sudofox's journal

Austin Burk's journal, where I share little snippets of my writing, code, and dreams.

Wanderlust is brewing, and thoughts about striving to become more perfect

Entry for August 9th, 2021

I just wrote 4-5 other blog entries to catch up. Since I backdated them, I suggest reading back if you want to see them. The one from yesterday has a particularly large amount of thought put into it about my walk in faith.

Wanderlust

I've started feeling restless at home again, and have been thinking about expanding my horizons once again. Unfortunately, the state of my finances has once again made itself known, so I'm left spending unusual amounts of time poking around gas-usage calculators and flight booking websites getting nothing much done.

There is one place in particular that's caught my fancy lately: Glacier National Park, a place of immense natural beauty. I also have a friend that lives kinda pretty close to there, though I question the wisdom of inviting myself to crash on their couch. Haha

Besides airfare, there's also things like car rental, day-to-day groceries, laundry and probably where I'd actually be able to set up my laptop and do work out of (I could take time off, but I'm always hesitant to do so since I usually have to save it up all year) Not being the most experienced traveller, I'm not super great at planning trips out myself so I figure the best thing to do is work on selling more of my things to pay down debt until I'm no longer $3000 in the hole.

Maybe a trip to the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania would be a better option. I could rent a little cabin and wake up in the morning, look out on some stunning vista that I never previously imagined existing, listen to the wildlife and enjoy the cold morning air as I make myself toast or a sandwich or heat up canned soup over a fire.

Work

I was working hard today. That's about it.

Dinner

I walked to a local diner and had a triple decker grilled cheese sandwich. Yummy, but I probably got twice the # of calories back then I burned off.

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Discussion

I had a really interesting discussion with a friend about the act of continual striving towards what may at first seem like a futile goal: perfection.

A key thought of mine in this regard was:

Being imperfect beings as we are, our relationship with perfection is an asymptotic one. The only person that embodies true perfection is God, but we can still get infinitely closer to it being made in His image.

So it's almost like having the goal post constantly moved except that every time we reach it we score so it's not bad.

One of the points was my concern about the concept of "good enough" as it relates to spiritual and character development.

My thoughts:

I'm wondering if that specific take could actually interfere with following the path God's laid out for us to completion: perhaps establishing a point of "good enough" might interfere with reaching the "even better" just around the corner

Well, that's all. Goodnight!