What I Learned Wednesday #32: Busy Bee Edition

I

When I was in 6th grade, I received the "Busy Bee" award from my teachers. The award read "Always Reading, Always Studying." Yes, I was a bookworm and an academic nerd from childhood. I've almost always busied myself with something. The two years between graduation and the start of my next degree (which begins next Monday) were the first time I've ever had downtime... and it was weird for me. I've taken the last 6 months to work on both my first novel and the sequel. While the sequel has also been finished (as in, the story has been written), I still need to flesh it out a little more. For the past month or so, I've really been focused on polishing the first novel as much as I can, with the final proofread currently being done. In that time, I was so consumed with wanting to meet the deadline (May 1st; tomorrow!) that I was failing to pray. I didn't do that purposely; I simply lost track of time while editing. As I wrote last week, it wasn't until I realized that I didn't like not keeping up with my prayers that I made a more conscious effort to change things. While I've gotten back on track (well, for the most part) this week, I've still not where I want to be... and that makes me a little nervous. I'm taking a heavy course load for the next year (5 classes during the summer and for each semester) and I don't want a repeat of what happened during Lent; I don't want to be too busy to pray. I have my next spiritual direction meeting tomorrow and hope I can talk things through with my SD because I feel like I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Lesson learned: Continuation of last week; keep my priorities on the right path. It's hard to schedule prayer time with a busy schedule but it's necessary for my sanity and for my spiritual life.

II

I've been seeing some lady bloggers address the issue of how women shouldn't feel embarrassed about breastfeeding their children in public and/or how to do it in a modest way. The topic is still (hopefully) in the future for me but I'm definitely learning from them already. Julie made a great video on the topic last week. Hearing her speak about it, reading the blog posts others have written, and thinking about incidents in which women were banned from breastfeeding their children in and near Victoria's Secret stores (seriously?!) makes me wonder what I can do to help the situation. It still boggles my mind how it's socially acceptable for men to ogle women's breasts but as soon as they see a mother nursing her child, they get offended. Uh... Does not compute. I know pornography contributes to the problem so I guess I can start by praying for those with addictions; that they may see how harmful it is and will want to kick their addictions to the curve.

Lesson to be learned: What I can do to help this situation. I don't even know where to start (besides praying) but it's something that I will be looking into.

III

One more thing I found kind of disturbing... I've been playing Sims FreePlay on my iPod touch (no, I am not addicted; I just started playing.) I make my Sims do activities that will take them hours to complete so I don't have to pay too much attention to the game, but there are some activities I'm not happy with. One of the tasks was to make two of the Sims be nice to each other. Okay so far. Then they needed to start dating. Not a problem. Before they could get engaged they had to "woo hoo" (as they call it). Um, I'm sorry. What? Apparently the Sims couldn't get engaged or even married in this version until they "woo hoo"-d. Yes. And then, after they were married, they didn't need to "woo hoo" to have a child; they just needed to buy a crib and wait 24 hours for the "stork" to drop their baby off in the crib. No words. Sadly, I think this was done to reflect our culture's attitudes towards sex and children... and it made me really sad. There must be something that can be done to help change this attitude.

Lesson to be learned: Same as number two; learn a way I can help the situation. There are several ways to tackle this issue, I just need to find the one I can do myself. Also, I really don't like playing games that will compromise my beliefs. It may be "just a game" to some people (and I'm sure there are some who are currently criticizing my personal beliefs about this) but it just doesn't sit well with me.

Anyway, that's it for this week. I didn't really learn too much but I wanted something written this week (in case I don't get a chance to between now and Monday) so I did what I could. lol. And now back to Proofreading-landia. lol.

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! :D