And it is now March 2013!?

The last real blog that I wrote was in October 2012, not including my copy-paste of what I wrote on my eighth anniversary of joining the English Wikipedia.

A lot has happened since then, and I've gotten the blogging urge again. I'm not going to be able to sum up the last two years at all where I haven't been regularly blogging and I'm not going to try to. One thing I will mention is that I now have a new audience: a few Wikipedia editors that I have worked with pretty closely for several years now and who I decided to friend on Facebook/Twitter. So hi!

As most of you know, I served on the public relations team for Upper Room, a Christian ministry on the UC San Diego campus, from June 2010 until August 2012. Following our final event of the academic year, I spent my summer writing a 104 page handbook about my two years (and I promised more portions of it would be posted online... maybe someday). After that, I largely went offline and greatly cut back on most of my Facebook posting... except for various Wikimedia-related anecdotes. I've gotten bad at keeping in touch with close friends.

There were a lot of reasons for that, but most notably, an awful lot happened over the last year. I've always been an introvert, and fall quarter and a lot of winter quarter I just didn't want to share *anything* that was going on in my life or that had been going on in my life until I had processed it all out. I still haven't dealt with everything yet, but now that it's been over a year and I can share a lot of these things without feeling so attached to them that I am unable to, or without having to deal with the political consequences of having a very prominent Upper Room leader writing such things. So here and over the next few days or whenever I lose this blogging urge slash the quarter begins again... are the things I've wanted to blog about for the last few months or up to a year, but could not for one reason or another. Definitely going to be controversial stuff... so be prepared. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if I lost a Facebook friend or two. I'm at 589 now... we'll see what the count is when the dust settles. :P

So the first of these thoughts:

Most of those who knew me in college knew that my last two years of college were difficult. They were, and though Upper Room did add to the strain of them (and I seriously considered resigning twice), that was by no means the only thing going on. There are some details that were never made public, and that cannot be made public at this time, to protect the innocent, and the guilty. But in short, those last two years were harder than most of you know. Frankly, there were days that I never want to go back to again, they were so horrible. Times where I had acted in absolutely good faith, and absolutely got slammed by others for taking the steps that I did.

Weeks where I ate out for all 14 meals in a week, where I got sick of various fast food restaurants, kept all my Costco sodas/Capri Suns/waters/textbooks/UR tech stuff in my car, and did not get home from the labs until 3 or 4 AM, all 7 nights of the week. Where the difference between a weekday and a weekend was not going to class and going to church Sunday morning. Where all my Internet activity (all UR stuff, video editing, programming, homework, Wikipedia) was done from the computer labs, and where I was always either in class, at UR or Flood, in the labs, or sleeping in my apartment. Where during two weekends the labs were closed, and I was forced to bounce around campus (the first weekend) or around San Diego (the second weekend when the entire campus lost power). Where I wondered "why the heck am I still single after all the sacrifices I've made for God?" (not that I was doing it all for a relationship, because obviously I kept along the same path even when it became crystal clear that I would not be dating in my college years)

I don't know if I could have put in a third year similar to those two; while I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm left at the end of year 4, as evidenced by my writing that 104 page handbook, another year would have been incredibly draining, even if it had been less challenging than year 4.

But now that I've had some time to rest, I find myself missing one particular aspect of those crazy days. I really miss being on 24/7 ministry every day, continually relying on God to getting everything done, and seeing God work continually. I miss having my friends close by me, supporting me, and working together on a ministry team, and living as a community. I miss using my skills to help bring people closer to God, doing slides, tabling, or organizational work. I've been getting more involved on Wikimedia sites (future blog) but it's not even close to the same feeling.

So overall, I do not regret my decision that I made in May 2010 to get more involved in Upper Room, and to dedicate the next 2 years and 4 months to college ministry, and more importantly, to serving the God who still cares for me, and who has seen me through until now. I realize that I may not ever see some of what God has accomplished through Upper Room, ever, but I have to trust that God's work was actually done. Finally, I have to trust that God will bring me to the right opportunities in the future.