Posts

Adventurer

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  I just finished listening to Brandon Sanderson’s The Sunlit Man. In the postscript of the book, he talks about how he is a storyteller and how he would write books even if he knew no one would read them. Listening to that I found myself being a bit envious, not because I wanted to be a storyteller like Brandon, but because I wanted to know who I was like Brandon knew who he was. I feel like this is something that I have been struggling with for years. I have long wanted to know who it is I truly am so I can know where I should go and do what I should do and do those things in a way that would be true to myself. I’ve wanted this for so long because I realized if you don’t do the things that are true to who you are, everything you do is a lie, you’re going against who you are, and it doesn’t work. There is a show on BYUtv that I really enjoy watching called Artful. It is a show that tells the stories of artists. I love watching the show because I get to hear the journeys so man...

Willpower

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Today’s been a good day. I started with my morning scripture study, knocked out the tasks I needed to handle, and then gave myself a little time to unwind with some YouTube. I went for a walk around the city—I'm here on a layover for work—and I even got in a solid gym session. Overall, it’s felt like a really disciplined day. But if I’m honest, I’m worried it might all fall apart later. That’s been the pattern in the past: I start strong—doing the things I know I should —but by afternoon or evening, things unravel. I slip into doom scrolling on Instagram, eat garbage food, or stay up too late binging TV. I think what causes that is a kind of imbalance. I burn up all my willpower early in the day and don’t have much left to carry me through the rest of it. So the real question is—how do I avoid the crash? The good news is that I’m aware of it now, and that awareness gives me a chance to do things differently. I’m realizing that the key isn’t trying to keep up a perfect, iron-clad...

The Next 25

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 25 years ago today, I returned from my service as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The end of my mission was a turning point in my life. It signified the end of an old life and the beginning of a new. It also signified the beginning of my adult life. A lot has happened in the last 25 years, most of it I never expected. As I sit here 25 years later, I can’t help but think back on everything that has happened but also reflect on what is to come. It’s as if I’m sitting in the middle of a 50-year time span, I look one way and I see the previous 25 years, the sum total of my adult life, and looking the other way, I see the 25 years ahead of me, from now until I am 71 years old. A lot has happened, and a lot is still to come. My goal with this blog is to visit the past and to chart the future. I’ve accomplished a lot in the last 25 years but there are still a lot of things I thought I would have accomplished at this point in my life that I have not. ...