2010 Review.

Another year has come to a close.  It surprises me how quickly time seems to go by lately.  One of the results of getting older year by year seems to be the perceived increase in the speed with which time passes.  Very rarely do I find that time goes by slowly anymore, but quite often I find that it has passed quite quickly.  This is quite the opposite of what I remember of my childhood when a week seemed like a year, and I couldn't even understand how long a month meant.  Since the year has come to an end I thought it would be good for me to kind of do a recap of some of the highlights of my 2010 as I look forward to an even more eventful 2011.  

 

In case you missed it, here is what has happened with me in the calendar year 2010:

I purchased a new house - although I enjoyed living at home and was able to minimize my expenses significantly by being there, as a 26 year old man with a good job I just didn't feel good about living at home with my parents anymore.  It was a good time to buy and I took advantage of some government programs at the time in order help myself feel better about my purchase.  

Lots of travel - well, relative to the rest of my life at least.  Most of my life I have not travelled all that much.  This year allowed me to go to a lot of new places that I have never been before.  List of places I visited this year includes: Detroit, San Francisco, Orange County, Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis, Nauvoo, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Washington DC, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Provo, Philadelphia, Birmingham, Albuquerque.  

Car troubles - ran rampant the last half of the year.  After about 3 years of not having to really worry about anything car related, I got in a minor car accident at the beginning of August.  Little did I know that this would just be the beginning of a 4 month car carousel, which HOPEFULLY ended yesterday.  After about a month and a half of juggling cars with the parents I purchased a cash car from a used car place for very cheap.  It ran perfectly in the test drive, and promptly died less than 48 hours later.  The engine was destroyed and cost a lot to fix.  I then went back to the same used car lot to see if they would give me a discount on a different car since they sold me a dud.  I purchased another car for them for fairly cheap, but more than the first car.  It ran well for about two months and then they engine blew up on me after my trip to Albuquerque for the New Mexico Bowl.  Yesterday I went and purchased a certified used car from a Honda dealership with all of the extended warranties I could get.  I look forward to not having to worry about car troubles again for a very long time.  

BYU sporting events - all in all I am pretty pleased with my attendance at BYU sports this year.  Living in Fort Worth, TX is not the most conducive place I can live in order to attend BYU sporting events, but in spite of this I was still able to attend: Mens Basketball at TCU, Football at TCU, Football vs. Washington, Football vs. Wyoming, Football vs. UTEP (bowl game).

Church - has kept me very busy throughout the year, even more so than usual.  My calling kind of makes it so I feel a bit more obliged to be at all of the activities I can get to, as well as all of the responsibilities I have on top of it.  I was also able to go to the temple a lot more this year than I ever remember going previously.  I was able to visit several different temples this year including: Dallas, Los Angeles, Nauvoo, Washington DC, Mt. Timpanogos, Salt Lake, and Provo.  

New friends, old friends - this year was a year of finding new friends here in Dallas, as well as staying in touch with old friends both back in Provo and on / home from missions.  It was a lot of fun making new friends, though it has taken me a lot longer and been a lot harder than I would have liked.  Good friends also returned from missions and set off on missions this year.  It has been fun reconnecting and staying in touch with them as well.  

All in all, it has been a great year.  I have had some of my highest highs and lowest lows that I can remember this year.  I feel like a real grown up now having purchased both a new car and a new house.  As great as 2010 has been, there were also a lot of trials and difficulties that helped me grow a lot in many different areas.  I look forward to a new challenge and many fun times and connections in 2011!  Have fun tonight.  12-31-10

New Mexico Bowl.

So this past weekend I decided to go on a road trip.  It was kind of a spontaneous last minute trip (or at least it felt that way) which is not something that I generally do.  My little brother and sister finished up finals week at BYU and were driving home for the Christmas break.  I decided I would meet up with them in Albuquerque and we would hit up the bowl game since they would be passing through New Mexico at about the same time the game was going to happen either way.  I tricked my friend Audi into making the 1300 mile, 18 hour journey with me and we took off once I got off of work on Friday.  It was a very quick and hectic trip but it was a lot of fun.  I have included a few pictures in order to help give you an idea of the fun.    

First is a picture of Audi and me in the car as we started on our way to Albuquerque.  We didn't get on the road until about 6pm, which was a lot later than I had thought, thus giving us an ETA in Albuquerque of 3am.  We had to get stoked in order to be able to make the journey…

After we made it to Albuquerque, we went straight to bed and got up in the morning ready to cheer on the Cougars to victory.  These were a few pictures of us on our way walking to the game. 

The game was a lot of fun, as we arrived at the stadium we were able to see some of the pregame festivities.  The highlight of the pregame was when the microphone didn't work for the girl singing the national anthem, so the crowd got restless and decided to sing it for themselves.  

As I am sure everyone knows, BYU dominated the bowl game and won by the score of BYU 52 UTEP 24.  We got to go down on the field after the game for the trophy presentation and for some of the interviews with the players.  We got a few pics from down there as well.  

All in all it was a really fun trip.  It was a LONG time in the car, but it was worth it to see the Cougars win.  The only unfortunate event from the whole trip was that my car blew up when we got home at like 3:30 in the morning.  It blew a head gasket and is completely gone now, part of the reason it has taken me so long between posts.  Also, I have been busy with the holiday season.  BYU should have a really good and talented young team next year.  Rise.  Merry Christmas yall!  12-25-10

Distractions.

Life can be a very busy experience.  Personally I prefer it that way.  An interesting observation my mother once told me was that I am a much happier person when I am busy doing things.  For some reason idle time and myself do not mix very well.  I become bored, irritable, and even at times unpleasant to be around (shocking I know).  Part of the reason that it is easier to stay positive when I am busy is because an empty / bored mind is more susceptible to the negative thoughts and temptations that are constantly thrown our way on a daily basis.  This can lead to a tendency to dwell on the unpleasant things / experiences in your life, what you wish you had, etc.  For this reason I have been ever more aware of the many different distractions that I employ in my life on a daily basis.  There are a lot of different things in my life that I use as temporary respites from the daily trials and frustrations that I have and that help me to chase away the depressing and negative thoughts that so easily come back when my mind is free to wander.  

First off let me put this in perspective.  I am not a depressing person.  My life is actually very blessed and I generally keep that in good perspective and am happy and grateful for my blessings.  There are times however, when it is easy to think of things that I wish could be different regarding my life.  Not everything in my life is ideal, and there are a few changes that I would make if given the opportunity to.  Unfortunately for me, a lot of these things are beyond my control and are not things that I have a lot of influence over.  I am okay with that, and I have come to accept that there are lots of other good opportunities and blessings that I can be pursuing as things currently stand.  While I do feel good about my current situation, there are times when I think about it and it bothers me.  It then becomes easy to become sad, cranky, and frustrated.  This is where the distractions come in for me and turn to music, sports, reading, writing, and friends to keep my mind from focusing on things in my life that have the ability to bring me down.  I am sure this is a very common thing, and probably not worthy of dedicating an entire blog post to.  What really caught my attention though was when I realized how similarly I turn to my distractions listed above to take me away from the reality of life situations that I can not or feel like I can not change, as drug addicts turn to drugs to escape the reality of situations they are facing in their lives.  

It was not something that I had ever thought about before.  I was watching 'Celebrity Rehab w/ Dr. Drew' on VH1 and the people on the show were talking about how they had turned to drugs when the situations in their life seemed overwhelming or too much for them to deal with.  They used the drugs as a distraction to keep them from having to think about the negative situations they were dealing with in their lives.  I have noticed recently in my own life how I will turn to music, sports, or some other distraction to take my thoughts away from situations in my life that I feel like I can't deal with / have little to no control over.  While the consequences of the decisions I make vs. the consequences of the decisions that the drug addicts made are vastly different, the interesting part to me was that the thought process behind the decisions were very similar.  A whole book could be written on the importance of choosing positive distractions to overcome your pain / grief / frustration vs. negative distractions, but I simply wanted to point out how close the actual thought processes behind those decisions were.  Personally I can remember specific times when I have had thoughts that were depressing, frustrating, or both and I have made the conscience decision, "I can't deal with / think about this anymore", and I have turned on music, gone running, or done something else to take my mind off of what was bothering me.  Not that I have a ton in my life to complain about or get me down, but there are times when it is easy to get caught up in the sadder aspects of life.  It was a humbling thought to think that I followed the same process in what has turned out to be very small decisions in my life that addicts followed when making some of the most life altering decisions of their own lives.    

I guess what is important is finding our own personal positive distractions that help us effectively deal with the inevitable windfall of tragedy and heartache that will eventually befall us all to some extent or another.  Perhaps the process behind turning to distractions to deal with different situations in life is more of a human characteristic vs. an addict characteristic than I had previously thought.  I never really thought that I had as much in common with those that have turned to drugs to escape their problems as it now seems that I do.  I guess the only thing that differs is our drug of choice. 12-12-10

Dorm Life.

Over the past few weeks I have been trying to keep myself busy.  I have also been a bit nostalgic and I decided that one of the best ways to help people understand a lot of the random references that I used with my friends up at school, that make absolutely no sense to most everyone else unless you know the context, was to bring my favorite web series to them.  The mockumentary episodic series "Dorm Life" and myself were first introduced by a mutual friend of ours.  From that first chance meeting I have been mildly obsessed with and have incorporated many different Dorm Life references into my daily life.  As such I wanted to share my love of this hilarious comedic masterpiece with those around me now.  

Dorm Life is great show.  It documents the lives of college freshman as they go through their first year of school at an unidentified university.  Most of the show takes place on the dorm floor 5 South where the characters learn "how to bond together and do fun activities."  The main characters of the show include Marshall the RA, Mike, Josh, Steph, Abby, Gopher, Shane, Danny B, Brit, and Courtney.  My favorite characters are definitely Gopher and Shane as they are kind of the comedic relief for the show and are the ones who provide a lot of the floor excitement without any of the drama.  The show is only two seasons long with the first documenting the Fall semester and the second documenting the Winter semester.  Apparently Dorm Life was nominated for a lot of different web series awards and deservedly so in my opinion.  I have included below a link to one of my favorite episodes of the show from the second season that shows 5 South's experience with Valentines Day.  

http://www.hulu.com/watch/64447/dorm-life-valentines-day

One of the best things about the show is how quotable it is.  A lot of the lines that have worked themselves into my main day to day vocabulary come from this show.  Whether it be Shane always saying "Prolly", or Marshall and his "So Rad Dude" (or really "So (anything) Dude"), there are a lot of great one liners from the different episodes.  I have included a few of my most preferred below.  

"You see Danny B, that's the risk you take with mystery hot girls.  Once you take the mystery away, it's just a hot girl and hot girls can be lame."  - Gopher

"We are going to go home with smiles in our hearts and songs on our faces!" - Shane

"Everyone knows there's only 3 ways out of the friend zone: boredom, jealousy, or a traumatic event." - Gopher

"Prepare to die, prepare to die, blood makes the grass grow kill, Kill, KILL!!!" - Marshall

"I don't even know why you guys think this I like sports and video games." - Andy

There are a lot more great lines from the show, but you should check them out for yourself.  There is a pretty rad website if you are interested in learning more, or if you ever get bored and are looking for something to entertain yourself. 

http://www.dorm-life.com/

I hope you enjoy!  12-07-10