Spring Is Coming

The View Outside The Place We Were Staying With The Youth Group

The Netherlands is slowly emerging from winter's cold and icy grip... biking to work in the mornings are generally dry affairs, but occasionally there's rain. I'm still not used to the merciless European rain and biking in it can be cruel. After I got back from impact, I house sat for some friends and I got soaked on the way there (and spent several hours in wet clothes). The flowers are starting to come out. Spring isn't my favourite season but I do prefer the warmth of spring and summer to the winter's coldness.

A big highlight for me this month has been the youth weekend away in Woundenburg. We had ten teenagers and four staff at a quaint little place in the countryside. We had three seasons of teaching and a few small groups (we divided the group into two; the 12-14's and 15-18's). We also played several games and had an absolute blast together... Rhodé (the youth leader) came up with some pretty cool games that entailed with many memories that will last a long time to come. I'm really enjoying working with the teens. It's one of those things on my calendar that I look forwards to, as they're a great group and a lot of fun to be with.

Over the last few weeks, I've been busy sorting through preparations for the future and working on various tasks that come with being an intern. I'm still enjoying the work I'm doing and I love the challenges it brings. A few weeks back, a few of us flew over to Sidcup, England, for the NewGround Prayer Days. On the whole I learned a lot about myself and God's faithfulness.

I'm still working on my plans for the future. There are a few question marks that I'm working towards answering and solving but I'll post here once I know what exactly is going to happen. It's exciting. I'm enjoying the challenges that come with looking forwards. I've written before about plans to stay in The Hague Den Haag and I'm slowly starting to formulate the next step in this regard.

I've been asking for your help for a few weeks now and no one seems to want to help anymore. This is the last survey I'm asking you to fill out for a while, as I want to make sure that I'm making good changes with my blog. I know that people have commented before about what I've been writing. My thinking goes as follows: if I don't know I'm making the right changes how can I improve? You can help by filling in the survey for me (so far I've only had two responses). Just click here.

Writing

Over the last few years I've really enjoyed a certain thing that doesn't come well to most dyslexics... reading and writing. I love reading (as you may have guessed) and I love writing as much, if not more than that. In this post I want to share some of the various areas I enjoy working on in the literary world.

My Memory Book; 2016 - 2020

Memory Book

Some of you have heard of my memory book. I've been writing in it since January 1, 2016... and I'll keep using it until December 31, 2020. Every day I'll write a few sentences about my day on the same page as past and future years. The date is written on the top of each page so I'll be writing today's few sentences on the same page as last year's lines, and next year's. It's a lot of fun trying to condense each day into a few lines... it's also a lot of fun seeing where I was last year and will be in the next few years.

Writing A Novel

I'm a writer and having a very imaginative mind, I've always enjoyed writing down my stories, most of the time. Of the last few months I've been wanting to start writing another book. By this, I mean, a full length novel made up of several hundred pages, not a short story. However the threads I've followed, in my head, have all come to dead ends. I'm someone who needs to know that an idea is worth investing in, if I know that I'm still going to be able to have the passion to write six months down the road. Most of the ideas I have end up feeling dry really quickly. Not to add, they're all really predictable. The ideas I have had have been already been written by someone else and I don't want to write a book that copies someone else's work. Another thing I don't like about the ideas I've had is the predictability of the plot outlines I've had. I have a bit of a thing about predictable stories. I don't enjoy knowing what's going to happen and I want to be surprised by the book's story outline.

Poetry

Another thing I've been trying to maintain is the amount of poetry I've been writing. I've got a couple on my iPhone which need to be put into my poetry book. This, too, is a skill I need to work on because I'm always forgetting to write down my poetry in the specific notebook I use as I don't carry it around with me as I go through seasons when I don't write anything for weeks, or even months, and then I end up writing several poems a day for a few weeks, before it shifts back to a state of silence. Not many people have read my poems because I'm rather fussy about the audience's reaction to my poems, despite the fact that years may have passed between when I wrote the poem and when I read it. Often people think I wrote the poem recently and start drawing assumptions that aren't there... but beyond that people do seem to like what I've written. If you'd like to read any of the poems that I've published online, click here. I haven't posted anything there recently due to not having the time or the energy to go through my poetry notebooks and find some of the ones that aren't too personal to be made public. Anyway, poetry is still a great love of mine and still something I strongly endorse.

My Old Journal; Which I finished A Few Weeks Back

Journaling

Since I was eleven I've kept a diary/journal. In the beginning of my journaling adventures, I'd write about what was happening in my day to day life, who was doing what, and my responses to what happening. As I grew up I began to write more about my thoughts are on various points. Now, whenever I write, its more about how I'm feeling on various things than what's happening around me. From time to time, I will write about what happens around me, but instead of writing about what's he/she/they did or said, I write in more detail about my response to the what's happening in the world around me. It become my favourite form of therapy and one of the most trusted. My journal is my place where I can be brutally honest with myself. Its where I can formulate my thoughts and feelings in response to what's happening in the world around me. I love it and I'm not sure how I'd be able to cope without a notebook and a pen. I always have my journal with me in my bag, as I'm always looking for a few moments to sit down and scribble a few lines. I think I've gotten to the point where I'm going through about two journals a year (depending on the size of the notebook I'm using, how often and how much I write). When I finish each notebook and I put them into a box that I keep somewhere in my room, and I make sure that I won't read what I've written for at least six months after I put the notebook away, so that I don't reopen issues that I've dealt with in that particular issue.

Do get in touch with me if you'd like to see more of what I write by clicking here and filling in the form.