Terri - My American Life

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/sentencing

I get it. I understand that drug laws are way too strict and can hurt people that are first time offenders. There's not that great of rehabilitation and we are creating a system that is a revolving door of prisoners that live in the system and don't know how to survive on their own. That sucks. I don't think that's the way it should be, and all things considering, major overhauls need to be done to the criminal system because it's screwy on way too many levels.

But,

Yes, there's a but to that statement.

But, they can keep Terri.

My wife was raised by her grandma. The person who I consider my mother-in-law is biologically speaking my grandmother-in-law. My wife's biological mother, is Terri. As long as I've known my wife, her biological mom has been in jail. I think there's been a few months or even maybe a year where she was on probation, but then landed herself back in jail, and I'm perfectly fine with her staying there.

Terri's one and only redeeming trait that she has in her life is that she gave birth to my wife. Even that she almost managed to screw up because when my wife popped out she was an addict's baby. CPA had to take my wife away from Terri because Terri was Terri and wasn't being a mother to my wife.

I don't care about Terri's drug's or criminal behavior, but if they're what keeps her in jail then I'm okay with it. What she did to my wife when she was only weeks old is uncalled for. The stupid part about it is because of her STUPID behavior in the first weeks of my wife's life, my wife has been carrying the baggage that her biological mother didn't love her, and essentially abandoned her.

Sit on that one for a second. One of the things that most people have the benefit of knowing when they were growing up is that at least their parents were there for them. In one way or another their parents were at least somewhat trying to keep them alive. Alicia, from a very young age, learned that her biological mother did not want her.

Do you know how much that screws with a person's personality and mentality? Because of that one person and her addiction to drugs, Alicia is now constantly carrying around this idea that the people who act like they love her in their lives are just focused on something else and soon er or later will leave her. Everyone in her life, starting with Terri, has left her or focused on something else besides her. That makes her loving, but also completely un-trusting of what is going on around her. I can't stand it, but at the same time, I get why she thinks that way. Prison sentencing for drug users and addicts needs to be lessened, but for the people out there that could treat their own child that poorly, they deserve to stay.

I've Got Nothing

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/142/barbara

I've been sitting on this one for a long time. I liked the episode, but I honestly can't do anything about this from my point of view. This is one of those that is so particular and set for a particular author, that I can't touch it. The entire episode is based around one black single mom who lives in the inner-city. I'm sorry, but I'm the exact opposite of that. As a married, white, male, who lives in the suburbs of the suburbs I can't do it. I've tried. I've been thinking about it in the back of my mind on and off for way too long at this point I've got to move on. I can't twist this into anything else. The episode was specific to one individual. I'm not that individual. That means I don't have anything to twist or add on to it.

The Secret Life of Introverts - My American Life

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/141/invisible-worlds

The problem about trying to make something invisible, is that to you, while you're in the middle of it, is totally visible. If you're in the world of  radio or whatever else, while you're in it, it is exactly what you know and there's nothing new or exciting to it in any way. The tricky part to deciding about the invisible world I'm part of, is trying to guess of what other people think are invisible that I'm part of. To me, it's just another day at the office, something that I already know, but to everyone else, it's something new and elusive that no one else is part of.

The thing that I think is invisible to most that are outside of the world I'm part of, but they think is invisible, is the weird world of being an introvert. For some reason this seems like some secret world that those outside of it just can't seem to crack. It's a world of mystery and wonder, one where people do weird things for weird reasons, and seem to contradict themselves in the weirdest of ways.

Typically introverts are people that work best in smaller one on one situations. Where others feel power and a sense of belonging in a group, an introvert loves smaller, individualized, or even solo adventures. For example, tonight I was at a party/get together with a few of my old roommates. It was a mess of people and conversations bouncing around all at the same time. The kick to all of this is that I wanted to see my old friends and catch up with them - but I didn't want to do it all at once.

I hated the get together tonight.

The moments I loved from the get together weren't the massive group all talking at once, or even being the center of attention when one of my old roommates asked me a question and everyone else in the room started to listen in to my life about what I was doing with my career. The best moments to me were when I was in a corner talking to one friend, and no one else was listening in and I could say whatever I wanted to him and it was our conversation. All of the other noise that came with the party was just something to suffer through in hopes that I'd be able to find more of those moments of thought.

This only escalates when  I'm doing things that I love or that are hobbies. I like my company. I like to be in my mind doing my own thing, which means that I don't play well with others because when I want to escape, I escape with the best company that I know - me. Just look at my hobbies and what I enjoy doing, none of them require another person. Even with the games that I play where it's supposed to be at least a two player thing (warhammer, D&D, even back in the day with MtG) I don't enjoy the actual game, I enjoy everything else around it that I get to do by myself. I enjoy D&D because I get to spend time alone with books and my brain, and occasionally suffer through a campaign game or two so I can spend more time plotting out the next story arc or what else might hook my players in.

Glowsticking - solo adventure.
Swimming - solo time, even though you're in a team, you never have to actual deal with anyone outside of occasionally passing them in the lane.
Tennis - at very most it was one other person on the court with me.
Writing - all me. It's just a glorified story time where I get to make whatever I like.

I enjoy time with myself dealing with what I love, but nothing in the world can make me feel anxious quite like being the center of attention in a social setting.

Tonight was prime time for that. Sitting along side the wall and listening into everyone else, and allowing time to just sit and listen, I sort of enjoyed. I could get all dark and sad saying that I was being overlooked or whatever else, but let's be honest no one can talk to everyone all the time. I enjoyed not having to talk to other people and just be there. The weird part came when I became the center of attention. When eyes were focused on me, I didn't like it. My answers became very short, I didn't talk in any form of sentences that made sense, and I just didn't feel right having people's eyes on me.

I don't like to stand out. I don't like it when eyes are on me. I certainly don't like public praise, and I don't like it when someone throws me under the bus with something like, 'I think Adam has something he'd like to say' in front of everyone.

Even in one on one situations there are times that I don't like it about me. Alicia and I were driving home from Las Vegas and she tried to turn the topic in on me and asked me what I was thinking about and tried her best to help me in writing. She was coming from a good place, but it only got more and more awkward, first because she kept talking about writing as if she was breaking out a secret that I had never thought about, but mainly because it was about me. She was making me sit in the spotlight, and it didn't feel right.

I don't like being the center of attention, I don't like all eyes on me, and I certainly do not like it when people are focused on me. I don't like large group settings, I don't like having a massive group infront or around me, and I hate the idea of small talk.

This is when introverts get crazy hard and people don't understand us because although I'm a total introvert and would live the hermit life if I had that option, I love teaching. I love talking in church. I love standing up and sharing my ideas about something that I'm passionate about.

That's the weird part about introverts. If you're talking to us about the weather, about whatever else is going on, or some weird small talk thing tht we could care less about, we'llchat, we'll play nice, but it's going to be painful for us. However, the moment you're talking about somethign that we enjoy, good luck shutting us up.

This is really confusing, especially to students of introverts. In the class my students see that I'm bouncing around talking about what I love the most, but as soon as I get outside of the classroom I shut down and don't keep to myself. One of my students actually found me in a Walmart once. They said hi to me, I said hi back, and then they had a serious issue because neither of us knew what to say after that. I wasn't going to go into a lesson about grammar in the middle of Walmart, and they weren't going to try to talk about their homework in the middle of Walmart, and we were stuck. They were used to me guiding lessons and discussions, and being the person who makes everyone around them talk more, but outside of the classroom, that's not me.

That's the trick to me, as well as most introverts. We will try to run and hide from you if you're talking about something that we don't care about o are simply not interested in. However, if you talk to us about something that we're passionate about and don't judge us in that passion, we're nuts. If you ever want to make friends with an introvert, talk to them about what they love. Let them show you that soft squishy side of them that they protect at all costs. You'll see a new side to them. A new person will break out of a cold hard shell that they've been practicing for years to build up. Tread carefully when you do break into that realm, because one wrong move and anything that you have been building up with that introvert will be ruined in seconds, and then you're stuck back at building that trust all over again.

Never Would I Ever - My American Life

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/140/family-business

There is never a chance in the world that I would ever work in a business with anyone from my family; this includes my wife.

Let's start with blood relatives - my parents and sisters. Nope, never would I think it a good idea to put my family int eh same room with me and create a business with them. We don't play well with each other. We don't communicate, we don't share, and we all think that we should be the person in charge and that everyone else has horrible ideas. Just look at our family gatherings. They're always a mess. It's always a great idea to bring all of us together, but in practice, it's a mess of families that have little in common with each other, people that don't talk to each other except for occasional phone calls to each other about birthdays, and generations of people that don't know or deal with each other.

Doing something as easy as playing a board game can't end with good vibes between each other, so there's never a chance in the world that we'd be able to do a for profit business together with each other. The business would go under.

As for my wife, I love her to death, but we wouldn't be able to agree on much with the business setting, and neither of us would be able to leave work at work. No matter which of us was the person in charge, the other person wouldn't be happy with it. No matter how great the choices one of us would make the other one would doubt or second guess them, and we'd totally bring it home with us and talk to them about their choices.

We love each other. We can deal with each other outside of work quite a bit, but we're also both very opinionated, and have very different approaches towards problems. It's part of life. Just because we're married to each other does not mean that we have to agree on everything all of the time, and that's what I love about it. We don't agree on everything, but the things that are important we totally agree on. Unfortunately, business practices is not one of the things that we agree on.

I love my family, but there's never a chance that I'd willingly go into business with them.

No TAL. I'm not doing it - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/139/ghosts-of-elections-past

No TAL. Shame on you. You know better than recycling things that you've already produced and I've already written.

You were lazy and didn't create anything new, which means I get to be lazy and not create anything new.

A Real Mormon - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/138/the-real-thing

One of the things I've learned while trying to survive here in Utah is that I can't stand a 'real' mormon.

I've been a member of the church my entire life, I've been around people that believe in the religion and exposed to all sorts of thoughts and opinions about that faith from all of them at different times and in different amounts, but if there's one thing that I can't stand, it's the idea that some of these people here have in their minds have of what it takes to be a 'real' mormon.

My religion is supposed to help guide and influence my life. It's supposed to be something that helps me understand my world and make sense of what I'm doing. Religion, no matter what faith or denomination you're sitting with is supposed to give purpose and understanding to what is happening in your life and what is going on around you. Religion is not meant to be consuming. As far as I'm concerned, religion is there to help me to become a better me, not to overtake who I am and what I do every day.

Unfortunately 'real' mormons become enveloped by the culture.

This goes beyond basic things like reading scriptures, or saying prayers, but rather turns into an entire life wide consumption that overwhelms them. They listen only to religious music, they watch only religious shows, they eat, drink, sleep, live everything that is religion. They become fanatics that have no life outside of the church and the doctrine that is there, which means that they have no identity other than religion. When you ask them about hobbies or passions, their only response is church.

I'm sorry, but I'll never be able to do that.

I'm me. I can't be a 'real' mormon. I can't strip out all of the things that I enjoy that are actually fun and not oposing the doctrine of the church, just because it's not Jesus time 24/7. I'm going to listen to the music that I like, because I don't think that it's Satan's music. I'm going to play the games I like, because they're fun even though they're not Jesus themed. I am always going to be me. I can't strip who I am.


The perfect, ideal, socially accepted Mormon is something that I will never be. I like the church, and I know the truth that is inside of it, but I also know me. I am not going to sacrifice everything just to hit an ideal that is only a social construct and is not supported anywhere within the actual doctrine.

Dragon Sleeping - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/137/the-book-that-changed-your-life

I knew that I liked writing, and I knew that I liked books for a long time, but I didn't know what I should do with them or if I was actually any good with it until about 8th grade. In 8th grade I got sick. Sick enough that my mom got in touch with my teachers and asked for homework for me to do while I was healing up.

For my English class I was given a book report that I had to write on a book of my choice. The only catch was that at the end of the report I was expected to do one of a few projects. The only problem was that when I read it, I skimmed things, or it was just poorly worded and instead of doing only one of the assignments, I did all of them. I wrote an interview with one of the characters, I wrote a chapter to the book from a different character's point of view, I even re-wrote the ending of the entire novel, and I did it because I was sick, and because I enjoyed it.

The book in question? Dragon Sleeping by Craig Shaw Gardner.
https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Sleeping-Circle-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B019UV7EE4#nav-subnav

That's the book that changed my life. That's the book that made me start to really like literature because it was a story that I understood, it was a story type that made me interested in what was going on, and it made me realize that reading could do a bit more than just spout out information at a teacher and get a grade on it.

The book itself is about a group of people from a suburb community and how they get sucked into a high fantasy setting with wizards and of course dragons. They get sucked into the world of magic and mystical creatures, and they look at everything like they're still part of their suburban world, and I loved it. I say that I write urban fantasy, and this book is the prime example that I give people when they ask what urban fantasy is. It's a perfect mix of things that are supernatural and weird, and yet perfectly average for the rest of us. It's suburban life and parents worrying about their kids, while their kids run around and get in trouble with elemental forces and magic, and I loved it.

This was the book that took all of my fantasies about day to day life, and how it was just a bit different than normal, and gave it a place to run around. My day dreams, my stories that I really want to write are always about the real world, but with just a hint of the crazy in there. I never want to write a 'typical' story, I always have to add in something different, I have to add in a different way to see the world because that's how I see it. I can't see a typical setting, I have to see something that's atypical, and this is the book that let me see it that way.

This is the book that put me into the world of literature and writing. This is the type of book that I want to write. Maybe not this exact style, and maybe with my own quirks and flavors on it, but this is the book that showed me that I can write my stories and maybe, just possibly, someone will read it.

Get Lost - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/136/you-are-here

I knew who I was, where I was, and what was going on in my life more in a different country dealing with complete strangers in a language that I hardly knew, than I do as an adult.

My time in Sweden was filled with a lot of times getting lost. This had a healthy amount of it dealing with the fact that my president, the guy in charge of telling us where to go and what to do, was known under the nickname of "Wildcard Karlsson" because he would do the most backwards, off the charts, weird things when moving missionaries around. His calling card move was the double transfer. This is when he would take two missionaries that had gotten to know an area, had worked with the people there, gotten to gain the trust of the investigators, members, and potentially the town drunks, and then rip them away and plop two new missionaries in the exact same area.

This happened often enough that I became used to the fact that the first time in any area was a guessing game from both me and my companion of where we were supposed to go, who we were supposed to meet with, and we were going to be lucky if we made it home anywhere close in time to get dinner in our stomachs.I got lost on my way to my own apartment so many times, simply because the area was new for both me and the guy I was with, and we got lost. We'd get turned around, sit on the wrong bus, not know the schedule for the buses on holidays and how they were different than normal days, and the list goes on.

Even though I got turned around, lost, and was living in a different world that wanted nothing to do with me, I didn't feel lost.

I think a large part of that not feeling lost even though I was physically lost, was the fact that there were rules. There were such strict rules and regulations for us as missionaries that I could be put in the weirdest situation ever and I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. If WWIII broke out and I had to abandon Sweden, I knew the exact rules of which train I should get on, which chapel to meet at, and where to go. I knew what I should do if my companion ever got lost without me. I knew what I should do if I got mugged. I knew what I should do, when I should do it, and how I should do it. I had rules about everything and in that light, I got to understand why people join the army.

I always hated the idea of the armed forces. In a way, I still hate it a bit.

I don't know what it is, but taking away people's individuality and 'breaking' them into something that you want and essentially taking away their idea to rationally process or answer anything for themselves is really scary for me. There is no room for questioning, it is only sir, yes sir. Say what you will about Hollywood actors that can ask for the permission to speak freely, in war you don't get to play that game. You have orders and you follow them, simply because some guy told you to do it. There are rules and you have to follow them or you, and the people around you die.

I used to wonder why anyone would ever want to have that life; why anyone would want to give up their ability to think, question, and understand the world.  I never understood it, but the brief glimse I got of it in Sweden, it makes sense. Places like that are comfortable. You don't have to ask questions. You don't have to think about where you are, what you're doing, or the difficulties of anything else. Your job is one job, and it is hammered into your head. There's no need to worry about your future, your life outside that job, or anything else. That one calling is yours, and that's comfortable because your world isn't big and scary. You have time settings to everything. Even in the worst days of combat (or on your mission) you can look at your deployment papers and hopefully see an end date, where you can say by THIS date, I'm done. It's just one day at a time and I can make it to that date.

You can drag me through the mud, spit at me, slam doors in my face, laugh at me, humiliate me, make me the most depressed I've been in my entire life, and make me feel like a failure, but I can get through it because I know that there's an end. I know that I can make it through just one more day. You can get shot at, blown up, cut up, torn up, and see the most horific things in the world, but hopefully there is that end date, where you know that at that date, you're coming home and you won't have to deal with it any more. You can do anything for just one more day when you know there's an end.

Those things don't exist in the real world.

There's no structure to real life, and that's where it gets scary. Instead of having a person moving you around, telling you where to be, how to live, and how long to live it, you get nothing. You're left with yourself, and that's scary. When you leave a structured place, be it school, family, military, mission, or whatever else, and you're left out for yourself, there's infinite possibilities, and no longer are there rules for everything because those rules don't apply any more. You can stay out as late as you want, wear whatever you want, do whatever you want, and see whatever you want, and there's no one telling you that you can't. There's nothing there to give you structure, other than yourself, and that's scary.

Trusting yourself is when you get lost, because there's doubt. You're only lost when you doubt yourself, or the structure that got you where you're at. I could be in the middle of Sweden in a town I couldn't pronounce with no idea of how to get home, but I didn't feel lost because I knew what got me there. Military members can be in the middle of a warzone in a teritory that no one has ever really mapped because no one lives there, and they're not lost because they know what got them there. But, if I got lost in the middle of Sweden now, in that same town with those same circumstances I would feel lost because I would doubt myself. How in the world did I get myself there? How am I going to get myself out? Before I trusted in the person and people involved with getting me into that circumstance that I knew they'd get me out, now I'm the only one left.

Now when I get myself lost, I'm the one that has to solve it. I don't have someone to lean up against. When I'm lost with my career and have no clue what to do, there's no rules that I can follow to get an easy out, I have to figure it out on my own and I have no clue what to do so that's really hard to do. When I get lost with how to have a happy marriage, I feel lost because there's no structure. There's no solution. There's no path that I can follow because there's no one that has set up a set of rules for me that I can just follow and know that it works.

I get why people stay in the military as long as possible. I even understand those people that want to relive their missionary, high school, or even college days, because those were the days where they felt in control. Those were the days that they didn't have to worry and felt like they knew what was going on in their life. They weren't lost.

You can't get lost when you don't have to be in charge of everything, and that's why you should get lost.

Go get lost. Get in a situation where no one can help you out of it. Go figure it out on yourself. You got yourself out in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night, now you have to figure out how to get back home. Go get yourself into a scary career, a major relationship, a life that you're not certain of, because that's when you have to grow. When you get lost, you come up with crazy solutions and get creative. When you get lost you push yourself to become better and find a way to make things work. When you get lost you come together with the people that you're lost with, and you create something better.

Feeling like you have no clue what you're doing, that you have no guide in front of you, and no one to help you doesn't make you lost, it makes you a trailblazer, an adventurer, or even a pioneer. That feeling where you're overcome with fear because everything is riding on you to come up with a solution and you're still stumbling around in the dark trying to understand which way is up is a frightening feeling, but it's in those moments that you can really do something great.

I get it. Avoiding feeling lost is a nice feeling. It's comfortable. It makes it so you have stability and never question yourself, but it's not worth it.

I Waited - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/134/we-didnt

This was partially for the blog, partially for something else with work, but I decided that it fit well in both places, so here's a short story called I Waited.

I Waited

I waited on my twelfth birthday, for someone to tell me that I was actually a super hero. I knew that there was something different with me, and I knew that they had to know what it was. I wanted them to tell me just what my super power was going to be now that I was going into puberty, and I couldn’t wait to keep the family secret. I didn’t care about the cake, the ice cream, or anything else that was wrapped in paper and given to me, I was looking forward to my grandma’s traditional birthday card to have something more than $20 in it, so that I could finally be the super hero that I knew I was.

I waited until the last minute of my sixteenth birthday for my family to tell me that I was adopted. I knew that I was. They didn’t have to tell me. I wanted to have them finally admit to the truth. There were never pictures of my mom pregnant before I was around, there were no baby pictures of me until a few weeks old, and despite what everyone said about how I looked like my dad having brown hair and brown eyes wasn’t a family trait, that’s just called looking average. I knew that there was something different about me when my entire family loved music but I could hardly carry a tune. I knew that I was something different because whenever I looked at family pictures I never felt like I looked like everyone else around me, but at the same time there were old yearbooks that I thumbed through that had pictures of people that looked more like my relatives than my actual relatives. I waited for someone to finally admit to the truth about who I was. 

I waited before and after graduation for someone to finally let me in on the family secret. Dad changed his name when he was in college, and he never told anyone why. I knew that once I finished high school that I would finally be old enough in their eyes to be told. I stayed in my bedroom that night, instead of out with my friends, because I was certain that someone was going to come into my room and tell me the secret. 

I waited for someone to tell me which college I should go to. I got accepted to a few different ones, but I didn’t know which one to pick. I knew that my advisor had a favorite, but he never actually told me which one I should go to. My parents were even less helpful and I tried to get them to put in their opinion but they said that it was my choice. I waited past three admission deadlines and was stuck with plan D. 

I waited in college for her to call back. I even had her number. She was going to be the one. She made me feel like no one else ever could. She made me feel like just possibly, somewhere in my bones was the person that could make dreams come true. She made it feel like I could touch the tops of trees and float through clouds, but she said that she would call me, and so I waited. I waited until I heard from one of my roommates that she was engaged to someone else. 

I waited for a response from my interview at my dream job. They were the company I was going to work for. They were the only thing that I wanted to be with for the years that I planned it out. That company was where I was going to be, and I knew that after one interview they would see what I had and call me back. I waited for their response. I only slept three hours a night for a week because I was afraid that if I fell asleep that I would miss their call welcoming me in to their fold, where I knew that I would belong and could finally make a difference in my world. I waited because I knew that if I got that job, I could finally be different. I could finally do all of the things that I had dreamed of doing.

I waited to ask her to marry me; she said it was too little too late. I wanted to make sure that I was ready and that I could support her and we could have a family together. I wanted everyone to be happy, and she didn’t like that I wanted to provide that for her.

I waited to start my family. I couldn’t have a kid while still in a graduate program. Then I couldn’t have a kid while interning. I couldn’t have a kid while in my first year at the company. I certainly couldn’t have a kid while working on the new project. I wanted to be the father that would help and love my kid, and I couldn’t do that while I was just getting started in the world. I waited for her to tell me that we should have a kid, but all she told me was that we weren’t right for each other anymore.

I waited to move. I always wanted to live on the east coast; I liked the cities. There were jobs out there that were better paying, there was a life style that I knew would fit me, but I waited because it was a bit too much work to try to box up everything in my life deciding what pieces could go with me and which had to be thrown away. I knew that I would have been better off in a different city with a different set of friends, but getting there was just too much work, and so I waited. Each week I would tell myself that I would start to clean out a room. That each night I could start to think about cleaning my life up so that I could move, but I waited to start it all because my work days were long and I got tired.

I waited for the will to be read to still hear the words that I knew were to be true. Everyone else was sad to hear that my dad had died, but throughout the funeral I didn’t cry. I didn’t care about his body being put into the ground. I didn’t care that I would never be able to talk to him again, because I knew that the will was going to be read and the truth would finally come out about me. It was the last chance for my dad to tell me what I had always known, that he was not my father. I waited for the lawyer to give away the china cabinet full of nick knacks to my sister. I waited for the house to go to my older brother. I waited as all of the heirlooms and chotskies were given away. I waited while everything else was debated over, because apparently I should have had strong emotional ties to the standup piano and argued over it for an hour with my brother and sister. I waited because I knew that at the end of that will was going to be the lines that I knew to be true, that I was different. That the people arguing about silverware and blenders weren’t my actual blood, and that I was something more. I waited for him to pull me to the side and tell me. I waited for the phone call to come and tell me in secret for a month after the funeral. 

I waited for my bosses to give me a promotion because I knew that I was doing a good job and doing better than everyone else in my office. I knew that I was better than them, and that my manager had to be seeing that. I knew that they would see just how great of an employee I was, and that they would do what had to be done and give me a raise. 

I waited to enter retirement. I still had work to do. I still had things to get done, and no one at my job could do my job. It was my job, and no matter how smart they thought a new hire was going to be, no one could do it faster or quicker than me. I waited to go to finally see the cities I had dreamt about looking at. I waited to be the old guy who could yell at kids to get off his lawn at all hours of the day. I waited to even be that old guy who lived at the library and read books for the entire day because that’s all he had to worry about. I knew that I wanted to do those things, but I also knew that I needed my job and so I waited. 

I waited to see a doctor about a small little lump. It was a birthmark. A doctor wasn’t going to tell me any different. I waited to see one because he wasn’t going to say anything that I didn’t already know. I didn’t care if the lump had grown in size, changed colors, or any of those other worry wort things. It was just a birthmark – a birthmark of stage four skin cancer. 

I waited for someone to come and visit me in the hospital. Someone was going to come. My boss, my neighbor, or anyone other than nurse Tyson was going to come and see me. 

I waited for permission from my body to stop breathing.

I Don't Sell - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/133/sales

When I worked at ROI, I started out as a translator. That was my job. I was supposed to take what they had and then update it into a different language so that they could do their job. I didn't have to talk to customers (much) and at the very most I only had to do customer support, and never, ever had to sell.

Unfortunately African Mango went the way of the dinosaurs, and fell apart. I was given the option of either getting fired because they no longer needed a Swedish translator, or switch campaigns. I needed money, so I switched campaigns.

I met with my new boss, Brett Wood, and he explained what I needed to do. The only problem? I hated sales. I had no desire in any way shape or form to ever do sales over the phone. I hated telemarketers, I never wanted to be a telemarketer, but I was in a position to telemarket to companies.

For the next few months, I was in sales, and I hated it. It wasn't even hardcore sales, I was doing the first contact for information for actual salesmen to follow up on, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated the product, I hated my job, and I hated sales. As I told Brett a million times, I don't do sales.

As much as I try to make it a mantra that I'm not a salesman, I wish I was.

Part of being a good author is knowing how to sell the book. People that don't know how to write, but know how to sell, they'll get published. Good authors that don't know how to sell their book and make contact with others, they're like me and never publish. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like sells, and I hate even more talking about myself.

That's the worst part about it. If I'm selling or talking about someone else or whatever else, but when it comes down to something that I have done or want to do, I'm a horrible salesman. I get awkward when it comes to talk about myself, and I get nervous.

The most recent example is with Dream Analysis. I had a real opportunity to become "That guy" on facebook, and spam everyone with it. Instead I think I mentioned it one or two times, and even then I didn't even push it that hard. I think I just left a link for one of them and never said a single word about what it was or what was going on. Even this blog, I write it as though I have a huge audience, and honestly I'm sure that if I whored out a bit more, I could get some regular visits, but I don't because I don't like to sell myself. Everything I do runs into that problem. If I just sold a few things a bit better I would have more followers, more readers, and more money, but I don't like it, and I don't know why.

Part of me hates sales because I feel like I'm forcing people into things that they don't actually want. For example with ROI I was pushing Visa cards on companies that didn't need or want them. If people actually wanted to read this blog, they would read it, I shouldn't have to sell it. If people want to read my book, they'll read it, I shouldn't have to push them. But I know that as much as I hate selling myself, I need to do it. It doesn't happen that way. The only way people can ever find me and appreciate me, is to sell myself. The only problem comes that I don't know just how much I'm going to have to sell, and that is when things get icky.

With the mood that I'm in right now, I'm most likely going to back off from this. I'm not a salesman. I know that I should be, but right now I want to get back into the joy of writing. I want to write what I want to write, and not have to worry about the stupidity of selling my books. I've been thinking way too much about how people think about me lately, and that's no good. I'm just going back to thinking about what I want to think about, doing my thing as best as I can, and enjoying life. Focusing too much on stupidity and other people hasn't been making me happy lately. It's time to write and do the things that I want to do.

Open Book - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/132/fathers-day-99

I will be an open book.

With my daughter, and any other kid that might call me Dad in the future, I have promised that I will be an open book. I will share my life, I will share my personality, and I will share who I am with them. As much as an introvert as I am, as much as I love my alone time, anyone who can ever call me their father, is in that circle so I have to talk to them. I will play with them, I will get to know their friend's names and drama, I will do everything I possibly can to be that ear that they can talk to.

People that call me Dad will know that I will do miracles for them. They will know that they have to only ask nicely and I will do everything in my power to do what they need. They will learn that I am totally whipped and it's because I love them that I act the way I do. They will know that I care. Even when my life doesn't mesh with theirs, even when everything around them makes me want to yell because they aren't what I expected, they will know, constantly, that I love them.

I will say please every single time.

I will say thank you every single time.

I will never use force. I will walk away when I want to.

I will let them see me cry. I will make mistakes, not on purpose, but because I'm a human and that's what we do, and I will show them how to pick themselves up and become better. I will say I'm sorry when something is my mistake. I will let things be my mistake, even if I think they aren't.

I will demonstrate everything I expect them to become.

I will not waste my life at my job and claim that it is because I want more for them that I spend more time at work than I ever do with them. Even if over-time is offered, my family will always come first. Even if that's a slap against me in a promotion, even if we could really use the money, or even if it's over time that is almost essential to get the job done, my family comes first.

I will have 'the talk' with them, and it's going to happen often. I don't care if it's super awkward, or uncomfortable, it needs to be done. I'll try my best to hide it in a car ride trip, or a corner discussion where they're least expecting it, but sex is not going to be an untouchable topic. It's my job to answer those questions, and I'm going to step up and say something about it. 

I will say that I am proud of them. Even if it is a small accomplishment, I will brag. I will be 'that guy' at work that doesn't shut up about his family. They will show up to my job and everyone will know who they are, and all of the amazing things they've done. I will find amazing accomplishments, even if everyone thinks that they aren't that impressive.  

I will never yell through the house. I will always try to talk to them face to face. Both when I correct and praise, it will be eye to eye, knee to knee, in a voice loud enough that they can hear me. I will talk to them. I'll never send an interpreter or negotiator to say what I want to say.

I'll wait. I will stay up late when I know they are out, and I will make sure they are home safely. Even when they're an adult I will wait for the call telling me that they made it home and I don't have to call the cops. I'll be outside dressing rooms, and I'll sit through all of the over times.

I will listen to every single story they ever want to tell me, no matter how long it is or what time it is.

I will always say that I love them. Always. Even in the darkest moments, and especially in the most socially awkward moments, I will say it. I will hug them, in public, when their friends are looking,  even when they're at college, and especially when they get older. My last words when I leave them for any amount of time will never be goodbye. I will always see them later. I will always love them.

When they make me upset, I will first try to find a way to fix my view of them and think that it is maybe my own fault that I didn't see it their way.

If they say they're in love, I won't doubt them. It doesn't matter who that person is, where they're from, or their history, love is love and I'm not going to step in front of that train - unless they're young, then no one is dating anyone.

Books, TV, computers, games, hobbies are things to be shared, not an excuse to be by myself even though we're in the same room.

I will do these things as I fill my role as a dad. During future fathers days, this is what my family is going to say about me. This is what I will do not because I think I'm perfect or because I know everything there is about being a dad, but because I want to live the dream I never experienced. 

Shoot Me First - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/131/the-kids-are-alright

Part of this episode was the fact of teachers trying to notice students that are troubled, or possibly doing something stupid like a school shooting. It's one of those things that I have the very real possibility of doing because I deal with writing, and I make my students write about their own thoughts and  opinions. I have the very real chance to see the mental health of students, and seeing just who is mentally stable and who might be walking on a thin line outside of that.

All things considering, I'm supposed to be a gate keeper of the university and recognize when, or if, a student starts to go off of the rails. The only problem with that? I am pretty loose with the crazy stuff that students throw at me. Just this semester I've had students tell me stories about LSD trips, getting arrested by the cops, Senior pranks, almost dying because of pranks from their friends, and that's just the scratch of the surface.

If looked at in the wrong light, I could have easily reported a large chunk of those students. There were down right sociopathic mentalities with students with these stories, and I had to sort through them and figure out if the student I was dealing with was mentally well adjusted.

Not only that, but I have students who mentally show that they just give up. They're going to school, they do the best they can, and then one thing triggers and then they just give up. Depending on those triggers of why they stop showing up, I'm starting to put myself in the cross hairs of students that aren't okay.

That's the scary part about teaching, hearing why other students in other schools decide to go on shooting sprees. I fail a student and I put my butt in line of a gun shot. I make students think critically and analytically - I'm in the cross hairs. I make a bad joke, be slightly offensive, or do anything that makes a student angry and instead of them getting a spine and learning how to be an adult, I run the risk of dealing with a crazy and being in the line of a gun shot.


School shootings are their own deal that I could write page about (I mean, come on people, you come in fully armed, and you only kill two people? Do the words fish in a barrel mean nothing to you? I'm sorry, but yes, deaths are horrible, but the accuracy of those people is down right horrible.) but it's a scary realization that at any point one of my students could come in and shoot me because of something I've done to them. Instead of talking to me, instead of getting help with whatever issue they're dealing with, they're reaching for a gun and my classroom is a target for them to hit.

Now, in the future, if any of my students decide to go on a school shooting and shoot up my classroom, please shoot me first. I'm going to go out on a limb, and after seeing someone get shot, I'm going to make fun of you. Mockery and insults are my coping method. If you put me in a bad spot, I'm going to hurt you . . . mentally. If you show up into y classroom and you take ten shots, but only manage to kill three people, please believe that I'm going to broadcast your hit rate to everyone. You're going to be reloading and I'm going to yell out, "It's okay everyone, even if they shoot another five times, none of us are going to get hit because they're such a bad shot!" It'll only go down hill from there. I'll broadcast your grades, why you're failing, or anything else that I can put on you. In short, shoot me first, or at least put me pretty high up on the list, because if you don't, I'm going to make the rest of your shooting spree a living hell.

I Have So Much Same Word - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/130/away-from-home

If there ever was a time that I was away from home, it was when I was living in Sweden, and it is a mystery to me how in the world the seven dwarfs made it there.

The thing that you have to understand first, is that there were seven of us traveling from Utah to Stockholm together, and after nine weeks with each other learning Swedish and how to teach, we realized that we were the seven dwarfs. It wasn't a name that we always went by, but the group of us totally met the seven dwarf characteristics.

Depending on who you ask, there were a few that were up to debate on which one of us were covering which dwarf, but there were seven of us, and most days we fit this pretty well. 

Elder Ragsdale - typically doc
Elder Francom - typically happy
Elder Jones - typically bashful
Elder Checketts - typically dopey
Elder Barrus - typically grumpy
Elder Hansen  - typically sleepy
Me - typically sneezy

Again, it wasn't a perfect science, but we were the seven dwarfs, and the seven of us got strapped into a plane with nothing more than a few papers in our hands telling us where we would need to transfer and which planes we needed to make.

The only problem? The one of our transfers was in Paris, and none of us knew French. We could get around in Swedish, but French, not so much, and we were stuck in the Paris air port trying to find our gate and everything to get to the place we were actually headed.

After pure luck / divine intervention, we made it to the gate when Elder Jones managed to get out to a group of Sweedes next to him, "How do you say "jet lag"?" (but he asked in Swedish). He wanted to know because he was starting to feel it. We were eight time zones away, had been on planes for a while and were only going to be on one more plane.

Their response was, "Samma ord" = same word. They were trying to tell him that the Swedish word for jet lag, was the exact same thing as it was in English. All he had to say in Swedish was that he had so much jet lag, but with a slight Swedish accent on the 'jet lag' and he'd been just fine. His brilliant mind, partially in the place where we had only learned religious Swedish, and also had a significant amount of jet lag, thought that the word for jet lag was literally same word. That meant that he went back into the conversation he was trying to have in Swedish and said, "I have so much same word."

I make fun of Jones, and it's easy to try to make him the person of jokes, that he didn't know what was going on, that he didn't get the language in use, or anything else, but it could have just as easily been me, but I was trying not to talk to anyone because I was still me.

Being a missionary is wrapped up so much into that one experience. Jones was coming from a very pure and innocent place. He just wanted to talk and be understood, but he had no clue what he was doing. The same goes with every day missionary work in Sweden. We tried as hard as we could, and we just wanted to talk to people because that's what we believed in and knew helped us, but then reality hit in and none of us knew what to do because none of us had any experience in actually adulting.

For two years I was away from home, and had I actually known what I was doing, things would have been drastically different.

I Don't Follow My Own Advice - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/129/advice

I give myself advice all the time - I rarely take it.

Spoiler - I write. I write a lot. It's how I think through things as I've said before, and it's one of those things that writing helps me think through things. It's like my own advice that I write and respond to. I write and I write my way through problems. I come to a solution to the conflict that I had in my mind, and then I get stuck because although I mentally know the solution, in the real world, it rarely goes into effect.

This is such a crazy thing that I've done that it goes to the point that in one of my emails I have a draft that has been sitting there for months now. I haven't read it for a while, and I have no where to send it to because I'm talking to myself, but every single time that I log into that specific account I see the draft and I'm one of those that gets irked by any unread message, so I instantly see it and remind myself of the message that I wrote to myself. The catch to that - I've had it sitting in my email for a long time, and I've yet to take my own advice.

I know exactly what I need to do.

I know what I need to do at work.
I know what I need to do with my relationship with Alicia.
I know what I need to do to be a better dad.
I know what I need to do at church.
I know exactly what I need to do, I've written it down and I have almost a daily reminder of what I need to do, but I still don't follow it.

This is the most depressing part of my life.

Any time that I get upset about my life or anything like that, this is the one that gets me the most upset. I know that I could be doing better. I know that I could be doing more. I know exactly where my weak points are at, and instead of choosing to be better, I'm choosing to be stupid.

It's a weird thing when it comes down to it. It's such a weird contradiction. I know exactly what I need to be doing, but I'm choosing to take the easy/lazy way out. It's times like this that I'm deeply afraid that because of my stupid choices now that I'm limiting myself in the future. Just because I chose to be lazy on Tuesday and do things like take a nap instead of working my butt off, what is that going to do to me long term? What about those bad choices where I take the lazy way out more often than the hard working often? What is that going to look like in the long run?

That's what scares me.

I know what my advice is to myself. I know exactly how to make my life better (this is not saying that it's not already good, because it is, I just know that it can become better), but I'm choosing not to do it.

Madge and Mable - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/128/four-corners

On the corner of Madge and Mable.

I grew up on the corner of Madge and Mable in Las Vegas, and the more I look at the corner that I called home for my entire childhood explains a lot about me.

Street View

My house has since been painted a new color, lost a lot of it's original 'charm', but it's still the best house on that corner. All while growing up, I thought that I was the person who had the nice house. In my neighborhood, we were the ones that had a yard, and the grass even looked alive most of the time. If you were able to pull up street views from forever ago, my house was one of the only houses on the street that looked like someone cared enough to pay attention to it. All of the other houses that I was surounded by were "desert landscapes" which roughly translated out to the people living there not caring a bit about what their house looked like and just letting the desert decide what their yard looked like for them.

This meant that my entire life I thought that I was one of the better off kids. This was not the case. I was just one of the only people in my neighborhood that decided to turn their sprinklers on on a regular basis. As much as I want to imagine, my house was ghetto. I drive back on the street when I go home, and I can't see the world that I thought I was in when I was a kid. I thought that my street was a little weird, had some character, but normal. Now I go down the street with many of the houses still with the same people inside of them, and I see anything but normal. My street, my corner, wasn't in the world of normal, it was the weirdest thing that you could find in metropolitan Las Vegas.

On my corner of the world there were people that owned horses in their back yards, raised chickens, rabbits, peacocks, camels, roosters, and donkeys. Not only did that raise the crazy that was my neighborhood that I took for granted, but then a Las Vegas celebrity bought a house (mansion) that was a block away. Lance Burton being the back door neighbor to your friend's house down the street was just a normal day for me. Seeing him washing off his birds that he kept in cages in his garage while I rode my bike around the block was a totally normal thing.

My childhood corner was on the corner of weird, crazy, and Vegas, and it made me who I am. That weird corner of my home that had no side walk, no street lamps, and had enough divots and bumps in it that when it rained there would be giant puddles that were long and deep scattered throughout the street, was what sculpted me. I never saw myself as the crazy one, it was always everyone else. I was the perfectly normal one that had a neighbor who would occasionally light fire his cannon on the 4th of July . . . and whenever he wanted to celebrate a good time. I wasn't the weird one, the person that had no electricity to her home and was as much as a hermit as any person living in Las Vegas valley could allow, was the weird one. The fact that we shared a street was just chance.

I was never the weird one. Even when people would try to point out to me just how weird I was, and just how much my corner of the world had seeped into my life, I didn't believe them, because in my eyes, I wasn't the crazy one. I tried my best to push the crazy away from me, or to find other flavors of crazy around me, but now that I look back at it, I was not as crazy as the people around me, but by no stretch was I completely removed from the crazy.

I had a back yard and then a back, back yard.

My dad would occasionally sit out with his .22 and shoot at gofers in our back back yard.

We would go into our back back yard and try to smoke out the gofers by saving the smoke bombs from the 4th of July, lighting it and throwing it into one end of the tunnels they lived in, just so we could see the smoke rise from any other entrances that we missed. Ultimately we'd cover all of the entrances up which meant that we either buried them alive, or gas chambered them in their own tunnels.

For fun I would play in the wash, which was behind my house and when growing up neither paved or cleaned regularly. It was the first time I ever had a beer bottle thrown at my head. I was maybe 10 years old and we were throwing stuff at each other.

For the longest time behind my back, back yard was just acres of desert, which doubled as my playground. Kids in the neighborhood had different stacks of bushes that doubled as their hide outs. I never spent time to make one, but please believe that I played in them.

With the massive amount of animals in the area, and every house having at least one dog (seriously, every single house) by the time I was in 4th grade, I had picked up a semi-convincing bark just to play around with the dogs any time I'd travel by houses. If the dogs weren't barking when I biked by, I'd bark just to get their attention and keep driving past.

As much as I'd want to think that I grew up in a normal neighborhood doing normal things, I look back at my corner and the world that I came from and realize that a lot of who I am came from that weird, crazy, back country, metropolitan corner.

Pimping 'Aint Actually That Difficult - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/127/pimp-anthropology

Pimping is easy, and so is prostitution.

This is the weird thing about growing up in Las Vegas, and knowing people that have chosen to do some rather . . . interesting things with their lives. As much hype as there is about pimping and hoe-ing, it really isn't that hard at all. It's not what Hollywood makes it up to be, but pimping really isn't that difficult.

Stupid people in high school start to do stupid things. There are those that start playing around with the idea of easy money, so they become drug dealers. Those same people who are looking for cash are the same ones that start talking about how to make easy cash. That leads to people who want to pimp. It's easy money. All you have to do is make sure that you have clients, that there's a girl or girls that will work for you, and after that you're dealing with protection and safety, not with sex trafficking. As for the girls, it's just about as stupid for the motivation. All it takes is to find a girl who is legitimately a whore. Who likes sex for the sake of sex, and likes money even more. It happens that people just enjoy sex, so a good whore is one that want a lot of it and doesn't care who or what gives it to her. Mix those two entrepreneurial sparks and you've found yourself in the pimping game. It's a weird corner of the world, but it's not that weird to me because I know people that have either tried to be part of the game, or are still in that very odd game.

It's one of the weird things of Las Vegas and growing up in the weird world that is Las Vegas. While in the mix and seeing it around you, you don't think anything of it, but now outside of that world, that is a messed up place. Just like it would be totally acceptable for people to quit school and become  a dealer at a casino, girls their senior year would pick up stripping at a local club to make a lot of cash. The really weird one, and it gets really weird, is while a life guard it was an event that most of the employees would go out to amateur night at a club, and cheer on as two (or sometimes more) of their co-workers would try to win cash from the competition.

Let's take a step back and work on that one messed up thought from the world of Las Vegas. Not only does this involve going to a strip club with your co-workers, both male and female, which is super weird and awkward before anything else kicks into gear, but then you cheer for your co-workers as they strip for you and strangers in the hopes that they might win the prize for the night as one of the best amateur strippers. No where else that I could even begin to imagine would that be possible, let alone socially acceptable, but the group of people that I worked with did it fairly frequently.

Being a stripper, pimp, hoe, or anything else that you'd think of as the 'seedy' side of Las Vegas isn't that difficult to get into. Think of it this way - who are the people that are even doing things like that? Typically, that stripper that tells that they are dancing so they can pay for tuition isn't doing that great in classes to start out with. And typically the people that are involved in a strip club on any sort of regular basis are not exactly the most intelligent people in this world. Now, if a high school drop out and sort out how to become a pimp, or even how to sell themselves on a street corner - can it really be that difficult? A person who has trouble with showing up to class on time, occasionally turning things in, and staying awake for seven hours, is the person who says pimping 'aint easy. The same person that dropped out because they felt like homework was just too much to ask of them, is the person that you're judging something from should never happen.

Pimping is easy, it's just the brain dead people that are doing it aren't used to a 40+ hour work week, so it's a shock to them when they have to spend more than two minutes on something.

It Must Be My Fault - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/126/do-gooders

This one is a good one for me right now because apparently it's my fault when I'm trying to do a good job at LDSBC.

Recently I've been trying to fight the fact that my turn over rate for first semester English students is ridiculously high. I start semesters with 20+ students in each class, and then all of the sudden by the end of the semester I'm down almost 50%. This semester I didn't want to do it. This semester I wanted to try to retain as many students as possible. I wasn't going to just sit back and do nothing, so I did what the college wanted me to do, I reported every single student that was struggling, and that meant that I reported half of my class. 

That's right, I put half of my class into the list of students that needed help to pass my course.

Instead of thinking that possibly it was my students who were struggling, that it could possibly be the issue with my students not having the skills or knowledge required for being part of a university system, the first thing that got said was that it has to be my problem. It wasn't the fact that the majority of my students struggled to graduate from college, are first generation college students, or even the fact that most of them don't even show up to class - no - the real problem was with me, the teacher, the one who was trying to improve their lives and willing to point a light on those that were struggling with the simpliest of tasks of showing up to class, taking notes, and paying attention enough to stay awake.

It only gets worse.

As I was looking through the course when I first started teaching there I was thankful for everything that was given to me, because I didn't have anything. I was thankful for the fact that they had a course ready for me to teach, and that it was put together in a way that I just had to show up and teach and didn't have to rely too much on my non-existant lesson making skills. It was a great thing.

Now that I'm about a year into the teaching thing, I'm starting to notice a major bug in the system. It's impossible for a student to fail the course if they show up and turn things in. Even if it is horribly written, even if there is a quality to their writing that is down right unprofessional and has no right to pass an ENG 101 course, it's impossible for them to fail as long as they turn in every single assignment.

Let's break it down so you can understand.

There's five major assignments.
Personal application of a self help book.
Rhetorical analysis of a self help book.
Synthesis and analysis of a topic given from the university.
Group profile piece of a company.
Personal philosophy.

Each of those is worth 100 points for a total of 500 points.

What isn't told is that attached to many of those are 'checkpoints' and 'journals' that add unnecessary fluff to the course to make it impossible to loose.

In my opinion the synthesis and analysis research paper is the most important and technical out of the entire series. Unfortunately, it's weighted the same as a personal philosophy paper (we'll get to that later), and then the fluff that surrounds it is the exact same weight as the final paper. That's right, it's 100 points, and all of the fluff (including a 30 point assignment that is basically show and tell for college students) is also worth 50 points. That means that even if one of my students manages to absolutely fail that paper and get a 50% on it, if they do all of their fluff assignments, it totals out to be a C, and that is for the most important paper in the course.

The group profile piece is a joke and as long as students work together in the two weeks they have to write it, they'll pass that assignment with an A.

The 'final' for the course is a personal philosophy, but it's 100 points worth of fluff. The writing prompt for the personal philosophy is junk. All it says is explain why you think the way you think. It can be about anything, just explain why you think the way that you think. It could be about how Care Bears are a life influence for you and that your life is strictly influenced by the power and strength that Care Bears and the Care Bear stare gives to you, and you would get full credit. The technical merit of that paper is non-existent, and it essentially comes out to another free 100 points as long as it's turned in.

As long as students show up and turn things in, they can't get anything lower than a C. It's impossible. It doesn't matter if they know the skills required of them, what matters is passing them through the system.

The reason I'm talking about all of this is that I would try to change it, however I know that for this one case, it's impossible. The university isn't focused on teaching skills that are actually used and can be transferred to the real world, they're more focused on helping people believe in Christ. I know that this isn't a bad thing, but it gets in the way of an education. I could try to explain to people why I think that we're doing a disservice to our students by freely allowing them to pass courses even though they have no education and skills that we are promising them, but I'd be instantly put under the spotlight. Instead of looking at the course material or the university, I'd be the one in trouble. It can't be a problem with LDSBC, it has to be a problem with me. The reason my students aren't learning the skills required isn't because of the lack of rigor or the complete lack of credibility from a university, but because I must be teaching their approved lesson incorrectly.

It's The End of The World - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/125/apocalypse

It's the end of the world as I've known it, and I've known that for a long time.

It's one of the weirder parts of being Mormon, but the church firmly believes that we are living in the latter days (the last days). I mean, it's in the title of our church, that we think that we are the last generation of true believers here on Earth, until the apocalypse happens. To those inside the church, it's totally normal, and almost accepted to talk about when Christ comes, and how we'll be when it happens. It's nothing weird at all to hear people talk about their emergency preparedness kits because when Christ comes things are going to get hectic, and they're going to need supplies to survive.

It's to the point where it's fairly frequent that there is an individual in the ward, who has a job that is to get everyone in the ward prepared for an 'emergency' (read: apocalypse). We're the proud owners of gallons and gallons of powdered foods sitting in our pantries and under our beds. We're the weirdos that have large plastic containers in our garages so we can have clean pure water when the water supply goes bad.

The thing that I've never realized is just how weird it is to have an active belief that the world is going to end, and I have a decent chance to see it. No one knows the date or time it's going to happen, so it could happen next week, or it could happen 1,000 years from now, the only thing that I believe (thanks to my religion) is that my church is going to be here on the Earth when it does happen, and we're not going to leave until it happens.

The funniest thing growing up with an emergency prepardness kit and a food storage that included things like 20 pounds of barley, was when things started to get old. Each year during summer we would pull out our kits and try to eat lunch off of what was in them.

It was never good.

Then came the awkward times when my mom would buy something for our food storage. For the most part they were good ideas. Getting a giant 5 gallon plastic bucket of rice - great idea, we loved rice and ate it all the time. Getting a 5 gallon  bucket of pinto beans - not the best idea because who uses dried beans that often? This lead to things sitting in storage for a long time, and then one day my mom noticing that things were getting close to their experation date, so we'd start to try to use that food in our meals.

There's a reason that no one eats barley any more.

The same goes for an excessive amount of dried beans. They're good for a small bit, but a small bit goes a long way. Seriously, you can buy a gallon tin can of beans and use them for about a year and not run out, and that's assuming that you're semi-active in trying to use them. Those things go a LONG way, and we were stuck with massive amounts of them just sitting there in our pantry waiting for us to use . . . or for the apocalypse to happen.

Simple Is Better? - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/123/high-cost-of-living

The entire show is all about how you shouldn't be worried about your fancy life, that the one that the type of life that everyone strives for, is actually sort of horrible and having asimple life that you don't have to worry about all of the stuff is easier, better, and just a happier place to be psychologically/emotionally.

I really wish that I could get behind that mentality, because it's what rich people say.

Rich people say stupid things like, you know what is really annoying? Having a nice house, a car, having debt payed off and not having to worry about going to my job every single day. Not having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck is such a hassle, I really wish I could go back to a simpler life when I was worried if I was going to have electricity in my house.

Seriously, who even says that? Who thinks that their multi-million dollar life is so horrible that they want to turn around and give it all up because it requires a bit of work?

Officially, the show was supposed to be about "living life to the fullest" and how that doing that isn't worth it, and sometimes it's better to "make yourself numb", but that translates out to having money and wanting to not have money. The only people that can "live life to the fullest" are people who have money. Even the person in the show that was falsly diagnosed with HIV, it's obvious that she had money, because people that don't have money wouldn't be able to afford all of the treatments she went through, have the time to go to all of the support groups, and d o all of the things that she was able to do. People with money have the time and luxury to worry about their life (and death) where as people that are not so fortunate are stuck with the simple option of going to work because rent is due and you have to pay the bills.

You don't have time to worry about your life or even live it to it's fullest when you have two jobs. You don't get to live life to the fullest when you have credit card debt, student debt, loans, or whatever else is sitting out there waiting for you to pay it off. There's no way for you to enjoy life when you're sitting and looking at your fridge wondering what you're going to eat because your kitchen is empty and buying something at the store translates to finding the cheapest menu option possible.

I'm not at that point right now, but I've only been slightly above that point for the past few months, and there's no way at all that 'simplifying' my life would ever be a good thing. Yes, it would be AMAZING to not have to worry about work, life, or any of those stresses, but that requires money. The only way that simplifying is a better life is if you don't have to worry about doing all of that simplification, and that requires the one thing that there is little of. This isn't to say that I'm a paycheck away from being homeless, but there's no way that I'm going back to that point. I've had my bank account in the red. I've had a paycheck get demolished into nothing leaving me with rice and tuna fish to eat until the next paycheck because it only slightly zeroed out my debt. Sure that was simple, but there's no way ever that I'm going to go back into that life.

Impossible Love - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/122/valentines-day-99

There's a hint of things around this world, especially when you deal with stories, that one of the best types of loves, one of the types that make you want to cheer for the couple and make them come together, are the love stories that should never happen. No one cheers for the couple that is cute together, that meets in a normal setting that are a normal story, everyone wants the couples that doesn't fit well together, where something is off.

It can be a Romeo and Juliet sort of love where families hate families. It can be long distance, over social classes, or anything else. It's the weirdest thing ever. Two people that work well together, that should be together, people don't care, but if you put one in power and the other as their coworker or anything like that, and suddenly it's a block buster movie where everyone cheers for the couple that needs to fight against all odds.

We like it when people have to fight for their relationship.

What sucks is when you have to be the one fighting for that relationship.

The idea of fighting to be with one another is something different than the actual process of telling your family to shove it and go against everyone that is around you just to stick with the one person that you want to be with. Trying to fight for the person that you want to stay with is not romantic, it's tiring.


People think that it's romantic to fight. People think that it's romantic to try to put a couple through hell just to make it together, but it's not romantic, it makes you want to quit. I would have loved it if parents and parents in law were friendly towards us (and each other). I would have loved it if we were easily together. I would have fought for the chance of us having oportunity to be together without having to work so hard for it.

The reason why is that it's hard enough to keep a relationship together and functioning when life is good, starting it out with a struggle is just gimping it. Instead of my wedding day being happy and a huge celebration it was a giant mess of emotion and drama that no one needs on that sort of day. The day that was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life was riddled with people throwing fits, nothing going right, and the only thing that I wanted to happen being done by lunch and then the rest of the next twelve hours was horrible.

Fighting for a relationship is not fun, it's not romantic, it's not something that I hope anyone has to go through because it doesn't make your relationship stronger, it makes you start your entire relationship off with burning bridges, salting the earth, and destroying ties that you need to have around you if you're going to keep going into the rest of your relationship.

I hate romantic stories of a couple that has to struggle to be together. They're not romantic, they're frustrating.