On Turning Twenty-Eight

I celebrated my first anniversary on the seventh. It feels strange to not be a newlywed anymore. Marriage is still relatively new to us of course, but now it no longer feels weird to be married. The first few months of marriage were pretty surreal. Whenever I said, "You are my wife. I am your husband," I couldn't be super confident that it was true. The fact that I am someone's husband still gets me every once in a while, but for the most part I'm used to that fact. What gets me now is how I continue to fall in love. It's shocking, really. Which seems weird to say because I knew I would love her more today, than I did on 1/07/10, but there are these moments where I look at her, or tell my keyboard about her, and I say to myself I just fell more in love and I am amazed all over again.

I will say that my favorite thing about the last year has been our opportunity to comfortably and confidently fall in love.

Another shocking thing is that my life actually seems easier. I expected life to be better, but not easier necessarily. There was going to be more bills, more decisions, more complications, etc., but I didn't realize how complicated my single life was. I mean, there isn't a lot in life that is as complicated as dating; stupid people and geniuses alike struggle with it. I have a great family and group of friends, but being able to talk to someone about your life isn't the same thing as having someone who is going through it with you. Chelsea knows my problems, fears, weaknesses, and so on, but not because I have told her about them (as that is the case most of the time), but because she experiences them with me. That is a huge difference, and having someone like that in your life makes it easier. Not to mention having a person there to take care of you when you are sick, and who doesn't care if you might be embellishing your illness a tad for a little extra attention, because for some damn reason they just like taking care of you. That's much easier than when I got pnuemonia a while ago and stayed in my room all alone for five days.

I now don't have to look for comfort or relief. For the most part both are right next to me; even more so with our tiny apartment.

I don't mean to say that life is a cakewalk now. Life was a kick in the drawers before and continues to be; it just doesn't hurt as much these days.

While we are talking about shocking things: I was worried that my writing would suffer after getting married. You know, the plight of the happy artist. So much of what I am interested in is what it is like to be human, and I suppose my main interest is in love. It seems like it can create more happiness than anything else in life, but also can be more destructive than hate or fear. Not revelation, I know, but that's the basis for my interest in it as a subject.

When I write I like to think about it as acting. I have spent a good portion of life watching my brother on stage. There have been times when I was little where I was scared or nervous about the person on stage because he was doing or saying something horrible and I believed that he meant it. It didn't seem like he was faking it.

I still have these moments. He's currently in Born Yesterday at Hale Center Theater, and he plays an intimidating A-hole. There is a moment where he walks on stage very angry with his girlfriend. He doesn't say anything. He stands there looking at her. It made me, and I'm sure everyone else in the theater, nervous.

The difference between those moments now and when I was little is that now I know that when I feel discomfort or unease it is a sign as to how succesful he is at acting his part. And although he doesn't say anything in the above mentioned moment, I think it may be his most succesful moment in the play. I don't think I have ever expressed what his acting has taught me about writing and art in general, because I am not a very good talker and I didn't want him to think that I believed it because I actually thought him capable of the things some of his characters do or say. He has taught me that the point to good art is not to provide an escape for the audience/reader/viewer, but it is a study of the real, and what we felt in that moment and so many others while watching him on stage is real. Even though he may be faking it, the result is not. Pretty cool.

There are people who think what I studied for a bachelors degree is awesome, and those who think that studying literature is an irresponsible use of the college years. What the people who don't get it are missing is that I was not studying fanciful fake worlds. I was studying this one.

And I am pleased with my education.

What I am trying to get at with all of this is that if I am writing a character who does or believes things I don't, the idea is not to dismiss them as evil or vulgar or wrong, but to understand them and learn from them because that is what I will want the reader to do. The world is a lot of things, and I don't believe that any of it should simply be escaped from (at least not permanently), but dealt with openly. I want to study what it is like to be that way, and then act that way while I'm writing so that when I type it I mean it. Whether it works or not, I don't know, but that is my desire.

The point is that being in a loving relationship and happy made me worry that I would lose touch with the other aspects of love and life, and be doomed to write gooey stories where dudes just gush about the person they love because that was all I knew. I thought I might lose the ability to act some parts. But it turns out that imagining life without Chelsea brings up all those feelings I was scared I would lose touch with so easily that I needn't have worried.

Writing a character that is lonely while I am in love is so much easier than writing a character that is in love while I am lonely.

I still don't like birthdays much. Hence the focus on my anniversary, probably. Chelsea decided to call it "Jeremy Day" instead to take the emphasis off of getting older and put it on the fact that I can do whatever I want today. It helps. I am not sure if there is a secret to life, but it is possible that it is finding something that makes you want to look forward. While I'd prefer to be celebrating many prior birthdays instead of my twenty-eighth, all I really want in this world is Chelsea. She wasn't there when I turned eighteen or twenty-one, so I tend to look toward the future more often these days. As long as she is with me, I don't care how hold I am.

On Turning Twenty-Seven Years One Month and Fourteen Days Old (I'm Back!)

The last time I blogged was in October and before that, August. Honestly, I shouldn't be blogging right now, either. I had planned in my head a triumphant return to the blog, but it turns out all I want to do is make the background white...

As you would expect, a lot has happened since my last post: an engagement, the holidays, like eight birthdays including my own and Chelsea's, the end of a semester, a wedding, the beginning of a new semester, moving etc.

First things first: Engagement/Marriage/Wedding

An interesting phenomena occurred when we were engaged. It seems about 93% of the people we told about the engagement (excluding friends and family) had nothing positive to say about marriage. Usually they just mentioned that they felt sorry for us, or talked about giving up our freedom and joy. I was told to run on several occasions. Many times these conversations happened in front of the spouse of the marriage basher (oh yes, forgot to mention that a lot of these people were married). Yes, they were joking, but a lot of times it was hard to tell, and hearing a husband tell us, in front of his wife, that he wishes he wasn't married, and we shouldn't make the same mistake he did, usually turned into words that we shouldn't have been present for.

We should have given them the finger for making us feel so awkward, but what can I say, we're nice people. I would like to give that overdue finger right now, however. Odds are if you are reading this you either fall into the friends and family category, or the 7%, but if not, just take it, you know you deserve it.

I would also like to thank the two stand-out acquaintances that were positive. An older gentleman from Chelsea's work responded "I love my wife." That guy kicks ass. A guy from my work who congratulated me when we passed in the stairwell said, "Marriage is a good thing. I dig it." To you two, I say thank you. Your change of pace made our days.

The lesson: When an acquaintance announces getting married try not to let your first words, or any subsequent words, be about how he or she is making a huge mistake. If the urge is too much, say congrats (or, if you can muster it, a congrats!) and walk away.

Because we wanted a ceremony focused on family we had my brother perform our ceremony. He doesn't have a marriage license, but, since having the state recognize the fact that Chelsea and I wanted to be together was secondary, that didn't matter to us. In order to fulfill said secondary objective, though, we needed to get married in the fancy state clerk's office the morning of our wedding day.

I know most people wouldn't consider getting married in the clerk's office as being a fulfillment of the best of two worlds, but for us it really was, and we did not expect it to be. We got to have the super private ceremony that we had originally planned for and then realized was not realistic, and a more public get together afterwards; we got to give traditional wedding vows, and say the "I do" which we weren't planning on and was pretty cool; we were legally married by a woman, which made my wife so very happy.

We had a great experience inside that office, and it just proves that, as my brother would tell us later on that night, All You Need Is Love. There was so much of it in that little room.

The wedding was amazing. It went off almost without a hitch; we got about as close to 100% success as can be expected, I think. It was a great day. I don't think I have or ever will feel that loved in one particular moment in time again. There were so many of our loved ones in one spot, and they were there just for Chelsea and I.

Our families worked so hard getting the place prepared before the wedding. So THANKFUL for all them. We later saw in our unedited video footage our families taking care of things the people from Noah's (reception center where the wedding took place) said they would take of, like setting up the tables, taking care of messes etc. The employees mysteriously disappeared after the ceremony. The playlist that I spent like 12 hours on, then deleted and re-did, and was so excited to listen to on my wedding day, couldn't be played because the system got screwed up and we couldn't find anyone to help fix it, and for that same reason Scene-It couldn't be played.

In the time I haven't been blogging I think I have done more growing up than I have in the past five years. My life is very different now, and so much better than what it used to be.

Speaking of growing up, I am twenty-seven years old now. Tony Kornheiser made a joke on PTI the other day, and Wilbon said that 18-24 year olds around the country are laughing hysterically. It is still weird to not be a part of that demo anymore. I didn't get the joke either. It was stranger than it should have been probably.

All right, I better get going, but stay tuned because I have a lot more I was planning to put in this post. I will do my best to get it up here ASAP.

I'm Getting Married!

Yep, it's true. I will be marrying Chelsea Lane Campbell on January 7th, 2010.

I will probably post some wedding stuff here, but go here for all the info, including an introduction to both of us, FAQ's, and a blog.

Be sure to sign the guest book, post comments, and check back there for updates, pics, and videos.

I love you, Chelsea.

Everybody Knew but Me

Do you ever have those nights where you lay in bed and you think about one time in your life? Just one. You think about what it means, and what you can or did learn from it? Maybe you didn’t learn anything from it; it just feels like you should have?

I was lying in the room I spent a good deal of growing up in the other night, and I don’t know where it came from, but I had a flashback to a night when I was sixteen. I was in my parent’s basement with a girl I knew from work named Annie. I had never had a girlfriend up to this point and I was really hoping that was going to happen with Annie.

You know Charlie in High Fidelity? Annie was kind of like my Charlie: the kind of girl I thought I wanted to meet (which, honestly, meant to a sixteen year old me that she was hot), and “she liked me, she liked me, she liked me…at least I think she did,” and in hindsight I can see that she was awful. If I had never heard that she thought I was cute, I would have never attempted to humiliate myself, by trying to go out with her, but, as it goes, she did think I was cute, and I did hear about it.

We started hanging out. We spent most of our time with her friends who were like her and were mostly rich preppies, dumb jocks, and cheerleaders. They listened to Limp Bizkit, and Kottenmouth Kings, and drove $60,000 cars their parents bought for them. I had nothing in common with them, and I hated hanging out with them. Eventually, I got her and a couple of her friends to come hang out with my friends. That didn’t quite work, either. Just about everyone in my life could see the kind people they were except me. The one time we hung out with my friends it ended with Annie’s friend, Jessica, crying, and her other friend yelling insults at everyone, and an awkward twenty minutes of me driving them home early.

Despite everyone asking me why I was hanging out with her, I plugged on hoping it would all be okay soon. I never did kiss her, though. I wussed out every night I hung out with her, which was probably my subconscious holding me back more than it was being a wimp. On the last night we hung out I walked her to her car and we just stood there having that awkward moment before a first kiss. I chickened out again and she got in her car. I finally got the balls and asked her to get out of her car for a second, which she wouldn’t do. She said we could do it later. Embarrassed, I said, “Okay, well, I am going to go inside and hang myself now.”

She told all her friends about me trying to get her out of the car, which led to me getting made fun of all day at work. I was too embarrassed to keep trying.

Anyway, the night I was thinking about was when the two of us were laying down in my room. Something was in the air, something heavy, and it could have been romance for all I knew, but I started spouting out some feelings. They had to do with fear mostly, I mean I was sixteen, seventeen, and soon high school would be over and I was getting on in years. I was afraid of the future and that was what I was telling her, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn’t understand how someone could be afraid. I didn’t know how to explain fear to her, and I felt a little silly, but mostly I felt confused. How could someone that age not feel at least a little fear? I began to realize that she was not really in touch with reality. Maybe she was too sheltered, or was ignoring it, but I felt kind of sorry for her. At least I knew what fear felt like. At least I knew it was something to be felt, and was real. And I know now that that particular fear has been conquered, and I know how much I have learned while doing it. I know now that since I have moved on to much bigger and scarier fears in my life, that it is necessary, and that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I wasn’t afraid of certain things. I know that if you are unable to feel fear then you probably aren’t able to feel a lot of the other things life is.

And life is a lot of things.

She got married about three years later. Her husband was an ex-boyfriend of hers at the time I was attempting to date her. I met him a couple of times and they are a match. I wonder how you can get married without a concept of what it is like to be afraid? Of course, now that I write that it seems like a lack of fear would make it pretty easy, and maybe that is better. But maybe it is like the back-up quarter-back syndrome where the first-string guy goes down and the back-up QB does an incredible job for the first few weeks because he doesn’t know how hard it is supposed to be…but it does eventually catch up to him.

I guess what I can get out of that night is that I am glad I am a person who feels. I am glad I have had ups and downs and know that I always will, that at times I will be afraid, but, at others, so happy I could pee. I am glad I don’t blissfully float through a naive life waiting for the human experience to catch up to me.

On Turning Twenty-Six

This year was—good. The reason I pause before my good declaration is because this was a year of extremes. “Aren’t they all?” Well, no, not really, at least at this stage in my life. It is a weird time; it’s a time that you can’t really understand unless you are in it or have gone through it. “Yeah, one of those things we all go through.” Umm, not at all actually, especially in this culture, it seems like the majority of people don’t go through this.

We were frightened of being left alone for the rest of our lives. Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being left alone for the rest of their lives at twenty-six; we were of that disposition. - Rob, High Fidelity

The mid-twenties in the Mormon culture are freaking weird. All my best friends, save one, are married and have been for quite some time. Watching each one get married sucked. I am sure I have never said that to them before, but their weddings sucked. I don’t mean that they weren’t wonderful and beautiful and that I wasn’t happy for them, but seeing a best friend get married while all you can do is stand there and watch everything change, except yourself, is a bit depressing. As I watched each one get married I knew that that would not be me for a very long time. I wasn’t ready to be married, nor did I want to be, and you would think that knowing that about yourself would be comforting. It’s not. All knowing that does for me is confirm that I have been left behind, and no matter how many times someone tries to make me feel better by saying people move at different speeds, and that timing is different for everyone, it will always just make me feel worse. It just conveys to me that I am slow, and somewhere along the line my progress has been retarded.

I’m not moping, I am just trying to explain why this time in my life is weird. Hmm. . . I was going to say that one reason it is weird is because in the rest of the country not being married at 26 would not be weird at all. I was going to say that I am in a rare circumstance where not being married by now causes all sorts of anxiety and pressure, mostly applied by other people, but I just read an article in USA Today that said the average age to be married in the U.S. is 26 for women and 27 for men. I thought it was more like 31 or something like that, so maybe it’s not as weird as I thought, but I still maintain that not being married by now in most circumstances would not cause as much of the aforementioned anxiety and pressure. Also, I would think that the average age for a female Mormon to get married is much much lower, which always brings the thought that if I go on like this for a few more years I may be looking at either insta-family or marrying a ninteen year old, and nineteen year olds bug the bejeebus out of me.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this subject, and maybe I should so all of you who got married at twenty-two get a better feel for what it is like and stop asking all of us late-bloomers what is wrong with us every time a relationship fails, or whenever we don’t want to go on a second date, but I won’t, because I need to get on with the post because I am forgetting what the point to this was supposed to be.

Oh yeah, year of extremes. Since all my friends have been married, and good times are fewer and further between, there haven’t been as many peaks and valleys in my life. I have felt more like I have been flat-lining somewhere in the middle of the Rockies and Appalachians. It hasn’t been all bad, sometimes the line was cruising along higher than others, but there were just no really great times or really bad times, and it didn’t really feel like living. This past year, however, started with a gigantic spike downward on my twenty-fifth birthday. A relationship failed that day and sped toward rock bottom at terminal velocity (remember that Charlie Sheen movie?). The reason this particular dumping was so difficult was because along with the end of the relationship came loads and loads of embarrassment. Embarrassment because of why it ended, and because so many people in my life and her life thought we were making a mistake; we assured them we weren’t and kept on going. Well, turns out we were and I proved everyone right and felt like an idiot. Of course, in hindsight what I did wasn’t really embarrassing, I was just coming to a realization, and it was actually great. Bloody wonderful, really. At the time, though, I would have none of that positive talk, or any talk really. I locked myself up in my room. I didn’t return phone calls, texts, emails; all I did was listen to ESPN radio because it was the only thing that didn’t really make me feel.

Even after I bounced my ceiling wasn’t very high at all. I just kind of vibrated between rock bottom and ceiling for a couple months. I started talking, but not about anything important. I started listening to music, but only a few certain songs by a few certain artists. Eventually, much to my chagrin at the time, I had a breakthrough. I was driving down 27th South listening to Avail when I first felt entirely okay. The song was Simple Song. It was as perfect for me at that time as it could be without actually writing it myself. I realized I was still capable of feeling good, and that kicked me out of my funk. That was a good day.

The first day of school was today (13th). While not the best way I can think of spending my birthday, it is pretty fitting. I moved around a bit the past year and a half or so, and haven’t been in school because I didn’t know exactly where I was going to be. Then I had some trouble getting going at the U, and missed another semester. This past summer, I finally got back in school, and it's good to be back. I started my third semester at the University of Utah on my twenty-sixth birthday, and it is a reminder that I am not where I was a year ago, and, in this case, that is a comforting thought.

There were a couple of funerals in the family this year, both coming much sooner than they should have, but the actual services get counted among my high points of 2008. They were both very life assuring and uplifting, and made me think about the quality of my own life and how I am responsible for it being good or bad, there is no fault to be slung around if it is bad, and I thought about the impact it had on others when it was good. I count those two days as good days.

After the funeral of Grant, my father’s cousin, I went to lunch with my family. With the exception of my sister’s baby boy (and the restaurant employees who swarmed around my nephew) it was just a meal with my immediate family, something that I don’t think has happened since I was in fifth grade. Outside of what it was, it wasn’t particularly special; we talked about football, about my brother’s new job, and my family found out I like sushi. It was lunch at a place called Crazy Jim’s, and it was special to me.

I want a family of my own someday. I do. I think 2008 really helped solidify that desire; I don’t want it right now, per se; I want to do a good job, but that is something I am moving towards. I heard about an online service the other day called Ashley Madison. It is a dating service that is supposed help married people cheat on their spouse anonymously. I guess in the seven years it has existed none of their customers have been caught, and there have even been marriages that have come as a result of it; the ass said that as if there were no irony in that statement. I hear about things like this and I think of my own family and how sacred all those relationships are to me and how every time we all get together for a birthday or a holiday I am reminded and at how full life can be, being single sometimes I can forget. I’ll never forget how dark I felt while listening to that interview, or how sad I was that so many people are eager to screw with their families while saying that they are doing it for “the sake of the marriage,” or that Darwin made them do it. I will always remember, though, how it made me so sure about what I wanted for my life and the people in it.

As I turn twenty-six, I am in a relationship with an intensely wonderful person. Spending time with her is like walking the cobblestone streets in one of those venerable classic towns feeling timeless and welcome. I really wish I could see her today.

So, until next time. I am going to start off my twenty-seventh year phones in, making my way through the rest of my beloved winter. I think I will start with Serenity, by the Bouncing Souls. After that, we’ll see.

Go Eagles.

The Bouncing Souls

Harvest moon in a desert sky. Making good time as we pass it by. Wherever this road takes us, it was meant to be.

We're already home.

What are dreams for, anyway, without the guts to live your life that way?

Learned to let go of the things we can't control. Left em behind and followed rock and roll. We found a new way of life. Forever till the end of time. But never getting old.

What are songs for, anyway, without the guts to live your life that way?

On Turning Twenty-Five

. . .courtesy of Jack Kerouac.

"I wished I was on her bus. A pain stabbed my heart. As it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this two-bit world."

No Title

I will finally be a student again. After a semester off I got registered up at the U yesterday. Nice. So I will be working full-time and will be a full-time student. I have never done the double full-time thing and am kind of nervous, but pretty excited about my classes for the most part. I am taking a fiction workshop, 19th century American literature history class, history of photography, and analysis of argument. Should be rockin.

I will be glad to be back in school again because being a twenty-five year old single Mormon guy is a pretty bland period of life. I find myself just wishing that I had something lighthearted to talk about. A funny experience or idea. Something. Some color in my life. But as it is now, pretty much all I do is sit at my desk at work, which is entirely gray. A lot of the girls I meet are either married or fresh out of high school making it a workout just being in the same room as them. I’m sure they’re nice, but I’m just out of the period of life where I could stand a car full of girls cranking Fergie, bouncing in their seats and screeching the lyrics while I get whipped in the eyes by hair and asked why I am not doing the same.

If I do meet a nice girl I would like to take out, and would like go out with me, I don’t do it because I feel guilty about it, because I have so much stuff I need to deal with first that if something good did end up happening I would feel bad for her because she had no idea what she signed up for (kind of like you do now if you made it this far in this post). This (yes, the third ‘this’ in six words and the second set of paranthesis in one. I’m okay with it) is where “they” or “you” or “whoever” says, “Well then, go take care of it.” And then I say, “Yeah, but. . .” But what? But it’s going to suck, that’s what, and I am tired. I need to try though, so I can stop writing posts like this one and move on to more interesting subjects.

How about I do a Top 5 Tunes on Tunes? That could be fun. Okay, done. Plus, it will get me listening to something a little more upbeat.

My Attempt to Decorate This Dying Day - Current Top 5 Rainy Day Songs - State of the Soul Part One

1. Soup - Blind Melon


The clothesline of cold eyes
Is washing away the face before
Now tell me what's wrong
You see everyone's gone
You gotta do your best to decorate this dying day



People move on. Some do, anyway. And it isn’t because they have finished playing their part in your life, it is because you have finished your part in theirs. Everyone moves at different speeds, and some can’t keep up, so there will always be premature breaks along the way. The slow ones will eventually stop because everyone else has crossed the horizon and they can no longer see a path or purpose.



2. Good Feeling - Violent Femmes



Good feeling
won't you stay with me just a little longer?
It always seems like your leaving
when I need you here just a little longer.
Dear lady, there's so many things that I’ve come to fear.
Little voice says I'm going crazy
to see all my worlds disappear.
Vague sketch of a fantasy
laughing at the sunrise
like he's been up all night.
Slippin and Slidin
what a good time,
but now I have to find a bed
that can take this wait.


I don’t really have a broken heart, more like unhealed—and tired. It is tired of wanting what it can’t have, and too tired to want anything else. The brain understands. It is reasonable. It knows what the right thing to do is. I guess the heart understands it all too, it just doesn’t care. It wants what it wants and there is no convincing it, and in the sorry shape that it is in you can’t blame it.



3. From Here to Never - Sparta



So don't forget
The time will come


And I'm not sure
What you'll be like


What will eyes say when I see them
Wonder what you'll grow up to see


If we have torn the map to pieces, you'll find your way home
Cause home is where you believe


There is no stopping it, so I guess I will just let it run its course and see how big of an explosion it makes this time. Should be pretty spectacular.


4. No Ha Parado De Llover - Mana


Quien detendra la lluvia en mi­
Se me ha inundado el corazon
Quien detendra la lluvia en mi, oh mi amor
Solo tu puedes pararla


Sigue lloviendo,
le sigue lloviendo el corazon
Dime que diablos voy a hacer
Sigue lloviendo,
le sigue lloviendo el corazon
Y en mis ojos no ha parado de llover

Pero dime algo, pues me estoy muriendo


I hope you know I meant what I said, and I hope you believe what I said, and I hope you don’t forget I said it.


5. Change - Blind Melon


Don't feel the suns comin' out today
its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery,
I don't think I'll ever see the sun from here.

When you feel your life ain't worth living
you've got to stand up and
take a look around you then look way up to the sky.
And when your deepest thoughts are broken,
keep on dreaming boy,
cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die.

And as we all play parts of tomorrow,
some ways we'll work and other ways we'll play.
But I know we all can't stay here forever,
so I want to write my words on the face of today
and then they'll paint it.


The only thing left to do now is watch the rain. At least it is raining. I don't want to look up, and in the rain I don't have to. I am glad I got to it before it was too late, because the season is over.

The Rest of My Life - Less Than Jake

Just thought I would post this Less Than Jake video on here. It is a really awesome video and song, and it goes along with the Growing Up and Getting Lost theme. I like the Alden Nowlen quote it shows:

The day the child realizes all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes and adult. The day the child forgives himself, he becomes wise.

I'll Sing Along Forever, Continued

Well, now that we have all that back story I wasn't planning on writing, let's fast forward to 2004 shall we?

I don't know how much time I spent just laying on my bed being homesick for Santiago. I wanted to go back more than anything. I had nothing else to do; it was in the middle of the Spring semester so I couldn't go to school, and I didn't have a job. It was hard, but I think the biggest thing was that life at home had changed a lot. While all the True Believers were back together, and it was great, there wasn't as much time for each other anymore, and there was going to be less and less as time rolled along. Friends were getting married or dating seriously and thinking about it or working at real jobs. Although I had matured a lot while I was gone I was still hoping that when we all got back there would still be a good year or two where we could go to school together or get an apartment or something and all move in and just hang out like the ol days. It was never going to be same, and that was hard on me. It still is.

I don't know what the first CD I bought after i got home was, but my favorite was Anchors Aweigh by the Bouncing Souls. This will always be one of my most beloved records. It came out in 2003 while I was away, and is different than anything they had released previously. While there are fast and slow songs on the record, the overall tone is very somber compared to the five previous releases. There is talk of life, death, change, separation, living and learning, and moving on and being able to be the same person while doing it. I have always had the most in common with the Bouncing Soul's lyrics than any other group and the entire record just seemed to match this time of my life perfect, and the title track encompassed all of it. When I listened to this record was one of the only times I truly felt at home. So, they helped me come home just as they had helped me leave, and for that I will sing along forever. And so:

Anchors Aweigh, my friends
I'll see you another day
I'm going away
experiences have to come
and the past has got to go
back into our dreams

Anchors Aweigh, my friends
Everybody understands that good times
come and they go
and together we will always flow
back into our dreams

And our troubles
we can't leave them behind
but the wind blows
and blows them all away
and the road goes
and takes them all away
back into our dreams

I'll Sing Along Forever

I am posting because B-lyn told me to.

I was listening to the Bouncing Souls and decided to write a little thing about them, because while I was listening to them I was thrown back to three years ago. Also, for me, the Bouncing Souls and March will always be linked together like two fingers wishing for luck.

I left and came home from my mission in March 2002 and 2004. The coming home was far and away the harder of the two. I hated it. I hated it for a lot of reasons. I won't go through them because that is not what I want to talk about; the fact that I was a sad mess should do just fine. First, lets go back in time. Now entering flashback story mode: Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo Doodle-a-doo...

1999-2001 The thought that we needed to maybe start taking life a little more serious started to make it's way from the back of our minds and struggle to be closer to the front. And reject it though we may, it was going to get there too. Some of us started to try and be serious and get a move on in a positive direction, and others (the group I belonged to) didn't. The main catalyst for this "movement" was that we were going to be nineteen soon, and are we going to go on this mission? and if so, we need to change so that we do it right. There was nothing around me that could really reach me and convince me to move on. One thing that really held me back was I knew that because of certain things I have done and was doing that road might take me a long time and I didn't have the heart for it.

Thanks to some great friends I started to make my way slowly and not very surely, but I started to put in some effort. Still nothing had really reached me in a way to help me give it my all. I went and bought a CD one day, and I got a free compilation CD with it. There were seven songs on it. Track six was "True Believers" and track seven was "The Gauntlet" by the Dropkick Murphys. It is weird to me today that they were both on there right next to each other because both of these songs became an anthem for that period of our lives and helped me through it. A few of us were in to the Bouncing Souls during this time, and I don't remember if the new Bouncing Souls record had not come out yet or what, but I hadn't heard "True Believers" yet, and when I saw it on there I was happy because the CD wasn't a total waste.

I don't remember the first time I listened to it, and I don't know when it exactly happened, but it was really the first thing that reached me. "Now you can fight or you can run/hide under a rock till the war is won/play it safe and don't make a sound/but not us/we won't back down." I wanted to be part of the group that wasn't under the rock. I realized I really didn't like being under it. I found that I was so much happier actually putting up a fight. I still listen to this, and when I can't listen I sing it it my head, when I fail or think I can't do this anymore and want to stop trying so hard, and it reminds me that it is better to be a True Believer in all aspects of life and take my licks than hide and not try. So while in the big picture punk-rock wasn't really the most important thing at the time, it was the song that helped me realize that believing in something, even if it is just life, isn't just thinking about it, but doing something about it. And life is better if you give it a purpose.

On Turning Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four. What is there to say about it? (This is where I pause and let the Old Lady put in her two cents.)
...

(And I guess this where I realize, after a few moments of silence, that she has left me to fend for myself. I guess it is my fault. I never listened to her anyway. I’ll miss you, ya ol bag.)

And so it is. You can’t just take the people you love for granted and expect them to stick around forever. If they truly do love you they will try, probably for years, but there will come a time when they have to move on, because you are no longer good for them.

Twenty-Four. Eh. You know how I think you can tell you are leading a good life? If you aren’t completely bummed on your birthday. My first instinct every January 13th is that everyone is depressed on their birthday, but there has to be plenty of people out there who look forward to the future and can leave the past in the past. They look forward to moving on. They aren't scared. I believe these are the happy ones.

In the story I am currently working on the main character, Johnny, seems to sum up the unhappy ones:

“Think about it. Your whole life you want to be sixteen, then you want to be eighteen, then you desperately need to turn twenty-one, but after being twenty-one for a while you want to be seven again, because now you don’t really have anything to look forward to until you are sixty-five and can retire, and no one wants to think about that. You don’t care that you couldn’t drive, live on your own, or drink. You just want to play hide-n-seek. We realize that are seven year old selves were a lot happier than we are and all we want to do is go back, but since we know that is impossible we just try to keep from going forward. And so we fill our lives with events that are full of empty calories in an attempt not to grow, and we starve.”

Am I better off then when I was twenty-three? Not even close. Much worse in fact. Despite all efforts and decisions made in an attempt not to grow, I turned twenty-four anyway. Huh. I wish I could say that I saw that one coming.

Help Save The Youth Of America From Exploding

At the end of the last post I quoted the song from which the title of my blog came from. I thought after that some might want to know where it is from if you don't already know. It is from the song "Help Save The Youth Of America From Exploding" from Less Than Jake's fourth Album, Hello Rockveiw. Here are the lyrics in case you are interested:

Sit down. Remind me how
this is the same old story of growing up and getting lost.

And just outside I can hear the sound
of the early morning street
becoming way too loud.
The hum of the engines in the cars on the street.
And with this cigarette that I just lit
as I passed the 53rd Street bridge.
Right now the world just seems too big,the world just seems too big.

Sit down. Remind me how
this is the same old story of growing up and getting lost.

And just outside I can see my breath
in between the words
that fog my spinning head.
And I can see the sun coming up,
and its just light enough to see.

And all the late-night calls
with all the lost hopes.
And all the missed connections
and the lost directions.

Sit down. Remind me how
this is the same old story of growing up and getting lost.

Time for another one of those 'What did/does/will it all mean' kind of posts.

I got a lot stuff running through my head. They seem to be all tied together somehow in there, but not really organized, so I am just going to write them down and hopefully you will see how they are all connected.

I am back "home" (in this instance home refers to where I currently reside) after having gone home home for Thanksgiving. I am grateful for Theraflu.

And as it happens everytime I come back to school after being home I get blue (I think it is actually more of a grayish color with black speckles in it). I can think of a few reasons I get this way. One would be I have to go to school tomorrow. Middle finger to that. Moving on.

Sometimes I wonder why I moved down here. Most people leave to go to school to get away from home. I haven't really lived with my parents since I was nineteen, but I was still home; in Salt Lake. People leave home for different reasons: they don't like it there, to get away from their parents, to experience different people. If you live in Utah you might want to go somewhere where they have real beer and more boobie bars, and if you are LDS in Utah you might want to experience the church outside of the state.

All that is good and fine, but none of them apply to me. I have never had a desire to leave home. I love my family and my friends and my ski resorts and my desert and my sand dunes and my canyons and my church and my restaraunts and my area code and my theaters and my streets and my mountains and my valley and my venues and my music stores and my sky and my winter and my fall. I love home. So why did I leave? Granted I didn't go too far away, just over 3 hours south, but when I go back and see my family and my friends and my stuff I sometimes wonder why I left them. And the real disheartening thing is when I come back to Cedar and it feels more like home than Salt Lake does.

In the last week of October we got quite a bit of snow one night. I had no idea it had snowed until I walked out my front door. Those who know me can picture the smile I had on my face when I saw this. I love the snow, and while I knew it would be gone in a couple of days I thought it might mean that winter might come a bit earlier than usual. Ever since that day when I wake up in the morning and I can tell it is over cast outside I crack open my blinds to see if it snowed, and have been disappointed every time when I see the dead stale ground outside.

I was told by many people that we were supposed to get snow over the weekend in SLC. I waited and waited and no snow came. I really was bummed out. I knew this girl named Summer once, and on days where she couldn't see the sun she got depressed. I mean, you really didn't want to be around her on an overcast day. Now I don't get depressed on sunny days, but my mood does improve by 50% on rainy days and a good 80-90% when it is snowing. I think because the world tones down a notch. It shrinks a little. Becomes more manageable.

I haven't been to Brianhead, but I hear good things. I am looking forward to going boarding this season although I will be going alone. That doesn't bother me at all. I have my ski crew back home and if I can't go with them I would rather go alone. I have had quite a few conversations with people here at school where the phrase, "We should go (snowboarding)," has been said. I even met a girl who works at Bruanhead and says she can get me free passes. I will usually say, "Okay. Sounds good," or something but really hope they never call me. Is that healthy? Probably not, but if I am going to buy a pass (I have already decided going with that girl isn't worth it) and drive up the canyon I might as well enjoy myself as much as I can. If I can't ride Gad-2 with my buddies and mess with the out-of-staters than I would rather hit the cherry cherry pow pow alone. It makes sense. Really, it does.

I have had a few potentially good things come into my life this semester. The kind of things where I get the feeling that if I went ahead with them good things would come of it (hence the title "good things"), but this would mean change and progress etc. I sometimes think that there are other powers that be that are pushing me into these things and I resist instinctively, which is of course ridiculous, especially for a person who believes in "other powers that be" and that thinks that "they" wouldn't lead me astray. Yet, I resist and think that somehow I will be fine just the way I am if I can just hold out until the snowfall comes. I will be happier and in less need of any other good things.

"Sit down. Remind me how this is the same old story of growing up and getting lost...right now the world just seems too big."

Writing is Funny and Love is Stupid

I have had a few experiences over this summer that I would like to say has taught me a lot about stupid love. I can’t say that, however. I can say that I have had a few experiences that told me a lot of stuff I already knew about love. I’m not quite sure what I want to say about it here; I just thought talking about it could be cathartic and good for me, and writing usually brings out the things I think, but don’t know that I think—if that makes sense. I think it just warms up your brain and you can separate your thoughts and pick them out better and teach yourself about yourself, which is an addictive and always fun experience.

As they say, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” I would guess that means that the memories of what was lost outweigh the loss itself. Maybe. But unless the other party left some of their things over at your house, or lent you money, what was gained from this now not shared love besides memories? And should memories really be chalked up in the things gained column? They seem to be the most painful part of a love lost. The memories are what make up most of the losses. They get attached to music, places, jokes, movies, games, and ideas that can no longer be fully enjoyed because they have been stained with the memories of loss. Being in love is great. Not being in love really isn’t that bad unless you were recently in love and are able to compare the two. In that case, not being in love can be suicidal, and memories do nothing but point out the incredible differences between the two.

So, what now? I am not quite sure what I have really gained from these experiences, and even though the math doesn’t add up I am sure it is better to have loved; if not, the saying would be, “It is worse to have loved and not gained than to ever have loved at all,” and that is just depressing.

?

When meeting new people I usually get asked what I am studying. When I answer creative writing, eight and half times out of ten the sub-question, "What are you going to do with that?" then follows. Ten times out of ten I want to answer become a doctor or start a restaurant or coach women’s volleyball or tell them they have three guesses. I suppose it is not that stupid of a question. I guess you could write about sports for the newspaper or essays for some magazine. There are novels and poetry. What pisses me off about this question is that I don't know the answer.

There are three ways one can go about deciding what he or she wants to study. The first would be to decide what you want to do for a career and then study the courses to help you do that. Second, just start taking different kinds of classes until you find something you like. The third, and the path I chose, would be to find what would make school the least miserable and go with that. When I found that there was actually a creative writing major I knew that it was what I wanted to study, and I knew where I wanted to study; of course that school didn't have a CW major so I went to a different school. I realized after that I definitely wanted to be a writer.

Now, I am not naive (at least I like to think that I am not entirely) and I realize that the chances of me being able to be a full-time writer are slim, and that I will more than likely always have a job that doesn't have to do with writing at all. "But this is America," you say, "you can be anything you want to be." Or so they say, but remember, only one person out of millions get to be the American Idol. So if your dream is to become the American Idol, at best you have a .0000005% chance of accomplishing your goal. There are more writers than American Idols, but I am sure you get my point. I am confident, however; I am just trying to find the line between reality and stupidity.

I learned quickly not to answer this question with an I don't know, because then the asker (usually a stranger) either gives me a weird look that says, "How can you not know?" or tries to help me figure it out by giving suggestions. Thanks for being nice and all, but shut up. I have also figured out that saying I would like to write stories is not acceptable either.

"What kind of stories? Non-fiction or fiction?"

"Probably both."

"What would you write about when writing non-fiction?"

"About when I was in the peace-core and lived in Yemen for a year," or "My triumph over brain cancer."

"Really?"

"No."

Only a certain kind of person has their life all figured out and laid down nicely waiting for them to get on with it at twenty-three. Shame on you for making me think that I should be one of them.

How I Spent my Life?

I have found out that one can only take so much apathy. In the same way I found out that there indeed is such a thing as too much cheese on your cheese fries, I have pushed myself to the very limits of laziness, and now the sight of my couch makes me want to weep, but being that I have nothing else to do, I am sure that my buttocks shalls grace said couch all too soon.

This weekend I watched four Star Wars movies in two days. I don't even think I wanted to. This has left me, for the first time in my life, saying, "I wish summer would get over with." I am sure that that first night of homework will make me wish that the semester would just get over with, but at least then Trash will be around and we can return to Big-Mac Monday and Taco Tuesday (Now yous can't leave).

How does a person live in a way where he or she isn't just wishing that that period of life would just be done with? I mean, it has to end somewhere, right? If you keep going eventually it will end up being, "I just wish life would get over with," and according to the pattern once you are dead you will just wish you were alive anyway. So where is the escape? I wish that the weekends and concerts would never end, but they hardly qualify as a period of life. I guess this means that changes have to be made. Darn. But because I haven't made an effort to change in a while, I am sure I am due.

I believe that first on the list is to change my not-so-sub-conscious thought,"People Suck," and switch it to, "Some May Not," and try not to be such a dick when someone I don't know talks to me, and maybe even try to talk to a few myself, and then go from there. I am sure that will at least end in giving me something else to do.

Now, I do have a lot of things to look forward to this summer still; the World Cup is coming up, and there are still a few concerts and new albums before the summer ends (the Warped Tour is going to be awesome!). I suppose it is all the time in between these events that I need to fix. Maybe if I can do that i can get back to being my normal self and wishing that summer won't end. I would rather spend my life wishing for things that I can achieve.

On Turning Twenty-Three

Youth. Where did it go? Apparantly right down the drain. I'm twenty-three now. That's old, Chach. You know, I can picture some old woman in my head telling me, "You are only twenty-three. You are still in your youth." You know what old lady? Today, I'm as old as I have ever been, and my 'youth' was a long time ago.

Ever since I was wee lad I can remember saying "These days aren't coming back again." My friends and I usually would say it as an excuse to do something dumb, like picking up all the road barricades we could find and placing them in such a way as to make two cars crash into each other, and then throw water ballons at them after they got out. Or starting Corner Canyon on fire. Anyway, I can't really say that anymore and I find I am a lot more lame now. I don't have an excuse to do anything, and i don't think it is that I am growing up; I would still stick my butt out the car window if I was with a group of people that thought it would be funny. There is just no motive anymore.

Now the one constant I have in my life, besides my family, is starting to go a bit squirly-my music. Lryics like "and now the fear in me is gone," are giving way to lyrics like, "Now I'm lost," when it seems like it should be the other way around. And some of the music of my youth is beginning to slip away along with the memories that are so firmly attached. And you know what else? The last concert I went to I stood in the back and watched.

I grew up with the same four kids all my life. Now they are all married, besides one who is in the national guard. For my entire life I have been defined through my friends; to me that was how I pictured growing up. How am I supposed to do that without them? It's the only way I know how. This is where the little old lady pipes up again. "Maybe you should find a nice young lady and follow suit." She's knitting now. Nice thought Aunt Jemima, but didn't you just finish telling me I'm in my prime? I'm confused. Plus I really couldn't, even if I wanted to. If it was the next step, wouldn't growing up have to occur first? I mean, I still think mooning people is funny. That can't put me very high on the 'most eligible bachelor' scale.