Bucket List

So, I was kind of forced into going to a counselor after all of this cancer business. I feel like I have been handling everything pretty well, but some people thought a few sessions of counseling would help. So I went. During my last session, my counselor talked about "ambiguous loss" where people grieve over things that are uncertain (such as a kidnapped person or a soldier M.I.A.). He said my situation could fit into that category because my future is pretty ambiguous right now. All I know is that I have a ton of polyps throughout my entire digestive tract, but I don't know if the drugs I am currently taking will stop their growth, or if things could get out of control quickly. I don't know, and the doctors don't really know a lot just yet.

Even though my type of cancer is pretty treatable and I don't expect to die anytime soon, my counselor suggested making a "bucket list" just to give me some things to think about and goals to work toward. I immediately thought of the episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Ray makes a bucket list that consists of eating things he has never eaten before, and then the goal to "never throw up again." I have been thinking about things, and here is what I have come up with so far:

1. Get married and have a family. I know this sounds cliché, but that honestly is my biggest goal right now. Like I said, I am not expecting to die anytime soon, so there is no health-related reason for this to not happen. I still go on dates quite often, too, I just haven't found the right girl yet. So the main goal on my list is also the hardest to achieve.

2. Advance in my career(s). I do a lot of different things for work, and I haven't exactly narrowed anything down to a career, but I could see myself being successful in a lot of different areas. I have had success with making films/commercials/videos. I have done okay with photography. I have tried a few different teaching jobs. I write and record music. The problem is, I don't know which would be best for the long term. Maybe I could continue to dabble in all of them, but make everything more consistently profitable.

3. Make a feature-length film. I have started several feature-length films, but most came to an end after issues with the lack of budget, equipment, actors, crew, etc. It is something I am very passionate about, but it is hard to make a good final product when everyone else involved is not so passionate. It is also quite expensive, and unless I found a willing producer, I would have to cover all of the costs myself.

4. Go to New Zealand, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. Ever since I was a young boy, I have wanted to go to New Zealand. It just seems like such a beautiful place. The other countries on my list are places where my family is from (beautiful places too).

5. Open a concert for one of my favorite bands. This may seem far-fetched, but my band has what it takes to do it if we would all work really hard. We haven't had the whole band together for a few years, though. We have been able to hang out with a number of great bands and just chat - the Gin Blossoms, the Bouncing Souls, Ignite, the Street Dogs, Jimmy Eat World, Coheed & Cambria - but we have never played with them. I gave demo CD's to those bands too, but they don't have any say when it comes to getting signed by a label or picking who opens for them. I have played shows with semi-famous bands like the Neon Trees, but they aren't an influence on me like the other bands I mentioned.

Ok, so those were all goals that would take a ton of work and time, so I thought of some that would be easy to check off this spring/summer:

- get Endowed in my church (my last bishop said I had to wait until I was getting married, but now I am allowed to do it after the next series of Temple Prep classes)
- record a new album (I have several new songs that need to be recorded)
- go skydiving
- hike Mt. Timpanogos all the way (I've done most of it several times)
- backpack/hike in Zion National Park
- fish the Feather River with my grandpa and brothers (we do this almost every year, but we missed the last few because of my grandpa's health)
- visit Yosemite (I have lived only a couple hours away for most of my life, but I have never been)
- wrestle a bear (only slightly joking)

That's what I've come up with for now. I guess we'll see if I accomplish any of those goals soon.

Friends

I got a lot of feedback from my last post from people thinking I was talking about girls they know and people getting slightly offended. The main girl I was thinking about when I was writing that last post, though, doesn't know any of my current friends and doesn't have a facebook account, so she would not have seen it. She broke things off with me just before Valentine's, so I was dealing with some hard memories. So for everybody who thought I was venting about someone they know, that wasn't the case.

Anyway, I wanted to write about something more positive - my friends. I have the best friends in the world. Seriously, I don't know what I did to deserve such good friends, but you all are amazing. Everybody has been so good to me since I have been dealing with health issues, but everybody was really good to me before that too. I have to admit, after the experiences I had from the last two areas in Provo where I lived, I was ready to pack up and move away. I had terrible neighbors, and the people in my wards were very judgemental and unfriendly. A member of the bishopric in one of my previous wards actually tried to get my brothers and I evicted because he said we were running a business from our home without proper licensing.

So I found a place up Provo Canyon, hoping that I wouldn't have to deal with people as much. I was mostly inactive in my ward for the first year that I lived here. But then, people started doing nice things for me for no reason. I started going to some of the activities and getting to know people. Soon I realized that I was missing out, became active again, and made a whole bunch of friends. Everybody accepted me for who I was without judging me. I don't know what it is about my current ward and stake, but everybody is great. There are probably some cliques, but I haven't noticed any yet. Everyone I know is a great example to me. I think everyone in my ward and stake realizes that we are all going through hard things at the same time, and we are much better off helping each other and being friendly than being self-centered and not caring about others. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for being such great friends and examples.

Why I Hate This Time Of Year

Here's a quick story: Guy likes Girl. Guy asks Girl out. Guy starts to develop a relationship with Girl. Girl says she has never been treated so well and loves spending time with Guy, but then says she doesn't want to further the relationship. Girl then goes out with Hot/Rich Guy and gets her heart broken, or worse, gets married to Hot/Rich Guy and then gets divorced a few years later. I know it sounds like a stereotype, but it has happened to me more times than I would like to admit. For a while, I thought I was doing something extremely wrong and tried everything I could think of the make things work, but the same scenario kept playing out. Then I started talking to a lot of my friends who have had similar things happen to them. They all told me the exact same story. So why does this keep happening?

I have a circle of guy friends that are all very sweet, caring, spiritual, fun guys who know how to treat women well. And yet they are all single and keep getting rejected by girls. We often sit around and talk about relationship stuff, but none of us can figure out why it never works out. Why is it that girls always say they are looking for guys like us, but then end up with jerks that treat them like crap? I am not saying all "hot" guys or rich guys are jerks, but there is a reason it is a stereotype. If a guy is most interested in building himself up, he usually doesn't make time for anything or anyone else.

I started thinking about the possibility that maybe I am asking out superficial women. I will admit that I have asked out girls based solely on looks a time or two. However, many of the girls I have gone out with are very intelligent, fun, and caring girls. So why did these girls reject me and then go out with some egotistical douche? I don't get it. What's worse, I have asked out girls that I wasn't even really interested in just because my bishop said the girl had talked to him about how she never gets asked out - and then she turned me down for a date. This has happened a few times. It turns out the girl wasn't complaining that she never gets asked out, she was complaining that she never gets asked out by "Hunky Joe".

People always tell me that eventually I will find a girl who appreciates how I treat her and loves me for who I am. Some even tell me that it is a numbers game, and I just have to keep playing. To them I say, I am 28 years old. I have been doing this for over a decade, and I always get the same results. Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So apparently, dating=insanity. Actually, I think that is a pretty good description.

So I look at this coming Valentine's Day and think to myself, "what the #@*%?!?!" That's about all I really can do. I have done my duty as a man by asking girls out and treating them well. I put my whole heart into relationships. What more can I do? Like I said in my first post, this blog is a cathartic outlet for me - hence the bitching. I don't really have any answers to my dilemma. At least I have a bunch of friends in the same boat that can lend me support and help me realize that it isn't just me. So I will just continue being the guy I am, treating women well and putting everything I can into my relationships. Maybe someday I really will go insane.

Insomnia and Dyslexia

I am writing this at almost 5 AM. Why am I awake right now? Because I have insomnia and I don't know what else to do with the time. Insomnia and dyslexia are two things people always say they have when they can't sleep for one night or write/say something mixed up once. As a person who actually has medically diagnosed insomnia and dyslexia, it kind of bothers me when people use those terms to describe a one-time thing. I have been struggling with insomnia and dyslexia since I was an infant, and it can be quite frustrating.

When I was about 3 years old, my mother started teaching me how to read and write. She wanted me to be able to read and write before starting kindergarten, so she was always working with me. She noticed a strange pattern developing. I would start with the last letter of the last word, and starting from right to left, I would write every letter of every word backward until I got to the first letter of the first word. I was just a toddler, but I think I remember her saying, "What the hell?" Just kidding. But it was definitely strange. She kept working with me, but I kept doing the backwards thing for over a year. Then she came up with a technique where she would "write" the letters on my back so I could feel how it was supposed to be. That really helped, and soon I was reading and writing like a regular person. That's not to say that I was "cured" though.

To this day, I still find myself reverting to the backwards thing with reading and writing on occasion, especially when I get really tired. When it comes to reading, there are certain words that I always mix up. A very common mix up is "was" vs. "saw". I'll read a sentence and be confused about whether the character saw a pig, or if he was a pig. Comical, yes, but also frustrating. My composite score on the ACT was dropped significantly because I couldn't finish the Reading section. My scores in the other sections were all 31-33, but my Reading score was a 25. Like I mentioned, my dyslexia gets worse when I am tired, and I had insomnia problems the night before taking the ACT. The problems persisted through college too. Luckily, spell checkers can usually catch mix ups when I type, or else I would have been in trouble writing all of my papers late at night during college. The checkers don't catch things like "was" and "saw", though, so I would just explain away the mix up to my professors as a deeper metaphorical thing. They thought I was a genius. "Wow, you are saying the character in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' WAS an albatross?" Genius.

Insomnia can be really frustrating too. If you have ever seen the movie "Fight Club", you know what insomnia can lead to. While I have never developed an alternate persona or blown up buildings, I am very familiar with the feeling Tyler Durden describes as never being fully awake or asleep. I often have this feeling like there is a fog in my brain, and while I am fully aware of what is going on, I feel detached from my body like I am an outside observer. My brother, Ben, has problems with insomnia too, and it is kind of funny living together. We often get up in the middle of the night and watch a movie or play video games. I have seen doctors many times trying to get help, but nothing has worked so far. I have tried going for walks, taking relaxing showers, counting backwards from 100, using muscle relaxation techniques, drugs, you name it. One thing that always helped me sleep in high school was reading "The Awakening." Every time I would start to read that damn book, I would be out in no time. I think my body knew I love irony, so it worked. Some of the drugs have helped me fall asleep, but then I can't get up when I need to. So I have just learned to live with it. I often do my video editing projects late at night because I am in a different mind set and I come up with more creative ways of doing things. I also work on writing scripts and writing songs late at night. My creativity seems to be stronger when I am tired for some reason. Of course, I always have to check what I have done the next day after I have slept to make sure it isn't completely crazy, but it usually works out. Brains are interesting things, aren't they? Anyway, this might all be incoherent rambling, so maybe I will try going back to sleep.