prologue: soulforce

This entry is more a reminder to myself of what I want to touch on later. I'm exhausted, burnt out, and incredibly sick, so tonight isn't going to happen. However, here're the basics (and keep in mind that prior to going I was fairly anti-Soulforce, but am typically open to giving people a second chance to make an impression):

We had 60+ people at the in-home discussion group that started at 8:30. There were 5 Soulforce peoples there, the most persuasive/knowledgable of whom was a lesbian gal from upper Michigan (and now from Washington) who has family members who are LDS. She grew up the daughter of a Lutheran minister (hey, I baptized one of those!). There were also fellows from Presbyterian and Southern Baptist roots, and I can't remember the other two (the bookends on the couch - anyone remember?). Their message was okay, but you could tell that underneath the cheery exterior they wanted to change church doctrines more than anything else. Which is okay, because they don't really understand us or our culture. Emily (the cool chick) said the one thing by a Soulforce rep that actually resonated with me, about relationships being the foundation for understanding within the community.

After the Soulforce peeps took off, we continued the discussion for another hour and a half. We got some questions from straight individuals trying to understand where we're coming from, a lot of talk about suggestions for Honor Code changes at BYU, some interesting discussion about stereotypes and common misconceptions, and got to tell everyone about Hidden (he'll get a blog someday soon :P) and Pinetree's meeting with the VP of student life at BYU and the strides that are being made from within. While some comments were a bit off-base, for the most part a lot of honest interaction and real learning went on, and I deem the meeting a success. Even if my body ACHED sitting there the whole time. Sitting in one place for a thing like that for three and a half hours when you're achy and sick isn't very fun, but it was definitely worth it.

Now we just have to convince our teacher to let us off class so we can go to the Kiwanis Park thingie tomorrow....

~drex

the good and the blah

Oh so busy. Honestly, there isn't enough time in the day for me to do all the things that I feel I have to do. On the plus side, I had a great (though incredibly hectic) day at work. I was not only amazingly busy, but very effective in using my time. I ended up making a sale (yay extra $200 this month! :D), plus I was told that my commission structure would be changing to be centered on training rather than sales, since all my time is taken up training people, and especially people that other guys sell onto our program. (we do online construction management software) So that means perpetually more money coming in. Which is really good, since I have a bunch of furniture to buy for the new apartment, a car to pay back to my parents, double rent in the month of April, and a trip to Cali to save up for.

Have to balance the good with not-so-good, right? I'm definitely getting sick, but I'm trying to stave it off with vitamin C, ibuprofen (to combat the abysmal ache-all-over feeling), ginger tea, and sleep. We'll see how I feel in the morning, but I definitely sound froggy with my itchy throat right now.

At that, I'm going to sign off. Gotta get some semblance of a night's rest, right? :P

~drex

meeting new people

So tired today, but it was a good day. Work and classes and all that jazz, but basically all day I was just pumped to go up to see the Joseph Smith movie again. What made it even better was that AttemptingThePath and El Veneno decided to join us. And just as I suspected, they're really cool and we had a good time. I wish we could have had more time to just talk or hang out or something, but I guess that'll have to happen some other time. Seriously. Plus, this time watching the movie I set a new record - I only used 4 tissues! But I think my sinuses were kinda clogged, 'cuz I got a nice sinus headache on the drive home. Wee!

I'm trying to figure out why I'm in such a good mood. I guess I just had fun, and it was good to meet new people that I could be open with, and who were the type that I would actually enjoy being friends with. It takes a certain type of person to be friends with me, so even seeing friend potential leaves a happy feeling. Plus it was an incredibly beautiful day today, and despite my brief bout of extreme pissed-offedness in the car (o road rage u), the sun kept me happy all day. I'm so shallow sometimes. I love it. ^_^

And now, to bed.

~drex

historical: first encounters

Pretty fantastic day today. I got to sleep in, it was gorgeous outside, church was abidable, we had an incredibly fun dinner at my aunt's house, and we hung out with Hidden and heard his hilarious performance of assignments from a class he took. We're pretty much all patched up now (to the relief of Salad) and the three of us are going up to Salt Lake to see the Joseph Smith movie tomorrow night. Incidentally, I bet we could get away with taking one (or squeezing, two) more if there's anyone from Provo/Orem that wants to come. I haven't cleared it with either Salad or Hidden, but odds are they'd be okay with it, and if not you'll just have to deal with the rejection. (: I'm excited, though. And I have to remember to bring a box of tissues, because I've definitely used at least 6 every time I've seen it, and I'm not anticipating it being any easier this time around. What can I say; I'm like a faucet.

Ok, so I'm flipping through my journal for fun historical insights into who I am. One entry made me giggle. I went to a school dance (girls' choice) my freshman year of high school at age 13. The girl I went with "was in Mathcounts and is way smart, essentially a girl version of me." PS, a year later she came out as a lesbian. xD Sorry, looking back that just cracks me up.

I guess I never recorded anything about the next few major milestones in my self-discovery, so this will be the first record. By my sophomore year of high school and at the age of 14 and 15, I'd come to terms with my SSA and had realized that it wasn't something that was likely to go away. I was still trying to figure out where I stood on it, and while I was nursing an interesting crush on a girl (I have yet to figure that one out, because I wasn't physically attracted to her - it might have just been a weird best friends thing, but I'm not certain), I was having a plethora of crushes on guys. That year the strongest crush was a senior kid that was in choir with me. It was very juvenile, but hey, I was just 15.

The next year was much more hazardous - I'm fully confident that only the intervention of the Lord kept me from ruining my chances at a mission and possibly facing other ecclesiastical repercussions [as a side note, I've toned this down some. This is a very vivid memory, and some aspects of that week would be just a bit too graphic for my taste]. With the old seniors graduated and the new senior tenors not really stepping up, I basically headed up the Tenor I section in the auditioned choir and the hand-picked madrigal choir at school. Among the Tenor IIs we had some decent strength, but a big boon for the section came in the form of a sophomore kid named Dylan who transferred back up to our school from New York City, where he'd been in a boys' choir boarding school something-or-other. The kid was openly bisexual, and extremely cute. So I silently crushed on him. A few months after my 16th birthday, the orchestra and choir went on a competition trip to Virginia Beach. I was in both the orchestra and the choir, and I had friends in the orchestra, but I wanted to make more friends in the choir. I'm sure secretly I wanted to room with Dylan and that that influenced my decision, but my memory on that point is pretty hazy. In the end, though, I did room with Dylan and two other tenors from the choir. Turns out one guy was also openly bi (and extremely disgusting - picture 400 pounds and unshaven, age 17, in lounging clothes on the bed eating vienna sausages out of the tin off of his stomach, and you can picture this guy), and the other guy was loosely closeted bi. What a situation for a stalwart LDS SSA youth to be in!

Two things saved me that week. One was my incredible naivete, and the other was what I see as intervention from God but what could have just been a series of unfortunate circumstances. I'll skip most of the filler. At one point Dylan and I had a pillow fight in our PJs (his consisting of boxers and an undershirt), and we ended up on the bed with his legs wrapped around me. If I had half a brain for the whole sexual undertones/overtones/tones thing, this would have been an obvious come-on. Luckily I was completely ignorant. If he had walked up to me and asked me to do something scandalous with him, I probably would have dropped everything and done it, but instead even his most obvious machinations didn't do anything to me. He would put a towel on, drop his boxers, and leave them in the room with me while he went to take a shower. He talked about not getting any on the trip. Seriously...how much more obvious could he get? We even talked about his lifestyle some of the time in the bus. But I was blissfully unaware of any interest from him.

The last day of the trip, I had basically decided I was going to go after an encounter with Dylan. Which was mildly amusing, because the night before he'd been talking about how he thinks everyone in the world is bisexual and just doesn't realized it, then decided that I was the only straight guy on the planet (probably because I didn't react to his flirtations) and that all supposedly straight guys should be as cool and accepting as me. Anyway, since I didn't understand flirting I was just going to be incredibly forward, and my excuse for doing it, or the circumstances I wanted to create to set it up, was another pillow fight. Shortly before I was going to put my plan into effect, one of the jerks in the choir basically threatened Dylan and said that he was going to tell Dylan's older sister about his orientation (how his family didn't know I will never fathom), which threw Dylan into such a funk that he wasn't in the mood to play or anything. I honestly feel like I was unwittingly moving into a temptation that would have been beyond my capacity to bear, and that God all but plucked me out of the situation in order to keep that promise that we won't be tempted above that we are able. In the end nothing happened between us, Dylan and I chatted and emailed for the rest of the school year and he loved being able to educate me about his lifestlye and the terminology and such. To this day the smell of the cologne that he wore reminds me of him, but I'm incredibly glad that nothing happened between us and that God had His eye on me. Even if I wasn't committed to a path following the gospel, he was a player and I would have been a fling, but since I was on the path to serve a mission it means that much more to me. Especially looking back and seeing just how treacherous the path I was treading was. God's a good guy.

~drex

lazy days

Lazy days are *so* therapeutic. Especially lazy days where it's over 70 degrees outside and blessedly sunny. Oh man. Salad basically mentioned most everything fun that happened today. I had a choir rehearsal this morning, cut my hair, got my shorts, we watched some basketball, hung out with Hidden, went to a concert and ate some cookies at our friends' house.

I'm having a hard time deciding what I want to blog about - it's a combination of too many ideas and too tired. I guess something that's been piquing my interest is holding grudges. I used to be able to hold a grudge really well and really long. At one point I held a grudge against my best friend - for years it lasted, until one day, years after he moved to another state, I had a dream that he said he was sorry. Only then, like 6 years later, was I able to forgive him and move on. So I find it really interesting that I can't really hold a grudge anymore. Or rather, I suppose I could, but I don't see the point to myself. One aspect of my logical side that remains intact is my ability to reason out of (some) emotions. If I'm feeling something that doesn't make sense or has no benefit, my logical side can sometimes flush it out. This extends to whenever I'm angry at friends - for better or for worse. I can't stay mad at friends, and can't hold a grudge against them. Not like I used to.

I suppose that relates to another curious thing that I've pondered recently - the logical vs. emotional dual aspect of personality. Before my mission I was almost purely logical. I think that at some point I subconsciously decided that the best way to not feel SSA-related emotions was to try to kill all my emotions. Of course very few people are able to completely pull that off, but I did okay at it. At some point on my mission, though, I switched to a largely emotion-driven individual. I think that was part of striving to be in touch with the Spirit. My testimony gained a more obviously personal aspect because I felt it myself rather than just learning it myself. I was able to discern the needs of those around me and how I could help them best. Some of that carried over after the mission, but I find myself sometimes wishing my logical side was as strong as before.

And I'm apparently rambling again. Man, I have to get more sleep. And maybe blog sometime earlier than 1:45 in the morning. Brilliant.

~drex