Growing

That, readers, is a tomato.

One afternoon not so long ago, Laurie was bored, and a little sad. We rejected the idea of increased caloric intake and batted around a few alternatives. Then gardening came up. Suddenly, we found ourselves perusing the garden center for pea plants. And bell pepper. And basil. And zucchini. And yellow squash. And thyme. And two kinds of tomatoes (little ones for salad, big ones for sandwiches!)

We returned home, my lap and Laurie's back seat smelling of dirt and green. That was only the beginning. Laurie and I transplanted the little plants into our new, long pots (amid gunshot-like shrieks and "LAURIE! You CAN'T freak out like that when there's a spider!"). I loved getting dirt on my hands and researching how to take care of the little guys. I felt like I'd adopted a baby.

Laurie remembers to water them, thank goodness. I spent about an hour today staking the pea plants (they don't look very healthy with so many dried out leaves, but the little searching tendrils and tiny buds totally attest to their growth). I've also grown tomatoes before -- thank you, Dad -- so I knew that the little flower that was there when we bought the plant meant we'd have a tomato soon. It's the one pictured above.

I was skeptical when Laurie and I bought these plants. If it wasn't for Cindy, who is marvelous at plants, I would have killed many a houseplant. I just don't remember to water the darn things. I thought I was born for cacti, but not so. The wonderful thing about a real garden is once you get the darn thing started, you get attached. "Is that tomato ripe yet?" "I thought I saw a bud on that pepper plant..." "The basil plant is just PRETTY." You remember it more.

I know the whole my-life-as-a-garden thing has been done about a million times. But I really hope that in watching this garden grow with very little help from me, I can learn to step back and let good things happen, rather than assuming they won't happen unless I force them.

I kinda want to name my plants. Too bad I have two tomato plants. They can't both be Bob.

GMH

I love knowing that if I ever felt like trying to be a good person, or life in general, was too much work, an entire mob of people would appear to offer their love.

Friendship gives me hope.

www.givesmehope.com

Things I'm Grateful for Today:

Callie. She came over at about 6 and we had dinner and dessert and just talked and talked and talked until almost 10. After a week without a single familiar face, she saved my life today. It was sooo good to see her, and fun to talk about my trip to Europe and her trip to Canada. And about Doctor Who. And Rexburg. And life. Just what I needed.

My new residence. It's a cute house all by itself, blue with a little yard. But it's also got a nice back yard, and a firepit, and a swing, and a grill. Let's not forget that it's in a cute quiet neighborhood with a little park. Or that Winco, Cafe Rio, and Kohls are practically in walking distance. And downtown Salt Lake is only 20 minutes away. I can't believe I get all this for only $350 a month. Blessings, what??

Facebook. I know, I know. But for the time being, facebook is my primary method of contact with the people I love most. It's nice to have that connection, as tenuous as it is.

Day One

My strongest instinct right now is to run. Just run, straight back to Rexburg.

It's the same feeling I had the first day of my Euro-trip. Our tour directors sent us out to explore Galway. I linked on to a group of about ten people (far too large for travel, by the way) and we wandered the streets of a touristy little Irish city. At first, my bravado propelled me into a flippant leadership role: "I don't know if this is the right way, but what have we got to lose? Let's try it!" The other ten girls complied easily enough. However, as the shops thinned out, so did my bravado. We turned around.

I spent the remainder of the trip as a ready and willing follower, and the remainder of the day as an anxious small-town American.While Galway isn't huge, it was still formidable to my Oxford, North Carolina and Rexburg, Idaho sensibilities. The rub of people and streets in big cities blisters those sensibilities very quickly.

So, Salt Lake is reminding me of that right now. I miss familiar faces. I have said goodbye far too many times in the last week: the 40 other pilgrims, my parents, my sister and her family, Tim, Natalie, Chelsea, and finally my little brother this morning. Joe has been the PERFECT roadtrip companion, so parting ways at the airport almost provoked tears. It didn't help any that he took the GPS with him. I hate finding my way around. I don't know where the nearest gas station is, where to look for apartments, OR how to navigate all the blasted construction. The only thing I know is that the little town that holds my best friends is straight north on I-15.

However, that is not the path I intend to take.

Like the clothing and toiletries and electronics waiting on my bed, I carefully lay out all of the reasons I'm not on my way to Idaho right now. Inconvenience is a big one, seeing as it's a 3 or 4 hour drive. My dignity is another. I know they wouldn't mind, but as hard as today is, I would be humiliated to suddenly hurl myself back into Tim, Natalie, and Chelsea's arms.

These factors helped me to stay in Europe, too. You can imagine how inconvenient it would have been to turn around and fly home again. And how ridiculous I would have looked to unexpectedly arrive at the door of Kensington 205, while the pilgrimage went on without me. And yet, I think the real motivation for staying in Europe is the same one that will keep me here in Utah. Now that I've worked through a few panicked compulsions, I remember that I do, in fact, have a sense of adventure.

This brassy streak, like a thread of gold through cooler-hued stone, is a valuable and sometimes subtle aspect of my personality. It's the fight response beneath the flight. It inspires me to be excited about my 3pm appointment to inspect an apartment. It reminds me that I looked forward to this internship as a prospect of impressing professionals in my chosen field. It's the same thread of "shining dawn", to translate the Latin, that made the hole-in-the-wall hostel in Galway endearing. There, I made an amusing video of the labyrinthine path up to my room. Here, I write an exploratory blog post. And in both places, I try to hear Tim's voice in my head, telling me that I'm brave. It's a good thing I can hear it in my head, or I might run away to Rexburg to hear it in person.

But no. I sit here quietly and try to feel him patting me on the back, and to you, readers, I echo his words:

It's okay, Sara. You're going to do just fine.

Thanks, Tim...maybe you're right.

Things That Made Me Happy Today

1. Learning about a hierarchy of literary value, ranging from the Truth to the Lie, with several degrees in between. Moral/ethical criticism is essential to consider, and by each person individually. (I, for instance, was very disturbed by The Picture of Dorian Gray and horrified by The Color Purple, yet found Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart very moving.)

2. A sweet thank-you note from my former supervisor, in response to the nice note I left for her on my last day of work. I'll really miss working for her; she's great.

3. Finding out that I know a lot more names of people who are going on the Brit Lit tour than I thought I did. Woot!

4. My outfit -- sooo classy. Trouser-cut jeans, kitten heels, t-shirt, blazer, necklace...mmm. Magnifique! Tres chic.

5. Calisthenics. Turns out, our morning exercises for class actually include exercises. I have no idea why I don't play sports...working out is so much fun!

6. Submitting the following t-shirt designs:

The last one is my execution of someone else's idea. It's also possibly my favorite, partially because it best adheres to the requirements given.

7. Making a plan before I got too overwhelmed by everything I need to do.

8. Re-realizing that Tuesday means Sam and Friday means Natalie and Chelsea and Kevin!

9. Quoting The Lion King in my facebook status. I'm an equal-opportunity profundity-seeker.

10. Going to bed BEFORE I'm too exhausted to think. Buenos noches!

Goals

Happy New Year, world!

This isn't going to be a very long post, and while I'd like to add more to it, we all know how often I actually write on my blog, heh.

Anyway.

In September, I bought a small white board, intending to put it on my refrigerator. When they said "magnetized", however, they didn't mean the board would stick to the fridge -- they meant magnets would stick to the board. So I stuck it on my wall in my room, and on a whim, wrote down my goals for the semester.

About 2/3 of the way though, these goals received an update and a reality check, and I'm okay with that. Especially because I am happy to report that I achieved ALL of them! Yes, all of them! I didn't even realize it until this morning when I was reassembling my room after white glove.

HOORAY! :)

Selfishness is never going to be worth the hardship we endure. Unselfishness gives us purpose and makes it all worthwhile. Rather than daring to hope that I'll get what I want, I can dare to hope that I'll give what others need.

MY NEW CAMERA!!!

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10981668

I'm so stoked. But, as I pointed out to Natalie, I just started yet another long distance relationship: it should get here between the 3rd and the 8th of December.

Maybe the Lord is trying to teach me about delayed gratification...? ;)


EDIT: This is my 100th blog post! HUZZAH! If I remember right, I posted a dumb joke to commemorate my 50th blog post. Bwahahaha....

-What do you call a black airplane driver?
-I dunno, what?

-A pilot! What are you, racist?

Bah-dah CHING! Thank you, thank you...

Giving Thanks

Kevin asked me yesterday, in a brief round of texting-truth-or-dare, what my biggest dream is.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm already getting most of them."

He laughed.

I insisted. "No, seriously! I'm going to Europe next summer. I'm graduating. This really great guy thinks it's awesome that he can make me smile without really trying."

Although my first thought was to worry that I'm running out of ambitions, but given the season, I'll take a more optimistic view. When did my life get so awesome that I started running out of things to hope for? And furthermore, how on earth did I miss that??

I've had a wonderful week or two, full of moments when I have realized just how good Heavenly Father is to me. The gospel of Jesus Christ is true. Joseph Smith was a prophet. The scriptures are the word of God. And Heavenly Father loves me.

I have always wanted to travel. Always. I just never thought I'd be cool enough to do it. That's all changing this summer. That's right, friends: my application to go on the British Literary Pilgrimage has been officially ACCEPTED. There's a lot of work ahead of me, like getting my passport, figuring out the academic part of my trip, and getting my student loans finalized. But STILL. I'M GOING.

God is good. The end.

Integrity and Humility in Résumés

In the name of “marketing ourselves” on our résumés, we are often tempted to present our strengths as greater than they are. We oversimplify the situation and ask “to market?” or “not to market?”, seeking an obvious answer that provides justification for inflating our abilities. But this internal sic et non disregards an essential quandary: will our guiding principle be integrity, or merely persuasiveness?

 When we overlook this question, it is not inevitably because we are morally corrupt people. In reality, we tend to ignore it because we are afraid—afraid that others will notice that our weaknesses exist, afraid that those weaknesses will be perceived as so great that our skills will be discounted. In short, we fear that who we really are is not enough to persuade an employer to hire us. The temptation to disguise and deceive proves most appealing when we do not trust others to witness our shortcomings with a merciful eye. We forget that others, like us, are weak, and assume that they exemplify every strength that we wish we had, except for one: the capacity to forgive.

However, C. S. Lewis suggests in The Screwtape Letters that we ought to give ourselves the same approbation we would give to others for comparable greatness. When we do so, we both recognize our own worth and also see how indispensably others have contributed to it. The opportunities that demonstrate we are valuable people are not of our creation; they are given to us by others. Our power only extends to our ability to collect the courage we need in order to receive the opportunities they offer. When we do so without resisting the forgiveness of others, or concealing our weaknesses, we discover that we are “magnified”. Our weaknesses do not fade into the background, but rather our potential employers can at last see us “up close”, swarming with strengths so potent that few (even ourselves) have ever observed anything like it. In light of these unforeseen abilities, there is essentially nothing to forgive.

Yes, a detailed, honest view of who we are is frightening to put forward. Unlike fiction, there is no safe place in writing résumés. There are no pseudonyms offering concealment, no images to symbolize lingering emotional aches. All we have is who we are, but on closer inspection, we finally find that this is enough. When we truly understand that we have the capacity to exceed expectations and not just meet them, we have the freedom to be honest regarding our shortcomings. In order to have the courage to be humble, we must first display our inherent power to achieve.