December 31, 2005
December 29, 2005
How Far Will You Go?
The reason I came outside to type, to sit and to think outside alone at all is that I often just do’t do it. I sit inside the house, or inside my room, or inside my classrooms at school and I am overcome with the darkness, or the sounds, or the expectations, responsibilities and chores. At home it is the trash, the dishes, the laundry, the cleaning up. In my room at school it is the writing e-mails, vacuuming the carpet, completing assignments, answering calls, finishing projects, filling out goals and talking with friends and neighbors. In the classroom it’s sitting sit, raising my hand, writing notes, answering questions, completing assignments, paying attention and smiling, laughing, grinning, smirking and blankly staring. When I’m at home I dream of adventures gone by and often get excited about having new adventures. At school I long for late night Gamecube excursions and hours and hours of frisbee playing. In the classroom I want to stand up on the desk, yell crazy caveman-like howl and rip open all of the curtains. I want to live outside and bask in the sunlight, run in the rain, dance in the snow, roll in the leaves, play in the dirt and fly against the wind. In so many ways I want to liberate myself from the confines of our society, culture, traditions and values. I want to smack off all of the excess pettiness that has clung to the core of what we all live for in the first place. I want to pull off all the excess layers of make-up and clothing and masks and accessories that distance me from those around me I love. I want to yell my feelings, whisper my dreams and embrace my true self around all of my neighbors instead of sitting quietly and raising my hand with the right answer. I want to get out of bed excited, I want to eat breakfast and taste it, I want to live throughout the day and feel it. I want to enjoy my life because I’m living and experience the journey because I’m journeying and I think I can do it. I think we can all do it a little at a time and a tiny bit each day. We all get the little feelings and the little inklings to do weird little things…like sitting on the driveway in a fold up chair with your laptop. Soon the inkling might be weirder and weirder and like my dad says, whatever you do it gets easier to do the next time. If you do what you want it will get easier to do what you want the next time. If you don’t do what you want, it will get easier to not do it the next time. Life is calling, how far will you go?
December 23, 2005
So Much
December 21, 2005
A Kind of Alive
Mostly this is a result of seeing my family, my childhood, my parents and my life in a new light. For the first time I see Nat Hellstrom and Judy Hellstrom, not my parents. I see Leighanna Hellstrom and Elias Hellstrom, not my siblings. I see my family, close and extended, near and far, not as ideas but as people. Saying that, I have found it much harder to love a person than to love an idea.
When I was a child my parents and my friends’ parents would fix us meals. We would get breakfast, snacks, lunch, snacks, dinner, dessert, snacks and all kinds of things in between. We would eat watermelons by the pool, pizza on the porch, grilled cheese inside homemade sheet/blanket tents, peanut butter and jelly after playing football in the yard and then some lemonade after I would mow it. I would get food, I would love the food and I would pretty much leave it at that. I used to tell Omega (my best friend Jessica’s mom) thank you for the little pizza she would make for us, but I didn’t think a whole lot about how Omega was feeling that day. I used to get excited and hug my parents when they would bring home Dominoes Pizza for dinner, but I didn’t think about how their relationship was going, how work was treating them, how that jury duty went, how it felt to be late on the electric bill or how that twenty-item household chore list was coming along. I wasn’t expected to think about it and I certainly didn’t offer up the consideration either.
The fact is, however, we college students are all getting older. We are paying for watermelons. We are making grilled cheeses. We make pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lemonades for ourselves. Not only that, we are proud of it and we often make quite a spectacle of ourselves. We eat homecooked meals and we think, holy snap…thank you. We do just what our parents always said we would do. We are becoming older, we are becoming adults and we are becoming appreciative. It’s rough and it’s tough, but it’s only fair. It’s real and it’s who we really are. When I say “I love you” to my mom and dad, when I hug my brother and sister and when I bring home a 2% milk carton it’s a lot different now. It means something different. It’s more closeness than I have ever felt before and it’s makes me feel much more alive than I ever did. It’s not like a “yippee!” kind of alive. It’s almost more like a…“thank you” kind of alive.
December 13, 2005
Impermenance
Love, friendship, sharing, learning, listening, talking and caring about other people happens here and now. I listen, I share, I listen, I share and it’s over. We move away. We think. We reflect. We change. We learn. We become better people and we move on to other conversations. It is difficult, wonderful, beautiful and sad all at the same time but it is life and living. I love my friends and my family very much and I think about them very often throughout the day, but something much deeper flows throughout my time with each of them. Somehow my journey in life is intimately threaded throughout the people around me. Each stranger I greet and open a door for, each teacher I thank and learn from, each friend I spend hours with talking about life, each sibling I hug and play with and laugh with, each moment I share with others defines me in a very real way. I can’t click a “save as” button on my life and I think it is best I can’t. Loving it as it happens is the best way to live it I think; loving each moment and letting it go, savoring each smile and letting it go, sharing each word and letting it go.
Thank you all so much for so many wonderful memories, for so many wonderful adventures and great conversations. It is a pleasure knowing so many wonderful people and existing in between so much love and friendship and care and goodness. I look forward to many great moments and I am glad to have had this moment to write about just a few of them.
December 11, 2005
December Adventure!
I really appreciate the opportunity to be around so many wonderful people and I hope that I thank each of my wonderful team members throughout our winter break and then long after. Thank you all for everything and thank you especially to Albatross, Osprey, Gully and Rooster for great individual and group pictures! I look forward to more adventures soon and until then I will continue to reflect on your awesomeness, exactly like the movie. : )
December 10, 2005
December Adventure!
December 6, 2005
Baby Steps
In What About Bob? Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Richard Dreyfuss) treats a sociopath named Bob Wiley (played by Bill Murray). In their first session together, Dr. Marvin gives Bob a book called Baby Steps. It is about setting small, reasonable goals to help one get through the day. I think those “baby steps” are helping in the goal setting I am talking about. We have to be reasonable with ourselves and often patient in reaching our goals, however big they might be.
"When thinking about leaving Bob,” said Dr. Marvin, “don’t think about everything you have to do to get out of this building. First just think about everything you have to do to get out of this room, then the office, then the hallway…see?”
“Baby steps…” said Bob. Baby steps.
December 5, 2005
Different
Often that fear slips away when we start to talk, and continue to talk, and don’t stop talking for hours. Language can be a beautiful method of communication about things which regularly cannot be spoken. Words can somehow mix with gestures, feelings and glances in a way which gets across an idea to another person and suddenly something happens. The other person hears you. You hear the other person. You both listen. You both start to learn from each other. Isn’t that the heart of understanding, knowledge and experience? We don’t know anything more than we know, so how can we create anything new? I don’t think we can. I think to understand something new, we have to put ourselves in scary, new, and exciting danger zones. We have to travel, we have to share, we have to make ourselves vulnerable. When we do this we are able to take in new scenery and new ideas, new ways of looking at things and new ways of experienceing life.
This can go for friends, strangers, family members and lovers. It can go for students, teachers, mentors and mentorees. For me it often happens with spiritual people who have a quality which is hard to describe – almost like a kind of peace in their minds. There are certain people who are wonderful to be around because they don’t want you to be anyone other than yourself. When you are around them you relax, you can just be yourself forever. With those kinds of people I relax. I often want to stay with them forever. We usually think about things very differently, but that has nothing to do with anything. What matters is that indescribable something which makes it possible for me to be myself around them. After such an experience this weekend I read my thought of the day from the Dalai Lama:
The spiritual discovery of people of other faiths is the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century. Some will see this as a threast to identity, others will see this as a completion of identity, the discovery of lost cousins and their worlds. The essence of humility.Humility and friendship I would say...what a wonderful challenge.
December 3, 2005
Kickball Kickoff!
- Toni-Lyn “Veteran Pitcher and Announcer” Keller
- Chase “This Is Gonna Be Iffy” Vaughan
- Shaw “Oh Wait, I Have an Idea” Rowe
- Josh “Yeah, We’re Coming” McKinnon
- Matt “Back Up, He’s Kicking” Conover
- Travis “Kick It Right Here Baby” Hellstrom
- Jodie “Delete That Picture!” Hall
- Edmond “Base Diving” Bailey
- Megan “No, Don’t!” Rowe
- Heather “Let’s be The Cool Kids” Davis
Kickball Kickoff!
- Toni-Lyn “Veteran Pitcher and Announcer” Keller
- Chase “This Is Gonna Be Iffy” Vaughan
- Shaw “Oh Wait, I Have an Idea” Rowe
- Josh “Yeah, We’re Coming” McKinnon
- Matt “Back Up, He’s Kicking” Conover
- Travis “Kick It Right Here Baby” Hellstrom
- Jodie “Delete That Picture!” Hall
- Edmond “Base Diving” Bailey
- Megan “No, Don’t!” Rowe
- Heather “Let’s be The Cool Kids” Davis
November 28, 2005
Kentucky Thanksgiving!
Thanks-giving
What is love? What is thanksgiving? What is family? You got me. That’s a tough question. Well, it’s a tough question to answer in words. Come with my
November 24, 2005
Diss Organization
It is so funny to me, how I can live in a world of organization and disorganization all at the same time…and love it! I have this need at one moment to organize and categorize: to make a neat room, update a filing system, clean up my address book, fill in my planner, organize my classroom binders, clean out my car trunk and thin out my wallet. Then in the next moment I feel a need to be messy and unjudging of any of it: to take spontaneous trips, throw my papers whenever, not follow my planner, don’t do my homework, leave my car messy, forget my wallet, be late for an appointment and maybe just not go at all. I have this love of being early, neat, tidy and organized and then a love of being late, messy, dirty, and carefree all in the same mind. I have planned out wonderful trips months in advance and taken trips that I was invited to that afternoon. I have planned out conversations weeks in advance and had others spur of the moment until 4am the next morning. I have been early to every class all semester and then five minutes to every class the next semester. I have lived in a world of 15-minute Outlook time fragments for an entire year and then the next year not looked at Outlook for weeks. Somehow I have lived in both worlds and somehow I haven’t just chosen one over the other.
Maybe the truth is, we don’t have to choose. Maybe considering it Organized vs. Disorganized is just too simple. For example, consider the two sides with words like these:
- Organized - planned, productive, practical, timely, precise, thoughtful, organized, neat, respectful, clean and simple.
- Disorganized - carefree, messy, spontaneous, random, lighthearted, fun, lost, unjudging and relaxed.
Is that reasonable? Can’t we be planned and organized, but ready for spontaneity and fun. Can’t we be carefree and lighthearted but precise and productive? I think we all prove that we can be everyday. I think the real question is how we can find ourselves within organization itself. I can live with Outlook and organize my life in a way that helps me enjoy it more, but I can also take that too far and start living through it enjoying my life less. I can live with my computer and keep it together in a way that helps me record, plan and enjoy my life more, but I can also get all caught up in it and waste my life on it. I can live with my friends, family, clubs, classes, work, exercise and spirituality all in the same way. Speaking of which, I’m gonna play a game with my little brother…on the computer…right now. : )
November 22, 2005
November 21, 2005
November 19, 2005
Bonfire Bonanza!
Promise Yourself
Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness & prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything & make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, & expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past & press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times & give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be far too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.~ Christina D. Larson
I just found this little bit of wisdom stashed away in pictures of my family and my childhood and right behind it I found my birth announcement from the Gainesville Sun the day I was born. Both are from my mother. She is the woman who is especially good at helping me to feel loved and the woman who collects these kinds of things for me to help me through life. In fact, most of what I call my success has come from what my mother has given to me over the last twenty years: her thoughts, her encouragement, her lessons and her hopes for my life. This little saying of wisdom is something I have tried to live out for years. Coming across it, I think I know why. These are the kinds of things my mother teaches and lives out every day. I am now hanging up the saying on my wall, but what makes me so happy is that I don’t have to. What’s important is that it is already hung in my heart…right where my mother put it a long time ago.
November 18, 2005
Bonfire Bonanza!
November 12, 2005
Exploris Adventure!
Exploris Adventure!
November 6, 2005
Frisbee and Fish Traps!
Frisbees, Frights, Friday Nights
November 2, 2005
Telling
Campbell University’s Forward Thinking is something that has become apparent to me over the last few years. Being a junior this year, I have seen many changes take place on Campbell’s campus. I have watched the Inauguration of Campbell’s fourth President and sat where a new fountain is now built. I have walked past a renovated D. Rich which was in the middle of renovation one year earlier. I have seen Buies Creek’s first four-story building erected, watched the removal of structures all over campus and witnessed a massive overhaul of dining services all across campus. Visiting Dr. Campbell’s grave before sitting in front of his university’s fourth presidential inauguration I thought to myself, “It’s all still going along.” Everything is flexible, everything is growing and changing, and all that I enjoy here is the work of many many people whom I will never meet. Yet something in all of these activities tells me that it is all going in the right direction. I think, since 1887, the mission has stayed the same. I attribute that to vision and forward thinking, which Campbell University is really doing well.
Dr. Peterman and other professors who I have been honored to know remind me of what college is designed to be. I have now lost count of the times I have walked into Dr. Peterman’s office just to talk. She, like so many other professors at Campbell, shows me what it means to be aware and attentive. Sometimes people just get it, they understand what their time is worth and they dedicate themselves to constant self-evaluation. When I stand at her door, she drops everything and smiles, telling me to come sit down. She could tell me she was busy and I wouldn’t bother her, because I know she is. She could talk but tell me she only a few minutes and I would be quick, because I know she does. Yet, she doesn’t. She doesn’t tell me she is busy and she doesn’t tell me to rush. We talk, I ask for guidance, she mentors, we laugh and I walk away a better version of myself because of her. This is very normal for her, and thankfully it is normal for me too. I think that’s because it is a matter of integrity, of purpose and of utmost meaning to her as a teacher. Of course she spends time with students, that’s what she’s here for. That’s what so many teachers at Campbell are here for.
Student Activities, in all of my dealings with them over the years, has been a department that really cares a lot about students. I have seen the development of Student Activities under both Tracy Renfro and Trisha Walsh in my years here at Campbell and by and large I think my experience has been momentous. Freshman year I and another student chartered a club on campus named Circle K, the collegiate Kiwanis organization. Since then our club has gone on to become one of the largest in the school, boasting over 3000 volunteer hours in our first two years and well over 100 students involved in our activities each semester. While this success points to many things, I think in large part it has been due to the strength and leadership available to us through Student Activities. Together with SGA and energetic leaders responsive to change and fresh ideas, I have been met ten times with “we can do this together” for every one time I’ve heard “we can’t do that.” Knowing that everyone around us is willing to help, Campbell has challenged me and those around me to ask, “What can I do to change this?” and “How hard am I willing to work?” Success at Campbell rewards effort.
Campus Community means something special to me at Campbell. I am still amazed at it, and I have told my story dozens of times to crowds of two and crowds of two hundred. Freshman year, before starting Circle K, I drove around the community to ask community leaders how I could help around campus. Driving into Lillington I stopped to ask the mayor’s secretary. She told me to ask the mayor, who said I should ask the Chamber of Commerce. There Mrs. Linda Johnson told me to ask the County offices but I got lost and couldn’t find them and instead found the NC Cooperative Extensions office on Main Street. Randomly I asked the secretary there the same question, “Do you know who I might ask about volunteer opportunities available to me in the community?” She took me to Wanda Hardison, who told me to ask John Powell in Buies Creek, who told me to ask Jim Roberts in the Physical Plant, who told me to come to a Kiwanis meeting in Marshbanks the next morning. I brought a friend and that morning we left the meeting determined to start a club. We knew we wanted to help the community and luckily the community was able to help itself all the way up until then. Every time I tell this story I make the point that we all have to opportunity to serve others, even if it just means pointing in the right direction. At our NC/SC Convention for Circle K, I gave my speech about this experience to hundreds of students and I will likely give the speech to thousands at International Convention next year. I have told this story to many people and I especially appreciate the opportunity to tell it to you. Campbell has something special and somewhere in between those seven people I feel like I got to experience it myself.
Campbell wasn’t what I was expecting. I consider myself spiritual but not religious, I have gone to public school but never private, and I always thought of myself as tolerant before my experience here. After coming to Campbell, I have seen what value religion can bring to peoples’ lives while at the same time studying organic chemistry and examining the nature of science. I have seen what life is like in a private university compared to the lives my friends who are in public universities and maybe most of all, I have realized that I have a lot to learn. When I came to Campbell I arrived as a high school Student of the Year, Senior of the Year, Eagle Scout, President, Chairman and Captain. Now that I am leaving Campbell next year, I feel like the one thing I want to leave as is a human. I want to be understanding, appreciative and accepting of others. I want to understand my role in our world, my capacity to help others, and my journey to do it. I want to not take for granted all of the innocence that I enter into the world with and instead appreciate all of the effort that was necessary to make it possible. Maybe most of all, I want to accept others for who they are, whether they are like me or not. I have seen what’s it’s like to live with others and to develop through the stages of relationships. Knowing what comes after criticism, I want to move into appreciation and understanding. The world offers me a great array of opportunities and Campbell has allowed me a place, a people and a time through which to see that. Campbell is doing a lot of things right and I appreciate you allowing me the time to tell you that.
Goals/Advocations
- Never be prejudiced
- See the very best in everything
- Don’t change beliefs and morals
- Protect and teach everyone you can
- Don’t make enemies
- Don’t be blinded by emotions
- Don’t hurt anyone unless a totally justifiable cause exists
- Always keep an open mind and listen more than you speak
- Recognize your weaknesses and strengthen them
- Always care
- Try your hardest to be fluent in the language of truth
- Continuously practice random acts of kindness on a regular basis
- Avoid being prejudiced by learning to be accepting, understanding and appreciative
- See the very best in everything and everyone
- Stand up for what you know to be right, but be flexible in understanding others
- Be careful to protect, teach and respect others whenever you can
- Don’t make enemies. Remember a smile is the shortest distance between two people
- Don’t be blinded by emotions. Be thoughtful, honest, compassionate and understanding.
- Don’t hurt anyone or anything
- Always keep an open mind and listen more than you speak
- Recognize your weaknesses and strengthen them
- Always care for world of people, animals and things around you
- Try your hardest to understand things as they really are and to be honest with yourself
- Regularly practice random acts of kindness
October 31, 2005
Halloween
October 30, 2005
Halloween!
Haunted Trail!
This means a few things for us as a club. First, we’re awesome. Second, our community is awesome. Third, Halloween and Haunted Trails are awesome. Fourth…we’ve done a lot of good and had a lot of fun. Together as a club we were able to gather hundreds of volunteer hours in one weekend with the collective effort of over 40 people who worked tirelessly in very cold conditions during very long nights. Together as a club we were able to scare and delight hundreds of people from our community as young as elementary school age children and as old as fifty and sixty year old adults. Together we set an example of what can be accomplished by many for the sake and enjoyment of many. I hope that together we may rejoice in all of our hard work. We have all learned a lot more about ourselves, been able to help others in our community and also helped to raise money for charities which will put our donations to good use. In our lifetimes we have chances to surprise ourselves, to learn more about what we are capable of, and to help others grown along with us. The Haunted Trail has been one of these surprising, learning and growing experiences for me and for that I am very thankful. I appreciate the creativity, vision, hard work, dedication, humor and endurance that so many have shown to such a tremendous project and I hope that my hard work will continue to reflect that appreciation. Thank you all very much, Chase, Danielle, Anna, Lloyd, Randall, Earl, Josh, Matt, Chris, Joshua, Michael, Tahlia, Ashley, Lenny, Amy, James, Leechee, Katherine, Ari, Adam, Samy, Arnold, Justin, Troy, Ron, Phillip, Laura, Ray, Scott, Brooke, Philip, Lauren, Jenn, Shaw, Wyatt, Brittany, Jodie, Daniel, Randy, Jim, Vita, Nick, Toni-Lyn, Leighanna, Elias, Mom and Dad.
Daylight Savings
There I was, with the clock function opened up, watching the seconds tap by…1:59 AM and 45 seconds, 46, 47, 48…then I took a drink…55, 56, 57, 58, 59…(this felt like eternity)…1:00 AM!
WHAT!?!?!?
October 22, 2005
Homecoming!
Homecoming
First we started this morning with our Circle K table in the street fair area next to Marshbanks and the Fountain. There we showed our club movie, had Randy and Chase advertising the Haunted Trail in full character, gave out flyers and information and also helped explain Circle K to quite a few passersby. Thanks to Anna, Chase, Randy, Arnold, Troy and Chris this went on awesomely from 10am to 3pm.
Next was the parade! We had ourselves what really became a fun-filled hay ride for both kids and adults (or big kids) starring:
- Terrific Kids: Matt, Savannah, Daniel, Jeremy, Patton, Gavin, Abby and Corbin
- Circle Kers: David, Jenn, Anna, Amy, Jodie, Shaw, Travis and Zoe
- Kiwanians: Jerry and Lloyd
October 19, 2005
Great Fall Break
October 18, 2005
King's Dominion!
Here's to you, Chris McMillan, Michael Sellers, Josh McKinnon and Travis Hellstrom, you explorers of the evening, landrovers of landmarks, adventurers of Americana. The adventures were mapped and the course was charted, with Honda in hand, the boys had come. Hello Lincoln, hello Congress, hello Einstein, Forrest Gump and DropZone. Hey, why is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial so far away?
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October 16, 2005
A Clean Start
Today is a day full of possibilities!
It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy…let’s go exploring!
October 15, 2005
Well-Directed
A well-directed mind creates more well-being than the wholesome actions of parents toward their children.I have thought to myself about parental love and wondered aloud to others at times whether it would be possible to love others like parents love their children. As most of us are intimately familiar parents care for their children to a point at which they say things like, “I want them to have a better life than I have had…I want them to have all of those things that I didn’t have…I want them to be better than I am.” How can that be so natural for us? Conversely, how can it be so naturally difficult for us to feel that way about our friends, our acquaintances or even strangers? I haven’t figured that out yet. However, I do find it interesting that this passage by the Buddha seems to address this question. If we are to have well-directed minds maybe we can bring that kind of parental love to others.
I think that guard and control means many things, but first I think it starts with awareness. If we can be aware of ourselves and our thoughts we can begin to direct ourselves toward goodness, toward wholesomeness and toward happiness.A wise man should pay attention to his mind, which is difficult to perceive. It is extremely subtle and wanders wherever it pleases. The mind, well-guarded and controlled, will bring him happiness.
October 13, 2005
Knox's Korner
October 12, 2005
Fall Break!
October 11, 2005
River Adventure!
October 8, 2005
Scarowinds!
Passing the entrance and crossing the state line on our way out