Month: December 2007

  • This Life I Chose For Me

    "I'm staring out into the night, trying to hide the pain.  I'm going to the place where love and feeling good don't ever cost a thing--and the pain you feel's a different kind of pain" (Daughtry).

    Home doesn't refer to what I might have thought it referred to, but this is a great song that seems to fit my mood right now.

    Winter break is more than half way over now.  I have finally figured out my class schedule for next semester, and am looking at a few campus job openings that I will apply for tomorrow.  I have also decided that I will be sticking around BYU for the spring and summer terms.  Hopefully that will allow me to knock out a bunch of GE's so I can focus on my art in the fall and graduate with a BFA in December of 2009.  I'm planning big and looking at masters programs after that.  I'm pretty excited about my future.

    So, my public blogging has sucked lately, and perhaps this should go on my private blog, but I've been thinking about happiness.  We talk a lot about trying to find happiness and pursuing happiness and all that, but what is happiness?  It's such an abstract concept I think we don't even know what it is we are pursuing half the time.  I mean, when someone tickles me, I laugh and smile--even to the point of tears--but I'm really kinda irked.  So though I may look and seem happy, it's not happiness, it's just being tickled.  On the other hand, sometimes I am just sitting alone, or with a friend, thinking, and though I may be straight-faced or sleepy or pensive, I am happy.

    For me, happiness is self-contentment, and it isn't dependent on any external force.  If you are happy, then you don't feel a need to prove your happiness to others.  In that sense it is very closely tied to security and self-esteem.  I also think that if you are happy you are happy regardless of what others do or say around you.  This is maybe what betrays most of the world.  I think too often we make our happiness conditional on others--a feeling of "I will be happy if or as long as so-and-so chooses this or that."  Only you should be able to determine the things that make you happy.  Obviously there are things beyond our control that will make us sad.  A loved one dies or does something that hurts us.  But if we are truly happy, then we will be able to be happy in the long term independent of others.

    I haven't mastered the happiness game, but I can say that I'm happier now than I have ever been.  To some of the informed, that is too hard to believe.  Fine.  I don't need to prove it to them, and I hope they will develop their own happiness despite me.  But don't tell me that I don't know what happiness is, because I do, now.  To be honest, sometimes I wonder why anyone wouldn't want me to be feeling what I'm feeling because of how happy it makes me.  The question is, does happiness vindicate me?  (I just wanted to use that word because it's so awesome).

    "I'm going home, back to the place where I belong, and where your love has always been enough for me.  I'm not running from--No, I think you got me all wrong.  I don't regret this life I chose for me. But these places and these faces are getting old, So I'm going home" (Daughtry).

  • Though I May Know, I Don't Care

    "Don't know much about your life.  Don't know much about your world, but don't want to be alone tonight on this planet they call earth. . ."

    Merry Christmas neglected xangans!  I'm sorry I've been so scarce here on xanga.  I have just been involved in other things I guess.  I can't believe a whole semester has passed since I got home from my mission.  I finally feel acclimated.  In some ways I have really changed a lot, but in other ways I am very much the same.  In any event, I am happy to be home for the holidays, even if only for 2 weeks.

    Well, I hope this brief note finds you all doing well . . .

    "You don't know about my past, and I don't have a future figured out.  And maybe this is going too fast.  Maybe it's not meant to last, but what do you say to taking chances?  What do you say to jumping off the edge?  Never knowing if there's solid ground below, or hand to hold, or hell to pay, what do you say?  What do you say?" (Celine Dion).

  • A small taste of heaven.

    Despite all the work I've had to do, I've been having a pretty good week.  Yesterday was great.  But this morning I had to wake up early again, and I was just so tired I didn't want to get out of bed.  But I did.  And I skipped the shower to get a seat in my accounting lecture near an outlet for my laptop.  All the way to accounting I have been grumbling about how much I don't want to be awake and going to accounting.  But then, just as my despair hightened and the Tanner Building loomed in my view, I saw a little table with free hot chocolate- complete with whipped cream.  It lifted my poor, tired, heavy heart and I felt a small glimpse of heaven.  I gained a little skip to my step.  I got my cup and to my surprise and pleasure the hot chocolate was perfect- not watery at all.  Of course the cream helped.  Now I am sitting in my lecture, enjoying a warm cup of cocoa and knowing that today is going to be a great day.

    Thank you to Microsoft for providing the chocolate.  Maybe if this becomes a pattern I will rescind all the nasty things I have said about you.

  • Rasberries.

    "Don't know much about your life.  Don't know much about your world, but don't want to be alone tonight on this planet they call Earth.  You don't know about my past, and
    I don't have a future figured out.  And maybe this is going too fast, and maybe it's not meant to last . . ."     (Celine Dion).

    It is snowing.  The whole valley is white, and I'm just having one of those mornings where everything is perfect.  Even though it's not.  The hot chocolate from McDonald's was watery.  The night was cold and uncomfortable.  I have a pimple on my forehead.  But none of that matters.  I had a perfect morning.  Wintery and Christmasy and wonderful.  I wouldn't have had it any other way.

    Anyway.  We watched Thoroughly Modern Millie last night, which was lots of fun.  I'm really excited that it's December.  I can't believe the semester is almost over.  It's all going by so fast.  And I'm anticipating nothing different for this month.  And then January comes and with it new classes.  Before long I'll be submitting my portfolio to the BFA studio program.  Soon I'll be out of this place and I'll be a grown up.  Weird.

    Things are going really well for me, but I did want to mention something that happened a few days ago.  Another BYU student committed suicide.  I didn't know him, but several of my friends were very close to him.  And even though I didn't know him, I really feel for him, with him.  Suicide is such a terrible thing.  It is so sad that a circumstance would make someone view death as a more desirable option than life.  I'll be praying for those who knew him.

    ". . . But what do you say to taking chances?  What do you say to jumping off the edge? Never knowing if there's solid ground below, or hand to hold, or hell to pay, what do you say? What do you say?" (Celine Dion).