The Challenge Of Writing

So Thursday night I heard this really fantastic man named Kevin Huggins give a talk on purpose and meaning and all kinds of really wonderful things. And he challenged us all to prayerfully consider what God’s overarching purpose for our lives is.

Not in a stressful, oh I have to know right now or else kind of way, but in a practical, smart way.

I’m not going to be able to give you that concise, one-sentence answer Mr. Huggins told us to come up with. One day I can, but right now, I can’t.

I don’t know what the purpose of my life is. I have an idea or two what God is nudging me towards right now, but I don’t think I could say with definite confidence, “THIS is why I am alive.”

And I think that’s okay for right now. I think in a lot of ways, God is offering me His Hand to hold while I figure out a lot of things with Him right now.

But I also know that I need to acknowledge more things that have been instilled in me that are talents, not just weird habits I try to hide.

Which translates to writing.

So after listening to the brilliant Kevin Huggins talk, and then getting the enormous privilege of talking one-on-one with him for a little bit after his talk, I decided to give myself a challenge and see where it goes, which is to write every day for 40 days, and then post it on this’a’here blog.

I thought about giving myself more specific rules, like write an emotion-filled blogpost, or write a continuous story, or write blah blah blah, but I know that I know that I know that I will fail if I give myself those kinds of rules.

So the rule is to just write.

That will look different every day. And that’s okay.

The point is to just write.

So you’re welcome to ignore my blog for the next 40 days, or you’re welcome to glance at what the writing is once in awhile, or whatever.

This is my challenge to myself. And I happen to think it’s a pretty great one for me right now.

Onto the challenge.

"I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken."

            It’s been seven months since I moved back home.

And it’s about time I get to write this blog post.

I took a job in North Carolina after college and proceeded to be miserable for fifteen months.

I can look back on that time now and see the things I needed to be taught by God, the things I desperately needed to learn on my own, and how being utterly alone for a little while did both tremendous good in so many ways for me.

I thought about leaving NC a lot during the year and a half I was there. Working a terrible schedule, coming home to a cat and no friends every single night, and dealing with drama from multiple coworkers makes one question what the point of everything is.

But I held on. My parents supported my every decision, but they were worried about me like good parents should be and encouraged me coming back home.

But I still held on.

I’ve never been very good about hearing God’s voice, whether through instinct or hearing the Holy Spirit whisper to my heart. My usual thoughts go something like, “Was that God? No, it was probably just indigestion.”

But when I was in North Carolina, I kept having this feeling like I should stay till December. It wasn’t like I saw the word December written in a burning bush or physically heard God say, “Stay till December,” I just thought, yeah, that makes sense.

So when December came, I knew that it was time for me to leave. Through different things that happened the last month or so, it became obvious it was time for me to go. I had learned everything I was going to learn, and I so strongly felt that God was telling me I was done there. That He had a new plan for me.

If I had known His plan was for me to live at home with no job or prospects for seven months, I might not have moved back.

So thank God He didn’t reveal that to me.

It’s funny, I actually had this confident thought that I was going to live at home for three months, find an awesome job in Knoxville, and move out by the fifth month.

I thought giving God three months was ample time for Him to find me a job. I wasn’t even asking for the perfect job. I just wanted to work somewhere I could be proud of.

It is very possible that I will look back later in life on these past seven months as being the most trying time of my life.

I won’t bore you with all of the emotions and ups and downs I went through since January. It would take too long. What I will do is tell you about the past two months.

Actually, I’ll start about three ish months ago.

I decided a little over three months ago that it had been too long since I moved home, that I needed to do something about not having had a job since December. So I thought the best course of action was to get a random part time job.

It’s not all that hard to get a part time job at the mall when you have a college degree. So I quickly found a job at a clothing store in the mall, went in for an interview, and was offered the job the next day. Which I didn’t take.

In between me going home after the interview and the call the next day, things got bad. I hate saying phrases like mental breakdown or emotional meltdown because do you know how dramatic that sounds? I have worked ridiculously hard since high school to not be that dramatic kid, and I will violently push aside any hints of drama that come about these days.

If you need a laugh or just a break from all this talking, here's something to brighten up your day. 

So let’s just call it a slip.

I slipped on my own brain and fell down hard.

I was angry at God for having to resort to working at a clothing store in the mall. I was angry my college degree that I worked my butt off to get suddenly seemed worthless. I was angry that I have never not had to work hard to get something for myself. I was angry that I was a 24 year old college graduate living at home with my parents without a job, single as can be.

I could feel myself becoming a bitter person, and that’s honestly something I never thought I would become. I didn’t deserve to have a part time job, I deserved to be living in New York writing short stories and making millions of dollars. I deserved to be in Los Angeles working as a casting director for big blockbusters.

So I turned down the part time job and let myself become overwhelmed with bitterness. It was so much easier that way.

Fast forward to a little over a month ago. I still have no job, I still am living at home.

This is a little bit what I looked like.

I’m not even sure what spurred me on to start volunteering. Maybe it was watching my mother volunteer at the hospital every week or thoughts back to when I volunteered at a hospital in North Carolina. Whatever it was, I abandoned all thought of a part time job to fill my days and started looking for a place to volunteer.

That’s when I stumbled onto The Salvation Army.

For those of you who don’t know, The Salvation Army of Knoxville houses men, women, and children. Which means they need to feed the residents three times a day. They have a few paid workers who make the food and serve it, but they desperately need help. That’s where I came in.

As odd as it may sound, I fell in love with The Salvation Army from the first day I volunteered. It’s a simple shift: Help prepare the lunch, serve the lunch cafeteria-woman-style to the residents, help clean up, help start dinner.

Maybe it was the fact that I finally wasn’t always thinking about me me me. Maybe it was the fact that even though some of these men who lived there who I served lunch to have miserable, sad lives, they can still be cheerful as they go through my lunch line, still crack jokes with me and make me smile, still thank me countless times over for doing something so simple as feeding them a meal.

I think sometimes we forget just how powerful a smile or a laugh or a silly, corny joke can be. When these men come through my line and tell me jokes that don’t even make sense but they crack themselves up just telling it, when they smile at me, some of them missing teeth or just having scary grins similar to that of Michael Fassbender, when they tell me I should come more than two days a week because I’m the nicest cafeteria lady they’ve ever had, I go home with a full heart.

I was having a conversation with a woman the other day from a church I’ve been attending and we were talking about how I don’t have a job and volunteering and everything, I found myself telling her that I was glad right now I didn’t have a job because The Salvation Army has been the best thing in the world for me.

I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth.

On the drive home that night, I felt for the first time in seven months that everything would be okay. Yes, I was constantly stressed about finding a job, yes, I was still living at home, yes, I didn’t have much going for me in my life, but it was okay.

Sidenote, that song has become my anthem. So thanks, Matt Thiessen. 

I gave my whole life to God several years ago, and got a tattoo on my body to remind me of that: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

I got these words tattooed on my body for a reason: To have a constant, visible reminder that it doesn’t matter how I think my life should go. It belongs to God.

If he wants me to be without a job for seven months, okay.

Please understand, I do not in any way say those words lightly. I teared up just writing them down. It has taken me seven months to be able to really really really believe them.

I found Psalm 37 today completely by accident, and I think David, the author, must have found some kind of time machine, traveled to our time, observed my life the past few months, then written this chapter for me and about me.

“… Trust in the LORD and do good… Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him… Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil… The meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity… The LORD laughs at the wicked, for He knows their day is coming… The LORD upholds the righteous… The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously… The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with His Hand… I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken… The LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones… Hope in the LORD and keep His Way… The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in Him.”

I know this post is very long, but bear with me just a moment longer.

I have a job now. It took seven months and 217 job applications, but it is here. It is only temporary for right now because it’s through a temp agency, so I am only guaranteed two months’ full time work. So I still can’t move out of my parents’ house, I still can’t be an Independent Adult, whatever that means.

But I don’t even care.

If this job doesn’t work out full time, if in two months the company decides not to ask me to stay on, I will be sad, but I won’t fall into despair.

God knows what’s up and what He’s doing.

I might think He’s crazy, I might question His timing, I might yell and scream and cry at Him for making me go through incredibly hard and lonely times, but in the end, my life is not my own. It belongs to God. And He is big enough and generous enough that I should always always always trust Him with it.

It sounds so simple when you write it out like that.

I’m taking this quote out of context, but there’s a Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock yells at someone, “Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it.”

How very, very true, my darling Sherlock.

"The whistle makes me their god." Dean Winchester may deserve my love, but the Supernatural writers do not

            I saw a post about this television show I watch called Supernatural on The Internet today that made me angry and annoyed, which turned into me looking up other things on The Internet about this show that annoy me and start a vent session in my head and then suddenly I remembered something.

            I don’t just have to vent in my head, I have a blog. That I rarely ever utilize. Let me utilize it for a vent session about this show that I both hate and adore.

            So this is my love hate blog on a CW show called Supernatural.

            I think most people have at least heard of this show (Lord knows if you know me, you’ve heard plenty about it) but if not, allow me to provide a brief description.

            Supernatural, boiled down, is a show about two brothers, Sam and Dean, who travel around the continental U.S. hunting down general evil things such as monsters and demons and the like who are pestering or killing humankind. In the first season, John, the father of the brothers, goes missing while searching for a demon that killed the boys’ mother, and Dean and Sam team up after several years apart to find him, and along the way, help people who have encountered evil in various forms.

            That is the show I fell in love with.

            I fell in love with Dean Winchester, the older brother, who is protective of his brother Sam to a fault, willing to do literally anything to keep his brother from harm.

            I fell in love with Sam Winchester, who was raised by his older brother Dean, and looks up to him and loves him even when he can’t stand him.

            I fell in love with the relationship between the two brothers, how they bicker just like normal siblings, how they tease and make fun of each other, how they depend and rely on each other for everything because they are pretty much all the other has.

            These two characters Sam and Dean have become my best friends in a way that only fictional characters can. I have obsessed over their lives, writing too many fanfictions to count about them, read too many fanfictions to count about them, imagined on a regular basis what it would be like to travel around with them and hunt monsters with them, and just in general fallen in love with these two brothers.

            I applaud the writers of this show for taking the time in the earlier seasons to develop these two characters, revealing little by little who they are and what they have been through. And I applaud the writers for the small, subtle things they do in the later seasons that give us character development.

            But therein lies the problem.

            Fictional characters should be constantly evolving, just like real life human beings. They should change and learn from their mistakes just like real life human beings. This is how we relate to the characters, how they become real for us.

            And yet the writers of the show insist on having Sam and Dean make the same mistakes in season 9 as they made in season 1. Or we see character development and get so excited only for the development to seemingly be forgotten in the very next episode.

            Someone on The Internet made the best and worst comment summing up the development of Supernatural the other day: “This episode again mentioned the great water pressure of Sam and Dean’s new bunker. Meaning the water pressure in Supernatural is the most consistent thing in the entire series.”

            In no better way is this proved than in Dean Winchester’s sex life.

            From season one, the viewers are aware of Dean’s promiscuity, of his jumping from bed to bed, of his hitting on quite literally any girl that comes his way. This is who Dean is. Or so we think.

            About halfway through season one, the viewers learn that Dean in fact was in a committed relationship for a time when Sam went off to college. He was so infatuated with this girl that he even told her the “family secret” about hunting monsters, a thing that it is inferred he has never, ever done before. And we also learn that this girl broke his heart and dumped him. Meaning that yes, Dean Winchester can in fact have a serious relationship.

            After this episode, I, being drawn in to an obsession with this show, began to think about why Dean hops into bed with numerous women. And it occurred to me that he never was told not to.

            Dean and Sam’s father, John, was incredibly absent from their lives as kids, dumping them at hotels alone for days on end to hunt for a demon that killed their mom, leaving a very young Dean to take care and raise Sam. Through different flashbacks in different episodes, we learn that John was never there for Dean, missing birthdays and Christmases because he was too busy hunting, leaving Dean to raise not only Sam, but also himself. Dean never got a parent growing up; he had to learn to be his own parent. The closest thing he had to a parent was Bobby, a family friend who would occasionally watch the boys for John.

            So did anybody ever tell Dean how to behave like a gentleman? He certainly never saw any examples of healthy couples: His mom died when he was four, and Bobby’s wife died before Dean met her.

            I’m not excusing Dean’s multiple sex partner lifestyle – we all have a moral compass that tells us right from wrong. I’m just pointing out that there are so many reasons why Dean might have chosen this kind of promiscuity in his life.

            But over the seasons, I feel like we find out all these things about Dean’s love life, and we realize there is so much more to him that just an a-hole who sleeps around a lot. In one season, we even see him attempt to settle down with an old girlfriend Lisa and become a father to her son. Lots of dramatic things happen with that, and he ends up having all of their memories of him erased so they can live a normal life. And we see how devastated he is that he has to do this because he loves this family he’s formed.

            And slowly, season by season, we see Dean sleeping with less and less girls. We still see him flirt, but we don’t see him jumping into bed quite as often. We see him making more lasting relationships, like with Lisa, and even see him become actual friends with girls (Charlie and Jodie).

            What I took from this is maybe sleeping around for Dean was a way of coping with things in his life. He knew his dad would make him move around so much, so just having casual sex was a way to avoid getting hurt by having to tell girlfriends goodbye. Or maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he didn’t need people since everyone, even his family, left him, so he didn’t need relationships, he was fine with just sleeping around. But then, the less we see him sleeping around, the more he becomes depended on real relationships with others. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that Dean was learning to respect women more.

            This, my friends, is character development.

            And then. Randomly, in a recent episode, we see Dean have sex with a random girl, basically out of nowhere. And the reason he has sex with this girl? Bad writing. The writers wrote themselves into a corner, honestly, and needed Dean to have random sex with this girl in order to continue the plot.

            Not only did Dean just have random sex with this girl, it was a girl who had taken a pledge of celibacy for several years. And with a cheesy pickup line and a wink from Dean, she forgets her vows and hops into bed with him. Dean knew she had taken this vow, but he didn’t care. He wanted to have sex, so he did, without thinking of anything but his groin. And after they had sex, the girl was never mentioned again. Ever. Dean felt no remorse for what happened, and it was never talked about again.

            So after nine seasons of character development, the writers destroyed everything.

            The Dean I had come to love and respect, the Dean I had seen change so much in his love life, was gone in a heartbeat because the writers needed an out.

            How is this at all respectful to the character? How is this consistent? How is this fair to Dean, let alone to me as a viewer?

            I don’t know of anything that disappoints me more as a writer than when writers are not respectful of their own characters.

            There is a difference between having a character make a mistake and learning something from it and bad, lazy writing.

            And lately, bad, lazy writing sums up Supernatural pretty well.

            Don’t know what to do with this one character? Let’s just kill him and say it’s to advance the plot. (I will never, ever get over Kevin Freaking Solo’s death. IT WAS THE MOST UNNECESSARY CHARACTER DEATH IN THE HISTORY OF CHARACTER DEATHS.)

            Don’t know how to show the brothers have issues? Let’s just repeat THE SAME STORYLINE WE’VE ALREADY COVERED FOUR TIMES of having Dean so utterly dependent on Sam he does whatever it takes, regardless of Sam’s desires, to save him. (Hey, writers, remember in season two when an overarching theme of the whole season was when Dean told Sam that what was dead should stay dead?)

            Don’t know how to show Cas is trying to figure out being human? Let’s just have him jump into bed with a girl for honestly no reason whatsoever.

            Don’t know how to bring in more viewers? Let’s just give the show a weird religious agenda, amp up the violence, and hope for the best.

            Allow me a moment to state that my favourite episodes have always been the funny ones, ones where Sam and Dean encounter a monster who is turning a town into a literal Looney Toons cartoon town, complete with falling anvils and dorky sound effects. The ones where Dean dies 108 times because they accidently end up in a Mystery Spot town, and Sam gets stuck in a loop where Dean dies every day in a Groundhog Day esque style episode, and Dean dies in the most hilarious, outrageous ways possible. The ones where Dean gets transported to 1940 and discovers his inner fan girl for ganster policemen and nice suits. The ones where the only witness to a murder is a dog, so Dean takes a potion that turns him into a dog for 24 hours and hilarity ensues.

            These episodes prove the writers know how to write comedy. But lately they just seem to refuse to do so, rather writing about things like nuns becoming demons or angels turning evil and murdering priests.

            If I wanted to watch scary religious things, I’d just watch The Exorcist.

            And let’s not forget Dean’s drinking problem.

            Remember how I spent the majority of this blog talking about Dean’s love life? There’s also the issue of his drinking problem too.

            I think Sam said it best in like season five: “No premarital sex and no alcohol? Dean, this town’s just cut out like 80 percent of your character traits.”

            Over the seasons, we saw Dean’s drinking get worse and worse. The writers made an effort to point it out to us, proving time and time again that Dean dealt with problems by drinking and having sex. It was hammered into our heads that Dean was an alcoholic.

            And then Sam and Dean found themselves an established home in season eight. They found out they were Men Of Letters and found the abandoned Men Of Letters Bunker and moved in.

            They had a home, something Dean hadn’t truly had since he was four years old.

            The writers made a point to show us how important this was to Dean, having him unpack and move into his own room, setting up pictures of his family, getting on Sam for not making his room feel homey.

            In the first season, we saw Dean sleeping in his boxers and T-shirt, but as the show progressed, we would see Dean sleep fully clothed, even with his shoes on, a gun under his pillow. But when they moved into the Bunker, the writers made a point to show us a sleeping Dean in his boxers and T-shirt again, even have a scene with him making coffee in the morning in a robe.

            They made a point to show us Dean drinking coffee, not alcohol. We saw him cook dinner for Sam, even going so far as to have Dean say in one episode that he was “nesting” and liking it. We see him having a beer with his homemade burger, as if to say he drinks a beer with dinner, not twenty beers to drink away his sorrows.

            And then.

            As if because the writers weren’t sure what else to do, they wrote in Dean getting the Mark Of Cain, a special weapon that would allow him to kill one of the main baddies of the season. The Mark began to take over him. And how did we see it begin to take over him?

            We began to see him drinking again.

            After all this time, after all the things the writers intentionally showed us to prove he was better, Dean begins drinking again.

            And not just drinking.

            It’s like all of the sudden, his alcoholism is back in full swing. We see him drink an entire bottle of vodka (or some kind of alcohol) in basically one sitting.

            To some extend, I understand what the writers were doing. They were trying to show how the Mark was changing Dean, that it was corrupting Dean. They were showing how Dean was letting it because he was willing to go through any kind of self mutilation in order to rid the world of a bad baddie.

            But writers, I want to scream, we established that back in season 4! And again in season 6! And again in season 8! And remember that one season where Dean went to Purgatory and was basically okay with it?

Why must we keep rehashing the same story lines over and over and over again?!?

Don’t even get me started on the sexism on the show, how the writers think good writing is killing off or getting rid of literally every single love interest for both Sam and Dean. Before Lisa, Dean had a sort of thing for this one awesome girl hunter named Jo Harvelle. But heaven forbid we allow Meagan’s ultimate OTP live – we must kill Jo now!

And don’t get me started on side characters, which the writers also seem to think is synonymous with dying, even if their deaths are THE STUPIDEST, MOST OBVIOUS EXAMPLE OF LAZY WRITING IN EXSISTENCE, cough Kevin cough. Let’s just list a few side characters that I have been in love with over the seasons who the writers have killed off: Benny, Samandriel, Death (yes, Death was a character and he was awesome), Anna, Jo, the entire Harvelle family, Bobby, Kevin, John, Bela, Adam, Chuck, Gadreel, Balthazar.

Just to name a few.

Yes, there are more I could name.

So here’s what all this ranting and raving has ultimately been about: I love Supernatural because the writers have an uncanny ability to create characters that are wonderful and complex.

Seriously, do you know how hard it is to write a character that is a human turned vampire pirate who loves killing baddies in Purgatory but when he comes back to earth he is sweet and kind and steals blood from blood drives because he wants to find a way to be “human” because he saw what being true to his vampire ways did to his once girlfriend? Do you know how hard it is to write this kind of character without it being as cheesy as it sounds when I write the description? Do you know how hard it is to write any “vegetarian vampire” character without it sounding like Edward Cullen? Benny was only in six episodes, but my love for that character is so strong it’s up there on the list with Sherlock Holmes.

So I watch this show because of these characters, because they have come alive and become my friends, and I don’t know how to abandon my friends.

But the way Supernatural has been going, especially this past season, I might have to see my friends in fanfiction form only.

When writers of fanfiction handle character development and respect for the characters better than the actual writers of the show, you know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Whew.

That was a mouthful.

Sorry not sorry.