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Wants

It's kinda cold here. Not bitter, but it's cold enough that I don't want to go outside. [You never want to go outside.--ed.] OK. There's much work ahead. I don't want to do it. But most of the time, like the weather, the clouds are not as dark as they appear.

I've been lax in my prayers recently, but I was literally inspired to pray a whole bunch. It was finding out about people's trials and reading the Catechism. My favorite passage from the past couple of weeks is paragraph 278. It's in the context of whether God is omnipotent. Now, the answer to this is an easy 'yes,' if one is thinking clearly about the definitions of the words, but people's spiritual problems are rarely intellectual.

Doesn't that paragraph just sound like a priest or Jesus admonishing you with rhetorical questions? At least it inspires me to make my "I'm sorry I asked" Face. Isn't it odd that although most people can't think their way out of a wet paper bag, at the same time, we're cultivating this slavish technocratic deference to supposed "experts"? The joke's on us, because they don't know any more than we do, least of all the things that matter. [What's with you and wet paper bags?--ed.] My gift is stupidly humorous, non-sensical metaphors and catch-phrases; if I don't use my gifts, then what am I here for? [Wow. Just wow.--ed.]

Tomorrow will not be a good day, I fear. On the other hand, I generally hate this entire month on account of that day now, and I'm doing OK now. Still, never forget that there are things much worse than the separation of death. I'd give back a hundred friends to heal this gulf caused by sharp words. There isn't a single day I don't think about it.

I guess you could say it's been a good year, even if it has been...uneven. I'm not on a fast track to Hell, though I deserve to be the doorman at best in the Kingdom. I'm not just pulling your chain; I read about this "indifference" we're supposed to have, and I just think, "That's not me." There are lots of worldly goods I prefer to others; I doubt I could say that any of them is just a means to my final end with God.

If I couldn't hear music, I'm not sure I could handle that. That's why I sort of chuckle when people think CP is such a huge burden. It isn't. It's just different. I can't run or ride a bike, but I enjoy watching you do it, by the way. I'm insanely competitive. The reason guys watch sports a lot is because something in us resonates deeply with triumph after a great struggle. Sports is a little picture of that without all the suffering (at least for the rest of us). Maybe in that sense, it isn't so good. How good is a thing if it's not hard to obtain? And who are we to make judgments about some guy in a game, when we can't do 1% of what athletes do?

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