Feels good to be back.

Well, hello there....its been awhile hasn’t it. If you haven’t been following me on Facebook then you wouldn’t know that I have recently started going back to school. It took me a long time to make that decision, but after one term I feel like it was a good decision for myself. I'm still not quite sure what I am going to school for exactly, but I think working that out while going to school will help me. It’s been very nice to get that feeling of encouragement and that feeling of being smart again. It’s building confidence to push me to higher things. Things like trigonometry and calculus use to be things I thought of as only what the “smart people” do. I have broken through that feeling after talking to my math teacher last term and a coworker who is a math major. I don’t know if I will be the best at them, but I know that I'm no longer scared to take them on. That kind of thinking has been a very good improvement for myself and I am proud of myself for taking that step. 

So the two classes I took this last spring term was a math class and writing class. Math is still at a review level for me so I don’t want to talk about that much. What I do want to talk about is my writing class. Because I have found through this blog that writing is a good outlet and a powerful tool for me. I am a man of many ideas and thoughts and its very nice to have an audience that enjoys and respects that. So, I know there isn’t millions of people reading this blog, but I want to take the time to thank those that do. 

So thank you for listening and being a part of my life. = )

So, I haven’t posted an entry since March and that was very shortly before I started school. I didn’t however stop writing, my writing just became writing of a different sort. I’m out of school for the summer and want to take this time to catch you up and share the many things that are on my and have been on my mind over the last few months. I plan to share as many blog entries that I can over the summer before I start school again in the fall. So to kick things off I thought I might share one of the three papers I wrote for my writing class. It is the one I'm the most proud of. I got a B on it and I was a little discouraged by that at first. As I explained to many people who helped keep me stay positive about my writing that in the past I have gotten B’s I want to get A’s. I’m not just in school to “pass” I want to excel. I kept at it and didn’t get the A+ I wanted till the last paper and thankfully that one was worth the most points towards my grade. I did however learn a lot trying to push myself to get that A. It’s always a lesson and I am in school to learn.  I will say goodbye for now and pass you off to my paper about the feeling of place. What is place to you?

As always I bring this to you with love and pure D-Lite. = ) 

Home Within a Home

I have lived here in this apartment for over 3 years now. Everything inside this place is connected to me. From the moment I wake up in the morning to get ready for the day, to when I walk through the door after a long day of work. I have worked hard to make this place I call home. It is not the structure itself or the location itself that makes this place I live on earth my special place. It really is so much more.

Every year I take a step back and reassess my apartment and take time to get rid of anything that is cluttering up my space to keep things open. This was an important thing to keep in mind when implementing some feng shui techniques in my apartment. It’s as simple as walking through your front door and as you do, think about these thoughts, “Do I feel welcome? What are the first things I see? How do I feel when entering this place?” When I walk through the door of my apartment, I feel blessed to have a physical place to rest my head and that this is where I belong. The first thing that I see when I step into my home is my kitchen where I spend much of time cooking meals for myself, my family, and my friends. It is a place I feel very at home in because of the time spent there. The feelings I get when I enter my home are relief, freedom, and happiness. Not only do I feel free to be free and open in my apartment, I try very hard to allow those that come into my space to have the same freedom. To have a place that is free to say how you feel, be who you really are, and to be open to anything. The author Terry Tempest Williams in her essay “One Tree” talks about being humbled by the presence of this beautiful cottonwood tree near where she lives when she says, “In the presence of this tree, I am reduced to exactly what I am, simply another life form” (Williams). Walking into my place is very humbling to me. There is no distractions from the outside world. In my apartment I am surrounded by the things I love and things that make me who I am. No matter what life is outside my home, here in my home I am extremely humbled. Not only does my space provide a base of who I am, but my home also has always been a tool to help expand on the person I am. 

There are many physical things in my apartment that have become a part of what is home to me. Many of the things in my apartment are reminders or reflections to myself of who I am. Reminding myself of the things that make up who I am is very important to me, as it makes me feel at home within myself. Music is an important part of my life and has always been part of my home. Besides my CD collection taking up a big portion of the living room, there usually is music playing in the background. That has been carried over from when I was at my father’s house growing up. There is something so relaxing and refreshing to me about music playing. Even the simple things like sitting on my couch and looking out the window brings such peace to me. The plants on my patio are always inviting and welcoming to me and help keep me connected to nature even though I live within the city limits. Then there is my extremely comfortable bed that I love so dearly as well. Because what is having a place to rest your head if you don’t have an excellent place to actually do that? These things help me keep track of who I am no matter where I go and that is why I feel they are important part of my home and that I feel I can pack my home up and move anywhere. 

There are many great things about the environment surrounding the location I live in currently. But if I was given the opportunity to live in a different location, whether similar or very different from where I live right now, I assure you my home would still be very much the same. You think that by living in Oregon my whole life I would completely feel at home here. It’s true there are many great things about Oregon I love, from the vibrant green that fills the state of Oregon during the days of spring to the leaves changing to brilliant colors of yellow, orange, and red in the fall. I also like the fact that I can experience so many different geographical locations without leaving the state. Being able to drive about an hour or two in any direction can give you a nice change of scenery. I have lived in many places within this state since I left my mother’s nest and each one of those places I lived in had things that I find important to a place I call home far past where is was located. Okay, so what if you had to live in Antarctica or in the middle of the desert instead of the lush green vegetation that makes up Oregon. Would that change what is your home? No. For me home is a lot more than the beauty that is around where my home may rest. I have traveled many places and each time I come back to where I live, its not just the beauty and wonder that the state of Oregon has that makes me feel home again. It’s walking through the door at my apartment that gives me this feeling of place. Other things that I like about living where I do is having a family that lives close by so that they can be a part of my daily life, having my own space to create or play, and also a place to just be. Speaking of a place to just be sometimes I will turn everything off in my apartment and open all the windows so that I can hear the freeway near by. That sound of the freeway over the years I have spent here has become as soothing to me as a river flowing down a mountainside, constant and never ending. In the essay “Homeplace” by Scott Russell Sanders he takes a moment to talk about the spiritual side of connecting to a place through words he found from a Zen master named Thich Nhat Hanh. Sanders translates in his own words what that lesson from the Zen master said by saying, “If you stay put, your place may become a holy center, not because it gives you special access to the divine, but because in your stillness you hear what might be heard anywhere” (Sanders 103). This idea of carrying a feeling of place within yourself no matter where you go I think is very powerful. I also feel that if you learn the ability to create that space for yourself in one place you can create it anywhere, it doesn’t matter the location. See having a place in this world to me is more about what travels with you than where exactly those things you bring with you rest or are placed in this world. 

So it may seem that it is my apartment that I call my home from the reasons that I have mentioned, but that would be a little misleading. The fact that I feel at home in my apartment is true, only it’s not the actual apartment I live in itself that that gives me that feeling of being at home. It’s not the airplane landing on the ground of the state I lived my whole life that gives me that feeling of home. It’s not the physical things that I have within my apartment. It’s what those things mean to me that I carry with me from place to place. I have lived in several places in my life and each one felt like home when I lived there. In fact, many people who have visited the places I lived in have told me that my place feels homey. This holds true for the good places I lived in to the not so good places I lived in over the years, each place I have made my home. The items I have or specific things I do to make my home in any place I live have moved with me and have been learned over the course of my time here on this planet and is always evolving with me as I go. I do believe it is important for people to look outward in life at the world around them that makes up or interacts with what they believe to be their home or place in this world. I find it more important to go inward as well to create a home within yourself that can travel wherever you are, because I believe until you find a place within yourself, no matter where you go, it will never feel like home.

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Works Cited 

Sanders, Scott Russell. “Homeplace.” Seeing & Writing. Ed. Donald McQuade and Christine McQuade. New York: Bedford, 2000. 101-104. Print.

Williams, Terry Tempest. “One Tree.” Wood Notes Quarterly Summer. 2001. Print.