit my needs. another job hazard is that you are always preparing yourself for the worst to happen. while at work you figure out plans of actions for everything from 'how to get the man that weighs more then everyone working at the time combined, who likes to sit at the bottom of the pool, out if he were to die' to 'how would you evacuate the pool if someone came in with a gun/knife' to 'how to get a vsa victim out of the pool when they're in the middle lane and you don't want to do cpr on the bulkhead'. [strap him to a spine board and use the chair lift for leverage to get him out, preferably lock the gunman in a closet - otherwise first get everyone under the awning and then get them out via the 'secret door', whistle/close airway and pull him under or over the closest rope/have staff or patrons drop the other ropes] unfortunately for me, this also translates into real life. 'what will you do if a guy with a gun comes into your classroom' or whatever. basically what i'm saying here is - i need to feel prepared for things - in order to feel prepared i have to have thought of every possible situation and given thought about what i would do in each of those situations. if you were on the fence as to whether or not i was insane - this is your proof.

a friend and i used to talk about random people in our program all the time [i say "used to" because we're not in the same program anymore so it's much harder :P]. anyways we used to speculate about the holes in their lives that we weren't sure about - and have a really good time doing it. but the point: we would finish this speculation with a laugh and a hope - that people were doing this about us.. tell me if this is weird: in my odd need for belonging - it is my hope that random people talk about me - that they fill in the holes for themselves...

i need the randomness back in my life. i need the purpose back. i need to find peace with where i'm at.
it's coming - and it'll be good.
sorry bout the randomness --- that had to get out.