hunger, space goats, and taboos.

This, my friends, simply won’t do! I know I’m walking a lot (I average some five miles a day) and I know my self defense class is killer exercise and I know I’m smiling more lately and that takes energy because one cannot really smile without bouncing as well, but really, this is a little bit ridiculous! Feeding this stomach (we won’t call it an appetite because that would imply that I enjoy the eating) has become a part time job!

Case in point: I ate a full meal right before going to bed last night. I went to bed around 1:30, and got up around 7:30, and in those 6 hours I consumed nearly 500 calories! This can’t go on or I’ll never get any sleep!

I’ve gained nearly 20 pounds since coming to BYU. Most of it is muscle I am sure, but I did notice today that I’m too awesome for the skirt I was wearing (translation: I’ve gone up a size or something.) The obvious solution would have been to go home! My room is a no clothz zone. Problem solved! But the teacher in Sunday School liked my comment, and then someone cornered me before RS and asked me to say the prayer, and soon I was stuck. If we ever get to vote on a 2 hour block schedule I’ll be all in favor.

I’ve been playing Settlers of Catan and Star Munchkins with various friends this past week with excellent results—I’m winning most of the games. Munchkins is a pretty awesome game especially because it has Space Goats in it.

Beloveds, there is so much to tell you all. Perhaps one of these days I’ll find time will and energy to write a proper family email instead of rambling on this blog. For now, I’m starving and it’s bedtime so I’m off to find something high calorie and easy.

P.s. check the new recipe on Neinerschts Virtual Kitchen. Credit goes to James!

this happiness thing

After learning that the last medication I had been prescribed (by a doctor I visited because mine was not available that day) was highly addictive, frequently used as a recreational drug, popular as a date rape drug, and partly responsible for Michael Jackson's death, I returned to my regular doctor for a second opinion. He put me on a mild mood stabilizer which I am loving. These topics can be kind of sensitive to discuss, but since I am generally a proponent of openness I feel comfortable expressing my appreciation for this miracle of modern medicine. I don't know how long these effects will last, but for these first six days on it I've been feeling like my true self--energetic, spontaneous, productive, happy.

What a good feeling it is.


(Picture: enjoying the hike to Garnet Canyon)

rainstorms in the land of smiles

I got my first letter from Thailand today. It was, as advertised on the envelope, 100% joy.

I’m convinced that there never has been in the past or ever will be in the future another missionary as happy as Jacob.

He even loves the nearly-constant rain and the thunder and lightning that comes with it.

I’m not such a fan:

schedule

My new schedule consists of:

Self Defense
Survey of World Religions
Intro to Computer Programming (3D animation)
Anthropology
Personal Finance

and,

if I get in,

Folk Music Ensemble.

It's a good mix, don't you think?

trying

I was so happy while in Garnet Canyon and the letdown after that high has been heavy. It was a true high like I rarely feel anymore. I had all this surplus energy and smiled so much it gave me headaches. I introduced myself to new people at Ward Prayer the night I returned to Provo; Madison commented on how out of character that is for me.

Today I am the usual me again and I don’t like it. The day started with a call home in which I related my desire to curl up in the nearest elephant graveyard and die. Classes were daunting—it was the first day—but I attended because missing the first day is never good.

I think I give off some kind of danger aura when I am feeling like I often feel; today the people I sat next to in my classes moved to other rows so that even in crowded auditoriums I had an entire row of chairs all to myself. The crowds were overwhelming and like a coward I retreated from them and hid in remote hallways where I read Matthew Kelley’s Perfectly Yourself. 

After classes I picked up fliers about a depression support group and a tutoring program at a local elementary school and then I signed up for a Folk Music Ensemble audition to be held the day after tomorrow. The better groups tour a lot and are way too intense for me right now, but I’m hoping for a just-for-fun quartet or something like that. They’re heavy on violinists though so we’ll see if they even want me.

This blog is always supposed to be positive so here are ten happy thoughts:

• siblings
• movies
• pillows
• french fries
• salads
• mountains
• cliffs
• waterfalls
• red lipstick
• toothbrushes

I don’t like nights

when I am unhappy without valid reason, but tonight I’m having one. When logic and emotion disagree it leaves me feeling frantic and discouraged.

TRC (teaching resource center at the missionary training center) today was disjointed and in some ways difficult, but it was clear that the Elders were trying and I felt their testimony as they spoke. They teased me about having different husbands each time that I volunteer, and on the way home Becca and I discussed the difficulty of giving up not only drinking but also all that comes with it (we played the part of drinking buddies in the scenario today) such as the magnificent wine collections many people have and what should happen to them if the owner joins the church.

My hands are healing excellently from my fridge cleaning adventure and I’m contemplating subjecting them to outdoor rock climbing. I tried on climbing gloves today but found it hard to give up the integrity of skin on rock. It is intimately painful and makes me feel entirely in control. The gloves of course were in a store and that was REI, where I collected an excellent sleeping pad that folds up to the size of a water bottle and weighs just 23 ounces. The selling point is that it’s thick enough once inflated to keep space between my bones and the sharp rocks beneath the pad. I can’t sleep with pressure on my bones.

Tomorrow will be a good day and the day after will hopefully be better, and soon I’ll be in school again. I am currently registered for

Personal Finance

Intro to Computer Programming

Self-Defense

Intro to Linguistics (Modern)

The Doctrine and Covenants

LDS History 1805-1844

I want to add Survey of World Religions with the famous Gaskill, and if I succeed in that endeavor I plan to drop LDS History since three religion classes at once is getting a bit heavy.

serotonin sunday: raw thoughts

On Friday I forgot to take my meds, the aftereffects of which convinced me that the only dose change happening in the near future is an increase. The low hits me somewhere between 10 and 30 hours after the missed dose, and it’s an unhappy place to be.

I’ve had a good weekend—fun times at the MTC with a friend, successful cleaning check (I think I’ve checked the sheet 100 times to see the little check mark next to “Pass”), some schedule organizing, inspirational hike with Becca, lovely dinner at Chadders with Becca and Marat, enjoyable Sunday spent primarily outside. Logic tells me I’m happy but the rest of me can’t feel it.

Always with depression comes more intense questioning than usual, challenging the basic truths that are supposed to guide my life. Most dominant among these questions is: why am I here?

I know that theoretically I am here to learn and grow, make and break covenants and suffer consequences and repent and vow to live more righteously. Somehow this 80-year journey is meant to prepare me for godhood and perfection. During it, I am supposed to become better.

The problem is, I don’t feel like I do. I make positive changes—the most drastic being the change from being a secretive child with a chronic lying habit to being a fairly open and almost always honest adult—but I feel like as I kick each bad habit I just move on to new ones and my overall goodness level remains about the same. Some habits have more religious significance than others, but even the ones that don’t get me in trouble with the church cause stress and unhappiness and I don’t see that they are necessarily less detrimental. This makes it hard for me to feel motivated to actively try to improve. I think I’m a decent person as is, and each time I try to eliminate something negative from my life it just seems to get replaced with some other negative—which, though disheartening, seems human. Part of mortality is being constantly flawed.

I suppose the point is to gradually decrease the seriousness of our flaws. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel like I’ve reached good human status, and that the flaws I possess now are just evidence of my humanity. I’m good at getting back to good human status when I slip below that, but progression past good doesn’t seem to mesh well with my humanity. So I keep changing my behavior without feeling that I’m making progress towards perfection.

But then I wonder, if I’m not progressing, what am I doing here?