Facebook has a feature that allows you to look at the top 20 posts on your timeline from the last year. According to Facebook, my highlights include jogging a mile for the first time, rock climbing, zip lining, and spinning yarn.

2013 was also the year that I started this blog. Many on the internet will advise writing about your passion, or finding your niche to write about, but I began blogging to help me discover what my niche was. What I was passionate about. I’ve been blogging for almost a year now, and you know what? I still don’t know what that is. I’ve discovered many interests, but as far as defining a niche or a passion, I’m still pretty clueless.

But that’s okay. I’ve still learned things, and I’m still exploring. And I intend to continue exploring, because I like to look at life as an adventure.

It makes it a little difficult to know what to write about, though. Sure, I write about my adventures, and sometimes I’ll throw in a post about something philosophical, but it’s a challenge to find inspiration sometimes. So if you, my readers, have any suggestions for what I should write about, I’m open to ideas.

Meanwhile, I hope you all have a lovely new year!

I’m about to make a huge generalization about some modern churches. Not that this represents churches as a whole, but I’m noticing a trend.

Many churches these days will say, “Come as you are; we’ll accept you no matter where you are in life.” I’m all for loving others, but sometimes it seems that a church is so focused on the message of acceptance that I don’t even know what their beliefs are. You’ll accept me where I am. Great. But maybe where I am isn’t where I want to be. Maybe I want to grow. Maybe I need to be challenged.

I hear people give the advice all the time: “Be yourself; don’t change for anybody.” Often I see churches trying to keep up-to-date on how to look appealing to younger generations. If they keep trying to be everything to everybody, they’ll end up being nothing to nobody. If I don’t like your theology, I won’t go to your church. That’s my problem. Don’t try to change just to try to make me happy. It won’t work. It will leave me confused because I don’t know who you really are. I don’t want a church that’s trying to please me. I want a church that’s trying to please Christ. Because that’s who church should be about anyway.

Am I saying you shouldn’t love other people? No. I’m saying don’t compromise who you are to please everybody. I do that enough.

My mom used to love to watch the show “Beauty and the Beast,” a show that aired in the late 80s. The female lead character’s name was Catherine, and that is partly what inspired her and my dad to give me that name (though with an alternate spelling).

Ask what the name “Katherine” means and most sources will tell you that it means “pure.” This is true, if you associate it with the Greek word katharos. What many people don’t know, however, is that “Katherine,” which really comes from the Greek name Aikaterine, could have several different origins and meanings, including being related to a word that means “torture.”

Pure and torture. Talk about two completely different meanings. But the meaning of a name is what you make it. It could mean a soul who appears pure but is tortured on the inside. Or maybe I find pure enjoyment from torturing other people.

What does your name mean?

I think I might be writing too many posts about why I write instead of actually writing. But I could be wrong. It could just be that that’s something I think about and not something I write about because I haven’t been posting regularly.

I write more for me than for anyone else, although I do appreciate people’s feedback. I write to sort out my thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts that get jumbled in my brain. It’s hard for me to focus on anything, but writing helps me to get stuff off my mind. That way I can see what I’m thinking and maybe make sense of it. Or I can forget it for awhile and read it later.

I write to become a better writer. It’s just a hobby for now, but I’d like to get better at it. Who knows where it will go in the future, if anywhere. It’s just something I like to do.

I think I can write the most when I can’t focus. That way I just write whatever I’m thinking. So it’s hard for me to write when I want to focus on something. And sometimes I don’t even know what to focus on. And even when I have an idea of what I might want to write about it’s hard for me to focus on writing about it.

At this point in the post some bloggers may have a moral to the story or a spiritual meaning to their words. Writing could be a metaphor for something. One could ask, “What are you focusing on?” Yeah, I don’t really have a moral or a metaphor. You can make one on your own if you want. Something to think about for the day.  (By the way I don’t mean to insult any bloggers who do this. In fact sometimes I enjoy reading blogs that have a moral to the story)

This is the point in the post where I would challenge you to do something. Take action. So this is my challenge for you: I challenge you to read to the end of this post.

Good job.

I used to write these things called brain dumps. That’s what I called them, anyway (I stole the term from one of my English professors). It started one night when I couldn’t sleep because I had a lot on my mind, so I opened a document on my computer and wrote out what I was thinking. I didn’t try to format it perfectly with proper grammar and punctuation; I just wrote. It certainly helped to ease my mind, so I started doing it more. My writing didn’t always make sense, but it didn’t have to.

A lot has happened at school over the past couple months, and I’ve found this semester to be pretty emotionally rough. You would think the more stressed I got the more I would write, but it turned out to be the opposite. I found myself writing less, and it got to the point that I felt so worn out that I couldn’t write at all anymore.

I generally detest talking about feelings and tend to keep to myself, but I find that my emotions show through my writing. The more I write the more I reveal about myself, and that’s a scary thing for me. My brain dumps aren’t meant to be read by other people, but by writing what’s on my mind I’m almost experiencing my thoughts twice because I actually have to admit to myself that I’m upset or confused in order to write about being upset or confused.

A friend of mine makes YouTube videos. That’s her thing, just as this blog is my thing, so we’re trying to keep each other accountable to be consistent in creating. She agreed to post a video if I created a brain dump and/or blog post tonight. So here’s my blog post. I’m going to attempt to start writing brain dumps again, as well as start blogging again. Because writing is important to me. I don’t really care if other people read it or not, but it’s just something that I need to do.

And by the way my friend is a pretty cool person, so you can check out her YouTube channel here: Molly Bahre – YouTube                                                                      Thank you, my friend.

Recently I read a book entitled Digital Leader by Erik Qualman – a very helpful book with advice on how to make a positive “digital footprint,” but also advice on how to become more organized and successful, both in business and in personal life. One thing that stood out to me in this book was a method of helping to discover one’s passion: each day write down something that was positive about that day, and write why it was positive. A highlight. Then look back over the highlights after a week or two and try to identify common positive elements, which eventually can help lead to discovering a passion. So I decided to take that idea and make it my own.

Many evenings I have written in my journal something I liked about each day. I haven’t been faithful in writing every day, but I write regularly enough so that writing down a highlight has become almost a habit for me over the past couple months. I recently decided to finally look over a few highlights over January and February, and I noticed several interesting things based on patterns I saw.

1) Sometimes the highlights of my day are those involving technology, particularly video making. I enjoy being in video projects, filming videos, editing them.

2) I enjoy activities that involve some sort of community: a movie night, a housewarming party, a dance. Generally I prefer smaller groups of people because to me it is more intimate and less overwhelming.

3) I also enjoy being alone. Every once in awhile I like to have an empty evening to relax and maybe watch a movie. By myself.

4) Many times the highlight of my day has been a rehearsal for Les Mis. I am assistant stage managing for this production being put on by the musical theater department at my school, and I love the rehearsals. Perhaps some of my favorite parts of the rehearsals have been when I was able to sit and watch the actors (although now I’m getting busier with backstage duties). I’m fascinated as I observe the decisions each actor makes to best portray his/her character, and I love observing how they walk, talk, and carry themselves onstage. I have learned so much just by observing, and I am eager to learn more. And the singing. Oh, if you could only hear them sing.

I still want to keep writing my highlights of the day, because eventually Les Mis will be over. But I like how this exercise has helped me to learn things about myself.

One other piece of advice that stood out to me in Digital Leader was to make some laughable goals. I’ve heard similar advice from various sources. If people don’t laugh at the goals you make, you’re not making them big enough. I want to work on some small, realistic goals, but I also have one very specific goal that up until recently I was too chicken to admit to myself that it could even be a goal. It was more of a distant dream, but I now want to work toward it. Right now I’m too terrified to admit it to the internet because of how ambitious it is. But maybe someday I’ll share it. Or should I say, maybe someday you’ll know what it is because you’ll have seen me accomplish it.

I’ll end with one recent entry from my journal:

Almost a 12 hr. rehearsal for Les Mis today. And so begins tech week. But one of my favorite times was when I could sit and listen to the singing. They have such beautiful voices and sing with so much expression. I want to learn to sing like that.

Readers may or may not have noticed that I did not post this past Friday. I’m not going to list a bunch of excuses, although I will say that sometimes it’s easy for me to get caught up in perfectionism. I have multiple drafts waiting to be published, but I can’t seem to get them quite right. I need to make the decision of whether I want quality or quantity.

But hey, why can’t I have both?

Both isn’t always going to happen. Sometimes I’ll be in a hurry. Like right now. I have to head to class in a few minutes, but keeping a regular blog is important to me, because it helps me to keep track of myself. I want to write about things that make me happy, things that maybe don’t make me happy, memories, aspirations, etc. My hope is that by writing out my thoughts I will be better able to sort out my goals and have a better sense of direction in my life.

I also think that blogging will help me become a better writer, even if I don’t spend hours trying to get each post just right. And so today I’m going to do something that maybe a “good” writer isn’t supposed to: I’m posting this as a rough draft. A quick glance to correct any grammar or technical issues, but then I’m posting it without spending too much time on it. Because today I need to get take care of other tasks as well.

Bazinga!