Introspection on Extroversion

Today demonstrated 3 ways that my piano teaching has changed recently: 1) I went to the Media Production Center on Campus to record a new video. I've been recording instructional videos on piano teaching so people can watch the contents of all my lessons online for a smaller fee than in-person lessons would be. Unfortunately, I didn't decide very well what to talk about in today's instructional video, and I've got plenty of stuff to do before instructional videos become very useful. So after about 20 minutes of meandering in my talking, I realized I had nothing ready to say today. I finally decided on something to say, but it would take half an hour to film and half an hour to transfer the files. As soon as that take started, a fire drill happened. By the time the fire drill ended, I didn't have the hour I needed, so I decided "I guess I wasn't supposed to say anything today." 2) During my piano practice today, I filmed a short video of what Hedwig...

I've been trying to overcome a particular sin, but half the time, I just don't care about it. While I know intellectually that it's wrong, it doesn't seem like a big deal right now, and it was enjoyable. So I kept doing it. Over the last few days, I've been remembering "I'm teaching in Church on Sunday, and I want to have the Spirit with me", or "I want to attract such-and-such girl, so I want to have the Spirit with me", or "I want to teach better, so I want to have the Spirit with me." So I've been deciding recently to do things that would invite the Holy Ghost into my life a little bit more - studying the Book of Mormon a little bit more and a little bit deeper, discussing a few more spiritual topics with friends, attending the temple a little bit more, and resisting temptation a little better. Today, I spent the time during the Sacrament Hymn to actually prepare for the Sacrament. I got to see the consequences today when I t...

I noticed a lot of change today, both in myself and in my friends. I started the day with a webinar, but because of technical difficulties, the webinar couldn't work. Though I was slightly frustrated at the inconvenience, oddly enough, I wasn't frustrated about my schedule. Then I had a student cancel and I still wasn't frustrated about my schedule being "violated". I finally focused on practice during piano practice (at least, more so than usual), and finally stuck with my schedule; at least, more so than usual. I took a blind date to the Yule Ball. It was frankly discouraging at first, because there was nothing for us to talk about in common except movies, and we even have totally differing tastes on movies. So I felt like we were just not the right people to be going on dates, but the conversation widened within me. The dance itself was kind of frustrating: Every song just reminded me that I used to know how to dance to this and I used to be a really good d...

It's hard to blog about something unique to that day that has a profound point when days get more and more similar to each other. Part of the theme of the movie Groundhog Day  is that people do experience times when they feel like every day is the same. Because of that, I've considered posting this exact blog post 3 times before. And it's been less than a month. But I haven't posted it, because each time, I've thought of something that was unique about that day that linked the events together. Today had the opposite problem. I did a lot of things that were out of the ordinary for me today - driving to Pleasant Grove to help out a guy from my Ward, getting free ice cream from Wendy's (although that's pretty normal), almost running out of battery on the way home leaving me to rely on my memory for navigation, filming a series of successful takes for an instructional video, taking about 25 minutes to transfer the footage onto Google Drive (that's actually ...

I spent most of my day listening to an audiobook of the Official TED Guide to Public Speaking while doing everything else - driving, walking, shaving, etc. That seemed to foreshadow the rest of the day, because everything else in the day was about presentations. One-to-one presentations to be sure, but presentations nonetheless. In the library, I ran across an acquaintance who was studying Economics. I mentioned that I enjoy the theory of economics, but haven't taken the class. She said she hated it. I related some stories from Freakonomics that have interesting conclusions - real estate agents tend to sell their own houses for more than their clients' houses, sumo wrestling has corruption, hot dog eating competitions are really weird, drug dealers don't make nearly as much money as we think they do - until I showed how economics drives each of those stories and each of our lives. She seemed more open to Economics afterwards, but maybe I'm just flattering myself that s...

During our Writing class, we talked quite a bit about narrowing topics down to sub-topics - narrowing from "Immigration" to "The DREAM Act", from "A.I." to "A.I. drones for military and medical purposes", and from "Film" to "Creative control for film directors". That narrowing turned out to be a theme throughout the rest of the day. Story time. On my way out of the Taco Bell on Campus, I picked up some mild sauce packets, the ones that have playful (sometimes flirtatious) messages on them. One of them said "I think you're pretty", so I took it with me, intending to give it to a girl. I saw a cute girl on my way out of lunch and opened the conversation by giving it to her and saying "This is for you." She really appreciated it and we started talking about our majors and our loves for music. I got her phone number and texted her later on in the day. Oddly enough, she actually responded. I was really sur...

I am learning so much right now and I love it! I was absolutely truthful when I told everyone today that my day is wonderful! I got to wake up super-early (for me at least, which is around 5:30), shift my schedule back earlier, finish everything I wanted to finish and even finish cleaning a difficult pan. But I digress. I took off for school with the knowledge that I would have no classes today, but I did get to attend the devotional, get answers to questions (like "How do I get the last discs from the DVDs of Seasons 1 & 2 of Community ?" and "Has my Pell Grant been sent out yet?"), and check in with the Research and Writing Center to figure out how to research a topic that's less scholarly than most Issue Paper topics. Got home just in time to be early for an awesome date with an awesome girl, where I got to learn a lot about her and some really interesting points about the things she likes. I really like her - to the point that I just felt grateful that...

I listened to a YouTube video about effective music practice today. It gave me the idea to present to my piano students the opportunity to choose their own goals, when they'll create deadlines for those goals, and how they'll accomplish those goals. And I'll guide them to accomplish those goals. I started thinking of my own musical goals. Unfortunately, my electric pianos aren't working today, so I can't practice right now. But I'll be working towards them a lot more effectively. But I didn't work very hard on goals today. I spent a lot of time playing games online and cleaning. But I did get to make a lot of progress on my goals. I posted a lot of ads on Facebook that will probably be more effective than my previous ads. I've already had 4 inquiries. Most of them live 25-40 minutes away, but they look promising. I got to improve my curriculum by downloading mp3s of a lot of the songs my students said they want to learn and which songs will help them...

I realized once that it doesn't matter whether I'm setting New Year's Resolutions. What matters is if I'm setting new day's resolutions. Today, I set some new resolutions for who I want to be and who I want to become. I realized that I haven't been doing the things I need to do in order to be who I want and who I was. Just a month or two ago, I got to act as an angel of sorts (mostly in financial ways). I want to be able to deliver angelic messages to people like I did back home. I realized first off that some specific sins are really not helping at all in my purposes in life and aren't anything that I actually want. It would be like someone who wanted to get to the Grand Canyon from Provo decided to take a detour to Nebraska. It's just not helpful for my goals. So I decided it's time to get back into really studying the Book of Mormon daily, going to the temple at least  once a week (probably more like 5 times a week), and working on the oratorio ab...

There were a lot of disappointments today, but I won't chalk today up to a day of disappointments, because you know what? There were a lot of good things about today, and I'd rather focus on what was good about today than what was bad. My neck got more and more painful throughout the day. I slept on it wrong for about 20 hours over the last 2 days what with being sick and trying to sleep so much. I guess the upside is that for most of the day, it didn't hurt? But there are more parts of today with upsides. I played a round of Legendary (a game I really like) with Spencer. We set up the game in a way that made us lose the first time, but we played another game and won that one. And the second one was a lot more interesting than the first. Movie night. We got together to watch one of 4 options. The host offered a few extra options at the last minute and asked a few hours before the event if he could pick the movie. I thought that was kind of rude, but only because my purpo...

I was sick all yesterday. I managed to go to the recording studio to record "Wake Me Up When September Ends" but that was pretty much all I did. I was going to go to class after the recording studio but felt so weak that I decided it was time to go home and sleep. I really couldn't do anything in class anyway, and I'd probably get to class just after it would end. So I lay down. And tried to sleep. Probably an hour later, I actually slept. For about an hour. I didn't eat all day. Didn't study the scriptures. Didn't really do anything. I watched 2 episodes of Community. That was basically my entire day. I'm grateful to my brother. When he found out that I was sick, he offered some medicine. I'm not sure if the medicine helped or not, but I'm grateful that he was willing to help. He did more than I expected in an attempt to help, and when people do more than I expect, that's when I feel loved. It's not often that I recognize people are...

Today, I lived my life the way I've wanted to live my life for years. Last night, I went to bed around 10:30. I had problems going to bed at 10:30 when I was on the mission, and I've always wanted to get back on that schedule. I woke up today at 7:15 (after randomly waking up at 5:20 and thinking "Why am I awake?" before going back to sleep) and got right to work. I maneuvered my schedule around what needed to be done and what couldn't be done at a given moment, and got to study the scriptures, research my family history, give a guy in my ward a name for the endowment session he's attending tonight, teach 4 lessons, make a meal, finish my homework, do laundry, and show up to the Research and Writing Center to get more advice on my newest draft of my homework assignment. On the road, I got to finish listening to a podcast on business storytelling and listen to about 5 videos on everything from multitalented people, to music theory, to conversation starters. I...

I got to work to overcome a significant character weakness today: I have this problem where I stick with the way things are even if the way things are is intolerable. It's mostly because I don't like change. This afternoon, I realized that the wi-fi in the BYU Practice Rooms was intolerable. I was teaching a Skype lesson in there and getting paid for it, but the wi-fi ended my Skype lesson 3 times in 5 minutes. I eventually told my student that I would try a different room, went to the Wilkinson Center, and tried the better version of wi-fi that's all across Campus. While the wi-fi worked, the Wilkinson Center turned out to be the busiest room on the entire campus. In 30 minutes, 3 different people asked to use the piano I was already on. So that was intolerable as well. So next time, I'll be using the better wi-fi in the practice room I was originally in. That should work just fine. When I got home, I noticed that my hair was unruly and didn't look that good even...

I went to the temple for the first time in weeks today. I felt like I'd been distant from Christ for a little while and just wanted to come back to Him. I didn't quite feel worthy to enter the temple even though I'm working to repent, so I just sat in the lobby and read scriptures about the Savior's visit to the Nephites. 3 Nephi 11 has always been a spiritually powerful chapter for me, and once again, I felt the Spirit the moment I started reading from it. After a few minutes, I saw a group come in to do baptisms for the dead and I was reminded: This is the house of God, not just a place to read the scriptures. I told God that I just wanted to spend time in His house and this was the only way to do so that I felt worthy to engage in. I went on a date today. But considering I went on dates with 3 different girls last week, I don't see the point of bringing up dates unless something genuinely interesting happened. I'm pretty sure I've been desensitized to d...

Back home, I told a friend that one of my major problems is that I couldn't stand to waste time, but nothing felt productive, so everything felt like a waste of time. I'm not sure if today felt productive, but at the end of the day, I could say "I did a lot of productive stuff today." Those productive things included listening to videos about marketing so I can get more piano students, practicing for this Friday's recording session, meeting someone new who just so happened to be a piano teacher who focuses on technique as well as a piano performance major, making a cheap meal, contacting potential students, clearing out 80 unread e-mails after reading a lot of them, teaching a lesson where the student learned something no one else can teach him, and attending a barbecue with my ward for FHE. Are those things really productive? Well, they helped me accomplish my goals (like getting more students, becoming a better teacher, teaching well, making new friends, and sav...

Over the last few weeks, I stopped caring about living the gospel and stopped caring about other people. For me, everything was either about money or about enjoying myself, whether it was dating, movie nights with friends, or watching TV late at night (those were all about enjoying myself. Not money). Today, I told God that I wanted to come back to Him, but I told Him that I knew it was purely for selfish reasons. But I told Him that I knew He would help me to want to come back to Him for better reasons, and asked Him for that. And it was a perfect day to do that. The first and last talks in Church were each on putting God first in our lives, loving God first, and making our identities as children of God more important than the other things we identify ourselves as. I told one of those speakers "You have no idea how badly I needed your talk." After Church, I decided "Father, this week, I'm going to not commit [insert specific sins I'm trying to repent of. To be...

I was walking out of a piano lesson when I saw... donuts. Don't worry. That was not the best part of the day. I don't actually like food as much as I make it sound, but it's a good thing to make a joke about. Either way, the donuts weren't for me. They were for the people at the Commercial Music Expo, a program I'd tried to sign up for, but it was full anyway. I'm working toward that program at BYU, so I figured I might as well ask: "Is this for people who are already in the program or people who are working toward the program?" I hoped to lead to the question "Is this Expo essential to getting into the program", but couldn't ask that before the person in charge replied, "If you want to just join in, we had a few people who didn't show up...". So I got to attend about 3 hours of the Commercial Music Expo I wanted to get into in the first place. One of the panels was headed by the Department Head for Commercial Music, Ron ...

I've been trying to stay awake all day until my last piano lesson started. I really don't know why. After all, I got almost 8 hours of sleep last night. But I've been emotionally tired of people most of the day. I know. Imagine that. Me, tired of people. I can't stand politics. So I'm getting angry from just thinking about the Opinion Editorials I read today to learn to write a better Op-Ed for this weekend's writing assignment. Even when they weren't political, they were still the very thing I hate about politics: doom-and-gloom. Whether the article insisted that "TV isn't art anymore because of cliffhangers" or the author expressed that "I'm tired of my accountability groups, but I'm going to do them anyway, because they make my life a little bit better", they were pessimistic and in first person, and well, I tend to reflect the emotion I think someone's conveying, especially in writing. So when I saw those people being...

I sometimes say that I'm so extroverted that when I don't get out of the house at all during an entire day, I get depressed. Today showed that really well. When I woke up, I had about an hour before a business meeting. Fortunately, that business meeting was at an Asian restaurant over a lunch buffet (yes, I woke up really late). So I skipped breakfast, and that lunch buffet turned out to be more than enough food for the whole day. We planned out 3 music videos in full that will be coming out in the next few months. And even though the Asian restaurant didn't have orange chicken (my favorite food) and even though I overate, I still really enjoyed myself just from being around people so much. Off from there to BYU. I needed to go to the Writing Center to finish some homework, and once I finished that, I figured I might as well stay in the Library to finish the rest of my homework. During that homework, a random guy walked up to me and started a conversation with me by offer...

My sister-in-law's birthday party was tonight, so I joined in for some party games. There are a lot of games I don't like and a lot of games I do like, but it's really hard for other people to figure out which ones I'll like. Everyone at the party was really nice about the fact that I just don't like some of the games, so they picked games that I would actually enjoy. I appreciated that. While people were deciding which games to play, my brother told them that what makes me like a game is when an individual turn is just as much fun or more fun than the act of winning. With most games, I work through the process for an hour and a half, and the most fun part is reaching a certain goal, and reaching the goal gives me15 seconds of enjoyment. And since gloating isn't fun for me, I feel like I'm not even allowed to enjoy the victory. I'd rather have something where the gameplay is so much fun that I'm not thinking about winning. I also brought up somethin...

A few weeks ago, I prayed about whether I should pursue a romantic relationship with a particular girl. The answer came: "No. She is not what you want." I didn't have the foggiest idea as to why. She seemed like a great girl, my family approved of her, and it was easy to talk with her and get along with her. So I kept going on dates with her. Today, I got a reminder of a Facebook post I'd liked. Something along the lines of "If God says 'no', leave it alone. Period." Well, tonight, she took me on a date. Afterwards, I told her that I like her romantically. She said that she likes me, too, and neither of us really knew what to do now that that information is out in the open. We kept talking about what we were already talking about, and the conversation had opportunities to deepen, but we barely ever took them. I realized that our conversations are all really casual, usually centered around movies, and never really probe deep enough. The fact that we b...

OK, time to get personal. I'm sorry. I went on a date with an awesome girl today. I'd been praying to be wise about this date, because I wanted to know if she's the kind of girl I should be dating and if I should be dating her specifically. Well, I got an answer to both questions: That she is the kind of girl I should be dating, but that I shouldn't be dating her specifically. She's going on a mission in 4 months, and I don't plan on actively waiting for anyone for 2 years. Not because it shouldn't be done. I just... well, let's be honest. I'm afraid of commitment. I said I'm a flirt. I meant it. I seriously don't know that I'll ever be able to commit to any particular girl no matter how great she is. And I'm genuinely worried about that. And if the girl is in a different state or country for 18 months? There's no way I'd be able to stay faithful to her. So I'd just rather not make the commitment to someone going on a miss...

When I woke up, I felt apathetic. I just didn't care about anyone or anything. It's kind of weird for an extrovert to feel that level of apathy. I showed up to a Ward Mission Correlation Meeting, where we discussed how to help people become more active in the Church. I gave a lot of input on how I think we should be going about the work of reactivation, and oddly enough they listened to me. Even more odd: Our Ward Mission Plan now includes a lot of non-Church related activities. For example, the movie nights I started holding last night is now part of the Ward Mission Plan. Yeah, they actually assigned  me to keep doing movie nights exactly as I had planned and they (and I) will be inviting people to the movie nights who like movies, including the people who need to come back into the Church. But I wasn't doing any of this to help people. I was just saying my opinions to get my opinions across about what I think a Ward Mission Plan should and shouldn't be. During that...

I really like intriguing ideas, and today focused principally on them. I wrote a first draft for an essay. The first draft isn't as well-written as it should be yet, but I'm still proud of my writing. Partially because I think it's well-written so far, but should be better, and partially because I got to write about a concept I'd never thought about before - a subtle but significant shift in my thinking between how I do write and how I should write. I will research for hours into movies I will never see if I feel like the concept is interesting enough (For a good example of this: John Carpenter's The Thing). Tonight, I had a movie night with friends. We chose a well-done movie, but without an intriguing concept. That's OK. Most movies I watch don't really have intriguing concepts. A friend and I stayed up until around 12:30 or 1:00 in the morning discussing what's important to us in a movie. For her, it's the film starting where the audience is and...

This is where this really becomes introspection ABOUT extroversion. Anyone who sees me long enough can tell that I'm a bit of a flirt. Today, I got to take a good look at my flirtatiousness. I set up 2 dates for this weekend. They both fell through because of scheduling issues. What's odd is that this wasn't odd to me. I called a girl to ask her on a date. She said "yes" and was very excited about it. I called another girl to ask her on a date. She didn't answer, and I could tell when she gave me her number that she just wasn't interested. What's odd is that this wasn't odd to me. What's odd is that this isn't odd to me. I was about to go to a wedding reception, called a friend, asked her to join me for the reception, and she came. I'm not sure if that counts as a "date", but it was set up about 30 minutes before the event began. What's odd is that this isn't odd to me . On Sunday, someone told me he hadn't been...

People might ask me sometimes if listening to music is a different experience to me than to most people. It really is. In some ways, it's like how magicians see magic tricks. Case in point: I recorded a cover of the Spider-Man TV theme in about 2.5 hours. Which would be impressive, but I had to "cheat" by recording it one hand or track at a time, since my hands can't move that fast. Then we had to film a music video for this song. It would have gone better if I hadn't recorded the song one track at a time, because then I would have been able to play the song correctly. I told the film crew that I'd be recording "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day in August and asked if they'd want to film it. I'll actually know how to play that one. I've been playing it for weeks. In other ways, it's like how artists see color or how a filmmaker sees a movie. During a piano lesson, I realized the pre-chorus of Five for Fighting's ...

I love Provo. I love the navigational system. I love the architecture of BYU. I love the amenities of BYU. And I especially love the people (but more on that in another blog post). Still, even in Provo, there are days when I wish I hadn't gotten out of bed. I woke up too late and got to class 40 minutes late. Then the moment I got out of class, it was time to schedule appointments with people: 2 Skype lessons, a recording session, and a film shoot. I started running around like a chicken with my head cut off and stressing about reaching the events on time, and within moments of getting to each event, it cancelled. It got to the point where I showed up within 2 minutes of the recording session only to find the door to the recording studio on campus was locked and the office next to it was closed. I knocked on the door and asked how to access that studio and they told me that I needed to bring my own TA because it's Summer. At this point, I got really frustrated. I wasn't a...

I don't usually celebrate holidays. I don't see the point in taking time out of my normal life to do all the traditions when I don't have time for any of the traditions. As selfish as it sounds, I celebrate them in whatever ways are most beneficial to me, so whichever ways offer free food. I also celebrate them in whatever ways are culturally imperative: I need to buy Christmas presents (and why not take advantage of an opportunity to give someone a meaningful, thoughtful gift?). Today was the most I've celebrated a holiday in at least a year and a half. Parade in the morning, listening to Hamilton and School House Rock later on in the day, not being able to attend a commercial event because it was shut down, and meeting with a friend for a picnic with her family and fireworks. I even shared Lessons from the Screenplay's video about the movie Independence Day on Facebook and a couple funny memes about Independence Day. It honestly felt a little weird to start Inde...

One of the weird parts about being both introspective and extroverted is that I'm just as happy being alone with something intriguing as I am being around a large group of people. Today was one of those days when I was surrounded by intriguing things more than around people. I analyzed an essay during class today so I could understand rhetoric better, but I immediately noticed punctuation problems more than anything else, and realized I'd grown up learning to analyze when people are writing "correctly", but never learning to analyze when people are writing well. It made me look forward to learning to write well during this class, but also made me wonder why we as educators spend so much time teaching children to write correctly instead of teaching them how to write well. It seems like we spend most of a child's writing time rapping their hand for doing things wrong instead of helping children develop, critically analyze, and express ideas. I've found that ch...