Just to warn anyone still reading this: this entry may seem a reckless rant, but it’ll hopefully come together at the end.

Life and Time are filled with music; at least, in my life they are. Journals are great for helping me reflect, but the moment is best captured with music. It seems that every 5 months or so I hit a great splurge (or binge as the case may be) in creativity. I become obsessive about finishing projects and I sacrifice a lot to get them done. The most notable instance was the KingQuest project the night before leaving for Florence. I’d been working on the application for three weeks full-time and the night before I left for Italy I finished the build that worked. It was a milestone made of music: Wicked. The soundtrack to the musical “Wicked”, was the driving force to those many, many hours of coding and developing. I bought the album on the iTunes Music Store and set it on loop. It doesn’t take much for one to guess what I WASN’T listening to on the inter-continental flight. In those three weeks, I purchased the CD and it jumped to the upper echelon of my Most-Played playlist (circa 100 times).

I’m now in the middle of one of those creative binges; and it’s a wonder I’m even able to recognize it part-way through. I returned from a short trip to Ft. Worth on Tuesday and ever since then I’ve only been able to concentrate on one thing: checking things off of the list. On the plane I made a list of 20 items (since it’s added about five items per day) and I’ve been working to check them off as fast as I can. It’s a wonder that each of the items is so easily removed: consulting on a fellowship with Dr. Hill where I’m helping him pick the video recording device for his research, coordinating with Judy to get Daryl’s backups to his colleagues in his translation project with Westar, adding yet another feature to KingQuest to make it my quintessential project for what I think should drive scholarship for the next decade, and a project for staff of the Christian Church in Kentucky, enabling them to do expense and hour tracking in order to maintain the accountability undermining their relationship with their congregations.

Beyond these, I’m also trying to increase my creative knowledge: I’m working on learning new techniques in Photoshop blending modes for a tribe project fermenting in the back of my mind; I’m making sure to keep better track of my thank-you notes I owe people for the blessings in my life — they’re slowly coming out, but obviously won’t make it to everyone who deserves them; I’m beginning the steps for my last-minute efforts to prepare for Chicago — Greek vocabulary, journal reading, note reviewing, etc. In all of this, the development happens with music.

The Kentucky project has excelled through U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” album. The KingQuest text entry carried on in time with Rascal Flatt’s “Me and My Gang.” My travels to and from Ft. Worth during the past month (four trips in these four weeks if my counting’s right) are accompanied with eclectic mixes from friends ranging from Eminem’s “Shake That” to a collection of Blue October, Caleb Kane and other artists’ songs.

More than anything, this past month has been a roller coaster, oscillating through a set of emotions. While the looped music definitely feeds those emotions and their changes, it also gives the continuity to this stream coming out of me. I’m at a crossroads — in the next few days my creativity will either skyrocket and completely change in scope (it’s happened about 60 percent of the time I’ve recognized this stage), or it’ll change back and I’ll have to wait for yet another turn. We’ll see.

I’ve been so torn these past three weeks. I knew this transition back to Iowa would be hard, but I had no idea. I’m reforming my work habits and my lifestyle. In Ft. Worth, I was there for work. I arrived early in the morning (often before 8am) and was there late into the afternoon and evening (usually at least 6pm). It was my purpose for living there and it was a great schedule.

Now, however, I’m in Iowa and loving the weather (Low 70s and sunny with a cool breeze). I’m enjoying the daylight so much that I’d much rather drive around, run errands and savor the weather and work at nights when it’s dark and pointless to be outside. So here I am – almost 3am – and I’m working. AND I’M LOVING IT!!!!

I’m also stacking my time with tons of tasks. I’ll have my Macintosh computer running batch processes on images and then using my Windows computer for reading through and flagging sections for Dr. Gunn’s research. It’s great on one hand because I can get even more done without losing focus easily. It’s bad, though, because I’m taking on other projects — which I’ll be writing about in the next couple of days. Here’s a short sampling: I’m finally writing the Tech workshops and most are scheduled; I’m learning 5 new computer programs (well — really 2 if you count Final Cut Studio as 1); I’m preparing for my hike with friends on the Appalachian Trail in five weeks. (oh gosh — I’ve got to work harder at preparing for it!).

Perhaps the challenge in all of this is taking the time to breathe — and that’s where I’m torn. My lungs and my life are used to such an insane pace that now I’m having trouble readjusting. To make it less of a shock — or maybe more of one, depending on how you look at it — I’m doing down to Ft. Worth two more times (total of 6 or 7 days) between now and finals in the next month. Wow.

This is a quick update since I’m low on sleep, a little stressed and trying to catch up on a lot …

This weekend was ‘amazening’ (Brittney’s new word). As many of you know, I’ve been involved with the ecumenical Awakening retreats for the past 2 years sponsored by Catholic Community. Each Awakening is different and I’d have it no other way; who wants a repeat? This was a great way to transition myself out of my college mindset. Granted, I haven’t been fully in it for a while, but this was especially important for releasing the last things I was holding onto. Now it’s time for grad school …

The retreat was also perfect for reminding me why the effort to make it to every meeting on the weekends was worth it. The friends and community I basked in are the reason why TCU has been the best possible fit.

Something bizarre happened after the retreat when some of the leaders were eating lunch. We were enjoying meals at Potbelly’s (a sandwich place next to campus) and as I was standing in line I recognized someone I hadn’t seen in 5 years. Nathan Soyer, a HS student at Norwalk who was a year ahead of me, was sitting there with his brother and his sister-in-law. In Ft. Worth, TX?!? I knew he’d gone to college in Indiana, but why was he in Ft. Worth? It turns out that he and Travis were both working in California and Travis got a job in Ft. Worth and so Nathan was helping him move out here. We only have a few short minutes to say hi and catch up, but it was another reminder of how much my life is in transition. I’ll be heading to Norwalk on Tuesday (fingers crossed) and will be working from there for the rest of the semester.

Moving up there, though, will require me to leave a huge group of friends behind. A nice anecdote from the night captures a little bit of the current stress. I was driving Libby back from dinner while Jon and Richard drove in Jon’s car. At one point, after going over a speed bump, we heard a little metallic sound. After stopping and then going we heard it again and stopped, looked, and saw that my muffler had disconnected from the tailpipe. While I was talking to my parents on my cell, Libby called Jon and he and Richard came and looked at it with me. Richard had bun-gee cords in his car, so they got them, returned, and we attached it again (in my opinion more solidly — save for the disconnect — than it was before). I’m going to take it to a muffler shop tomorrow morning, but it was the bond I have with them all that made it only a 15-20 minute fiasco (for tonight) instead of the 1-1.5 hour one it could have been.

Now I’m going to continue working on putting in a good word for a friend …