The Lists that Govern my Life

I think it was 2007. I was running Christmas errands with my mom and was still under the impression that I could sew. We had stopped at Johann’s and Christmas fabric was on sale. I asked my mom how easy it would be to make a Christmas skirt. She said "pretty easy." I bought some black fabric with red and green candy canes and went home to sew my first skirt (she was right—pillowcases and skirts are probably the easiest things to sew and thus the only things I can make). I wore it once a week throughout December and decided this was a good thing. The next year I went back to Johann’s and bought enough fabric to make four more skirts to sport throughout the month. Or maybe it was 2009. I invited a friend to go “Christmasing” with me. Which basically meant we drove to Target and spent hours ooh-ing and ah-ing at, trying on, and buying apparel, which we then put up all over my bedroom as well as screaming giddily at all of the Christmas lights we passed

Before you read any further, you should know that there are two problems with the title of this post. The first is that there is only wedding, so the plural of wedding was a misnomer. And the second is that there is actually no mention of warlocks in any sentences in this post. Except in the one that you just read. I just wanted some alliteration and that's what came to mind. Now that we've cleared that up, let's celebrate that fact that my dear little brother (known by his close friends as Yogurt, and by close friends, I mean just me) got MARRIED last week in Portland. I thought I'd take this momentous occasion to celebrate what a great individual Logan is by sharing a few things Logan has taught me over the years. 1. The mundane can be beautiful.  Logan is a master of creativity. He turns the normal into the beautiful and the boring into an adventure. I loved going on runs with Logan in high school because he took running as an opportunity to explore

I came back to Utah last week.  Utah that felt like a foreign land in 2011 when I moved out here as a timid and innocent college freshman. Utah that felt like home when I drove away in 2017 after years of running in the mountain foothills, working closely with BYU professors on campus, and going on adventures with friends.  And coming back actually felt like coming home despite having moved away a year ago. I mean, I drove down to Utah Valley Sunday morning for a dear friend's farewell and was instantly overwhelmed with love for the friends who were also there. It felt like a glorious homecoming to the people who helped me learn to call Provo my home and helped me find a better, more outgoing and more authentic version of myself. And come to think of it, maybe it's not just the magical, green mountains that whisper  home.   It's the people who made this home.  These feelings of  Heimat  and belonging are actually a little bit paradoxical because I just lef

Year 1 of grad school is done.  (okay, minus one presentation and a couple hours of paper revisions). Years 2-5/6/hopefully-not-longer-than-that are up and coming. It feels soooooo good to have a year behind me. A year of knowing what grad school is like and a year of knowledge in a field I'm theoretically going to spend the rest of my working years discovering. This is how it looked. first semester:  I sat in classes writing down words I didn't understand. And looking up those words. And still not completely understanding. But laughing with everyone else all the same when someone would make a comment like "Wow, that's so Hegelian!" Which happened at least once a week. Here are some other expressions you might have missed while you were busy studying history as an undergrad but can throw into your speech to sound more intelligent: metaphysical  phenomonology aesthetic consciousness hermeneutics philology fragmentation coherences o

To my unmarried friends.  Especially those of you who are LDS.  Because #mormonculture. And to my married friends who love their unmarried friends. #pleasedontbedeadtome I've been thinking some thoughts about how we talk about marriage and wanted to share some insights. First, I'm going to let you in on a secret:  I thought I would be married by age 25.  Heck, if we're completely honest, I thought I would have gotten married within a year of coming home from my mission, which would have been by age 22.  Because as a teenager, most all of my LDS female leaders and role models had gotten married in their late-teens or early 20s. They talked about getting married like it was the easiest thing.  "Well he came home from his mission and thought I was cute and I thought he was cute so we decided to get married!" It hasn't been that easy for me. I'm 25 and not married.  This is okay. This doesn't make me less tal