A couple of days ago, I did what had not been done in years: accepted a friend request of someone I don't know, pretty much because he is quite good-looking.  It felt weird to do, like I'm way too mature to participate in such things, but I did it anyway.  And I did it on Facebook.  That's even more rare.  Facebook is strictly limited for family, very close friends, and maybe a few acquaintances I've worked with or interacted with for a period of time.  And the latter often ends up being unfriended after a period of time of no interaction. Facebook is something important to me, a way of keeping tabs in a convenient way of people I care about.  If I get requests from people I don't know, they usually get ignored and deleted.  Am I so sharply opposed to bringing strangers to my page?  Not unless some effort is made beforehand.  I mean, at the very least, introduce yourself to me.  Send me a message before you request to be my friend. Give me something to go with.  But when I don't get even that, why would I bother accepting your friend request?  I don't.

Now this time, I made an exception.  A good-looking guy requested to be my friend for no reason I can think of, other than maybe he spotted a comment from me on a basketball post (he has LeBron and Dwyane Wade images and/or video clips on his page, after all) and maybe found me intriguing enough to friend me.  And after warring with myself a bit beforehand, I reluctantly accepted.  Sometimes you won't know what will happen when you take a chance on something.  I'm in no position to generate relationships, not in real life and definitely not on the internet, but I'm not opposed to opening windows of opportunity.  For all I know, he may have been from Florida, as he's seemingly a fan of the Miami Heat, and possibly could have been my sneak connection to the sunshine state before a move down there.  Yes, perhaps some of it was wishful thinking, but still.  That was my thinking regardless.  Now granted, he's still a stranger, and he immediately went to my restricted list even after I accepted his request.  No harm, no foul.  I expected that after maybe a few interactions, I'd get familiar enough with him that he'd eventually move "up" to my normal friends list.   

A day later, he messages me.  "Hi."  Now maybe it's wrong of me to judge a person by their internet persona, but in this day and age, you would think the way social media is and people's constant interaction with the internet, they'd have a decent way of self-expression in the two-dimensional realm.  A simple "hi" is...well...boring.  But forgivable.  Perhaps he's just being extremely careful.  We're only just starting to interact after all.  Still, I use the same medicine and tread with the same carefulness he was.  "Hello," I had said.  And then his predictable question followed suit: "How are you?"  Safe and casual again. So I attempt to add just a bit more character. "I'm as good as can be, and you?"  And a very simple "I m fine" follows thereafter.  Okay, so far so good. And still boring.  He then asked where I am from.  I answer normally, with an added "born and raised" at the end.  After a short pause, all I got in return was a "ok."  Okay?  I wait a bit more and finally ask where he is from.  He tells me and I say "cool."

At that point, my interest in interacting with this handsome stranger (which was minimal) had already vanished.  I understand not everyone can be a genius via messages, but as I said, give me SOMETHING to go with. You requested to be MY friend after all.  And finally yet another predictable question.  "How old are you?" And of course I answer.  But I don't bother to ask him the same.  I don't know.  I guess it was simply my poor, pathetic attempt to break up the monotony of what was our version of a first time conversation.  I wanted to see if he'd even dive into the conversation with a little more chutzpah and be a little more personable without me having to weed it out of him.  It failed miserably.  Whether my age freaked him out or he too was bored with the conversation, he never responded back and that was the conclusion of our interaction.  It reminded me of the days when I used to do this far more often, whether on dating sites or messageboards, guys asking me very specific questions because they're looking for something very specific.  Whether or not this applied to him, I can't say.

Needless to say, I went ahead and unfriended him, as I didn't really see the need to keep him around.  Sure, maybe I was overly eager to expect some very interesting conversation with a perfect stranger, or maybe I prematurely removed him without truly knowing his reason for the sudden halt of conversation.  But oh well.  It's not like we're friends, after all.  No harm, no foul.  He was merely a handsome stranger who just so happened to have the internet personality of a wall.  And not the Facebook kind either.  At least those are still more interesting.

Ah yes, perhaps that quote looks familiar to you.  And of course it would, because that is what was written on a receipt at an Applebee's restaurant in Misouri, and the picture of it is now viral.  It's the current story that people are clamoring over, the sort of story that will no doubt be replaced by something else that gets people's attention.  Gotta love the fickleness of mankind.

Anyway, I of course shook my head upon learning of that.  Anyone who professes to be a pastor ought to be ashamed of themselves.  And what's worse, it's things like that make other Christians look bad.  She did not show good judgment or wisdom, and unfortunately, it took the thing going viral for her to realize her blunder. But perhaps it took something like this to shed light on other areas that needed light on when it comes to her life.  Perhaps this is what she needed in order to do some soul searching.  Sooner or later, we all of us have to face our demons.

So people are angry at the pastor and angry at Applebee's, and for understandable reasons.  Obviously the pastor, who seemed to be have exercised a selfish, pompous attitude about the whole thing for not cheerfully giving of her means (in this case money) as the Bible commands.  And Applebee's for doing some firing after the pastor made it known what was going on: her receipt being posted on the internet with her name as clear as day and the tip scribbled out.  I've researched this event and came up with my own following conclusion:

Shame on the pastor, of course; that much I've made known.  But I can't say shame on Applebee's.  Why?  Because apparently, after closer inspection, the waitress who was fired wasn't the waitress who actually served the table.  No, it was another waitress who decided to share the receipt with the world with the customer's name clearly visible.  Another exercise of poor judgment.  Had she cropped out the customer's name, none of this would have happened.  And the effect would have been the same.  The world would still be all ruffled and disturbed and quibbling over religious people and whatever else, but without a name to go by.  Whether or not Applebee's still would have fired that waitress had she decided to eliminate the name, I can't say.  But their reason to fire would have been non-existent.  It's a shame that a waitress had to lose her job, but even she should have exercised better judgment. Blacken out the personal info!

There are indeed real Christians out there.  I am one of them, after all.  There are also "self-proclaimed" Christians out there who merely claim the label and nothing more.  And there are real Christians who still stumble, who still can't quite get it right, who still give in to their fleshly human ways than they should. It's a whole big mess of a situation that unfortunately can confuse a whole heck of a lot of people out there who aren't religious in any way, shape, or form.  And it's a saddening fact that Christianity in general gets too poorly misrepresented by situations like this that it makes us all become a laughingstock to the world.  This pastor sure left a bad taste in the mouth of not just believers, but unbelievers alike.  Why should you give the girl 18%?  Because giving is what you're commanded to do.  It's as simple as that.

In conclusion, this pastor failed in doing the Christian thing. I can't fault her for that, as I've been guilty of doing the same.  We're all definitely still human and we're all still going to make our mistakes.  We'll have our poorly thought out responses to situations and screw up badly.  There's no reason to not apply that to this pastor as well.  But as I mentioned earlier, perhaps this moment shedding a negative light on her is just what she needed to see her true character, and whether or not she's as Christlike as she's supposed to be. Sometimes it takes our sins glaring back at us to help us realize that we still have some repenting to do.  I hope she'll take the time to reflect on this matter, and to not let her embarrassment be more of the issue than even choosing to write what she wrote in the first place.

I've said my piece. Now onto the next controversial and/or "spicy" news bit....whatever that will inevitably be.

I'm at a point in life where I have so much to say, but don't know how to say it.  But I can tell it's there, buried not too deeply beneath the surface, yet it no longer wants to budge.  Oh sure there's the status updates on Facebook, the short and sweet stuff that doesn't require much thought or planning. But I've been staring at this blog screen for roughly two hours, and still haven't found the urge to spill the useless nonsense about life in general like I used to, at least not without it sounding like repetitive jibber jabber.  Work, weight, love.  There should be far more to life than that, but I can't find the means of speaking about it like I used to.

What's happened to me? Is this just another stage of development in my life? Is it laziness? Uneventfulness?  Or is it, quite simply, lack of interest and I'm just in a state of denial about it?  I can't quite pinpoint what it is.  Maybe it's everything combined. I'm older now, living in a different state of mind than I was 10 years ago (my gosh, has it been that long?).  My life hasn't really taken a drastic turn into something worth raving about.  And even if it has, am I one to brag about it?  I don't know.  Not yet.  

It's a big reason why moving to Florida this year would be the desperate change I'm waiting for.  I feel like I'm trapped in a cocoon stage from my caterpillar life, and Florida can be my means of finally bursting open into the butterfly I'm supposed to be.  Corny analogy, but you get the idea.  It's an escape from mundane, from typical, from usual, and from a done-to-death way of life.  I want that feeling of going somewhere where no one knows me and coming back into the lives of those who DO know me as a transformed human being.  And sometimes that feeling is overwhelming too. There's no fear in moving to Florida as there used to be. Now, there's more fear to stay in Indiana.

It's all a transition though, a big waiting game.  Nothing has solidified yet.  It's either we get the land we want to start building, or we get the house we bid on and EVENTUALLY start building on another piece of land, which is my own personal preference, because that would mean that I can maybe keep that house for myself, assuming I'd have an awesome job lined up.  But everything's up in the air still. We're sure it will happen, but it's a matter of when now.  I haven't started sending resumes yet, as I'd like to have a time frame to go by as well as a foundation to help me gauge where jobs are in vicinity to where I'd be living.  Once I have that, I can and will send resumes like crazy.  All in due time.

I wonder what sort of life I have waiting for me in Florida? Am I thinking too much of it? Relying too heavily on it?  I'd really like to know...