Jess's Journal: Life Unscripted

Wow, what a Good God. A lot has been happening over the past couple of weeks. It's hard to comprehend what has been happening lately in my life. I have to admit, there are days where I struggle immensely with my own self doubt. Lots of people go through these days, especially when we interact with others. But enough of the personal, this post is about worship styles. James 4 begins with this: "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." Talk about a slap of reality. We're constantly fighting with and against ourselves. We're quick to speak and slow to listen. I'm writing this blog post tying James 4 to the context of worship. Denominations quarrel over methods of wo...

The last thing I ever thought about was entering the legal profession. No illusion this time. There. I said it. My first post confirming that I am applying to law school for the fall 2020 semester, LSAT notwithstanding. How did I get from a confused former education major to a graduate with an English degree taking that step and having that step confirmed? It was that fateful day before I left for Georgia with my classmates taking the Flannery O'Connor night course at Union. I was near the Writing Center at Centennial Hall and I remembered blurting out: "I want to go to law school." Without a single thought, panic set in. Instead of unconditional support from my friends and colleagues, I got concerning remarks. They made many reasons why I needed to back out of law school -- one example was an unnamed female lawyer with an alcohol problem. Another reason was the textbooks. All the mounting dread started to cave in and I thought, "Am I making a huge mistake?...

Never thought I would use vision for my first post of 2020, but I feel that it is a great topic for the start of the year. For all my glasses and contacts folks, this one is for all of us. Every year, I would have a routine eye exam to monitor changes in my vision. Once changes were documented in my prescription, I would then see the optometrist for a change in lenses. The eye checkup was as usual. But today's was a little different. On the prescription for my left eye, I discovered that I have astigmatism. Shocker, right? Except not really when you get headaches, constantly squint, and other things. Astigmatism is actually very common and it gradually develops from a combination of heredity and environmental factors. Luckily, it was caught on time and can be easily fixed.  But life is not exactly 20-20. Life does not have simple solutions to correct errors. It's not exactly a one size fits all type deal, even in LSAT/MCAT/DAT/GRE prep (plus other standardized test prep...

This blog post is an important one for me to write. It has gotten apparent that my twenty-fourth birthday is coming up in a few weeks and I, yet again, have put myself in the crossroads of life. My devotional readings as well as my prayer time revealed revival as a #OneWord for 2020. But wait, there's more. One of the other words I've considered is grit. Grit definitely ties into responsibility. And one of the many gripping things I've wrestled with in the past few years is that while the Lord closes doors in order to protect us, we have to sacrifice our own comfort and safety to follow the path that the Lord has for us. I think now is the most important time to recognize that God  usually does not put you in the most comfortable or closest school or path. We're not meant to be comfortable. We're not meant to be secure. We're meant to get out of our comfort zone. I think that's the most important value of all. At the end of the day, our own closed doors se...

Ten days until the end of the decade, and I am getting ready to reveal my #OneWord for 2020. Although this time, I will also talk about how the past decade has shaped me all the way to now. At the start of the decade, I lived through the heydays of Facebook and Twitter. I was in middle school trying to get my start in music through covers of popular songs. But then I realized a key part of copyright. Then I tried to get my comedic chops going and it did not work out either. As of today, my YouTube channel sits empty. Then, Vine came along my high school days. Humor dominated my junior and senior years of high school. If you haven't heard of Vine, it was basically a six second version of TikTok minus the lip-syncing.  In music, I gradually went from listening to pop, hip hop, and country to rock, punk, and metal with some hip hop sprinkled in. Contemporary Christian music also was a part of my playlist in some moments. That was a snapshot of my life over the past ten years...

Today as I am sitting at the table, with coffee in hand, preparing for a December TV update for Pop Culture Cosmos, I thought about a lot of things. Jessica's Show is coming out of hiatus. I have been radio-silent on the podcast front since November 17. There are a lot of things to address. It is December 12, and a lot has happened since the last post. I'm going to clarify the paragraph, " When I was in college, I surrounded myself with like-minded people, same views and interests. But nowadays, I want to surround myself with people with different backgrounds, cultures, views, hobbies, etc. I have since limited contact with the people I associated with in college, with the exception of a few people. I'm probably not going to get into the details of what led to that, because I have no business putting all that stuff out there on social media. But one thing is for sure, I don't have the same group of friends I did back then. That's life. There's no drama, n...

How do I word this blog post? It's December 2, and the year has gone by super fast. I've learned quite a few lessons on forgiveness and relationships in the past few years, but more so in the past year. I have a hard time putting this into words. Two posts were in my drafts folder on this blog and this year is not even done yet. There are so many open possibilities that I have at this point so I can go anywhere if I set my mind to it. Back in high school, I was trying different things. I was on the journalism staff briefly, I was in choir for two non-consecutive years, and I tried my hand in academic team. I was also secretary of my high school's Book Club and the Future Business Leaders of America, and interestingly enough, books were an integral part of my undergraduate career. Even now, I am still trying out new things. I learned that for every plan that does not work, there are always backups. I will be sharing one of my backup plans. For a backup plan, I thought ...