Don't be a phony.

I have a situation for you...
You are sitting there at opening exercises for mutual, minding your own business when suddenly there is the laurel president. She asks you to play the opening song. Panic attacks immediately. You haven't even looked at the piano, let alone played it, in months. Of course you say yes, it would be rude not to. You hastily thumb through the hymn book trying to find a song you can try to play. You stop on hymn 142, Sweet Hour of Prayer. It was the first one you learned, and you had it memorized at one point. It will do. It comes time to sing the opening song. You sit down at the piano, going through the chords in your mind. This is going to be interesting, you say to yourself. The introduction is unrecognizable. You PRAY that the rest of the hymn goes better. It doesn't. The congregation sings a cappella with some minor assistance from the piano. After everyone has been dismissed to their various activities, your friends come up to you. "Good Job!!!" they say. "I wish I was as good as you." You can't believe your ears. Are your friends DEAF or something?!?!? Couldn't they hear how you had totally killed the hymn? You shake your head in disbelief. You had already felt bad enough, but these false compliments added sprinkles to the already frosted cake. (Yes this is based upon a true experience.)

Now what can we learn from this? That we should practice the piano more? NO, though it couldn't hurt. That saying yes isn't always the best thing? NO. We should learn that false compliments are not good. They hurt more than they help. You may think you are being nice, but you are not! When someone messes up, you don't have to tell them, but you also don't have to make up lie to try to make them feel better. Instead, act like nothing bad happened. You feel you must, compliment them on something sincere. That way you feel fulfilled and your friend doesn't feel even worse.

Fast Food my foot. More like a fast way to DIE. (I know it is melodramatic, but I couldn't help myself)

You are driving down State Street in Orem. As you look side to side what do you see? A dry cleaners, Arctic Circle, an auto store, Wendy's, a movie rental place, McDonalds. Do you see a trend here? In a world where half of the world population lives on less than two dollars a day, we Americans have a fast food place on nearly every corner. How can we defend spending money on junk food when billions of people are starving? Wouldn't it be a better idea to just save the money we would have spent on a biggie meal and use it to help people who barely get one meal a day? I think that it was high time our country shaped up, in more than one way. Buy healthy foods at least. Then at least you can justify it.

Homemade Wheat Bread and What Not to Wear.

Honestly, my title has nothing to do with my blog. My blog is really about misconceptions about student secretaries, and just about everything else. Why do people assume certain things? Everything goes back to the good ol' label. People like to fit everyone into little boxes. Well not everyone can fit into boxes okay? Goodness. In my almost daily life I am forced into a box, metaphorically speaking of course. People call the school (I work at Mountain View answering phones after school. I know it is a nerdy job, you don't have to tell me. It has caused more than one awkward situation. These situations usually involve me answering my home phone "Mountain View High School, main office.") and ask me if a student, or someone is there. How do they expect me to know if their child is there? It is not like I'm psychic or anything. Why people think that is anybody's guess. Maybe they assume that because I answer the phone, I automatically know everything. Anyway, labels in our society change the way people feel and act. If we want to change how much society rules our lives, we need to stop going along with it. Instead of assuming things, we should take the time to find out for ourselves. Keep in mind that those who really try to change the world usually end up changing it.

No more talk of Christmas. It is time to get down to the important stuff. Like anger management..

Have you ever been very angry with out knowing why? If you haven’t, let me be the one to tell you that it is one of the most frustrating things ever. This past week, I was extremely angry at nothing in particular as far as I could tell. It was just today that I finally narrowed down the reasons. I’m angry at society and at my stupid new paradigm.

Saying I’m angry at society must sound superficial and dumb, but it is too true. Learning about labels in our society and the effects they have on people has really made me think more than I’d like to. And to add to that, at the beginning of the week I saw a TV show where a certain label almost caused this kid to kill his father, then himself. I got so angry at that and I didn’t even realize it until this morning.

Not only am I angry about labels, but I am angry about being angry about labels! Before September of last year I didn’t think about things very much, and I cared even less. Even then people told me that I over thought things. Now I am always thinking, and always analyzing and I’m not sure I like it, especially because I now over think almost everything! I’m sure in the future that I may be grateful for this switch in paradigm, but for now I just resent it. I’m certainly getting more headaches.