That Mediocre Baylor Line

Baylor is a very traditional school. Not only traditional in its values and constitutions, but traditional in that some of us are very proud of our history. If I were to name two schools that upheld "traditions" the best off of the top of my head, I would say Texas A&M, and Baylor. (A&M has a slight advantage in that anything that happens more than one time is considered a sacred "tradition.")

Just this morning, in fact, thousands of students woke at daybreak and braved the bitterly cold, Central-Texas morning to watch or participate in the oldest homecoming parade in America. The students in the organizations that put out floats for the parade spend countless hours and sacrifice countless nights of sleep creating multi-thousand dollar masterpieces, all of which will only be seen by each spectator for a matter of minutes, at the most. The time that each person lining the sides of the street gets to view each float is irrelevant, what counts is that they're there, to support and appreciate the hard work that went into each and every piece of our good ol' parade. And the people in the parade appreciate that support, that welcoming, that feeling that what they've been working for is being looked upon with grateful eyes. So why not return the favor?

One of our oldest, most important, and most visible to the public traditions is the forming of the Baylor Line. Ideally, each and every member of the freshman class in attendance will don their golden jersey, (under a sensible jacket, perhaps), run the length of the football field in as crazy and rambunctious a way as possible, and then form a tunnel that wraps back around the field for the football team to go through. When the team runs, they'll know that they are supported, that they are welcomed, and that what they've been working for is being looked upon with grateful eyes, and they'll appreciate the student body showing that they care. Doesn't that sound familiar? The very same students that could have just walked inside "the lines" this morning, now have the chance to be that support for the team that has taken us so far this year. But will they? More and more, I see freshman run onto the field and immediately go to the guard rail of the stands, trying relentlessly to get a seat in the first or second row. What good does that do the team? None- it surely can't feel that great to know that there could be people cheering you on, and that they chose to do something "more important" with their time. What fun is it for a player to look into the stands, and when he sees the people closest to him, they're only the people who abandoned him at the very beginning? Finally, it looks sloppy. From the field, it may just seem like chaos, but from the stands the division is depressing to watch. If you've never seen it, you'll never know until you watch as an upperclassmen. By then it'll be too late to change anything personally, but I guarantee your opinion will change. By week 3, you'll think like I do: Why can't they just wait another 5 minutes?

The Line isn't the only tradition Baylor has that's suffering, though. Some people may not even know of others- because they've never seen the end of a game. Question: Did you know, that after every home game that we win, the Golden Wave Band plays "The Tennessee Waltz", and a new person performs the solo each week? If you look into the press box, you might be lucky enough to see a window open; opened by an elderly mister who is one of the biggest supporters of our band, whose favorite song is the Tennessee Waltz, and who stays to the end, of every game. Did you know that Art Briles personally comes up and thanks the members of the Line that have stayed until the end for being good supporters and "putting the team on their back?" Probably not, because the group of people that he has to thank is incredibly small, week after week. On the other end of the game, did you know that the band performs a pre-game show every week that includes a Baylor spell-out and the forming of Texas to our state song? If not, I guarantee you can get better seats by being there early enough to see it happen.

The "THIS IS BEAR COUNTRY" tarp may as well read "THIS IS BARREN COUNTRY" by halftime, and it shouldn't have to. The tarp is already sad to think about. The tarp is a concession. The tarp was Baylor giving up on the student body, because it couldn't count on us to show up and stay, and it was tired of looking bad, so it covered some 5,000 seats and forced us all closer together. The UT game this year, the final game ever to be played in the stadium, is the first time it will come off since the new generation of Baylor football started. The new stadium, though the biggest construction project central-Texas has ever seen, will be even smaller than the Case, and I wonder why? Please, lets fill it up.

The game will be cold, so come prepared for the weather. Bring a jacket, bring a beanie, bring some gloves, but bring an attitude that if the players can be out there fighting through the weather, then so can you.  Come early and tailgate, there will be tons of free food, live music, and good fellowship. Watch the March of the Bears and cheer on the team as they take the field for practice. Freshman: run the Line like you know you should, like you're the only people in college football who get to do something like it, because you are, and show the team the same support that you showed this morning at parade. Upperclassmen, be there for kickoff, but even better be there for the pre-game show. And everybody: stay for the last fight song, the last Baylor Line, and the only Tennessee Waltz. I guarantee you, the parties won't start until after the game is over, you'll have time go get prettied up. Georges will still be open, they'll still have chicken fried steak and they'll still have beer. If you show early enough, getting out of the parking lot isn't an issue, no matter how late you leave.

Last night we handed the torch to the newest freshman class, and now I hand it to you. We are Baylor, and we fight with all our might. Do you?

The Greatest Lessons

Having started my third semester at Baylor a few days ago, I can say for certain that the greatest lessons to be taught are learned in college. But though I've learned abundantly in the classroom, the lessons I refer to I didn't learn from professors. I learned them through experiences. Experiences that I wouldn't wish on anybody, and that I'd like to share with you.

Growing up, my dad and I were close, but in retrospect, there weren't very many things that we could do together. That wasn't his fault. I wasn't any good at soccer or baseball or football or tennis- he ran out of activities to take me to or balls to play catch with me pretty quickly. He was really involved with the activities I did in Boy Scouts, and I love him for that, but at the time I definitely could have been more appreciative. 

College was the first thing we really bonded over on a really deep level. Before my dad left campus on move in day freshman year, he slipped an envelope into my desk drawer with a list of suggestions, hints, and things he wanted to tell me that we hadn't gotten to talk about. I kept it, and I still read it at the beginning and end of every semester. Those three pages comprise one of the most meaningful gifts that anybody has ever given me. I've always been self driven enough that I set and achieve my own goals, and that was satisfactory to the unspoken requirements of my parents. But having a list of things that my dad thought I could achieve gave me someone to work for other than myself, and it put me on a course to success. 

This summer, while I was leading Line Camp and learning the values of intentionality and how to love on a deeper level, my grandma was in the hospital with multiple life threatening conditions, and the outlook was grim. Despite how close I became with my fellow leaders and how open I was with them, I barely took the time to ask my dad how he was doing or how he was feeling. I didn't take my own advice in regard to one of the most important people in my life, and I felt horrible about it. The day after I came home from Waco, though, I left to go see my grandma in Florida- a 10 hour car ride with just my dad and I. 

We stopped at various hole in the wall seafood restaurants along the way, and each one was more terrible than the last. Every restaurant stop was prefaced with the question of whether or not we should just go to Whataburger, and every time we chose to try the local cuisine instead. We were also wrong, every time. But the quality of the food deteriorating in Louisiana while I wore my Baylor hat and my dad sported his Florida Gator shirts didn't matter, because we were making memories and lightening the mood, and spending more time together than we had in quite a while. After we got back from Florida I had absolutely no desire to eat seafood for some time, but I'd happily go to Fish Place or some sketchy seafood-serving taco truck with my dad any time. 

Upon my arrival my grandma was staying at home, but not really in any condition to function at any high level. Unfortunately, she didn't make it more than a few days after we got to the house, but we all got to say goodbye and I was able to be there for my dad in the moments that counted, unlike when I was at camp. I don't do much home repair or "manly" things of that nature in Houston, but when we go to Florida I end up doing things like scrubbing the mildew off of the side of the house by hand, and it makes me feel like the son and grandson that my family deserves. I'm really going to miss my grandma and everything that visiting her entailed, but seeing her one last time was the best bonding experience I've had with my dad ever, and as much as I would hate to have him re-live that time period, I wouldn't trade the benefits of that trip for the world. 

Before my grandmother's funeral, we drove back to Texas for the weekend to pick up my mom and a few things. I was hoping to get away from the sting of death a little bit and just see my friends, but the Lord had other things in mind. At 8:30 am the day after I returned from Florida, I received a phone call that shattered my perception of the world. One of my best friends in the world, who I've known since we were in 1st grade, passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. I was in absolute shock. There isn't really any way for your body to interpret news like that right away. So I began to call other people and inform them, acting as a messenger delivering the most atrocious of news, as some weird way to cope with what I didn't quite understand. We had done everything together. We got our Eagle Scout ranks together, we played trumpet together, we were in class together, we graduated together. How was I supposed to understand that we wouldn't do things together anymore?

That night I went with a few other of his/my close friends to dinner to share memories and funny stories of his life, and afterwards we went to the cliffs by the school and smashed fruits with a baseball bat, something I had done with him a long time ago and thought fitting to relieve some stress and lighten the mood. Afterwards we sat out in our camp chairs and as the sun went down over the water we sang one of his favorite songs, Don McLean's "American Pie", followed by "Hallelujah"and "Amazing Grace", and finally the most intense and emotional rendition of "The Ants go Marching One by One" that has probably ever been sang in history. What I thought would be one of the most emotionally challenging and distressful nights of my life actually ended up being one of my favorites, and I'll remember the camaraderie that we embodied that night forever. 

I love to write, it's my passion and my favorite talent to hone and practice. But I don't write for fun unless the subject is something that I really, truly care about. I was asked to speak at the funeral of my friend, and I responded without hesitation that I could follow through. I wasn't sure what I was going to say or how I was going to say it, but I knew that it would come to me. Little bits and pieces entered my head throughout the week, but after seeing my dad speak at my grandmother's funeral in Florida, I knew exactly what I needed to say. The words flowed easily enough through my fingertips, the only part I had to worry about was keeping my composure in front of the audience. I have no trouble speaking in front of crowds, but it would be difficult to convey my message through a mouth full of tears. When the day came though, I wasn't sad. Well, that's an exaggeration, but I wasn't as distraught as I thought I would be. There were so many people in attendance at the vigil, I was almost happy. It brought a special kind of warmth into my heart to see how many and much people cared about him. I made it through my eulogy with a strong drive to finish the entire time, and conveyed exactly the image of him that I wanted the crowd to see, through my eyes, through my words. I'm confident that God knew that what I had to say would be impactful to the lives of many in the audience, and gave me the strength to finish with confidence. After the service I realized how much my words meant to the family, but they meant just as much to me- that's why I was able to write them. When we departed, a large group of us went to dinner together, but it wasn't the same group that usually did things together. It was this huge conglomerate of multiple friend circles that would not usually cross paths, all gathering in one place in honor of the friend that we all treasured. And for the third time in one week, it was death that brought me closer to some of the people that I cared about the most. 

After the services for my friend were finished, my father and I took it upon ourselves to commemorate him in a way that he would approve of and appreciate, and that would last for as long as it could. I took it upon myself to scavenge my mail accounts for the contact information of parents in our scout troop, from the band, from his street, of anyone who I thought could help me, and I sent an email with the idea that we had composed. I spoke with both the current and former treasurers of the band, with the band director, with his parents, and collected money at my house, and as of what would have been his 20th birthday just a few days ago, my dad and I raised enough money to give a scholarship in his name to a leader in the band of outstanding academic merit every year for the next 10 years. For someone who was a gifted leader, musician, and a brilliant mind who loved to share and teach, I can't think of a more appropriate way to honor him, and honestly I couldn't be more proud of the result. 

I lost a lot this summer. But I didn't leave empty handed. I may not have gone to summer school, but I learned lessons that I won't ever forget. First, that whether young or old, you can't always count on seeing someone again in the best of situations, so say what you need to say, and don't hesitate to tell someone that you love them. Secondly, that death does not signal a time to merely mourn loss and then go back to life's previous routine. It brings people together, and while the loss of someone special is mutual, the strengthening of relationships because of that loss can be mutual too. Finally, the best work is done by people who are passionate about what they are doing, and the best reward is the smile on a mother's face or the tear of joy in a father's eye. 

Hi, My name is Matt Chelf and I'm a sophomore public relations major from Cypress, Texas. Baylor became my home when...

Over the past three weeks I had the outstanding opportunity to be a shepherd in lives of 25 new students as they transition into life at Baylor. During Line Camp they would be experiencing life as a Baylor Bear for the first time: living on campus, having roommates, eating in the dining halls, and most importantly, finding community. It was my job to simply guide my groups through the process, making sure nobody was hurt and everybody had a good time while I facilitated small group discussions and overall just welcomed the campers to Baylor by being a friendly face to talk to. Most of them were freshman and I finished my freshman year literally two months ago, so I could easily relate to them. Basically, I was being paid to hang out with a bunch of kids my age as we did a bunch of fun activities. Who wouldn't want to do that? 

A year ago I experienced Line Camp for myself, and it changed my life. In high school I wasn't particularly social. I knew the people that circumstance had provided for me, but having gone to school with the same crowd for 13 years, I didn't have any drive to meet anybody I wasn't already friends with. I made my rounds with the band nerds and the honors kids, and I was content with never stepping outside of those lines. At the start of senior year I cut my hair and gained a little bit of confidence, and a month before prom I found the girl of my dreams, but it wasn't until I became a part of That Good 'Ol Baylor Line that I truly blossomed. 

I came to Line Camp completely alone. My parents dropped me off, and as soon as they left I knew absolutely nobody. While some people might have felt scared or intimidated, to me there was no more liberating feeling in the world. It was a fresh start. Nobody knew me, nobody had an image of me. I could be who I wanted to be. I could lose the awkward, and just be myself. (So maybe not all of the awkward was gone). I realized that I wasn't the least attractive kid in the room, I realized I was pretty good at holding a conversation, and most importantly I realized that everybody there was in the same boat that I was in. Nobody knew anybody, everybody wanted to meet people, and I was just comfortable enough to break the ice. 

Not everything in our Line Camp session went exactly as planned, though. The second day we were there was scheduled to be the day we drove out to Independence, Texas- the original home of Baylor. Our busses were late to pick us up by a few hours, however, and we didn't arrive until much later than anticipated. None of us had any idea what we were supposed to be doing in Independence, so we had no idea that eating inside instead of outside wasn't in the original plan or that we were supposed to go on a tour of the town. I like to think that we arrived exactly when God wanted us to, because that night I didn't feel like I missed out on a thing. In fact, it was the most satisfied I've felt in my entire life. We went out to the four remaining columns of the original Baylor campus on Academy Hill, and right there, in the spot where Baylor students stood over 150 years ago, under the vastness of the stars in the pitch black sky, we sang. We sang about love, about God, about Jesus, about joy, we sang about Baylor. And in that moment, in the little town of Independence, far away from my life in the big city, I felt closer to God than I had ever felt, and I felt more at home than I ever had. 

On the way home from Line Camp I cried. I cried a lot. You don't have your phone with you for the whole week, so that you fully immerse yourself in the experience. So you don't have anybody to tell your stories to except the other campers, and they don't care because they were a part of those same stories. So I got in the car with my parents and I just word-vomited everywhere. About my new friends and my new life and everything we did and as I talked I realized how much better I felt about myself and my decision to come to Baylor than I had before and it was overwhelming. I knew I had to do it again. 

So there I was at the beginning of this summer, ready to give my two sessions of campers the same experience that I had. That was my goal, to help change their lives in the same way that Line Camp changed me a year beforehand. I had experienced it, and now it was my turn to help them feel as at home as I did. What I didn't expect was to be transformed again. 

My love for meeting people and making friends never ebbed during the school year. I could go around the library for hours just talking to people, finding new friends through old ones, generally distracting myself instead of studying- it was much more fun. Sometimes I would just get tired of having the same routine everyday and I would show up to the library with no work to do, my only goal being to find someone I hadn't met and make a new friend. I definitely have a core group of best friends, but I also ended up with a lot of less-deep relationships, more surface level friendships that were closer to Facebook friends than Best friends. 

Line Camp 2013 changed the way I see people, the way I see friendship, for the better. I still love meeting people, and I can't picture ever becoming less social. What I learned was the value of intentionality. 

I came into camp this year expecting to form lasting bonds with my campers, but I hadn't thought much about what my relationships with the other leaders would look like. There were quite a few of them that I had never interacted with before training, and I didn't consider how close we would become. Now, I can easily say that some of my best friends in the entire world are members of that group of leaders, and we've known each other for less than a month. The secret to being such fast friends? We sought each other out more actively than I've ever seen, and it was wonderful. 

Line Camp is a really emotional experience. We run on almost no sleep, we're away from home, our campers are away from home potentially for the first time, and the days all feel like weeks. In a time like that, you use all the support and encouragement you can get, and that's exactly what we provided for each other. There were so many days when I had trouble even getting out of bed, and when I passed another leader they gave me a high five and said "You're doing great, and you're gonna do even better today!" and that was all the boost I needed. There are so many of the leaders that I had never spoken to as of June and now I've exchanged life stories with, and I would trust them with the world. 

Over a course of 3 weeks I was able to get know the 20 leaders of Gold Camp on a more personal level than some of the people I've known in Cypress my entire life, and even more so than a large amount of people I've met on Baylor's campus during the school year. And those relationships mean something to me. I've learned that if I'm going to be around someone frequently enough to be a part of their lives that I really want to do that. I want to REALLY get to know people. There's a sense of happiness that you just can't get without living in love, and that's what this is all about. As a group, we as leaders poured an immeasurable amount of love into each other, and it made for the most close knit group of people I've ever been a part of, and it made Baylor more of a home than it's ever been. 

If you're reading this, we've probably met, but maybe we haven't. It doesn't really matter. Tomorrow I have a goal for you. Think about the relationships you have now, and the relationships you want to have. How close are you to the people you consider important in your life? Seek them out. Actively pursue and engage in meaningful conversation. Be vulnerable with people, and they'll be transparent with you. Live in love, and you'll notice the difference. 

My goal was to give my campers the experience I had at line camp last year, and I think that for most of them that happened. Now I have a new goal, and it's to give the people in my life the benefits of the experience I had at line camp this year, and this one can't be put in a checkbox to be marked as complete or incomplete. It will be in progress for the rest of my life, after all, I'll never run out of people to know. 

House Rules

I play a lot of board games. (Let's just take this moment to practice spelling that- B O A R D games, not bored games). I play a lot of new, kind of geeky board games that a lot of people have no idea how to play, too. Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Bang!, are played more often than Risk or Monopoly. I play a lot of poker too, Texas Hold 'Em specifically. Lots of these games have really complex rules that everybody has to learn to be able to play, and that can take a while, so sometimes it turns into this sort of learn-as-you-go experience. Everybody knows how to play Monopoly or Scrabble, but the rule books for some of the newer games seem to go on for ages.

Because of the amount of rules and guidelines to follow, it can be easy to forget the protocol for a specific situation, and instead of going through the book to find out what we should do, the host makes a "house rule", and we do whatever we want to do. Obviously we can't change anything of immediate importance, but playing with Aces as only high cards and never low doesn't seem like the end of the world, and starting with the resources for your first settlement in Catan as opposed to your second shouldn't change who wins the game. In this way, as we fantasize about having control and immerse ourselves in the different worlds created by our games, we use house rules to sort of circumvent the system, and "stick it to the man", if you will.

But what about the real world?

God gave us a rule book, and I can guarantee it to be longer than the one that comes in the box of whatever board game you choose. Do we know the rules? Do we follow them? Or do we make our own "house rules?" Usually only the host gets to declare a house rule, but who is our host? Do we owe it to the God who put us here to give up our right to change minor parts of the game? Or as long as they don't change the outcome of our lives is it okay? Some things to think about.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears...and Bleach

 As many of you know, I'm going to be a Baylor Line Camp Leader for the freshman class of 2017 for most of July, which I couldn't be happier about. However, since it takes up a large chunk of time in the middle of the summer and not at the beginning or the end, it made searching for a secondary summer job seem unreasonable. So, being the spontaneous, impulse buying, never-let-an-idea-die kind of guy I am, (remember the dia tanks? I drafted those in half an hour), I improvised.

One morning in the shower I had the idea that I could pressure wash driveways for some extra cash before I left for Waco. I didn't actually own a pressure washer, though, so logically I needed to acquire one. Immediately upon exiting the shower I put a towel on and found a guy selling one used for a decent price on Craigslist, out of Spring, TX. I texted the phone number saying I was interested, he said I could come check it out, I got dressed and left the house. Without telling anybody where I was going I withdrew the money I needed from the ATM and headed to Spring.

Spring is a lot farther away from Cypress than I thought it was. We have Spring-Cypress Road! Shouldn't that mean it doesn't take that long to get there? One of the lights was out at a really major intersection on Highway 6 and I was stuck in traffic, barely moving for almost half an hour. After about an hour and a half, I made it to my destination: An incredibly nice suburban home with a 3-car garage, two nice trucks, and multiple Polaris ATVs inside. If anything were to go wrong with the deal I at least knew that this guy wasn't going to kill me in broad daylight, and he didn't seem to be in a financial situation worthy of holding me up for less than $200.

He demonstrated the pressure washer for me and everything seemed to work just fine. It was a nice model, too, a 3000 psi Honda, one of the better ones on the market. It seemed like a really good deal...maybe even too good. I asked him why he was selling it and he said "It just started to run a little rough, and I'm not one for tinkerin'." I asked him how many times it had broken down and just stopped working, and he said that it had never completely quit on him, and I believed him. It made sense based on the contents of this man's state of the art garage- if something wasn't perfect, he probably just bought a new one. He helped me load it into my car, even throwing in a few bungee cords to help tie it down, and I was happily on my way. When I returned to my house and mom found out where I had been she freaked out, quoting times people had encountered bad situations on Craigslist and how I should be more careful, but I saw no flaw in my decision making process. I wanted something, I found a good one, I bought it, and now I was going to make money. Everything was fine. Was that naive? Probably. Should I have taken a little more time to do my research? Probably.

I chose to do my own driveway first, just to make sure that everything worked properly and to see how long it would take me to finish one so I could calculate a price accordingly. Calculating a price turned out to be the least of my worries, and being on my own property turned out to be incredibly lucky. I had been using the washer for about half an hour, experimenting with different heads, getting a grasp for what stroke patterns to use, and had completed about half of one of the tiles on my driveway when the machine sputtered out and came to a halt. I thought that maybe I was out of gas, but when I checked there was still a visible amount in the tank. Frustrated, I went inside and made a sandwich.

I came back outside after lunch, turned the water back on, and was pleased to find that the washer started right back up when I pulled the cord. Being the incredibly bright, full of common sense, Dean's List college student that I am, I started working on the tile directly below the one that was half finished, and finish half of it also, in ten minutes this time! Then the washer died for good. I ended up having to take it to a lawn mower repair shop, where they took over a week to fix the carburetor and give it a tune up...for another $90. Not only was this a week that I couldn't use it to make any money, it also cost me...and my driveway looked utterly ridiculous the entire time.

After I finally got my baby back, and she purred like a kitten, (for the price of a brand new purring kitten, might I add), I started back on my driveway. And the moment that I finished it, I was staring at Ol' Faithful herself. The hose from the engine to my spray wand had a pinprick hole in it, and when water ran through the machine it sprayed a mist 15 feet into the air. I tried to cover it with a rubber casing that was on the hose, but as soon as I turned the water on it broke through that and sprayed even higher. The hose was done for.

Not to worry, right? That has to be the least expensive part of this whole set up, how much could it cost to replace? Let's try another $60. I found one at Home Depot that was the same brand as the spray wand, (which the previous owner had recently replaced), and that was suited for up to 3600 psi, more than ample for what I needed.

I felt like I was finally ready to go, so I drafted up some beautiful, humorous, and altogether enticing flyers and passed them out up and down my street, left a few at my dad's old office, and sent out a few emails. Today, I had my first job.

Let's talk about this morning. The job was 15 minutes away, and I needed to be there by 9 o'clock. I planned to leave at 8:30 just in case, and because it never hurts to be early. I set my alarm for 7:30, thinking that would be plenty of time to do everything I needed to do, mainly: eat breakfast, make a lunch, mix my chemicals, grab some tools, put the new hose on the washer, and load the car. I woke up in a frantic delusion at 7:00 anyway, because my body was just so excited, and luckily I decided to leave bed then.

After a short breakfast, I made the discovery that the brand new hose I had purchased did not in fact, "fit all pressure washers", as advertised. In a situation where one size fit most, I was the minority. So, in a rush to get to the hardware store and buy a new hose that actually served a purpose, I loaded the washer and my gas can into the car and left the house. Let's count the things I forgot: lunch, chemicals, tools, dignity. Right.

After floundering around Lowe's at 8 in the morning, where no employee wants to help you because it's seriously too early to have such a serious concern, I found what I needed, shelled out another $60, and was able to make it to the house a few minutes early.

I don't usually sweat much, but standing outside today, monotonously stroking back and forth with the wand in the sweltering Houston heat, I couldn't have been more grateful for the sweat dripping down my body. The rest of the day went without a hitch, and it felt so fantastic to actually be doing something productive with my time. After putting so much time, money, and effort into this project, I had finally yielded a result, and it was amazing. I worked really hard, and made sure to do a job I'd be proud of. I even got the go ahead to do the house across the street tomorrow. I made it out of the valley and now I'm finally going places. After overcoming all of that today, I think it goes to show that everything temporary is tolerable, and almost everything in life is temporary. Don't give up on your goals, learn from your mistakes, make spontaneous decisions, and always follow through.

Just Another Day in Paradise

I was never really a huge country music fan when I was growing up. When I was a little kid and my dad still drove his little black Ford F-150 we would listen to 93Q and sing along to George Strait and Alan Jackson, but we outgrew those days pretty quickly and soon I was listening to Ryan Seacrest's American Top 40 every Sunday morning and my love of country was hidden deep down, only to be awoken when I left for college.

I already said "howdy" as my greeting to most people, why not listen to the music that I remember first? There's a cassette tape recording of me as a five year old singing "I like it, I love it, I want some more of it," and I did want some more of it. I already had the motto that every Texan should own a pair of cowboy boots, and it wasn't long before I thought that every Texan should know how to line dance.

There's just something about country music that suits the summer. Whether it's driving, going to the beach, sitting by the lake, doing fireworks on the Fourth of July, going camping, sitting by the fire singing songs late at night, or staying up and sleeping in, there's a part of country music in the spirit of summer, and it makes me love doing things.

I spent the weekend at the lake a few days ago, and the only music that I thought was suitable to play off the dock was my rodeo playlist. Talking about my "ass in the water, toes in the sand", "barefoot bluejean nights", and girls in bikinis just seemed right. It really was "just another day in paradise".

I'm home now, but I'm still filled with summer spirit. I'm antsy to get up and go do crazy things, drive all day and see how far I can get, cook new foods, never sleep, have the time of my life. That's what summer is about, I reckon.

Get to it, y'all.

A Change in Scenery

Being home is different this time. For the first time in my life, I'm coming back for the summer. It's like I'm taking a vacation to my own house. Rules are different, friends are different, restaurants are different-- but it's still just as hot!

It's odd at the moment because a lot of my friends are seniors in high school and aren't out quite yet, and I'm realizing just how much more limited I am in my selection of people to socialize with now than I was in Waco. I've made the most out of the past few days, but already, on day four, I'm bored. I never realized that even though I complain about class and always want to take naps when I'm up at school, all that work is a necessary filler to what are otherwise dreadfully long days that when unoccupied by some sort of activity become almost depressing.

 I don't mind not sleeping much at night, because my schedule gives it to me in short breaks. Activity, nap, lunch, activity, nap, activity, activity, dinner, activity, activity, bedtime. Usually during school I don't sleep until 1 or 2 a.m. Last night I went to bed at 10. It felt good, but at the same time, it felt so wrong- like I was wasting time that I could be using for something much more satisfying.

I have a solid circle of friends that I do most of my day-to-day things with, both at school and in Houston. But I also have a lot of other contacts that are huge parts of my life by being people I can see every now and then, have fresh conversations with, do new things with, and laugh about different things with. I value each and every one of those people, and they aren't nearly as numerous back home as they are in Waco. Sometimes I find myself missing those fresh faces more than people I've known for a long time, because in the back of my mind I know that when I see my closest friends nothing will have changed, but the others will bring some element of surprise.

I just got back home, and I've already fallen into a groove that I cannot wait to break out of. Sometimes all I ask for is a Change in Scenery.