One life to live + oops = turd in the fan,

  or,
If Mordor had a baby.

I've mismanaged my life. I admit it, I accept it, I own up to it. I hate it.

I'm the kind of person who wants it done right the first time. If you show me an unfamiliar word, I will not sound it out; not aloud, not in my head. I wait until I figure out how it's pronounced and then I tell you. It's not that I don't make mistakes, or fear mistakes. I'm really good at making mistakes, and they've taught me a lot; and I don't need a lesson on how life isn't about avoiding mistakes.

Let me try a different approach. I'm an "A to D" kind of person. I don't mess around with the "B and C" of things. I want to go from start point to finish as efficiently as possible. Why build a bridge when I can jump across?

Which leads to my complaint. Sometimes, the jump lands short. Then, the work really begins, because I'm not Indiana Jones and I don't carry around a handy whip (note to self...). I've got to climb up the hard way. It's not that building vs. jumping is better, but when I jump and it doesn't work out- it's frustrating, demoralizing.

I went into college pretty "doe-eyed" (though I don't have pretty doe eyes). The foresight I did have wasn't focused on my life, and I was blind to the present then, too. Well, this buck stops here. I've racked up some serious education related debt, and it's really going to screw with my life. My family, I think, is heading to a fairly significant, financial hurt-bump. Meanwhile, I'm earning a degree that will no better help to put food on the table than a minimum wage job. What am I going to do?

I can't turn back, but what is there to hold onto?

Save the Words

People don't realize the state of the endangered word. Every day more words are lost to carelessness, abuse, over use, etc. Humanity's tendency to expand its reaches at every cost has confined the natural environment of words to inhospitable locales. The word cannot thrive in these conditions, and due the word's lack in adapting effectively we have seen diminished numbers of words, and words that flounder in an attempt to survive in foreign environments.

Take for instance the species of word known as poetry. Poetry enjoyed great prosperity as a species for centuries, maybe even millenia, until recently when the islands of man began to rapidly drift further and further apart. Every word (poetry, prose, dialogue especially, etc) survives as a wanderer much as desert bedouins wander for survival. A word travels from one man island to the next finding food for itself, and also adding to the land it inhabits. For this, think of the bee; a bee pollinates flowers which then reproduce. In this way, the word (like the bee) is detrimental to its biome.

As I said, though, the islands of man have drifted further and further apart. The simple word has suffered greatly. Again, I return to poetry. In the past, poetry has exhibited ornate plumage, strong vitality, and great capacity for producing offspring. Recent years have seen a decline in the number of poetry capable of actually producing offspring, or producing offspring incapable of traveling from one island to the next. Ancestors of modern poetry demonstrate this concept plainly. Take for instance the following specimen:

"Ah, God, the way your little finger moved
As you thrust a bare arm backward
And made play with your hair..."

This particular poetry came from island of Crane, but it has been found to inhabit many other islands in some form or another. It is attractive and invites suitors, and has the capability to produce nearly innumerable offspring. Now take what we might see today in a similar environment.

"ooh baby, the way you text me/
it's oh so sexy..."

As you can see, this poetry is far removed from its ancestor, and has lost many of the ancestors qualities which might ensure survival, and propagation. Can you see how it is too weak to survive? How it isn't capable of producing viable offspring? All this because the islands of man have somehow drifted apart, or shifted in themselves.

We must work to preserve the endangered word in its various forms. Without the dedicated effort of thoughtful people like you the word could go the way of the Dodo- or worse.

So, please, please, save the words.

Amphictyony

If you don't know what it means, that's ok. "Amphictyony" is not the most intuitive word. "Amphi-" kind of sticks out, but the rest of the word leaves the best wordsmith cowering in the fetal position, unsure of his assumed prowess. It is a real word, though.

"an association of neighboring states or tribes in ancient Greece; established originally to defend a common religious center" ~WordNet (R) 3.0 (c) 2006 by Princeton University

John Bright uses this particular thorn of a word in his A History of Israel to describe the tribes of Israel after each assumed its portion of the land of Canaan and there abouts. My question is this: If this is the best word that Bright could acquire for use, then does he mean to say, in what he does not say, that the distinct tribes did not necessarily give a lick about each other, but only YHWH and his dwelling place?

Or maybe he meant they were all actually Grecian?