A picture of me.

This is me not long before I got married. I was a little thinner then. (Why does everyone gain weight when they get married?) I really just wanted to put a picture of me on my blogspot. So here I am.

I was with my family in Bryce Canyon and my mom made me pose for a picture. She's a really good photographer. My favorite thing about the trip was that I was in excellent shape. I zoomed ahead of my dad and brother and kept waiting for them for ten or fifteen minutes at the top of each hill. It felt wonderful to hike and I really loved being in my own skin. Alas, I long to feel that way again!

Rekindling dreams.

So, here I am contemplating my life up to this point. I used to have a lot of dreams that I fervently believed I could accomplish. I was going to study abroad in Europe, be an artist, novelist, and singer. Now what am I doing? I put books away at the library and struggle to go to just three classes at school. I rarey even think about my dreams anymore.

But that is about to change. It's time for me to get myself together and start over again on building my dreams. Somewhere inside me are the embers of my dreams. Once burning brightly like an inner beacon fire, they have cooled to a soft orange. All I need to do is blow on them to raise new blazing flames. I can live all the dreams in my longing soul. I can.

But how does one go about such things? How do you wake yourself out living sleep?

I will start by stirring my old sense of adventure. Tomorrow I will do something adventurous. If it wasn't the middle of the night, I would have an adventure right now! When I do have my advnture, I'll blog all about it.

Introspection.

What does it mean to be a good person?

I used to think I was a good person because I spent a great deal of time in study. I read and pondered the holy scriptures for at least an hour a day, sometimes more, usually late into the night after all my family or roommates had gone to bed. It was easy for me, then, to navigate through any passage of scripture and leap through dozens of references from memory. I felt secure in my knowledge and I didn't doubt that I was a good person.

But now, being married, going to school, and working all at once have put serious restrictions on my time. It is no longer realistic, or even possible, for me to study as often as I used to. I can only snatch a few minutes in the scriptures every day. That is really the best that I can do in my current situation and I'm certain that time constraints will only increase in the future.

And so I have been riddled with guilt since I married, wondering constantly if I am actually a good person. I wonder this as I struggle to do things married women are supposed to do. I'm not good at keeping a house or cooking. I don't have very much time to myself, and I prefer to spend my personal time reading or talking with a friend rather than scrubbling the counters and sweeping the floor. My husband naturally tires of my incompetencies and sometimes criticizes me. I feel like a bad person.

So I have had cause to stop and question what it really means to be a good person. Am I no longer a good person because I can't keep up my study regimen? Or did that not make me a good person in the first place?

I'm just wondering.