Holy Cow! I have grey hairs!

So, I might be feeling a bit better. It's past 10:00 and I don't feel like I'm going to pass out, so I decided to spend some time on here writing a small little thing that I realized last week, but was too busy coughing up my lung to write about.

I don't know if I put it as self-actualization or self-realization, but somewhere in all of the mess that is my life, last week I realized a few things about me.

First- I've got a good chunk of grey hairs coming in. . . and they don't look half bad.

Somewhere in the mess of me coughing up snot balls that were really quite revolting in size, color, and taste, I noticed that my hair is starting to go grey, and it's actually sort of cool. I don't know what it is about it, but I sort of like it. It was a little weird to think that I was rocking enough grey hair that I could really notice, but at the same time I was rocking grey hair, I'm okay with that. We all know that my genetics are going to make me have a white head of hair by the time my body matches my soul (seriously, I'm a 90 year old man on the inside some days), so I'm glad that my hair's getting a head start.

Next- I'm freaking awesome.

Maybe it was just the drugs talking but right now I've got this going on-
- Part time job at ROI
- Part time job tutoring at New Haven
- Part time stay at home dad
- Volunteer at the library every week
- Teach priesthood lessons at church once a month
- Cook the majority of the meals
- Do the majority of the cleaning (dishes, laundry, general, and cat)
- I'm taking THREE masters level courses and passing all of them with a B+ or higher right now.
- I'm writing my masters thesis. MY MASTERS THESIS! You know, that capstone to my entire educational career? The pinicale of my ENTIRE education since kindergarten? I'm doing that!
- I still manage time to spend brushing Alicia's hair and paying attention to her. Last night I figured out I knew how to do a French braid! Suck on that Pintrest moms!

The best part about it? I'm doing it all!

All of those years learning how to do this-  (slight exaggeration)

leads to me totally and entirely rocking out at life right now. For a while there I was feeling down and depressed, but somewhere this week I snapped out of it. I'm kicking butts and taking names. I'm doing great in grad school, great at work (both of them), and still have time to get better. 

Sorry to toot my own horn for a post, but if you can't brag about yourself on your semi-secret blog that you haven't told anyone about, but they may or may not know about, where can you brag about yourself?

The only thing that I was thinking about today at church was that I'm not as spiritually strong as I used to be. It's one of those that I'm getting pretty awesome at everything else, but church wise it's starting to drop pretty low. I know that I can make time to get better at it, work at ROI is a brain waste so I could easily read conference talks or the scriptures there, I'll just have to put it in rotation with working on masters stuff. The only thing that I worry about with that is wondering if it's worth it.

Hear me out.

Every time that I dump time and energy into becoming spiritually stronger, really having the Holy Ghost with me 24/7, making my life really line up with everything, doing all the stuff, what comes from it? Little to nothing. I bust my butt, and the most that I've ever seen from it is slammed doors, offended people around me, and getting treated like I'm a freak, and honestly, feeling like one too. I KNOW that it's worth it, but at the same point I don't see it being worth it. I put in the time, the effort, (which is honestly, comparing it to this silly masters program not that much so I shouldn't even complain) to read, say my prayers, try to keep the spirit with me daily, serve others, use spiritual gifts as often as possible, yadda yadda yadda, and what happens? I find myself asking for more patience, and maybe a little bit of a break because Upper Management likes to pile it on when They see that I'm willing to help out. Oh, you look like you're willing to talk to Us? Here's your to-do list. Enjoy the social awkwardness of trying to help people you don't even know!

Then there's always the downside of being spiritually awesome, doing amazing things, and people's free will getting into the way. As much as I know it's a bad option and not the one that I sided for for all eternity for obvious reasons, some days I really REALLY like Satan's plan. He might be oppressive and sort of a jerk, but the man wanted to make sure no one said no and that everyone got saved. It's not a fun thing to look back at my score card and see little to no sucsess. I guess you could say with some of the people on the card I could put mild to moderate influence, but it'd be stretching it. It's frustrating for me to see people that used to be my spiritual rock, that lifted me up and I try to pretend that I helped them out doing things like this-

He's not doing anything "bad", he's just not being as awesome as I know he can be. It comes down to this- any person that I have put personal effort and time in trying to follow what Upper Management wants me to do has resulted in them either going AWOL from my life, or staying in my life and going slightly to entirely AWOL from the church. I just don't see it's worth it. I know that officially it's worth it because the time span for spirituality is a billion million trillion times longer than what I can see, but some days I just want some short term 'hey-look-I-did-something-good-and-it-stayed-good' action.

Side note- Zach, if for some reason you back track that picture and you end up here, do your thing man. I know that you've got some stuff on your plate you've got to sort out. Do you. Honestly, all things considering, I'm a bit jealous. The offer always stands though, you need me for anything, anywhere, anytime, you know that you've got me. I owe you big, and nothing you can do since you've helped me out can make me forget you helping.

I'm just rambling now.
I really should go back and re-read my mission journals. I think it would be interesting to see how crazy stupid naive I was. Seriously, blind faith is sometimes way more powerful than knowing what you're getting yourself into. Maybe that could be my way of getting back on the spiritual train, have old me try to motivate now me. It's worth a shot, and also probably worth a really REALLY good laugh sometimes. We'll see.