Just a few things is all

So Prop 8 is going on and I care and stuff (I really do.), but I'm going to ignore the major social media explosion which happened today and talk about other stuff because my blog lately has turned into serious-ville. Which is fine. But I'm just feeling less serious right now. 


Anyways...

A few things.



:: This is me at a young, undetermined age.

:: I take receipt surveys. Because somebody has to win that $1000 WalMart gift card, and someday it. will. be. me. (Cue: Chariots of Fire theme song.)

:: Can anyone tell me why Google Reader must die? I could Google the answer to this question, but really I just want to complain a tad so it's not worth actually trying to find that out right this second. But Reader is, like, my BIFF (Best Internet Friend Forever). And I am definitely going to suffer from separation anxiety if I really do have to say goodbye. Wait, can I start a petition for something like that??

:: I realized last week that I almost have crazy people long hair now. Like you know those people whose hair touches their heinie and it's near impossible to do stuff with it so they just let it hang? Or they braid it? Yeah I'm almost there, folks. The only thing keeping me away from that is SOCK BUNS. 

:: Along that same vein (and while I'm posting a million pictures of my face), the best thing in the world is taking my hair out of a braid. Not that that just happened or anything...uhhhh...

:: I have done SO MUCH FAMILY HISTORY in the last week and it is cool stuff. I followed 12 people through every census they were ever in, and here's a fun fact for you: reading those census sheets is 17 million times easier when you know in advance what names you are looking for (as opposed to indexing people you've never heard of). I have totally fallen in love with my family history class this semester. To all my current BYU friends--take REL C 261 with Amy Harris. And do it now cuz #yolo.

:: I listen to country music lately. Country and I have always had an on-again, off-again relationship and we're on again.

:: And along that same vein, there's this song. I might be over it in a week, but I'm in love with it tonight.


And that's all I've got for you, folks. Three cheers for disorganized posts once more!

In which I marvel over prayer

Have you ever thought about how incredible the concept of prayer is?

At any time and in any place, anyone in the whole world can stop what they are doing and talk to God, the boss of the universe. And God, who is likely rather busy running the universe, will stop what He is doing and listen.


And have you ever thought about how incredible the concept of personal revelation is?

Whenever God stops to listen, He considers a response, and He considers when would be an optimal time to deliver that response, and He checks His schedule and sees that everything is lined up for that response to work out, and He clicks *send*. Sometimes He does this even when we haven't asked anything, just because He knows we'll need it anyway.


I don't want to speak too lightly about this, but we talked today in Relief Society about what a blessing prayer is and what a blessing personal revelation is. And it just put this image in my head, of God and I communicating just like my family and friends and I communicate. 

I felt strongly during my freshman year at BYU that I was learning how God speaks to me personally. I'm not always the best listener, but I've realized which venues He often uses when He needs me, Alyssa, to pay attention. It was a blessing to feel His direction and see His hand in my life more constantly than ever before. 

This year I feel like it's going more the other way around, and I'm learning how, really, I need to talk to God. I have had times when I've known He certainly saw the whole thing or heard exactly what they said or understood exactly what I felt, and yet I could honestly do nothing more than simply explain my thoughts and feelings anyway, relay my confusion/anxiety, and wait for an answer. And most often, that answer has been comfort before direction, solace before progress. It's been a huge blessing to feel His love more deeply and intimately than ever before. 

I think we often have the sad tendency to think of prayer as a habit or a ritual or something to check off the list before we leave the house in the morning or eat our lunch or go to sleep at night. But prayer is everything! It is our link to God, and it is His gift for us.

A couple weeks ago I had an amazing experience in my math class at BYU wherein my professor offered to say the opening prayer, asked if anyone would like him to pray for them specifically, and then spent 10 minutes praying. He spoke so frankly and openly, and I could just tell in the first few seconds that God is this professor's best friend and they talk all the time. He told God about how the sunny weather was so nice because we had had such an awful winter, and he discussed that our calculus proofs can sometimes be hard to understand so we'll possibly need some help with that, and he thanked God for the Atonement and explained exactly which aspect of it he was most grateful for in that moment. And then he prayed for the students who had asked for prayers, and he did so on such an individual basis that you would have thought he had taken each one to lunch the day before just to find out what they most needed. And after our 10-minute prayer, class went wonderfully. 

That is the single most influential experience I have had at BYU thus far. And though it's true that I have never felt more love from professor to student than on that day, it is also true I have never felt the love of God more strongly relayed through another person than I did right then. God asks us to love Him and then to love others, and this professor showed by example how to do both in one fell swoop. I learned quickly that prayer is the key to our following the most important commandments. 

Prayer is everything. 


I know that God hears and answers our every prayer. As our spiritual father, He cares more than enough to stop and listen to our pleadings at every moment, and He will send perfect responses if we will watch for and learn from them. Prayer is the start of personal revelation and we simply cannot live this life without it. It is the simplest yet greatest blessing we have been given. Prayer really is everything.

2 social media things?

Ok here is something I am sharing for Women's Chorus:

Hardy har har. We are too funny for our own good. Go watch it and give us another view, yeah? We're just trying to beat Men's Chorus is all. Thanks, I love you.


And here is something that I posted on FB but maybe I have someone who reads my blog with whom I am not currently FB friends and this might apply to them? So yeah. 

Calling ALL soon-to-be missionaries! I got an email this week inviting me to take place in a research project survey, and it sounds super easy and includes a drawing to win free stuff, but I'm not going on a mission in the next 6 months, so I am not eligible to participate (although I'll admit the free stuff almost changed my mind). I tell you this not because I benefit but because it just sounds cool and I'm mad I can't do it so I want people I know and love to do it instead. They are looking for seriously anyone 18-24, leaving soon. If this describes you and you're interested, holler and I'll forward the email. Sorry for the long FB post. kthatsallbye.

More on the survey: 
We invite you to take part in the Pre and Post Mission Survey if you plan on beginning your mission service within the next 6 months.  Study participants have an opportunity to win a $100 gift card prior to their missions and a $500 gift card after their missions. By taking part in this study, you will help us discover how the experience of living in different places affects your political attitudes.

Yeah. And it's being done by professors at MIT, BYU, and Stanford. So...real deal status?
Confession: I just want somebody I know to win a gift card. I have this goal to help people boost their luck because some ridiculous thing inside me thinks it will boost my luck as well? I dunno. Just holler if you wanna do this survey. That's what we came here to talk about. 




Also, I'm sorry that my English in this blog post is awful and that every other sentence is a fake question. That's what social media is for. ??

Quote for 19 March 2013

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not."

 - Thomas Henry Huxley

I have been blessed/cursed to have best friends throughout my life who have all had exceptional amounts of self-discipline. This is a blessing because they have set great examples for me; it is a curse because I have never ever come easily by that ability, and have therefore always felt like a lazy bum next to them.

But I have realized that pretty much nobody simply stumbles upon self-discipline. And I have realized that if that is the case, then I am going to have to work hard if I someday want to always be able to do the thing I have to do, when I have to do it, whether I like it or not. It'll be a lifelong quest; this I know.

The good news is that I think I have decent self-discipline in specific areas. I can make myself floss my teeth every night even though I hate it. I have pretty good control over my eating habits and I can rein myself in before I eat too much junk food. I can talk myself into liking things that are good for me and talk myself out of habits which waste time. I can befriend and care about people I don't get along with. I just don't think I'll ever be very good at getting myself up any earlier than the very last second possible when I need to be somewhere in the morning. (All things considered, this is not a worst case scenario. But I will pray and work for that dang character trait anyway.)

Anyway, I thought of this quote because I taught the lesson in Relief Society this week, and the topic was "Becoming Perfect before the Lord: A Little Better Day by Day." I would maybe modify the quote by replacing the word "education" with "life experience." After all, the original word and the replacement are, in the long run, synonymous, yes? The purpose of Earth is to provide a testing center for everyone to experience and overcome the difficulties of mortality, so through life experience we learn self-discipline. And since perfection, I believe, is the end result of self-discipline, as well as the ultimate and final goal in the eternities, day-to-day self-discipline in this life is crucial. 

So although this basically was already the case, I'm declaring that self-discipline is now my main thing--my goal and my motto and my challenge. 

And I say: bring it on.

What I thought about today.

I've been so gosh darn busy for the last couple weeks that I've gotten very wrapped up in my own world. It hasn't all been school work although that has been a sizable chunk of my self-absorbed-ness. Part of it has been the fact that I somehow got sick twice in the last month (I'm a baby when I'm sick). Another part of it has been that I'm trying to be better at setting goals and sticking with them, but lots of my little weekly goals require time alone--for example, play the piano at least 3 days this week, blog at least twice, scripture study for 30 min every day--and though they are good goals, they take me away from other people. 

So this week I added some different goals. I'm not sure they worked right off the bat but I'm sticking to them a little longer to see what'll happen. First off, social media and I are fighting. I believe in blogging, always, because it's a form of recording snippets of my life and I do it "for my posterity!" of course. But I have made a conscious effort to NOT stay caught up with Facebook and Instagram and Google Reader this week, just to see what extra time would land in my lap. Lo and behold, I had some extra time indeed. I read half a book and I played with my nephew and I went on a date! Another thing I tried out this week was to avoid doing homework in my room. This was partially for the well-being of my lower back (which has been complaining lately about how much I just sit on my bed), and partially to get out of the basement dungeon. I wasn't very good about this one this week, but it still sounds like a nice idea so I'll keep it around.

Anyway, I do feel like I spent more time with people this week, so that's good. And I also feel like I didn't only half-listen to people I talked to this week (which is, sadly, my norm), so that's really good. 

I'm just tired of running round and round from school to home to school to church to home to school without ever stopping to have meaningful interaction with other humans. I've always been pretty independent and I've always enjoyed spending time alone and I've always loved the idea of not needing other people. But that is selfish and I want to give it up. Having time to myself can be good, but right now, in this time of my life, I'd rather have that be the exception than the norm. There are so many cool people around me that I need to learn from right now.

That's all really. 
Thanks for listening.

Hipster Status

If I had to name my favorite type of person, I would choose: hipsters.
I don't think that was grammatically correct, but whatever.
I typed in "grammatically correct" before it was even cool, so...yeah.
[Hipster joke.]

Well I hope you like wildflower, because that was a lot of it.

I love. punctuation mark bands. More than, like, regular word bands.

They just crack me up. 
I had a TA for Physical Science 100 last year who said she wanted to be a hipster so badly that she Googled how to do it. 
Guys. That is almost where I'm at right now.
Except I don't want to be a hipster; I just want to know lots of them.
So if anybody knows of a good place to find some friendly ones, please let me know.

Thank you for your time.

This morning, I woke up.

And that was a literal miracle. I am not kidding you. I went to sleep last night without even giving a moment's thought to the following things:
:: ward council at 9:00 AM.
:: daylight saving making that meeting really be at 8:00 AM.
:: bothering to set any alarms.
And guys. I don't wake up even when I do set alarms. I can set three alarms and still wake up late. I DO IT EVERY MORNING. [Ask Will.] [Actually, don't ask Will.]

Anyways, I rolled over this morning at exactly 8:22, which was exactly 8 minutes before I would need to get up to be on time for 9:00 ward council. You can think I'm being sarcastic or melodramatic or whatever-you-want when I say it was a miracle to wake up at just the right time, but I truly believe that it was a miracle.

It's either that, or I'm lucky.
So I guess who really knows?

Jk. I know. 
Miracle.


Completely unrelated is the fact that I woke up from a zombie dream. It wasn't going well, so I'm glad I woke up. 




Also unrelated: tonight I came home from ward prayer and my mom told me I have "such an elegant look when I pull my hair back in that bun" like I had it. It was one of the best compliments in the world because there are about four words I really want to have people use to describe me before I die, and elegant is one of them.
So thanks, Mom. Love you.

I don't know what happened, but...*

The following things have been said to me in the last three weeks:

"Alyssa, can I take you out to dinner sometime?"
"I'm planning a double date, was wondering if you'd like to go?"
"If you're not busy this Friday, would you like to go out?"
"Hey would you wanna hang out this weekend? Can I get your number?"
"Also, can I have your number?"
"I should probably get your number."
"Ok, just give me your number."



And here's the kicker: each of those was said by a different guy.









You can feel free to ask what the heck is going on, but I promise no details.
Because quite frankly, I am as confused as you are.
I don't think I changed anything...but this is very different from the last year and a half in which I have gone on a grand total of 2 dates? I think?
So yeah, I dunno. I just dunno.
But in the meantime, I'm trying really hard to not let my homework take a back burner position.
And I'm spending a lot of time going on dates.
And, well, I'm having fun.

So that's good.






*I wrote this about a month ago but I felt weird posting it when I actually wrote it in case anyone, like, found it and read it. Like anyone involved. You know? So anyways, here it is, a month later. Still a pretty darn accurate view of my life lately.

I'll sit on the front porch all night, waist deep in thought...

This week has been nutso busy and I really don't have time to blog but here I am anyway. 

I've done well at avoiding social media this week while I've had lots to do, but today I was going going going from 7 AM to 10 PM and that is a long enough day to warrant a blogging break. Also: gross, I didn't even realize how long that is until I typed it up. That explains why my feet kill, I suppose.

But on a more positive note, I am feeling very grateful tonight for a healthy body and a healthy brain and a healthy spirit. I'm thankful that my stomach is not waging war on me, and I'm thankful for two good test scores, and I'm thankful to have seen the hand of God in my life today.

I am also thankful that this day is done. And that I can go to sleep now.


I'll be falling asleep to this tonight:
Huh. Weird music video. Never watched that before.

I hated this song for a long time because it was SO OVERRATED and everyone in the world was using that "the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly" line as their Facebook status. Seriously, I think half my Facebook friends used it at some point, and of course that took any cuteness that line ever had and threw it away promptly. But this has now just become a long overdue rant. 

I like this song now. And not just because it can put me to sleep. 

If you're wondering, my favorite line is the one in the title. But I could spend a long time explaining why I love every line. Even that finger spaces one.

Anyways.

That's all.