What makes a book hard to read? Aside from finding little interest in a book, things that can make a book hard to read for me are not what you would probably expect. The author has a need to show off their vocabulary? Not usually a problem for me, and if I happen to not be able to figure out what a word means from the context I just look it up. Complicated sentence structure? No problem. Strange book structure, like no punctuation or paragraph breaks or 7 pages for one sentence that is entirely in italics with a open parenthesis that never closes? Been There.

What makes a book hard to read for me is when I can’t pronounce the characters’ names. This may sound strange, but if I can’t pronounce the names, I can’t follow the story in my head. I had a professor who said he would give nicknames to characters whose names he couldn’t pronounce, but this hasn’t worked for me. This is why I’ve been reading Doctor Zhivago for almost a month now and am only on chapter four.

What makes a book hard to read for you?

So, no e-reader for me. However, if I were not an English Lit major, where most of our books for class are novels, an e-reader would have been a more serious consideration for me. I would definitely choose a gadget if the alternative was lugging around heavy text books.

I cannot end this post without mentioning that Nintendo has stated that e-reader features may be in the 3DS, now that would be something else to consider since I already want a DS.

When I woke up I realized the barracuda was the BP oil spill.

Meyer writes about doing things on purpose, not waiting till she “feels like” doing them. She writes about not being afraid or doing things afraid, so as to not let fear rule you. That I get. But she also says things about how she, at times, will decline speaking invitations or other such things because she doesn’t have peace about it.

My problem is this: how do you know the difference between something being a fear and it just not setting right with your spirit?

I considered prayer as the answer, and maybe it is. For prayer to be the answer though, a person would have to be completely open to hear God and be able to tell the difference between what God is saying to them and what their own feelings about the situation are, something that is incredibly hard to do if fear is involved.

The problem of having too much to do starts with giving ourselves to much to do; we try to take on too many roles. We try to be every member of a team ourselves instead of letting others join our team. This doesn’t even have to mean things that work like a team, sometimes we just try to be it all. For example, if you’re a web designer, worship leader, photographer, Sunday school teacher, janitor, and office manager, do you really think you’re doing the best that can be done in all of those roles? Are you able to give all of them the attention they deserve or wouldn’t it be better if others were able to take on those roles so that every role was being filled to the best of each person’s ability? We’re not meant to be great at everything, that’s one reason we need others.

I’m currently reading The Confident Woman by Joyce Meyer and in it she talks about how we are not supposed to fill every role, we are not meant to be good at everything. We will feel much better about ourselves if we focus on the things we do have talent in and grow in those things instead of trying to create talent for ourselves where we don’t have it. Moreover, when we try to fill every role, taking on tasks that we’re not so good at, we’re depriving the person who is talented in that area from doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

So, if we stop trying to wear everyone’s hat, we’ll feel much better about ourselves and can give ourselves the change to excel in the things we are talented in. We will be less stressed and we won’t feel so bogged down by having too much to do.

Other ways to simplify your life:

Romans 12:3I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

4-6In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

6-8If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

That’s all for now.

A lot has changed since I last wrote here.
I got married!

I’m this close to being getting my BA.
We got a puppy!

The vet says he is either part Mastiff or Saint Bernard. In case you don’t know, those are both considered “giant breed” dogs. She said, “he’s going to be huge.” So this will be fun.

In addition to these changes, changes will be happening here too. I’m going to try to focus more on my original goal for this site, which is to write positive posts about things that make me feel uplifted (keep me from sinking) in hopes that they will help someone (even if it is just one person) who reads it. Among these posts, which will probably vary from life things, to things in the news, to thoughts on scripture—like I’ve done on some of my previous sites—I will be writing more reviews. Right now I think the reviews will mostly be books that I enjoy and/or have a good message, but there may be an occasional CD or movie review as well.

If you have anything you would like to see reviewed here, let me know by emailing Reese@Ohbuoyancy.net
That’s all for now.

I have a preference and tendency to use (without thinking about it) Old English. I use “dreamt,” not “dreamed;” I think the word color should have a “u” in it and many other things along these lines. I’ve always preferred British punctuation, especially when it comes to quotations. In American English, punctuation marks always go inside the quotation marks at the end of a sentence, no exception. The English way makes so much more sense; for example, with a question mark, if the question is what is in quotes then the mark is inside the quotation marks, but if the question is the whole sentence, not just what it is being quoted, the question mark is outside of the end quotation mark (How many times did I say “quotation”? Three. Did I ever say “quotation?” No.)

Just now, I was reading some 17th century literature and nearly every noun has its first letter capitalized (yes, I used a z and not an s, but trust me, it was not without hesitation). If you check my work from elementary school (not that you could do that, that would be weird) you will see that I did this more often than not.

Finally, when I was in elementary school we were still taught to use the Oxford comma. For those of you out of the punctuation nerds loop, this is the comma before “and” in: Red, white,(this guy to the left here) and blue. We’ve driven the Oxford comma into non-existence, but he’s there for a reason and I refuse to give him up!