My Mind on a Webpage

This is the front of the journal.

So I promised a good friend of mine that I would make her a journal for her travels throughout Italy this summer.  So I wanted to share with you photos of what I made.  I bought a Moleskine from target cause it was surprisingly the cheapest thing I found that would work for my purposes.

So, a quick how-to.  I looked for a journal in the store that was sturdy and had a bound because i don’t like spirals and they’d also be harder to decorate when it comes to the spirally section.  So, I measured the dimensions of my journal and printed out a map of ancient Rome (front) and a map of the Roman Empire (back).  Both were resized in Photoshop so that they’d fit properly.  So then I cut the maps out a bit and fit it to the book and bent the edges so I knew where it went.  Then I used Mod Podge to paste each piece down, doing the front first.  The back map takes up the space on the spine.  Something special for the back map was that I had to cut holes out for the elastic band to come out of.  I am overall very happy with how the journal turned out, and I think my friend is too.  In the pictures you’ll see that I put some different pictures on the inside as well.

So this is the first project in a new medium in my summer of 5s that I’m posting for you guys.

Progress:

2/5 Projects in a New Medium

2/50 Blog Posts

56/500 Miles Biked

I Forget/5000 Pages Read

So, depression has been creeping back lately after it’s vacation from my life.  It’s been back for a few months, and I cannot really tell what it’s doing.  Because the episodes are less frequent, yet the severity seems to be getting worse.  I’m becoming more hopeless with each bout.

I was in New York last week and a friend asked me what I plan on doing after graduation.  Graduating is already a touchy topic because I feel as if I failed somehow and am continuing to fail.  All my friends from freshman year are graduating, moving on with their lives and to other places, and everything else that comes along with graduation, but i will not be.  I question the value of a degree and the reason I am in college in the first place.  I have no clue what I’ve majored in or what it will do for me. And all of this among other things makes me not want to go back to school at all.  But getting back to her question, I tried to think of what I want to do after college.  I have the cue card response, but this was a friend and conversation that deserved the true answer.  After thinking about it, I simply replied, “I don’t know… I can’t imagine living until, then,” picking my words carefully to reduce the morbid or wining, “I’m depressed” qualities of the statement, but it is true.  Every time I’m asked to think about something in the future whether it be one year or 50 years, I truly cannot fathom making it that far and with my current status I sincerely hope that I don’t.  I don’t want to live like I have been another month let alone year(s).  I followed up that answer with the lies people like to hear, “I’ve been looking at some graduate programs…”

In my depression I’ve started to lose my love of New York.  Afraid to think about this as I am, that’s what depression does.  When it starts to get bad, I stop enjoying music and other things that I usually enjoy, and I guess this long-term absence is making me apathetic towards the city I vowed never to leave.

I’ve been trying to do things, make myself proactive, to ward off the depression, like a torch to wild animal.  I’ve tried reading more, learning to crochet, learning to knit, making jewelry, photography, writing, painting, web design/programming, exercising, but soon after learning something new I tire of it and am no longer interested.  I devour the knowledge and learning it quickly and then want nothing to do with it.  I felt myself, while making the Red Riding Hood Dress, feel disinterested in knitting anymore.  I fought off the feelings and kept myself knitting for a while, but here I am in May and I have not knit one thing since then.  I begrudgingly crocheted a scarf for a friend.  The only other things I’ve crocheted were very quick and felt like they were made out of necessity.  I have no desire to even continue with my plans to start a business.  I’ve been fighting these feelings pretty much since the start of its realization.

Trying to solve my life while falling asleep last night I thought, maybe it’s not that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but that my life has no direction.  Life feels completely useless to me. I feel like a waste.  Nothing I do feels like it carries any value for myself or others.  I really don’t know what to do anymore.

I worry more and more everyday because suicide seems a little less irrational.

“Some business updates.”  It bothered me a long time ago that the word business doesn’t really exist.  I mean the noun form of busy, like happiness.  So this update is both about my business as well as how busy I’ve been, my busy-ness.

Wow  It’s been quite a week since I last posted (or however long it’s been).  I have been making a lot of progress with my website.  I am still very happy with the blog, and now www.shop.matassenyc.com is starting to take shape.  I have been doing writing lots of code, and just learning as much as possible as quick as possible.  The hardest part though is doing this so that it will be easier in the long run and at the moment, it looks like I’m doing well.  Everything should be incredibly easy to update and operate down the line!

My friend from high school, Elaine, has a blog, that I’ve been watching for a while called Clothed Much which is a fashion blog featuring modest clothing.  The coolest thing about the blog, which is partially the purpose is that I don’t realize the modesty of the clothing.  It is natural and effortless, which is why i continue to visit her page.  Elaine has giveaways very often on her blog and so there’s a very good possibility of me giving away two items on her blog to a lucky member of her readership.  I am going to send her some photos today.

Yes, that means I have new pictures to show.  Since the theme for this collection is water, I added some props in the photographs.  This piece is called the bubbling bracelet.

Bubbling Bracelet by Matasse

I am happy with how it turned out, considering I remade it about 5 different times to make sure that it was perfect.  I of course wrote down how i did it so that I can recreate it easily.  This bracelet goes along very well with the Bubble Earrings that were revealed in my last post.  There might even be another object that comes out today.  We’ll see how much work I get done.  If not today it should be out within the next 2-3 days.

Yesterday was a very difficult day for me.  Being Sunday and my Sabbath, I decided that I was going to do no work yesterday.  That was so incredibly difficult because first, I know I have plenty of work that I should be doing.  Secondly, every other day of the week work takes up the full day, so I wasn’t really sure what to do without work.  Thirdly,  everything that I thought to do instead was work related.  It was tough but I made it through.  I crocheted some of a sweater that I’m working on for myself that has been hibernating.  I got some water ice with my mom and ate lunch at Harvest, which was good as usual.  I didn’t do much but it was fun.

I don’t know how I forgot to mention this sooner, but on Saturday I babysat my niece Lily.  I’ll put up a few pictures and close out with that.  Have a good week!

-Steven

P.S. I couldn’t figure out how to get the picture of the bracelet out of this gallery.  Forgive me.

So in my decision to get a tattoo I was wondering about how I might be able to explain this choice to some Christians who are not as open to the idea of getting tattoos whether it be in the near future or later on.  The only verse that I can find mentioning it in the Bible is in Leviticus, and since we are not under Levitical law through Jesus’ dying on the cross, that mentioning does not matter.  Some are still highly against it though quoting that “your body is your temple” and that you should take care of your body.  Quite frankly I don’t think getting a tattoo or piercing would not be taking care of your body unless it’s done at a place that is not clean with their tools.  Regardless I continued to think about the idea of your body is your temple.

In thinking about this, I first asked, “What are temples for?”  A temple is a place that is built for the Holy Spirit to come into and meet with us.  Though after thinking this, I immediately thought about how God does not need a temple.  God is perfectly powerful and is not weakened at all by not having a temple. Nowhere is it said that God needs a church or synagogue or anything to contain him.  The Bible actually shows quite the opposite.   When Moses is in the desert leading the Hebrews to the promise land, God led Moses.  “By the day the lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night” (Exodus 13:21).  Here god is with these people even though they have no home and are moving constantly.  They surely had no temple for the Lord and he still showed himself in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire.

Even in societies that are established God doesn’t necessarily need the temple and Solomon admits that He cannot be contained by anything they build.  In Solomon’s message to Hiram, the king of Tyre, Solomon writes, “The temple I am going to build wil be great, because our God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?  Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him?” (2 Chronicles 2:5-6).  If God had to be contained by our temples he would be out of luck because as Solomon says, nothing we could build would be good enough for Him.

God shows how this separation of spirit and body exists in us as well.  Genesis 2:7 says that, “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground” just like buildings.  Brick is made of dirt and water.  This is the temple, but then God makes the spirit when He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being,” which is the rest of the verse.  The breath of life is the spirit of Adam and the spirit of each of us.  Just as without a congregation the temple is just a building, without a spirit, our body is just a corpse, not a living being.  These bodies that were made by our earthly father and mother are just housings for the spirit that the Lord has given each of us.  Just as temples erode and crumble so will our bodies.  Even in John 6:63, Jesus is recorded saying, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.”  It is our spirit that will pass on into the after life, not our earthly flesh.  Because of this, we should be more careful to take care of our spirit than our body.

So if we are to go about with the belief that the body is not as important we can start to run into trouble as well.  This could lead to the belief that we should neglect or even damage the body because our spirit is the only part that really matters.  Trying to figure out how to combat this point I looked to the where the “your body is your temple” verse is to see if there is a little more explanation in context.  Surprisingly I found out that the verse does not exist and that it is just a common misquoting Paul in the New Testament.  In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, Paul writes, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” and in 1 Corinthians 6:15, 19-20 reads, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? … Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”  It is not that your body is your own temple, but it is the Holy Spirit’s temple.

This idea is stated multiple times in the New Testament.  In John 14:15-17, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.  The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”  When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior we invite the Holy Spirit to inhabit our temple with our own Spirit.  Again, this idea is illustrated in Acts 4:31, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and Spoke the word of God bodly.”  The Holy Spirit is in us and maybe for some of us, it is that we allow him to more fully inhabit our temple on Sunday or during prayer and praise times.  Maybe it is during great times of great health or fortune that we are more willing to invite the Holy Spirit to be more fully in us because our temple is clean and beautiful. Though this should not be the case.  The Holy Spirit is always in us and should be always in us as much as possible, allowing God to be an important part of your life.

So now that the complicated importance of our body is settled what about tattoos, piercings, brandings, implants, plastic surgery, etc.  What are we allowed to do with our bodies?  Right after Solomon mentioned in his letter how no temple he can make will be great enough we are reminded that he started of saying that the temple he will build will be “great.”  He continues in verse 7 with the purpose of the letter to Hiram by saying “Send me, therefore, a man skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, and in purple, crimson and blue yarn, and experience in the art of engraving to work in Judah and Jerusalem with my skilled craftsmen, whom my father David provided.”  He also continues to ask for cedar, pine and algum logs from Lebanon because of the skill of the men at cutting timber (2 Chronicles 2:7-8).  He is asking for all of the finest things to decorate the Lord’s temple so he can make it as great as he can.  What it comes down to for each of us is what is the motivation behind our body modification.  At certain times of our life or for certain reasons it may not be the right thing to do.  If one gets a tattoo simply because it’s the trend and they want to fit in, this would not be a good reason.  If they want to decorate their body with a branding, or remember an important event with a tattoo, then it may be a good thing.  Getting a tattoo of a cross on ones body may not necessarily be a good thing.  It is all about what the thought is behind it.  Some of the same reasons can be sinful for one person and not for another and even change during a lifetime.

This is my take on the topic, which I believe is inspired by God.  What do you think? Does my argument fall flat anywhere?  Are there any holes?  Please tell me what you think.

All quotes are from the New International Version of the Bible published by Zondervan.

So October was quite a wild month for me.  For those of you who do not know, I was in an out of the hospital a couple of times.  It was an interesting time and it has resulted in my absence for all of October and most of November.  The second time I got out of the hospital was around the 8th of November.  I came home that same day.  I have reacquainted myself with my house and Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania.  I’ve been doing random things since I’ve been home.  I’ve been hanging out with the few friends that still live in the area.  I’ve been doing a lot of yard work and seeing old teachers.  I’ve tried taking up the art of wood carving.  I’ve started on a wand.  It’s proven to be quite difficult, but fun.  I’m trying to read more, but for some reason I have not been doing that as much as I want.  Maybe I will do that after I finish this post.

Some other things I’m filling my time with is a volunteer position with the Pastoral Care unit at Nemours, the A.I. DuPont Children’s Hospital.  I am thinking of getting a job at the grocery store that is down the hill from my house.  There are a lot of things that I want money for, but I don’t want to drive anywhere, and I don’t really feel like working in clothing retail anymore.  I was thinking about applying to Lush in Philadelphia, but I don’t want to pay to get into the city every time and gas is expensive (and so is parking).  I will see what I can do around here.  I don’t really want to work at the grocery store, but it is very close and will probably be easy.  An upside to it is that I’ll become more comfortable with food types and think about cooking more often. Any ideas?  Especially from those who know Garnet Valley?  I’ll be adding a new section to my blog: Theology.  There I will write my ideas of Christianity.  I will explain some of my belief and how they’re changing or different from most peoples.  I really hope that draws some conversation.  We’ll see.  There should be an essay up by tomorrow.