Bryce Moore's Blog, page 40

Aaron Judge and the Yankees

I don’t blog about it very often, but I am indeed a Yankee fan, despite living deep in Red Sox nation. I’m not a militant fan, of course. I’ll stick up for my team if they come under assault, but I’m not one to go around yelling about how awful the Red Sox are (even if they’re having an awful season). I also don’t watch all the games religiously, though I catch them when I can, and I enjoy rooting for the team.

So I was very relieved and happy to hear Aaron Judge had signed a 10 year contract with the Yankees. Yes, it’s $360 million. Yes, we’ll still be paying that when he’s 40, and there’s no way of knowing how he’ll be playing by then, but I was firmly in the “we need to pay him whatever it takes to keep him” camp.

My best justification for that is another player near and dear to the hearts of many of my fellow Mainers: Tom Brady.

The amount of love for Tom Brady up here would have been pretty hard to describe. People treated him about as close to a saint as you could get. The man could do no wrong, and he’d been with the Patriots from his rookie season.

Then, they let him go. He was too old. The Pats didn’t want to keep playing him, or didn’t want to pay him as much as he wanted, or something else stood in the way. He stopped being a Patriot, and he went to Tampa Bay, where he subsequently won another Super Bowl.

The Patriots, in my opinion, should have paid whatever they had to keep Brady with the team, and they should have let him keep playing as long as he wanted to. He’d taken the team to a 12-4 record his last season as a Patriot. He should have been there until he retired completely. Instead, there’s this strang sort of limbo situation where he’s been a Buccaneer for three years now. He’ll never be a 100% Patriot player, and I think that’s a shame.

Look at some of the Yankees who were Yankees from their rookie season until they retired:

Lou GehrigEarle CombsBill DickeyJoe DiMaggioPhil RizzutoWhitey FordMickey MantleDon MattinglyBernie WilliamsMariano RiveraDerek Jeter

There are more, but that’s an impressive list. What would it have been like to let Gehrig or DiMaggio or Rivera or Jeter play out the rest of their careers on a team other than the Yankees?

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’m a big believer in team loyalty, both from a player to a team and a team to a player. If Judge had left, I wouldn’t have just criticized the Yankees for letting him go. I would have criticized Judge for leaving. To switch sports, it’s one of my beefs with college football now and the transfer portal. One of the things I really liked about college sports was players coming and sticking with their team until they graduated. More and more, it’s feeling like a free agent market out there.

Anyway. Not like many of you will care about this, and it’s a far cry from my typical blog post fodder, but it’s something I’d been thinking about for a while, and I was happy to see the resolution I was rooting for.

Go Yankees!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Upgrading to 4k

I’ve had my projector for around . . . five years now? Something like that. And I’ve been very happy with it. I remember when I first switched from standard definition to HD. It felt like I’d been seeing the world through blurry glasses all this time, and suddenly I’d gotten my prescription fixed. Since then, film and TV have continued to evolve, with offerings now that are 4k or even 8k in definition. (For a full explanation of the different definitions, see here.)

I’d held off upgrading for a number of reasons. First, it would be a real pain in the rear to do. My A/V receiver only did up to regular HD, so I’d have to swap that out, and that’s a lot of wires you have to futz around with. Second, I wanted to wait until I could upgrade one last time and then not worry about it anymore. While TV resolutions might keep increasing, the human eye’s ability to tell the difference does not. With a 105″ screen, as long as you’re sitting closer than 14 feet to it, you can see a difference between HD and 4k. To see the difference between 4k and 8k, you’d have to sit around 3 feet away. That ain’t happening, so there’s no practical need for me to get any higher resolutions.

Also, I didn’t have a 4k projector. I wanted to switch to a laser projector, because those are brighter and don’t need the bulbs switched out. And as long as I was doing that, I wanted to upgrade the sound in the room to the latest surround platform, which is Atmos. (With Atmos, you install speakers in the ceiling, so sound isn’t just coming from around you, it’s coming from above as well.) Again, I doubt I will need more speakers than that for my space. Any more speakers, and it’ll be more speaker than walls.

But upgrading all of that is expensive, and so that was another thing holding me up. I’d done the research, and I knew what I wanted to buy, but I was going to wait until I had the funds.

Then the royalty check for The Perfect Place to Die came in, and suddenly I had the funds I needed to make the change. I decided that would be an excellent way to celebrate the success of the book, so I pulled the trigger and have spent the last week swapping out most things in my movie room. A new A/V box, brand new speaker wire, four new surround speakers, two ceiling speakers (yet to be installed. I have to cut into the ceiling . . .), and a new projector.

Can you tell a difference? Definitely. The picture is crazy sharp. Daniela described it as feeling as if the people were literally in the same room with you. We watched the climax of Avengers Endgame, and it just looked incredible. I’ve watched some World Cup in 4k as well, and you can see pretty much everything.

So now I’m selling my old stuff and no longer worrying about upgrading anything again. Would I recommend 4k and Atmos to everyone? Probably not. For one thing, you have to have a big screen and be sitting not too far away for you to really tell the difference. (You can read all about that here.) Just because a TV can be a certain resolution doesn’t mean you’ll notice. For another, it’s quite tricky to set a system like this up on your own. You need to really want to do it, and do a lot of research to find just what you want. (On the plus side, I’ve spent this time rewiring me room so that most of the cables on the walls are hardly noticeable.) So in the end you have to balance between how hard it is to do it versus what you’ll get out of it.

But personally? I’m very happy with the result, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about it.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 2 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! I’m still alive in Žilina! This week has been a lot busier. Things are going good here and we are establishing ourselves – we are the first elders to be in Žilina for like a whole year so it’s an adjustment for the people we are teaching. But it’s been good!

This week we got to have dinner with a bunch of Ukrainian refugees – it was really cool to hear their stories and just be around them. Afterwards we took them for a tour of the church building (I say building but it’s really just like a set of rooms) and we played some Christmas carols for them. Overall a very good evening and it was cool to hear Ukrainian spoken – I could understand some but it was tough. 

Speaking of understanding, Slovak continues to come along well. I happened to sit next to a somewhat drunk man on the train to Banská Bystrica and he talked to me the whole time. He was muttering though and I had a hard time understanding but I got the general gist of his complaints about the war, refugees, and the Kia factory’s lack of production. It was…interesting but he said my Slovak was ok so that’s cool I guess. 

About the radio – the senior missionaries here, the Ottos, are friends with a local radio producer and she wanted to interview us about how Christmas is in Žilina because we are foreigners. It was just a quick interview – maybe 7 minutes total but we will be on the national radio or something like that soon! Hopefully someone hears and is interested. 

We also had the opportunity to visit Trenčín, where Mom is from and where Babka lives. That was cool – it’s different to be back there as a missionary instead of a tourist. We were there because there was a concert being put on and we were a part of it. That went really well, a lot of people showed up along with like half the missionaries that were nearby. There were lots of very good performances and the first saxophone I’ve ever seen played in a church building. Then we had traditional dinner with kapustnica and everything. It was so nice to be in Trenčín again even if it was just briefly. Also Babka got me two fire ties – one is super Christmasy and looks really good with one of my sweaters. She knows what’s up with the kroj. 

Speaking of ties, I figure I’ll update you all on the tie spreadsheet. It’s going well, although my collection/rotation has shrunk as I had to make some decisions on what I was keeping and was simply didn’t make the cut. My standards have risen quite a bit – the tie game out here is solid. I now have a list of decommissioned ties as well and have updated the dropdown to check both lists using a nested VLOOKUP. Good stuff. My rotation is now only 18 ties. 

Finally, me and elder Noflte picked up old Soviet cameras from a guy on Marketplace today. Mine is missing a part and he will get it to me soon, but the other one is pretty cool and I’m excited to see how the pictures develop. I’ll update everyone on that too. 

Finally, I’ve decided that instead of being limited by sending pictures in the emails I’ll just make a Google Photos album and add things to that as they happen. Here’s the link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

Thanks for all the emails you’ve sent – it’s been great to hear from everyone. Hopefully you all get some more snow back home – there isn’t any here either. 

Love you all,

Starší Cundick

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Taste of Farmington: 2022 Edition

Farmington, Maine has a yearly festival in honor of Chester Greenwood, inventor of the ear muff and native Farmingtonian. There’s a parade (with everyone and everything wearing ear muffs, of course), contests, and general festivities. Back in the days of yore (pre-COVID times), there was also a “Taste of Farmington” activity, where you’d buy a ticket that would get you a sample of food at all participating restaurants in town. The ticket was $5, and the samples varied in size, but it ended up being a really good deal for $5, and a fun way to pass a few hours. That went away during COVID, but this year they brought it back. And who am I to pass up an opportunity like that? We went with the fam on Saturday, and I’m here to let you know what I thought of all the offerings, ranked from worst to best, of course.

N/A Java Joe’s, Tuck’s Ale House, and Main Street Nutrition: I don’t drink coffee and I don’t drink beer, and that’s what was offered in the first two spots, respectively. I also avoid sweet drinks of questionable origin, because I’m allergic to aspartame, and it’s not worth getting a migraine over. So I skipped the health drinks of Main Street Nutrition, as well. I can’t rate any of them, because I passed.

Dunkin’ Donuts: Come on, Dunkin’. A quarter of a donut? Your generosity astounds me. It was small, and . . . still a dunkin donut. Unimpressed.

Farmington House of Pizza: A small slice of a personal cheese pizza. Better than the donut morsel, but not very inspired.

Orange Cat Cafe: There was a chai here that I passed on (see above), but they also had small cupcakes, which were extremely tasty. Bump the size of them cupcakes up a few notches, and we’d have a serious contender.

The Homestead: Corn chowder and a piece of bruschetta. Tasty, but once again quite lacking in terms of portions. It just couldn’t compete with some of what the other were offering.

Wicked Good Candy: Your choice of three (out of around 6 or 7) types of candy. Not a ton of candy, but bonus points for variety of selection and offerings. MC thought this was awesome.

The Better Living Center: A piece of apple pie, home made. Very tasty, and not that small. Of course, not that big, either . . .

Mary Jane’s Slice of Heaven: Talk about variety and portions. They gave out three chicken wings (with your choice of three sauces), pork rinds, and a full slice of pizza. The wings were delicious, though the pork rinds were . . . pork rinds, and the pizza was . . . hot dog? Also, there was a long line. So . . . some strange selection, but great portions and selection.

The Roost: Pulled pork slider, homemade chips, chili, and they even offered water to drink. Everything was delicious, and there was quite a bit of it. Very impressive showing.

The Beaver Lodge at UMF: A small mango/strawberry smoothie, hot sandwich, homemade chips, and cup of clam chowder. Great portions and variety, and that smoothie was my favorite thing of the day. We have a winner!

And there you have it. If they offer this again next year, I heartily recommend it. I was stuffed by the end of it all, and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Television Review: 1899

Would you look at that? I finished another TV show a week or so after finishing a different one. That’s usually a very good sign that I enjoyed it, and I very much did this time, but that comes with some caveats.

The first season of 1899 is on Netflix. It’s follows a group of people on an Atlantic cruise ship from London to New York City in (you guessed it) 1899. The group (generally) doesn’t know each other, and most of them are from different countries. (The show has Spanish, Cantonese, Dutch, German, French, and English on a very regular basis. The characters often don’t understand each other, but subtitles are given for everything, so the audience knows what everyone is saying.) The ship encounters its sister ship in the middle of the Atlantic, four months after that ship had disappeared. Mystery and intrigue ensue.

The show is from the same folks who did Dark, which I really enjoyed. (If you haven’t seen that series, you should definitely check it out, if you like science fiction and time travel. Great stuff.) The same sort of unraveling mystery premise is at work in 1899, and this is very much the first season of the show. That means it does a fantastic job of asking lots of questions, setting lots of riddles, and answering those questions with even bigger questions. If you loved Lost and the experience of watching Lost unfold over the years, then this show is for you. If Lost infuriated you, probably avoid this.

Of course, since I have no idea what the answers to the show’s questions are, it’s hard for me to really say one way or the other if it’ll all pay off. When people found Lost’s answers, many didn’t like them, and thus didn’t like the show. (I personally enjoyed the answers, even though I wish we’d gotten more of them.) On the other hand, Dark was able to ask big questions and deliver on answers, so I’m optimistic for 1899’s future.

It’s got some language and steamy scenes, but nothing in the ballpark of an HBO show. Denisa and I both enjoyed it, and now we’re both impatient for the next season. (That’s the Catch 22 of shows like this. On the one hand, it would be nice just to watch it all at once, and never have to wait. On the other, if enough people don’t watch the first season, then we’ll never get a second season at all . . .)

It’s 8 episodes, and it moves quickly. Very bingeable. Give it a shot. 8/10

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Shoulder Pain Update

I can’t remember what I’ve told you all about some things anymore. Blog for long enough, and everything blurs together. But whatever I’ve said before, I’ll recap briefly now. About five years ago, something happened in my right shoulder. I don’t know what. As I recall, it started when I was driving a stick shift car in Europe. I went to a physical therapist, who diagnosed me with impingement syndrome. Basically, doing a certain action repetitively had aggravated my shoulder, and I needed to calm it down or it would only get worse.

For several months, I went to appointments and did exercises, and the pain eventually went away. (Yay!) Then, back at the beginning of my kitchen renovation, I lifted a large piece of plywood, and something popped in the same shoulder. It hurt quite a lot. I hoped it would go away, but it didn’t, so I went back to physical therapy. I’ve been doing it since then. A bit less than a year, though I haven’t been able to do it consistently (which is why it’s taken so long to recover.) It took some time to figure out exactly what motions were aggravating the shoulder, and then when I went to strengthen those motions, that aggravated the other shoulder. It’s been quite an ordeal.

The good news is that I feel better now. I went and played volleyball the other night, and it hurt to use the shoulder, and I worried that I’d regress a ton due to that, but I was already feeling mostly better the next day. That’s significant progress.

The bad news is that to feel better, I have a laundry list of things I’m doing each day. Three different types of stretches, three different strength exercises. The goal is to build the shoulder up so that this doesn’t happen again, and I’m hopeful it works. But where ten years ago, I could just do whatever I wanted and then feel better in a day or two, I’m seeing now that my body doesn’t quite bounce back that way. If I want to feel okay, I need to be reasonable.

Getting old is a bummer, right? But at least it doesn’t have to be a painful bummer, if you watch what you do.

And a big shout out to the folks at Allied Physical Therapy, who have now shepherded me through both shoulder incidents, TMD, rehabbing my broken elbow, and helped with Daniela and MC on various injuries. If you’re looking for a place to go to get fantastic care and attention, from people who really know their stuff, you can’t do better than them.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Television Review: The English

Westerns just don’t get made as much as they used to. There was a time when the genre was everywhere you looked, but good westerns only come out now and then. The English, streaming now on Amazon Prime, does a great job taking tropes from westerns and blending them with a more modern approach, and the result was really fantastic.

Starring Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer, the six-episode series traces the efforts of a woman to find revenge on the man who killed her child, and the journey of a Pawnee veteran trying to make a place for himself in the new normal of America in 1890. The acting is superb, the characters complex, and the cinematography is gorgeous. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, especially the credits number for the final episode. (A cover of Paul Simon’s American Tune by Crooked Still, linked at the bottom of this post.)

The series feels very real, depicting life on the frontier with no filters. Is it accurate? Hard to say. I know the creators worked with Pawnee advisors throughout the filming, so I’d say it’s definitely more true to life than the classic Hollywood western. I’d like to think the west wasn’t so bloody and dangerous, but having written books set in the late 1800s and done a fair bit of research into the time period, I tend to think it was more violent than not.

As I said at the start, The English injects some modern storytelling approaches, slowly unspooling its plot by showing things in the present and the past. It’s easy to make assumptions about character early on, only to discover later how wrong you were. Again, this felt true to life. All we see is a snapshot of each other’s lives. Look at any one snapshot, and the same person could seem a hero or a villain, depending on your interactions with them. I enjoyed the mechanic in the series, especially how it kept me guessing and wanting to know more.

It should be said the series isn’t for everyone. It’s violent and bloody, though not pervasively. There are some gory scenes, and it touches on some unsettling subjects. That said, if you’re up for it, it really is a fantastic show, and better still for being entirely self-contained. You don’t get to the end of the sixth episode and reach a huge cliffhanger. It’s one story.

10/10 I loved it.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 1 in Žilina

Hey everyone! It’s been a bit – things worked out funny with flights and changing which day I can talk, but I made it!! Right now I’m in Žilina, which is like an hour or so away from Trenčín, where mom is from. I have two companions, elders Frost and Noftle, both of which have played cello and violin for 11 and 15 years respectively. Our apartment is pretty cramped since we have 3 violins and 2 guitars just sort of hanging out. Expect some good musical posts on Facebook – we’re going to take advantage of it while we can before Frost goes home in January. 

The other night we were practicing at the church building, right on the main square, and we heard some love music out there so we went and watched that. It was a little surreal especially because I was just standing there, holding a miniature Christmas tree, listening to “Despacito” on two violins and a cello in Slovakia. Definitely a cool moment. Also there were two super drunk guys that were doing their best to dance which was pretty entertaining. 

Besides that, we’ve been at a bunch of conferences recently which means I’ve met everyone currently serving here, including a lot of Ukrainians which is cool. Thanksgiving dinner was Vietnamese with everyone who had to stay for social media training since we’re trying to be the best mission in Europe social media wise. In areas as big as here, it can be difficult to find people who live far away so we run ads and then contact anyone who was interested. It’s been great to meet everyone though – finally I am around more than 1 missionary who actually speaks slovak. 

Church here this past Sunday was very different. I was expecting it, but still different. It was the three of us, the two senior missionaries here (which is the term for married couples who choose to serve as well) and then one American man and his little daughter. We did all the talks and stuff in Slovak, but then afterwards switched to English for the rest of church which was strange. I will say usually we have more like 5 other people but they were sick this week. It was nice though, we played a hymn arrangement and got to sing in Slovak and everything. 

Today was my first pday here! It’s been good – we went on a hike up to Súľov castle (just ruins) and practiced a bunch of chamber music for fun (it turns out I can’t read nearly as well as I thought-sheet music is a new skill for me but we are working on it). 

I guess I’ll also talk about the flight here – we flew straight to Amsterdam from Salt Lake, but then had a 6 hour layover there. But we got to travel with one of the sisters that got her Czech visa, which was nice. Unfortunately we had to leave one of our companions at the MTC as he did not get his visa yet, but hopefully he will get here soon as well. 

After we made it to Prauge, we actually ended up staying there for two days because of all those conferences, so we hung out with the missionaries there for a while and saw the sights and talked to some Czech people on trams (native Czech is very difficult for me as of right now, but it is likely that I will serve there later). Then we also spent two days in Brno, where some of us went and hunted for traditional ribbons at fabric stores so we could make cool ties. Brno was really pretty and had some cool streets and stuff. That was cool and also way bigger than Žilina, but it’s nice to be here. Also I managed to accidentally make black tea by not checking the box before – I don’t know why we have six in the apartment but it tastes like dirt anyways so I’m not missing out on anything. 

That’s about it for these last two weeks – just getting into it as an actual missionary. I’m excited to see more of Žilina and settle in and everything. Hopefully all is well back home and you’re all doing okay. 

Love you all and miss you,

Starší Cundick

Photos:

First miata I’ve seen here from Prauge

The view from Súľov

Elder Noftle and a weird statue in Brno

The trio at Súľov

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Thanksgiving Recap

I’m back from Thanksgiving break, and I’m happy to report all went swimmingly (almost). Did I successfully complete every last thing on my To Do list before the break began? Not quite, but I got the big things out of the way. The kitchen was completely decluttered and ready for use. The sunroom was decluttered, though it still has some piles that need to be given away. The wood pile was completely stacked in the shed (thanks to some superhuman help from friends). And our living room was also successfully clean for the first time in . . . 14 months? A long time, regardless.

So the overarching overwhelmed feeling was done away with, and I was able to focus on other things. Like eating. We also played some volleyball, hung out with friends, had a movie night, baked, got a tree, and I got all my Christmas shopping done (for the most part). Daniela and I lugged up all the Christmas decorations we have from the basement to the living room, and so our living room is once again a disaster. But at least it’s a recent disaster, and one we’re going to work on right away.

Was the break as restful as I would have liked? Well, probably not, since I hadn’t really thought about Christmas at all before the break, and I spent a lot of time figuring out what to buy for everyone and (most importantly) what homemade gift I was going to make. That’s a tradition I’ve really enjoyed, and I’m glad we started it. Over the years, I’ve made a wallet, a wire tree, two maps, a hand-bound book, a collection of home movies, a kitchen, and more. This year’s is shaping up to be a doozy, if I can actually pull it off.

I do think that generally speaking, I’m a person who ends up being busy by default. If I have free time, I fill it with something, and while that’s normally just the way I like it, I’m learning that I need to do a better job at ensuring I don’t get too much on my plate. Saying no is a learned skill, and one I’m still getting better at.

Either which way, it was nice to have the days off and to get things ready for the big December. Last year we were in the middle of the kitchen renovation still, so I’m very happy to have one be more normal this time around.

I hope your break was good as well. Happy belated Thanksgiving!

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Sunday Talk: Spiritual Momentum

I gave a talk in church for the first time in over two years yesterday. (Quite a far cry from when I was giving them every month.) Topic? Spiritual momentum. Here’s the full text:

There are two main approaches to getting into a pool or a lake. The first, of course, is to throw caution to the wind and jump in without thinking twice. It’s a sudden shock to the system, but after a few seconds the shock wears off, and you’re swimming in comfort without any concerns soon after. The second is to edge into the water inch by inch, knowing full well that it’s cold, and thus more than a little reluctant to face the temperature change too quickly. With this approach, it usually takes a time of constant discomfort as each new inch reminds another part of your body that the water really isn’t as warm as you’d like.

Both approaches ultimately lead to the same spot. The water temperature isn’t magically colder with the fast approach, and all that the second approach ultimately gives you is a longer phase of discomfort. It might even persuade you at some point that you didn’t want to swim after all, and so you head back to dry land and assure yourself you didn’t really want to get wet in the first place.

I have done both over the years, and despite the fact that experience has taught me the first approach is almost always the better one, each new time I’m faced with getting into a pool, I’m right back at the mindset of “it’s going to be too cold, so wouldn’t it be better to ease my way in, instead?” It’s one circumstance where experience hasn’t done too much to persuade me to let go of my natural inclination to avoid being cold and wet at all costs, despite the fact that I enjoy swimming once I’m in the pool.

When Tomas headed off to the MTC, I wasn’t sure how things were going to go. It’s one thing to think about going on a mission, and quite another to actually be doing it full time. Would he decide it just wasn’t for him? Would he constantly question the decision to go in the first place? As a father, I always overthink things, and I didn’t hear from him for a full week before I knew if things were going well or going poorly. It turned out they were going far better than I had even hoped. Each week we talk to him, he’s happy and in good spirits. He’s enjoying his time at the MTC, even though he’s anxious to get out into the field. This despite the fact that I know he shared my worries about what the MTC would be like ahead of time.

As I’ve talked with him and seen how he’s handled things, I think one key reason for his attitude was his willingness to jump into a mission and not look back. To fully commit himself. I see the same principle at work elsewhere. When I’m really set on a goal and put my whole effort behind it, I’m much more likely to reach that goal, especially if I sustain that effort for a long period of time. Back when I was looking for a job, I decided I would treat the search like a job itself. So I spent 40 hours each week looking through listings and tailoring my applications to each opening. It took more than 50 applications to finally get a position, and I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t worked so hard at it. Diving right in gave me the initial momentum I needed to carry me through to the end of the goal.

But effort isn’t easy, and sustained effort is harder still. What can we do to start that momentum and, more importantly, keep it going? President Nelson went over five overarching principles in his talk last month: get on the covenant path, repent daily, learn about God, seek and expect miracles, and end conflict in your personal life. Each one of these is, of course, an excellent suggestion, but it’s one thing to hear someone give guidance, and another to actually know how to apply that guidance in my day to day life. I feel like sometimes I hear excellent advice in general conference, but when it comes time for me to follow it, I get lost.

For example, seeking miracles is an area where I am definitely weak. I struggle to set aside my inner skeptic and really believe God plays an active role in the day to day events of my life. My natural inclination is to think that most things happen the way they happen because of the actions of people around me, and that the real miracles take place when God acts through people. But that’s not what President Nelson says in his talk. 

“Moroni assured us that “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.” Every book of scripture demonstrates how willing the Lord is to intervene in the lives of those who believe in Him. He parted the Red Sea for Moses, helped Nephi retrieve the brass plates, and restored His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Each of these miracles took time and may not have been exactly what those individuals originally requested from the Lord. In the same way, the Lord will bless you with miracles if you believe in Him, “doubting nothing.” Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.”

I’m not saying I don’t believe in miracles. I’m just saying I struggle to believe I will see miracles in my personal life. They’re something other people experience, not me. I know those two thoughts conflict with each other, and I’m trying to do better at increasing my faith, but it’s something that’s taking time. For example, I’ve been struggling for the last while to stay on top of everything I’ve got going on at home. I feel like I’m being pulled in too many directions at once, and that I’m never going to get on top of my to do list. Tuesday evening was particularly discouraging. Of course, I saw that there was snow in the forecast, and a small part of me thought how great it would be if I got a snow day to focus on catching up on all those odds and ends, but I didn’t think about praying for one to happen. It would snow or it wouldn’t. A snow day for me might be a horrible day for someone else. Who was I to ask for something that might cause problems for other people?

And then I woke up Wednesday morning to find out the university had indeed been canceled. I spent the day cleaning my garage, working on writing, and catching my breath in a much needed break, despite the fact that not much snow actually materialized. It would be easy to call that a miracle, and it certainly felt miraculous, but I still have a hard time viewing it that way. Why would God send a snowstorm to western Maine just for me?

On my mission, I taught many refugees from Sierra Leone and Ghana. I was impressed with how easily they seemed to be able to see the hand of God in their lives. They would talk about people being blessed as if it was so matter of fact, and there was no need to add disclaimers or explanations. I remember thinking at the time like God is able to work miracles among a people only proportionally to the amount of faith that people is willing to have in Him. I wondered then, and I still do, if my tendency to put so much trust in science and logic has an adverse effect on my ability to see miracles in my life.

As I’ve thought about it, it seems some of my difficulty stems from the fact that I want to keep thinking of miracles as only global events, when in actuality so many of them have always been intensely personal. Lazarus rising from the dead didn’t really make a difference to anyone but his friends and family, and I’m sure there could be any number of scientific explanations offered for it. Alma the Younger’s encounter with the angel changed his life, and Christ feeding the 5,000 didn’t suddenly cause the rest of the world to develop a new agricultural system. Ultimately, I need to increase my faith and confidence in God’s ability to intercede in my life in a way that doesn’t negatively affect everyone around me. It seems silly to doubt that once I phrase it that way, but I still need to work on it nonetheless. 

So I will work on seeking and expecting miracles, and I believe doing that will help increase my spiritual momentum. What else can I do?

If you’re looking to increase momentum, you’ve got two options. First, you can push harder, and keep that pressure constant. Yes, it takes effort to get something moving at first, but once it’s going, that effort gets dramatically less. On the other hand, you can also work on reducing the friction beneath the object, making it easier to move it in the first place. Too often, I think I revert to the brute force method to get momentum going. If I don’t have it yet, I just need to try harder.

I’ve had the most success, however, when I take the time to try and get my life in a spot where that momentum is easier to build. If I want to get something new done, I  look for habits to cut down on, or schedules to change. I believe when someone says they don’t have time for something, what they’re really saying is they don’t believe that something has a high enough priority for them to make time for it. Sometimes that’s true. If you’ve got to work two jobs to make ends meet, and you’ve got family and church obligations, there’s a good chance you have to pick and choose where you’re going to put your effort. But often, it’s easier to just say “I’m too busy,” and go back to what you’d rather be doing.

Then again, friction isn’t always a bad thing. I used to take a walk every day when I was at work. That went very well until winter came, and I was walking around after a storm. I hit a patch of black ice and fell flat on my back, breaking my elbow. I could have used some friction that day, and without something to push against, it’s impossible to get any momentum at all. In many ways, then, getting momentum is all about focusing on friction. Adding the right kind and reducing the wrong. Bad friction would be things like poor sleeping habits, a bad diet, addictions, rocky finances, or poor time management. Good friction would be positive habits, supportive friends, a healthy environment, and living the Gospel in your everyday life. That kind of friction grounds you and gives you the support you need to be able to move forward.

But none of that is the sort of thing that you do once and then never have to worry about again. If I’m being honest, I don’t believe any one experience, generally speaking, can make or break your entire life. If you miss a day of church, chances are you’re not going to find yourself in a gutter, confused and alone the next day. Likewise, if you generally don’t go to church, attending one week won’t likely result in you suddenly getting a halo that follows you around every day. But while those individual events don’t make a huge difference one way or the other on their own, they mean everything when they team up. 

I write a journal every day. Why? Because I know from experience that if I skip a day, then I start skipping two, and then it’s down to once a week, and then I just stop writing a journal. At the same time, however, many of my journal entries aren’t exactly page turners. Much of life boils down to me doing the same general thing day after day, and there’s only so many ways you can make that interesting on the printed page before you just start writing things like, “Went to work today. Not much different.” And if that’s all my journal ever was, then I don’t think I’d have the willpower to keep writing it.

However, there are some days when I write much, much more. Days when I’ve done a lot or am facing something particularly troubling that I’d like to work out in my mind. Days when writing a journal actually helps me a great deal, or at the least helps me remember things I don’t want to forget. I suppose I could tell myself that I would always write a journal entry for those days, and then not worry about the days when nothing happens, but I know that for me, the only way I’m going to write on the important days is if I’ve been writing on every day before that day as well.

Looking back at all those journal pages, it seems to me that  the difference between feeling like I’ve got momentum and feeling like I’m stuck in a rut typically comes down to a few key experiences. More than that, it comes down to which experiences I choose to focus on. In a football game, a team could play well the entire time, yet mess up on a single play at the end of the half and feel like they’re not doing well at all when they go into the locker room. In my life, if I focus on the positive things that are happening, I’m much more likely to feel like things are trending in the right direction.

And there are always positive and negative things happening to me. Personal interactions, events at work, highs and lows of family life. There have been times that I have felt particularly down, and it’s not difficult to look around at what’s happening and find all sorts of thing to feel down about. That said, it’s a struggle for me during those down times to try and change my view through sheer willpower alone. I think a lot of that has to do with momentum as well. As I look at more negative things, I dig myself deeper and deeper. I don’t get out of that hole with a simple goal to be more positive. It takes effort to start focusing on the good, day after day. That helps reduce the friction in my life, giving me the ability to start gaining momentum.

But sometimes momentum can be a very bad thing. When I got to the Frankfurt airport as a missionary, I was trying to make my way to the train station with all my many bags in tow. Instead of taking the elevator, I decided I could manage the escalator just fine. A big, tall escalator down to the bottom floor. I got on, juggling bags, but confident it would all work out. And it did, until gravity started working on my largest bag, and it slipped right out of my hand, thundering end over end, all the way to the bottom. It’s a miracle no one was on the escalator below me, because they could have been seriously injured or killed. That bag was as big as a nine year old, and with the amount of momentum it had behind it, it would have been a force to be reckoned with.

The longer I thought about the topic of spiritual momentum, the more complicated it seemed to become. There’s good momentum and bad momentum, good friction and bad friction. How in the world am I supposed to remember which is which and what to focus on?

Like most things in life, the answer to that question can be found in MarioKart. Denisa reminded me that it might be possible some people in the audience aren’t familiar with MarioKart, and even though I was skeptical, I agreed it would probably be a good idea to give a brief overview of it. It’s a racing game at heart. First person to make it three laps around the track wins. But instead of straight up driving skill, the game throws in the ability for other people to try to mess you up. Throw banana peels in front of you to make you skid out. Shoot you with heat seeking turtle shells. Steal items with boomerangs. The usual. I’ve been playing it since it first came out on the Super Nintendo, and while there was a time when I was at peak Mario Kart ability, that time has long since passed, as I’ve been overtaken by Tomas.

In any case, to successfully navigate the chaos of the course, it’s important to use your gas pedal and your brakes to steer your way to the finish line. Sometimes you need to speed up. Sometimes you need to slow down. When you do each can make all the difference. And yes, I suppose I could have just said “being successful in life is like driving a car,” but that would have been much more boring.

The thing is, when you’re starting out on Mario Kart, it can all feel very bewildering. Managing steering and braking and avoiding obstacles can seem next to impossible. But once you’ve been doing it for a while, it all becomes second nature. You have a goal in mind, and you use the tools at hand to reach it. The same applies to spiritual momentum. As we practice knowing when to dig in and when to ease up, what to add more of and what to add less, we become better and better at reaching salvation. God has provided a guide for all of this, of course. If we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we can know in every situation what the best course of action for us will be. It might be different for different people in the same spot, but that’s okay. 

Ultimately, my experience has been that as I try to do better, God meets me more than half way. Trying to improve in any one area leads to gains in unexpected places and gives me enough momentum to get to the next area I need to work on.