I don't even want to know

I usually have this urge to know everything that's going on around me. It's so hard for me to hear other people having a conversation and not butt in and be all "wait, what are you talking about? INCLUDE ME! I WANNA KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO AND I WANNA KNOW EVERYTHING THAT YOU'RE DOING AND I DON'T WANT YOU TO ACT LIKE I'M BEING ANNOYING I JUST WANT YOU TO ANSWER ALL OF MY QUESTIONS."


Just kidding I'm not nearly that bad.

Anyway, I just clicked on my mint.com tab on Chrome, but as soon as it opened I closed it because I don't even want to know what the finances are looking like right now. I spent over $500 at Kohl's the other day. Granted, probably about $150 of it was from Kellie and Natalie buying things on my card (not because I'm their sugar daddy (I HATE that term, by the way) but because they needed to buy it on my card to get the 30% off). Also granted that I will be returning most of the stuff I bought for myself. (That's just how I roll when it comes to buying stuff at Kohl's)

I'm in a weird mood lately, where I just want to do nothing. I'm still getting my homework done and everything (and I got a 95% on my 2nd calc test. Booya!) but I kinda just want to go watch movies for a week.

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed. I stay up way too late these days. And I think I'm going to go help some friends set up for a commercial shoot.

P.s. I went back to Kohl's and bought one of the softest, comfiest (wow, that's really how you spell it!) blanket ever! And what's funny is I was about to buy a different blanket that was actually even softer when I realized it was only big enough for 1 person to use at a time. So I bought the one big enough for 2 people :)

Even though I'm not dating anyone.

Oh yeah: how is it possible that we have a house of 7 super-awesome, fun, outgoing, good-looking and smart guys without a single girlfriend to show for it?

Run and [explain] that, homeboy.

Maybe because nice guys finish last? I dunno.

Last nights in NYC

I don't even know where to start. Mostly because I don't really remember everything we did in the past few days. The last 2 days went by as quickly as the first two days went by slowly. Weird.

We crammed in a ton of agency visits, I remember that. Weiden + Kennedy, Droga 5, Grey, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Ogilvy. I also went on... never mind I just realized that was Wednesday night and I already blogged about it. (Man time flies!)

What did we do?? I guess this blog is going to turn out to be slightly more stream of consciousness...

Dangit I left my camera at home so I can't look up the pictures.

Oh! Thursday night was the Facebook Wrap party, which wraps up AdWeek in general. It was legit, with an entrance line and bouncers and everything. There was loud music with a hot beat, but no one was dancing. Enter BYU AdLab students.

We started dancing, and for like 20 minutes we were the only ones dancing, but we could tell some older (as in like mid-late twenties) people were loosening up to the idea. Then came the TV camera which filmed us dancing. Then small groups starts bobbing a little, until about 15 minutes later when we had gotten quite a big group to dance! Booya! Way to be the life of the party.... us...

I have had some great conversations these past two days too. I'm loving good communication! Things are so much better when people can know where you're coming from and what you're thinking. Talking with my sister today was awesome. We had a chance to actually bond basically for the first time.

Oh yeah and I walked approximately 1 million miles today.

K, I'm going back to the loft so I can actually get a full night's sleep tonight. Maybe.

Peace, NYC. It's been jolly.

See y'all back in Provo!

My childhood in videos

Having just talked to my dad for Father's Day, spending time reminiscing about me when I was young, we got to talking about the movies/videos that I always watched when I was just a young'un. I remembered a lot of it, but some of it my dad reminded me of, and I just had to share it with someone.

So, thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, here is a summary of a number of my childhood memories. Oh the memories :-)

George Harrison - I Got my Mind Set on You



MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This

I guess embedding of MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" is disabled, so here's the link if you want an awesome blast from the past:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

Star Wars - Jabba the Hutt
 
Sorry about the subtitles in this one.





An American Tail - Never Say Never



Babar



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II - The Arcade Game for Nintendo

Obviously you don't need to watch all of this. Plus the guy playing has no idea what he's doing, I could play circles around him in this game :-) (Boy, if that doesn't make me cool, I don't know what does!)



Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

Another one with disabled embedding. You won't be disappointed by watching this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0YkXmebAGM


Wow. I had a great childhood! :-)

Somber

Somber: dark or dull in color or tone; gloomy.

I'm in one of those moods today. It's been like one of those constant, "everyone else is doing something either productive or fun, and I'm at home doing nothing productive nor fun." It got better once we had our intramural games in the evening, but seriously once I got back from my internship (I spent most of the time social bookmarking. Oh boy.) I had NOTHING to do.

Strike that, I had stuff I could have done, but decided not to. I wonder if, subconsciously, I just wanted to be able to complain about it later. I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of person, but I guess something I prefer to see the half-empty side of things and fill up the other half with social interactions.

You know how sometimes you like to just be alone? I don't get that feeling very often.

On a few positive notes, I'm almost done with The Magician's Nephew, and we won our Ultimate game, despite being one man down the whole time! We actually started with only 5 players, so they dropped a player to make it slightly more even, but once we scored twice in a row they decided we didn't deserve that luxury. Fortunately someone else came to make it 6 on 7, and we still won 12-7. Booya!

Anyway, did anyone actually read this? Leave a comment if you did :-)

Efficiency Expert

After some research last week and some more today, I found ways to save my mom about $500/month just in our insurance and phone plans. Booya! Maybe I should charge a small fee to people to help them save money or time doing things more efficiently. I'm pretty sure I've heard of people actually doing that. Anyone interested in my efficiency services? :-)

It's looking like I'm going to be spending a majority of my time on my computer this summer.

• Learning SEO with Leadgenix
• Learning Adobe programs with BYU's OIT Training AND with the free Comms Department Lynda.com training membership
• Starting a website or two just to see if I can (and maybe start up a business or NPO?)
• Studying for the GMAT

All not including the time I spend on my computer already. What a nerd.

Why today was a good day

1. I actually got a lot done in the time I was at school from 7:30am to 3:30pm. I gave the Sierra-West presentation (practice round 2) (wow, that was today? I guess technically it was yesterday, but it feels like 2 or 3 days ago already...). I worked a bit on the MTV account, we came up with a few rad ideas for the Boy Scouts account, then we spent another 2 1/2 hours working on our Sierra-West presentation. It's getting pretty good.
2. Our (Brandon Tholen's and my) tenacity, doggedness, persistence, and indefatigability helped us get the house we have been fighting for (and had almost given up on). And yes, I just used the thesaurus on the word "tenacity" and wrote down a bunch of synonyms. My browser doesn't recognize "indefatigability."
3. I went running for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm way out of shape, but it still felt good.
4. I went on a date for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm way out of practice, but it still felt good :) Hoping to find another date for Friday's ballroom dance performance...
5. I paid a bill and went grocery shopping. (And saw one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen while shopping. I've seen her a few times on campus and she takes my breath away.) Oh yeah, and girl's who shop at Smith's are hotter than girls who shop at Macey's. Just sayin'. I got to compare today because I went to both.

Housing debacle

A group of us (Brandon, Josh, Jonathan, Bryan, Matt, Tyler, and I) were looking for a place we could all stay. We found a place (which to my understanding is pretty nice, unfortunately I haven't seen it yet) right next door ( a house) which would be great. Then we found out the current owner decided to sell it, and the people who were buying it wanted to make it into women's housing instead.

Then we found out that BYU wanted to make it into women's housing in order to get rid of the (crappy) reputation of the Hollywood house. Brandon Tholen and I began preparing for an epic battle of wills, testimonies, and probably not fists. We got our current bishop and our (hopefully) future bishop to strap on the whole 9 yards of ammo, ready to fight for our entry into the house.

Apparently it only took a few precise shots by our sharpshooter, Bishop Henley (can you tell I've played too much Modern Warfare 2 lately?) to soften the hearts (or convince BYU?) of the soon-to-be owners to let us stay there.

If they try anything we've got literally 14 people as references, 3 of whom are ecclesiastical leaders with the ward's and stake's interest in mind.

Score one for networking. Boo-ya.

Body, Mind, Spirit, and Miscellaneous

I made goals at the beginning this year. I'm not going to mention how well I'm doing at achieving them, but let it be known that I'm not failing at them all :-) Just most of them...

Anyway, I was thinking today about goals, and I realized that maybe a way to keep my goals on the top of my mind is to set goals each month instead of each year. (I can still set yearly goals, but maybe make my monthly goals more specific and make sure they help me achieve my long-term goals.)

So I read a good post about posture the other day and realized that I need to improve mine. Then on my way to the adlab today I realized I should also find ways to improve my memory (because it's terrible unless I'm dealing with numbers). Then I thought, "well I've got a 'body' goal and a 'mind' goal, why not have a 'spirit' goal too?" Then I thought, "but if I have all those, then I won't be able to have a more fun goal, like learning to juggle, typing the right way, or whistling loud. But what would I call that?"

So now I have my very own "Body, Mind, Spirit, and Miscellaneous" self-improvement system. I'm going to come up with a goal in each one of those categories, and try to improve that part of my life for a month. My hope is that it will become habit by the end of the month, and I can move on to another goal. (For example, I won't have to consciously think about improving my posture, but will hopefully do it out of habit.)

(As a side note, I can do as many goals in the "Miscellaneous" category as I want in a month. I can also go above and beyond in any of the categories if I want.)

So in August we have:

Body - Improve my posture. I am going to keep my back straight when I sit and stand, and keep my head up as I walk. It help me to think about how not slouching stops my ribs from cramming my stomach organs forward as it talks about in the Art of Manliness blog referenced above. Cause that's just gross. And this way I'll probably have even more of a rippling 6-pack than I already have. Yes... the one I already have...

Mind - Improve my memory. Whenever someone tell me their name, I'm going to remember it. I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to accomplish this yet, but I think the Wilk actually holds little classes/gives suggestions on how to improve your memory skills, so I may just go look into that.

Spirit - Improve my scripture study. I've always been very on and off with scripture reading. Instead of focusing on the amount of time I read every day, I'm going to read for at least 5 minutes every day, but also write at least one sentence down about something I learned/felt while reading. I hope to be able to increase the time/amount that I write in the future, but for now this will suffice.

Misc. - Read more. Other than scripture study, I want to read more. I've been doing alright this past week in reading, but I know once I finish the book I'm on I'll have to have another one waiting for me or else I may not continue. I would like to read at least a book a month, even when things get crazy in the Fall.

There you have it. Feel free to stay on top of me with these and ask me how they're going. Maybe a little accountability is what I need to keep me going.

Also, if you read all the way through this post, please leave me a quick comment, even just to say "I read it all." I would like to know who actually reads my blog! :-) Thanks!

Too Dizzy

I know that's not the right kind of "to."

So in one of my random Wikipedia-skipping adventures (you know, the ones where you go to look one thing up and end up reading about 20 different articles? It's sort of a brain-cell-strengthening version of surfing videos on YouTube since you actually feel more informed afterward...), I came across the Wikipedia article for Madonna. I had no idea she was born in Michigan!

Anyway, I was really impressed to read about her beginnings. Here's a selection:

"Madonna's ballet teacher persuaded her to pursue a career in dance, so she left the college at the end of 1977 and relocated to New York City.^[20] Madonna had little money and for some time lived in squalor, working at Dunkin' Donuts and with modern dance troupes.^[21] Speaking of her move to New York, Madonna said, "It was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi cab. I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done."

I think of all the times I've considered being a musician, or an actor, or a photographer, and how every time I abandoned the idea because the road would be too hard and I was worried about what people might think. It makes me think of when children say they want to be astronauts. At what point does that dream fade? When do kids stop saying they want to be an astronaut (or a policeman, or fireman, etc.) and say "I want to go into electrical engineering," or "I think I want to be in accounting." Not to say there's anything wrong with wanting those things, but what changed? Is it that they honestly no longer wanted to be an astronaut? Or did they worry about what other people would think? Or was it just too hefty of a goal for them?

DON'T LET THE OUTSIDE INFLUENCE WHO YOU WANT TO BE ON THE INSIDE!!! Although environmental factors play a big role in who we become, once we reach a conscious state in which we can actively make choices as to who we become, we don't need to let ourselves be controlled by other factors than our own will.

Speaking of will:



Lizzy: LIVE YOUR LIFE! BE WHO YOU WANT TO BE NO MATTER WHAT. NO MATTER HOW ANYONE ELSE MAKES YOU THINK OR FEEL!!!! I know that was basically verbatim what you asked to hear, so I'm sorry for my lack of originality in this paragraph. Hopefully something else in this blog helps too though.

Do what you want to do, and don't let someone else determine what that is. Develop your skills and personality to mold yourself into who YOU want to be, not who you think someone else wants you to be. One of my biggest fears as a missionary was that people would join the church because they liked the missionaries and didn't want to disappoint us. I was afraid of that because either the investigators would lose their testimonies uber fast, or they would never really gain one in the first place. One of the most important things about constantly re-gaining a testimony is that you need to want it. If I just go to church because I don't want to disappoint someone else, can I honestly believe that I am progressing?? Sure I may be learning things that I wouldn't learn otherwise, but what good is it if I have no motivation to apply the things I learn??

Take time to meditate for a while, extricate the outside influences from your thoughts, and draw up all the plans of things you want to do with your life and who you want to be. Include detail and maybe a few deadlines. Make some pros-and-cons lists. Then pray and ask what Heavenly Father thinks about it all. (I guess I would be wrong in saying ignore ALL outside influences then, huh? Whoops.) The difference is that God won't judge you for who you decide to become as long as you're doing what's right in the eternal perspective.

Then remember that everything cool comes from Michigan (including Madonna) and eat some amazing homemade Winger's chicken.

Case Closed

Proven. (Click on the picture for one you can actually read)