Recent Thoughts

I am enjoying my time in Maine. I think it's a dirty state in certain ways but beautiful in others. Everyone is a sailor here so they all swear like one.

The state capitol looks huge, but it's like a hollywood set, super small when you walk around it.

I had stake conference this weekend and then last night listened to the CES fireside in which President Dalton spoke. She spoke on virtue. She said without chastity there is no virtue and vice-versa. So true. This weekend supercharged me. It helped me to see how distracting life can be. There are so many things that just don't matter and that suck our focus from us. There is so much of a lack of discipline in those around. Sometimes it seems like discipline and pertinacity is all I've got under me. Grit is something tangible and saves us from the distractions that everyone else allows as necessities. I love to have fun, but how can you have any fun at all if you're not driven towards something great? What do you even have to take a break from?

Left Overs from This Year

More BarsI ran on a beach
Played games
Made paper with Cami!

I had been wanting to make paper for over a year and I told Cami that it's about time I do it! So she brought over her blender and we shredded my semesters homework and tests. It doesn't take much paper to make paper apparently. It was fun to get out of my system and if we had better screen equiptment the paper would have turned out better. I probably won't do it again for a while but that adventure is over.

Excerpt

It has been such a blessing to be in Maine. I feel that I can make good choices here, also I can relax and enjoy life.
I am reading "Too Late the Phalarope" and I wanted to share a passage:

. . . And if the homestead could not be seen, for the farms are rich and large in the grass country, he would say where it lay, and what trees grew there, and that there was a girl there, lovely and true, who would make a good wife for a young constable, and might one day bring him riches, so that he could give up the Police, and round in the sun and air. And what was better than that, for in the rain you could hear the plovers calling, and the piet-my-vrou would cry from the kloof, which was like a hand suddenly plucking at the strings of the heart, so that your whole being shook and trembled; and why and why, why no one knew, it was the nature of man and of creation, that some sound, long remembered from the days of innocence before the world's corruption, could open the door of the soul, flooding it with a sudden knowledge of the sadness and terror and beauty of man's home and the earth. But you could not keep such knowledge, you could not hold it in your hand like a flower or a book, for it came and went like the wind; and the door of the soul would not stay open, for maybe it was too great joy and sorrow for a man, and meant only for angels. Yet you could ride again in the rain, in the piet-my-vrou's season, and he would call again, and catch you by the throat and make you tremble. (55)

I thought this was beautiful writing and I wanted to share.