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Showing posts from January, 2015

Cage Matches with Uncertainty

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I know I’ve shared this insight from Theodore Roosevelt before, but I just love it so much that I’m sharing it twice, plus I want to talk about the arena ( where I’m currently getting my trash kicked ): “ It is not the critic who counts ; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena , whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause ; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly , so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."    Why do I love this

Emotional Explosions

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Last week, I was a nervous wreck . This week, I was an emotional explosion . You know those weeks when those random, little things make you weep like a child —like seeing pictures of blind puppies or holding a stuffed platypus or running out of colored pens because everything seems to forebode stormy skies? That was this week for me. My mom wrote me on my mission once (okay, actually a lot more than once; she was pretty much the best writer ever) after my little brother had left for college and admitted that she’d started bursting into tears whenever she saw babies or commercials for diapers or other things that reminded her she was an empty-nester and though I have no excuse as traumatic as that, I felt similarly this week. Regarding the whole crying sporadically. You know, just doing my thing and then suddenly I'm  weeping like a toddler while watching movies, talking to friends, doing homework, trying to plan the future, seeing the future fall apart, etc. T

CAN'T YOU SEE I'M A NERVOUS WRECK and other t-shirts I need

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I started my first week back at college with a small breakdown . Nothing big. Just a few nervous tears. A pounding heart. Some trembling hands. An obnoxiously loud voice in my head telling me I was not fit to be here. As I sat on a couch on campus. Trying to look like I was definitely not having a minor freak out session. Which obviously failed . I love my job as a first-year mentor and partly because of this job, I took a second job teaching German 101 at BYU. You would think that being asked to teach German would be a no-brainer to accept; I was obviously excited about the theoretical prospect when it first came up, but as winter semester drew closer, I got more and more… panicked . Because as it turns out, the only teaching I’d ever done was on my mission. And teaching people about Jesus Christ with the help of the Holy Ghost seemed a lot simpler than teaching students who are paying tuition to learn German. I started Monday with my daily affirmati

Childult forever

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Going home to be with my parents always makes me feel like a little kid again. Okay, maybe not like a little kid, but at least like a teenager, even though it’s been years since I was in that decade. Three years to be precise. Going back to school always makes me feel like an adult . Okay, maybe not like a full-fledged, insurance paying and provider-for-a-family adult, but still a sufficiently independent person. I think being in my early 20s just makes me feel in this awkward middle stage where I’m still somewhat dependent on my parents and perhaps I secretly want that, but I’m also creating my own new life separate from the first two decades of my life. Full of plans that won’t work out but dreams that might . So basically I consider myself a childult . Pronounced chill-dult.  Because I still feel six years old on Christm as morning and when I go grocery shopping with my mom and beg her to buy my favorite treats. But I also feel very adult-like when I get my pa