Today and the Serenity Prayer

I've had quite a few weeks of essays and seminar leading, and other school crap, etc. Today I finished my Essay on Obama and Hillary with less than 40 minutes to spare. It was cutting it close, but now I can rest a little.

This morning I woke up and my first thought was 'today is going to suck'. I then sat there thinking for a while. Why would I choose to live if today is going to suck. I decided that I wasn't going to let today suck, sure it was stressful, but I'm just trying to be happy about doing things. I try to remember that life isn't that bad, and that I will have fun again, but most importantly that even if things do go badly, that's ok, life isn't always fun, it isn't always overly joyous, but at the same time, I can be content, I can be optimistic even if things aren't great.

I've been thinking about school and work tonight and possibly buying the WoW expansion tomorrow to start it up again, but I've been trying to think honestly that if nothing else goes right in life, I'm still going to have to find a way to be happy about today, and maybe I should try to be happy without 'quick fixes' like material possessions, video games, food, etc. Maybe I could just be grateful to be alive and enjoy myself as I am right now. All of this sounds extremely trite and simple, but I'm still trying to just live this way, so for me this was all revolutionary.

I'm not an alcoholic but I still love the serenity prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

Amen." -Reinhold Niebuhr

I was going to analyze the lines I like, but I realize that every line is awesome. Today I'm thinking about the line "That I may be reasonably happy in this life". Still finding my daily Eudaimonea...

I'm going to have to memorize this, and read some of Niebuhr's stuff.

Jones-in' it for some WoW again...

Last week in American history seminar a girl next to me started talking about how she was going to play World of Warcraft as soon as she got home and how she was having a LAN with her girlfriends. I felt like I had landed in some gamer's fantasy (girls actually playing WoW - "dry land is not a myth!"). Anyway I proceeded to tell her how long I'd been clean (From world of warcraft) and then my TA joined in saying he quit too, and everyone around the room started to go off about how they had all played WoW and either were still addicted or had cleaned up and moved on. But there's still the faint glimmer in my eye when it's mentioned lol.

I found these screenshots on my computer and I've started to get the old craving again, it's comin' back. I'm also done school in a few weeks and so my grades won't be an issue (my average went from 72 last year when I played WoW to 82). I still have the game Everquest sitting in it's package upstairs - I never even bothered installing it. But these screenshots reminded me of amazing times I had in Azeroth. It's actually kind of strange, because some WoW moments I would almost classify as some of the funnest times of my life. The other day I was thinking about Heaven and then I saw a girl playing WoW infront of me in lecture on her laptop and I thought - it's strange that my view of heaven is that it will be less fun than that game. It's as if I have the Blizzard creators higher than their Creator. So maybe I need to just imagine all the fun and good times I've had and make that sum a glimpse of Heaven.

This picture is from a guild raid that we did on Redrock Ridge where we camped on the roof of this building and I chain lightninged people and NPC's it was absolutely hillarious. Of course, apparently this is now bannable, which is ridiculous, but w/e, just another way blizzard ruins the game.

Aristotle talked about Eudaimonea - fullfillment/happiness, I distinctly remember last summer having put in a hard days work for 8 hours, worked with a friend and had a fun time for most of the day, and then coming home and sitting at the computer desk to play WoW while listening to some classical music. Months later when I read Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics I thought those kind of happy fullfilling moments where nothing is wrong with the world. I also think about sitting looking at the stars, etc. Good ol' Aristotle, I think he'd be a gnome mage. I wonder if I'll start playing again.... Blessed Virgin Mary pray for me!