Introspection on Extroversion

I'll still be writing in my journal after this, but it won't be about extroversion. It'll mostly be about spiritual topics and occasionally important events in my life. Extroversion is interesting and all, but not every day has an event that draws a conclusion about extroversion. But as I journaled about spiritual experiences every day, I found that every day has an event that draws a spiritual conclusions. I won't be writing about any spiritual experiences in today's blog post, because I had a spiritual experience that isn't appropriate to write about here. I'll write it where I'll treasure it more: my journal. Two more last thoughts about extroversion before I leave to start writing in my journal again: Whenever I was inside a building today, I was happy, because I was around people. But every time I left those buildings, I was happier, because I was around people and I could feel fresh air. I always said that I wasn't really interested in anyt

I knew a man who was late for everything. We all expected him to be late. One day, we say why  he was always late. This man was giving us a ride and he passed by a man on the street who needed some help. He took the time out of his day to help out the man on the street. As the drive continued, he stopped to get gas. As he paid for gas at the register, he struck up a conversation with the cashier, and it looked like the cashier enjoyed the conversation. Through other drives with him, we found out he was characteristically late because he characteristically making conversation and making other people happy more important than being exactly on time. There's obviously a question of respect for other people's time, but now's not the time for that discussion. Today, I got to experience that side of extroversion and realize that it takes time, but it's highly rewarding. A few of my appointments fell through, giving me approximately an hour and a half of extra time. All of

One thing I used to not do very well at is setting a goal and doing whatever it takes to get there. I would usually get stuck and feel like I was all out of resources. But I decided to set a goal for myself: I will release Episode 1 of the Song Appeal podcast by Friday. I spent basically the entire day preparing the podcast. I wrote Draft 3 of the script for Episode 1, I set up the podcast through a free Podcast Hosting app, and even set up a website for it. I've never set up a website for any real purpose before. I set up one awful practice website years ago, but never one like this. I managed to not only register the domain, but set up the website to be fully functioning (so far) without any outside help. I just Googled stuff and figured it out. Occasionally, I ran into big problems. I wanted social media buttons like the video essayist channels have. In particular, I wanted a Patreon button like LessonsFromTheScreenplay.com has. Most importantly, I wanted the cover art on

I finally got to start working on the podcast yesterday. Just before I went to bed, I found out something I needed to do as soon as possible to get the podcast up. But it was too late to do it right then, so it would have to wait for Monday. Today, I was so excited about the podcast that having a Sunday honestly felt like kind of a burden. I realized this as soon as I got up. Then I realized that I haven't gotten that much out of Church since I moved to Utah. And I felt like I'd just gotten into a state of spiritual apathy. I asked God for help to get out of this state of spiritual apathy and He replied "Study the Book of Mormon". Unfortunately, I had to leave for Church right away. Since I didn't get to study the Book of Mormon before Church, I spent all of Church waiting to get to study the Book of Mormon. But I did get some more revelation on how to come out of this state of spiritual apathy, including: Go to a temple session (specifically an endowment sessi

How do you discern whether an impression is of God? Over the past few weeks and months, I've ruminated on the idea of starting up a podcast and YouTube series answering the question "Why do we like the music we like?" After a little while, I got the forceful impression "Stop making that podcast." Frankly, I couldn't put it down. Or rather, the idea wouldn't put me down. The idea kept bothering me, weighing on my mind. Occasionally, I would see something new that I needed to learn to make that podcast truly effective. Occasionally, I would hear a song and think "What would I say in my podcast about that?" And this week, it took up so much of my thoughts that I figured it must be the Holy Ghost having it weigh heavily on my mind. Why? First, because I've noticed God usually doesn't give me forceful impressions like "Stop making that podcast." The way He usually speaks to me is through simpler, calmer impressions lik

After staying up until 3:30 last night, I woke up around 9:30 for my 10:00 class. I rushed to Campus, where I found that people had sent the papers to me that they were supposed to. So I rushed to the library, printed off the papers, and rushed into class, where we discussed those papers. I hadn't read them yet, so I was reading them while discussing them. It turned out well, but should have turned out better. The problem was: I didn't get to shower before class. My hair looked bad and I kind of stank. I didn't expect that would be a problem. Until I started a conversation with a beautiful girl on the way out of class. Then I realized "I really do need to get up early enough to shower every day, because I never know when I'll run into a conversation like this and I want to be ready." A few minutes later, I found that I had completely overlooked a lesson with a new student. That's the second time this week. With both those issues, I decided it was ti

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "Say whatever words you will, you can never say anything but what you are." An experience today showed me how that changes conversation. I love my job. In fact, I'm passionate about my job. When I talked with someone about it today, she could see the passion in my eyes and complimented me on my appreciation for music. The fact that I was so passionate about teaching and music led the conversation to be open to my question: "What about you? What's something you're passionate about?" Whereas she had been sitting at a 45- or even 90-degree angle to me, she turned to sit towards me square-on to tell me about her passion for cognitive behavioral therapy and her desire to help everyone know about CBT so it can improve the normal, everyday lives of people without  mental disorders. Because I really was passionate, I could speak in a way that was passionate, which gave her social permission to speak in a way that is passionate.

A few weeks ago, a student requested learning "Whatever It Takes" by Imagine Dragons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGlEZpOVjGo). The moment I heard it, I felt like there was speed and motion in this song. Tonight, as I was listening to the song with a friend, she and I realized some of what makes this song have so much speed and motion to it. I'll be talking about this in a video essay soon (I hope) so I'll go over it briefly now. The song runs at 135 beats per minute - 5-15 beats per minute (so just barely) faster than your average pop/rock song and 25 beats per minute (22.7%) faster than the average country song, so the song is inherently fast. On top of that, the verse are mostly 16th notes, making the song feel like it's moving at 540 beats per minute during that section. But if it were just a song that moved quickly, we'd get used to that. We got used to the speed of Bach's songs that were filled with 16th notes that (at the time) were literally

Dad challenged me to get registered for Fall classes as soon as possible. Considering how little time I have until Fall semester begins, I can understand why. But I learned a flaw I'll have to learn how to fix: being too detail-oriented at the wrong moments. All I'm looking for is whether I'll actually learn anything in The Eternal Family, but I spent 2-3 hours just looking on Rate My Professor at most of the professors who teach The Eternal Family, which is only one of the classes I could take. Tomorrow, I'll be doing more of that, but I don't have that much time left to register for classes, as they've been filling up (as my dad mentioned) for months now. Specifically, since February, so for 6 months. Perhaps I'm getting into a little analysis paralysis even though I've been trying to get only a broad picture of what each professor is like. But I got to experience less paralyzing analysis when I got in on a discussion about Dunkirk 's score, whic

My entire day basically revolved around how tired I was at any given moment. Last night, I stayed up until 6:20 or so working on a paper. Somehow, my teacher managed to praise the words I'd written at 4:00 in the morning. She gave ideas on how to fix specific parts. After a little discussion, each of those fixes turned out to be largely making sure a secondary audience can read and understand this piece, even though it's targeted towards industry insiders, just because this piece will be turned in during a Writing class for a grade, so the teacher wants to be able to understand it herself. With only about 2-3 hours of sleep last night, I'd planned to go straight back home and straight to bed. But discussing the paper with my teacher, I wasn't quite tired. So I did a bunch of stuff I needed to do on Campus, including going to the Research and Writing Center for more advice on the same paper. They expanded on something else my teacher recommended: Make it more clear why

In a musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Buffy comes back from the dead, but finds her life more lackluster than before. Hence, the episode is perfectly titled "Once More, With Feeling". She starts to sing a song called "Going Through the Motions" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQLgHCXdf20). The song represents her emotion perfectly: Like her life as a vampire slayer, the song's tune is exciting, but she makes even that song humdrum by having a bored face, a bored tone, and bored mannerisms. Like Buffy, my face has been bored. My tone has been more sober than hers, but my mannerisms have shown an absolute detachment from the things that mattered most when I spent basically the entire Church meeting (except the Sacrament and the parts I was involved in) on my phone. Buffy's words might apply just as well to me: "I was always brave and kind of righteous, now I find I'm wavering." I thought I had good reasons: Fast and Testimony Meet

Back home, I warned people that if I spend an entire day inside, I get depressed. I need people that badly. Today, I looked at my schedule and saw that since my only lesson outside the house got cancelled, I would be spending the entire day indoors, so I decided that tonight's blog post would be titled "How to Stay Inside Without Going Crazy". For introverts, this is entirely unnecessary, but for someone as extroverted as me, it could help. I found that being busy is important, but it doesn't completely replace going outside and being with people. If I want to replace going outside and being around people, I have to bring them to me. Sometimes, I brought them to me virtually. I had a few phone calls with friends, a Skype lesson, and a call from Dad where he checked up on how things are going on my end. Sometimes, I brought them to me physically: The bi-weekly movie night tonight was at my house. Only 2 people came, but that was enough. Sometimes, it was just ov

I spent a lot of the day with one of my friends, towards whom I've developed a growing attraction. We've both already confessed an attraction towards the other, and there was a palpable "will they, won't they" atmosphere when we were together, but I've recently told her that I don't feel like we should be in a relationship. I felt like God didn't want it. When my Bishop said in a meeting recently "If you like her and she likes you, that's a pretty good sign [that you should date seriously]", I started reconsidering a romantic relationship with this girl. Maybe it was a good idea after all. Now, scratching her back during a video essay isn't exactly the most romantic thing, but it certainly was more romantic than anything else we'd done other than texts. That said, it was great to get to watch a video essay I hadn't seen before and watch it with a girl. I felt like we were learning together, especially when we started discussin

Due to going to bed late last night, I woke up late today - just in time to prepare a lesson plan for my piano lesson and head out to the lesson. It wasn't a very good lesson plan, but it was a lesson plan. Either way, he got what he wanted to get out of it. After that, I just completely threw my schedule out the window. Once I finished practicing (which I've found takes about an hour), I went shopping (which I hadn't planned on doing today, but I was out of food), and researched for my Writing assignment. By then it was time to head out for my next lessons. At those lessons, I had about 15 minutes to prepare both the lesson plans, but both students got what they wanted to out of the lessons. Then, off to Burger King to send e-mails and do writing homework. For some reason, e-mails took longer than usual. I was probably just less focused, but time slipped away and I found myself needing to leave for my next lesson before I'd even finished e-mailing. No time for lesso

Please, stop telling me that I can't turn out to be good. Please. I'm not talking about saying "You can't be perfect in this life." That's also not true, but that's a different topic for another time. I'm talking about when people would tell me about my namesake being "Nimrod, the mighty hunter", who (according to... what is the highly dubious source on this, anyway? Hearsay? Tradition? Lost scripture? Commentary from uninspired writers?) didn't hunt animals, but souls; he made it his personal mission to drag as many souls to hell as he could before he died. If I associate my own name with someone as bad as that, how would I possibly turn out to be a good person? By the way, my namesake was Howard W. Hunter, who emphasized the importance of temple and family history work. But what do I hear about him my entire life? That he was only President of the Church for 6 months. People only seemed to remember him or menti

I love Provo. I'm happier here than I have been since serving on FSU's Campus. I get to be around as many people as I want (which brings me lots of energy), I get to spend all day making people happy, and I get to learn great new stuff. I don't know if it's because I've pushed away the Spirit from my life or whether it's because I haven't eaten a home-cooked lunch or dinner this week, or whether it's because I'm dehydrated, or whether it's just because my last boss made being late a really bad thing (seriously. I was afraid every day of being late, and when I was late, I was afraid to see my boss for the first hour of work because I didn't want him to know I was late. Maybe I was just over-reacting), but I got pretty stressed out later on in the day. I was on my way to a piano lesson, and it took 5 minutes longer to walk to my car than I expected. The map told me it would take only 15 minutes to get to her house, but once I got in the car, i

I downloaded Mutual 2 days ago. It's a dating app similar to Tinder, but it's specifically for LDS YSAs. Yeah, weird. Most people wouldn't expect it to even exist, especially since Dallin H. Oaks specifically counseled against online dating (see https://www.lds.org/ensign/2006/06/dating-versus-hanging-out?lang=eng). Frankly, since he counseled against online dating, I was worried about getting in the first place, but it came with one of those "might as well" thoughts, and I hope it works out? I really don't know. I keep feeling like I should delete the app, but it feels very different from the feeling I get when I'm being prompted by the Spirit. I kind of just feel guilty for using this app at all. I've been using the app for doing something at least productive while I'm doing other stuff, although I've had to remember that there are times and places where it's not appropriate and that I shouldn't let a good thing get in the way of a b