Cankerous Habit

Oh social media. It keeps me sane at work, helps me and Mitch unwind after work, entertains us while waiting for food at restaurants, keeps us in touch w/ people we love...AND MAKES ME COVET LIKE CRAZY.

"Why can't we be living in beautiful, charming costal city with an adorable baby girl, nice house and me making making easy money on the side managing social media for a dance studio??"

Seriously though, I just finished stalking an acquaintance who has that exact life. She had her baby naturally, is skinny, gorgeous and has the cutest house. Chevron rugs, granite countertops, kitchenaid, crown molding etc. I just wasted 45 mins at work going through her blog and getting more covetous with each scroll.

NOT GOOD. First of all, Mitch loves it here and is thriving in school. We have plenty to be grateful for and I need to support him. Period. 

I also need to stop coveting. That girl didn't get where she is by pouting over other girls "lucky lives" (well actually I don't really know since I really don't know her well, but I'm assuming she's the go-getter, no complaining type). 

Now since I can't come up with much advice on how to avoid this, I turned to an Ensign article written by one of my former professors at BYU. He says of coveting, 

"Often the cankering of the soul and the destruction of our spiritual powers that stem from materialism, greed, jealousy, and envy are so slow that we may not even recognize them in ourselves until other, more serious problems appear."  http://www.lds.org/liahona/1998/12/thou-shalt-not-covet?lang=eng

Whew, that's a hard statement, but from what we know of the devil, he works likes this. Whispering "reading blogs for hours is harmless....the discontent you feel is normal....it's okay to be constantly dreaming of future riches". 

The most clever personification of the devil by far is the oft-quoted Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I found these gems on the topic of coveting:

“Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.” 

Now, that being said, I do believe there is a right way to read blogs, status posts, and view instagrams of people that are capturing a happy life moment. We must think of it as just that. "How nice that they can afford a beautiful new home" or "They must be so excited to have a brand new baby". I think it's fine to enjoy learning about other's successes and highlights, but the moment we start to compare it to our own life is when the toxin starts to drip into our souls. Okay, that was dramatic but I really think there is a healthy balance and a really unhealthy imbalance. 

Here's to partaking of social media, getting excited about the present, being grateful for what I have while still gleaning positive ideas and motivation from others. 

Updates...

I usually try to avoid just writing a post about my life details, but a lot has happened recently and I've come across nothing clever or epiphanous.

How bad did I want to move back east? February 29, 2012 12:30 pm: We'd been married all of 13 days and Mitch had yet to even taken his final LSAT to make him eligible, I created a folder in Evernote titled "Future Plans". I was, in every sense of the word, ecstatic and thrilled and invigorated and every other word for excited about moving away. Sure Idaho was a nice place to grow up and Utah treated me fine, but North Carolina? Or Virginia? Vermont? Or even Tennessee? Every picture in every book or website that I'd ever seen of those places rotated through my mind. I could see those in person! I could live and work and have cats and babies in those places! All my Facebook and Instagram photos from now on would be full of green, lush backgrounds and cool cityscapes/architecture never found in Utah or Idaho. I would meet people that didn't know the definition of "molly mormon", who didn't roll their eyes about me living 4 years in the "BYU bubble", who knew what it was like to lives hours away from a temple. I had over 200 pages saved in Evernote for apartments, jobs and even things to do for each place that Mitch sent his applications to. I planned weekend trips to Virginia to meet up with Mitch's sister and brother-in-law who was also going to law school. Sure I knew Mitch kinda wanted to go to the U but that fact got swallowed by my daydreams of forested backyards and long weekend drives to the east coast or NYC.

We flew out just 6 weeks ago and visited the gorgeous campus of University of Maryland law school. I interviewed for jobs in downtown DC and the suburbs of Maryland. We toured several apartments with wooded greenbelts and tree-lined parking areas. Mitch practically told the U of M counselors that he'd made the decision. Upon returning, I of course shared it with everyone! The prideful monster inside me delighted at being able to brag that I wouldn't be stuck here in Utah. No, I was getting out. Ha!.... sometimes now I wonder if that's why we couldn't go back east. I needed to be humbled. Well that pie was large and it got thrown full force into my unsuspecting face.

July 25th, just 6 days after we returned from our DC/Baltimore visit, University of Utah calls Mitch and not only reverses their decision from rejected to accepted but offers him a sizable scholarship. This was his dream all along. I was just too blind and dreamy to realize it. My world played spin-the-bottle and landed on the least desirable candidate...for me.

Today, we're living closer to campus than we would have ever been with schools back east. We're paying tuition at a fraction of what it would have cost anywhere else. Mitch will mostly likely get a high-paying, secure job the second he graduates. We are within a short drive from our family and live within blocks of temple square, yet I am still struggling to be grateful. What conversation is on repeat in my mind?
New acquaintance: "So tell me about yourself"
Me: "Grew up in Idaho, will die in Utah. The End"


Abhorrently negative, selfish, narrow-minded and pessimistic? Yes. Is it getting better?
....Mostly...TBA...God-willing....yes.


p.s.
I have to clarify. Do I blame my wonderful husband? Heavens no, although he unfortunately kept thinking I did through the process. It was not a decision he made lightly nor selfishly and he of course was excited to move as well. It just wasn't in the plan for us...most unfortunately.

            Why we don't do it…                           On the contrary…

You “know” the other person needs to hear the negative things to improve	\      Negativity improves nothing. And no one can truly “know” exactly what another person needs. It’s not up to you to judge.
\      There is such a thing as too many positives and it makes me feel submissive/powerless	\      Boosting someone else will NEVER make you worse off. As long as you’re sincere, you can never be too positive about someone.
\      I already compliment him/her enough	\      Chances are you don’t. And who defines “enough”? A person should get significantly more praise from their loved ones than anyone else in their life.
\      It’s good for me to get out all the negative things I’m feeling toward him/her	\      Not to their face. Yes, get the negatives things out, go for a jog, write down your feelings or put in some head phones but let it dissipate privately. Then whatever feelings persist, present them using “I” statements (see below).
\      He/she doesn’t have enough positive things for me to comment on	\      You probably don’t either. Take time to seek them out and you'll find more than you realized.
\      He/she doesn’t follow the rule	\      Be proactive NOT reactive. If you’re always waiting on the other person to make the first positive move then you’ll be waiting a long time. And it’s contagious so if you start then chances are they’ll catch on.

“I” Statements

From the marriage handbook created by StrongerMarriage.org:

“I” statements can be combined with a specific focus on the behavior. Labeling a person can

quickly make that person defensive and upset. See how these are different:

\      “You’re such a slob,” vs. “I’d like it if you’d remember to put the wet towels in the hamper.”

\      “You’re thoughtless,” vs. “I feel really sad that you forgot our anniversary.”

\      “You never help with the children,” vs. “I’d feel much less stressed if you helped with the children’s bedtime routine.”

Marriage Infographic

I was thinking about how Mitch and I need to take more pictures of our married life activities and was thinking what we could do with them. I originally thought of just doing a collage of our photos in the shape of an L but I was looking for something more interesting...with more detail. Then I thought of doing an infographic like the one shown here with collected facts and little icons etc. Here is the list I have so far of things to keep track of for the first year.

Number of states visited

frozen yogurt trips

Sunday dinners cooked

Number of times "I Love you" said (based on daily average of 2 times/day)

Number of bike rides

Journal entries

Road trips

Number of spiders found in basement

Wendy's trips

Bruges wafflles (or other dessert places) trips

Number of video games played together

Double/group dates

Number of songs listened to in the car

Different types of sports played/attended together

Number of dollars spent at ______

Number of texts sent (calculate w/a weekday and weekend average)

This Is It

That moment when you see all the tragic news footage of fires and natural disasters flash across your mind and think “I might be a casualty or a barely breathing  under a ton of rubble”. This particular brand of fear comes each time the fire alarm blares. For most, this comes as a yearly or quarterly drill meant to prepare for the worst, with no real threat. Still, though only the most transparent of us will admit, we have that split second of “what if this isn’t a drill” or “this is it”.

I had such thoughts traipse through my head this morning  and, unfortunately, while finishing my business in the office ladies room. Alone. In the dark. Certainly the fastest I’ve ever used toilet paper in my life. Amidst fleeing the stall (that would surely crush me no matter the disaster) the automatic lights flashed back on for a second and I took a glimpse in the mirror. And suppressed a smirk. My face was a frozen ‘composed’ panic (you know the kind where you want to look cool and not scared but the fear beneath the surface is poking through) and I was pulling my skirt frantically over my underwear…and prancing toward the door. Once the smoke I swore I saw “dissolved” and I joined the throng leading to the stairwell, I relaxed. Instantly, my fallback method of becoming chatty to unkink my nervous energy started up. As my legs still shaky from the startle brought me down the stairs, I prayed no one would notice…even though shaky legs were widely shared because when that alarm went off everyone thought, even for a split second, “this is it”. 

                                            Better Things Ahead.

Mitch and I work in our respective offices from 8 to 5 daily doing mostly stationary, computer-based assignments. We know we're not in our dream careers and we know we must endure this until our next phase in life. We try to avoid the phrase "I don't want to go to work tomorrow" but it comes often. We are happy to have completed our undergraduate degree and grateful for the family that has helped us get to this point. 
But it's only NOON ON A FRIDAY and we're ready to be done for the week. Date night with friends at Pizzeria Limone, moving my grandpa to an assisted living location and a quick trip to Price will hopefully make the weekend fulfilling, in order to transition us back to our 40 HOUR DESK JOBS.

Budgeting Gumption

  

Groupon is a clever beast. They send me emails and I can ignore exactly 3 out of 4 of them...but that 1 I can't ignore usually gets me to buy something. Typically it's a 50% restaurant deal or auto coupon which, considering how much we go out to eat and need our cars working, it's helpful. However, I sometimes want to splurge on hair care or consumer goods and that is NOT okay. I should probably even cut down the restaurant coupons because that only encourages us to eat out more. Looking at the future budget amounts for law school I can't even begin to justify the spending we do now in comparison...but we're slowly getting better. I found a new slogan help in this frugal journey ahead. I ask myself...

"Can I acquire this thing or service in a different way with similar results and not spend this much?" 

If after true introspection the answer is still No...then it's justifiable BUT if, for an instant I think of an alternative then I need to re-evaluate and probably answer YES.

So does Groupon offer great deals on things I need? Yes
Are some of those deals things that I've already found an economic way to fulfill? Yes
Here's a happy caveat though...
If Groupon offers something I needed before I found the deal AND the discount is better than I would get with my usual method then...I CAN get it! Yay!