If I remember correctly, when last I wrote, I was working weekdays 9-5, attending the temple weekly, institute weekly, and I was single. I was also feeling pretty stagnant. I didn’t feel like I was progressing in any meaningful aspect of my life. No measurable learning, feeling of spiritual progression, or even hints of dating opportunities. It was pretty disheartening all around.
The past few months, so much has changed, yet nothing has changed haha. I still work weekdays 9-5, I still go to the temple weekly (a few times attending a session didn’t work out, so I studied in the parking lot for an hour, but I still went to the temple haha), I still attend institute, and I’m still single (although I had a girlfriend, story to follow). But I’ve had great outlook changing experiences with each of these categories.
My job is amazing. I was so blessed to stumble into this job. The people here are all just great, everyone cares about everyone, even the high ups care about the bottom people. In fact, I didn’t even realize some of the friendly guys I ran into and joked around in the halls with were big wigs until after the fact. Anyway, one evidence of how much the company cares about it’s employees is they pay for private career tutoring. They have us take a test which determines our strengths, and then do their best to provide opportunities for us to participate in tasks (or move to positions) which play to our strengths (which provides great job satisfaction by the way) and it’s just awesome. In a one on one career tutoring discussion I expressed my feeling of stagnancy and lack of growth, and she recommended I keep a “work journal” where just once a week or so I write down a few bullet points of things I learned in the past week. That way I can look at it and see some quantifiable growth. It has made a huge difference, I feel much better in this category now.
It didn’t stop there though, a few weeks after I started the journal, we had a meeting to announce a radical and exciting shift in the way we are going to develop stuff here. I can explain the concept to you if you’d like, but it sufficeth me to say it’s a method I’ve always wanted to try since I heard of it, but it was never feasible before. It’s a method that takes a huge overhaul in the company and so most development industries haven’t made the shift. But it will make it so rather than taking 6 months to get a new version of our software to our customers (like it takes now) we could do it daily if we want. For your gee-wiz collection, it’s modeled after the Facebook development model (which everyone thought was crazy at first, btw), not that Facebook ever amounted to anything… so yeah. Intellectual progression need totally being satisfied right now, and I’ll be getting leading edge experience with a company who is willing to invest in me until I learn it.
Spiritually I feel like I’m being a worthy valiant member, yet I still didn’t (don’t) feel very in tune with the spirit, and it kind of frustrated me *sheepish look*. It’s like I feel entitled to it. A big thing that hit me during conference though was towards the end, Elder Cornish said, “Don't be discouraged when you don't learn to be attuned to the spirit all at once. Like any foreign language it takes time and practice.” I was like, “oh, duh! It’s not like I can start being valiant and expect to be a spiritual powerhouse the following week!” and so I’ve been more patient. I’m still trying my best though. And even if I can’t tell if something is a prompting or not, I try to follow it anyway.
Dating… So for some reason I decided to try a online LDS dating site (I feel dumb admitting that for some reason, but oh well) and I met a few people and had a lot of fun conversations. I decided though that it was making me less happy with my singleness for some reason. It’s like when I felt lonely I’d go to the site hoping to be instantly gratified, but of course it didn’t work. Conference Sunday I decided to cancel my subscription. But I got on the website anyway and started chatting with someone new haha. She turned out to be super awesome and the conversation was really great. I’d been telling my brother Mason we’d play something that night though, so I reluctantly was trying to taper off the conversation. However, she had mentioned she loves playing games with her fam. So I said “well, if I was feeling extra creepy, I’d invite you to come play games with my fam. If you were my close friend though and you told me you were going to meet a guy you’d just found on the internet an hour before, I’d Probably discourage you.” To which she replied, “I grew up with four brothers, I think I can handle myself”. So she ended up coming over, and we had a fun time J. It was impressively brave of her too.
We talked a TON over the next four days, went out Thursday night, talked till midnight, and then Friday morning we decided to officially hook up. Yes, five days after meeting. Seems weird, but I know tons of people who hooked up that fast and are still married. I complain when dating isn’t going well, why should I hold back just because it was going TOO well? She didn’t have any red flags, I didn’t have any momentum with other girls I’d be losing, I couldn’t see any reason why not (besides my instinct to take it slow anyway…) it was actually great. We set down kissing boundaries right up front that made chastity danger a breeze, we got along great in general. I didn’t really have any emotional attachment to her though. No “spark” or “magic” or whatever you want to call it. I had this amazing lesson on revelation two weeksish after we got together, and I prayed about Tiffany the whole way home asking what I should do. I didn’t really get a “yes break up with her”, but for some reason the idea of listing myself as in a relationship with her on FB gave me anxiety haha. So as best I could guess that was the “stupor of thought” category. I’ve found that if I keep debating doing something I don’t want to do, it’s probably from the spirit. I didn’t want to break up but it kept coming up. And in my effort to follow the spirit in big things as well as small things I to the Lord “ok, I’m breaking up with her, hopefully this is the spirit, please stop me if I’m wrong!”
So we broke up, it was probably one of the smoothest break ups ever. Basically I told her how great she is but how I just don’t feel it and as best I can tell it’s a prompting, and I let her see how frustrated I was about the whole thing haha. And I was frustrated. I still hadn’t found any red flags, she was genuinely physically and intellectually attractive to me, I just didn’t have the emotional “magic”. It really bothered me that I found an eligible gear who would date me back that I still didn’t to keep just because of some magical feeling I can’t control. But luckily, since that was the truth, I could just convey that to her, and she didn’t feel like she wasn’t good enough or anything like that. Thus the smooth break up. I felt so much peace after going through with the break up, so I’m sure it was right, I’m just not excited to keep doing the singles thing haha.
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