This week I received a lot of news that was hard for me to process and handle. On a mission, you lose all your normal ways of handling stress. For me, I lost music, water, along time, etc. Buuut...you've got to figure out a way to deal with it or you go crazy. Well, you go crazy anyway but stress makes it 10,000,000 times worse.
So, as much as I wish knocking doors helped me relax, it doesn't. I was sitting in the car fighting the urge to throw the Mo Tab CD out the window and desperately wanting to swim laps when I started (pretty sarcastically) narrating the lives of the people I was watching out the window.
I used to do this a lot when I worked as a lifeguard and a couple minutes into it I realized I was laughing. I realized that narrating the world around me - putting my thoughts into actual words - really helped me. This sounds kinda weird, but if you think about it, we all have tons of thoughts crossing our minds every second that we don't consciously register. When I'm not able to take a second and visualize my thoughts they build up until I'm stressed without actually knowing why. This is why swimming distance and throwing a polo ball at a cage for hours used to help me so much. The repetitive action allowed my mind to sort itself out...to catalog what thoughts were important and which ones I needed to throw out. I've been self-narrating my life for years without even knowing what I was doing or why I was doing it.
This is also probably why writing has never been a big deal to me. My professor wants a 10 page paper on thermodynamics governing the course of history? Cool. Now I have something to think about next time I swim laps for hours. [My time spent swimming for several years of my life gave me the chance to think...and think a lot. So when I was assigned topics in school, my mind had often already wandered to them and studied out different aspects while I was in the water. For the most part, I enjoyed the opportunity to formulate those random thoughts into a cohesive argument.] That being said, writing is not something I've traditionally considered a stress-reliever. I definitely did more than my fair share of it at school and i never minded it as much as other kids, but I've realized in the past week how much it relaxes me. Writing is a way to take my thoughts, put them on paper, organize and reorganize them. At the end, I can say "Yeah, I've examined every connection and tangent I know of at this point related to say, thermodynamics, and this is the conclusion I've reached."
Yes, I know that makes me a total freak. It just gives me a chance to "see" my thoughts. When I write, I'm able to figure out what's going on in my head. So I may not be able to swim or be alone or listen to John Mayer or Mumford and Sons for the duration of my mission, but I can write. I have absolutely no idea how long this will last. Maybe my whole mission and maybe just this week. But for the past couple of days it has helped me connect to every event and thing I study to a central idea and think "How would I phrase this? How would I link this or explain it? How else could it be viewed""
I'm not under the illusion I'm a fantastic writer. I will never be J.K. Rowling or Neal A. Maxwell, but I'm not writing to be good. I'm just writing to make connections and change my perspective on the world.
Entonces. Ashley asked me in her letter how I developed a testimony and relationship with Jesus Christ. This can be answered in a lot of different ways, but the question made me think about why I first developed a testimony and why I still have one. So I will get to Ashley's question eventually but first I had to address a much more fundamental concept. And that began my first discourse...
So, as much as I wish knocking doors helped me relax, it doesn't. I was sitting in the car fighting the urge to throw the Mo Tab CD out the window and desperately wanting to swim laps when I started (pretty sarcastically) narrating the lives of the people I was watching out the window.
I used to do this a lot when I worked as a lifeguard and a couple minutes into it I realized I was laughing. I realized that narrating the world around me - putting my thoughts into actual words - really helped me. This sounds kinda weird, but if you think about it, we all have tons of thoughts crossing our minds every second that we don't consciously register. When I'm not able to take a second and visualize my thoughts they build up until I'm stressed without actually knowing why. This is why swimming distance and throwing a polo ball at a cage for hours used to help me so much. The repetitive action allowed my mind to sort itself out...to catalog what thoughts were important and which ones I needed to throw out. I've been self-narrating my life for years without even knowing what I was doing or why I was doing it.
This is also probably why writing has never been a big deal to me. My professor wants a 10 page paper on thermodynamics governing the course of history? Cool. Now I have something to think about next time I swim laps for hours. [My time spent swimming for several years of my life gave me the chance to think...and think a lot. So when I was assigned topics in school, my mind had often already wandered to them and studied out different aspects while I was in the water. For the most part, I enjoyed the opportunity to formulate those random thoughts into a cohesive argument.] That being said, writing is not something I've traditionally considered a stress-reliever. I definitely did more than my fair share of it at school and i never minded it as much as other kids, but I've realized in the past week how much it relaxes me. Writing is a way to take my thoughts, put them on paper, organize and reorganize them. At the end, I can say "Yeah, I've examined every connection and tangent I know of at this point related to say, thermodynamics, and this is the conclusion I've reached."
Yes, I know that makes me a total freak. It just gives me a chance to "see" my thoughts. When I write, I'm able to figure out what's going on in my head. So I may not be able to swim or be alone or listen to John Mayer or Mumford and Sons for the duration of my mission, but I can write. I have absolutely no idea how long this will last. Maybe my whole mission and maybe just this week. But for the past couple of days it has helped me connect to every event and thing I study to a central idea and think "How would I phrase this? How would I link this or explain it? How else could it be viewed""
I'm not under the illusion I'm a fantastic writer. I will never be J.K. Rowling or Neal A. Maxwell, but I'm not writing to be good. I'm just writing to make connections and change my perspective on the world.
Entonces. Ashley asked me in her letter how I developed a testimony and relationship with Jesus Christ. This can be answered in a lot of different ways, but the question made me think about why I first developed a testimony and why I still have one. So I will get to Ashley's question eventually but first I had to address a much more fundamental concept. And that began my first discourse...