My Future

As you can probably tell by the title, I'm taking a little break from the Friends series today. If you remember, I said in a previous blog that I would soon blog about some of my dreams/ideas for my future besides being a college professor. This is that blog.

Of course, college professor seems to be my most likely career path right now, but I'm not 100% committed to it just yet. Another possibility that really tugs at me sometimes is working with Wycliffe. If you don't know, Wycliffe is an awesome missions organization dedicated to translating Bibles into the languages of people groups that do not yet have them. If I were to ever go into ministry or missions of any sort, this is definitely what I would want to do. It's a really scary thought though. I was just now looking at the Wycliffe website, and as I was reading and thinking about working with them, I felt great excitement and tremendous fear at the same time.

I also have a few other ideas, though they seem to be much less noble. I think owning a coffee shop would be thoroughly awesome. I love being a barista; I love making, tasting, smelling, and consuming coffee. What else can I say? Owning a coffee shop would simply be following my love.

If I were to truly follow one of my loves though, I would, of course, be a professional wrestler. Of all my ideas, I definitely consider this one the most far-fetched/unlikely/silly/impossible. I don't have much motivation for exercise, and a lifetime of being on the road and beating myself up isn't all that appealing. But man, I sure do think about it a lot. I often visualize myself in matches in my daydreams. Sometimes I just can't stop imagining myself give someone an RKO, or a superkick, or a second-rope to top-rope springboard moonsault.

Those are the long-term dreams. As far as the immediate future goes, I'm pretty sure I want to, after getting my Master's degree, spend a year in Honduras teaching English at a Christian school. It was founded by one of the missionaries that I met at a missions summit back in December, and as he was talking it up, I really felt like it would be a great opportunity for me to experience something like that on a short-term basis. I went to Mexico a few years ago, but that was only for a couple of weeks. I think an entire year in another country would really be helpful in this whole decision-making/calling-finding process.

Anywho, those are my dreams. Now you know them. Though I don't really know exactly what I want to do yet, I'm not too worried. I wholeheartedly believe in the Scripture that asserts that though a man has plans in his heart, it is God who determines his steps (Prov. 16:9). Also, I was just astounded this morning when reading what God asked Cain when his face was downcast:

"Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?" (Gen. 4:6-7a)

God offers Cain here such a simple way out of his problem, and I think he makes the same wonderfully simple offer to us. That's not to say that when we do right, life is just easy and peachy all the time. It simply means that if we do right, and we don't let sin and selfishness misdirect us, then we don't have to worry about our lives. God will take care of us.

Ken, Born of Fire

Friends, Pt. 3

Welcome to the third part of my friends series, where I share memories of some of my bestest friends. The young lady you see in the picture to your right is the subject of today's blog. Her name is April Hermanson, and she is the (soon to be no longer, *sad face*) director of Cafe XA, where I am a "Special Events Barista." The file that I'm pulling from the vault for today is labeled "Coffee Bar Mornings."

This one is actually not so much a specific memory as it is a collection of memories. I guess it's a category of memories. Back when I first started working at the coffee bar on a regular basis, I was an opener, but I didn't have a key, so April would have to come open the building for me and put in the security code and whatnot. Thankfully though, she wouldn't just open it for me and then leave and go back to bed or anything like that (it was 6:30 in the morning, and she lived right across the street. If I was in her situation, I probably would have done that). But no, she would stay in there with me, and we would pretend to try to study, but really, it was too early to study, so we would just talk and constantly interrupt each other's "studying."

Those were good times, especially the ones where we had some kind of trouble with the espresso machine. It was a very fickle machine, and it often decided that it didn't feel like working so early in the morning. Or other times it would decide that the floor needed a mopping, so it would leak water all over. It was one of these times that led to one of my favorite quotes of all time. I forget exactly what happened, but something was going terribly wrong with the coffee bar, and April, clearly frustrated, but doing her best to remain calm, said, "I'm trying not to be a girl about it." I love that quote. I'm going to go put it on my "Favorite Quotes" on Facebook now.

Ken, Born of Fire

Friends, Pt. 2

This is the one and only Jacob D'Avy. And this blog is part two in my ongoing "Friends" series. Jacob is one of my best friends, and we were roomates for a year, so I definitely have plenty of memories with Jacob. When I reached for my Jacob files in the old memory vault, the first one that I pulled was one labeled "Avril Lavigne." Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday.

As I said, Jacob and I roomed together for a year, back in 2003-2004. There was this one night when I came back to the room kinda late, and Jacob was already in bed on his top bunk. So I got ready for bed myself, and, as I was and am accustomed to doing, I got into to bed to read for a little while before actually going to sleep. So I read whatever book it was that I was reading at the time. Then once I started to get sleepy, I was about to go turn out the light. As I turn to get out of bed, I look up to see nothing less than a giant image of pop singer Avril Lavigne staring me right in the face! I was quite startled, and yelled "What the heck!" as I jumped out of bed. I then hear Jacob, who I thought was sleeping, laughing from his top bunk.

He got me good. Jacob is a frequent frequenter of Good Will stores, and he later explained to me that on his last visit he had happened to find a huge poster of Avril Lavigne and thought it'd be a fun prank to tape it above my bed.

That poster ended up being the source of many more fun memories throughout the semester; if you want to know about them, just ask either one of us. I'm sure you'll get a good laugh. Anywho, that's Jacob for ya.

Ken, Born of Fire

Friends, Pt. 1

I got an idea for a series of blogs I can do. I got the idea as me, April Hermanson, Amanda Meadows, and Jacob D'Avy were sitting around at CC's, drinking coffee and whatnot. We were searching for our names on Google's blog search to see if anyone was blogging about us. It was pretty fun. You should try it. Anywho, Amanda found her name in one of my blogs, but then when she read it, she was a little disappointed that she was only briefly mentioned. (I guess she was expecting some kind of exuberant lauding of her many skills, talents, and personality traits, or something like that. To that, I would just sing an updated version of that classic song:

You're so vain,
I bet you think this blog is about you.

(I wish you could do footnotes on blogs, but since you can't, I have to settle for long parenthetical comments like this one)). Well, as I was saying, I then got the idea to do a series of blogs where I tell stories/memories of various friends. So here's part 1, and guess who it's gonna be about . . . you guessed it: Amanda J!



So, as I reached into my memory vault for files marked "Amanda J," I found one with the subtitle, "Drunk Amanda." Ah yes, I remember that. It's one of the funnest Amanda memories I have:

Our friend Christina was having a birthday party at her apartment one night. We ate burritos and cookies and drank sodas and had a good time. As it got later and later, Amanda was having an especially good time. In fact, she was reaching a state of delirium that she often reaches when she's tired and it's late. Now I know that it's a fairly normal occurrence for Amanda, but this just so happened to be my first time witnessing it. She was just laughing uncontrollably at every little thing. But what really made the night unforgettable was that she happened to have had a big glass bottle of Perrier (carbonated mineral water) in her hand, which she was drinking between giggles. As I looked over at her laughing and drinking, I realized that she had become a dead ringer for a drunkard. Her face was red, she was incoherent, and she appeared to be clumsily slingin' back at 40. It was hilarious.

And she was a Chi Alpha intern, so the image of her drunk was especially incongruent with my perception of her. Funny. Just funny.

So that's Amanda. And so ends Friends, Pt. 1 Stay tuned for Pt. 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 25.

Ken, Born of Fire

The Verdict Is In.

The Blog of Fire is back for another installment!

So, as you probably are fully aware of, I just recently completed my first semester of teaching. And as you are probably equally aware of, teaching is what I want to pursue as a career. So, as you are probably equally capable of discerning as you are aware of those two things, this was an extremely important semester for me. I did, for the first time, what I intend to do for the next 40 or so years of my life. If I liked it, it would be a good sign that I should continue going in the direction that I am. If I hated it, it would perhaps be a sign that I should reconsider the whole course of my life! So which was it, you ask?

I loved it! There's just something so exhilarating about seeing someone really learn something for the first time. And it's more than just seeing them learn something about whatever the subject of the course happens to be (in my case, writing). When you teach someone something, you're really teaching them how to think. This is especially true when teaching writing. It's not like I can just spit out a bunch of facts, and then they memorize them and spit them back at me on a test. I'm teaching them how to organize, support, clarify, evaluate, and revise their thoughts and beliefs, and when they realize that that's what they're doing, it's an incredible sight to behold.

And of course, it doesn't hurt that my students actually seem to have liked me. A group of about 5 or 6 of them all gave me a thank you card at the end of the semester. That just put it all over the top.

So, for anyone wondering what my future is looking like, being a college professor is still looking pretty likely. I have other ideas too, but I'll save those thoughts for a future blog.

Ken, Born of Fire

P.S. I read yo mama's blog today. She said she was feeling a little lupine and that she was thinking about going out with the pack tonight.

Yo Mama

For those of you biting at the chomp for a new blog: C'mon, gimme a break, it's freakin' finals week coming up!

I do have a great yo mama joke that I'd like to share with you though.

Yo mama's so fat, when taking a bath, she uses considerably more soap and water than an average person, and she takes longer to dry herself off, partly because of her greater skin area, partly because of the difficulty in manipulating a towel around her immense girth, but also partly because she actively avoids looking at herself in the mirror, because even though, deep down, she knows she's fat, she can't handle the visual confirmation of her obesity.

~Ken, Born of Fire