Myself

I want to be myself as much as I can, but sometimes I wonder if I even know who I am most of the time.

The conclusion I've come to is that who I am is always changing. I try to be easygoing, but sometimes I'm not. I try to go with the flow but sometimes I get stuck in my ways. I try to learn new things but sometimes I just get lazy. Maybe instead of seeing myself as always short of who I want to be, I should be happy for the progress I've already made. Maybe that way I can find ways to change the things I want to, but not get down on myself when I fail. After all, it seems like it would be hard to be happy with change if you never feel good enough about it.

I noticed the other day that not only do I try to have certain qualities, but I try to avoid other qualities. I spend too much time worrying about who I don't want to become that I sometimes forget to work on becoming who I DO want to be.

For example, I often find myself thinking, "I want to [insert something that takes you out of your comfort zone, like asking a girl/guy you just met out], but I don't want to be one of THOSE guys/girls." Well what if I don't want to be one of those guys but I still want to do that uncomfortable thing? What if I think it'll help me grow?

A roommate and I were talking about how a tactic I read a little while ago. It's meant to be a way to get over the awkwardness you feel when trying to approach a total stranger. Basically stated, you practice. You go to a mall and just approach strangers and try to strike up a conversation. When I first hear that I think "well I want to be able to talk to random people and make friendships, but I don't want to be one of those guys..." Is any of this making sense?

Conclusion: less worrying about what other people think. Less worrying about what I think of other people. More risks to take, since I pretty much only have something to gain.

'Cause I'm kind of a health nut

New! From the creators of Baconnaise comes the newest way to raise your blood sugar and renew your sense of illness. It's Bacon Salt!

Also, this is pretty good. Skip ahead of 2:10 if you're short on time.

I did it!

I just added labels to all my past blog posts. You know how when you've got nothing to do, you finally get around to doing those things you've always meant to do, but never had time? Yeah, that's what today has been. I was going to go running, but instead I updated my blog and blogger profile...

While I'm here, I had a thought when I went to the airport a few weeks ago. We were sitting in the park & wait and I was noticing just how many people were there waiting for people they cared about to pick them up. I mean, going to the airport in the kind of weather that day is not a pleasant experience, but clearly it would be more pleasant to get to see/help out the friend or loved one that had been gone. It was touching in all of its "Love, Actually" manner. (I was looking for a good YouTube video to post here of the Love, Actually intro, but I could only find this. Please ignore the 80's quality music and the Arabic (Farsi? Elvish?) subtitles. Oh and at 1:00 you can just stop watching altogether cause then it cuts to the end and kinda ruins the mood.)

Because we want to

Why would people ever go out of their way to help someone else? We don't really gain anything tangible. In fact, I'd say people lose more tangibles by helping other people than they gain. So why do people help each other, lift each other up, and support people other than themselves?

Did you know there are people out there who check discussion forums religiously simply to answer any questions that people ask about whatever the topic may be? They're not paid.

Why would non-business people put up all the recipes, guides, FAQs and how-to videos that they do? They already know it, so what if someone else doesn't?

Why do I enjoy making breakfast or dinner for other people? It just takes lots of time and costs me money!

Deep down I hope at my eulogy that "altruistic" is one of the three words my friends/family would use to describe me. And I hope I have a long life ahead of me to prepare for that, cause I have a long way to go.

We're not as dumb as we want people to believe we are

Every time I hear someone say something along the lines of "he/she is just so dense, they don't pick up on all the signals I've been sending," I think "what's probably happening is that he/she isn't interested in you and they chose the 'ignore the problem until it goes away' approach." Men are particularly good at doing this.

I think I do a pretty good job at picking up on signals. I often just don't want to act on it / am too indecisive to know whether or not I want to act on it or not.

I promise I'm happy

So a good friend just helped me realize that my blog posts as of recent have been lonly-esque and a little bit in downersville. Then I realized that while Facebook has become a place for me to spread my happy moments and realizations, this blog has unfortunately taken the brunt of emotion and become a place to vent frustration.

How about this one: I was driving home two days ago and a song from "Dan in Real Life" was playing on my iPod, and I realized just how happy life really is. It was for a moment all of the junky things people have to go through made sense, and that it is all worth it. (Ignore the terrible grammar of that sentence, please.) I helped comfort someone in distress on Sunday, I was reminded how greatful I am for the Restoration, and once again got to compare my life now with my hypothetical "I was never tracted out by the missionaries and subsequently baptized/converted" life. Being a member of the church has only made life harder.

Oh yeah, and wonderfuller. Can't forget wonderfuller.

Laura's right: butterflies in the stomach is great. I had it for the first time in a long time this week, and I'm hoping to have it again soon! I need to get her number first. :-P Wish me luck!

Along those lines, here's a funny one: last month I met a girl but never got her number. She seemed at least a little interested, so I was kinda bummed. Finally, after complaining to our mutual friend, he found an excuse for me to see her again. Something was different this time though--she seemed distant and less interested, including a classic playbook "hey, this is my friend so-and-so. She doesn't know many people around here." When instead I kept talking to her (kindly greeting her friend and continuing my conversation), this happened:

"Oh, well I just saw something on my fridge that I need to go look at. I think it might be a cleaning check notice, in which case I would have to clean all day tomorrow." (Exit: girl.)

'Nuff said.

Except that we overheard conversation that implied she has a boyfriend. Now 'nuff said.

I like stream of consciousness

Maybe because it's later at night and I don't have the energy to organize my thoughts.

Why do we judge other people the way we do? I understand that we need to find ways to organize personalities and all primarily based on first impressions, but when we then close our minds to re-organizing and re-evaluating thins along the way, we cheat ourselves of the truth.

There was a girl in church today (Matt, you know who) who seemed unsually sad (although I didn't actually ask her about it). I started thinking about the perceptions I've had about this girl (high-maintenance, mostly friends with people outside the ward, sometimes misses her RS meetings, etc.) and began to realize that I have no right to judge someone else. I am basing all of my judgments off of very little contact time and mostly on first impressions. I love it when people surprise me and change my ideas about who they are. Maybe I should also feel a little guilty that I was too hasty in the past.

I can really appreciate it when people know exactly how to say what I've felt/been feeling. Today in sacrament meeting someone bore their testimony about how there are so many people around us that go through the same (or very similar) trials as we do. What good would it be for everyone else if they didn't have to go through hard times? And I don't even know how often I've thought to myself, "yeah, other people have issues too, but they couldn't have gone through anything this hard." And it's not just a "well I know at least the Savior has felt my pain" sort of thing. People I know have gone through the same problems and same trials! The ones who always seem happy and like everything is going well for them. The ones who I talk to all the time, and who I've felt like I've come to know them really well. Those same people know what it's like too! What a comfort!

I'm going to strive for shorter and more frequent posts from here on out. It seems like it's easier to keep people's attention that way. Plus I've forgotten all the other things I had on my mind. That's the downside to stream of consciousness writing I guess...

I am self destructive

Why do I do some of the things I do? How come I wait for time-sensitive things until my opportunity has passed me by?

It's like when an opportunity comes to me, I subconsciously think "it'll be around for awhile, no need to rush into anything or hurry it up." Then, almost without fail, the chance goes away and I never see it again.

Just the other day I saw a job listing that I thought would be fun. It was only 10 hours/week and paid pretty well, but I didn't call until about 3 pm (when I saw the listing at 10 am). By that time they had already filled the position!

I talked to a lady in Provo that wanted some extra help with her yard work once a week for only 2 hours, paying $10/hour, and I even went and talked to her. Then I never called her back. What the heck is that?

It's not just work -- it's internship opportunities, it's projects I could be working on, it's my dating life, it's exercise, it's making good meals, it's getting up and doing something productive, and I'm sure I could keep listing other things that I wait too long for.

I've gotten much better than I have been in the past, but I'm still not where I need to be. I have done a good job writing things down and to-do listing, but it's not enough!

I won't do it anymore. No more. I'm done. From now on I'm capitalizing on every opportunity that comes my way (within reason).

I never write in my journal

But I don't really think of my blog as a place to just let people know everything that's going on in my life. I guess I think of it more as a place to let people know what's going on in my head. I also guess that's probably more what a real journal should be, so maybe I'm back at square one?

I DO have a tennis tournament coming up in 3 hours, and I'm starting to get a little nervous.

A push towards the middle

It's been too long since I've posted. Sorry. I don't know who I'm apologizing to, since I don't think anyone actually reads this...

So I've been watching a lot of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (quite left-wing, but rational about it all) and The Colbert Report (also left-wing but pretends to be right-wing in order to maintain an agenda of sarcastic humor) in the past few months. I think it has slowly started to make me drift from dead center on my political viewpoint to slightly to the left.

But last night I was watching The Daily Show and actually watched Jon interview his guest (I usually skip over it, but didn't this time) Newt Gingrich. I realized that there really isn't much "truth" in politics, meaning that people are rarely right or wrong. They just have stronger or weaker opinions, and are better or worse at debating them. Jon Stewart usually does a great job debating, but last night good 'ol Newt held his own really well. I'd say he won the debate. But I wouldn't say he was right. Or wrong. Just better at debating.

It reminds me a little bit of the law system. Then again I might just be thinking of The Fugitive we watched last week, where the guy was innocent but "proven" guilty, and the cop was all "he was found guilty in a court of LAW... the guy's guilty" or something along those lines.

Anyway, this all made more sense to me last night when I was watching it. Of course I was falling asleep at the time. Good news though: not only can you text Facebook to update your status, but if you say "note" first, it'll add a note instead of update your status. (As I found out this morning when I had a new note that said "to self: "A push towards the middle.") I wonder what else you can do through text to Facebook.