"i support this relationship not working out."
-francie whitman, in the darjeeling limited


my mind is a swirling mess of images, thoughts, and ideas. wes anderson movies always put me in these weird moods. i feel like i need to take a thousand photos and smoke a whole lot of cigarettes right now.

i need to stop spending money on food, because these adventures i want to go on take up a lot of gasoline.

some things i like about today:

--Jesus. i'm doing a sort-of one year plan again, and the book of matthew is intense.

--when i mistrust my own ability to find my car keys, and so absentmindedly leave with things relating to somewhere i will be driving.

--seeing people i know on the bus.

--our cute member judy who is probably eighty and comes in every single day. literally.

--tim cannon.

--the book of Ruth. it's such a good reminder of how God provides for us and a beautiful picture of being faithful to Him when times are hard. except for tonight at small group i was so tired that what was going on in my head was not being able to put two sentences together correctly. so that's weird.

--not being in a theory class.

today was going beautifully and so nice with the sun all around me. it was cold but i could definitely breathe the air in, plus my classes went by fast and i understood what my spanish professor was lecturing about. i got to work right in time, after spending a very brief amount of my life on 215 (when you add up all of the minutes of the past two weeks, it isn't so brief) listening to the new decemberists album. so all of that was good enough. i even did my chore of writing all over the whiteboard, in case people forgot their schedules.

but then.

two hours before i was suppose to get off, the whole entire network that runs my work life shut down. and i was stuck doing everything by hand, which is super intimidating, and also time consuming. by the grace of God, the system came back up ten minutes after we closed and saved us even bigger headaches...but we still had to stay an hour later than normal to clean up after the mess. i balanced my drawer, again, by the grace of God, and now i am exhausted. work is always an interesting story in my life now. but i would be a liar if i didn't say i still had possibly hundreds of produce codes memorized. these things never leave you, once you have started with them. certificate rates. account suffixes. how to fold shirts. produce codes. sales principles. how to take a deposit to the bank and how many bills are in a strap. i think this is a good stopping point for information for the time being. i am happy about my life right now.


just don't be shocked if i forget everything that isn't God, school, or my job. because my head hurts too bad all of the time to remember anything else.

I got a package from Germany today, which was the most exciting and foreign thing that has happened to me in awhile. I miss the days of my life when everyone I interacted with was from somewhere else. Norway, Germany, Brazil, China. I would say a phrase and they would either stare blankly, pretend they understood, or ask me what I was getting at. My favorite was Kim, who spoke English very well except that he would say things like "I learned Marley how to jump six feet", or "Rap music is a marathon of swearing." I still imagine in my head how he would say phrases that I think are funny in normal English speech. It is a different environment without these people around. I am settling, instead, for being thrilled about taking a foreign language again. Even though, oops, the last time I took a class was four years ago. I feel so lost but also so proud when I pick up the most basic words. I bet this is what a two year old feels like. Plus, hello, I have a professor that looks like Chuck Bass, which is super great, but also super intimidating, because who wants to conjugate irregular past tense verbs incorrectly in front of Chuck Bass? I wish he really spoke Spanish.

Crazy week one is over, and next week is going to be the same, but hopefully with a little bit more sleep. I don't mind being a zombie except when I am driving or counting thousands of dollars back to a member. My manager was proactive though, and has already hired at least one person to fill our large gaps. I am encouraged by this. There is a day in the future where I won't have to rush between class and my branch. Driving to school isn't as bad as I thought though, because on days like today where the sun is shining I love looking out from 215 at God's beautiful Utah, regardless of the smog that sometimes still lingers. I am blessed to be where I am inside of these long days. Things are do-able.

With my new job, I feel like situations stick with me a lot longer. I think about members on the drive home and often even while I am sitting at home. It's a weird burden that I am not used to.

I am really happy today, in spite of tomorrow being a long day. God is good to me, and that's all I need for now.

I am always finding headphones attached to iPods that are still playing in this house. Every time I think I'm hearing a voice, it's because I usually am, and so I find it and turn it off. It is always Mark Driscoll, is the funny thing.

This past week I have been super-discouraged about school and my 'real job'. At first it was so glamorous but I am starting to realize that going to classes and having to drive to work every day afterwards isn't easy. The workload I have been given this semester is already huge. I don't remember Spanish well, my English professors are assigning hundreds of pages a night, and we are really short-staffed at work because people keep quitting, transferring, or getting pregnant. I had a really encouraging talk with a good friend last night, that put things in a bit better of a perspective though. School is just a season, but to not be there right now would be foolish for me. I only have a few months of this and it will be summer. God isn't giving me more than I can handle but this is definitely a time of refinement and learning how to balance my time. Plus, I have Jesus to look to. What is ANY of this compared to what he had to go through for me?

My headaches are coming back though, due to stress. Good thing it is halfway to the weekend. I can make it through these next few weeks.

I feel like I need to complain, for one second, about how webct never works when I actually need it to. Or cis. Or anything university related. Which I guess is alright, because I would rather not read Mallarme anyways.

Two ladies yelled at me today during work. One man told me I was pretty. Six people, at the least, asked me the same question they ask me every single day. I lost my keys zero times. My boss only gave me one speech. I accepted a countless amount of extra hours. Probably most of these numbers are made up. But I know at least two of them are correct.



The cat got shut in the closet again, which it has a habit of doing, so it's brother is just staring at the door, waiting for something to happen. It's sort of cute. I go to let him out, and the other one crawls in. Whatever, cats.


I put too much peppermint in my coffee. It feels like I just smoked way too many cigarettes, except a little bit cleaner.

"He was also a little addicted to the expression of a belief that, where there was so great an observance of the externals of religion, there could not be much of the substance."
-James Cooper, The Pioneers

That's from one of the books I am reading for my 19th Century American Literature class (and yup, I am aware that that is a mouthful), which I think is kind of nice. Everything else is pages of arguing about a dead deer, and then bam! I think I would like to meet the man they are describing. He would either be really thought-provoking or really annoying. I want to hear him speak, but instead I can't pay attention to the novel because the rest of it is too boring.

These days. There is nothing much to say except that they are flying by. This week has been a freaky, blurry dream, due to all of my time being spent at school, the credit union, or traveling between the two. I snuck out of the routine for a little bit to go the gym, but even there the Brother's Grimm followed me and I ended up reading some creepy German fairytales. Like, super creepy. I don't thiink I would ever show them to my children. Or especially I wouldn't read them out loud, because I would just feel guilty. "And then the stepmother cooked her son in a stew, and fed him to his clueless father." Yeah, not so cool, or encouraging.

I want to only speak in Spanish for the rest of the year. It just sounds so nice, but I am terrified to speak it in front of real life Mexicans or Latin Americans. Bummer.

My business professor seemed real cool because he looked like Harrison Ford, and had a pretty decent voice. But then he spent a lot of time talking about God in a way that was totally off-base. It took all of ten minutes before I was done. Done completely. I just didn't feel great about it, and I dropped the class. I don't want to take a class that leaves me with a weird feeling in my gut. The business world just does not appeal to me at all, because a lot of things in it go against everything I stand for. So I'm done and I don't know where I'm going from here. But the truth is is that it feels a whole lot better.

I realized today I only need like 4 or 5 classes to graduate now, because of no business life for the moment. But it tempts me into taking Spanish a lot further. So I don't know what I am even doing anymore. I don't have any plan, but there are a lot of ideas rolling around in my head that I am excited to give to God. This is going to be a really interesting season.

the thing about working out (which i accidentally went and did twice today, because i am starting to be in love with it, and watching sports on the little tvs, and trying to work all of the fancy machines...) is that is just makes me want to eat, so much. so i guess it's good that i'm not going to the gym to lose weight or anything, more like i just want to be able to bike up hills without having to get off and walk. that's a good goal to have.

i feel like i spend all of my time at the credit union now, or at least in anticipation of being at the credit union. today was the first day that it was slow for a long amount of time since i started, so i spent some time reading blogs, which was a welcome change of pace. so far i feel incredibly blessed by my job though. members surprise me every single day. today a man came in, and what happened between us was this: i finished helping him and asked our classic, "is there anything else i can do for you (your name here)?", and his answer was "well, you can put me on your prayer list tonight, that i would get a job." he said it half-jokingly but was actually totally serious. i was totally shocked for a minute because that has never happened to me at work, but i am encouraged by it. he had no idea i was a Christian; in all honesty, he probably assumed i was a member of another religion. but the fact that he approached me made me day. so i am praying for that man, and i hope he comes back in soon.

anyways. tomorrow is my day off. i think i'll stay up watching a movie i borrowed from noah hahn. it's good to know i have the same taste in movies as a twelve year old boy.

I have been to the gym twice in the past few days. It is a good use of my free time because I get to listen to teachings and build up endurance for all of the things I want to accomplish this summer. School starts on Monday, and I'm incredibly unprepared, but I know this semester will be alright. There is a lot on my plate this time around but I am not scared of managing all of my time wrong anymore. School is a long season, but it doesn't have to take me out of the picture completely. School isn't bigger than my God or good, Christian fellowship. I am stoked to go into this semester with that mindset. There will still be stress, but I feel much better about it.

in my dream the other night,

you weren't able to tell me how you felt about me. so what you did was get a bunch of m & m's and attach personal messages to them, things that you loved about me and so forth. i was pretty upset because i ate a few of them before i noticed the messages, and in those few i was afraid you'd said something quite profound. each phrase was well thought out and beautiful.

except for the biggest problem was that your sentiments kept making me late to work. it became too hard to concentrate on even dressing up nice. each minute counted against me so i was a little bit angry at you. but i appreciate the thought.

Spencer is singing loud songs while crying his eyes out, which I guess is his new way of showing grief. It's sort of sad because I can hear him from downstairs and he sounds so brokenhearted, but I know that all that happened was that his dog ate his new rabbit's foot from his grandpa. Like, 2 hours after he brought it home. Poor buddy, but he is at least not dying of a real life broken heart. It's so sad to hear, but at the same time strangely funny because he is just singing, singing like a drunk man. Times like these make me not want to be a parent for a little while. I don't know how I would even be able to begin to handle a situation like that.

The Bears lost today. Which, hello, they only lose when I actually watch the game. Like, I think I've watched like, 3 games, and they've only lost 5 total. What is going on with this?