The Awakening

The Awakening
by: Joseph M. Martin


I dreamed a dream,

A silent dream,

Of a land not far away.

Where no birds sang,

No steeples rang,

And teardrops fell like rain.

I dreamed a dream,

A silent dream

Of a land so filled with pride

That ev'ry song,

Both weak and strong,

Withered and died.

I dreamed a dream.

No alleluia,

Not one hosanna,

No song of love,

No lullaby.

And no choir sang to change the world.

No pipers played; no dancers twirled.

I dreamed a dream,

A silent dream.

Silent. Silent....

Awake! Awake! Awake! Awake!

Soli Deo Gloria! Awake! Awake!

Awake! Awake, my soul, and sing!

The time for praise has come.

The silence of the night has passed;

A new day has begun.

Let music never die in me!

Forever let my spirit sing!

Wherever emptiness is found,

Let there be joy and glorious sound.

Let music never die in me!

Forever let my spirit sing!

Let all our voices join as one

To praise the Giver of the song!

Awake! Awake!

Let music live!

Create

Everyone has a special talent, or hobby, something that they love to do to get their minds off of things. For some people it's sports, for some people it's going to a movie, or a movie, or even just simply listening to music. I know that as for me, there are two (well.. probably more than that but.. oh well) things that I know can get my mind off of things. My first love being music and secondly is something that I've only gotten into more recently. Within the past year, I have developed, a love, or, well, more of an obsession, for scrapbooking and card-making. It started around Halloween of last year, I decorated 5 Halloween cards for some of the "smaller" members of my family, and I absolutely LOVED it. Since then, I have made numerous cards for birthdays, weddings, and "for the heck of it" along with almost completely filling a scrapbook.
It's not just the fact alone that all of this stuff gives me an outlet for creativity, it's the reaction I get when the person that is the recipient, knows that I've spent special time on something just for them, rather than just buying a Hallmark card and sticking it in the mail. (Not saying that that is so horrible, because that's what most people do)

So here are a few of my older cards and/or pages:

This one is the inside of the Halloween card I sent Andrew:



This is the front of a wedding card I made for my cousin Devin:



... and this one is a scrapbook page I made of Kyle & I's 1 year anniversary:



These last two are my most recent


This one is a birthday card for my dad:



.. and this one is a birthday card for my mom:



I someday hope to do this (or something LIKE this) for a living, so if anyone knows of a job where creativity is main aspect, please let me know!

An Encouraging Word

I think that something I've personally been struggling with lately is just putting forth an effort to be more encouraging rather than negative and derogatory. I want to be treated with respect and kindness, yet I find myself not treating others that way. I don't think it's in an effort to 1up them, but I think it's just that the more I make others feel like nothing, the better I feel about myself (which is a lot to admit). I know "no one deserves to be treated that way" but I know i'm not the only one out there that does it, which doesn't make the situation any better, but just a word of encouragement to all of us downers out there, to try to reverse the situation. I know that for me, I can get reprimanded or scolded for a million things, and it'll really get me down, but if I get 1 simple compliment, or word of encouragement, it boosts my whole morale, and while I had forgotten half of the things I had done wrong, that someone had pointed out, I still remember the 1 thing that someone noticed that I was doing right, and that says a lot.
So my goal is this week is to find one person a day that maybe is having a hard week or day, or someone who I haven't talked to in a while, and just show them some kind words.
Btw... the person who made up the phrase

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"

... yeah, that person is a big fat liar! (no offense)

Spektator

So it's not like it's been a huge obligation for me to "figure out who I am" or "find my style" but recently I think that I have more closely narrowed down my genre of music that I particularly like. Well, I don't know about genre, but the artist Regina Spektor is currently my favorite. I don't know what it is about her that I like the most, because her lyrics don't even make sense most of the time, I think that it's the mere fact that she's different; she's not just another cliche artist who writes about love and heartache. If you listen to her music, you'll probably raise one eyebrow and walk away saying, "wow, that was... weird", but if you don't judge it immediately, you might actually like it, AND she has a great sense of style (in my opinion), which makes me like her even more. The other day I was at Target and actually saw her most recent CD. I wasn't sure if I should buy it, so i flipped for it, tails being buy it, heads being don't. First flip was tails, so I decided to go best 2 out of 3. Second flip was heads... then third was tails, so I sucked it up and payed for music (which I rarely do), hoping that it wouldn't be too weird, but just the right amount of weird. I put it into my new stereo, courtesy of Troy Wibberley ;), and the purchase was a success! So if anyone knows of any other artists that may fit in this category, please, feel free to enlighten me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM

Bones

So about two weeks ago I had this weird craving to sit down and watch a whole bunch of episodes of a t.v. show (preferably a show that I was already following), and I told Kyle about it, but he had a ton of homework to do, so, it didn't really work out. The t.v. show "Bones" is a show that we enjoy and have just started following, so it was a mutual agreement. When we were available to do so, we were set to have a Bones marathon. If you don't know what show I'm talking about, it's sort of like CSI, but way better ;), but an anthropologist and an FBI agent work together to solve murders (sounds kinda morbid I know, but it's sooo good). Anyway, so I decided to search all of the local Blockbuster's to see if I was going to be able to rent any season, I really didn't even care which one, but it's Tallahassee... which means, that it was not available. Just out of curiosity, I looked up how much it would be to purchase from Walmart [greatest store ever], and it was about $40 :/ . We actually decided to just go for it and split the cost, so after dinner we drove to Walmart and looked. We get to the T.V. section of the store and we only saw seasons 2 and 4, so I asked one of the workers and she said "what's on the racks, is what we have", so I was bummed to say the least, until I just happened to notice that on the pack of dvd's that said "the complete second season" was another disk, labeled "the complete first season".. it was a multi-pack.. and it was $35! Who doesn't like a deal like that?!!? Needless to say, we've already watched the first 6 episodes, and plan on continuing relentlessly every waking moment of free time that we have... praise the Lord that Spring Break is next week!!

Procrastination

If you're like me, most everything you do is last minute. It's not that I intentionally don't do things, it's just that i "don't have time" until it's almost too late.. or so it seems, and then I have a million things that all NEED to be done within a short period of time. I know a girl who waits until the last minute for everything, school related that is, and she actually scores better when she is under pressure, as opposed to when she spends the time studying. I wish I could be like that, and sometimes I try to convince myself that I am so that I won't worry so much, but it never works! I have also noticed that my attention span when I am cramming, is much lower than when I have the ability to work at ease. There is definitely something to be said about accomplishing things way in advance; it just gives me a feeling of success and relief that I actually went through with something. Maybe one day I'll actually learn, but then again, I always find myself saying that...

The Beginning

So I've never been one to write down my thoughts, but it seemed only fitting. These days, there's a lot going on, not only with me, but with everyone, and even if no one reads this, I feel like it could serve as a self check-up. Something I could look back on in the future and see how I felt about something at the time, or what was going on in my life. I know for me, I love finding an old batch of pictures, or an old note that you thought you had thrown away, the memories just flood back to you like it was yesterday, so I hope that I can look at this and see how much I've grown over time.

"A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past." - Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983