Journal Entry

Thinking about my life and my attempt at being more grateful I had a thought.

If I brought Alexander the Great, Napolean Bonapart, Abraham Lincoln, Solomon from the Bible, Abraham from the Bible, Mohammed, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle, Plato, Copernicus, Guttenberg, Leonardo Da Vinci and any other host to great and renowned figures from the past and brought them forward to now and took them on a tour of any city or town in the United States. It would be hard, maybe impossible, to convince them they had not died and gone to heaven.

Think about the conversations. I could explain to them I had never had to grow my own food, hunt or slaughter my own meat, or even fetch my own water. I could tell them I get up when I want to, go to bed when I want to and to earn Money I go to a place where I sit and read all day. I could tell them I don’t care when the sun rises or when the sun sets each day because those things don’t dictate what I do.

I could tell them I’ve read and studied more religious texts than Noah, Abraham, Moses, Muhammed, Buddha or any other religious figure before 1900.

From the frequency of my writing, it is obvious that I am not doing this as much as I should.

I guess I should mention some of the things that have been going on in my life over the last month.

Family

Family first. Emerson has been getting himself up on a lot of mornings. Which I believe is a good step for him. He is still doing well in school which is always good. He also did some work on his car by himself. There is a sensor light that is coming on in the car he is driving a 1994 Toyota Camry. It’s supposedly an EKG valve warning. He took the time to figure out how to take it out and clean it. Roman and he have done some things on it together in the past. He did most of this on his own. While I would rather give my kids new cars so I don’t have to worry about fixing an old car. It is good that he is getting the confidence that he can fix things.

Roman took a trip to Boston to meet his girlfriend’s parents So they are getting closer to getting married. Roman is getting closer to figuring out how to pay for his flight school. He has found a school in Florida that will let someone use regular student aid to pay for the school. So he will probably be headed out there in June. They may be getting married around the same time.

Paige proposed to her girlfriend Bella and they are planning to get married in October. Paige went to Taiwan from September to November to study Chinese. When she returned she went to California to meet Bella’s family. Bella’s family doesn’t seem to be as accepting of their lifestyle. I always want Bella and Paige to feel comfortable coming to our home.

Spirituality

I don’t feel as confident about my faith as I did when I was younger. I this may be from several things. One possible reason is that I have grown less spiritual, or two I just realized more fully realize how much more I really need to change. Or maybe another variation on that is I have not been able to have manifest in my life the things I thought that I would prove I had more faith. I once thought as I came closer to God I would have more miraculous spiritual experiences. I also believed life would get easier the closer I got to perfection. I am slowly realizing both of these things are not true. In the Book of Mormon, it states many times if people keep the commandments they will prosper in the land. I may have the wrong definition for prospering or I may not be keeping the commandments in such a way to obtain the prospering I would like.

I will acknowledge the fact I live at this time in history by definition means I am prospering at a level not realized by 99.9% of the people who ever lived. I am grateful, but not as fully grateful as I should be.

With my belief in the pre-earth life, it begs the question. What did I do right there to get to live in this day in this country and enjoy the things that I enjoy? I don’t have to worry about getting killed by my neighbor, the tribe in the next village, or from the neighboring kingdom. I don’t worry about dying from any of the myriads of horrible diseases the took the lives of my ancestors. In the United States, a person my age has mostly to worry about accidents. I think if most of our ancestors using a time machine and were transported to our day they would think they had died and gone to heaven.

I have to think about what God told Adam you will eat by the sweat of your brow. I cannot remember the last time I had to sweat to earn a living? I was more than 40 years ago. And I didn’t have to do that to eat I only did it so I could have money to spend on leisure things.

I would say the only proof I have this is not the millennium is the fact that people are dying.

It is miraculous that I basically have to volunteer to find ways to make my life harder.

I need to remember this on a more regular basis. I need to be more thankful.

Work

Being focused on marketing is a switch for me in my life. While I have thought about it in the past, I have earnestly pursued this area. I should feel blessed to be given this opportunity to learn more.

I know the basic premise. Find out what people want and then give them what they want. The hard part I am finding is just getting their attention or getting to the place where they are trying to find what I am offering.

This reminds me, I just read “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is my third time and I need to figure out a way to summarize what they said and so I can easily bring to remembrance the principles taught. I see people all of the time that seems to be natural at certain things. I would like to learn how to be a natural at marketing.

I just heard a statistic that there are one billion blogs on the internet. So I am one in a billion.

I am surprised it’s been 12 days since I last posted. I am currently reading David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. I am surprised this hasn’t been converted into a movie yet. Maybe it just hasn’t been enough time since the book was written in 2015

More to come about the book.

Crazy, I had to go through a couple of steps to save this to my Pinterest account.

It wasn’t that bad, but I have the expectation that it should be one click.