September Recap

Green Day released a song when I was in high school called "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Now, I've never wanted to sleep through September; it's one of my favorite months, and not just because I was born in it (though that does make it pretty awesome). But it does feel rather like I have slept through it, just because it's zoomed by. A lot has happened this month, actually -- I moved, I got my first grown-up job paycheck, my mom came to visit, I had a birthday, I got a second job, there was a temple open house and dedication, my best friend left on a mission, I made new friends, and I made old friends better friends. Oh, and I ripped my favorite pair of jeans. You know, got to make sure I get in all that really important information. So, since much of that I neglected to blog about, here's a short recap of September.

1 September: I moved out of my friend Jordanne's house, where I'd been living all summer with her and her family while I figured out what I was going to do with myself. I also got my very first grown-up job paycheck from IELI (albeit only a half of one, since I only worked half of August).

2 September: The high councilman over stake emergency preparedness asked me to accept a calling as the stake emergency preparedness committee co-chair.

3 September: I finally got all my boxes and the furniture in my new room unpacked and organized. And it was my first official paid holiday, too (yay for Labor Day!).

5 September: My mom flew into Utah and stopped by to see me for about three minutes on her way up to Bear Lake with her sisters and cousins for a reunion. She also dropped off a memory foam topper for my bed, which has radically altered my life for the better.

7 September: I left work early for the first time to go to Shannon's (my best friend's little sister) own endowment session. Afterwards, I met up with a friend to explore the Gallery Walk downtown, and we hung out at Coldstone afterwards, eating ice cream and listening to the screaming in the stadium during the Utah State vs. University of Utah game. (It was loud screaming, people. We could hear it a mile+ away. For the record, Utah State won. Go Aggies!)

10 September: My mom back from her reunion, she picked me, my brother, and my cousin up to drive over to Brigham City (about a half-hour away) for the Brigham City temple open house. We meet up with some of my dad's sisters and their kids (and one husband) to tour the temple before it's dedicated. It was absolutely gorgeous! My favorite part, though, was the ceilings in the sealing rooms. The picture below doesn't show it, but painted on the ceiling was a large circle of brilliant blue with flowering branches of peach blossoms. They were stunning.

Picture here from hjnews.com

After that, we drove to my aunt and uncle's house for a family dinner of delicious minestroni soup and fresh french bread (with donuts for dessert!). My uncle asked if I'd like to drive his manual 1963 Jeep, which in his words has "no power-anything" (no power steering, no power brakes, etc). I drove down to the river bottom and up and down a veeeery steep hill. That was a blast, even if my 15-year-old cousin drove on the way home. I only thought we were going to die about three times, so she did pretty well, I'd say. Riding standing up in the back was definitely a fun time.

11 September: I went to work, then went over to my grandma's house to spend time with her and my mom. We stopped by my friend Jordanne's house to say goodbye to her; she left for the Provo MTC and eventually a mission in Chile the next day.

12 September: I met up with a friend for Aggie Ice Cream after work to officially kick off my birthday celebration. Nothing in the world is as delicious as Aggie Blue Mint.

13 September: Happy 26th birthday to me! I woke up super early (630!) for some reason, but lay in bed until about 830 when my mom came over to make me a birthday breakfast of French breakfast muffins and orange juice. (Well, she bought the orange juice.) After that we spent a few hours shopping, and we made sure to stop by the Distribution Center so I could purchase my parents a present with my very first paycheck (a Korean tradition). She dropped me off at work, where this was waiting for me on my desk:

My boss had stopped by to pick up a brownie for me, and our director found a tea light, lit it, and sung happy birthday to me. The whole department signed a birthday card for me, too. My mom picked me up from work and took me over to my grandma's house were we made dinner and I put my candles on my brownies (I don't like cake so I have brownies instead). Most of my family that lives in the area stopped by for some birthday brownies and ice cream and some catching up. 26 candles makes for a lot of light!

14 September: I met with a couple looking for someone to watch their 8-week-old baby girl in the mornings. Since my office job is only 1-5, I was looking for a better way to spend my mornings than sleeping late. The couple seemed nice and I adored their baby girl at first glance, so I was hoping to get the job. After meeting with them, I met my mom and grandma at the temple and went to lunch downtown at Great Harvest, where we had fantastic sandwiches and a delicious cinnamon roll for dessert. We ate outside, and the weather was gorgeous!

That evening, I went for Korean food with a friend and saw The Amazing Spider-Man for the second time (the first time I went to go see it on the Fourth of July with my little brother). It was just as good the second time around.

15 September: I worked in the temple cafeteria for the lunch shift and had a great time with the two other girls who also volunteered. I also had my first emergency preparedness committee meeting, to prepare for the stake training meeting the next day.

18 September: I got a call from the couple I interviewed with the last Friday, and they offered me the job! I'm so excited to start in October. I think I'm really going to enjoy it, and I'll finally be working full-time, albeit at two different jobs.

21 September: The week was pretty slow and not very eventful. I met up with a friend for dinner and to explore our local (tiny) zoo. That's where I discovered this little gem I blogged about before. It was also the last day of summer, since the autumnal equinox was the next day.

23 September: Regular church was cancelled in order for us to be able to attend one of the dedicatory sessions of the Brigham City temple, which was broadcast to all the meetinghouses in the area. It was a special event, especially hearing President Boyd K. Packer talk about growing up in Brigham City and his memories of the city and how the temple came to be built.

26 September: I get a text from my mom in the afternoon that my little brother (the one who lives and goes to school here in the very same town that I live in) was being admitted to the hospital. They didn't know what it was yet, but it didn't seem too serious. That evening, I went to help my dad's mom put up some decorations for fall. While stepping off the top of a step ladder, I managed to rip my favorite pair of jeans. ~sad face~ But my grandma and I still had a good time, and the decorations look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

27 September: I went to visit the little brother in the hospital, and it appeared that he was anything but wasting away in sad loneliness, since he had an almost constant stream of vistors. We had a nice chat, and then I met up with a friend for gelata at Zeppe's (only the yummiest place ever).

28 September: Our director at work took the office staff (me and our secretary/adviser) out to lunch at a local (and delicious) Italian restaurant. After work, me and some girlfriends drove down to SLC to wander around the new City Creek Mall, have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (so. much. food), and spend the night at the Marriott downtown. It was a fun getaway, and our stay was free, thanks to my friend's aunt's Marriott reward points.

The view from our room on the very top floor of the Marriott in downtown SLC

My ginormous dessert, the delicious warm apple crisp. It was good cold the next day, too.

29 September: And now to today! Whew! My girlfriends and I slept in, laid around chatting about life until checkout time, ate brunch at Denny's, and drove home. This evening was the General Relief Society Meeting, the very first one with Sister Burton (my mission president's wife) as General Relief Society president. She gave a great talk! I was only sad that I wasn't able to go with my friends to the meeting in the Conference Center in SLC. Sometimes not having a car is very inconvenient.

And there you go. Not exactly a short recap of my September, but hopefully it wasn't boring.

Versions of Me

One of my senior pictures, summer 2004

Have you ever gone back and looked at old pictures of yourself? I do, sometimes. We spend so much time looking out from behind our eyes that looking into them can feel like you're looking at someone else. 

Hanging out in a friend's kitchen, summer 2007

Sometimes, I look into the eyes of these old mes and remember how innocent and hopeful I was. Innocent of all the hard and challenging things that lay ahead of me, innocent of the disappointment of not facing those challenges head-on and overcoming them the way I would like to think I can. Hopeful that things would unfold the way I thought they would, hopeful that all those things I'd dreamed of were coming to me just the way I'd dreamed they would.

In the Young Adult fiction nook of our town library (my favorite place), fall 2007

The old me could have never have imagined the current me. In some ways we're very different people, and in others we're very much the same. I wonder if parts of her still linger, or if somehow the current version of ourselves gets "saved" over the older ones, like drafts of a Word document, and the only hints of those old versions of ourselves are the moments captured in photographs.

In the MTC, winter 2007

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Fall leaves at the traditional Korean village just outside of Seoul, 2008.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, and this year is no exception. The weather has been cooling off lately, which gets me all excited. I've been trying to wear my sweaters for the last week or so. It's still too warm to really pull that off, but I know I shouldn't wish the warm temperatures away; come January I'll be begging for them to make a comeback. Until then, however, I'm reveling in the crisp evening air and the occasional smell of woodsmoke that drifts through my window.

A Short Laugh Break

I'm terribly behind on all the things that have been happening lately (I turned 26! my mom came to visit! I got another job!), but I thought I'd share this. I saw this at our local zoo tonight and got a laugh out of it. Sorry about the crappy picture, I still must rely on my dumbphone's 1 megapixel camera for all my picture-taking needs.

All Moved In

After procrastinating it for a few hours this morning, I finally dragged myself off my bed (where I had returned after getting up to make breakfast) to go do something about the huge mess in my room you saw in the pictures yesterday. I always require a sit-on-the-floor-and-look-around-in-an-overwhelmed-fashion period of adjustment before I tackle anything, and this was no different, but I finally managed to decide where I want my bookshelves (yes, I have two! ^_^) and get my books unpacked and put away. After that I took a break to watch a drama (hey, it's a holiday). But after a big push and some "just do it" mental chivvying, this is what my room looks like now. Here's the view looking straight in from the door (which opens, inconveniently, to the left).

That little nook is darned inconvenient, I must say. The dresser was originally in the closet, but the closet isn't very wide and I couldn't open the drawers because the closet doors didn't slide open wide enough. So it got relocated to The Nook. (I think I will use the capitals from now on.) I'd have it facing forward, but it's missing a bottom drawer, and that looks kinda weird from the door, so it's sideways.

This is the view from the wall to the right of the door, the one the dresser is on. It looks a little cramped with my second bookshelf on the right, between the foot of my bed and the closet...but there really isn't a good place to put it. So it's here. Which is good, because I like having my books within eyeshot / arm reach. This way I don't have to get out of bed to get a book I want to read. (And I just want you to know, I made my bed just to take this picture. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.)

Here's the view of the head of my bed (whew, those satin pillowcases are shiny!), my desk, and my other bookshelf (all of which came with my room - the other, taller bookshelf is mine, though). The door swings in front of the bookshelf when it's open, but thankfully the bookshelf isn't very deep so I can open my door almost all the way.

...and here's my view while I'm lying in bed, looking toward my bookshelf and closet (see how narrow it is?). I apologize for the lighting and the bad quality of the pictures, but the only camera I have is the one on my phone, and it's not even a hi-tech smartphone. It's just a 1 megapixel-camera dumb phone with no zoom. Still, you get the idea, right?

 I still haven't hung any of my posters, and the pictures / artwork might move around based on how cool the landlords are with nail holes. I think I'd like to hang my mirror lengthwise on the wall opposite the window. I'm hoping if I do, it'll throw around some light and hopefully make things a little brighter. I'm lucky, though, that my window faces south, so it's not a dank, dark, gloomy place and stays pretty light all day long. Still, I'm a big natural light fan, and the more the better, right?

I'm not sure how well you can see them, but those are some of my glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. My siblings gave them to me for Christmas years ago, and they've been on all my ceilings since. They're the last little touch that always makes every new place feel a little bit more like 'home'.

My New Place

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was my very first "grown-up job" payday, and it was also the day I moved into my new place (made possible by my first grown-up job payday). So come on in, and I'll give you a little tour of my place, all from the door of my room (please excuse the mess, and be careful on the stairs).

My room is in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs. Those stairs, to be precise. ~gestures to the picture below~ Those stairs lead from the side door. If you come straight down you enter my room; if you turn left on the landing and take two steps up, you're in the upstairs kitchen.

I say upstairs kitchen because there's also a downstairs one. The picture below on the left is the view from my door, facing out and left. There's also a table to the right, but it's blocked by the wall in this shot. To the left of the kitchen is the downstairs bathroom. Further to the left down a very short hall is the downstairs living room, and just off of that is a large bedroom shared by two of my roommates, Taylor and Megan (who are cousins). If you stand at my door and look out and right, you see the laundry / storage room.

This view below on the left is standing at my door looking to the left. The one on the right is standing at my door and looking straight ahead. The wall color doesn't look quite right, but it's a kind of dusky dark pink, with more purple than red in it. The other three walls are white painted paneling.

Here's the view from just inside my door toward the far left wall. That the wall my window and my bed are on. I've rearranged the furniture a little, and now the desk is against the same wall as the headboard, right up next to my bed. I'm typing this sitting at the head of my bed with my computer sitting on the desk. I'm going to pause just to complain a little bit about sleeping on a twin bed again. I sure do miss my lovely queen from my other house. ~heaves a heavy sigh~

And here's the view from the foot of my bed, looking back toward the door.

 So, really nothing too spectacular (and not nearly as nice as my last place - but cheaper!), but I'm hoping when I get everything unpacked and put away and organized and hopefully get all my art hung it will feel more like home. I have to admit that I felt a little lonely and sad last night. Jordanne and her family were very good to me and I'm going to miss them. Still, one has to be independent eventually, right?

When I get more settled in, I'll take some more pictures and show you how things look in that configuration. In the meantime, I'm excited that my mom will be coming into town this week and will be staying for my birthday!

My baby's back!

My baby (aka my Macbook) is sporting a sassy new hard drive (the nice people at Expercom were able to retrieve almost all of my files!) and it's back in my loving and anxious arms. After almost three weeks of separation, I have to say I'm pretty over the moon about it. ^_^

We interrupt your Friday evening for an important news flash...

So every once in a while I get on a kick. An obsession kick. Where I listen/watch/eat/read one thing over and over and over again. These last few days it's been SHINee, specifically their latest music video (see above - sorry, no English subs, since I couldn't find any good ones). It's called Sherlock. But it's catchy. And SHINee always has great choreography. When I watch their MVs I almost want to stop being lazy and ignore my abject fear of looking stupid and learn to dance like that.

First Day of Work

This is my new office. I suppose that's a bit of a misnomer, since it implies that there's an "old" office, when in fact this is the first office I've ever had. A bit of a thrill went through me when I reported for work this afternoon at one PM and heard, "You have your own office over here." I almost feel like a real grown-up!

To back track just a bit -- Obviously, the kick in the pants I got last week, combined with my computer biting the proverbial dust, did the trick. A good friend told me about this position, but I was initially reluctant to apply because it's not full-time, but half-time instead. I was wanting a full-time position for several reasons, but one of the most pressing was my upcoming 26th birthday (a month from today! crazy!). Turning 26 means I can no longer be on my parents' insurance, and gaps in insurance coverage can cause problems down the line. But when you're starving, metaphorically speaking, you can't afford to quibble with the available food not being 100% organic health food -- you've got to take what you can get. Plus, I knew they would seriously consider me because of my background and experience, and I wasn't getting a lot of consideration (*cough*or any *cough*) the other places I was applying. So I applied, and I interviewed last Thursday, and just a few hours after my interview they called me up and offered me the job and told me to come in Monday.

Here's the skinny on my current place of employment. I work for the Intensive English Language Institute at USU. The name is pretty self-explanatory -- it's a place where people come to learn English. Intensively. It serves mostly international students, but there are a few students who are US residents, mostly immigrants and refugees. My job is to do the "grunt work": filing, answering email inquiries, spending time on the telephone with insurance companies trying to straighten things out for students, copying, compiling orientation packets, scheduling catering for some events, etc. I work half-time, so basically I show up after lunch and close up the office at 5pm. Sadly, I only get three days off for Christmas (which I admit I'm a little puzzled about, since there are no students around).

Since there is currently a workshop going on that is being run by our faculty, I haven't really met anyone besides the IELI adviser, the IELI director, and one or two faculty. Oh, and the IT guys who came to help me get my computer set up. The only real work-y thing I did today was answer a phone while everyone else was out. I'm not yet in the system and I'm still fairly clueless about everything, so I spent the day reading the orientation packet and figuring how to get my (Windows 7 - ugh!) computer to let me type in Korean. I'm excited for the semester to start and for the students to get here, because I love students. And because presumably I'll know a little more about what's going on and be more comfortable in the office and know more people. I'm really excited about this job, even if I am doing "grunt work", because I feel so passionately about IELI's mission to help international students learn English and have a wonderful experience at USU and in America. I'm also hoping to be able to keep working my old job at the high school, since it's only in the morning and this job is only in the afternoon. That way I'd be working 35 hours a week, almost full time, which would keep me busy and stop me from sleeping too late in the mornings. We'll have to see how that works out, though.

Mourning My Baby

Remember my last post about how much I hate uncertainty? And the one a few more before that when I shared my "compelled to be humble" moment? Well, here's another wrench thrown into the rapidly deteriorating machine that is my life.

Just a few hours after my uncertainty post, as I was surfing the net and watching an old Japanese drama (*gasp* Yes, I do watch other kinds of dramas), I saw the light on my charger change from orange to green, indicating that my computer was fully charged. Since I'm not a fan of leaving my computer plugged in when it's charged (it's bad for the battery and for the environment and your electric bill), I immediately unplugged it -- only to have it suddenly die without warning. I admit to being more than a little confused, since my little battery icon had clearly stated it was fully charged. So I plugged it back in and attempted to reboot it. After an unusually long time, it finally booted, but up popped a little message that said the computer had reset to a date before Jan 2008. So I figured I'd reboot it again and it would hopefully straighten itself out. It never rebooted after that, instead getting stuck on the grey Apple screen that shows up while the computer's booting. Normally it's there for a few seconds, then transforms into the login screen, but it was perpetually stuck in grey-Apple-screen-land.

So I took it into our local Apple dealer to get it looked out. The woman helping me ran a few tests and determined that the battery had exceeded its lifetime of 1000 charges (by 51) and had just died, nothing too strange about that, and would just need a new ($120) battery to work again. Still, that didn't explain why my computer wouldn't boot, because it should work just fine as long as it's plugged into the wall. To make a long story short, I left it with them to examine, and got a call from them last evening. I went in this morning to the very bad news that the hard drive was shot and I'd need a new one ($183, at the very least). The sort-of-not-bad news was that the techs said they'd most likely be able to recover some/most/all (?) of what was on my old hard drive, but of course there's no guarantee that they'll get everything or that they'll get the most important things if they can't get everything. I've been meaning for a long time to get an external hard drive to back everything up on, and it was literally at the top of my list of things to purchase when I finally get a job, but I've been mostly living hand-to-mouth for the last...well, always. If it just could have held out another three or four months! ~tears hair out~ Thankfully, the very most important things, my mission pictures, are backed up on a flash drive, so at least I have those even if I lose all my music (~sob~) and all my documents from high school and college. And I'm pretty sure I have backups of my mission emails somewhere.

Really, though, I can't have imagined a worse time for this to happen. Maybe this will become a good thing when I look back on it a twenty or five years from now, but right now I'm very upset. The only real things I own at this point in my life are my books and my computer, and most of my books are at my parents' house. I suppose I used my computer A LOT in the last two years I've had it, but still. If it could have just held on another year or so, that would have been ever so much more convenient. But I suppose life and challenges don't happen when it's "convenient".

Uncertainty - I'm not a fan

I'm not a big fan of uncertain things. I like things -- my life, especially -- to be tied up nicely and neatly in a smart little package with a bow. I'm the kind of person who likes to be on very solid footing before taking the next step.

Unfortunately, that hasn't been working out too well lately. Or ever, really. I don't think life usually works like that.

P.S.

After rereading my post from yesterday and talking to my mom about it, I think I came across much more petulant than I was actually feeling. I was feeling pouty about the whole prospect of life not working out according to my plans / ideas of how it should go, but I think it was more frustration at my own stubborness and childish clinging to unreasonable expectations than a temper tantrum. I'm still not thrilled at the prospect of doing things I don't want to do (who would be?), but I'm happy to report that after a few days of reflection I'm feeling a little more willing to do them.

Stubborn

I'm a little mad at the world right now.

Doesn't that sound so petulant? Sadly, I think petulant -- "childishly sulky or bad-tempered" -- is the most appropriate word for my attitude right now. I shared yesterday about my "compelled to be humble" experience, but apparently I'm still struggling with the humility, because the logical and grown-up part of me is rather appalled at the bad attitude of the rest of me. And it isn't that impressed with stupid excuses I'm making, either.

See, the thing is, the solution to my current situation is simple. It involves getting a job. As it was pointed out to me yesterday, people who are much less qualified and much less intelligent than I am have jobs, so obviously my hang up is not getting a job, but getting a job that I want to get. The humility part of this is in acknowledging the truth of that statement. Admitting it's true puts responsibility for my current state of unemployed-bum-hood squarely on my own shoulders and breaks up the little pity party I'm throwing for myself. People will feel sorry for you if your woes are inflicted on you by the Universe or the vagaries of the economy, but they tend to be much less sympathetic when it's your own fault.

The cause of all this stubborn pride is an assumption that's been lurking in the back of my brain for years and years -- probably since I was old enough to realize that "one day" I'd be grown-up and out of school -- that my life at 25 would include a husband, a kid or two, a house, and me at home taking care of all of them. I went through a "I want to be a fighter pilot / astronaut / ballerina when I grow up" phase, but by high school I knew I wanted to be a domestic engineer -- a stay-at-home mom. It wasn't that I didn't have any dreams, or that I was somehow less ambitious than girls who wanted to be doctors or the next president of the United States or small business owners. (See this for a fantastic post on the topic.) I firmly believe that the greatest good I'll ever do and the highest calling I'll ever have is as a wife and mother. That doesn't preclude any other contributions to society, of course. But all I have to say on that subject is a post for another day. The main point is that I never expected to find myself in this position. I don't really want to be in this position, either. 

It's not that I don't want to do other things, because I do. I'd love to be able to travel all over the world. I'd love to live in a big city here in the States for a while, maybe NYC or DC, and explore all it has to offer in the way of food and museums and parks. I'd be ecstatic to move back to Korea and eat all the Korean food I ever want and finally become fluent. I want to have an environmentally friendly car, a small but nice house with a yard someplace safe and quiet, all my student loans paid off and a nice cushion in the bank, a fantastic bed, and one room in my house devoted totally to books. I most definitely do not want to stay here in Logan and work some boring job that isn't very stimulating, rewarding personally or financially, or likely to set me on the fast track to some amazing career if I don't end up getting married and having a family. I don't want to be paying off my student loans until my oldest child is 16. I don't want to live 1.5 hours from the nearest city and have no car. I don't want to live in any more apartments or in someone else's home. I want my life to follow my plan for it.

But it just doesn't work that way, and sulking about it isn't going to change anything. The AnnMarie I dreamed up when I was 12 doesn't exist. She never existed. She's never going to exist. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do, and being jealous of someone else's opportunities is not very becoming. Neither is refusing to deal with reality. It's one thing to realize all that intellectually, and quite another to actually believe it and act accordingly. Of course I knew all this, I'm not stupid or totally ignorant of the way the world works. I certainly don't lack examples of these principles. If I came to me with my attitude, I'd've given me the same dressing down I got yesterday. Quit whining and just get a job, moron. Unhappy with a paycheck is better than unhappy without one. (I paraphrase.) At least then you'll be able to pay your bills and be independent. 

Life is unpredictable. I think that's been pretty well established, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It shouldn't come as a surprise, either, that sometimes the best experiences of our lives grow out of other experiences we might not be so thrilled about having. We lack the perspective to see, in the moment, how our difficulties and challenges will make us better people and perhaps even bring us greater blessings than we could have ever imagined. I am reminded of a Chinese proverb I learned in some of my classes at USU: 塞翁失馬焉知非福 (Saiweng Shima, Yanzhi Feifu). Since that probably means nothing to 99.9% of you, I'll share the story of the old man who lost his horse. (There are several different versions of the story, but the one I quote here you can find here.)

     "During the Han Dynasty—in the third century B.C.—an old man living on China’s border one day lost his horse. His neighbors all said what terrible luck that was, and sympathized with the old man. But Sai Weng said: “Maybe losing my horse is not a bad thing after all.”
     Lo and behold, the next day the old man’s horse returned, together with a beautiful female horse alongside him. All the neighbors exclaimed: “What great luck!” But the old man responded: “Maybe this is not such good luck after all.”
     The old man had a strong young son. The boy fell in love with the new horse and rode her every day. One day the new horse got spooked by a wild animal and threw the boy from her back. He broke his leg very badly and was permanently crippled.
     All Sai Weng’s neighbors said: “What a tragedy, your strong son will never walk without pain again.” But the old man again said: “Maybe this is not such a bad thing after all.”
     And so it went that when the New Year came, the emperor’s army passed through the border region and recruited all able young men to fight in the frontier war. Because the old man’s son was crippled he could not fight and was left in the village to farm with his father.
     Sai Weng said to his neighbors: “You see, it all turned out okay in the end. Being thrown from the horse and breaking his leg saved my son from fighting in the war and almost certain death. So it was in the end a lucky thing after all.”"

I admit, I don't like it. I'm not thrilled about possibly having to get a job doing something I don't love. I'm not excited about staying in Logan. I'm not happy at maybe having to spend the next ten years of my life making small payments on my student loans and worrying about insurance and living in rented apartments or rooms. I'm mad at myself for not doing unpleasant things earlier that would have put me in a better position right now, financially, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, educationally. I hate the thought that I might never get the life I think I want right now. I'm still feeling stubborn about it all. It's not like my attitude about all of this is going to change overnight, but I hope some of the compelled humility will worm its way into my perspective and I'll be more willing to do what I need to, rather than stubbornly holding out for what I want.

"Blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble"*

*Alma 32:16

Today I had one of those "compelled to be humble" moments. It was painful. And rather uncomfortable, too. And I feel monumentally stupid.

The thing about "compelled to be humble" moments is that you are usually fully aware of what it is you need to be humble about -- you're just not being humble about it. Such it was with my moment today. There was nothing new about the smackdown I got, nothing in it I hadn't told myself over and over again...except this time someone else was saying it. It's funny how hearing it all coming out of someone else's mouth has a way of making it all just that much more painful. And embarrassing. ~sigh~

The other thing about being compelled to be humble, besides it being decidedly less comfortable than humbling yourself, is that it's much harder to ignore the magnitude of what you need to be humble about than if you just give yourself a little lecture and then fix it. It also has a way of ruthlessly illustrating just how stupid you've been and how inane your excuses sound when you say them out loud.

The upshot of my being compelled to be humble is this: I'm going to stop wallowing in self-pity (because as much as I try to deny it, that's what it is), stop expecting things to magically go the way I want them to, stop turning my nose up at jobs that aren't quite (or at all, ~sigh~) what I want, and give myself a schedule each day. I'm going to only set goals that require my agency to achieve them -- things like "I will submit 20 applications this week" instead of "I will have a full-time, benefitted position by the end of August". And I'm going to get off my bum and get active instead of moping around and eating a lot of ice cream and cookies.

Here's hoping. ~crosses fingers~

A Sisterly Perspective

Yeah, the one where I'm taller than her? That was taken a loooooooong time ago.

I'm not going to lie. Life feels pretty tough right now. Tough, and maybe a little bit pointless. It isn't (pointless), of course, but it feels that way. And it feels hard. And challenging. As I was telling my sister earlier while we were talking on the phone, obstacles in life seem insurmountable when you've got your nose pressed right up against them, scraping the brick (or whatever else your obstacles are made out of). It takes backing up twenty feet and scrutinizing them to realize that they're really a stepping-stone to where you want to be. What I'm struggling for right now is that perspective.

That's why I'm grateful for my sister. She's not the only sister I've got, but she's the only grown-up sister I've got and she also has the dubious honor of being my best friend. She gives me a little of that perspective, coaxing me to step back from where I'm stubbornly rubbing my nose into the brick, trying to wear a hole through it, and see the bigger picture. I've got a lot of blessings, but I think she's one of the best. Thanks, sis, for being my perspective and my best friend. I couldn't do it without you.