I'm pretty sure this won't qualify as a messay. But it doesn't fit under any other category, and I don't want it hanging out in the world wide web without a categorical home, so I'm putting it here.
It's not a messay, it's more of an update. On my mind, and my life, and what's been going on that I haven't shown on here.

Things I've Been Thinking About:
Music, specifically the fact that I've been listening to Hamilton and Chance the Rapper, and in the past I've had a zero-tolerance rule on explicit music. This shift has caused me to think  about my standards. the discussion seems to have resolved into a theoretical exploration of the lines between art and porn.
Writing, specifically I've been working on my book every day. Which is exciting because I'm writing every day, and calling it a book, and who am I to do either of those things. But it means that a lot of my processing has been on paper, and not this blog, sorry.
Societal Lines, specifically my general confusion over how I can be friends with some people and not others. I try to figure out if I'm not friends with people because I'm not situationally around them or because there's actually something disparate in our levels of interaction that prevents us from being friends.
The Church, and stances it actively and passively adopts that harm its mission field. I'm going to be honest, I believe in natural selection and evolution, but I don't think that proves false in any substantial way the Genesis account. The church engages with the issues of homosexuality and abortion, and is disappointed when our government supports these things, but I don't think it's the government's job to legislate morality. I think if these are legal, it's not a failure of the government, but of the church.
Friends, specifically wondering how many people I can effectively be friends with. I tend to over-diversify, and hang out with like twenty people once each over the course of three or four weeks, but this doesn't seem to be working as well as I may like, because Jane has shown me by example that depth is better than breadth, so now I'm trying to pick my friends, and I think it's hard and annoying, so I'm still trying to figure that out.
Food, and how I can make it a big part of my life. I love the grocery store, and my soul jumps when I see baking accouterments, but I also regularly struggle with gluttony and overeating, so I'm trying to figure out where the line between these things is, and where the joy is polluted by my overindulgence. This is complicated by living in a dorm room, which necessitates living where my food is. I'm sadly in the habit of snacking every time I come into my room, so that's problematic.
Success, and what I need to be doing, and if I should just be a waitress and a baker and a writer-on-the-side, or if I need to participate in what people tell me is some great intelligence that I have, that I seem to have spent lots of money cultivating by coming to college, so I'm wondering what to do about that. money? or nah?

I think that's good for now.
happy sabbath, love you guys (you invisible readers. thank u for listening to me)
Charlie
P.S. Clarity to come soon (aka like March) on my identity crisis, which probably would confuse you if "you" even existed. **UPDATE YAY NOW WE KNOW THE SUMMER SHADOW!**

I wrote this about a month into my freshman year of college, a few days after I didn't get a bid during recruitment. The moment it describes remains one of my favorite life lessons.

     I saw that it was raining outside, so I opened the window. A contradictory impulse, perhaps, but one I nonetheless engaged in regularly. There is no weather more glorious than the rain; on Saturday I had returned from a retreat and was alone in my room trying on a new ballgown skirt that'd come in the mail, when all of a sudden a storm began. I immediately flung up the window sash and stuck half my body and a good portion of the billowing skirt out into the weather. The wind whipped my hair and my skirt and, framed by red brick, I looked absolutely glorious to the empty sidewalk below. "Rain," I thought to myself, "is a lovely thing."

     Today's rain was different, though, different from any rain I could remember. Shafts of wet light fell from the sky, the sidewalk sprouted water spots, and the sun shone shadows. It was this last part that baffled me the most, for though the rain looked like sparkling spiderwebs stretching from heaven to earth and the earth seemed to dampen of its own accord, I found the collision of sun and rain to be the most extraordinary happening in the moment.

     I continued to stare. The sun continued to shine, the rain continued to fall, and, I am told, though I'm not sure I believe it, the earth continued spinning past my window's opening. 

But I was not involved in that madly spinning world, for as I sat still on my side of the sill, I saw in the open window a reflection of myself in the world outside. 

     College had seemed so odd up to now, and I"d been unable to figure it out. Why were friend situations so bad but seemed about to turn good and school so good but seemed about to turn bad and my family absent but I wished they were present and negativity so present but I wished it would be absent and I knew why life was different but I didn't know how to adapt to this change.

     But God opened my eyes when I opened that window. In an experience completely new to me, rainfall and sunshine peacefully coexisted.

     In my life till then, I had seen only sun or rain, times were black or white. Here, they collided, however. Yet they did not mix to gray, because the Sun shone light.

     I knew that life needed balance, but here the Creator had visually played it out for me, letting me visualize what I already was and would continue to be experiencing. He'd shown me what I hadn't seen before and encouraged me that if my life was like that weather—a harmonious collision—that it was a new and beautiful phase. He had created it, and I didn't need to be afraid.

written 9/1/14

I'm not sure what I think about this type of post. It seems to me to be a bit presumptive, a bit unnecessary, and a bit strange.

Regardless, I have an ardent love for efficiency, and I assume some of you do too, so I've compiled a few examples and tips—exceedingly random, mind you—that I wonder if you'll like.

1.