Fascinating... It be 2010...

It has recently come to my attention that the year is not 2009 anymore. This realization has been somewhat of an irritation in situations such as check writing. The realization that you just screwed up your check blank after you've already filled out the rest of it, the irritated look from the other party to your sheepish look as you fumble with another check... Things like that. However, since it is in fact a new year, this also means that I have not yet posted on my "blog" this year (and the debate about whether or not I posted last year is still going on). Since the former realization leads quite nicely to the latter realization, it seems logical to me to boot my dead laptop battery from the front page by posting something new. In December of last year, I graduated from New Tribes Bible Institute with an associates degree in biblical studies. Hence, I am no longer residing in the frozen cheese-laden-northern-territories-of-WI aforementioned in previous posts, but am back in the promised land of Littleton CO. My plan for future career plans has also changed somewhat significantly. I had been thinking that I would go to pilot school and eventually go into missionary pilot work. My thoughts were influenced by being at a bible school with a missions emphasis, and having had an indecisive frame of mind for quite some time, I thought "why not? it's directly involved with missionary work, and it's pretty clear God wants the church to do missions". Some other factors came to mind however that have changed my mind. While talking with my dad about my plans, he made a good point. He said that definitely the church is to be involved in missions work, but missions work is much more than the guy on the front line. He used the illustration of the fact that for every soldier on the battlefield, there are eight people supporting him in various ways. Those eight people behind the lines make the soldier's job possible, and cannot be counted as not involved in the battle. In the same way, people on the home front supporting missionaries have no less an important job, are no less involved, and God isn't going to tell them "I'm not as happy with you as I am with this guy, because you didn't go to the jungle like he did." This got me thinking about something my brother-in-law's father told me when I asked for help in figuring out plans (he's got significant counseling experience in this area). He said, after I told him my story so far, that it seems like up until now, I have let life happen to me, instead of happening to life. All this got me thinking about my thought processes over the years. Before I considered piloting, I was thinking that I would go to the police academy after bible school, and become a police officer. Why was I considering that? Because I thought it to be a profession that wouldn't require me to learn a-lot of math. What is it about math that intimidates me? My last three math classes were as follows: I dropped out of calc 2 after slogging through it, not understanding much, not getting good help from the professor, and not being able to finish my homework due to a glitchy computer homework system, before that I managed to plug through calc 1, which I got a bad start on and only passed with a C with a-lot of one on one help from the professor, before that, I took a trig class taught by a professor who had terrible handwriting, went very fast, and had a very thick accent. When I had trouble understanding things at the beginning of the class, the professor ridiculed me and implied that I had cheated my way through math to get to this point, and therefore he wouldn't bother to help me. Before that, I took college algebra from a professor who explained things well and helped when he was asked, and I passed with an A... Wait a second, an A?? What were my thoughts about careers when I taking that class? At the time, I wasn't really intimidated by math, it was just work, and my career interests involved computers and engineering. Hold on a second... I'm still a nerd when it comes to computers, and I am fascinated by the engineering of electrical components such as circuit boards and computer controlled systems. Why aren't I pursuing technology careers anymore? It occurred to me that I wasn't pursuing my actual interests because I was intimidated by some bad experiences with math, and I had a less than accurate perspective on missions work. So, I have decided to man up, take life head on, and go for an electrical engineering degree. I made this decision a little late to get fully started at a college, but I have started a class in trigonometry to show this math thing that it aint got nuthin on me! As far as the degree goes, I'm considering going through a program called College Plus, which is designed to help you learn things faster and test for credit. Since this is an engineering degree, I won't be able to do the majority of my classes online like you might be able to do with a history degree for instance, but depending on how many credits I can transfer to the school I decide to go to, I may still be able to save a-lot of time and money on gen-ed classes. Talitha and I are still together, but we are long distance since I'm in CO and she's in MN. It's been a little tough, but I think we're learning a-lot about each other this way, and long distance won't last forever. If I think of anything profound to say and I also manage to think to post it here and also somehow get around to doing it, I'll post more at a later time.