Post 200 -- Retirement

It's been a good run here. I started this blog just under five years ago with a post on girls. I wish I knew then what I know now.

It started out with questions, concerns, hopes, dreams. It became a place for me to express my poetry, my heart, my soul. Recently I gave this address to a friend along with the quote:

Aedh Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

This place truly is my dreams in ways I cannot even really imagine. I posted here a little less than once a week on average. There are good posts, and bad, posts I look back on and wish I could more often be the person who wrote those words. And ones that I am ashamed of. Others are funny, out of intent, or not.

Above all else, I feel as though my life is no longer the same as it was five years ago, the supposedly required anonymity of my past is gone. I have fewer rhetorical questions, and more simple thoughts. I no longer attend school, and have started on a path of nomadic wanderings. Truly I have lost my home as a place and gained it as a state of being. As such... I have decided to change the address, I will not be importing anything from here there. It will be a fresh start. I look forward to seeing you there.

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Given the chance, I'd fall again.

When I first started this blog I added questions to every post, and those questions were more or less rhetorical. I've gotten out of the habit, and I think I'd like to start that up again, so here goes.

If it never goes any further than it has, will I be okay with that?

Today I came face to face with the realization that it might not. I might not be able to defeat the ghost, I might not stave off my wanderlust long enough. I might not be a classy enough guy for her. There are a lot of things that may go wrong.

There is a saying, trite beyond compare really, "Better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved." It's true though, I'm a fan of falling, of getting in over your head and then... dealing with it. I've discovered something as I've tried to do that, the more I do it, the easier it is to give of myself and the easier it is to heal afterward. Love, like any muscle, needs exercise. Our souls are made to love, that is part of the design, we just have to get our minds out of the way long enough for the eternal font of life to shine through us.

Yes, it hurts. But the pain is small, you went all in and God respects that, he rewards you for your effort. I won't ever regret this, but I do regret hurting you, I shouldn't have responded the way I did. I should have been stronger, I am so sorry that my weakness was a source of your pain.

No one is perfect, me less so than most it seems, you didn't do anything wrong.

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Ruminations 9/21

It's probably time for a real post here... one that isn't esoteric and really short. It has been an interesting last couple of weeks. The ride has been good. Most of my stress lately has been revolving around attempting to find a job. I don't think I even realized how draining it has been.

I have an interview tomorrow, I'm somewhat terrified of it, both if I get it and if I don't.

It's a long way away from home, and I have no transportation really since Gusto died. Things are complicated on the relationship front, and I don't really see them settling down anytime in the near future. I'm having mixed concerns with my new ward, and the way that they run things. Particularly my part in it. I feel like I know a lot of the people here, but don't really do anything with them. Being out of school puts me in a strange loop outside of the norm.

Today we had a lesson about how God gives us all our talents, and how we are ungrateful when we do not give all the credit to him for the things we accomplish. I thought at the same time, how we must also be grateful to the Father for all the weaknesses we have, for they are opportunities to grow. They are things he has trusted that we would be able to deal with, and it's not like he makes us deal with them alone enough. They are how we remember his love, and how we feel it most powerfully.

I don't often say thank you for the things that I struggle with, but maybe I should. Maybe I should be grateful he picked out for me a collection of tests designed to help me grow.

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Chooseing the Right

Is it right? What I'm doing...
Or is it just what I want?

How can I tell?

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Changes

There have been a lot of changes here lately... and it's likely that there will be some more. I'll be going through and adding labels to all my posts for one, and the advertisements on the side for another, I don't really expect to make any money off of the thing, but it couldn't hurt!

Still looking for a job, still trying to figure myself out. Someday I'll get one of those two probably, hopefully both of them. I should go and read my scriptures instead of sitting here updating, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with this than with God. I know... I'm coming.

Also, I'm starting up a new blog full of information that I'm not really certain I want everyone to have, if your name is Eric, Krystal or Sarah you could probably get that blog address/permission to see it, otherwise... you probably can't. Email or facebook.

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June 27th

Sleep has fled before mine eyes and left me a desolate pilgrim wresting the mysteries of the world into a thousand forgotten memories which dance before my eyes like motes of light, and in the dancing half become remembered.

Tonight, I felt like being sullen. So, I was for a little while, just had to get it out of my system. And now, it's time to be happy again.

Also, sometimes I just don't get it.

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Under Pressure

Ea reprimanded me for not posting, "as often as I check." So, I guess this means I need to write something.

I don't have a lot to say though... normally I write when I am feeling an excess of emotion that I am not finding acceptable methods of disclosure. However this hasn't been the case of late, and thus... I haven't felt the need to write.

So, travelog! I recently moved into my apartments here in the Milkyway. I have three really great room-mates, who I absolutely am going to love spending time with. We have been holding apartment scripture study, cleaning up after ourselves, etc. And while I realize this is still the Honeymoon stage of our apartment, I am hopeful for the future.

Mostly, lately I've just been incredibly grateful for the many blessings that I have in my life.

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On Angel's Wings

It is funny sometimes, how often the Lord answers our prayers in ways that we don't comprehend, or even guess at until long after the event in question.

Lately, I have been trying to focus a lot on how many things I have been given. I suppose the source of this is in picking up Way to Be the first chapter of which was on gratitude. So, by no means a complete list, but things that I have been thinking of lately:

• The Wind.
• My family
• The willingness of others to share
• Jason
• The Internet
• Long nocturnal walks
• Ice Cream
• Blankets
• Movies
• Being able to recapture my childhood
• The realization that today is all I have
• The Scriptures
• Prayer
• Responses
• Forgiveness
• Truth
• Eyes
• Electro-Magnetic Pulses
• The people who read this blog
• The people who give me blogs to read

As an exercise I've been trying to name things I'm thankful for in my 'down' time, it is interesting what comes up in my head. I think I'm going to take a page out of Janell's book and swear off a few subjects on my blog, so... I'm going to avoid those particular subjects for the time being. Life is good, It is scary not knowing where I am going in life, but I have the assurance that I am walking in the right direction, and I guess I don't need anything more than that.

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A moment of quiet reflection.

I recently returned from the coast. I love the coast so much. It sets my heart at ease. It's strange, all the things that I've been dealing with for months, it just took twenty minutes on a beach at sunset, the sunset above actually. I still need to edit that with something other than paint, I'm not satisfied with the colors or the text. Anyway... It's amazing how much peace I can achieve with something so simple as a visit to the ocean.

Also, I realized how much I've missed talking to someone, all this summer I've had to keep up an illusion, a facade of strength that I never really felt. Now, I look forward with peace and see the difficult water ahead. It doesn't bother me that much.

I guess that's what happens when you remember, like Peter, to cry out, "Lord, save me."

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Words, words, words.

I realize I've been putting off life, and soon, life is going to catch up to me.

I have no idea what to do.

I realized yesterday, I wouldn't mind dying(not suicide)--at least then I'd know where I was going.

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Tanya

Once, when I was younger, we made the mile long trek to Verds, or Yerds (we were never really sure which) to make use of our pennies on their supply of penny candies. Verds was a mom and pop type shop that was positioned about a mile from my home, we would ride our bikes down there and grab 25 cent sodas, 1 cent orange slices and the like.

One day, we ran into a girl that was in my grade and her older sister. I said Hi, she said, Hi. Then her sister said, "So this is Asmond..."

It made me think she liked me, it made me consider Tanya in a new light. We weren't really 'friends,' but I've always sorta wondered... what if?

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New posts

Today I was talking to several people about poetry. It got me thinking about the beautiful things in the world. I found this, I think if I could be in this moment, my arm wrapped around the woman I love, and I could feel the slightly chill breeze drift in off the ocean, I could be happy, not just content but really, truly happy. Perhaps that's enough of a reason to go to the Celestial Kingdom, so I can visit this place and be in that moment, adrift from all the rest of humanity, isolated within the confines of that perfect moment.

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Post 193

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how bad I am at this whole life thing. I don't mean to say that I do life badly, but rather that I don't really possess the skills needed to function in life. I simply don't handle life the way that the world wants me to. Because of my depression I can't do things like School, or a 'real' job. I am discovering that there is a delicate balance that I have to pull between those things that we do to sustain life and those things we do to make life worth living.

It just randomly posted that, so my apologies for anyone who read just a partial message.

These facts have become more evident to me this past semester when school got me to an 'overload' point, and then everything just shut down. I'm getting back to the point that I can function in society again... but it has been a costly meltdown. I will probably be asked to leave BYU after this semester. Probably for good. This means I'm going to need to go somewhere else, or get a real job. I think I could try UVSC, I know that several of my friends have said it is a much less competitive school. But I think that is sorta what I need in life.

I was watching, "Meet Joe Black" today, and I realized how unlike Bill I am. How I wish I were. People don't love me, I will never be the kind of person he was. I know people like that, and I envy them so much.

Oh god, have mercy on me. I am so tired of being like this. I just want to be free of it. I don't want to carry this burden any longer, it is too much for me. I wish I could say, "Not my will", but I can't. What can I do?

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Letter: Valentines

Happy Valentines Day!

It snowed again. ERGH!

On Wednesday I went diving, a normal enough chain of events... except that when we came up after our fourth dive, something happened. I got out of the water, started putting away my gear, changing into my clothes you know, the stuff one normally does when you get out of the water. My dive buddy didn't get out though. After I was in my clothes he called out, "Help." What followed is difficult to describe as I tried to keep him and myself calm through him losing the ability to move his limbs. The ambulance was called, paramedics came and we managed to get him out of the water, out of his gear and onto a stretcher.

He asked me to call his sister and tell her what happened, while I finished packing up the rest of his things and brought his car (we carpooled up) down to the hospital. So, I called her and told her what I knew, but in the confusion of the moment we weren't sure which hospital he had been taken to, so I had to try and keep her calm and tell her what was happening. I felt so helpless, there was information that I had, but I didn't know how to tell her, I wonder if that's what the early apostles felt as they tried so desperately to tell their followers everything they could to help them return to God. Only to have the message unclear. "As through a glass darkly." The dive buddy is okay, they finally gave him O2 (like we had been telling them to do for a while) and he started to recover quite quickly. They aren't sure what happened to him.

I was listening to some of the TED talks this week, TED is a conference held annually whose premise is to share ideas worth spreading. Basically the worlds smartest people get together and share ideas on how things should work. A friend of mine got me interested in them last year and I've been perusing them a bit since. One that I noticed (after he posted it on his blog) was a talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert the subject was creative juices. She talked in particular about how in the Greek and Roman days the belief was that each person was given a genius or daemon that would whisper the ideas to their minds. This being was who was responsible for the worth of the work that was created.

She says that this serves two purposes, one: it protects the author from pride. The idea isn't theirs, it is the daemon's. They were just the tool for the expression thereof. Also, if it stunk... well, that wasn't you that stunk, it was the daemon. And it wasn't until much later that people started being described as being a genius for their works, rather than having a genius in their work. The part that made me want to mention it though is that occasionally a dancer or an actor would have this Genius come upon them and inspire them to greater heights than they could previously have attained. This again, wasn't the person... but the genius that aided them. The Islamic faith took this idea and said that it was in fact Allah that was doing this, and they would chant, "Allah." when these particularly amazing events happened.

Then they invaded Spain! The phrase became Spanish and eventually it morphed into the modern day term, "Ole."

Hope you have a wonderful Valentines day(I'm repeating myself, deal with it) and weekend in general.

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