Resolving to Resolve.

I have yet to make any New Years Resolutions. Decision making has never been my greatest strength. I tend to get overwhelmed with all of the available options. There is so much to choose from in this life, so many different roads we can take. Yet, we are forced to choose just ONE. One road. One choice. One life.

It doesn't help that I suffer from a chronic form of perfectionism which easily turns into procrastination. I can be very self-defeating as I subconsciously insist that "if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do it at all."

I'm working on that one! I'm working on not making life more complicated and difficult than it really is. I'm working on taking a more active role in my agency...I want to choose where my path will lead me and not simply be tossed about by every tide and storm and random influence. That doesn't mean that we are not allowed to make mistakes. Or change our mind. Or go the wrong way. I am realizing that sometimes, it doesn't matter so much what you choose, just that you choose. You are free to act, don't be acted upon.

I will qualify that. WHAT you choose IS very important. As President Thomas S. Monson likes to say "Decisions determine Destiny."

I don't know about you, but I want a destiny. A beautiful, eternal destiny. But to create this destiny, we don't need to be so afraid of our choices as I have so often feared. Such fear represents a lack of trust and faith, for faith and fear cannot dwell in the same mind at the same moment. So I will choose not to fear. I will choose to create that beautiful, eternal destiny step by step. Day by day. Lives are lived not in years or college semesters, but in moments.

Life is such a delicate balancing act. We must not fear or worry about every single choice, yet we should be concerned and take an active part in our agency as we acknowledge that every single one of our little choices affects who we are. We must think and plan ahead, but live in the moment. We must figure out what we want. Who we are. And once we know ourselves be willing to sacrifice that will for the will and wisdom of our Heavenly Father.

So what is His will for me?? I really don't know. Not yet.

I have come to understand that the Lord reveals his will to us in both our minds and hearts at the same time in a quiet yet clear way. I feel very confused right now...so I am not going to make any final decisions for the present. However, in the spirit of the New Year and it's resolutions, I will make this one: that although I cannot choose all of those big life decisions right at this moment, what my career will be, who I will marry, etc, I am not going to procrastinate life any longer. I am just going to live right now. I am going to bloom where I am planted. I am going to make those small daily choices like "let's get out of bed," "let's pray and read our scriptures," "let's go for a run," "let's choose to have faith and not fear at this moment." I am resolving that when I can act with certainty..when I have ideas that feel right, I will act upon them. I will go and do. Even if the choices I can make are only small: I resolve to resolve.

Unfinished.

I can't finish anything right now. I don't
Is it really procrastination?

Where Am I Today??

This is a question I ask myself everyday.

Sometimes I feel lost. Stuck. Frozen. A wandering wanlass, if you will. :P

Other days I feel like I am just where I am meant to be.

so...where am I today????

Tired.

I am weary. The everyday grind of life is wearing me down. No matter, this season will pass just like all the rest.

Note to self:

-recipes for Sarah (the three-layer-cookies and the brownie trifle)

-finish "Motorcycle Girl" and "Letter Factory" and "Why Cell Phones Sell" and...the rest.

-work on other blog, "A Little Mermaid"

-eventually start music vlog??

-why do I make lists like this?? It only makes me tired-er!!

p.s. I just realized that today is a really cool date: 11.22.10 :)

Happenstance.

Life just happens.

Like it or not

The clock doesn't stop

And the winds of change and chance

Blow where'er you dance

Life is just...happenstance.

A Time and a Season

There is a time and season for everything under the sun, or clouds--as the case was today. Every season divine. I have been reveling in the graceful beauty of this fall. There is something about this time of year which reaches beyond the bouquets of sharpened pencils and crispness of the air. There is something more to the raking of the colorful leaves, the picking of pumpkins and apples. The oneness I feel with nature goes beyond simply being outdoors to witness the bluest of skies and general vividness of the colors surrounding me. I have yet to be able to soak in enough of this wonderful autumn. My words being inadequate...let me borrow John Donne:

Elegy IX: The Autumnal by John Donne

No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnall face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame,
Affection here takes Reverence's name.
Were her first years the Golden Age; that's true,
But now she's gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,
This is her tolerable Tropique clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves; for else he is no where.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
Vowed to this trench, like an Anachorit.

And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he, though he sojourn ev'ry where,
In progress, yet his standing house is here.
Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night;
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at counsel, sit.
This is Love's timber, youth his under-wood;
There he, as wine in June enrages blood,
Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the Platane tree,
Was loved for age, none being so large as she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age's glory, Barrenness.
If we love things long sought, Age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;
Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at Resurrection;
Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique be.
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
Since such love's natural lation is, may still
My love descend, and journey down the hill,
Not panting after growing beauties so,
I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go.

Reading this again, I think of the book I just finished called The Road Less Traveled by Scott M. Peck and Persuasion by Jane Austen. The theme resonates with where I am write now and causes me to think of Ecclesiastes 3:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." No worrying needed. I like that! :)

Besides the fall, I am in a season of busy-ness. I am working two jobs: I am a lifeguard at Healthtrax (a gym), and as a VerizonWireless sales girl...so of course I am in love with the Droid phones. Especially the Droid X and the Incredible. Luckily, I am kept from temptation by the fact that I am broke. That'll do it every time! ;)

In my down time (and pool time), I have been doing quite a bit of writing and reading and stretching and growing in the past few months...just not directly on my blog. A lot of my thoughts have been translated into letters (which too often go unsent...working on that!) and into songs, and into other writings. I hope to get some of these thoughts up soon. I am in such a personal state of transition. The question "what actually happens in the caterpillars cocoon during metamorphosis?" is being revealed to me. I wish that I could sleep through it, as the caterpillar does, and simply wake up as a butterfly. But it doesn't work that way.

Sigh.

This is me, apparently. According to a girl named Tiffany.

I sure do wish that certain daydreams would come true!! ;P

Confused? See my post from last month: Daydreams.