Been sick the last few days. Really sick. Last night I was tossing and turning until I finally fell asleep at 6 AM, and then i had to get up at 7 to do inventory at the bookstore. I woke up at 7:05 (which means my alarm clock read 7:10 because I try to make myself punctual like that...ha), cursing under my breath and hurrying to pull my jeans on because I had set the alarm clock but had forgotten to push over the little button that makes it go off in the morning. I hate it when I do that. The jeans were my ragged pair, the ones with the patch in the left knee that my mom sewed on for me. I've been wearing them the last 2 days. Time to change soon.
As soon as I got outside, I started coughing immediately. The cold, dry, Utah air makes me feel like I'm inhaling steel wool. The mountains sure were pretty though.
I was so pissed off walking up the hill to campus. I swore to myself that if any of the uptight old bookstore ladies gave me any flack for being late, I was going to calmly punch them in the gut and then cough all over their desks before I quit altogether.
Lucky for them, they didn't make any noise about it.
So I did inventory for a few hours. I just scanned tons of books in the general book department. Most of them were history, or classics like Dante, or stuff about postmodernism. I don't even know what postmodernism is. I once bought a book for this girl Ashley in high school about postmodernism because it was what she wanted for her birthday. I knew at that point that she was way out of my league. She's at Berkeley now, saving the planet or studying rocks or Iceland or heading MENSA or something.
Being sick sure does make you appreciate the being well times. It's another of those simple little profound lessons in life.
We had some visitors this week. It was sort of a little BYU SSA freshmen orientation thing I guess. Lad came up from California and PM came from BYU Idaho. Both cool kids and both my age, which is sort of rare at BYU, so they will be cool to have around. It's odd and a little daunting to think that the amount of gay people I know at BYU will just keep growing. For some reason I thought it might start going the other way.
Despite my age and cluelessness, I've felt like an old man lately. Being sick adds to this. It seems like my words are chosen more carefully, my observations are more keen, and what would usually shake me up just sort of makes me brace myself and go stoic. Like this:
I feel like I am more uncertain than I ever have been; life is more and more a thing of faith and endurance.
Hmm...
My hair is getting a lot longer. It's lots of fun, and less people mistake me for a blond. I can shake my head and it goes all over the place. My mom says its getting too long. She keeps referring me to people who have told her they will cut it for free if money is an issue. Hehe. She also said I was too skinny and I was going to up and blow away one of these days. I love you, Mom.
I've been thinking about people mostly. I've met tons at BYU, and they've all shaped my character a little I think. I mean, either they make me feel things that I have to deal with or I see a trait in them that I like and then steal for my own or see a flaw in them that I share and try to get rid of or all of the above. I wonder what life would have been like without any of these people. I mean, I'm sure I would have learned and grown, but I wonder how, and to what degree would it have been different. Would God have planned it any other way? I hope not.
I find myself constantly trying to walk this fine line between feeling connected to someone and not letting them influence how I feel. I'm not sure this is possible. I hate feeling like if I lost someone I would want to cry or be sad or not know what to do, but the truth is I feel like that about a lot of people, a lot of my friends whether they know it or not. I'm pretty vulnerable to their decisions. I can control how I react, I get better and better about that all the time. But I can't convince myself to actually feel any differently, even when I say or act like I do. Feelings are more important than we give them credit for I think. They make actions either easier or harder. They are the only things that we have some say in towards other people, unless the other people work tirelessly to figure out how to just turn them off altogether, which I admitt sounds attractive sometimes, but I think can be very crippling. I hope that I influence peoples' feelings positively.
I think I've contradicted myself several times in this blog. But I guess that's the beauty of having my own blog. I can write all the nonsense I want. I don't mean to sound so random in these things, it just happens that way.
