My mind is very powerful: College

I have realized today that my mind is a very powerful tool that if not handled correctly, could result in unintended consequences and behaviors and expectations. Whenever I am presented with the opportunity to made a decision or judgement on a situation, I tend to ask for other opinions, I try to determine which decisions will impact me the most in positive ways, and then I stick to that choice or opinion until presented with new and better information.

In this blog post, I want to focus on college. Oh college, what a complex yet simple thing that some people have a detailed confident plan about while others struggle all their lives to figure out. Spending as little as a few grand to almost a million just to get experience, a chance to get a dream job and possibly meet your wife/husband. Welcome to the world of college.

On my mission I learned to plan and set goals and had very specific ideas that I was confident about accomplishing. We had guides that would help us know what to teach and what to do. It was very well setup. Yet when I came home and it was time for me to figure out my life, I stumbled and fell. Well, what do I want to do with my life? I knew my interests and I had friends who lived in certain places so I could motivate to go to certain colleges to be with them and enjoy my interests. But how do I get there? There was no book that covered each career and your life situation and gave a plan and set of goals on how to accomplish them.

I had to figure things out, and fast. I asked many friends what they thought and besides the normal "pray about it" advice, I got some suggestions and would indeed pray about it to decide what was right. Except that I really didn't know, and I think the Lord didn't care, He just wanted me to make up my mind and then He'd give me blessings and opportunities and so on.

The point of this post isn't to focus on my choices, but rather the power of influence in making those. I have been told by several people that BYU is a good choice. My parents like it, friends like it. It has two programs that I like, one is animation/filming and the other is sign language. Both interests I want to pursue. With the influence of others, I had become convinced to attend a local community college that would help bypass a few requirements at BYU and make things easier.

Well, now that I've done that, and am waiting for results from BYU... I have realized how powerful these influences have been. I haven't studied other options. I chose what I have from just a few people's suggestions. I feel that the Lord wants me to just figure it out and He'll help me when I do need it. And I sit here and wonder, was it worth it? If I am rejected, was the community college still worth it? Should I have started this path?

I feel the answer is yes because of many personal and not so personal blessings I have already experienced, however the point here is, a single person's opinion can influence your decision to spend thousands of dollars. So always be mindful and make sure you are happy with the choice, not just that others are as well.

Asking girls on dates

Until very recently, I have been terrified of asking girls on dates. This is an example of a typical date-asking-out-scenario:

Boy walks up to girl/calls her on the phone, "Hi Girl A*, this is Boy. Would you like to go out on a date with me on Friday? I was thinking we do this and that. I'll pick you up at 7pm."

Girl A, "Sure! Okay, sounds like fun! I'll see you then!"

And it's that simple. Or is it?

Here is what my mind has envisioned for many years as to what goes on in each other's heads:

Boy walks up to girl/calls her on the phone, "Hi Girl A, this is Boy. Would you like to go out on a date with me on Friday?" thinking, "I like you and want to get to know you better because as we both know, dating is how you eventually get married and by me asking you on a date, I am saying that I think you are a possible option for me when choosing someone I want to get married to. So hopefully this date works, but if it doesn't then I'm going to feel super bad and you'll probably hate me and be depressed because it didn't work out and I'm an evil person for not finding you attractive enough. Now you have to be single and keep hoping someone calls and asks you out!"

Girl A, thinking, "Oh, my, gosh. He is asking me out! Does he like me? I think he's cute. I can't believe he's asking me out!", says "Okay, sounds like fun!"

Growing up, I was afraid that if I asked a girl out they would automatically assume that I am willing to get married to them and will put forth effort to get to know them better. Which I suppose is partially true. But that has scared me so much that the girl might think I'm considering her for marriage that I never wanted to date when I was at the age. It took literately years before I spent weeks building up the courage to ask a friend out to prom on my 18th birthday. That took a lot of mental preparation. By the time I finally asked her out, I had put so much mental energy into it that when she said yes, I could feel all the stress, the worry and problems I had in my mind just fly away and was filled with indescribable joy.

So if asking someone out to prom before I served a mission was scary, imagine asking someone after your mission when it's clear what your next goal is?

Yet the few dates I've been on, asking them out so far hasn't been scary at all. It took me about 6-8 months since I been home to actually have the confidence to date, It hasn't been too bad and so far I don't think my imagined scenario has been reality too much. I guess when you haven't done it, you are terrified to do so and imagine the worst, but when you actually do it it's not as bad.

But that's how I viewed dating even until just recently. Once you do something you are scared and uncertain of, it will become less scary.

10 months later; what has happened?

Pardon any ramblings, random topic changing and otherwise lack of a unified-feeling post. A lot of thoughts came to my mind during this post, many of which I had to diverge into other separate posts. There will be subtle overlapping. Forgive me.

I got released in June of 2014. Still plenty awkward and with an uncertain future, I smiled and shook hands at my home ward the following several Sundays. Many came over and said hi, others I couldn't remember but they could and were happy. And many new faces as well. The ward had many of the same original members, and the ones I could remember the most. The Bishopric had changed, and a few leaders had moved, though. Still trying to take in the fact that I had served a mission (that will be for another blog post another day) and that I had spent two years successfully doing what I spent my whole life planning for, I wasn't sure if what I was feeling was normal and how I should react to said feelings. The ward felt the same, a bit. As I said, there were old faces that brought me memories. Yet it felt different.

The best way I can explain this feeling is via an experience my MTC companion and I had. We were to stay at the MTC for ten weeks, while everyone else in our immediate district was to leave by the end of 9 weeks. When everyone left and it was just us two for a little while, I felt as though the spirit of the district had left. The spirit was still there, but the guardian angels for each missionary had departed to protect them on their two year service. It felt like most of the pie was gone, but our two slices still remained and thus we still had a bit of a familiar spirit. Then when the next district came, the remainder of the space on the plate was filled with a new pie. Still good, but different. Different families, different levels of a testimony, different expectations. It was like having our old district with us in a sense, yet obviously different.

So with my attempt to give an analogy out of the way, the home ward felt as though there were new spirits there in the midst of an old spiritual place I was familiar with. So I give my homecoming talk, bring a non member friend to attend the services, then I make a decision that will start my new phase of life: Attending the singles ward.

I had avoided this ward prior to my mission (see my Singles Ward post for more info) because I did not want to fall into the trap of dating to start a relationship before my mission. I'm not suggesting that it would be a bad idea, but being who I am, the thought of having a girl who liked me and was willing to wait while I served scared me. There is a time and a place for everything and I wasn't sure if I would be ready for such a step in my life yet. But now my mission was over and it was either my home ward, or the singles ward. And knowing that my friends would eventually migrate to that ward anyway, I decided it was my best option to progress and not fail at the whole post-mission life goal stuff.

So the singles ward. What an interesting place where Mormon culture meets... single adult culture. Where socializing and making as many friends as possible seemed to be the way to survive. I was fine with it for the most part. I had just spent two years forcing myself to get to know every Deaf person I could meet. Learning how to love people and see them as God seems them. So it should be just as easy to do so in a hearing singles ward, right? Well, yes and no. I have a separate post about living in the hearing world with love for the Deaf and sign language, but I'll give the gist here.

Being an introvert to some degree, using my hands to communicate to the Deaf meant that I was using a different language. Watching the Deaf understand me, communicate back and me understand them made me happy. I was seeing a witness of my success and improvement with my calling and mission language. Also, not hearing my voice seemed to make me feel more confident in myself. I wasn't self conscience of my voice or anything, but it was a nice change to communicate and depend on different senses.

So in a hearing ward, especially a hearing singles ward, the common language was English. Sure some people knew Spanish or German or something cool. But they never spoke it except as a joke on occasion. Same thing with sign language right? Well, yes. Except that I had just spent two years putting my heart into the Deaf culture and sign language (... yes I have a post about this as well. How the Mission changed my life [not what you think] ) and found it to be the most amazing skill and talent I had acquired all my life, so the best way I could figure out how to connect with people post-Mission was via using sign language.

But, I'm in a hearing ward. I shouldn't expect every hearing young single adult to find a fascination with sign language and/or my dedication on my mission. They would rather learn about who I am, what my interests (besides signing) are, where I'm going to school, where I work, what I like to do, what I did last week, how I am doing this week, what I thought about the talk in Sacrament and so on. Sure I talked a lot about this on my mission, but it was in sign language. This is in English. Speaking English doesn't make me feel accomplished or good about myself. It is satisfying to know that I can communicate with the hearing, I suppose. But that's just to be expected from a hearing person.

So here I am attending a singles ward with people I don't know (my friends I grew up with hadn't finished their missions or gone home yet from college). Trying to figure out how to be a single adult (because quite frankly, I didn't know how. I just knew how to be a youth and what to avoid) and not being Missionary-awkward. I do end up making some friends along the way, who were able to recognize the personal and social struggles I have always gone through in a hearing setting. They may never know how much of a difference they made.

And now it's almost summer a year later. Soon I get to celebrate the first year of being a return missionary (I survived a year without mission rules? hooray, time to celebrate I guess haha). What have I done 10 months later? (after how many paragraphs and I ask the question in the title?) Well, I've been active in the singles ward. I've receive multiple callings (and am in no ways complaining about them), and have reunited with most of my friends from pre-mission. My college plans have also developed from basically having no idea (I'll need to make a blog post about that!) to actually feeling like I'm doing something.

So here I am, typing this blog post (and diverging many ideas and thoughts into 5 separate posts, hooray!) and amazed by what has happened in my life. I think I'll end this here for now. It's a good place to contemplate. I'll consider my future plans in another blog post. This has gotten long enough for now. I hope whoever reads this, will enjoy? Or find it interesting at least? No matter. I just need a place to record my thoughts. About what happened 10 months since my mission.