Stake Conference

I don't understand why people act like I'm crazy when I tell them I go to church for three hours every Sunday. It's like they think Church is a form of torture or something. I will admit that some Relief Society lessons can be a bit much, like the ones about how we should all be mothers at age twenty, but for the most part, Church is a very enjoyable experience. Like today, for instance.

Today was Stake Conference, which always makes for an excellent church-going experience, and not just because of the lack of that third hour. Our Stake President is such a character that there's practically never a dull moment. And he speaks VERY loudly into the microphone. Remember learning about the "inside voice" in kindergarten? Yeah, he missed that day of class. So you couldn't fall asleep even if you wanted to. Plus his talk contained some excellent advice to the men of the stake: "man up and ask girls out." Classic. Never saw that coming in a BYU singles' stake conference.

My favorite talk today was actually given by one of the counselor's in the Stake Presidency, President Brinton. He began with a well-known story. Well, I'd never actually heard it before, but I was able to find it with ease on the Internet, so it must be fairly familiar. It's called "A Tool of the Devil": "Once upon a time it was announced that the devil was going out of business and would sell all his equipment to those who were willing to pay the price. On the big day of the sale, all his tools were attractively displayed. There were Envy, Jealousy, Hatred, Malice, Deceit, Sensuality, Pride, Idolatry, and other implements of evil display. Each of the tools was marked with its own price tag. Over in the corner by itself was a harmless looking, wedge-shaped tool very much worn, but still it bore a higher price than any of the others. Someone asked the devil what it was, and he answered, "That is Discouragement." The next question came quickly, "And why is it priced so high even though it is plain to see that it is worn more than these others?" "Because," replied the devil, "It is more useful to me than all these others. I can pry open and get into a man's heart with that when I cannot get near him with any other tool. Once I get inside, I can use him in whatever way suits me best. It is worn well because I use it on everybody I can, and few people even know it belongs to me." This tool was priced so high that no one could buy it, and to this day it has never been sold. It still belongs to the devil, and he still uses it on mankind."

I'd never thought of Discouragement in that way before. I figured it was just a normal emotion that everyone feels at some point in their lives, but this gave it a whole new spin. Discouragement really is a gateway emotion, for lack of a better term, because once you get down about something, it opens the way for all sorts of doubts to creep in. Scary thought? I think so. Sometimes it seems like I can't help but be depressed about my day. How on earth do you combat that?

Well, President Brinton had an answer for that. After thoroughly scaring the entire stressed-out-college-student audience, he presented a solution: always remember the enabling power of the Atonement. No matter what happens, be it mistakes we make, doubts we have, or problems we face, we always have the sacrifice of our older brother to carry us through, as long as we're willing to take part in it. That is a comforting thought. And any comforting thought is worth being thankful for.

Double-Stuf Oreos

You know those days when all you want to do is sit on the couch, hug a fluffy pillow, and have a chick flick marathon until 2 in the morning, complete with sweatpants and chocolate ice cream? Yep, had one of those days today. Well, felt like having one of those days. To be fair, I have sat on the couch for several hours, but I've hugged no fluffy pillows and only watched one chick flick (while doing homework). Plus I'm wearing jeans, and ate carrots instead of chocolate ice cream (I'm rather proud of my restraint there). So my day really hasn't been anywhere near as pathetic as it could have been!

Why was today one of those days? It all started with this unfortunate little disease known as homesickness. Really, it doesn't deserve its name. It should be called that-ridiculous-feeling-you-get-when-you-realize-you're-living-by-yourself-3,000-miles-from-home. Or something along those lines. See, I'm generally not a homesick type of person, but when that stupid disease hits, it hits HARD, and I start missing pretty much everything. I have no idea why it hit today, or how it even began really, but suddenly I was missing my mom and my dad; my brothers; my house and my long-dead car; the trees in my front yard, and backyard, and all over my hometown; my high school; my ward; and the Rita's down the street. I even started missing my dog, and we don't get along! And then, because I was already missing pretty much everything from home, that obnoxious disease decided I might as well miss everything else in my life, like that boy who lives entirely too far away. Why not, right? So considerate, to make sure nothing felt left out. Hopefully by now you realize why it felt like one of those days for me.

As I sat there wallowing in self-pity on my couch, I remembered: I had a brand-new package of Double-Stuf Oreos waiting just for me in the pantry. Hallelujah! My faith in life was restored! I quickly descended on the package; the poor thing had no chance. Don't worry, I did manage to exercise restraint and not wolf down the whole thing (though I dearly wanted to), but what I did eat boosted my spirits very nicely. I'm so grateful for those wonderful black-and-white morsels of heaven, because life would be pretty awful without them.

My Editing Professor

I'm having a bit of a life crisis right now. I decided when I was a sophomore in high school that I wanted to be an editor, live in New York City, and work at some big publishing company. See, I'm one of those people that you always wanted to peer edit your papers in high school English classes because I like grammar and punctuation and all that jazz. And of course, being my naive self, I thought that was the only thing to editing: throw in a comma here, take out a verb there, and voila! Instant bestseller. Well, it's not quite as simple as that, as I'm painfully finding out in my ELang 350: Basic Editing Skills class. Unfortunately for me.

As I sat in my class a few weeks ago, learning about how to correctly hyphenate words according to the Chicago Manual of Style, that absolutely awful, traffic-cone-orange book that I swear weighs a hundred pounds on the days I have to bring it to class, I realized that I didn't actually like what I was doing. It just wasn't any fun to add in those hyphens, decide between a comma and a semi-colon, or delete a conjunction. I used to enjoy it in high school when all I did was peer-edit my friends' papers and tell them they did a great job no matter how awful the papers really were, but I just don't like it anymore. Maybe because I actually have to make decisions (which I'm terrible at) and provide criticism (which makes me feel bad), all the while validating that every change I suggest is really correct, instead of relying on my instincts like I used to. This epiphany was not at all comforting; it actually made me panic, and I almost started hyperventilating in the middle of my professor's lecture on the varied lengths of dashes. Why the freak out? Well, it might have had to do with the fact that my entire life plan was flying out the window, but that could just be a hunch.

So what did I do? I panicked for the next few hours before I realized that I couldn't do anything about it now because it's too late in the semester to just drop the class. So I put a lid on my fear until finals week (which would really be an awful time to freak out again; maybe I should adjust that time frame) and decided to just keep trying. Who knows, by the end of the semester, I might have regained my love for editing. This all happened two weeks ago. And then today in class, my professor started discussing summer internships, and I freaked out all over again. I panicked so much that I decided to go discuss it with my professor. So I dutifully trekked to his office on the fourth floor of the JFSB to express my ridiculous concerns in the hope of getting some magical advice.

Well, the advice I got wasn't magical, but it was just what I needed. Instead of dismissing everything I said, my professor took the time to talk through my concerns with me and offer suggestions to alleviate those concerns (even though he secretly probably thought I was a crazy person). And the more he said, the better I felt. So today, even though I'm 100% sure he'll never read this, I'd like to express my gratitude to him, for making time in his busy schedule to sooth the feelings of a panicking student and help restore her faith in her dreams. As Mark Twain said, "Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great."

Olympics

These past few weeks have been relatively unproductive for me because of a very important something on television, affectionately known as the Olympics. And my mother was worried about a boyfriend destroying my grades. She should have been more worried about that awesome display of athleticism on Channel Five from 7-11 every single night. I think I've spent more time in front of the TV these past two weeks than I have for the whole beginning of the semester (though in all honesty, that's probably not true). Not much gets done when the Olympics are on, except writing my daily post and chatting with friends on facebook. And yet I still watch it every night.

I'm not alone in my Olympic viewing tonight (though most nights I'm not alone; at least one of my roommates is always watching too). All five of the girls in my apartment are crammed into our living room, in front of our ridiculously huge television that was graciously left here by a previous resident, watching the woman's long program in figure skating. It's the first time in, like, ever that all five of us have done something together as an apartment (I'm sure we've probably done something altogether before, but I have an awful memory). And it's really quite fun!

This leads me to the conclusion that I am grateful for the Olympics. They have this tendency of bringing people together, and not just in my apartment. The whole world seems to pause during the Olympics, and everyone acts polite and courteous towards everyone else (except American women skiers, apparently), and all the athletes shake hands and tell each other good job and great performance. It's just such a happy, friendly time that I almost wish the Olympics happened year-round. Except then my GPA really would be shot.

My Not-Done Hair

I am not a cold and wet person. Warm and wet, sure. Cold and dry, fine. But cold and wet is pretty high on my list of dislikes. Which of course means that living in Provo is quite the adventure for me because of the abundance of snow during the wintertime (though this winter has been rather abnormal in that category so far, and I'd really like it to stay that way). Today just so happened to be one of those extremely unfortunate days where the snow gods decided to dump a wonderful mixture of snowy rain on the Provo bubble. And, because Utah doesn't believe in the beautiful concept of snow days, it was a typical day of class.

When I entered my first class of the day, I was blissfully unaware that any precipitation was scheduled to fall. Consequently, I was rather shocked upon emerging from that same class to find that it was indeed snowing. Unfortunately for me, I had no form of head covering whatsoever. I used to have a hood on my jacket, but three of the five buttons that held it on fell off, and then so did the hood. My only option was to walk through the wetness to my next class and... get wet. Which is what I did. Then I walked to the bus stop and got wet again. Then from the bus stop to my apartment. My apartment back to the bus stop. The bus stop to my last class. And finally, I walked home. All in the snowy rain. As I'm sure you can imagine, I got rather wet today, especially in the region of my head. By the time I made it to my apartment for the night, I decided I could have skipped my shower this morning and been just fine.

This is where my gratitude comes into play. Normally, I would have been a little bit upset about my hair getting wet over and over because my hair doesn't do well with wet. If I straighten it, I have to make sure no moisture touches it or else it reverts back to its natural self, which looks like something along the lines of day-old noodles pulled out of a tupperware. However, today I did not straighten it. All I did was blow it dry and let it be, so the fact that it got drenched every hour for five hours didn't even matter! Which made me feel a little better about the fact that it did get drenched so much. And boy, am I grateful for that.

South Town Market

This morning was a very typical morning. I unwillingly dragged myself out of bed at 7:27 after both my alarms went off twice, stumbled into the bathroom with eyes mostly closed, and took my good ole' sweet time in the shower. Finding a relatively decent outfit wasn't too hard, and doing my hair didn't take too long (as you can see, I really spend lots of time on my appearance). And then it was breakfast time! Best time of the morning, except for those days when you wake up two hours before your alarm goes off and realize you have two more hours to sleep. But on an average day, breakfast is the best part of the morning. This morning, I decided a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch was on the menu, so I poured out the cereal and reached for the milk. Only to realize that if I went through with my grand plan, there would be no more milk. Oh what a dilemma!

Well, as you could probably guess, I used the last of that precious commodity. My bowl of cereal was delicious, but... now I had no milk. And my plan for dinner had been to make Mom's potato soup recipe, which requires two cups of it. Go figure. I pondered what to do about this rather unhappy problem while I went to my first few classes. See, the grocery store is just far enough away that I have to take the bus or borrow my roommate's car, and that seemed a bit excessive for one teensy gallon of milk. Then it hit me. The South Town Market. Last week, a convenience store opened just south of campus, called the South Town Market (I think). This store just happens to be exactly on my walk home from campus. And they sell milk. Problem. Solved.

Needless to say, today I'm grateful for the South Town Market, since it easily (and cheaply) provided me with the milk necessary to make my soup. I feel like I'll be frequenting that store more often because, really, it's quite a beautiful place.

Blogging

I've always wanted to create a blog. And by always, I mean since I saw Julie and Julia about a month ago. Really, after watching that movie, who wouldn't be inspired? However, this posed the problem of what on earth to blog about. I'm a notoriously awful journal writer, so having a journal-style blog would simply be a waste of space on the Internet (not that the Internet will run out of space anytime soon. But still). Trying to keep an online journal would turn out no better than my other seventeen journals did, all of which are now stuffed in the bottom drawer of my nightstand with two or three measly entries and a whole slew of blank pages inside. The next idea was a strictly photo blog, no writing required, but I'm really more of a photographer-when-the-moment-is-right-and-my-roommate-says-hey-take-a-picture, rather than a seriously-like-to-improve-my-photography-skills type of person. Besides, I'm pretty sure I would run out of things to take pictures of about two days in. So that was a no-go too.

Then I had my epiphany. What about a gratitude blog? It wouldn't be a real journal, so I'd be more likely to write everyday. I wouldn't have to do anything more than sit at my computer and write, so it wouldn't be too time consuming. And isn't being grateful supposed to make you more happy? That settled it. Before I begin the actual blog, however, I should probably set down some rules. You're more likely to keep rules if they're in writing, right? So here they are: Every day, I have to write (at least) one thing I've been grateful for that day; I'm not allowed to repeat anything, and I have to keep this up for 365 days. Shouldn't be too hard right? Here we go.

I suppose I should start by saying I'm grateful for blogging. I mean, where else would I be able to put my idea into action? Plus blogs are really cute. And they're free! Really, win-win situation here. One day down, 364 more to go.