Places to Chat
Chatterbox: Chirp at Cricket
Happy Valentine’s Day
Hi everyone, I’m Micearenice, the farm-loving, ski lodge-writing CBer from 2015. I’m excited to catch up with everyone and meet some new people.
To those of you who don’t know me, I grew up on a farm and often posted about chickens, mice, ferrets, etc, and drew lots of dragons. My love of animals, particularly insects, spurned me to study entomology at college. (I worked at a lab and tallied bugs under a microscope.)
During my time at the CB, I wrote two massive ski lodges called The Farm Story and Lake Lelillo. My time at the CB showed me how much I loved to write, and I spent my days dreaming of hitting it big as an author, never exactly sure how that would happen.
After attending college for one year, I decided to take a gap year, which is where I’m at now. I’ve been flip flopping for years on what I want to do with my life, but God recently answered a longing I’ve had since I first started writing. He introduced me to this small Christian writing school that teaches you the concrete skills you need to succeed at a career in writing. Business, legal info, marketing, building a platform, novel tactics, etc.
The coolest part is the 2 year full time apprenticeship they offer, where you go live on their campus and study + practice writing full-time (8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 2 years straight). There’s no fluff; it’s not a college degree—you get to do what you love and launch your career then and there. I’d love to go in person, but right now I’m taking their part-time online program. I’m grateful to finally have some direction with my writing and career. I’ve launched a small business and am 60k words into a new novel, which is more progress over a few months than I made over the past several years combined.
If any of you are serious about becoming authors (or doing ANYTHING writing related), then I highly recommend looking into a program like this. There are lots out there. They’re more affordable and more sensible than a writing degree, and they teach you actually useful things that you put into practice right away. There’s no reason an author should be a “starving artist,” and getting published doesn’t have to be like winning the lottery. It just takes a lot of work - and if you learn from a good mentor, you’ll have a well-founded map of the steps you need to take.
(Also, in case you haven’t heard this cool story, Tui T. Sutherland was a Cricketer as a kid. She read the magazine (before the CB existed) and that spurned her in her writing journey. Shy Peacock told us this; she went to one of Sutherland’s book signing events and she talked about Cricket in her speech! So there really is something special about Cricket and the CB. Who knows what y’all are destined for.)
Late last year I read a book called “Do Hard Things” by Brett and Alex Harris. It’s about the all-pervasive trap of low expectations which keeps teenagers living in futility, and how to break free of that and do great things in your teen years and beyond.
I cannot recommend this book enough to all of you—especially all of you as CBers, since I know the ambitions for great things CBers tend to share. It will vindicate everything you feel when you are languishing away at the hands of low expectations through your teen years, at school, work, home, and elsewhere. It will also give you the tools you need to break free and go do great things. I wish I’d read this book when I was younger! It was written by two 19 year olds who’d already run political campaigns and started a massive online community when they were only 17. So with as much passion and zeal as I can express to you over the internet, I am urging you, please go check it out and read it in its entirety! Use the years of your youth for great things. Share it with your friends, and do great things together. I really think it’ll change your life.
Now for my final bit of advice. I just turned 20. Older CBers used to intimidate me, and I was afraid to approach them. Time flies--now those older CBers are almost…in their 30s…and one day you’ll be in that position yourself and look upon a generation who’ll one day look upon another below them. Where do you think you’ll be at that point? Who do you want to be and how will you get there? What enduring fulfillment will you pursue and attain? On what will you place your identity that remains unshaken and unshifting for all your days? When will you feel good enough—or be good enough—and when will you find an enduring answer to the meaning of life?
When you zoom out of your everyday life, there are only a few things that really, truly, enduringly matter. We’re not guaranteed anything, not even a tomorrow. Finding and accomplishing the meaning of life is the most important matter we can engage in, so that’s what I’m making my last bit of advice about.
This is an invitation to investigate what I have found to be the only fulfilling, stable, peace-abounding, joyful, life-giving foundation on which to live. Not self love, not good deeds, not who you are on the inside, not anything else…but I believe God is the answer. Not in a vague distant ooey-gooey religious sort of way, but in a hard core, all encompassing, vast, infinite, all-things-consist-in-God sort of way. Like, God isn’t an add-on to life--I believe He IS life.
I encourage you now to do some serious research about God & the Gospel. You have nothing to lose by just spending some time investigating, and everything to gain if even a fraction of what the God of the Bible promises is true. (Like salvation, eternal life, peace that surpasses understanding, joy, wisdom more precious than rubies, rest for your soul, Him as your Father, the list goes on and on.)
I hope you’ve all been doing well this past year! Those are the things that I've been most excited to share with yall. Happy Valentine’s Day.
-Micearenice
submitted by Micearenice, age 20
(February 14, 2023 - 10:24 am)
(February 14, 2023 - 10:24 am)
@Micearenice, I love how you point out that we should kind of try to focus on who we want to be and what will matter to us in the future. And thanks for all the information on the writing school and the book. I'll check them out! I've been looking into alternative ways to get the life I want without necessarily going to a typical college, and this should be useful.
I personally don't feel like the part of your post that was about religion was too authoritative or pressuring. I don't entirely agree with all of it, but that's beside the point - whether I agree or not, it's clear that this is something that really matters to you, and if you believe that it can help others to be happy in life, I'm glad you pointed it out! I think we all have our own ways of feeling fulfilled and it's fine to recommend them to other people, (as long as we don't try to make them feel bad for not doing things our way, which your post did not do, at least for me). How is society ever supposed to advance if we can't openly discuss our religious/life beliefs? Suppose I were to bounce in one fine morning and give a long speech on how for me only way to be happy is to reject religion and, because it's worked so well for me, I recommend you to try it too. (I don't think the only way to be happy is to reject religion, btw, I'm just saying suppose it were.) If it were meant in the right spirit - honestly trying to suggest a way to be happy, rather than just prim evangelization - I don't think there would be any reason for a Christian to get offended, and it works vice versa too. Even if it were meant in the wrong spirit, there'd still be no reason to get too worked up; you just say, "Oh, there's someone who wants me to turn Christian/nonreligious/whatever. Well, I shall move on. What's for dinner today?" and move on.
At least, those are my thoughts. I'm not sure if everyone will agree.
@Everyone, I do realize that trying to find out what religion you are can be really confusing. I myself don't know exactly. Some days I think there must be a God, others I'm not so sure. So yeah, I really get where you're coming from! But I just don't feel that Micearenice's post deserves so much controversy. If you agree with her, that's fine; if you don't, that's fine too. I don't think Micearenice was trying to Make Everyone Turn Christian At Once, just share a way to be happy that she personally found very successful.
Anyway, @Micearenice, thank you for dropping in! I hope you had a nice Valentine's Day too! :)
(February 15, 2023 - 9:20 pm)
i agree!
(February 16, 2023 - 1:27 pm)
Um, hi. I'm a newer CBer just recently celebrating my 1st CBversary, so you probably won't know me! But I just want to say thank you for the inspiration and encouragement. As my life aspiration is to be an author, it helps to see other people who are doing that sort of thing. Also, my Dad is an entomologist, and I have never met another one! He keeps all his bugs (or should I say insects?) in a cabinet in my room lol!
It's so amazing that all the CBers come together this week and say hello to each other. Sometimes I'm reading old threads and see your name, and here you are in ... not in person, but almost like that? But you're one of those older CBers I am sort of in awe of. I'm working on the religion thing, and I'll think about what you said. Good luck with your novel-writing, and thank you for coming back to share with us.
Flamarestii
(February 16, 2023 - 9:20 pm)
@Periwinkle, thank you so much for your comment. First, about the ski lodges, if you click “replies” on Pudding’s Place and go to the last page, part 1 is “COME BACK” and part 2 is “It’s night.” I wish you all the best with your writing endeavors! It’s hard work but so rewarding.
I’m trying to be careful with the way I word things, because the Admins modified my other posts, and I don’t want this one to be edited.
The way I see it, there are two ways to approach religion. The first is, you can approach it as something subjective, whose purpose is to suit you - to add on to your life and give you comfort and happiness, tailored to the individual like you might tailor an outfit or choose a career. The other way is to approach it like something objective, which has concrete answers - which you can investigate and find answers to in the same way you might treat science - hopefully you get what I mean by that. Something that can be sleuthed out. If somebody believes there is no possible supernatural truth to religion at all, the first option is likely the one they’ll operate from. My challenge is to try looking at it the second way.
A good way to show the difference between those two approaches is this. You mentioned your experience from church -- consider this; not only that the people were talking about something they genuinely cared about, but that they were talking about & worshiping a God that genuinely cares about them. Not just that they believe He does, but that He actually does.
So basically, that is a way of looking at it that says, there’s a claim that Christianity (or insert any other religion here) is really true and God works in people’s lives and made all these promises. If that was true, there’d be evidence; I can search for that evidence and see what I find.
You talked about your searching, confusion, not knowing what to believe. I know what you mean. There are thousands of religions in the world and hundreds of thousands of different gods, goddesses, philosophies. That’s a teeming ocean and it’s all too easy to get overwhelmed in it. There’s not enough time in a lifetime to go in and investigate all those religions and their rules and methods of achieving whatever grand final goal they aim for. Most religions are outlined where the followers work hard to reach an end goal. Christianity is different; the Bible says that God comes to you and did the work for you; it says He’s like a shepherd who leaves all 99 of his sheep behind just to go rescue 1 who got lost. (And this illustration isn’t just like walking to the other side of a pasture. In Israel in biblical times, shepherds literally fought off lions to protect their sheep.) To anyone curious, I recommend researching the Gospel to understand what that means (God coming to people instead of the other way around).
This'll be my last post for the reunion. I really enjoyed hearing from those who commented. Flamarestii, that's so cool your dad is an entomologist!
I'll reiterate my original advice from this thread again, and I wish you all the best on your writing, educational, and life goals this next year and beyond.
(February 17, 2023 - 1:36 pm)
I think you explained this really well! personally i'm agnostic, but when i'm exploring religion and just thinking about what's out there i like to think objectively too.
(February 19, 2023 - 3:33 pm)