In Which I Am Alive

Guys, I love going on adventures and all, but...I HATE planning them! I'm much more happy with the spontaneous "Let's go do something fun right NOW!!!" approach. Unfortunately, my brain isn't wired to work that way. I need a Plan. I need to know who's driving, when we're leaving, who's bringing tents, is food separate or together, do we have to pay to use a campground, are there bathrooms, what hikes are near our camping site, are there bears, are there cougars, are there wild hellhounds from the pit of darkness, will I even survive the planning stages of this trip or will I die before we ever get there? And since I'm usually the only one uptight enough to care about most of those questions...I get to be the one who gets to find the solutions to ALL of them! And sometimes other people think up questions, and guess who volunteers to find the answers for those? Yeah, me. A one-night trip should NOT cause me so much stress. I guess on Saturday...

Sometimes I get this weird foreboding...like there's something terribly wrong with my worldview, and if I could just put my finger on what it was, extreme emotional pain would follow suit. Which is probably why my subconscious seems to block me from ever putting a finger on what it is. It's a strange feeling though. You know that itchy spot in the middle of your back, that you can never quite scratch and it drives you absolutely crazy? It feels like that. Except that also the itchy spot is a scab over a massive wound that's just going to reopen if you scratch it (sorry for the gory details). So you're torn...leave it and itch in misery? Or scratch it and feel pain from the wound itself? Not as if the question actually matters, because you can't reach the stupid itchy spot anyways...

Rec Center Patrons: Toilet paper on the floor, Pick it up yourselves. Efy children: I let your wraps dry out. They're crumbly...don't hate me. Summer, let's be friends! Sorry for my unjust hate... I like you again. Haikus are tricky: Easy to compose and yet, Hard to make clever.

So...there's this little comic, with these little stick figures. And I've been thinking about it all day. Sometimes it's crass, sometimes it's inappropriate, sometimes it's wayyy too nerdy for me, and sometimes it's a little pretentious. But sometimes it makes me laugh until I cry. Sometimes it makes me think for hours. And sometimes it makes me shiver, because somehow, this weird little stick-figure comic captured one of my deepest, most private thoughts. Here we go, Karissa's thoughts, xkcd style: How I do relationships: http://xkcd.com/513/ What I'm scared of (a series): http://xkcd.com/44/ , http://xkcd.com/310/ (profanity warning on that last one...), and http://xkcd.com/770/ . How I think I'll redecorate my apartment next semester: http://xkcd.com/150/ A fun game that I did before I'd ever even read this comic: http://xkcd.com/525/ Food for thought: http://xkcd.com/610/ Maybe I'll change my career path?: http://xkcd.com...

Oh, me of little faith. I shouldn't be so surprised that that just worked. I could feel my emotions spiraling downward, and felt terrified at my inability to fix them. I didn't know where to turn. And so I knelt. I explained my problem. I explained what I was feeling. I felt a little silly, letting an event so small make me so sad. I felt even sillier asking for help about it. But I didn't know what else to do. So I knelt. I didn't even ask for help. Just talked. But help came anyways. A finger stuck in the dam of my emotions. The situation is still the same. I still don't know what to do. And it still makes me a little sad. But my emotions are no longer swirling out of control. Thank you, Lord.

I don't suffer from insomnia. Once I lay down in bed, I'm out like a light. I suffer from a severe lack of desire to sleep... Every single night... For no reason... I get this bizarre energy burst at about ten, and so I just want to talk to people, and play and have adventures but I live at home so everyone goes to bed and no one can play with me. And so I get on facebook, and I blogstalk (sometimes the blogs of people I've never met...friends of friends...don't tell!) and I try to pretend that the people I'm reading about are really talking to me and that we're friends. And then I realize that I could have gone to bed 2 hours ago and I have to wake up to go to work tomorrow and I still need to read my scriptures and this is why I don't read for more than about 2 verses per day these days. Ok, but tomorrow I'll go to bed at a decent time, right?

So once upon a time, I started to write a blogpost and not publish it. Sometimes typing things in blog form helps me think through things, but this was kind of a gooey/sentimental/sensitive post that I didn't want to make public. So I wrote it, and it was poorly written but that was ok because it was just for me. And then I accidentally hit publish. If you happened to be on my blog in the exact right 3 minute window, you got to read it. You are lucky. I couldn't figure out how to delete a post (yes, I'm retarded). So I hit "edit," deleted all the text and hit "publish" again. Voila, an unsightly blank blog post. Then I got to thinking, "You know, that post wasn't half bad. With a little editing, it might even be worthy to publish again." I'm trying to learn to open up to people more, so maybe posting it would have been an ok idea. I thought I'd used cut and paste when I cleared the text, so with excitement, I hit edit agai...

Dripping with sweat. No sprinklers in sight--apparently some Utahns do conserve water. The sun's fiery tendrils beating at my head. And yet somehow... Satisfaction.

I've been thinking a lot lately about profanity. As far as I can tell, the only scriptural reference to profanity in language comes in the commandment not to take the name of the Lord in vain. I can understand that. It is most certainly wrong to use God's name flippantly. I'm just confused about all the other "bad words." The leaders of the church have frequently warned us not to swear, to use good clean language. In the BYU community, letting a bad word slip can get you instantly judged as an apostate, a Jack-Mormon, or at least "kinda sketchy." I've often said that of all the vices in the world, I think swearing is one of the least serious. Gossip, lust, idleness, ingratitude, selfishness...in my opinion, all these are worse than throwing out the occasional "hell" or "damn". So why is profanity considered wrong at all? What's so bad about letting out my inner sailor every once in a while? I found a blog today that sh...

Having been Young, Single, and an Adult for coming on 2 years now, I've been in my share of singles wards (Three, to be exact). My ward has usually been my prime source for new friends, a place where I can find those going through the same trials and adventures as I am, and of course, a venue for all kinds of fun activities (ok, I have a history of being too "busy" to attend the activities, but sometimes I try). And yet I wonder if we're missing out on something. I can understand the purpose of singles wards: to give young singles like myself an opportunity to be strengthened by those our age, to give us a sense of community at an age when it's so easy to feel like a social nomad, and, of course to Get Us All Married Off. But sometimes, in the company of so many so much like myself, I wonder if I could benefit from a little...diversity. I like going to my Relief Society in my home ward, and hearing the comments from the mothers and grandmothers, those who ha...