While I'm waiting, I want to record this thought, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me: I over think things. I overplan, I overanalyze, I overworry about things that generally work themselves out. (Ryan's going, "Yeah, trial runs, anyone?" Okay, okay, yes, you're a genius, no one needs to do trial runs of every aspect of their life, which is the tendency I have, I think in a vain attempt to control things out of my control. Today my thought is this: I spent literally hours poring over the catalog of classes, agonizing over the exact perfect combination of parenting, marriage, personal development, and gospel classes, that are simultaneously meeting all of my personal needs, yet are not too far to walk from one building to the next. Hours and hours, no joke. Today I still hadn't decided which classes to take for sure, there were just so many options. But the first hour I only had to decide between two, so I went to the Being Enough class. The teacher said that when she was agonizing about a previous ed week class, a friend told her that it doesn't matter what she prepares - people are led to the classes they need to attend, and the spirit will tell them what they need to learn from that teacher. And it's so true. I'm trying to learn to be a better mother, but every class that I take tells me how to love more, like Christ. What could make me a better mother than that? I want to learn more about the gospel, have a deeper understanding of the scriptures, and every class uses the scriptures to teach. It doesn’t matter what class I take and which I skip, the spirit is telling me what I need no matter where I am. I think that's a valid lesson that I didn't have to take a class to learn.
Quest for lifelong learning
in choosing to come to earth, we chose to progress, to know, to gain more knowledge. Lifelong learning is not only secular, it is eternal. You cannot take it with you, but knowledge has eternal significance. D&c scripture - what intelligence we obtain in this life will go with us.
Earth is a great school. Part of our eternal education. As children we learned because our parents made us, with the reward of being self-sufficient. If that is our only motivation, we will stop learning when the degrees are earned and the parents leave us alone. We need to learn for the joy of being edified rather than being entertained. Their desire is to learn to change their behavior, to improve themselves and the world.
The scriptures give us the curriculum of the lifetime learner - things of the world and of heaven, things of nations, wars, judgments on the land, countries and kingdoms.
Nephi was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father. The lifelong learner knows no boundaries in their quest for knowledge. They have an insatiable desire to learn of all subjects and disciplines, on all the wide subjects that interest them.
Is it a genetic gift, or can you learn the desire for learning? Anyone willing to pay the price, heavenly father will bless us with the drive to become lifelong learners.
how can we improve our desire and the desire of others to be lifelong learners?
Attributes of lifelong learners:
Courage
Faithful desire
humility
patience
willingness to share what we've learned
Courage - to overcome fear of leaving limits of comfort zone and enter unknown. We dwell in our strengths, avoid our weaknesses. Dwell in security of our past, fear of ignorance. Need courage to have faith in darkness.
Faithful desire - insatiable unselfish desire to gain knowledge for the mere joy of obtaining knowledge without need for rewards. Desire for self-improvement, happier life, knowledge that will help them be better mothers, wife, servants in the kingdom. Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom.
Humility - recognize the source of all knowledge is a gift of god. The humble will be blessed. Intelligence is a gift of god, don't become prideful of i.q. or accomplishments. God metes out each piece of intelligence in his time, in his way. The lord gives knowledge and wisdom to us. We should use that to lift and strengthen other. Learning is a gift of the spirit.
Patience - understand that diligence and energy and time are needed to gain knowledge. Sometimes what we learn today doesn't seem valuable for months or years. Ponder the knowledge so we can put the knowledge to use when needed.
Curiosity - as children, curiosity is instinctive, learners find techniques that surpass what they learn at school. They don't lose curiosity. Ask question why, and then finding answers. The thrill of investigating and finding answer didn't know is wonderful. Personal aha moments when wee see larger picture all at once. Edison - I have not failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that didn't work.
Communication - find joy when those they teach by sharing knowledge are uplifted. Communicate with god to give thanks for knowledge. Sharing with other learners, great teachers are also great listeners. Great teachers produce lifelong learners - don't provide all answers, but lead them to fountain and give them desire to drink.
Scripture study is a lifelong learning experience. Now matter how many times we read it, through Holy Ghost we will gain new insights to meet life's challenges. Yesterday's meal is not enough to meet today's needs.
gospel learning comes one precept at a time, must read over and over.
Mosiah didn't teach sons how to read to get ahead in the world, it was so he could be spiritually wise. Lehi took plates in wilderness so they could remember how to be children of god. It's why scriptures are for us at this time.
Sincere desire, faith, prayer, obedience aid scripture study. It doesn't require years of formal education. Unlearned and ignorant like peter and john gained gospel knowledge by listening to words of the savior. Masters degree in theology is less important than the degree of knowledge we can gain from the Master.
Learn principles and doctrines, not places and names. Find insights for your life, it's an instruction manual for becoming like the savior. It's a quest for spiritual insights and understanding and growth that comes from application.
We grow in spirit as we care for our neighbors and the world around us.
Results of learning are not reflected in grades and honors, but who we become. Our qualities, faith hope and love are most important ways to progress as individuals. As we increase mental capacity we receive new insight, if we ponder we can get additional insight that solves a question or one of life’s' problems. That is the sweet mystery of lifelong learning. When we experience leap of faith.
Have prayer before and after scrip study - before, to prepare, after to give thanks and gratitude for what has been given us.
Scriptures and gospel are eternal curriculum. Learn why we are here.
Lifetime learning past present and future. Learners see connection between what we learned in past, with what we are learning in the present and what we can learn in the future. Always open for idea sin future, spending lives learning, being better than our best. Personal progress is simply that, best of today is not good enough for tomorrow.
Michael Phelps set world record in 2004, but now needed to be better than his best to win this Year. he shaved off a whole minute from the 1904 time. What an example of being better than your best. If we don't try to grow every day, we won't be able to meet demands of tomorrow.
Sometimes learning is limited by capacity of our mind, and we have to expand the capacity of our mind. Or we place limitations on ourselves.
never dwell on the past or attempt to protect your comfort zone against changes on future advancements that will be needed.
D&c 138 - gave people hope
like Christ, our endings usher in new eras. Lifelong learners don't dwell on past, they build on past.
Milestones seem like ultimate goal, then leave us depressed, then ask your self what next? The end is only the dawn of a new beginning. Enjoy a moment of satisfaction of progress you've made, then turn around to see what new peaks are now in sight and set a course to climb higher into he future. The achievement on the past will help you achieve in the future.
Time stops for no man. What we do with our time will determine the degree of lifelong learning we will bring to the eternities.
Motherhood is the ideal opportunity for lifelong learning. Leaning grows as she nurtures child in development years. They learn and mature together. It is exponential not linear learning. Each child brings added dimension to learning. Their needs are so demanding and different. A mother learns so much of psychology, education, biology, development of gifts, nursing, etc. Think of spiritual learning that is required to teach gospel principles, to teach fhe, relief society, primary, etc. A mothers opportunity for learning is universal - don’t' sell yourself short as a woman. Or as a mother. The world would stand that a woman is in a form of servitude that doesn't allow her to express talents. Don't let the world define denigrate or limit your feeling of lifelong learning and motherhood and benefit you give to your children and husband. Learning helps self-worth, is invigorating mentally, and improves self-doubt. Progress and improvement are essence of lifelong learning.
Only goal is living eternal life and faithfully enduring to the end - everything else is corollary. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, that gets understanding. (O.T.?)
glory of god is intelligence. To basic intelligence we add knowledge, to that we add experience, and that equals wisdom. With all thy getting get understanding. The world stops at wisdom, the lord teaches us understanding.
Wisdom plus gift of Holy Ghost give us understanding. We will no more desire to do evil, wee will long for returning to father.
Ponder and seek to acquire the attributes of lifelong learners. Ask what is the meaning and value of each characteristic to me? How do they apply to me? How can it make it a part of my life? How ca I enhance these qualities in my life? If you only seek to improve one quality in your life it will make a difference in your life and your future.
We cannot only believe but to know that god lives. Seek to know, and it will be granted to you. Seek to let others know that the gospel is restored.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
How To Write a Personal History Folks Will Want to Read
By Dawn Parrett Thurston
I picked this class because I needed an emotional break after the last one - couldn't quite handle the parenting class that I was heading towards, so I turned around and went back to this one. I already had to take a dose of Excedrin, earlier in the day than I had planned.
"When an old person dies it's as if a library burns down." You will always wish you had written down the stories they had, you think you'll remember, but you only remember basics, not the details.
Www.memoirmentor.com
some histories lack warmth, not personal, just details.
We come from a long Mormon tradition of keeping histories - Joseph Smith tells his personal story, Nephi starts with his family and their situation, lots of autobiographies of pioneers.
Spencer W. Kimball urges all people to write family history, encourage parents and grandparents to write family journals.
Life stories come in all flavors - personal history
-autobiography - history that covers scope of whole life
-memoirs - a portion of a life, just childhood, for example, like Angela's Ashes - some have a theme, like military career, a hobby, spiritual experiences
- personal essays - take a topic you are interested in, ruminate about it, include stories from your life
-journal, diary -
-blog entries
-story collection - random stories from life
-"graphic" memoir - pictures to go with the stories
What are you writing?
For me, I write blog entries and personal essays, focusing on my life as a mother of young children, so I can remember when my kids are older.
Who am I writing for? I write for myself, first, then my family, and then for friends who are both Mormon and not. My writing is on the Internet, so could be broadly public.
What is my completion deadline? I would like to write continually, not necessarily publish a completed book, but to always be writing. Maybe I'd like to write about my history, in story form, that would be a complete book.
Maybe have family contribute stories about particular topics, and then compile it in an anthology.
Components of a Personal History
Events - school, graduation, etc.
People - who influenced us, who shaped us
Places - they are also characters, where we lived shaped us also
Life Context - what was going on in the world around you when you were growing up, that might have shaped decisions that were made in your life
Reaction - what these events, people, places meant to us - people go awry here because they don't put in these personal feelings, be honest about how we are, how we feel about certain things. Especially in Mormon culture, we try to make us look like paragons of virtue, but it's unbelievable, and feels sterile.
Story - tell it like a story, don't write it like a report, not just expository.
Avoid pedigree chart stories, listing birth date, lists of names and dates, boring.
themes you'll hear this week:
being personal, be human, be honest, be fair, be specific, and use lots of details
getting started: make lists
build a database of information, to help recall
-make list of stories that must be told
-important people - your VIP list
-places you've lived
-favorites: toys, food, songs, and movies
-pets
-boyfriends/girlfriends
-cars you've owned
-hobbies, classes you've taken, callings
-turning points in your life
What is a turning point?
A major event that changes the direction of your life.
- move, crises, chance comment, sometimes someone says something that changes who we are, mission, military, loss of loved one, new job.
Turning points in my life:
moving to California
moving to Eldersburg
meeting Ryan
having brad
Ryan telling me I should write
auditioning for to kill a mockingbird
make charts: chronological chart of date, event, and historical events that occurred at that time
(i.e. Birth date, event is birth, history is top songs of that year)
here's what I recommend:
1. Make list of stories that must be told
2. Pick a story that interests you and write about it.
3. Then pick another, etc.
big concept: show, don't tell
it makes all the difference in your writing. Telling is the book reports from school.
Comparing meanings: tell is explain, inform, describe, and narrate.
Show is demonstrate, exhibit, illustrate, reveal
"don't just tell me you love me, show me!"
the principle is as important to good writing as it is to good relationships.
telling summarizes, no evidence, instead tell a story or what someone would have really said, it shows who someone is by letting him or her speak. The reader makes the judgment, not you.
Instead of just telling facts, turn it into a scene, where personalities are revealed and feelings are displayed. It makes you feel like you are in the moment, learn more than just the facts.
Some people are gifted, but everyone improves with practice.
show with detailed description, so people can visualize what people looked like. First go round, just get something down on paper. Then on edit, what can you add to make this person be more alive? Add the detail afterwards.
how do you show?
Create a scene
creating dialogue
using details to put readers in the moment
writing descriptions
this is a website with the slides from a class on family histories, shared by the woman sitting next to me:
http:home.lib.byu.edu/~rcf3/
Wednesday – How To Write About People In Your Life: Making Them More Than Names On A Page
Writers read - read the kind of book you want to write
As you read, analyze what they are doing that makes the book so interesting to read.
Patrick McManus (humor writer) - he made a writing schedule 7-9 pm 7 nights a week and tried never to miss a day. It was pure writing time, not doing research, not making notes, not thinking about writing, just pounding the keys even when there was nothing to write. The writing eventually became better, if not easier.
When could I devote some hours a week to writing?
Online resource: www.memoirmentor.com has info, list of memoirs etc.
Day 2 - about people and breathing life into your characters
There are a lot of people in your life that changed who you are
Parents
Spouse
Children
Mentors
Old flames
Rivals
Friends
Relatives
Teachers
Put flesh on the bones of your people - your challenge is to make the people in your story more than just names on the page. They must seem like real people - what's unique, memorable, and human
Writing exercise - what is unique about a parent?
I moved to a new ward when I was newly married, newly pregnant, and knew nobody. I met a man who had served a mission in Maryland where I grew up. When I told him my maiden name, he burst out into a massive belly laugh, out of nowhere - in exact mimicry of my father. As it turned out, my father was the ward mission leader when this man was a missionary, 15 years before when I was about 5 years old.
My father is known for his frequent laugh. He has a great sense of humor and always looks for the humor in a situation. This gets him in trouble frequently, as my childhood is peppered with incidents where we'd be trying to pay attention to the sacrament talks and he'd be writing on the program all sorts of funny observations. It was completely irreverent, and quite possibly a bad example, but laughter is the main memory I have of my childhood.
Hearing my fathers laugh come out of this strangers mouth gave me an instant feeling of home in this new place.
How do you do it?
Show what they look like - detail, precision. How do novelists describe their characters? Avoid "she was short and attractive" too vague. "Average height and weight and middle aged" "stylish dresser" - leaves too much for imagination. Be aware of generations, who you are writing to, avoid generalities.
Book recommendation: Rick Bragg - It's all over but the shouting. Also the Prince of Frogtown.
Make your similes and metaphors apt and original.
-Hair was straight as a kite string on a windy day
-Words come out in a tumbled rush, like puppies spilling out of a cardboard box
-As dull as...
Don't use the some thoughts you always have.
Show people in action.
Capture your characters' mannerisms and behavior.
Does she fold her arms across her chest when she talks?
Does he clear his throat?
Does she walk or talk rapidly or slowly?
Is he checking his watch cleaning his glasses, straightening tie?
Can she sit still without doing something like folding laundry?
Don't just have talking heads, give them movement during dialogue.
Show how people affected others.
Show the reaction from someone's behavior, how they affect you, instead of just saying how the person is.
Translate emotions into behavior. Don't just say "I felt sad" show your behavior that shows sadness.
Book: Tobias Woolf's This Boy's Life
Get your feelings into it, how you felt about things is how you make yourself seem human.
Borrow a technique from movie directors
Use scenes in your story. Don't just summarize the events, actually recreate the moment and let the reader come along with you.
Thursday:
Writing about Places - Creating your life context
The importance of setting - the places we've lived our lives
Book: Growing Up by Russell Baker
Use senses, be descriptive
Building a place:
Occupations
Recreation
Attitudes
Traditions
Sights, sounds, smells
Hangouts
Crises
Industries
Commerce
Terrain
Weather
Houses
Weather seasons
Population
Transportation
History
Don’t write a travel brochure. Don't include everything on that list; it's not an encyclopedia entry.
Things to consider:
What do people need to know to visualize your community the way you remember it?
What made it home for you?
How can you make your descriptions personal?
Recreate places as they were in your day, not how it is now.
Give a sense of place by using all of the senses.
Establish environment of other places visited, not just where you live.
Can write in the past tense, then enter a "scene" written in the present tense, then go back.
Ideas:
A backyard
An outhouse
A kitchen
Recreating Your World
How to develop your life context
No one was raised in a bubble. Things have been going on around us that influenced us, decisions parents made, or where you went to school, or how you felt about yourself. We can't leave those things out. Write outside the box, not just inside your life.
What is life context?
The communities where you lived - prejudice, small town, socioeconomics, did you fit in, major industry?
The family you came from - money, parent's personalities, discipline style, emotional problems, your position in the family, religion.
Local, regional, and national events - the Depression, wars, economics, local things.
Personality and I.Q.
Trends and fashions of the times - songs, movies
What does this mean? Our readers have to understand our world if they are ever going to understand us.
What does a reader need to know about my world to understand me better?
How was my experience different from what people experience today?
What influence did the event have on me?
Would I be any different if that event didn't happen?
What was it like to be a child in your day?
Family discipline
Relationship of kids to elders
Educational ideas
Recreation - what did you do for fun as a family?
Family routine, dinnertime
Childhood home, bedrooms
Societal norms, what is bad behavior
Family concerns, what did your parents worry about
Don't forget pop culture
Going to movies, going on vacation
Tie context material to your life
Don’t just include a laundry list of events
Show why this is important
Don’t take for granted that people know that history
Use Internet to do research
Life context stuff is vital to ancestral biographies
How has your life intersected with history? What historical events shaped, were memorable in your life?
Friday: How to write a page-turner, giving it some pizzazz.
"History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it." Winston Churchill
How to approach difficult situations, difficult people. If you want to write something that matters, it needs to be a matter of prayer. It's a big responsibility to write about the lives of people that are important to us.
How to write a page-turner:
Bring out conflict, without telling the ending, show the roadblocks, getting feelings on paper so they are rooting for you.
Don't worry about your image, about being the hero of your story. It distances people. Be human, and your readers will be drawn to you.
Book: Inventing the Truth, the art of memoir.
The gorilla in the room - the problem of truth telling. How much do we hold back? If we leave things out or put a fine gloss over things, it takes out the believability of our story. It casts doubt over the rest of the story. At the same time, we have other people's reputation in our hands.
there are ways of telling the truth that are less hurtful. If it's clear the author has an axe to grind, you think less of the author. You know that there's another side to the story. So if you're too hurtful, it's us that come across as bad. There's a way to tell it with humor and grace and have an ability to rise above.
How much truth can you handle? How much truth can your readers handle? It's easier to write about difficult people when they are not alive. But some family members can't handle anything that's not pleasant.
how do you handle personal or family skeletons?
"If you can't get rid of a family skeleton, you might as well make it dance." George Bernard Shaw.
It's a balancing act. Weigh these things:
Its importance to your story.
Writing about children is harder than about people who have gone before, because children still have their lives ahead of them and the promise of repentance.
What is your purpose in writing this story? Are you trying to purge guilt, or vent, or lay blame - selfish purposes, or are you trying to share with family, etc?
Who is your audience?
Your family - what kind of damage can you do?
The tone - are you striking out, blaming, putting labels on people?
Be fair. They often have reasons for being the way they are. Talk about motivations, contributing factors. Show both sides of someone, showing the negative and the good.
Your tolerance for criticism, rejection, or disinheritance.
You get as many chances as you want to get it right. You can write all the junk for therapeutic purposes, then let it sit. Maybe give it to a trusted person to review, see if you can make it gentler.
Tell the truth with love. Look at your motives, find grace and forgiveness, but don't hedge. Keep integrity.
Writing exercise: identify traits and their opposites. What would be the benefit of having that trait?
Get your facts right. What you hear from rumor that's been passed down, make sure there's validation for it.
Avoid moralizing. Stay off the soapbox, labeling people and acting more righteous than people. Remember the generational differences because what is acceptable at one time may not be in another.
Let readers form their own conclusions. Put it out there and don't put a judgment on it.
How much truth should you tell about yourself? Should you reveal things about your past that show you aren't perfect? They know you aren't perfect already. You don't need to show all the gory details - you will seem more human, you can show you've learned, grown.
Don't exaggerate.
Book recommendations:
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
The glass castle
All over but the shoutin'
This boy's life - Tobias Woolf
When I was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago
Begin with a hook. Start with something to grab the reader's attention. Put you in the action right at the very beginning.
Middles and endings make better beginnings. Your birth wasn't very interesting.
Begin at a high point. What has your life been about?
Or begin at a low point. Story is about how you got there, and how you got to where you are now.
Journeys are good beginnings, life-changing events. Book: On Gold Mountain by Lisa See.
More than just a hook
Your beginning establishes your style, tone, and theme if you have one.
Cut the clutter. Decide what's essential and what's not. Select incidents that demonstrate certain things, if you show too much you'll bore people. Make list of stories that must be told or outline or chronology or table of contents to keep you on track.
Don't overdo adjectives and adverbs.
Writing is not a McDonalds hamburger. The cooking is slow, and in the beginning you don't know if you're getting a roast, a banquet or a lamb chop. Anne Lamott
Get a pair of fresh eyes to read your story. It's a lonely business, and you don't know how you're doing. You need someone to give you objective reactions.
By writing your story, you'll see you had a meaningful life.
I picked this class because I needed an emotional break after the last one - couldn't quite handle the parenting class that I was heading towards, so I turned around and went back to this one. I already had to take a dose of Excedrin, earlier in the day than I had planned.
"When an old person dies it's as if a library burns down." You will always wish you had written down the stories they had, you think you'll remember, but you only remember basics, not the details.
Www.memoirmentor.com
some histories lack warmth, not personal, just details.
We come from a long Mormon tradition of keeping histories - Joseph Smith tells his personal story, Nephi starts with his family and their situation, lots of autobiographies of pioneers.
Spencer W. Kimball urges all people to write family history, encourage parents and grandparents to write family journals.
Life stories come in all flavors - personal history
-autobiography - history that covers scope of whole life
-memoirs - a portion of a life, just childhood, for example, like Angela's Ashes - some have a theme, like military career, a hobby, spiritual experiences
- personal essays - take a topic you are interested in, ruminate about it, include stories from your life
-journal, diary -
-blog entries
-story collection - random stories from life
-"graphic" memoir - pictures to go with the stories
What are you writing?
For me, I write blog entries and personal essays, focusing on my life as a mother of young children, so I can remember when my kids are older.
Who am I writing for? I write for myself, first, then my family, and then for friends who are both Mormon and not. My writing is on the Internet, so could be broadly public.
What is my completion deadline? I would like to write continually, not necessarily publish a completed book, but to always be writing. Maybe I'd like to write about my history, in story form, that would be a complete book.
Maybe have family contribute stories about particular topics, and then compile it in an anthology.
Components of a Personal History
Events - school, graduation, etc.
People - who influenced us, who shaped us
Places - they are also characters, where we lived shaped us also
Life Context - what was going on in the world around you when you were growing up, that might have shaped decisions that were made in your life
Reaction - what these events, people, places meant to us - people go awry here because they don't put in these personal feelings, be honest about how we are, how we feel about certain things. Especially in Mormon culture, we try to make us look like paragons of virtue, but it's unbelievable, and feels sterile.
Story - tell it like a story, don't write it like a report, not just expository.
Avoid pedigree chart stories, listing birth date, lists of names and dates, boring.
themes you'll hear this week:
being personal, be human, be honest, be fair, be specific, and use lots of details
getting started: make lists
build a database of information, to help recall
-make list of stories that must be told
-important people - your VIP list
-places you've lived
-favorites: toys, food, songs, and movies
-pets
-boyfriends/girlfriends
-cars you've owned
-hobbies, classes you've taken, callings
-turning points in your life
What is a turning point?
A major event that changes the direction of your life.
- move, crises, chance comment, sometimes someone says something that changes who we are, mission, military, loss of loved one, new job.
Turning points in my life:
moving to California
moving to Eldersburg
meeting Ryan
having brad
Ryan telling me I should write
auditioning for to kill a mockingbird
make charts: chronological chart of date, event, and historical events that occurred at that time
(i.e. Birth date, event is birth, history is top songs of that year)
here's what I recommend:
1. Make list of stories that must be told
2. Pick a story that interests you and write about it.
3. Then pick another, etc.
big concept: show, don't tell
it makes all the difference in your writing. Telling is the book reports from school.
Comparing meanings: tell is explain, inform, describe, and narrate.
Show is demonstrate, exhibit, illustrate, reveal
"don't just tell me you love me, show me!"
the principle is as important to good writing as it is to good relationships.
telling summarizes, no evidence, instead tell a story or what someone would have really said, it shows who someone is by letting him or her speak. The reader makes the judgment, not you.
Instead of just telling facts, turn it into a scene, where personalities are revealed and feelings are displayed. It makes you feel like you are in the moment, learn more than just the facts.
Some people are gifted, but everyone improves with practice.
show with detailed description, so people can visualize what people looked like. First go round, just get something down on paper. Then on edit, what can you add to make this person be more alive? Add the detail afterwards.
how do you show?
Create a scene
creating dialogue
using details to put readers in the moment
writing descriptions
this is a website with the slides from a class on family histories, shared by the woman sitting next to me:
http:home.lib.byu.edu/~rcf3/
Wednesday – How To Write About People In Your Life: Making Them More Than Names On A Page
Writers read - read the kind of book you want to write
As you read, analyze what they are doing that makes the book so interesting to read.
Patrick McManus (humor writer) - he made a writing schedule 7-9 pm 7 nights a week and tried never to miss a day. It was pure writing time, not doing research, not making notes, not thinking about writing, just pounding the keys even when there was nothing to write. The writing eventually became better, if not easier.
When could I devote some hours a week to writing?
Online resource: www.memoirmentor.com has info, list of memoirs etc.
Day 2 - about people and breathing life into your characters
There are a lot of people in your life that changed who you are
Parents
Spouse
Children
Mentors
Old flames
Rivals
Friends
Relatives
Teachers
Put flesh on the bones of your people - your challenge is to make the people in your story more than just names on the page. They must seem like real people - what's unique, memorable, and human
Writing exercise - what is unique about a parent?
I moved to a new ward when I was newly married, newly pregnant, and knew nobody. I met a man who had served a mission in Maryland where I grew up. When I told him my maiden name, he burst out into a massive belly laugh, out of nowhere - in exact mimicry of my father. As it turned out, my father was the ward mission leader when this man was a missionary, 15 years before when I was about 5 years old.
My father is known for his frequent laugh. He has a great sense of humor and always looks for the humor in a situation. This gets him in trouble frequently, as my childhood is peppered with incidents where we'd be trying to pay attention to the sacrament talks and he'd be writing on the program all sorts of funny observations. It was completely irreverent, and quite possibly a bad example, but laughter is the main memory I have of my childhood.
Hearing my fathers laugh come out of this strangers mouth gave me an instant feeling of home in this new place.
How do you do it?
Show what they look like - detail, precision. How do novelists describe their characters? Avoid "she was short and attractive" too vague. "Average height and weight and middle aged" "stylish dresser" - leaves too much for imagination. Be aware of generations, who you are writing to, avoid generalities.
Book recommendation: Rick Bragg - It's all over but the shouting. Also the Prince of Frogtown.
Make your similes and metaphors apt and original.
-Hair was straight as a kite string on a windy day
-Words come out in a tumbled rush, like puppies spilling out of a cardboard box
-As dull as...
Don't use the some thoughts you always have.
Show people in action.
Capture your characters' mannerisms and behavior.
Does she fold her arms across her chest when she talks?
Does he clear his throat?
Does she walk or talk rapidly or slowly?
Is he checking his watch cleaning his glasses, straightening tie?
Can she sit still without doing something like folding laundry?
Don't just have talking heads, give them movement during dialogue.
Show how people affected others.
Show the reaction from someone's behavior, how they affect you, instead of just saying how the person is.
Translate emotions into behavior. Don't just say "I felt sad" show your behavior that shows sadness.
Book: Tobias Woolf's This Boy's Life
Get your feelings into it, how you felt about things is how you make yourself seem human.
Borrow a technique from movie directors
Use scenes in your story. Don't just summarize the events, actually recreate the moment and let the reader come along with you.
Thursday:
Writing about Places - Creating your life context
The importance of setting - the places we've lived our lives
Book: Growing Up by Russell Baker
Use senses, be descriptive
Building a place:
Occupations
Recreation
Attitudes
Traditions
Sights, sounds, smells
Hangouts
Crises
Industries
Commerce
Terrain
Weather
Houses
Weather seasons
Population
Transportation
History
Don’t write a travel brochure. Don't include everything on that list; it's not an encyclopedia entry.
Things to consider:
What do people need to know to visualize your community the way you remember it?
What made it home for you?
How can you make your descriptions personal?
Recreate places as they were in your day, not how it is now.
Give a sense of place by using all of the senses.
Establish environment of other places visited, not just where you live.
Can write in the past tense, then enter a "scene" written in the present tense, then go back.
Ideas:
A backyard
An outhouse
A kitchen
Recreating Your World
How to develop your life context
No one was raised in a bubble. Things have been going on around us that influenced us, decisions parents made, or where you went to school, or how you felt about yourself. We can't leave those things out. Write outside the box, not just inside your life.
What is life context?
The communities where you lived - prejudice, small town, socioeconomics, did you fit in, major industry?
The family you came from - money, parent's personalities, discipline style, emotional problems, your position in the family, religion.
Local, regional, and national events - the Depression, wars, economics, local things.
Personality and I.Q.
Trends and fashions of the times - songs, movies
What does this mean? Our readers have to understand our world if they are ever going to understand us.
What does a reader need to know about my world to understand me better?
How was my experience different from what people experience today?
What influence did the event have on me?
Would I be any different if that event didn't happen?
What was it like to be a child in your day?
Family discipline
Relationship of kids to elders
Educational ideas
Recreation - what did you do for fun as a family?
Family routine, dinnertime
Childhood home, bedrooms
Societal norms, what is bad behavior
Family concerns, what did your parents worry about
Don't forget pop culture
Going to movies, going on vacation
Tie context material to your life
Don’t just include a laundry list of events
Show why this is important
Don’t take for granted that people know that history
Use Internet to do research
Life context stuff is vital to ancestral biographies
How has your life intersected with history? What historical events shaped, were memorable in your life?
Friday: How to write a page-turner, giving it some pizzazz.
"History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it." Winston Churchill
How to approach difficult situations, difficult people. If you want to write something that matters, it needs to be a matter of prayer. It's a big responsibility to write about the lives of people that are important to us.
How to write a page-turner:
Bring out conflict, without telling the ending, show the roadblocks, getting feelings on paper so they are rooting for you.
Don't worry about your image, about being the hero of your story. It distances people. Be human, and your readers will be drawn to you.
Book: Inventing the Truth, the art of memoir.
The gorilla in the room - the problem of truth telling. How much do we hold back? If we leave things out or put a fine gloss over things, it takes out the believability of our story. It casts doubt over the rest of the story. At the same time, we have other people's reputation in our hands.
there are ways of telling the truth that are less hurtful. If it's clear the author has an axe to grind, you think less of the author. You know that there's another side to the story. So if you're too hurtful, it's us that come across as bad. There's a way to tell it with humor and grace and have an ability to rise above.
How much truth can you handle? How much truth can your readers handle? It's easier to write about difficult people when they are not alive. But some family members can't handle anything that's not pleasant.
how do you handle personal or family skeletons?
"If you can't get rid of a family skeleton, you might as well make it dance." George Bernard Shaw.
It's a balancing act. Weigh these things:
Its importance to your story.
Writing about children is harder than about people who have gone before, because children still have their lives ahead of them and the promise of repentance.
What is your purpose in writing this story? Are you trying to purge guilt, or vent, or lay blame - selfish purposes, or are you trying to share with family, etc?
Who is your audience?
Your family - what kind of damage can you do?
The tone - are you striking out, blaming, putting labels on people?
Be fair. They often have reasons for being the way they are. Talk about motivations, contributing factors. Show both sides of someone, showing the negative and the good.
Your tolerance for criticism, rejection, or disinheritance.
You get as many chances as you want to get it right. You can write all the junk for therapeutic purposes, then let it sit. Maybe give it to a trusted person to review, see if you can make it gentler.
Tell the truth with love. Look at your motives, find grace and forgiveness, but don't hedge. Keep integrity.
Writing exercise: identify traits and their opposites. What would be the benefit of having that trait?
Get your facts right. What you hear from rumor that's been passed down, make sure there's validation for it.
Avoid moralizing. Stay off the soapbox, labeling people and acting more righteous than people. Remember the generational differences because what is acceptable at one time may not be in another.
Let readers form their own conclusions. Put it out there and don't put a judgment on it.
How much truth should you tell about yourself? Should you reveal things about your past that show you aren't perfect? They know you aren't perfect already. You don't need to show all the gory details - you will seem more human, you can show you've learned, grown.
Don't exaggerate.
Book recommendations:
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
The glass castle
All over but the shoutin'
This boy's life - Tobias Woolf
When I was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago
Begin with a hook. Start with something to grab the reader's attention. Put you in the action right at the very beginning.
Middles and endings make better beginnings. Your birth wasn't very interesting.
Begin at a high point. What has your life been about?
Or begin at a low point. Story is about how you got there, and how you got to where you are now.
Journeys are good beginnings, life-changing events. Book: On Gold Mountain by Lisa See.
More than just a hook
Your beginning establishes your style, tone, and theme if you have one.
Cut the clutter. Decide what's essential and what's not. Select incidents that demonstrate certain things, if you show too much you'll bore people. Make list of stories that must be told or outline or chronology or table of contents to keep you on track.
Don't overdo adjectives and adverbs.
Writing is not a McDonalds hamburger. The cooking is slow, and in the beginning you don't know if you're getting a roast, a banquet or a lamb chop. Anne Lamott
Get a pair of fresh eyes to read your story. It's a lonely business, and you don't know how you're doing. You need someone to give you objective reactions.
By writing your story, you'll see you had a meaningful life.
Being Enough, Knowing Enough, Doing Enough
By Kathy Headlee, CEO of Mothers Without Borders
Mark 5:36
Ask myself what does this have to do with me?
As we make changes in our lives, we can change the world, nothing is the same again.
sometimes we withhold praise, compliments, love - why? Why do we
sometimes give and sometimes withhold?
Satan's plan was a plan of fear, God's plan was a plan of love.
Fear is:
discouragement
despair
anxiety
jealousy
anger
resentment
worry
criticism
hatred
contention
hard hearted
unforgiving
apathy
inaction
selfishness
greed
scarcity
Love is:
hope
joy
kindness
compassion
mercy
laughter
empathy
understanding
forgiveness
patience
courage
insight
enlightenment
wisdom
possibility
peace
humility
When you feel any of these things, you are feeling either fear or love. Contention comes from a fear-based place.
Satan tells us we can do enough, we don’t have enough, we will never be enough - why did we choose this plan anyhow, there is no way you can be enough, no way you can do enough.
Perilous times trigger fear. People who suffer understand the love of god, they live with faith.
d&c 104:14-17 - there is enough and to spare - there is enough love, enough atonement, money, food, we have to believe it and live it. It is our nature to operate from a space of love.
When you get in a place of fear, remember who you are, who they are, whose you are, and remembering will take you to a place of love. Forgetting takes you to fear.
What things can I do in my life that will help me to remember?
Honest prayer, humbly, earnestly.
Reading scriptures.
Serving.
ask where you need to go, direction to whom you can help, it's usually for your benefit.
3 Nephi 27:27, mosiah 3:19 - these divine attributes can't be learned sitting in a classroom, we have to live through them, they can't be developed in a hurry. We need clinical experience - those things through which we are asked to pass. (Maxwell)
how can we be more like god by acting through a position of love?
We have to act patient in order to become patient, act loving to become loving, but the goal is to be that kind of person, loving and patient.
we don't need to feel discouraged that we can't do enough - our feet need to be firmly planted on the path of service (Monson).
Each time we act upon god's love through us, it is transformational to us and to those we act towards.
In serving, comes remembering
remembering who we are and whose we are dispels fear
fear breeds inaction
remember that faith and fear cannot exist in the same mind at the same time
be not afraid, only believe
Isaiah 41:10
2 kings 6:16
2 timothy 1:7
1 john 4:18
Kathy started the group Mothers Without Borders, a charity that goes to third world countries to give aid to mothers and children. I've heard of the group before and have always wished I could join them. I don't know why I feel that way so strongly, but I've always wanted to help in that way. I feel guilty, because certainly there would be plenty of needy children in, for example, America - I don't need to go to some foreign country to help people, and why am I not actively engaged in helping people here? I don't know, but to be honest, there is something about the abject poverty and wretched circumstances that put America's poor to shame.
Anyhow, she told several stories and showed pictures of these women dying of AIDS - one had a little baby who looked just like Darcey's age, who is also dying, and I think I haven't stopped crying yet. I need to be there, I need to help, because there is so much pain there that I just can't fix.
Her message was one of hope and love, that even though we can't fix the world, we can make the world better in our own way, by loving the people we are around and praying to have the Lord direct our actions so we can bless the lives of others. But it was still hard to watch and not have my heart break into a zillion pieces. I want to be there so badly. I want to take my children to see the way millions of people live, to give them some perspective when they say "There's nothing to eat in this house!" It's going to take me a whole day to gear myself up to go back to that class.
Wednesday – Be Hopeful, Be Happy – A Conscious Choice
No place for guilt unless sin involved, go to a place of gratitude instead. Ask if you could be doing more, saying more, if not, be grateful instead and ask the Lord to give you gratitude.
If you chose hope, you are choosing love. It also brings hopefulness into others lives you touch.
Let other people know that they can return to Heavenly Father - have confidence in them, tell them they can do the things they need to do.
Hope - being hopeful and being happy is a conscious choice
Look up scriptures that talk about hope
Ether 12:4 - not just hope for eternal world, but hope for better world today
Heavenly Father sent us here with hope, knowing we were coming to a fear-based world. All things work for good for those who love the lord, and we can have confidence in that.
Maxwell quote: it's okay for us to not know everything (1n11:17) "then as immortals possessed of immortal principles we can overcome the mortal trials and we can put the pressing things of the day in precious perspective."
We shouldn't glibly explain away our problems; admit it's okay to not know the answers to the hard questions. Don't
assume you know, go to the Lord and tell him you don't know; ask for help and for answers.
It's okay for a problem to be too big to handle alone. It's okay for a problem to be serious, the Lord will help us.
Everyone in Africa is either infected or affected by AIDS - and we should be affected too.
Other people's fear can trigger your fear, so be aware when someone else shows fear stay in a place of love.
It's okay for us to have difficult trials because we have hope and faith in Jesus Christ to save us, to help us.
6,000 children a day become orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.
Jesus Christ is where our hope needs to come from. Through him our hearts will be made whole, our suffering will be healed.
My thoughts:
The second day didn’t get any easier. The class ended with a slideshow of photos taken in Africa. The artist Liz Lemon Swindle came to Zambia to paint a picture of Jesus among the children of Africa, and they brought a man who was a model of Jesus Christ. The pictures of this man with these children were exactly what you would picture Christ looking like with these children. He was tender, he was loving, he smiled and laughed and loved them. I was overwhelmed with the thought that these babies are just as precious as my babies. Why would we think that we are any better, any more special than they are? The lord loves those children just as much as my children, and in a way that makes them my children too. I am overwhelmed with love for these children and the desire to do anything I can to help them. The spirit is working on me so hard that it’s difficult to keep coming to this class. I really don't want to come back so that I can stop feeling so much love and pain for them.
Friday: Be the Change You Wish to See in the World
we need to love the people that the Lord has put in your path. Whatever you do and whomever you love, the Lord is pleased, and it is equal in his eyes. All I have to do is walk my path and love who crosses my path.
What are some of the changes you want to see in the world? The world for you might be your home, your community, you marriage, your ward, or a global level. What is the Lord saying to me, where should I focus? D&c 45:26. 88:91, Luke 21:9.
It doesn't matter if it's "the last days" because it's always my last days and I have to live that way.
Matthew the love of many will wax cold and peace will be taken from the earth.
Heavenly father knew that this would be the condition of the world we live in, and sent us here anyway, sent us here on purpose, knowing it would be okay and we would be up to the challenge.
moses 7:41 - Enoch, all eternity shook when he saw our day, bitterness of soul and refused to be comforted. We feel that way when we hear about people suffering. When we open our hearts and eyes to these things, it hurts, but we ask God to guide us. His answer to us would be to love. We can't fix it, but we can be an instrument in his hands.
There is more priesthood and temples than ever in the history of man. The heavens have been opened, there is a lot to rejoicE of. We don't have to be scared because our love is bigger than the bad things we are seeing.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is producing orphans on a scale unrivaled in world history. These children are meant to be raised in families. There is no coincidence that the family proclamation came forth at the same time as this crisis.
Every 14 seconds, a child loses a parent to aids. Today, 6,100 children will become orphans as a result of this holocaust. There are 43 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa alone. If we were alive during the Jewish holocaust, would we have done anything to stop it? We'd like to think so, but we're in the middle of the greatest holocaust in the history of man, and we are in a position to make a change.
80% of people infected with aids are women and children.
Even if the only thing you can do is pray, that's enough - open your heart to ask for heavenly father to help those of his children who are suffering.
D&c 104:17 - there is enough and to spare. Heavenly father will not direct you to give more than you can handle. You can't give enough love.
Book: end of poverty - there are enough resources in the world to provide for everyone.
Ask heavenly father: is this your job or my job? There is no way to help everyone, so how do you choose? The lord will tell you which people it is our job to help, and which are the Lord's job.
Mourn with those that mourn, but don't question the time of death. He won't take anyone one nanosecond before he's ready to welcome us home. We can't fix everything. The time between birth and death is given to man.
matt 6:8
2 Nephi 9:20
words of Mormon 1:7
Helaman 8:8
Abraham 2:8
things might be a surprise to us, but the lord was expecting it and is ready to direct us.
Elder Holland may 1996 talk - a handful of meal and a little oil.
Mark 5:36
Ask myself what does this have to do with me?
As we make changes in our lives, we can change the world, nothing is the same again.
sometimes we withhold praise, compliments, love - why? Why do we
sometimes give and sometimes withhold?
Satan's plan was a plan of fear, God's plan was a plan of love.
Fear is:
discouragement
despair
anxiety
jealousy
anger
resentment
worry
criticism
hatred
contention
hard hearted
unforgiving
apathy
inaction
selfishness
greed
scarcity
Love is:
hope
joy
kindness
compassion
mercy
laughter
empathy
understanding
forgiveness
patience
courage
insight
enlightenment
wisdom
possibility
peace
humility
When you feel any of these things, you are feeling either fear or love. Contention comes from a fear-based place.
Satan tells us we can do enough, we don’t have enough, we will never be enough - why did we choose this plan anyhow, there is no way you can be enough, no way you can do enough.
Perilous times trigger fear. People who suffer understand the love of god, they live with faith.
d&c 104:14-17 - there is enough and to spare - there is enough love, enough atonement, money, food, we have to believe it and live it. It is our nature to operate from a space of love.
When you get in a place of fear, remember who you are, who they are, whose you are, and remembering will take you to a place of love. Forgetting takes you to fear.
What things can I do in my life that will help me to remember?
Honest prayer, humbly, earnestly.
Reading scriptures.
Serving.
ask where you need to go, direction to whom you can help, it's usually for your benefit.
3 Nephi 27:27, mosiah 3:19 - these divine attributes can't be learned sitting in a classroom, we have to live through them, they can't be developed in a hurry. We need clinical experience - those things through which we are asked to pass. (Maxwell)
how can we be more like god by acting through a position of love?
We have to act patient in order to become patient, act loving to become loving, but the goal is to be that kind of person, loving and patient.
we don't need to feel discouraged that we can't do enough - our feet need to be firmly planted on the path of service (Monson).
Each time we act upon god's love through us, it is transformational to us and to those we act towards.
In serving, comes remembering
remembering who we are and whose we are dispels fear
fear breeds inaction
remember that faith and fear cannot exist in the same mind at the same time
be not afraid, only believe
Isaiah 41:10
2 kings 6:16
2 timothy 1:7
1 john 4:18
Kathy started the group Mothers Without Borders, a charity that goes to third world countries to give aid to mothers and children. I've heard of the group before and have always wished I could join them. I don't know why I feel that way so strongly, but I've always wanted to help in that way. I feel guilty, because certainly there would be plenty of needy children in, for example, America - I don't need to go to some foreign country to help people, and why am I not actively engaged in helping people here? I don't know, but to be honest, there is something about the abject poverty and wretched circumstances that put America's poor to shame.
Anyhow, she told several stories and showed pictures of these women dying of AIDS - one had a little baby who looked just like Darcey's age, who is also dying, and I think I haven't stopped crying yet. I need to be there, I need to help, because there is so much pain there that I just can't fix.
Her message was one of hope and love, that even though we can't fix the world, we can make the world better in our own way, by loving the people we are around and praying to have the Lord direct our actions so we can bless the lives of others. But it was still hard to watch and not have my heart break into a zillion pieces. I want to be there so badly. I want to take my children to see the way millions of people live, to give them some perspective when they say "There's nothing to eat in this house!" It's going to take me a whole day to gear myself up to go back to that class.
Wednesday – Be Hopeful, Be Happy – A Conscious Choice
No place for guilt unless sin involved, go to a place of gratitude instead. Ask if you could be doing more, saying more, if not, be grateful instead and ask the Lord to give you gratitude.
If you chose hope, you are choosing love. It also brings hopefulness into others lives you touch.
Let other people know that they can return to Heavenly Father - have confidence in them, tell them they can do the things they need to do.
Hope - being hopeful and being happy is a conscious choice
Look up scriptures that talk about hope
Ether 12:4 - not just hope for eternal world, but hope for better world today
Heavenly Father sent us here with hope, knowing we were coming to a fear-based world. All things work for good for those who love the lord, and we can have confidence in that.
Maxwell quote: it's okay for us to not know everything (1n11:17) "then as immortals possessed of immortal principles we can overcome the mortal trials and we can put the pressing things of the day in precious perspective."
We shouldn't glibly explain away our problems; admit it's okay to not know the answers to the hard questions. Don't
assume you know, go to the Lord and tell him you don't know; ask for help and for answers.
It's okay for a problem to be too big to handle alone. It's okay for a problem to be serious, the Lord will help us.
Everyone in Africa is either infected or affected by AIDS - and we should be affected too.
Other people's fear can trigger your fear, so be aware when someone else shows fear stay in a place of love.
It's okay for us to have difficult trials because we have hope and faith in Jesus Christ to save us, to help us.
6,000 children a day become orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.
Jesus Christ is where our hope needs to come from. Through him our hearts will be made whole, our suffering will be healed.
My thoughts:
The second day didn’t get any easier. The class ended with a slideshow of photos taken in Africa. The artist Liz Lemon Swindle came to Zambia to paint a picture of Jesus among the children of Africa, and they brought a man who was a model of Jesus Christ. The pictures of this man with these children were exactly what you would picture Christ looking like with these children. He was tender, he was loving, he smiled and laughed and loved them. I was overwhelmed with the thought that these babies are just as precious as my babies. Why would we think that we are any better, any more special than they are? The lord loves those children just as much as my children, and in a way that makes them my children too. I am overwhelmed with love for these children and the desire to do anything I can to help them. The spirit is working on me so hard that it’s difficult to keep coming to this class. I really don't want to come back so that I can stop feeling so much love and pain for them.
Friday: Be the Change You Wish to See in the World
we need to love the people that the Lord has put in your path. Whatever you do and whomever you love, the Lord is pleased, and it is equal in his eyes. All I have to do is walk my path and love who crosses my path.
What are some of the changes you want to see in the world? The world for you might be your home, your community, you marriage, your ward, or a global level. What is the Lord saying to me, where should I focus? D&c 45:26. 88:91, Luke 21:9.
It doesn't matter if it's "the last days" because it's always my last days and I have to live that way.
Matthew the love of many will wax cold and peace will be taken from the earth.
Heavenly father knew that this would be the condition of the world we live in, and sent us here anyway, sent us here on purpose, knowing it would be okay and we would be up to the challenge.
moses 7:41 - Enoch, all eternity shook when he saw our day, bitterness of soul and refused to be comforted. We feel that way when we hear about people suffering. When we open our hearts and eyes to these things, it hurts, but we ask God to guide us. His answer to us would be to love. We can't fix it, but we can be an instrument in his hands.
There is more priesthood and temples than ever in the history of man. The heavens have been opened, there is a lot to rejoicE of. We don't have to be scared because our love is bigger than the bad things we are seeing.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is producing orphans on a scale unrivaled in world history. These children are meant to be raised in families. There is no coincidence that the family proclamation came forth at the same time as this crisis.
Every 14 seconds, a child loses a parent to aids. Today, 6,100 children will become orphans as a result of this holocaust. There are 43 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa alone. If we were alive during the Jewish holocaust, would we have done anything to stop it? We'd like to think so, but we're in the middle of the greatest holocaust in the history of man, and we are in a position to make a change.
80% of people infected with aids are women and children.
Even if the only thing you can do is pray, that's enough - open your heart to ask for heavenly father to help those of his children who are suffering.
D&c 104:17 - there is enough and to spare. Heavenly father will not direct you to give more than you can handle. You can't give enough love.
Book: end of poverty - there are enough resources in the world to provide for everyone.
Ask heavenly father: is this your job or my job? There is no way to help everyone, so how do you choose? The lord will tell you which people it is our job to help, and which are the Lord's job.
Mourn with those that mourn, but don't question the time of death. He won't take anyone one nanosecond before he's ready to welcome us home. We can't fix everything. The time between birth and death is given to man.
matt 6:8
2 Nephi 9:20
words of Mormon 1:7
Helaman 8:8
Abraham 2:8
things might be a surprise to us, but the lord was expecting it and is ready to direct us.
Elder Holland may 1996 talk - a handful of meal and a little oil.
Ed Week Tuesday
Okay, for the sake of readability, I'm going to make each class it's own entry, and then when (if) I attend that class again, I'll just update that entry with the new day's notes.
Man, today was a long day. Great, but long. I forgot to pack a sandwich and all of my classes were at the farther end of campus where there were no food places, so all I ate all day was Fiber One bars. I am paying the price now, my stomach is killing me. I didn't want to sacrifice a class so I could sit alone somewhere and eat for an hour and a half. I'll come up with a better plan tomorrow.
On a positive note, I was quite proud of myself for not getting lost the whole day! I had to use the map, but I pretty much always knew where I was and how to get where I wanted to go. The only minor difficulties were when I forgot which building I was in and attempted to orient myself from the wrong place, and three times when there was a building in between me and the place I wanted to be, so I accidentally walked the longest way around. I walked around three sides of the Marriott Center before I got to the parking lot where my car was, and at the end of the day that is pure torture. Oh, and when I got there, I found the black, squishy banana that I meant to bring to supplement my Fiber One diet. If you ever want to speed-ripen a banana, leave it in the car on a 95+degree day. Just a little tip from me to you.
Enjoy the class notes, I'm almost intimidated by having three more days of this - I think my mind and body will both collapse by the end!
Man, today was a long day. Great, but long. I forgot to pack a sandwich and all of my classes were at the farther end of campus where there were no food places, so all I ate all day was Fiber One bars. I am paying the price now, my stomach is killing me. I didn't want to sacrifice a class so I could sit alone somewhere and eat for an hour and a half. I'll come up with a better plan tomorrow.
On a positive note, I was quite proud of myself for not getting lost the whole day! I had to use the map, but I pretty much always knew where I was and how to get where I wanted to go. The only minor difficulties were when I forgot which building I was in and attempted to orient myself from the wrong place, and three times when there was a building in between me and the place I wanted to be, so I accidentally walked the longest way around. I walked around three sides of the Marriott Center before I got to the parking lot where my car was, and at the end of the day that is pure torture. Oh, and when I got there, I found the black, squishy banana that I meant to bring to supplement my Fiber One diet. If you ever want to speed-ripen a banana, leave it in the car on a 95+degree day. Just a little tip from me to you.
Enjoy the class notes, I'm almost intimidated by having three more days of this - I think my mind and body will both collapse by the end!
Monday, August 18, 2008
Watch Out - Here Comes Education Week
Maybe you didn't ask for this, but it's coming your way anyhow: a week of reports from this years Education Week at BYU! Today I attended, with my friend Rachel, from 8:30-4:05, and I ended up with 16 pages of notes from three classes. The first was 2 hours with Marie Ricks, teaching a fantastic class about Home Organization. Next was one hour from S. Michael Wilcox, about raising a generation that never falls away. Rachel's opinion: it was like Sunday School, mostly straight doctrine, not so much personality. (In fact, I think our Sunday School teacher is more interesting than this guy, I know Wilcox is a big name, but he didn't do it for me.) The last three hours were beyond-fantastic, a series of classes by Scott Anderson about the importance of relationships. Rachel isn't joining me for the rest of the week, but this class was sufficiently awesome that she doesn't think she'll miss much.
For you brave ones, here it is in all it's long, typo-ed glory. I expect those of you who finish the whole thing to brag about it in the comments!
Marie Ricks, Home Organization
Why do we arrive everywhere feeling flustered?
We have too much, do too much and spend too much.
If we will learn to be 10% more organized (2 seconds from a 20 second task) we will gain 90 minutes a day.
We need a marathon organization weekend.
Get rid of half of everything we personally own. Half of what we own is too big, too small, to ugly, to in disrepair. Less is always more.
We tend to be involved in an addiction - accumulation, acquire addiction
1. Get rid of half of your stuff.
2. Worm principle - dirt comes in, dirt goes out - nothing stays inside. Stay current. The lord will provide what you need in the future. What I need I will keep, what I don't need, I will share
1. If things are useful and needed I will keep it, up to 50%
2. If it is useful or not needed, give it away or throw away.
The gospel requires us not to bury our talent but to share it. We have homes so full of stuff that we don't use that we literally bury our head in our stuff. We must unvelcro ourselves from our stuff. There is power in getting rid of your things.
Kids - we must teach those we are with. When children have less they attach better. The lord does not desire us to be the trash can of the neighborhood. Wee keep just in case - we must have a limit of the things we keep "just in case" (one drawer of plastic bags, one small stack of empty cool whip containers.)
What about books? Give away half. Keep what's vital what's useful in our lives. We will be liberated. The lord can't bless us enough when we don't keep what we don't need.
We are the stewards, not the treasure house.
2 exceptions - photos, family history. Keep it until you can organize it and pass it on.
We will always be swimming upstream in our quest to be organized. Nature tends to be chaotic.
Personal bedroom, personal room must be cleaned first in order to function.
Office - put all paper in boxes on the floor so your desk is clean.
2. Then spend a month (or 12) going through the boxes. Then go on a paper fast. Only bring bills into your house, no magazines, no newspapers.
3. Only keep one month's ensign. If you haven't read it, say a guilty prayer of repentance then share it.
4. Group papers. Have a place for bills, for receipts. No longer come in the home and put things down, come in and put things away. Group like with like.
5. Discard whatever you don't need. Congregate and group so habits are firmly establish for retrieval. How do we put away things to make retrieving it easier?
Nothing in your closet but what you love, nothing on your desk but what you need.
Pray for skills and courage to share. It's hard to give away things, but the lord will help you.
The law of stewardship - we would do better now to share than to keep it just in case. We will have a renewed empowerment to enjoy life.
We collect or keep possessions because there is something on the other side of the wall of clutter that we don't want to address. The clutter does not help, it hinders. Empower yourself so you can better deal with the pain of your life.
Routines
Where can we multiply our tools so wee can function at a higher level. Look at how each routine in your life can be a pattern of progress. Routines should not be frustrating, sometimes they don't function. It's the little things that drive us nuts, those things need to change.
-For me, I need to change my morning routine.
Include in the order of your life to include journaling, scripture study, exercise, prayer. When we do it right, it always works better. What do I need to tweak in the morning routine so that the rest of my day goes smoother? Change 10% to save 90 minutes a day.
Organization in our callings
The lord gives us callings we don't like to prove how humorous he is. When you receive a new calling, accept it - it's the lord's next step in your life for growing, for healing. Never worry there's not enough time, the lord stretches you for it.
1. A binder - 10 dividers, what things are you going to look for regularly. A ward list, calendar, information. Pencil holder in front so you show up to meetings with the instruments to serve. Always date papers that come into your life so you know when the paper is obsolete. Organize so that if someone calls, you can answer the question easily.
Post it notes are convenient but deadly - things get written down then never get put where it needs to be.
Set up paperwork for our calling so we can set-up, record, retrieve, easily. If you have to keep obsolete papers, keep it in another binder.
Don't go to another calling meeting again without being fully prepared. Be orderly inside so you can serve better outside.
1. What questions need to be resolved, decisions to be made from those in the meeting?
2. What information are you lacking that you can get from the people at the meeting.
3. Go with the spirit of meeting assignments.
Always go to meetings early. Business is done in the 5 minutes before the meeting, so you are calm, so you are blessed, and settled in your mind. Being early when you are in a public setting will help you in your capacity to serve.
Don’t answer the phone 20 minutes before leaving the house, because important people always call right before. This way you can get places on time, you are in control, and you are organized and put together.
Order your life so you look the part. Dress one step higher than your mood and your need. Dress up. You have no idea how many people are watching you. You need to be composed and neatly dressed.
After the meeting, take the time to land. Put assignments on the calendar. Decide when you are going to do things. Put information into the places it needs to be.
paper is for remembering, the mind is for solving problems.
With kids, put the landing off until after the kids go to bed or whatever - a shelf just for things that haven't gotten taken care of.
How to delegate - let them know they will get a phone call halfway through, and then right before. Follow up more initially until you learn to trust, let them know you are a follow-upper until they are ready to fly. Schedule the calendar with your phone calls.
In our personal life, all of us want to save the world, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and we don't know how to do it. Choose one thing to do so you are doing something to learn, to save the world.
Marie Ricks, Hour 2
When we're looking at a home, we fool people - clean what most people will see most of the time. Reorganize, clean up and clean out. You have to have less to organize.
Walk through the home and see what furniture you can share. It isn’t worth saving for the next generation, if it's not being used, then share it. Get rid of things so you can make your house your home. Keep it as cluttered as the temple, or a church house. Keep tools, not trinkets, because they will help. It's not the wiping that bugs us; it’s the lifting up and putting back down.
We only need places to sit and some decorations. It's okay to collect but only if it's in a useful state. Don't bring stuff home to repair.
Start with big pieces (furniture) and get rid of things. Your environment needs to reveal your current needs, not your past and not your future. The lord will provide you with things in the future.
Move from acquiring a possession to acquiring an experience. Keep in your life what your season reflects.
Your collections should grow to the size of a reasonable display. Then new things come in, let old ones go.
Keep your paper current in your home, shred it or toss it.
Wastebasket situation - the more organized, the more wastebaskets there are in each room. If a trashcan is available, people tend to throw it away not throw it down. Make wastebaskets a top priority so the trash gets moved out.
Hogs - a person who brings home everything they come across. Collecting things is okay, but they can keep in a personal treasury, but beyond that they have to remove things for each new thing they bring home. Too much is too much.
If you have a collection that is past useful in size, take a year and bring it back to the size of normalcy. Sometimes it is not worth going through it, it is better just to share it and start over again. Assign a size/area, and then when it is full give away things as new ones are bought.
Garages - clean them out so there is room to organize and sort. Do you have the courage to bless someone's life with the things you need to share?
Whittle and weed with your children to bring the proportions down to reasonable size. A preschooler only needs 3 items of clothes. Remove opportunity for messes. Elementary, 5 items, high school 10 items (tops, 10 bottoms, 10 underwear and socks).
Help children share half of their things, day before birthday or Friday before thanksgiving.
If you love it, take lots of pictures and bury it the backyard, but there is great liberation in having less.
Doing small messes more often is better than doing big messes once in a while. Always be teaching the principles. Pick it up, don't pass it by. If it's yours always take it to a place of finish. If it's borrowed, return it.
Teach principle of finishing first in the bathroom - teach to close lid, then wipe down sink, then hang up towels, then put clothes in hamper. One skill at a time. Teach to finish, always be moving to a place of finish.
What tools can we use to deal with this paperwork? What systems can we use to deal with paperwork? Routines - when will paperwork be filed, bills be paid, etc. Employ a routine to deal with the paperwork.
Most women have forgotten the title of mother, instead of maid. We need to work ourselves out of a job, teach them train them, follow up, reward tem compliment them, make it part of living in the home. Train, counsel, support others.
Our house must be a temple. We can control the clutter. When we control that, we make our home a haven, we can better cope with pressures in our life.
Teach them to finish so housework, homework will be reduced by half.
Decide not to keep what you don't need even if you have room for it.
Have in your home things you want the savior to see, to sit down on. Move it to order and beauty will naturally follow.
Order in the family
The law of firsts - as you lay the foundation of your family, first, teach children to pray. Brings order to spiritual life. Personal prayer, then family.
Next, scriptures as part of their vocabulary. There is power in the scriptures in your children’s lives. You ordered your world to include scriptures.
Work with your children to regularly journal. Let them write what is in their heart. Teaches them to be grateful and to channel their prayers.
Monday night is fhe. This will order your life in the lord's way. Have it every single week.
1st Sunday is fast Sunday. Teach that to children who cannot fast, that we do it to be obedient.
Teach them the importance of temple attendance and attend regularly.
Do these things, even if you do it alone. Fast, attend temple, etc even if you don't have support f a spouse.
All family members must contribute to order in the home by having responsibilities. If you live in the house, you contribute to the house. Create an environment that work ethic is important. No one escapes, no one is a guest. Part of living and being happy is to work.
Service needs to be an ever-present part of their resume. Teach them to serve the sick (write a get well card) keeps them aware of others who might miss church.
Serve in family history. Maybe just a picture on the fridge or a story.
Straight service. Short, easy, anonymous. Pick up trash on the street; pick dandelions from the church, small things. You don't have to do everything, but you have to do something.
Food and home storage. Teach skills, learn to eat wheat, practice knots or whatever.
Work with children so that the bedroom that they live in becomes their mini-home and becomes something they are proud to live in. Help them to have a room that can be organized. Do they have tools to be organized? Do they have a system to keep it clean? Do they have a routine to keep their room organized?
Small incremental 10% improvement is all we need.
S. Michael Wilcox
The Rising Generation - Children who never fall away
The essence of celestial kingdom is relationships.
Passing on what we've learned to the next generation - how to raise children who never fall away. (Anti-nephi-lehis - whose children are the stripling warriors.)?
Use scriptures as parental counsel. God did not have success with all his children but he gave us lessons to help us.
Alma the younger as a father, lehi and Jacob and Abraham as fathers also.
Alma 35 - 9 chapters as a father, king Benjamin teaches his children before he teaches his people
Judges v8, 12 - Samson - asking the lord how to raise the child
Lecture on faith - stirred up the faith of multitudes to feel after god, to search after a knowledge of his attributes, until they became extensively acquainted with him, behold his glory, stand in his presence.
That's what we want for our children, to be extensively acquainted with god. That's what god wants from us, to stir up the faith of our children.
How do we do that? How do we stir up the faith of our child? Verse 56 of lecture on faith - it is human testimony that stirs up their minds, and the credence they gave to the testimony, inspired them to inquire after god and led to glorious discoveries and eternal certainty.
Testimony is the most important thing to give our children. They need to know what we know.
Nephi's greatest spiritual experience was his vision, which came because he asked to see what his father saw.
Jacob and enos - enos was hunting and was thinking about the words his father spake, and his soul hungered. He saw the joy of the saints, need to let our kids see the gospel is not a barbed wire fence keeping them from things they want, there's joy available. We give our kids thoughts that we float out on the water, but we want to give it weight so we often speak of these things, and the accumulation of things sinks deep in their heart.
Alma and Alma - he was in hell, and the teachings were there from his father so he knew whom to call on.
Stripling warriors and their parents - they did not doubt their mothers knew it. Not just taught it, but knew it.
Compare Alma the younger to David in o.t. - his problems with Bathsheba cripple him to his children, Alma can tell his children to repent as he did.
Alma 36 V2, 6 - do as I have done, as I have seen, as I do know, 29 - you ought (parent words) - teaching by example.
Child will walk in the footsteps of their father, if you want a child who is kind, be kind, if you want him to be patient, be patient.
If we teach a child to read but don't teach them how to choose good books, we've given Lucifer a weapon. Teach them to read the scriptures, read classics, read good books. Scriptures give them 6000 years of heroes to look towards. Alma 37 is power of the scriptures
1. Enlarge the memory - formerly called the book f remembrance - the things that god wants us to remember
2. Remember the error of their ways
3.
Mosiah ch 1 - Benjamin teaches his son the same things. Verse 2, taught them to read, to become men of understanding, 3, scriptures, otherwise suffers in ignorance
cs lewis suffered in grief from wife's death, had no knowledge of eternal families.
Scriptures described as a liahona, a sword, manna, a lamp
Don’t send your kids out into the wilderness without a compass, they will get lost. Life is a battle; don't send your kids out without a sword. Don't send your kids into the wilderness without manna; don't send them in the darkness without a lamp.
Poor Shiblon, the middle child - Helaman gets 2 chapters, Corianton gets 4, Shiblon gets 15 verses.
Chapter 38 is specific praise for specific things. He also lets his child know the joy that child brings. Validate experiences.
What do you do when you have to correct a child? Chapters 39-42 - great love, corrects doctrine because he knows doctrine
1.tell where they went wrong, what steps led up to the situation v.2 didn't give so much heed to my words
2.tell them the long and the short consequences of the action v.11, 13, 9, long term
3.tell them how to prevent the problem from reoccurring v.9 repent, forsake sins, take upon yourself to avoid sin
4. Always leave them with hope and forgiveness. v.19 preach coming of Christ, forgiveness
Scott Anderson Replenishing Relationships
We will retain our identity forever - wee get so caught up with the view of life from birth until now, instead of viewing ourselves as infinite, as eternal.
D&c 93:38 - every spirit was innocent
We were tempted in pre-mortal life; it was a war in heaven that's a strong word for what happened.
In premortality we
Had agency
Sinned
Progressed
Repented
Used the atonement
With all that, how much does your spirit know? It has already gone through all of that, we are more remarkable and experienced than we know. Elder oaks tells us we bring traces of our premortal selves
The adversary whispers in our ears n Nephi 28:20
He tells us how much of a failure you are
If the savior could stand in front of us, he would tell us how much he loves us and wants to bless us.
Alma the younger - what did the angel say to Alma? To this rebellious struggling young man, he said, remember how merciful god is, how much he blesses your family - he said remember.
We need to be able to receive what the lord wants to give us. Remembering is the first step. Moroni 10:3. It's hard to remember how merciful he's been this week, and we are supposed to remember his mercy through all of history. He keeps a tender mercies journal of the things that the lord has blessed him with. It's a way to remember.
Focus on a different blessing every day, so we can open a conduit to receive words of the lord.
Matthew 22:36-39
Love the lord thy god, love thy neighbor as thyself - this is the entire purpose of earth life, and it is all couched in relationships.
Moses 7 - the lord wanted us to love each other and to choose me, their father
Expectations
1 Nephi 8:4-12
lehi saw a dark and dreary waste, he saw a glorious being in white, he experiences the dreariness of mortal life - he was sent to the tree, which is Jesus Christ - there are some things we can never get from mortal relationships and if we need to get them from mortals we will always be disappointed.
2 Nephi 4:17-18 & 34 - only spiritually receptive people recognize their weaknesses, Nephi is the only one who calls himself a wretched man, not his wretched brothers.
Nephi went to the lord to make himself feel better, not his wife, it's not her job to make him happy, it's the lord.
Why does god love you? Not because you’re good, because he's good. We have the capacity to love like god, when they aren't meeting your needs anymore.
attitude is the symptom of what's the matter, laman even obeys, prays when things are good, when things are bad he melts into a puddle because he doesn’t know the mysteries of god. That's the real difference. Nephi could see god's hand in his life. He loves his brothers enough to still want to save them when they want to kill him. It isn't reciprocal love, he has the capacity to love as god does. Ch. 16 v 7 - check the footnote. The daughter of Ishmael.
Nephi talks about wading through affliction, verse 2, praises god for the blessings on him. The wife has milk for the baby, she is starting to stop complaining, he recognizes god's hand so he has a greater capacity to truly love.
lamoni kills people when they lose their sheep, after a week of preaching he tells his people he'll never do it again, it changed his capacity to love his people. They would not kill again because Jesus Christ changed them.
The sacrament is meant so that we can create a two-way covenant, we covenant and so does he - he's promising to be there for us, to help us, to give us capacity to love and to be a better parent.
Hour 2
Moses 7:26
oneness
3 Nephi 19:22-23
john 17:20-21
genesis 2:24-25
what does a perfect resurrected person pray for? Us. That he can give us his oneness, we can be one with him.
Adam and eve were commanded to be one with each other.
Truth can make us free, if we live truth, we receive light. That is the point of intelligence, the glory of god is intelligence or in other words light and truth d&c 93:36,37
someday you will be coupled with eternal joy, which you do not now enjoy.
Dc 93:39 - Satan takes away light and truth because of disobedience and traditions of our fathers.
Dc 123:7 - adversary's goal is to destroy your relationships with god, extended family (angels), ourselves, spouses, children - god takes creeds and rivets them on their hearts, Satan wants to separate us from all of these. because of this, the world is filled with confusion, growing stronger and stronger, is the mainspring of all corruption, whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity.
The adversary wants to separate us from each other, is trying to destroy relationships on the earth.
Mosiah 26:22-4
what's harmony? Blending extreme differences, not being the same. It's not being in unison, harmony creates depth, richness.
Mosiah 26:2-4
did not believe
could not understand or feel
would not behave
we try to change the behavior, not the way we believe, understand or feel
we can change behavior faster by studying doctrine than by studying behavior.
If we are blocked from understanding or feeling, we are blocked from revelation. We will see differently, feel differently, and then our behavior is easier to change.
This is Alma the younger. He s unconscious to show that all he changed was his beliefs, not his behavior. The tragedy of Alma was not his behavior, it is the beliefs about himself that led to the behavior.
can you believe you are hopeless if you honestly believe that Jesus Christ will make your weaknesses your strengths? If you believe in the atonement, you can't be hopeless.
Alma’s belief changes by these steps: Alma 36:11-21
recognize the false belief
examine its influence
find a true belief to replace it
seek spiritual help
apply the new belief
we have creeds riveted on our hearts that limits us in our capacity to receive. Jesus Christ is able to unrivet false beliefs and make us whole.
happy couples make differences their strengths. The hardest parts of a relationship might be very close to a point of great growth.
You don't have to believe the same, you just have to understand. It opens you up, broadens you.
Communication and loving behavior, both high. Communication without loving behavior is no good - loving behavior is the most important thing.
favorite marriage scripture 2 Nephi 2:11 - opposition in all things
oneness can't happen without the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost knows our spouse perfectly and knows us perfectly and can bridge the two people.
we judge each other’s behavior by our own beliefs. We aren't ever right when we do that. The pattern is we describe what we think it means, and the misunderstanding continues.
dealing with differences
3 Nephi 14:1-2 judge not that ye be not judged - (3 Nephi 11-13 relationship with god)
one of the most challenging ideas, to not judge someone from our own beliefs - we need the holy ghost to help, we need to ask "what does that mean to you"
seek first to understand, then to be understood
3 Nephi 14:3-5 here's how to do it - before you correct anybody, look at yourself first and make sure you know what you're really seeing
conversation inviting change
1. define the problem without blame, unified front, Satan wants to divide us, make us correct people
2. Each partner shares what he/she is doing to maintain the problem
3. Each partner suggests something he/she could do to improve the problem. When you first work on issues, don't elaborate on the other person's problems.
4. Implement and evaluate
we can't be responsible to remove all the negative from each other’s life. As soon as we get the answers life changes. We can be in charge of the positive. 5 positives for every negative to keep the balance in a relationship. We can put positive in our relationship.
Give the perfect gift for the one receiving it. The lord will help us give each other meaningful relationship gifts that are right for the person who receives it.
What if we kept a tender mercies journal about each child, or their spouse, how that person has blessed them that day.
Hour 3
d&c 25 - what delights his soul
d&c 19 - Christ’s role - I will suffer for you, all you need to do is change and I will do the rest. I will make a covenant with you as long as you know
d&c 18:10 worth of souls, determined by price that was paid for it. How great was his joy when you accept it, plus we get joy when we bring others.
he weaves our lives together so that we can have joy together. The only way we can all benefit from each other's spiritual gift if we share it with each other.
D&c 45 -
1 Nephi 22:26 - through righteousness, bind Satan
1 Nephi 14:12 - church is all over the earth v 14 - power of god descends on church, the power is his capacity to love
children express their most difficult emotion to their safest relationship. Who else absorbed pain and grief and gave love back? Who else took upon himself the role to be giver of peace, transmitter of love? We take upon us the opportunity to show Christ like love. We aren't failures if our children have been angry with us. Alma the elder mosiah 26:15-20 - god comforts Alma while he is struggling with a wayward son.
For you brave ones, here it is in all it's long, typo-ed glory. I expect those of you who finish the whole thing to brag about it in the comments!
Marie Ricks, Home Organization
Why do we arrive everywhere feeling flustered?
We have too much, do too much and spend too much.
If we will learn to be 10% more organized (2 seconds from a 20 second task) we will gain 90 minutes a day.
We need a marathon organization weekend.
Get rid of half of everything we personally own. Half of what we own is too big, too small, to ugly, to in disrepair. Less is always more.
We tend to be involved in an addiction - accumulation, acquire addiction
1. Get rid of half of your stuff.
2. Worm principle - dirt comes in, dirt goes out - nothing stays inside. Stay current. The lord will provide what you need in the future. What I need I will keep, what I don't need, I will share
1. If things are useful and needed I will keep it, up to 50%
2. If it is useful or not needed, give it away or throw away.
The gospel requires us not to bury our talent but to share it. We have homes so full of stuff that we don't use that we literally bury our head in our stuff. We must unvelcro ourselves from our stuff. There is power in getting rid of your things.
Kids - we must teach those we are with. When children have less they attach better. The lord does not desire us to be the trash can of the neighborhood. Wee keep just in case - we must have a limit of the things we keep "just in case" (one drawer of plastic bags, one small stack of empty cool whip containers.)
What about books? Give away half. Keep what's vital what's useful in our lives. We will be liberated. The lord can't bless us enough when we don't keep what we don't need.
We are the stewards, not the treasure house.
2 exceptions - photos, family history. Keep it until you can organize it and pass it on.
We will always be swimming upstream in our quest to be organized. Nature tends to be chaotic.
Personal bedroom, personal room must be cleaned first in order to function.
Office - put all paper in boxes on the floor so your desk is clean.
2. Then spend a month (or 12) going through the boxes. Then go on a paper fast. Only bring bills into your house, no magazines, no newspapers.
3. Only keep one month's ensign. If you haven't read it, say a guilty prayer of repentance then share it.
4. Group papers. Have a place for bills, for receipts. No longer come in the home and put things down, come in and put things away. Group like with like.
5. Discard whatever you don't need. Congregate and group so habits are firmly establish for retrieval. How do we put away things to make retrieving it easier?
Nothing in your closet but what you love, nothing on your desk but what you need.
Pray for skills and courage to share. It's hard to give away things, but the lord will help you.
The law of stewardship - we would do better now to share than to keep it just in case. We will have a renewed empowerment to enjoy life.
We collect or keep possessions because there is something on the other side of the wall of clutter that we don't want to address. The clutter does not help, it hinders. Empower yourself so you can better deal with the pain of your life.
Routines
Where can we multiply our tools so wee can function at a higher level. Look at how each routine in your life can be a pattern of progress. Routines should not be frustrating, sometimes they don't function. It's the little things that drive us nuts, those things need to change.
-For me, I need to change my morning routine.
Include in the order of your life to include journaling, scripture study, exercise, prayer. When we do it right, it always works better. What do I need to tweak in the morning routine so that the rest of my day goes smoother? Change 10% to save 90 minutes a day.
Organization in our callings
The lord gives us callings we don't like to prove how humorous he is. When you receive a new calling, accept it - it's the lord's next step in your life for growing, for healing. Never worry there's not enough time, the lord stretches you for it.
1. A binder - 10 dividers, what things are you going to look for regularly. A ward list, calendar, information. Pencil holder in front so you show up to meetings with the instruments to serve. Always date papers that come into your life so you know when the paper is obsolete. Organize so that if someone calls, you can answer the question easily.
Post it notes are convenient but deadly - things get written down then never get put where it needs to be.
Set up paperwork for our calling so we can set-up, record, retrieve, easily. If you have to keep obsolete papers, keep it in another binder.
Don't go to another calling meeting again without being fully prepared. Be orderly inside so you can serve better outside.
1. What questions need to be resolved, decisions to be made from those in the meeting?
2. What information are you lacking that you can get from the people at the meeting.
3. Go with the spirit of meeting assignments.
Always go to meetings early. Business is done in the 5 minutes before the meeting, so you are calm, so you are blessed, and settled in your mind. Being early when you are in a public setting will help you in your capacity to serve.
Don’t answer the phone 20 minutes before leaving the house, because important people always call right before. This way you can get places on time, you are in control, and you are organized and put together.
Order your life so you look the part. Dress one step higher than your mood and your need. Dress up. You have no idea how many people are watching you. You need to be composed and neatly dressed.
After the meeting, take the time to land. Put assignments on the calendar. Decide when you are going to do things. Put information into the places it needs to be.
paper is for remembering, the mind is for solving problems.
With kids, put the landing off until after the kids go to bed or whatever - a shelf just for things that haven't gotten taken care of.
How to delegate - let them know they will get a phone call halfway through, and then right before. Follow up more initially until you learn to trust, let them know you are a follow-upper until they are ready to fly. Schedule the calendar with your phone calls.
In our personal life, all of us want to save the world, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and we don't know how to do it. Choose one thing to do so you are doing something to learn, to save the world.
Marie Ricks, Hour 2
When we're looking at a home, we fool people - clean what most people will see most of the time. Reorganize, clean up and clean out. You have to have less to organize.
Walk through the home and see what furniture you can share. It isn’t worth saving for the next generation, if it's not being used, then share it. Get rid of things so you can make your house your home. Keep it as cluttered as the temple, or a church house. Keep tools, not trinkets, because they will help. It's not the wiping that bugs us; it’s the lifting up and putting back down.
We only need places to sit and some decorations. It's okay to collect but only if it's in a useful state. Don't bring stuff home to repair.
Start with big pieces (furniture) and get rid of things. Your environment needs to reveal your current needs, not your past and not your future. The lord will provide you with things in the future.
Move from acquiring a possession to acquiring an experience. Keep in your life what your season reflects.
Your collections should grow to the size of a reasonable display. Then new things come in, let old ones go.
Keep your paper current in your home, shred it or toss it.
Wastebasket situation - the more organized, the more wastebaskets there are in each room. If a trashcan is available, people tend to throw it away not throw it down. Make wastebaskets a top priority so the trash gets moved out.
Hogs - a person who brings home everything they come across. Collecting things is okay, but they can keep in a personal treasury, but beyond that they have to remove things for each new thing they bring home. Too much is too much.
If you have a collection that is past useful in size, take a year and bring it back to the size of normalcy. Sometimes it is not worth going through it, it is better just to share it and start over again. Assign a size/area, and then when it is full give away things as new ones are bought.
Garages - clean them out so there is room to organize and sort. Do you have the courage to bless someone's life with the things you need to share?
Whittle and weed with your children to bring the proportions down to reasonable size. A preschooler only needs 3 items of clothes. Remove opportunity for messes. Elementary, 5 items, high school 10 items (tops, 10 bottoms, 10 underwear and socks).
Help children share half of their things, day before birthday or Friday before thanksgiving.
If you love it, take lots of pictures and bury it the backyard, but there is great liberation in having less.
Doing small messes more often is better than doing big messes once in a while. Always be teaching the principles. Pick it up, don't pass it by. If it's yours always take it to a place of finish. If it's borrowed, return it.
Teach principle of finishing first in the bathroom - teach to close lid, then wipe down sink, then hang up towels, then put clothes in hamper. One skill at a time. Teach to finish, always be moving to a place of finish.
What tools can we use to deal with this paperwork? What systems can we use to deal with paperwork? Routines - when will paperwork be filed, bills be paid, etc. Employ a routine to deal with the paperwork.
Most women have forgotten the title of mother, instead of maid. We need to work ourselves out of a job, teach them train them, follow up, reward tem compliment them, make it part of living in the home. Train, counsel, support others.
Our house must be a temple. We can control the clutter. When we control that, we make our home a haven, we can better cope with pressures in our life.
Teach them to finish so housework, homework will be reduced by half.
Decide not to keep what you don't need even if you have room for it.
Have in your home things you want the savior to see, to sit down on. Move it to order and beauty will naturally follow.
Order in the family
The law of firsts - as you lay the foundation of your family, first, teach children to pray. Brings order to spiritual life. Personal prayer, then family.
Next, scriptures as part of their vocabulary. There is power in the scriptures in your children’s lives. You ordered your world to include scriptures.
Work with your children to regularly journal. Let them write what is in their heart. Teaches them to be grateful and to channel their prayers.
Monday night is fhe. This will order your life in the lord's way. Have it every single week.
1st Sunday is fast Sunday. Teach that to children who cannot fast, that we do it to be obedient.
Teach them the importance of temple attendance and attend regularly.
Do these things, even if you do it alone. Fast, attend temple, etc even if you don't have support f a spouse.
All family members must contribute to order in the home by having responsibilities. If you live in the house, you contribute to the house. Create an environment that work ethic is important. No one escapes, no one is a guest. Part of living and being happy is to work.
Service needs to be an ever-present part of their resume. Teach them to serve the sick (write a get well card) keeps them aware of others who might miss church.
Serve in family history. Maybe just a picture on the fridge or a story.
Straight service. Short, easy, anonymous. Pick up trash on the street; pick dandelions from the church, small things. You don't have to do everything, but you have to do something.
Food and home storage. Teach skills, learn to eat wheat, practice knots or whatever.
Work with children so that the bedroom that they live in becomes their mini-home and becomes something they are proud to live in. Help them to have a room that can be organized. Do they have tools to be organized? Do they have a system to keep it clean? Do they have a routine to keep their room organized?
Small incremental 10% improvement is all we need.
S. Michael Wilcox
The Rising Generation - Children who never fall away
The essence of celestial kingdom is relationships.
Passing on what we've learned to the next generation - how to raise children who never fall away. (Anti-nephi-lehis - whose children are the stripling warriors.)?
Use scriptures as parental counsel. God did not have success with all his children but he gave us lessons to help us.
Alma the younger as a father, lehi and Jacob and Abraham as fathers also.
Alma 35 - 9 chapters as a father, king Benjamin teaches his children before he teaches his people
Judges v8, 12 - Samson - asking the lord how to raise the child
Lecture on faith - stirred up the faith of multitudes to feel after god, to search after a knowledge of his attributes, until they became extensively acquainted with him, behold his glory, stand in his presence.
That's what we want for our children, to be extensively acquainted with god. That's what god wants from us, to stir up the faith of our children.
How do we do that? How do we stir up the faith of our child? Verse 56 of lecture on faith - it is human testimony that stirs up their minds, and the credence they gave to the testimony, inspired them to inquire after god and led to glorious discoveries and eternal certainty.
Testimony is the most important thing to give our children. They need to know what we know.
Nephi's greatest spiritual experience was his vision, which came because he asked to see what his father saw.
Jacob and enos - enos was hunting and was thinking about the words his father spake, and his soul hungered. He saw the joy of the saints, need to let our kids see the gospel is not a barbed wire fence keeping them from things they want, there's joy available. We give our kids thoughts that we float out on the water, but we want to give it weight so we often speak of these things, and the accumulation of things sinks deep in their heart.
Alma and Alma - he was in hell, and the teachings were there from his father so he knew whom to call on.
Stripling warriors and their parents - they did not doubt their mothers knew it. Not just taught it, but knew it.
Compare Alma the younger to David in o.t. - his problems with Bathsheba cripple him to his children, Alma can tell his children to repent as he did.
Alma 36 V2, 6 - do as I have done, as I have seen, as I do know, 29 - you ought (parent words) - teaching by example.
Child will walk in the footsteps of their father, if you want a child who is kind, be kind, if you want him to be patient, be patient.
If we teach a child to read but don't teach them how to choose good books, we've given Lucifer a weapon. Teach them to read the scriptures, read classics, read good books. Scriptures give them 6000 years of heroes to look towards. Alma 37 is power of the scriptures
1. Enlarge the memory - formerly called the book f remembrance - the things that god wants us to remember
2. Remember the error of their ways
3.
Mosiah ch 1 - Benjamin teaches his son the same things. Verse 2, taught them to read, to become men of understanding, 3, scriptures, otherwise suffers in ignorance
cs lewis suffered in grief from wife's death, had no knowledge of eternal families.
Scriptures described as a liahona, a sword, manna, a lamp
Don’t send your kids out into the wilderness without a compass, they will get lost. Life is a battle; don't send your kids out without a sword. Don't send your kids into the wilderness without manna; don't send them in the darkness without a lamp.
Poor Shiblon, the middle child - Helaman gets 2 chapters, Corianton gets 4, Shiblon gets 15 verses.
Chapter 38 is specific praise for specific things. He also lets his child know the joy that child brings. Validate experiences.
What do you do when you have to correct a child? Chapters 39-42 - great love, corrects doctrine because he knows doctrine
1.tell where they went wrong, what steps led up to the situation v.2 didn't give so much heed to my words
2.tell them the long and the short consequences of the action v.11, 13, 9, long term
3.tell them how to prevent the problem from reoccurring v.9 repent, forsake sins, take upon yourself to avoid sin
4. Always leave them with hope and forgiveness. v.19 preach coming of Christ, forgiveness
Scott Anderson Replenishing Relationships
We will retain our identity forever - wee get so caught up with the view of life from birth until now, instead of viewing ourselves as infinite, as eternal.
D&c 93:38 - every spirit was innocent
We were tempted in pre-mortal life; it was a war in heaven that's a strong word for what happened.
In premortality we
Had agency
Sinned
Progressed
Repented
Used the atonement
With all that, how much does your spirit know? It has already gone through all of that, we are more remarkable and experienced than we know. Elder oaks tells us we bring traces of our premortal selves
The adversary whispers in our ears n Nephi 28:20
He tells us how much of a failure you are
If the savior could stand in front of us, he would tell us how much he loves us and wants to bless us.
Alma the younger - what did the angel say to Alma? To this rebellious struggling young man, he said, remember how merciful god is, how much he blesses your family - he said remember.
We need to be able to receive what the lord wants to give us. Remembering is the first step. Moroni 10:3. It's hard to remember how merciful he's been this week, and we are supposed to remember his mercy through all of history. He keeps a tender mercies journal of the things that the lord has blessed him with. It's a way to remember.
Focus on a different blessing every day, so we can open a conduit to receive words of the lord.
Matthew 22:36-39
Love the lord thy god, love thy neighbor as thyself - this is the entire purpose of earth life, and it is all couched in relationships.
Moses 7 - the lord wanted us to love each other and to choose me, their father
Expectations
1 Nephi 8:4-12
lehi saw a dark and dreary waste, he saw a glorious being in white, he experiences the dreariness of mortal life - he was sent to the tree, which is Jesus Christ - there are some things we can never get from mortal relationships and if we need to get them from mortals we will always be disappointed.
2 Nephi 4:17-18 & 34 - only spiritually receptive people recognize their weaknesses, Nephi is the only one who calls himself a wretched man, not his wretched brothers.
Nephi went to the lord to make himself feel better, not his wife, it's not her job to make him happy, it's the lord.
Why does god love you? Not because you’re good, because he's good. We have the capacity to love like god, when they aren't meeting your needs anymore.
attitude is the symptom of what's the matter, laman even obeys, prays when things are good, when things are bad he melts into a puddle because he doesn’t know the mysteries of god. That's the real difference. Nephi could see god's hand in his life. He loves his brothers enough to still want to save them when they want to kill him. It isn't reciprocal love, he has the capacity to love as god does. Ch. 16 v 7 - check the footnote. The daughter of Ishmael.
Nephi talks about wading through affliction, verse 2, praises god for the blessings on him. The wife has milk for the baby, she is starting to stop complaining, he recognizes god's hand so he has a greater capacity to truly love.
lamoni kills people when they lose their sheep, after a week of preaching he tells his people he'll never do it again, it changed his capacity to love his people. They would not kill again because Jesus Christ changed them.
The sacrament is meant so that we can create a two-way covenant, we covenant and so does he - he's promising to be there for us, to help us, to give us capacity to love and to be a better parent.
Hour 2
Moses 7:26
oneness
3 Nephi 19:22-23
john 17:20-21
genesis 2:24-25
what does a perfect resurrected person pray for? Us. That he can give us his oneness, we can be one with him.
Adam and eve were commanded to be one with each other.
Truth can make us free, if we live truth, we receive light. That is the point of intelligence, the glory of god is intelligence or in other words light and truth d&c 93:36,37
someday you will be coupled with eternal joy, which you do not now enjoy.
Dc 93:39 - Satan takes away light and truth because of disobedience and traditions of our fathers.
Dc 123:7 - adversary's goal is to destroy your relationships with god, extended family (angels), ourselves, spouses, children - god takes creeds and rivets them on their hearts, Satan wants to separate us from all of these. because of this, the world is filled with confusion, growing stronger and stronger, is the mainspring of all corruption, whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity.
The adversary wants to separate us from each other, is trying to destroy relationships on the earth.
Mosiah 26:22-4
what's harmony? Blending extreme differences, not being the same. It's not being in unison, harmony creates depth, richness.
Mosiah 26:2-4
did not believe
could not understand or feel
would not behave
we try to change the behavior, not the way we believe, understand or feel
we can change behavior faster by studying doctrine than by studying behavior.
If we are blocked from understanding or feeling, we are blocked from revelation. We will see differently, feel differently, and then our behavior is easier to change.
This is Alma the younger. He s unconscious to show that all he changed was his beliefs, not his behavior. The tragedy of Alma was not his behavior, it is the beliefs about himself that led to the behavior.
can you believe you are hopeless if you honestly believe that Jesus Christ will make your weaknesses your strengths? If you believe in the atonement, you can't be hopeless.
Alma’s belief changes by these steps: Alma 36:11-21
recognize the false belief
examine its influence
find a true belief to replace it
seek spiritual help
apply the new belief
we have creeds riveted on our hearts that limits us in our capacity to receive. Jesus Christ is able to unrivet false beliefs and make us whole.
happy couples make differences their strengths. The hardest parts of a relationship might be very close to a point of great growth.
You don't have to believe the same, you just have to understand. It opens you up, broadens you.
Communication and loving behavior, both high. Communication without loving behavior is no good - loving behavior is the most important thing.
favorite marriage scripture 2 Nephi 2:11 - opposition in all things
oneness can't happen without the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost knows our spouse perfectly and knows us perfectly and can bridge the two people.
we judge each other’s behavior by our own beliefs. We aren't ever right when we do that. The pattern is we describe what we think it means, and the misunderstanding continues.
dealing with differences
3 Nephi 14:1-2 judge not that ye be not judged - (3 Nephi 11-13 relationship with god)
one of the most challenging ideas, to not judge someone from our own beliefs - we need the holy ghost to help, we need to ask "what does that mean to you"
seek first to understand, then to be understood
3 Nephi 14:3-5 here's how to do it - before you correct anybody, look at yourself first and make sure you know what you're really seeing
conversation inviting change
1. define the problem without blame, unified front, Satan wants to divide us, make us correct people
2. Each partner shares what he/she is doing to maintain the problem
3. Each partner suggests something he/she could do to improve the problem. When you first work on issues, don't elaborate on the other person's problems.
4. Implement and evaluate
we can't be responsible to remove all the negative from each other’s life. As soon as we get the answers life changes. We can be in charge of the positive. 5 positives for every negative to keep the balance in a relationship. We can put positive in our relationship.
Give the perfect gift for the one receiving it. The lord will help us give each other meaningful relationship gifts that are right for the person who receives it.
What if we kept a tender mercies journal about each child, or their spouse, how that person has blessed them that day.
Hour 3
d&c 25 - what delights his soul
d&c 19 - Christ’s role - I will suffer for you, all you need to do is change and I will do the rest. I will make a covenant with you as long as you know
d&c 18:10 worth of souls, determined by price that was paid for it. How great was his joy when you accept it, plus we get joy when we bring others.
he weaves our lives together so that we can have joy together. The only way we can all benefit from each other's spiritual gift if we share it with each other.
D&c 45 -
1 Nephi 22:26 - through righteousness, bind Satan
1 Nephi 14:12 - church is all over the earth v 14 - power of god descends on church, the power is his capacity to love
children express their most difficult emotion to their safest relationship. Who else absorbed pain and grief and gave love back? Who else took upon himself the role to be giver of peace, transmitter of love? We take upon us the opportunity to show Christ like love. We aren't failures if our children have been angry with us. Alma the elder mosiah 26:15-20 - god comforts Alma while he is struggling with a wayward son.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Inertia
So I was pondering some theories of physics today and - No, okay, I can't possibly make myself sound that smart. In reality, I have been all but glued to the couch recently, due to an unexpected influx of great new books, and now that I've finished them I find that it's hard to get moving again. It reminds me of what Mr. Durkin, my high school physics teacher, taught me - a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force.
I'm thinking the outside force that gets me moving again is going to be the new school year, because laundry sure isn't doing it.
Adding to my sloth this week is an overriding feeling of boredom. There's nothing going on, nothing coming up, no big trips or family visiting or special occasions or anything to look forward to. And nothing around the house seems pressing either - to be perfectly honest, house cleaning has always felt like busywork to me. Something you're assigned to do to fill time but that doesn't mean anything. Cleaning (beyond our nightly/Saturday scheduled cleaning) is never going to get me moving.
I tend towards boredom frequently, which I'm just now noticing about myself. I hate boredom to an extent that only my children could rival. In fact, when I laugh at them through gritted teeth on the first day of summer vacation for announcing their boredom, what I'm really saying is Join the club! Or possibly, Welcome to my world, friend, where we get to be at home all day and wonder if there is more to life than putting away your shoes and breaking up arguments over Lego Star Wars.
Everyone handles boredom differently. When Brad is bored, he either watches tv or he eats. I try to call him on this, so he can notice that he's not really hungry, he's just bored, a skill that I haven't yet mastered. When Noah is bored, he picks fights. He will purposely do stuff to annoy his brothers, to the point of minor violence, just to entertain himself. If the family is watching a movie together, he's the one jumping on the couch or rolling on the floor or otherwise making the rest of us crazy. (He's largely outgrown the movie thing, but the tendency is still there in everyday situations.) Zack and Darcey don't seem to get bored yet. Zack is pretty content to find himself something to do, and Darcey just putters around the house, getting into kitchen drawers or the bathroom or, her favorite, the shoe closet.
When I'm bored, I get antsy. I think I do a little of all of those things my kids do: I eat, I watch tv, I whine a lot, I wander the house feeling bereft of hope that anything fun will ever happen again.
My main goal is boredom prevention. I think it might be my overriding goal for my daily life. How can I get through today and not go stark raving mad from boredom? I have lots of tactics. School is my first line of defense. It gives me goals, small things to achieve every week, bigger-picture things to work towards, and a feeling, when I'm sitting on the couch looking for something to watch other than a Cosby Show rerun, that there's always something I should be working on. It keeps me productive and busy, and that makes me happy.
Projects are another strategy I use frequently. Ryan used to be baffled by my constant picking up of a new craft or hobby, only to abandon it later for a different one, and then be picked up again two years later. I cycle through projects constantly, and there's usually something I'm working on. I've done cross-stitching, crocheting, knitting, quilting, photography, sewing, and a very ugly bout of decoupage, which I doubt will be revisited. I also enjoy card-making (but not card-sending) and in the past I've done a ton of scrapbooking. I will go through organizational phases, where no closet in my house is safe from my wrath. Cooking is a hobby, unless it is cancelled out by the hobby of being on a diet, which is probably my least favorite hobby of all.
I rarely leave the house without one or more things to occupy any free second of time I might encounter. I am waiting for Apple to create an iPod chip that can be inserted under my skin, with controls built into my arm so that I can't possibly forget to bring it with me somewhere. Maybe I could have one implanted, you know, like a pacemaker. My iPod is my $300 binky, my digital security blanket, the thing that the Linus in me drags around everywhere just to make me feel good. I like knowing that, should the need arise, I could instantly fill my downtime with an audiobook, a podcast, some music, a video, or a game. Oh, the freedom of it!
The gym is one of those places where boredom hits me hard right between the eyes. I can't look at a treadmill without dread, and the ipod isn't enough for me there. I need my ipod for some ear-drum shattering music, a magazine to read (and to cover the timer on the machine), and a tv to watch while I read the subtitles. And that is still barely enough to keep me occupied, although I'm not sure what it would take to keep me truly entertained on a treadmill: a live acrobatic show? Trained monkeys performing stunts? Someone handing me dollar bills for every minute I keep walking? Yeah, that one would do it, but I can't imagine how much that gym would charge.
I hit a patch of boredom today that I should have been prepared for, but wasn't. I met my friend Michelle at the Lehi pool to take our kids swimming. Being around friends is the number one way for me to be not bored, so I had an ipod with me for the car, but I rejected the idea of bringing any number of other things with me - the book I was almost done with, my waterproof ipod case (for listening in the pool), today's crossword puzzle from the paper. Literally thought of bringing those things, but, in a spirit of trying to break myself of packing half my house everywhere I go, I left them all. Which turned out to be a mistake because Darcey, who had skipped a nap, lasted hours longer than I expected her to, and Michelle had to leave at 3:30.
Man, did I regret packing light after that. I was good for about the first five minutes alone, trying to think about people watching or just, I don't know, thinking. It didn't work. By 4:00 I was trying to figure out how quickly I could convince the kids to leave, although they were having so much fun that I knew that would be wrong. So I stayed and sat and stared at people and thought about stupid things and when I checked the clock again it was like 4:15. Argh! This is why I put a magazine over the time on the treadmill! By 4:30 I was tired of trying to stop Darcey from licking water off of the ground around the pool, and put her in her stroller where she promptly fell asleep. That at least freed me from the water, but made me regret more than ever not having a book, or a notebook to write in, or my Palm. Curse me for cleaning out my purse before we left! I had a sudden brainstorm and realized that the two foot long receipt from Albertsons was completely blank on the back, perfect for jotting notes about how miserable I was for a new blog entry. I had no sooner uncapped the pen than Zack appeared, shivering, and asked to go home. Which I had been longing for, but still ended up frustrated because I finally came up with something to do that would stop me from being bored!
So the truth is out - I'm no better than my kids. I have better coping mechanisms than they do, and I'd like to think that I might be slightly less annoying on the whiny-ness scale. Why do I hate boredom so much? A therapist would probably say I'm afraid of what I'd think about if there wasn't something constantly going on. But I've listened to the stuff rattling around my head, and frankly, it's not too interesting. I'm looking forward to school starting again, to jump start me out of my boring funk, to kick my resting body off the couch, to have inertia work for me rather than against me. Because after all, a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Thanks, Mr. Durkin, turns out I learned something after all.
I'm thinking the outside force that gets me moving again is going to be the new school year, because laundry sure isn't doing it.
Adding to my sloth this week is an overriding feeling of boredom. There's nothing going on, nothing coming up, no big trips or family visiting or special occasions or anything to look forward to. And nothing around the house seems pressing either - to be perfectly honest, house cleaning has always felt like busywork to me. Something you're assigned to do to fill time but that doesn't mean anything. Cleaning (beyond our nightly/Saturday scheduled cleaning) is never going to get me moving.
I tend towards boredom frequently, which I'm just now noticing about myself. I hate boredom to an extent that only my children could rival. In fact, when I laugh at them through gritted teeth on the first day of summer vacation for announcing their boredom, what I'm really saying is Join the club! Or possibly, Welcome to my world, friend, where we get to be at home all day and wonder if there is more to life than putting away your shoes and breaking up arguments over Lego Star Wars.
Everyone handles boredom differently. When Brad is bored, he either watches tv or he eats. I try to call him on this, so he can notice that he's not really hungry, he's just bored, a skill that I haven't yet mastered. When Noah is bored, he picks fights. He will purposely do stuff to annoy his brothers, to the point of minor violence, just to entertain himself. If the family is watching a movie together, he's the one jumping on the couch or rolling on the floor or otherwise making the rest of us crazy. (He's largely outgrown the movie thing, but the tendency is still there in everyday situations.) Zack and Darcey don't seem to get bored yet. Zack is pretty content to find himself something to do, and Darcey just putters around the house, getting into kitchen drawers or the bathroom or, her favorite, the shoe closet.
When I'm bored, I get antsy. I think I do a little of all of those things my kids do: I eat, I watch tv, I whine a lot, I wander the house feeling bereft of hope that anything fun will ever happen again.
My main goal is boredom prevention. I think it might be my overriding goal for my daily life. How can I get through today and not go stark raving mad from boredom? I have lots of tactics. School is my first line of defense. It gives me goals, small things to achieve every week, bigger-picture things to work towards, and a feeling, when I'm sitting on the couch looking for something to watch other than a Cosby Show rerun, that there's always something I should be working on. It keeps me productive and busy, and that makes me happy.
Projects are another strategy I use frequently. Ryan used to be baffled by my constant picking up of a new craft or hobby, only to abandon it later for a different one, and then be picked up again two years later. I cycle through projects constantly, and there's usually something I'm working on. I've done cross-stitching, crocheting, knitting, quilting, photography, sewing, and a very ugly bout of decoupage, which I doubt will be revisited. I also enjoy card-making (but not card-sending) and in the past I've done a ton of scrapbooking. I will go through organizational phases, where no closet in my house is safe from my wrath. Cooking is a hobby, unless it is cancelled out by the hobby of being on a diet, which is probably my least favorite hobby of all.
I rarely leave the house without one or more things to occupy any free second of time I might encounter. I am waiting for Apple to create an iPod chip that can be inserted under my skin, with controls built into my arm so that I can't possibly forget to bring it with me somewhere. Maybe I could have one implanted, you know, like a pacemaker. My iPod is my $300 binky, my digital security blanket, the thing that the Linus in me drags around everywhere just to make me feel good. I like knowing that, should the need arise, I could instantly fill my downtime with an audiobook, a podcast, some music, a video, or a game. Oh, the freedom of it!
The gym is one of those places where boredom hits me hard right between the eyes. I can't look at a treadmill without dread, and the ipod isn't enough for me there. I need my ipod for some ear-drum shattering music, a magazine to read (and to cover the timer on the machine), and a tv to watch while I read the subtitles. And that is still barely enough to keep me occupied, although I'm not sure what it would take to keep me truly entertained on a treadmill: a live acrobatic show? Trained monkeys performing stunts? Someone handing me dollar bills for every minute I keep walking? Yeah, that one would do it, but I can't imagine how much that gym would charge.
I hit a patch of boredom today that I should have been prepared for, but wasn't. I met my friend Michelle at the Lehi pool to take our kids swimming. Being around friends is the number one way for me to be not bored, so I had an ipod with me for the car, but I rejected the idea of bringing any number of other things with me - the book I was almost done with, my waterproof ipod case (for listening in the pool), today's crossword puzzle from the paper. Literally thought of bringing those things, but, in a spirit of trying to break myself of packing half my house everywhere I go, I left them all. Which turned out to be a mistake because Darcey, who had skipped a nap, lasted hours longer than I expected her to, and Michelle had to leave at 3:30.
Man, did I regret packing light after that. I was good for about the first five minutes alone, trying to think about people watching or just, I don't know, thinking. It didn't work. By 4:00 I was trying to figure out how quickly I could convince the kids to leave, although they were having so much fun that I knew that would be wrong. So I stayed and sat and stared at people and thought about stupid things and when I checked the clock again it was like 4:15. Argh! This is why I put a magazine over the time on the treadmill! By 4:30 I was tired of trying to stop Darcey from licking water off of the ground around the pool, and put her in her stroller where she promptly fell asleep. That at least freed me from the water, but made me regret more than ever not having a book, or a notebook to write in, or my Palm. Curse me for cleaning out my purse before we left! I had a sudden brainstorm and realized that the two foot long receipt from Albertsons was completely blank on the back, perfect for jotting notes about how miserable I was for a new blog entry. I had no sooner uncapped the pen than Zack appeared, shivering, and asked to go home. Which I had been longing for, but still ended up frustrated because I finally came up with something to do that would stop me from being bored!
So the truth is out - I'm no better than my kids. I have better coping mechanisms than they do, and I'd like to think that I might be slightly less annoying on the whiny-ness scale. Why do I hate boredom so much? A therapist would probably say I'm afraid of what I'd think about if there wasn't something constantly going on. But I've listened to the stuff rattling around my head, and frankly, it's not too interesting. I'm looking forward to school starting again, to jump start me out of my boring funk, to kick my resting body off the couch, to have inertia work for me rather than against me. Because after all, a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Thanks, Mr. Durkin, turns out I learned something after all.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
The 31-Year-Old Teenager
On Friday night, I went back in time and got to re-experience what it was like to be a teenager. Which meant that I stayed up ridiculously late in order to do something of negligible amusement, surrounded by a thousand people who would periodically scream for no reason.
Turns out, I'm too old for that.
As pretty much every sentient being in the known universe knows, the last book in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series came out on Friday night. And that is why I found myself at Borders with my friend Sylvia, standing in line for our copies at the midnight release party. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We both love the books, we both had passionate (though opposing) points of view for our favorite characters, and we both knew that our normal lives would screech to a halt when the latest book, "Breaking Dawn" came out, doing nothing but reading until we finished it. So it was a no-brainer to be in line to buy it at midnight when it came out.
But once we got there, Sylvia and I both realized that we were a little out of our element. The crowds were massive - literally hundreds of people were milling around. Some wore costumes, more wore t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to either Edward (the vampire) or Jacob (the werewolf) in as clever a way as possible. I had neither a costume nor a t-shirt, not wanting to put my lack of wit and creativity on display. (I tried to brainstorm clever t-shirt sayings with Ryan, but he was no help. The only one he jokingly suggested was "Long Live Dumbledore." He is soooo unhip.) The winning t-shirt in the t-shirt contest was "I already know how the book ends. -Alice" Which is super clever, to fans anyway.
Sylvia had pre-ordered the book, so she got a numbered wristband which, unbeknownst to us, they had started handing out at 9 a.m. All the real teenagers knew this, and had started standing in line THE NIGHT BEFORE, and consequently we ended up as number 895 in line that night. We were herded out of the store and into the parking lot where we were loosely organized into groups of 200, then told to line ourselves up in order of our numbered bands. So we found the 800-1,000 group, parked ourselves roughly in the middle, and sat down. That was around 11:30.
The thing I hadn't taken into account when I agreed to this little evening out was just exactly how long it would take for the 894 people in line in front of us to pay for their books and move along. Here's how long: hours. By 12:30 they had numbers 1-400 inside the store, but the line in the store wrapped all the way around the perimeter, so just being in the building meant little. By 1:00 a.m. I was wondering if there were lines like this at the 24-hour Walmart, or if we could just walk in and buy the book. By 1:30 I was ready to stretch out on the asphalt and try to get some sleep. We finally bought the books at 2:15.
Which brings me to my point: I'm not as young as I used to be. I remember the days when "sleep" and "schedule" wouldn't even make sense if used in the same sentence. When I was 18, I came home from a party at 4 a.m., then drove 2 hours to Irvine Meadows Amphitheater in order to get a free KROQ t-shirt, then ended up at an all-day singles ward activity. Man, was I proud of myself - that seemed like such a cool thing to do. Looking at it from this side of 30, all I can think was, "What a stupid waste of time! Why not get some sleep and then pay $10 for the shirt at some decent hour instead?"
It's not just a stamina thing, it's a change in thinking. There's more logic in my brain now then there used to be, as I'm sitting on the ground in a parking lot trying to figure out why I wasn't at home asleep and buying the book in the morning, when I'd actually be awake to read it. The teenager in me was thinking, "It's not about convenient shopping hours, it's about the experience! The party! The crowds! The energy! Living in the moment!" Ryan's had the same change in thinking. His moment of enlightenment came when he realized that there is no need to fight the crowds and stand in line to watch a movie on opening night, when the SAME EXACT MOVIE would be playing every night for the next four weeks.
Overall, though, I'm glad I went. It was fun to hang out with Sylvia, who had brought a deck of cards and we played Egyptian War and talked about the other things that we'll probably never do again now that we aren't teenagers. For me, it was never going to another concert where I spend more time dancing than sitting, for her it was never being in another mosh pit. She had brought both Twizzlers and Red Vines to snack on, because most people have as strong a preference for one over the other as the fans at Borders have for Edward vs. Jacob. (FYI - I prefer Twizzlers and Jacob, though not together.) Plus, neither of us had our kids with us, which pretty much guarantees an enjoyable evening. The weather was nice and warm, there was live music and lots of time to just relax.
And, naturally, when I got the book home, I couldn't put it down - I ended up reading a hundred pages in an hour, completely enthralled by the story and only going to bed because the adult in me had to instill some sort of discipline on the teenager in me. I went to bed at 3:30, but the teenager in me was dragging her feet the whole time, totally willing to stay up all night on one giant reading binge that I would absolutely enjoy at the time but would probably regret in the morning. And even tonight, I am having a hard time going to sleep with the last 225 pages still unread.
Now that I've unleashed the teenager in me, where will it lead? Will I go back to middle of the night Slurpee runs and hanging out at the mall and absolute disregard for circadian rhythms? I doubt it, but I also don't think I'm quite ready for orthotic shoes and buying elastic waist pants from mail order catalogs either. I think I'll stick with doing things that are slightly ridiculous and occasionally challenge logic, throwing caution and healthy sleep patterns to the wind. Occasionally. With lots of naps afterwards. After all, you're only young once.
Turns out, I'm too old for that.
As pretty much every sentient being in the known universe knows, the last book in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series came out on Friday night. And that is why I found myself at Borders with my friend Sylvia, standing in line for our copies at the midnight release party. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We both love the books, we both had passionate (though opposing) points of view for our favorite characters, and we both knew that our normal lives would screech to a halt when the latest book, "Breaking Dawn" came out, doing nothing but reading until we finished it. So it was a no-brainer to be in line to buy it at midnight when it came out.
But once we got there, Sylvia and I both realized that we were a little out of our element. The crowds were massive - literally hundreds of people were milling around. Some wore costumes, more wore t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to either Edward (the vampire) or Jacob (the werewolf) in as clever a way as possible. I had neither a costume nor a t-shirt, not wanting to put my lack of wit and creativity on display. (I tried to brainstorm clever t-shirt sayings with Ryan, but he was no help. The only one he jokingly suggested was "Long Live Dumbledore." He is soooo unhip.) The winning t-shirt in the t-shirt contest was "I already know how the book ends. -Alice" Which is super clever, to fans anyway.
Sylvia had pre-ordered the book, so she got a numbered wristband which, unbeknownst to us, they had started handing out at 9 a.m. All the real teenagers knew this, and had started standing in line THE NIGHT BEFORE, and consequently we ended up as number 895 in line that night. We were herded out of the store and into the parking lot where we were loosely organized into groups of 200, then told to line ourselves up in order of our numbered bands. So we found the 800-1,000 group, parked ourselves roughly in the middle, and sat down. That was around 11:30.
The thing I hadn't taken into account when I agreed to this little evening out was just exactly how long it would take for the 894 people in line in front of us to pay for their books and move along. Here's how long: hours. By 12:30 they had numbers 1-400 inside the store, but the line in the store wrapped all the way around the perimeter, so just being in the building meant little. By 1:00 a.m. I was wondering if there were lines like this at the 24-hour Walmart, or if we could just walk in and buy the book. By 1:30 I was ready to stretch out on the asphalt and try to get some sleep. We finally bought the books at 2:15.
Which brings me to my point: I'm not as young as I used to be. I remember the days when "sleep" and "schedule" wouldn't even make sense if used in the same sentence. When I was 18, I came home from a party at 4 a.m., then drove 2 hours to Irvine Meadows Amphitheater in order to get a free KROQ t-shirt, then ended up at an all-day singles ward activity. Man, was I proud of myself - that seemed like such a cool thing to do. Looking at it from this side of 30, all I can think was, "What a stupid waste of time! Why not get some sleep and then pay $10 for the shirt at some decent hour instead?"
It's not just a stamina thing, it's a change in thinking. There's more logic in my brain now then there used to be, as I'm sitting on the ground in a parking lot trying to figure out why I wasn't at home asleep and buying the book in the morning, when I'd actually be awake to read it. The teenager in me was thinking, "It's not about convenient shopping hours, it's about the experience! The party! The crowds! The energy! Living in the moment!" Ryan's had the same change in thinking. His moment of enlightenment came when he realized that there is no need to fight the crowds and stand in line to watch a movie on opening night, when the SAME EXACT MOVIE would be playing every night for the next four weeks.
Overall, though, I'm glad I went. It was fun to hang out with Sylvia, who had brought a deck of cards and we played Egyptian War and talked about the other things that we'll probably never do again now that we aren't teenagers. For me, it was never going to another concert where I spend more time dancing than sitting, for her it was never being in another mosh pit. She had brought both Twizzlers and Red Vines to snack on, because most people have as strong a preference for one over the other as the fans at Borders have for Edward vs. Jacob. (FYI - I prefer Twizzlers and Jacob, though not together.) Plus, neither of us had our kids with us, which pretty much guarantees an enjoyable evening. The weather was nice and warm, there was live music and lots of time to just relax.
And, naturally, when I got the book home, I couldn't put it down - I ended up reading a hundred pages in an hour, completely enthralled by the story and only going to bed because the adult in me had to instill some sort of discipline on the teenager in me. I went to bed at 3:30, but the teenager in me was dragging her feet the whole time, totally willing to stay up all night on one giant reading binge that I would absolutely enjoy at the time but would probably regret in the morning. And even tonight, I am having a hard time going to sleep with the last 225 pages still unread.
Now that I've unleashed the teenager in me, where will it lead? Will I go back to middle of the night Slurpee runs and hanging out at the mall and absolute disregard for circadian rhythms? I doubt it, but I also don't think I'm quite ready for orthotic shoes and buying elastic waist pants from mail order catalogs either. I think I'll stick with doing things that are slightly ridiculous and occasionally challenge logic, throwing caution and healthy sleep patterns to the wind. Occasionally. With lots of naps afterwards. After all, you're only young once.
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