Bright Ideas...

Is over.

My life comes back to me after this week. I'll be able to get ahead on homework, actually do what I'm supposed to do, and maybe even get some extra-curricular studying (that'd be video games and such...)

Speaking of, Final Fantasy XII is really good. It has its moments where you wonder what's going on and why, but on the whole it's been amazing so far. (I can't believe he was a Judge!) The character development has been slow and steady, the plot is delightfully politcal, the world is given massive proportions (you don't save the world, you save a region...), and there's no massive love story given central attention (it's mostly past love for now...). Anyway, I could go on, but I won't.

I'm going to bed right now. Goodbye Mac, Genevra, Joshua, and everyone else... It's been fun.

Bright Ideas!

Bright Ideas! Bright Ideas! Bright Ideas!

Stinking Patrick Miller

So I got this email the other day from Patrick Miller. He said, essentially, "Hey Kemp, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about being an RA." I read, "Kemp, I think you'd make a good RA." I was planning on writing him a nice email letting him know that I was not planning on applying for a couple of reasons, but as I composed the email, I found myself actually thinking about it more.

So now I'm thinking about it more.

Reasons not to be an RA:

• I would have plenty of time to do theatre.
• I would have plenty of time to work at my new major. Film takes quite a bit of time to work at, so I'm told.
• I think I'm a better leader when I don't have a title. When I informally lead a group, say a Bible study or otherwise, I do it out of love and desire to do it. When I formally have a title, say Sherpa, my job is done like a job. It is no longer about love and desire, but about responsibility and obligation. As a Sherpa this year, I have felt more obligated to build really strong relationships with my Sherpees and guilty when I don't feel I am making an impact on their lives. I would much rather just love people because that's what I do. As an RA, I would be obligated to spend time with each of the men in my section. If I didn't have as strong relationships with some as I did with others due to my lack of pursuit of a relationship, I would feel terribly guilty.
  
• I don't like planning activities. I don't think I would dig coming up with section sneaks or section activities.
  
• I don't like having to report on conversations or do paperwork on students or any of the other nasty yuck RAs have to do.
• There's always that annoying fear that I won't be able to connect to the guys in my section. I just don't connect with some people, and I'd be afraid to have a section full of them.

Reasons to be an RA:

• Well, the pay is pretty nice. I know it's not exactly fair if you break it down by hour, but really, it's quite a hefty sum for a semester.
  
• It would look great on a resume.
  
• My RA was huge to me as a freshman in college. (Granted, that's probably because he was my suitemate and we had lots in common, but still...) I would have the opportunity to be that guy to others.
  
• I don't think I'd be terrible at it. Others seem to have great confidence in my ability to do it and have a positive impact.
  
• I kinda want to do it in a weird, masochistic kind of way, and junior year really would be the best time to try. I don't want to look back and say, "Man, I wish I would have been an RA."
• Is my self-assessment of my leadership really all that valid? (This can be an interactive question.) Would I still reach out to people if I didn't "have" to, or would I just turn into apathy? Is a leadership position something I have to have in order to funtion?

And then there's that whole God thing. I don't really want to be an RA, I think, but what if he knows better? I don't think he'd ask me to do something that I don't have much interest in doing, but then there's the example of the prophets and others who have asked God to find someone else.

And all this came about because I was trying to respond to Patrick Miller's rather simple email (that I have since found out was prompted by Mike Coon...). Stinking Patrick Miller.

P.S. I'm thinking I'll be good to not be an RA. If CUSG's flyers mean anything to me ("Be the Change you want to see!"), I should keep going in to Leadership Journey. Sirdars have little to nothing to do with curriculum or anything that I'd want to change. In fact, they are going to become general student orientation coordinators. Lame.

Thursdays

Thursdays are never as bad as they seem.

Life comes at you fast.

Don't you hate it when you have to make decisions that you don't think you're quite ready to make?

But then again, if the decision must be made, apparently God thinks you can make it. He gives us everything we need to face what we face, so the right answer must be out there.

Sleep time is now.

So... I had this idea.

I used to have a program that you could design your own RPGs on. It was kinda neat, but I never had the patience really to sit down and do it 1) Because I'm impatient about things like that, and 2) my ideas were too big.

So I had this idea to get that program again. But this time, I'll try to be more patient and I'll work on more manageable game ideas. Little mini-games that have a 2 hour story, maybe. Not 4o hour.

If I'm going to be making 5 minute films as a film major instead of feature films, why can't I make what amounts to a 5 minute video game?

I have no idea where this is going, so bear with me.

I feel it is time for an update. I don't, however, have any idea what to write about...

Next weekend, I'm going to the symphony! Yay! I didn't get the chance to go at all last semester, so I'm really excited about hearing some live music. They're performing something by Gershwin and something by Rachmaninoff, both of which Mike Coon is very excited about, so I am too. I heard a bit of the Rachmaninoff and asked him to turn it off, just so it could hit me for the first time live. I'm hoping my brain will start working again.

One of the funny things about life is that since I decided to pursue game design, my design brain hasn't really been working. I think the reason might be because I had to do a complete video game pitch in about three days... It certainly wasn't the quality that I would have liked it to be (although I still got a 95) and much will change when I revisit the story (I worked on that story almost exclusively in my Creative Writing class my junior year. I'd forgotten much of what I'd written.)

One of the things that pleasantly surprised me when I went home was rediscovering my old Creative Writing notebook. Believe it or not, it doesn't suck all that bad. Usually when you go back to look at your old written stuff, you think it's fully crap. The idea may still be good, but the writing is terrible. Now, either I was looking straight past the writing to the idea (which I normall don't), or the writing really wasn't that terrible... I thought that was a really neat.

Oh, and I stumbled across an idea I don't even remember, which is also weird. There's another problem, but it takes some explanation.

When I write, I write as if I'm already there with the character. Usually, this involves no small number of preunderstandings. There are people to know, history to understand, and general world information that just sits in my brain as I write. Usually, I make notes in the margin or make the necessary preunderstandings plain in my writing, but with this page or so of stuff, I didn't. I have very little idea what's going on... I vaguely remember something about dealing with church corruption by using a character in the church, but I don't quite remember why the church is corrupt or how he discovers it, etc... Oh well.

I need to go to bed. I think I shall. This is enough writing for now.