Day 616

Today was a pretty full day.  We got a lot of things done.

It was a normal beginning to a Sunday... we woke up and went to church.  Pastor Marked talked about the sort of things that retain most of our time and attention, whether it's money, luxuries, friends and family, or God... specifically regarding the things that make you happy.  It was good and insightful.  

When we got home I got some lunch and then did homework for my finance class.  Meh.  Then I finished up grading the tests that my students took last week.  I'm hoping to get their additional assignment graded by tomorrow afternoon, but we'll see.

After grading and such, I got to studying. This section is pretty frustrating because there was a lot of material, but I don't really understand how much of it is important.  The questions don't seem super difficult, but the chapter had about twice the reading of most sections and... I have no idea what it was talking about.  So hopefully any questions from this chapter are just computational and nothing too conceptual.

We had leftovers for dinner (because we have lots of leftovers), then I studied some more.  After my brain was done for the night I went upstairs for some reading/gaming.  I was reading something interesting about happiness and the author made an excellent point that I've known for a while, but has never really sunk in until recent years: the pursuit of happiness is often what makes us happy.  Getting a new sports car as a gift would be pretty awesome... but how much more rewarding would it be to work hard for years, saving every paycheck your dream car?  And the pursuit, though hard, would instill a dream in you that creates happiness in and of itself.  I think that often, the pursuit of something is what keeps us going.  For the next 4ish years, I'll be studying for exams and other criterion for my line of work.  And as much as I wish I didn't have to, it gives a very straight forward goal and tangible payoff.  I don't have to create any goals for myself... I have a big one given to me.  That hard work and pursuit is what gives people (or maybe it's just me) purpose.  One of my big pursuits is to become an influential member of my community wherever I go.  Specifically, I've always felt passionately about helping homeless people.  I think that's mostly because it's an issue that I see often enough for it to be very real to me, and I can imagine not having a home or job and how awful it would be.  Some of the terrible things going on in the world are too awful for me to fully comprehend... but I can comprehend (mostly) being homeless.  So one of my goals in life is to actively do something about it.  In my perfect world, I'd love to pretty much take a huge warehouse and turn it into a safe place for homeless people to live.  Additionally, people can have a place to store their belongings, have a mailbox, have access to career services, and other types of things to get people back on their feet (provided they don't want to remain homeless for their entire life).  That would be neat.  We'll see if it actually happens.

Well, that was a bit of a tangent.

Ok.  It's late and I'm tired.  Good night.