so, im sitting at work, terribly bored.

the end

a beautiful day...

ive found myself listening to a lot more u2 lately...thus the blog post title. but it really is a beautiful day. i find myself right now in a very uncertain place but feeling very confident. i havent posted for a while so i guess i should update... and in usual bullet point form....

i got engaged...yeah, its true, my committment phobia has been broken, and i am going to marry the most beautiful girl in the whole world. i dont deserve to be with such a beautiful, intelligent, funny woman who challenges me to love jesus more each day. she is way out of my league to say the least, but i got her something shiny and tricked her into saying yes so....december 5 clear your calendars

im graduating...again. i will finish my masters on august 20. i am very excited to finally be done, but the prospects of where i could go next seem more appealing. and now that i have someone to go with me (see above paragraph) i am much less scared to go....

allegedly i will be working full time at the center for children and families in rayville starting in august. i am very excited about this prospect. God has brought me to such an amazing agency that truly cares about their clients and wants to see their clients succeed. i love working with the kids and i love working with the families on my case load. i hope everything works out and i can stay there for a little while.

other than that things are going swimmingly, the uncertainty of wedding plans, school plans, and work plans havent phased me yet, but im sure they will. i look forward to what God has in store for myself and my future wife. perhaps we will start one of those family blogs. wow, ive come a long way....

talk to you soon....


dustinshelbywhitlock

i forgot about you....

dear blog,

I forgot about you, but im back.

So it's 11:00 and i still dont feel like getting out of bed, my feet are sore and blistered. After hiking almost 20 miles they are cursing at me. Hanging out and camping with eric was a lot of fun. He and I hadnt really spent and time just relaxing in a while. And 2 days worth of driving and hiking in the silence of the national forest gave ample time to have our usual discussion of life.

Having a few days off of work has made me have very mixed feelings. I enjoy not having to drive to rayville but at the same time I want to get back to work so i can keep learning how the center works and learning more about my clients. I feel like God has really blessed me with this new job, especially after the crappy last one.

Having started the new job it has made me wonder a lot about the future and where i am going. I thought for the longest time i would never want my LPC and that i would just look for a doctoral program straight away after finishing my general and school master's. But now I am starting to wonder if i would like to stay around the center and get my LPC and see where that could take me. I think its just the comfort of Ruston that makes me not want to get away. Yes, i know, very paradoxical that the very thing I've said i wanted to get away from for a while is the very thing that keeps me here. All that being said, I've decided that over the break I must make a decision about pursuing my school masters degree. Some days I want it some days I dont. We'll see what happens.

She is gone home for a while. I miss her already. I think its the littlest things that make me care about her so much. I happened acorss a photo album of us last night that made me smile. Hopefully I will get to go visit soon and meet the fam. Which, as you know, is a huuuugggggeeeee step for me. I guess I see it as a big step in the committment area. Which is an area that Ive struggled with my whole life. My expertise in the area of freaking out and running away are childish notions I am trying to escape. Maybe it just takes the right girl?

Im sorry its been a while and I will try to remember my poor sporadic blog more frequently.

-dustinshelbywhitlock

its been a while....

hello again,

Ive decided im ready to write about the alchemist.

yes i know there are other things to write about, vegas etc., but i am ready to write about the alchemist.

and this is it....

never tire of doing what you know in your heart is right.

whether people tell you its wrong, whether people ask you to justify your actions, whether your parents tell you that you shouldn't, whether you have to go to great lengths to do it....

never tire of doing what you know in your heart is right.

the boy never tired.... i hope i can say the same for myself...

I know that was probably anti climactic, and there are so many other things that I couldve brought from that book, but that is what i needed to hear right now....

dustin

im like willy nelson....

or at least a little bit, im soon to be on the road again.

this trip has been so much fun, it was exactly what i needed to recharge the batteries before school starts.

elpaso has been good. the rowell's have graciously opened their home to me and have been so fun to be around. i think sometimes i forget what a family unit looks like. its been really cool to be around them this week.

well i really didnt have alot to say. hopefully soon i will have the seattle and el paso pictures up on facebook so be sure to check for those.

i am still mulling the alchemist over in my head, ill get around to penning it when i get home, for now i have to go pack my life back into a little bag again.

see you in ruston....


-dustin

the city....

so i made it to seattle, it was good to see eric, we are currently residing at the green tortoise hostel outside of pike market. its pretty much the in the coolest location ever.

we have been cruising down to the market to wander through all of the fresh flower stands, fresh seafood stands, the bakeries and the fruit stands. the aroma of it all mixed together is intoxicating. it mixed with the hundreds of people down there was a neat sight yesterday, it smelled like life to me, yea, thats the only way to adequately explain it.

yesterday after hanging out and drinking coffee on alki beach and reading i decided seattle would be a nice place to reside. i could certainly get used to it.

so i am reading the alchemist right now. an to be honest it is really speaking to me. it talks a great deal about how the world is so interconnected and how each person must fulfill their own personal legend in their lives. it also talks about how each person is connected to the personal legends of others

and i began to look at the city yesterday and see how i was connected to the people around me. it was such a strange feeling to look at someone i didnt know and see them for the hand of the creator and to see that he had brought us to the same place at the same time and we would never meet again. eric and i began to talk about this and we noticed that we were in the background of some peoples pictures, we talked about how as long as those people owned those pictures we were connected to them. im still trying to sort out all of this in my head, so it probably sounds mushy.

its all very existential in manner and im having trouble wrapping my mind around it, but god is teaching me something cool, i can feel it coming, he just hasnt put all the puzzle pieces together yet.

anyway,

once we came into the city we checked in and eric and i began to cruise the city. we wandered for a while the found ourselves at the space needle. it was pretty cool and we decided to go into the experience music and sci fi museums. both were really cool. then we ordered a bit of pizza and sat in a park overlooking puget sound and ate and read. i finished the alchemist but i think i want to start it again...i know, im ridiculous.

after pizza me and eric went for a stroll on our phones :)

then, to bed i said, to bed.

-dshelbywhitlock

tired...

today was a crazy day, i dont enjoy being the mediator...

i feel like so much is going on....

but i cant really focus enough to write...

i said something today that i didnt mean to say....

but it ended up not being bad at all....

d.s. whitlock