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two-two-niine, Georgia, United States
i never thought it would be hard to fit a nut into a nutshell, but here's a go at what i'm about. foremost, i know, love and follow the Lord. i'm a wild card. i enjoy being alone as much as i enjoy other people. i eat up anything art-related. i'm an only child. i have a BBA in Marketing & an AA in Fine Arts. i'm the marketing and PR gal for Stewbos group, a job i truly love. i do this part-time, and the rest of the time i'm a stay at home wife/mama to Justin and Vayda. i itch to travel and i delight at learning new things. you'll find i'm neurotic, intellectual, honest and somewhat naive. i'm open and compassionate, yet paradoxically hard on myself. my biggest fear is succumbing to cynicism, and my greatest joy is experiencing growth. my idol is willy wonka, because i never want to grow up. i sing and dance my way through the day. I believe the best ones are full of giggles. i think blogging is rather self-indulgent. writing about my thoughts feels selfish, yet i enjoy the exploration it brings. thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

gee, thanxxx

i don't know why, but i always think of thanksgiving as kind of cliche. i say i'm thankful for crap, but really i'm not at all. i just enjoy the food and the warmth of my family being together, but it was mostly just another selfish day in an enjoyable season.

this year has been a big struggle to renew my mind, to be authentic instead of just going through the motions everyday, to avoid getting dragged through the trivialities of life. therefore, i think the Bible verse that has shaped this year for me is Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to trst and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will."

i often get caught up in myself and who i've let myself become, but discovering this year that i can mentally take action to renew the way i think by memorizing Scripture and taking on different thinking habits has really changed the way i look at things. i have the power in Christ to be more authentic, to use my time better, to change how angry and frustrated and stressed i allow myself to become over situations. it's a challenge, and i like that.

so, this season i want to really give thanks:
i'm thankful to have a God who is in control and who reminds me that i can't really do much on my own so i need to stop worrying.
i'm thankful for parents who have great intentions for my life with their advice, who love the Lord, and who love me and love being involved in my life.
i'm thankful for a positive, kind-hearted, open-minded boyfriend in my life.
i'm thankful for wonderful friends who love me, challenge me and often forgive my flaws.
i'm thankful for the influence God has given me among certain groups of people. i'm thankful for freedom in Christ in America and the opportunity to experience Christ at all.
i'm thankful for job opportunities and all that i have been able to learn recently.
i'm thankful for the blessing of being able to attend school with the help of scholarships and my parents, so that i have a better chance at gaining employment in society.
i'm thankful that i am able to give thanks--that the Lord gave His life and gave me the Holy Spirit so that i can know Him through prayer and share in His power. such things sounded so lofty and so strange until i knew this unexplainable gift.
i'm thankful for my past--no matter how sticky or how stupid my decisions were--because they've shaped who i am currently becoming.
most of all, i am thankful for tomorrow and the future purpose for my life.

i hope i never forget how to seize the day.
happy thanksgiving to anyone who reads.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

no excuses.

at the beginning of the week, i have every intention to go to choir practice, bible study, relevate practice, the gym, etc--but when the day gets here, i get so tired by the end of the day that i'd rather just lay around a little longer at the house instead doing something mindless.

i'm feeling pretty irresponsible. i know the people who are used to seeing me have probably lost faith in me, and i don't even know why i'm so tired. i've started working full-time (between two part-time gigs), and i guess the juggle has just become mentally exhausting.

it makes me feel like a whining dweeb, because so many people work harder than me. but i crave sitting down to read one of my million books or catching up on my favorite movies and television shows. that feels selfish. probably because it is selfish. it's a funky place, and i don't know whether i should just indulge it or try to motivate myself to get back involved on a regular basis. i loathe being inconsistent, so since 'all' wasn't feasible, i reverted to 'nothing,' essentially.

people approaching me saying that they miss me makes me feel awful, so i feel the need to perform under those expectations. i don't know what the Lord is doing in my life right now, but i know that i am trying to follow as He convicts me. this is just a confusing area for me.

i feel like LMF is such a blessing, as i get to use my creativity and passion for art on regular basis. it just feels right, and things are progressing in a wonderful way. it's the rest of my life that's chaos. it's weird, because i was so intensely afraid of my job situation this summer as evidenced in my blogs. and now that i feel secure in that, everything else has turned upside down. i have faith that the Lord will provide a path. i just need to be more faithful in valuing my time. i could really shave off a few minutes here and there to make my life more useful.

having a boyfriend feels a little crazy. chipper and i will have been offishy for a whole month tomorrow. he's such a good thing in my life that i'm scared i might start focusing too much on him for my happiness. that sounds like a negative thing, but it's not. i just feel so safe and understood with him, and having that so present in my life makes it easy to start ignoring God--but i hope recognizing that early means i'll be able to stop that from happening. i really just can't explain how well things are working themselves together. i'm sort of at a loss for words about it, because this relationship came out of a really awful time of stupidity and self-inflicted chaos in my life. yet somehow, i got a really big blessing out of it. i'm still trying to process it--or just figure out when the joke is going to end.

i heard a sad song this afternoon. it's a song that has a lot of memories attached to it for me, and it made me feel really apprehensive. letting my guard down is so hard, and as much peace as i've felt through my prayers i still get overwhelmed sometimes when my past comes to the forefront of my mind. i worried for a while about it this afternoon, but all in all the Lord is going to work it out if i let Him.

it's hard for me to be so honest about things i just don't know about. it's hard for me to admit i'm unsure or that i know i'm failing some people's expectations. there's no excuses though, and i'm not doing the erinish thing and making any. so that's this week in erinland.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

i'm not lazy.

i've written in all lowercase letters for years, and there's a reason. i'm not just grammatically lazy. ee cummings is my favorite poet, and obviously we share the same first and middle initial, as my name is erin elizabeth (add the doubleh-voo and you'll find out my initials are EEW, gross. laugh it up. you're not the first).

if you aren't familiar with ee cummings, much of his work seems nonsensical to the general public. however, he was truly a master of the avant-garde, whose work i quite enjoy reading. many people believe he legally changed his name to the lowercase, punctuation-absent "ee cummings," but this is likely untrue. it's thought that when he did sign this way, it was a submissive act for the crowd. for some reason, that makes me love him more.

ee cummings really inspires me, because he was willing to twist conventional rules that often induced confusion and discomfort for the audience. and he did all of this for the enjoyment of his craft, which correspondingly pushed boundaries in the art world at large. though his neologisms and other grammatical choosings are more notable that his lack of capitalization, i chose to mimic him in the latter respect a few years ago as an expression of minor rebellion and appreciation for his ideas. i also enjoy creating, using, and attempting to spread personal neologisms, but that isn't so much a display inspired by edward estlin as much as it is a quirky erin thing.

my blackberry autocorrects this preference, but i keep it up while i can. i just felt like sharing, because it's a little-known erinish factoid. so there.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

time

2010 has been quite a year. i know it's not over, but i feel like i've crammed a lot of life into it. i think i can successfully say i did more living in this year than i've done in any years prior. i broke so many of my rules, and that process has been both scary and rewarding. this year has changed so much how i feel about time itself.

how am i spending my time?
what is time, really?
how do time and dreaming correlate (i'm convinced they do)?
is my attitude positive or negative during the majority of my time?
am i valuing the time i've been given?
is time another simple man-made instrument or God-ordained idea?
am i ordering my time based on social stigmas or my conscience?
who is worthy of my time?
how much does history's routine affect how i feel comfortable spending today's time?
how can i quit wasting time?
how can i maintain radical and spontaneous uses of my time throughout an average life?
is my mind accurately interpreting my time through memories and analysis?

i enjoy thinking. let me rephrase that--i'm utterly fascinated with my mental capacity. i like getting so deep into my intellect that i feel insecure over it. i feel like the human mind is such a feeble thing. i'm not referring to the idea that many people don't actually use their minds--which they don't. they mindlessly follow social norms and trivial desires within the physical realm. i'm guilty of this too. what i'm suggesting is that the human brain just isn't enough. i see evidence everywhere, mental illness being the number one. on that note, i'm a firm believer that everyone has a tick or a quirk. some people are just too arrogant to search out and admit it. i'm sure there's some norm as far as mental capacity goes, but everyone has some unique pattern that individualizes their own brains.

i'm usually very selective over who i share intellectual conversations with. my deepest convictions and the depth of my musings and dreams just seem like such personal things. my friend jamie joyce inspired me this summer to share more of myself in this respect. he's really an incredible guy. he displays such a large desire to connect with people on more than just a trivial level. he wants to know you for everything that you are from the most shallow to the very deepest core. what an inspiration! it's so easy for me to mimic the trivialities of the world around me. having "fun" and asking about the day-to-day and sharing laughs over the cynicism of daily grind is easy to dumb down and experience. but how many people have i experienced down to their very soul?

in such an informational world, it's easy to base our connections on simple data. i want so much more than that. i want to hold the things that can't be held. i want to attempt to know the things that can't be known. i love to test the heights and depths of my mind. it's so small, and i am so unable to comprehend so much. i look at the sky and i think of all the people who have lived and who will live and see the very same sky. who am i to feel so important that i can display any amount of cynicism about time? who am i to say i know anything at all? i can talk such mindless drivel all day long about popular culture in the world, but what value does any of that really have?

i could write all day about the mind. about how the mind is in a war between what is Godly and what is not. about how my mind is completely weak without the Holy Spirit to guide me. about how the mind lies to itself and creates completely different memories from those that actually occur. about how my eyes can't even physically see the world as it is because of the way my mind has trained them to view it. about how i feel like there must be some spiritual purpose for the night's dreams. about how i wish i could live within my imagination. about how i dream to spend years training my mind in the ways of the Lord and exercising my intellect into new boundaries, but i know that the trivial distractions of success, money and life will slow the process down indefinitely.

i'm a procrastinator. time waster. completely caught up in the world around me. i'm talented. i long to be accepted. i long to please people. i long to have attention. i spend so much time. i spend it and spend it until it is gone. i can manage to juggle a million endeavors, but i can't make the time to manage my own mind. that's the ultimate sin, i think. the one that won't be conquered in my lifetime--using my time to complete fullness. don't ask me where this came from. it's sort of a vomit because i'm stressed. i work. fun. sleep. church. work. fun. sleep. church. work. i just look at the year and i filled it so perfectly, and i enjoyed the beauty of most of it in my mind. i hope i will always be able to take a breath and enjoy the beauty around me. i was overwhelmed earlier, and i rested my head on the back of the couch, looked at the ceiling and sighed an enormously long breath. and all i could think about was the overwhelming nature of time.

secrets

i accidently posted this to an old business blog on saturday. weird. oops:

i'm on the bus home from secret church right now, and i've really enjoyed the trip. after taking a step back from the ministries i was involved in, i felt a little alienated. but this has been a really good experience. i think i made a lot of the tension up in my mind, and i'm really encouraged that i don't feel compelled to run away because i feel like i've failed (something i'd typically do) since i had to give some things up. everyone still cares about me and likes me the same as they always have, so i am feeling less stressed about it.

i found myself listening to 'secrets' by onerepublic a few minutes ago. there's something about that song that touches me, and i think it's because relate to what the band is saying. it's so easy for me to live under pretense, and the song always reminds me that insincerity is so unnecessary. i heard the song for the first time flying home from boston, and i cried. i don't even really know why. i didn't know what the lyrics meant at first, but i thought it was so beautiful. having the courage and the desire to be me enough to go on a trip independently was a big deal. i have lived so long trying to fit into someone else's mold that being myself seems unnatural sometimes, so i'm striving all the time to remain authentic in who i am and who God created me to be. today i ate lunch alone again. i've done this a lot lately. i will see movies alone and other solo activities just to remind myself that i don't always require the approval and company of others. i'm such a people pleaser that i often forget to please God or treat myself right.

i'm happy for the discovery i've had recently, and i hope i will be able to find the right balance of pleasing others and leaving time to have a healthy personal life. i guess i'll just continue to 'give all my secrets away' in the meantime as i grow into this new idea. i think it's a pretty nifty thing.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

relationship status

my relationship status on facebook has changed. it wasn't really something i expected to happen, but i'm pretty happy about it. i met chipper a couple of years ago when a friend took me to play rockband at his house, but we didn't really hang out much after that. i struck up a conversation with him when i saw him out around my birthday, and we started hanging out. i've done things differently with chipper than i've done in the past, and it's been a pretty big challenge for me. given that i'm completely neurotic, i normally require the input of every acquaintance i know before i give a guy the green light. everyone has to know all of my business and approve before i make a decision, which normally just stresses me out more. i consulted the people i care about the most, and they were all for it. and after i prayed about it and felt a peace, i was all for it.
my life has been such a whirlwind recently with all the changes going on, but i feel better than i have felt in months. things aren't perfect by any means, but i see direction and i feel pretty confident about where my life is heading. i hate pretending so much, and i hate living under other people's convictions and opinions about my life. for the first time in a while, i have the space to be me and figure out what God has for me without everyone whispering in my ear.

i still get texts and facebook messages and kids approaching me asking about gossip and things they've heard about chipper, and i'm glad i'm in the place where i can understand and give grace to that very small-minded, legalistic attitude. in earlier years, i would have gotten discouraged and gone as far away as i could get from that crap. but being involved in church and learning more about the Christian faith has really encouraged me to be an example in any situation i find myself in. at sherwood, it's hard for the general public to understand when someone pulls back a little in their involvement. people get uncomfortable about it, and they start to assume things without having any information. i know this, because i've done it to people. it's common to alienate and accuse someone rather than confront them with a concern, and even though that's sad and frustrating, i'm not letting it stop me from what the Lord has for me at the church he's called me to attend.

because let's face it, the way i choose to spend my time and the people i choose to spend it with is ultimately between me, God and my parents, because they are the authority in my life until i live on my own or until i'm married. i like to share my life with everyone because i'm an open book, but i don't owe anyone an explanation about who i'm dating or why i've decided to pursue a full-time job that takes time away from the things i was able to do in the summer time.

i truly hate experiencing people waste their energy creating false ideas about what i'm doing, which in turns wastes my energy becoming frustrated with instigators who further unnecessary gossip. it's my hope that the Lord will bring understanding to people in my generation soon that we should build each other up through His love by showing grace and mercy to all people. not just the needy children at gillespie park, but the pregnant girl in the youth group and the Christian friends who have gotten distant and the family member who is disappointing you. grace and mercy aren't just for the people it seems easy and convenient to give them to--it's for everyone. and the Lord calls you to show love through grace and mercy far more times than he calls you to rebuke others in love in His Word.

enough of that soapbox. it's just something that's been bothering me lately, because my happiness would be pretty unbeatable if there wasn't a backlash of silly opinions everytime i look at my phone. i feel pretty joyful right now. i love working at lemonade. i feel successful, because i can give my favorite skills toward my everyday tasks to please my boss. i still love sherwood everything i get to be a part of at sherwood, even if there's awkwardness because of some lack of understanding. and i really enjoy the relationship i'm in. i wrote a blog back in april about what i hoped for in my dating life, and it wasn't just fluff. i look back at that, and chipper has all of the qualities i want in a person (here's the link, if you need a reference: http://erinwhatley.blogspot.com/2010/08/guy-appreciation-101.html).

it's my goal to continue to grow in all seven areas as an individual so that i can be the best person i can be for the Lord and as a girlfriend. faith, sincerity, independence, consideration, kindness, motivation & appreciation. they are all such heavy virtues to uphold that i think it could take me a lifetime to succeed in all seven, but i really do love a challenge. :) nothing could really rain on the erin parade at this point. i'm loving life, and i'm being myself--so i couldn't really ask for more. well, i could use more money...but couldn't we all?