A Clarification on the Nature of Blogging

After reading my 2009 goals, George pointed out that a blog post a day is unreasonable. I agree for a few reasons. First, how in the world could I come up with enough to write? No one likes junk blog posts, the ones that people put up just for the sake of filling a day on their blogging schedule. Once you start posting like that, people start ignoring your blog in their feed reader, no matter how interesting they think you are. I do not intent for my blog to go this way. Second, a good blog post takes longer than 15 minutes to write. Many of my favorite posts took about one and a half hours to write. Obviously I had more free time back then.

So here's a clarification: when I say 15 minutes of writing on my blog, this doesn't necessarily mean I will finish a post each day. Just because blogging can be instant publication doesn't mean it should always be. Writing something good takes time, but you don't always have all the time at once. So I'm turning my blogging back into a revision-necessary form of writing. Blogging has always been a balance between quality and quantity: if you have a life outside of the web, you have a limited amount of resources to distribute between the two. Your blog with either be infrequent but meaningful, or full of daily, maybe hourly, posts linking to videos or commenting on the weather. Since I view my blog as a place to cull material for future essays, the former is more helpful to me.

Take a look at this post: that is what 15 minutes of blogging looks like. Barely enough time for one coherent thought!

Knowing the Bridegroom

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. (Matt 25:10-12)

So it's been awhile since I've written a more serious entry, for reasons which should be obvious. But since my mind insists on formatting every thought I have into a blog entry, I guess I better recommit myself to the blogosphere.

One thing that I realized on my study abroad trip was the metaphors in the scriptures are anything but accidental. For one of our devotionals in England, I wrote a talk on why the scriptures refer to Christ as the light of the world. The implications of that metaphor are astounding to me. (I plan on revising that talk over the next few days to post on Blogger of Jared. Keep an eye out for it.) But the metaphor that's been snagging my mind lately is Christ as the bridegroom and ourselves as the bride, again for obvious reasons.

The lesson in Relief Society this week was "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me" from the Spencer W. Kimball manual. Our discussion veered off on the interesting tangent of how we can grow to love God more. As we listed all the typical answers, it struck me how apt it is to compare our relationship with Christ or God to a marriage. It seems from my limited experience that there are two ways we spend time with a spouse. The first is the process of life--buying groceries, looking over the weekly calendar, picking each other up from work, running errands, getting stuff done. The second is the specially set-aside time, time we make away from the work-a-day mill to spend with each other, the weekly dates the Church so frequently councils us toward. One isn't better than the other; both are necessary for a healthy relationship.

How well these two elements apply to our relationship with God! God is to be part of our everyday actions. We must be listening to spiritual promptings and doing the 'errands' of our spiritual lives--our scripture reading, our prayers--in His presence. Yet equally important is setting aside weekly time to meet with God, to commune together without an agenda of getting things done, just listening and talking and repairing our relationship.

How many of us can say we set aside time for a weekly 'date' with God, though? In my life at least, there's often much emphasis on relying on Him in my daily actions--the Spirit is my support through the day--and not enough of simply getting to know Him better. Much of my time with God seems about incidental convenience. Blogging time double-counts as pondering time. Writing in my journal is following the prophets as well as creating material for my honors thesis project. I can learn all sorts of spiritual things while also getting paid to work on the footnotes for the next volume of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. (Now they pay me to be obsessed with him. Yay!)

I'm not saying such double-counting is bad. God's presence should permeate our lives like light. But it gets to be a problem when I have a hard time thinking of that last time I did something to commune with God without the ulterior motivation of being productive elsewhere. That kind of relationship is exhausting. When George and I went through a few days doing nothing but working and planning wedding stuff, my ability to give and feel love was severely impaired. Without downtime in any relationship, you simply forget why you are doing things. And lack of downtime in my relationship with God leads me to forget why I push through the 'errands' of spirituality.

Another question is this: what do you do with one-on-one time with God? Unfortunately, I can't take God down to the Malt Shoppe for two-for-one Mondays. For me, the answer to alone time with God is prayer. At FHE, we discussed Elder Scott's conference talk on prayer, and this phrase from the "How Should You Pray?" section stuck out to me:

Don’t worry about your clumsily expressed feelings. Just talk to your compassionate, understanding Father. You are His precious child whom He loves perfectly and wants to help. As you pray, recognize that Father in Heaven is near and He is listening.

That description of open communication, without worry about clumsy phrases or entertaining the listener, is exactly the type of communication that ought to exist between spouses. That willingness to say whatever comes to mind, to talk about anything, everything, nothing, is exactly the way I feel when I talk with George. Prayer ought to be the kind of talk that comes of lying in a hammock with someone you love, staring at sky through the tangled leaves, where all life suddenly comes open, and in that instant you can fix problems that have taken years to form, or doing anything really. It's so vast yet personal--overwhelming to me.

Homo Faber

So hanging out in the apartment alone is very conducive to blogging. This is a reply to Ben's post on technophobia in the older generation.

A factor you didn't list: a lot of older people don't see the need for computers in their lives. My grandmother is totally computer illiterate as in "can't check her email or use Word" illiterate. She does use a cell phone and she's a pretty active business person. (She and my aunt have a bridal store in Bountiful.) Lots of people in the family have offered to teach her the ropes, and she seems amiable to the idea.

However, I think the main factor that's keeping her from it is that she doesn't really see a need for it in her life. Email, you say? She already has a cell phone and more people over at her house everyday to talk to than she can handle. Photo sharing? The relatives bring over their scrapbooks or send her pics in the mail, and she can see everything else. News? That's what she takes the paper for. Specialized information? I think libraries are still in existence, with real, actual people to help you. No need for word processing or spreadsheets or blogging or games. There's simply no viable reason to learn how. In fact, I think the only reason my grandmother even contemplates it is that she would get to spend some time with her grandchildren as they teach her.

We young people are convinced that the elderly are missing out on something tremendously important, and maybe they are. But we forget that people got along fine before computers. Most of the things we do via computer can still be done by hand or by phone. What, in the end, are they really missing out on?

Really, the only true reason for the "older" people to learn computers is in order to land a job. Similarly to the immigrants-learning-English analogy, they will only learn what they need and nothing more. They don't need computers to have fun or be personally productive. They already know a rich, fulfilling way of life without it.

More and more I envy these people. I spend a lot of time on my computer, and I'm sure only 10-20% of it is productive. A lot of what I do on here is not very concrete. Wouldn't I rather be out in their world, producing tangible things? Cooking and sewing and crafting and making--this is one point where Karl Marx and I can agree. Isn't it more satisfying to be Man the Maker than Man the Thinker? Digital creation and data pushing just doesn't cut it.

Just Do It

In response to people (*coughJonicough*) complaining about not having enough time:

Stuff and nonsense. I don't want to hear a single thing about you being busy. I'm taking five upper-division courses and working 16 hours a week. Yet, this week, I still found the time to cook dinner every night, spend 4 hours at the CS Lewis Society booth (plus 2 hours passing out flyers), play Sardines in the library, watch Nova, start a prank war with the apartment across the way, and go to an enrichment activity. Oh, and I've posted on my blog almost everyday.

If there's one thing I've learned in the past few months, it's that complaining about being busy will get you nowhere. Either you're doing it or not.

One thing I highly suggest is taking into consideration exactly how much effort you need to put into your school work. Book of Liz, chapter 6, verse 12, "For what is a woman profited, if she shall gain straight A's, and lose her sanity? or what shall a woman give in exchange for a high GPA?" Really, especially with textbook reading, there's three levels of effort you can put in: comprehension, completion, and skim. Reading for comprehension is not necessarily the best level, especially when completion or skimming will do. See where you can cut back your efforts and still get reasonable returns.

My rule is the Pareto Principle. 20% of the work will get you 80% of the way there. 80% is a B-ish; how much of the other 80% of the work do you want to do? Is the extra 40% to get an A worth it when you could save hours and get an A-? It doesn't have to be perfect, just done. No, you won't have a 3.999999 GPA, but you'll hang in there around 3.6-7-ish. Which is perfectly fine.

Anyway, try not to stress out too much. You can't do everything, so stop trying to. It's extremely liberating. Only do what you need to do, then do what you want to do.

Pros and Cons of Being Martha

This wasn't what I originally intented to write about, but I need to write it down before I forget what it was about. So Saturday's intended blog entry is being put off indefinitely.

As this semester has come to a close, I've noticed a problem I have that's always been lurking in the back of my mind, but I never really bring out and conquer. It's one that should be obvious, but for some reason I manage to always ignore it. The problem is this: I am always living waiting for something to end, for the future, I guess, but mostly for change.

In particular, during the semester I tend to rationalize the fact that I have no time to do what I want by the fact that it will soon be over. This semester has really been the worst: I literally go to school everyday, come home, eat, do homework, and sleep. When I do have free time, I spend it vegging out in front of my computer because my brain and will are simply so fried that I can't do anything else. When the semester ends, I spend a few days just hibernating in my apartment recovering. But then, I don't learn from my experience and simply load myself up again with way more than I can handle.

I probably get this from my dad: he tends to go in this same full-throttle/crash-and burn cycle. He'll work a sixty hour week, perhaps staying at work for even 48 hours straight. Then he comes home and crashes through the weekend. I know this is not a good way to live; as I said to my dad, I don't want to live waiting for my life to be over.

So while I've been pondering this, I came across in my scripture reading the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. When people discuss this story, we talk about the problem of being too busy to stop and listen to the gospel. The work Martha is doing is something that needs to be done, but sometimes it is more important to stop and listen to the gospel. Mary is symbolic of the quiet listener, Martha the overworked and distracted disciple.

However, this time as I was reading this story, I looked up a cross reference and read in John 11 the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I hadn't ever read this story focusing on the Mary/Martha aspect, but when I did, I noticed another aspect of this relationship which caused me to reconsider the meaning of the story. When Jesus comes to Bethany, Martha immediately comes to him, and when asked if she believes Christ has the power to raise the dead, she immediately says yes. But when Mary comes to the Lord, she seems, at least to me, to be in total despair, lacking the hope that Martha seems to have in the gospel.

The conclusion I came to was this: living a busy and less active life sometimes leaves little time to contemplate the gospel, but I think it gives us a testimony of the principles of the gospel in action in our lives. By sitting around contemplating the gospel, we can gain a deep understanding of the principles involved, but it doesn't necessarily give us a testimony of their truth. The gospel is not something that can be studied in isolation; we cannot learn the gospel without having something to apply it about. The most boring and least strong members of the church are those who spend all day studying the gospel. Really, it becomes a sort of inbreeding: you have no substance to live the gospel about and your belief in it becomes founded only on your study of it. But when you live, you see the application of the principles in your life, and your testimony grows stronger even though you may not have as much time to study.

So, as seems to be the conclusion of the most of my posts lately, it's all about balance. I need to find the point in my life when I won't be so overwhelmed that I don't have time to contemplate, but also be busy enough to have experiences and deepen my testimony of the gospel.

Unpacking

Well, I'm finally back from Christmas vacation. Today was really crazy. Between dropping Heather off at USU, picking up Joni from the airport, and driving to Provo, I spent about 10 hours in the car, plus two in the airport. Sheesh. I hate waiting for things and riding in cars. I don't feel like I can get anything done because something might happen and I need to be on alert. (Plus in cars, I'll get sick if I try to do much of anything.)

So, I thought I had this semester all planned out until I got my grades for last semester. Then I realized that in order to keep my scholarship, I need to retake a few classes. Thus, this semester has suddenly become a lot easier than I thought it would be, but I feel sort of ashamed retaking classes. I mean, I should have done better in them in the first place. Almost without exception, my bad grades are due to my lack of participation. On tests and papers, I almost always do well, but quizzes and participation points are usually enough to bring my grades down to the B range. Not bad for some people, but in trying to keep a scholarship, huge problem.

I think the reason this happens is because I used to be able to get by in school on pure talent. No effort was really necessary to get A's (or E's, since my elementary school didn't use traditional letter grades). But in high school, they start including so many participation points and busy work, which I hate. For example, I failed (yes, with an F) two quarters of AP Biology. However, I got a 5 on the AP Bio test and a 7 on the IB Bio test. It was just ridiculous. Why should people who know everything in the class get poor grads because they refuse to do busy work?

Here's my solution to the problem. Give each student two grades at the end of the semester, one based only on important papers and tests, one including those plus all the busy work points. Either put both on the report card, or let students choose which one they want. I guess my main frustration is the lack of a standard grading system for all classes everywhere. If I were in charge, all classes across the US (maybe the world) would have a standard grading system. That way things can actually be compared. This is why I am a huge fan of testing systems. They provide a scale of comparison. All this nonsense about the tests not being fair just seems silly to me. People complain about them because they reveal the difference between a 4.0 student who learns and a 4.0 student who just does the work.

This detour brings me back to the real point. Through out my school career, I have avoided doing more work than necessary to learn the material. Basically, I'm a self-made slacker on purpose. But now I need to reform and get some actual study habits. Yeah, that would be good.