Logan Blogaday - Day Twenty-Two

Hey, Happy day twenty-two.

I had a really good experience last night. It helped cheer me up and change the way I've been looking at a few things. It was important.

I was going to write about some of it tonight- but it's 3 AM, and I just wrapped up my calc assignment.

I used to joke about dating calculus in high school. Now it feels like I'm dating calculus' ugly older step-sister. They're still related, but this one is older and bigger and wants you to spend more time with her. There's a reason I used to date her cute and innocent little sister instead of her. She's hairy.

It's been a good day. I got a few things done that needed to be done. My head is still above water, but I have no idea for how long. I'm just trucking. One day I'll be ahead, boy oh boy.

I think one of the reasons I have some trouble with this whole college thing is that I cannot possibly see how I'll ever get a job doing any of this stuff. Great, I understand waves a little better thanks to physics. Someone's gonna pay me for that? I can figure out the forces on a stake driven into the ground that's being pulled on by three strings at various angles with various tension- hooray.

It's sorta like falling in love, I think. Maybe I'll save that one up for a whole big post in the near future. I love the idea of writing one good post that covers one good topic. I never do it, but maybe it'd be fun.

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll write about what happened last night. I've got a lot of homework stacking up, these folks just don't know when to stop the madness.

It's Tuesday. That means tomorrow is Statics homework for most of the evening. I should probably finish reading the physics chapter I'm on and start that homework too. I have an institute class tomorrow, that's good. It's long though. We'll see how that goes.

Well, we're getting there, I think. I'm three weeks closer to having a degree than I was three weeks ago I guess. That's good news, right? I'm learning more about myself and about life at least. That's a lot more important than this school stuff anyways. Hooray for youthful bodies and kind blessings that let me continue functioning through all of this.

Yeah, it's late. I'm out.

I hope you're all doing well. Merry Tuesday. Who's ready to buckle down and go smack wednesday?

Logan Blogaday - Day Twenty-One

Three weeks? How'd that happen? Maybe my numbers are off. Or maybe it really is day twenty one. In any event, happy day twenty one folks.

Today was a pretty good day, albeit real long. I had my statics recitation for the first time today, as well as my physics lab. The physics lab wasn't bad at all, it was actually fairly fun, but it definitely lasted two hours.

I was working with a real smart kid from the DR. He did everything really well, and while his English wasn't great, we never had a communication problem. As lab partners go, he was a pretty good one. The truth remains, though, that I still prefer working on my own.

Maybe that's not entirely true. I do value teamwork, and I know that at times it is crucial. As far as academics go, though, I don't see it working too well. The problem with a lab is that I feel guilty if we both aren't doing all the work. I can see partner work going well when I'm like, "Hey James, you do part A while I do part B, and then we'll help each other out, yeah?" I really like the idea of delegation. But I don't know why two people have to work together. I mean, aside from not having enough workstations.

But it was a good lab, don't get me wrong.

I feel like I worked pretty hard today, and I'm happy about that. I still didn't do great staying awake. I dozed off in Physics (again...) and my statics recitation. I haven't done any homework tonight, but I did go grocery shopping, pay some bills, buy my tickets for creative arts, and other miscellaneous stuff like that. Not exactly everything I'd hoped to accomplish, but not all that bad.

So, still adjusting to all of this college business. It's not what I expected it to be, but it's not bad. It's harder than I thought it would be. There's a lot of role-changing going on all the time. 50 minute classes are nice, but it's hard to go from calc to physics to creative arts to accomplishing something to feeding yourself to recitation to physics lab to FHE to shopping to whatever. Not that I'm complaining. Just saying, lots of shifting around. Got to be on your toes and have a good attitude.

We challenged Murray to the game late last week and still haven't heard any word from them. We wanted Tuesday at seven, but since that's tomorrow and we haven't heard anything we're assuming they're not going to show. We're going to see if we can get them to play sometime Saturday morning, probably around ten.

Tomorrow will be a pretty busy day. A whole calculus assignment, physics quiz, honors assignment. Not a huge deal, and I've got some decent time tomorrow. I might go play Ultimate with the club just to get better, that'd be cool. Not sure though, that's a whole lot of time and work.

So, thoughts. Not sure if I'm actually going to write about them right now, but I've got a few. Nothing outstanding or groundbreaking or all that relevant. I like my creative arts class. Isn't that a crazy surprise?

Hey, it hasn't been a bad day. I didn't shoot 100 percent like I wanted to, and I'm not five days ahead of my homework, but I didn't do too bad. Tomorrow's another day and another chance to learn something and make myself more than I am today. Sorry it's a bit of a cop-out post, but I didn't get a nap today, give me a break ;)

Looks like bed before 2, that's sweet. It's only 12:17 right now, so I should be sitting pretty. I hope you're all doing well. Keep up the good work. Maybe I'll do something awesome tomorrow. Well, catch you all later~

Logan Blogaday - Day Twenty

Hey everybody, happy day twenty.

I'm here in Logan again and feeling pretty good about that. It's 3:26, and I just nailed my calc assignment. It was a little rough, but I feel real good about how it went. I read all the introductory information on the section first, and that really helped. I'm going to start doing that for all of them. I had to use the back of the book to get a lot of it right, but it's okay, because I was really starting to figure it out. I feel good about it.

I gave calc a good effort tonight, definitely the best effort I've given an assignment yet. I feel so much better about it than I have before. Going along with my stand I'm taking, I'm going to work harder on my homework. I'm going to start reading and studying the material instead of just trying to do it. Physics slapped me around for trying that, so I'm going to really start learning. I'm excited to give it a good shot.

But it's late. Looks like this is going to be a pretty good week. I hope things are great for you all. Smile, be happy. Things aren't too shabby you know.

Who I Am [Logan Blogaday - Day Nineteen]

"I couldn't tell you that I was wrong,
chickened out, grabbed a pen and paper, sat down and I wrote this song."
-What a Good Boy - BNL

One day in adult roles we were doing speed dating. We'd have about 45 seconds to answer a question about ourselves to another random person in the class.

One of the questions we got was, "what is your greatest fear?" I was paired with a girl in the class I had never talked to before. I thought about the question and thought about a good answer to it. I said to her, "You know, I think my greatest fear is failure. Or letting someone down. Yeah, I don't want to let people down."


She looked at me with a bit of disbelief and said, "that's it? Letting people down? You're not afraid of spiders or being burnt to death in a building? You'd rather die than let someone down? Sharks?"

The way she said it made me think and laugh a little bit. I stuck with my answer.

But tonight I realized what it is that I actually fear. The thing that legitimately has me worried.

I'm afraid that I'm going to change. I'm afraid that even though I've been on fire before, I'm not going to be on fire anymore. I'm afraid that even though I used to be a runner that I'll never be a runner again.

More than anything else, I'm afraid that even though I know that I've worked hard and been a good person for a very long time, that one day I'm not going to be that person.

And I'm afraid because it's me that does it. I'm afraid that even though I know something right now that I'm not going to do anything with it. I'm afraid that when I know I should push the green button that future me won't push it.

I'm afraid that I'm going to suck, plain and simple.

I don't run anymore. I'm still in shape. I still play Ultimate and basketball. I could run some miles if I had to.

But I used to be a runner. I truly was. I could run forever and not get tired, I could go whenever and wherever I needed to. I ran for life, I ran to be better, I ran to fulfill my obligation to my teammates and my coach. I ran for the smell. I loved the trails. I loved and hated the competition. It was part of me.

And now it's not. And it's not because I got hit by a bus. It's not because I left the cross country team either. It's because I don't go running anymore. This change that has occurred in my life is not caused by genetics or my environment. I wasn't tricked into it.

I'm no longer a runner because I don't go running. I haven't been making the choice to do it. I am not a runner because of the choices that I make.

And that terrifies me. Not because I'm worried about being a runner, but because I'm worried about what I'll do to myself. I don't want to be 40 years old and suck.

This fear is cleverly crafted. It's based on truth, yes, but I'm looking at things so one-sided.

My fear here is that I'm destined to let myself down. Let everybody else down too. (Funny how that was one of my fears that I said wasn't my real fear. I guess they're related...) The problem is that I've always done it. I'm not a terrible person. But there have been hundreds of times when I've felt like I needed to be a better person, and when I knew I had what it took to become a better person, and when I committed to being a better person and worked on being that person. And I know that today I'm not fully that person. I know that even though I've started and participated in dozens of workout regimens I don't workout regularly. I know that even though I've set goals in the past I haven't always completed them. I know that I've made commitments to myself and to others that I simply have not kept.

But I do know who I am. And I do know what I'm capable of.

And this is the point where I start feeling better. Thanks, up there.

So those are my fears, but I know they work both ways. I know that even though I've failed repeatedly at being perfect, the good things that I have done do stack up. I know that I'm not going to make it at being perfect, but I know that that's okay. I know that if I choose to work hard- that's going to pay off. I know that I can be a better person. I know that I don't have to suck if I don't want to.

There are things in this life that I control. I'm the boss of my life. No one can make me suck. No one can make me amazing either.

But I choose what I'm going to do. And if I choose to be better, I'll be better. It's a whole lot of work. But it's what I want to do.

There have been nights like this before. And there will certainly be nights like this in the future. I'm not done with this battle. This fight between who I want to be and who I am. But it's like Dumbledore said when Harry asked about Voldemort trying to come back time after time. Something like, "And if we defeat him every single time he tries to regain power, well, then he'll never regain his power." It's that idea the even though it's going to be a fight, one day there will be an answer. But that answer is only there because of every single little fight we've fought along the way.

I wrote once about tunnels and how what I think we're all afraid of is things not changing or ending. We're afraid of being in one place too long, doing one thing too long. We're afraid of never seeing our friends again. We can make it for 85 years, as long as we know we'll see them at year 86. But when we're faced with the idea of never seeing them again we get so frightened. That's a bit of what this is here. I'm afraid that I'll always be fighting. As long as this life chugs on, I believe that I will be fighting. When will that victory come? When will that idea of voldemort returning to power ever truly be put to bed?

It's not in the foreseeable future. But it's like Dumbledore said. If we keep on fighting, forever, the end result is the same. Vanquished forever is the exact same as pushed back for another month, every month, for the next hundred years.

So here I am. I'm taking a stand. A stand that I've taken before. A stand that I have, in a way, failed a hundred times before. A stand that I'll have to take again. But it's the stand I'm taking, and I'm happy and honored to take it.

What does it take to be a better person? What is the good life, and how do we live it? What am I going to do tonight to make my dreams a reality? What am I going to do to help someone else? What am I going to do to be the person I'm supposed to be? What choices am I going to make?

I'm taking a stand for excellence. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to learn more. I'm going to be kinder. I'm going to care and love about people. More. I'm going to try. I'm going to be friendly. I'm going to do things that I would just rather not do. I'm going to prepare.

What does it take to be excellent? There's a lot, and I don't know it all. But I know that it takes, at the very least, a lot of work and a lot of time.

The good news is that I'm ready to work and the time's on Someone else. So here I stand. This is the mound that I'm placing my flag on. I know it'll fall over. But I'm going to keep picking it back up.

Stand on.

Logan Blogaday - Day Seventeen

Hey, I'm at home tonight. Classes were good today. It's now 2:30, and I just finished trying on my physics. I got about 80 percent on the actual assignments, and finished about half the extra credit. I would be sitting pretty, but Kyle discovered tonight that the extra credit is currently counting as required points. So I've got something like 83 percent total for my assignments now when I ought to have a little bit above a hundred.

I'm counting on this simply being an error on Jimbo's part. Jimbo is our physics professor, you see. Jimbo isn't his real name, but it seems to be more fitting. If in fact Jimbo did this on purpose- well, I'm going to be pretty upset.

Moral of the story: I'm a little frustrated because I didn't do well on that stuff at all. Now, granted, I didn't exactly read the chapter, but still.

In any event, it's done. I don't have another assignment do for a while. I'm going to head to bed. Sorry this post isn't much fun, I'm just a little tired of being at the keyboard. Nobody likes standing waves anyways, honestly.

Hope you're all doing well. Happy days everybody, I'll catch you all later.

Logan Blogaday - Day Seventeen

Hey, happy 400th post everybody ;)

I'll do a celebration or something like that once blogaday is over. For now, I'm happy to be at the end of a really really good day up in Logan.

Today was probably the best day of classes I've had so far. Coming off of last night's success at static homework, I was feeling pretty chipper this morning as I got ready for class. Me and Andrew made it to statics on time, turned in our assignments, and sat to take notes. For the first time ever I totally followed everything the professor said. I was eating it up, taking killer notes, and totally following on the examples. Most of that was because of the homework last night, and I feel really good about that. Score one for statics being great today.

I took the liberty of sluffing my physics recitation today. Call me a slacker, but I don't feel that bad about it. I probably won't do it too much in the future, but I'm happy about stuff. I spent some good time with Andrew instead, joking around about stuff. I also hung out with Kyle and Levi a bit. I spent a while working on my Graphics assignment and thought up a pretty sick vehicle to design.

Ultimate class was good. My play was pretty poor, but I did a fair amount of hustling that made me happy. I even laid out for one sweet end-zone reception, so that made me feel good about myself.

Graphics, for the first time ever, didn't suck. This was actually an awesome day in there because I stayed up with the professor the whole time. That has never happened before. Ever. I made everything work perfectly, it was awesome. I left that class actually happy.

We delivered our bulltimatum to the Murray boys tonight. I don't think I told you, but we had to tone it down. We wrote the bulltimatum either Friday or Saturday night. At church on Sunday we had two lessons about pride. I was feeling like it was a very prideful bulltimatum, and I couldn't shake the image of the US men's basketball team getting third place in Athens in 2004. I knew that the pride was a bad idea, and I certainly didn't want to be put in my place like basketball was four years ago. So we rewrote a tiny little thing that basically "invites" them to play Ultimate. It's a bit of an improvement over the last one. I still like the creative writing of the previous version, but what can you do?

It's about 2:40, I finished my calc assignment about 10 minutes ago. I feel good about it. I didn't get every single question done, and I don't think I got every question right, but I'm okay with it.

It's late, and I'm driving home tomorrow (hooray!) so I should probably do my best to be able to stay awake tomorrow. But I've got two cool thoughts before I go to bed.

Thought one is a vision on something awesome. Calculus assignments are due about a week after they are assigned. I've been doing them the night before, of course. Statics is the same way. Assignments are due seven to nine days after we cover the material. These are my two classes with significant homework. I realized tonight that if I actually jumped on my assignments ahead of time, I could ask my professors questions during class about the things that I don't understand. That way I'd be almost guaranteed one hundred percent, and I'd learn 50% more. That sounds so sweet. It's entirely against my nature, but man, wouldn't that be one heck of a green pasture? I want to give it a shot, I bet that'd feel amazing.

My second thought is simply this: Rise up. Do you ever get tired of sucking? I sure do. Sometimes you just have to look at yourself and say, "Alright, it's time to get better at everything. It's time to work harder and be better. Go." And then you go. I've had a pretty bad attitude about school lately, as blogaday has shown. I've still been getting by, but I think it'd be cool to be a better student. I could learn more. I could do better on assignments. I could care more. There's a lot that I should care more about.

So that's my closing thought of the night. Rise up. Stop sucking so much. Be better. I like it.

I hope you're all doing great :) There's a weekend coming up very soon, isn't that incredible news? I'm headed home tomorrow, score! Free food, comfy bed, people who love me, no kyle. Who could ask for anything more?

Nah, really, Kyle's great. I wouldn't trade him for a pack of bubble-gum.

Goodnight friends. Good luck with everything. Keep up the good work. Keep me posted on all that cool stuff that happens. I'll catch you all on the flip side. Tomorrow I post from Taylorsville, score!

Logan Blogaday - Day Sixteen

Hey Hey, happy day Sixteen. That's a perfect square, you know.

It's 3:39 AM. I finished my statics homework 15 minutes ago or so. Don't be like James and joke about me spelling "statistics" wrong. This is statics. It's not statistics.

I was ready to up and drop all my engineering classes about two hours ago. I had six statics problems to do tonight. One through four were beasts, but five and six were pretty good. I got a lot better at it as I went on. It was mostly trig, in three dimensions, of course. No one likes two-dimensions in college I guess. But I feel better about stuff. Still going to look hard at my options, but I'm not changing majors tomorrow like I was thinking about a few hours ago. Yay for actually getting work done.

I took a really big nap today, as well as a few smaller naps between classes and during physics. I really should have a better attitude about physics. I sort of figure that I'm going to have to teach myself the material anyways, so why bother trying to glean something from class when it's such an impossibility anyways? I should certainly have a better attitude.

Umm, yeah. Not a bad day. I'm super sore today from Ultimate. Sorer than I've been in a long time. It has gotten uglier as the day has progressed, but it's alright. Hopefully a few hours of good sleep will help me out a bit. I've got ultimate class tomorrow, but I'm not going to go practice with the club because I've got my connections class during half of it. My group isn't ready for connections tomorrow yet, haha. I haven't done my graphics homework either. Luckily I'll be able to make both of those up before I have those classes tomorrow. I might sluff my physics recitation. More than likely I'll actually go to my recitation but spend the whole time working on something else. That sounds like a pretty good use of time actually. If I don't go to the recitation I'll just sleep.

Buildings I've slept in so far: Library, Engineering, ESLC. Next target: Family life during creative arts. I hear we're watching a video next time.

No really, I am trying at this whole college thing. Sometimes I just wonder if classes are worth going to, that's all.

I had a good time being with my roommates today. Just talking with them all was great. Hopefully I'll do some more of that in the near future.

I need to do a calc assignment tomorrow. It shouldn't be too ferocious, I don't think.

Yeah, not too much briliance spilling out of my brain tonight so I think I'm going to run off to prepare for bed. I hope you're all doing well. Happy Wednesday. Even happier Thursday tomorrow. Keep up the good work, I'll catch you all later.

Logan Blogaday - Day Fifteen

It's 2:02 AM. I just finished up my calculus assignment, and it was actually pretty cool.

The moral of the story is that I played about three hours of ultimate today. Usually when people throw out absurd numbers of hours they're joking. "I slept for like, seventeen hours!" or "He didn't shutup for six hours man." But no, I actually played roughly three hours of high intensity ultimate. About an hour was during Ultimate class today and the other two were with the club team.

I don't think I'll go play club, but I'll keep going to tuesday practices I think. It's really fun to go play high-level ultimate. I'm certainly not ranked as a good player there, but I'm pretty decent, and I'm excited to get better.

So, yeah, it's been a good day. I did well in classes. I got my assignments done that needed to be done for tomorrow. I played a ton of Ultimate and my body is letting me know. My legs haven't felt like this since the PLC bike-ride I think. It's a pretty great feeling. I mean, it's less comfortable, but at least I know I earned it, right?

I'm going to sleep like a brick tonight. That's something I'm looking forward to. I hope you're doing well. I'll write something a little more fun tomorrow I hope. Rock on friends, thanks for being around.

Logan Blogaday - Day Fourteen

Two weeks of logan blogaday. Ah snap.

Happy Labor Day to all of my American readers. Since all of my readers are American, I won't even bother to put a line in there for my foreign friends. If I did, it would have gone something like, "I bet you wish you were here now too, eh?"

Nah, but really, I like people. Even if they're not from America.

I was going to steal a cool idea for a post I saw on another blog today. Since it's labor day, the blogger told a little bit about every job he's ever had. He talked about what was good about it, what was bad about it, how and why he got it, how and why he lost it, etc. etc.

I'm interested in writing that post, but I don't think I'll do it tonight. I'm not in that mood.

I've learned a few things while I've been here at school for two weeks. Some things that I'm going to write down in a list. Stupid basic things that I wish I'd have known a month ago. I only have one solid one so far.

#1 - Textbooks are worth the price. Even new ones.

Yes, we know that the textbook market is a scheme. But not having a calculus book because you weren't willing to spend 200 dollars is a joke. I'm spending how much to come to school? I'm spending what on tuition? And I'm going to make it twice as hard on myself by not buying a book? It's 200 dollars, honestly. The proportions here are way off. Just buy the books next time, doofus.

So yeah, I finally ordered the book today. After a week of classes I figured having my own copy would definitely be worth it. So that's one lesson I've got down, hooray!

(8) Reach for the western skies (8)

Not sure why that line from that song is in my head, but it is. I like the passion in it. I'm not a musical genius. As far as music goes I'm pretty stupid. I like it that way. I sing to myself when I feel like it. I was singing hymns as I got ready this morning. I'm in an apartment with a lot of musical people. Kyle's doing cool stuff with institute choir and Latter Day Voices, James is dang good at theory, and Molly happened to be over as I was singing. I realized that I wasn't rounding my vowels or supporting my breath or singing forward or doing any of those things that I'm supposed to do when I sing. But I wasn't singing for anyone but myself. I was singing for a purpose, and that purpose was entirely satisfied by not doing all those crazy things. It was actually fulfilled better by my unprofessional voice than it would have been by my professional one. I like my trailer park singing, thank you very much.

And I think that's the moral of my story for a minute. Sometimes I don't care if it's not done perfectly. Sometimes I don't care if they ripped off the idea from rogers and hammerstein or anybody else. Sometimes I like a line of song sung with passion. There doesn't have to be a reason for it.

I'm not ragging on the music buffs in the room. I'm just saying, sometimes the rules don't matter as much. Sometimes it's just about being human.

I'm not pursuing my education with passion. I'm not here because I desperately want to be here. I've learned that even if we don't desperately need something, we can still make good things come of it. But I decided that I want to start pursuing things that I desperately want, not just things that seem to work out.

College makes a lot of sense for me right now. I'm leaving on a mission in not too long, and a year of college fits in perfectly with my schedule. My tuition and pretty much everything else is paid for thanks to highschool and a nice Pell grant. So it makes a lot of sense for me to be here.

But I'm not hungry for it. I'm here cause it makes sense, not because I want to be here. I'm not saying I don't want to be here, cause that's not true. But when you ask me why I'm here, I don't say, "Because I'd die if I wasn't."

Moral of my story? I'd love to be passionate about this stuff. I'd love to want to do something. Anything really. I'd love to know what I want. I'd love to wake up and say, "Oh yeah, I'm ready to go move forward on this whole, what I want to be when I grow up, thing." Of course, that means that I need to know what I want to be when I grow up. It also means that I need to be moving forward on all of that. I'm going to look for it.

I'm a family guy. I think about my family a lot when I make decisions. I'm how I am because of my family, at least in large part. So it's very interesting for me to be considering taking a hippie semester this spring. The idea of halting progress on my major in order to take time evaluating my life and finding out what I really want to study is something that's just laughed at at home. "You don't want to be one of those people that changes their major a hundred times and ends up at school forever." Most of that comes from Nathan, but it's cool. It's not a bad thing at all. But it's not something that I have to do that often- disagree with things that I've been told by my brothers or parents. It's my wisdom versus theirs, but I've got to start somewhere.

I'm still not positive I'll be taking a hippie semester. I might fall in love with Mechanical in the meantime. I simply don't want to be unhappy.

It's sort of like this marriage thing. A time will come in my life when the next step in my life will be to get married. When that time comes, I'm not going to marry someone that I don't want to marry. Even if they are a great idea and I'm really good at math and science. I've got to want to marry them.

Likewise, I can't go ahead and marry mechanical engineering if I don't want to marry it. I'm here because it made sense and I didn't feel like it was a bad idea. I even like the idea. I'm just not sure that it's the place that I want to be. I know it'll work. I'm sure it'll work. But maybe I want to be something else. That's my choice, right?

I don't know why I'm so hung up on all this. After all, it's only been a week of class. I've done like, two assignments. My engineering classes don't excite me though. Look at me go, preparing to do something I never expected to do. Maybe I'll go crazy and actually transfer to BYU when I get back from a mission, just to throw everybody for a loop. Maybe I'll start doing my hair different too!

Okay, not really. One step at a time here. Plus I really like my hair the way it is.

Notice how sometimes I just ramble a bit? It's the curse of blogaday. Under normal posting routines I'll come when there is something to say. Under blogaday's regime I'll come regardless. I'll usually find something. Sometimes it's just not worth as much.

It's like kennecott copper mine. It's successful because it goes through so much ore that it can afford to only gather a fraction of a percent of copper from each ton of rock it processes. It was a pretty new idea when the mine started. Instead of mining a little bit of really high quality ore, they just mine a whole buttload of low quality ore.

Blogaday's like that. Not necessarily super high quality all the time, but hopefully the added volume makes the value equal. Hopefully we get some stuff out of it.

So, I've certainly got lots to work on. But I'm glad that I've got friends who care about me. It's good to learn things. College is good for me. This whole experience is going to make me better, I know it. Sometimes you've just got to be brought down a bit before you can be brought up. That's how it goes I think.

Well, halfway there, right? ;)

I hope you're all doing great. I do care about you. I'm always up for a good bit of helping my friends out. It makes me feel good about myself and it's a great distraction from homework and hunger pains, so let me know if there's anything ;) Have a great night friends, I'm out like leg-warmers.

Logan Blogaday - Day Thirteen

Happy Sunday, everybody.

So, today has been interesting. Don't you love how every day is interesting? Maybe that word choice comes from a lot of different places. Maybe I'm like a politician, covering everything up with "interesting". "There was a huge train wreck today that was all my fault. Isn't that interesting?" No, I don't think that's it.

I've said before that my method of discovery is something like this: I see something that makes me develop a theory about life, and then I adopt it as if it were true. I live my life until something forces me to change it. Now that's an incredibly simplified version of all of that, obviously, but the point still stands. I think "interesting" means that it was a little outside of my understanding. Some behavior that wasn't expected or predicted.

Like I said, today has been interesting. There are several stories from today. Church was incredible. Like I said last night, I just love church. Going to church is incredible. It feels like it's been forever, so today was awesome. It had really only been a week; I'm not sure why it felt like it had been so long. Anyways; great. After dinner me, Andrew, Levi, and James collaborated on dinner and made a super sweet meal. We had fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. We experimented with frying breaded cheese and breaded onions. Both were pretty good; it was a successful meal.

There are a few more adventures that could be related today, but that's not really what's on my mind right now. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to write about what I want to write about. If you don't like it, you can go read Nick's blog.

A person who is very dear to me came over tonight, just to visit. All of us here sat out in the living room and visited for a while. We had a good time, I think, but there were a few things that bothered me about the experience.

For whatever reasons, the four of us that live here were putting on a bit of a show. I think it was subconscious, but we had visitors, so we were in our social character instead of our *real* character. I don't think there's anything wrong with being in social character, since it's a subconscious thing anyways, but still.

Important background: Me, Levi, James, and Kyle have been friends since the seventh grade. We learned in the seventh grade that self-deprecating humor always got laughs. We'd talk about our troubles getting ladies or the fact that we smelled funny and then people would laugh. Over time, as we grew closer together and grew more confident, we started including each other in our self-deprecating humor. Instead of talking about *me* smelling bad, I'd talk about *kyle* smelling bad. Of course, I'd do this when it was me and kyle talking to someone else. It was like some of Kyle's smell was reflected back on to me, so the self-deprecating humor came from both of us, since I was his friend. We got to be very good at comfortable at this kind of humor. It is now an engrained part of our social character. When we're together, we make fun of each other. We poke fun at everybody. We use it to get laughs from each other and from anybody we meet. We do it kindheartedly and with nothing but love for each other. We all know the game, and we all play the game.

Tonight, for whatever reasons, we were being worse about it though. Maybe it was Kyle wasn't here, or maybe it was cause there were new guests so we were putting on a show, but we were dirtier about it than usual. I don't feel good about it, and that bothers me. I've always known that our derisive humor wasn't a great thing. I didn't figure that it was terrible though. But tonight I think we definitely crossed some lines. I'm not saying that we're terrible people or that we said anything that we hadn't necessarily said before, but I just don't feel good about it. I wish that we'd have been kinder tonight.

And I wish that for two reasons. Reason number one is that I'm trying to be a better person. I'm trying to love more and to treat everybody like the valued person they are. I'm trying to care about people like I used to do a lot better. And tonight had none of that in it. Tonight I was a dirtbag. So, no, I'm not a dirtbag, but tonight I wasn't good like I want to be. Tonight wasn't an improvement over anything. It was certainly regression. This isn't a huge deal, I'm just saying. In a quest to be a better person, tonight certainly didn't move me forward.

Reason number two is that I was really looking forward to visiting with the person who came by tonight, and we all sorta botched it. We didn't have a really good time because we were being such dirtbags. I think that people are important. Sam Worsham said that relationships are the most important thing. Not like, relationships, but just relationships between people. I'm beginning to agree more and more. As far as moving relationships forward, tonight didn't move me forward at all, it moved me backwards I feel.

So that's two quests I'm on- relationships and being a better person, that didn't move forward tonight even though I had a great opportunity for it.

I'm not slamming myself for this, but I recognize that I screwed up. What do I do about it? I've got a few ideas, we'll see how it goes.

Do you notice that I say we'll see how it goes very often as well? That's because I believe it. I know that we'll see how it goes. Of course we will. But still, I'm compelled to wonder about some of the things I've said we'll see about. I don't remember any specifically, but I know that most of my posts will have it in there. I wonder if I had a list of times I'd said it, if I could look back and see exactly how a few of those things went. "I'm auditioning for madrigals tomorrow- we'll see how it goes." I saw how it went. I've been there. Interesting how we are where we are because of what we've chosen to do. Also interesting that I always seem to forget what I've done and where I'm from. The present is so consuming. It's hard to look backwards and forwards, but I know it's the right thing to do.

I worry and think about so much. Writing is such a parallel to life for me, it's insane. Tonight's post could have gone many directions, because there are a lot of things on my mind. I have chosen to include what I have because I feel like A) it's the right thing to do. and B) this is what I think is important for me to share. I've thought a lot about my grammar tonight. I know that I misuse commas like crazy. I'm a chronic sentence splicer. I used to pride myself in being able to write freehand like this and still make grammatical sense. But I realize now that I'm rife with errors. I am okay with that. Really. But still, I've been thinking about it. And I wanted to bring it up a few times earlier. I resisted the urge because I knew that it would take away from what I was trying to write and the things that I was trying to say. I say it now to point out that sometimes I pick my battles. Sometimes things are worth fighting and other things aren't.

One interesting thing about the social life at college is that I'm a freshman and that I'm going on a mission in less than a year. I am in a lame-duck period in a big way. I'm only here temporarily before I leave for two dedicated years. I'm not here to find a wife. I'm not here to get a degree for a while. I'm here for one year and then I'm so out of here.

So sometimes I get stuck in the cycle of thinking that I'm a second-class citizen here. I get stuck remembering that there are tons of people around who have served missions and who have mounds of experience that I simply don't have yet. I know that there are people who have been going to this university for years- they know their stuff. There are people with plans, people with fiance's, people with everything. I'm not a person with those things, so sometimes I forget that I'm real too.

Isn't that a terrifying idea? I think about what I'm writing now. I realize that I'm on the threshold of a big and new era of my life. I know that some things are going to change. A mission will change a lot of things. Two full semesters of university will change things too. Life on my own, doing my own laundry, meeting new people, walking up the hill a million times- all of this is going to change me at least a little bit.

I know that I'm not at my final destination. But sometimes I forget that that doesn't mean that I'm not here right now. There's a scripture somewhere that says something to the extent of: "But let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers..." I had an incredible lesson based on that scripture once. This was a few years ago. We learned and were taught that it didn't matter that we were young, but that we were still important and that we still had much to offer. That's something that I need to do a better job remembering. Even though I've got big adventures ahead of me, I'm still me. And I'm still going to be me- no matter what happens.

I've come this far, with help. I'm not going to go further and forget who I am. I will go farther. But that's going to be me, not somebody else. I need to remember that too.

It's a monument thing. I don't believe that just because something was before means that it should be now. But I also believe that things are a lot more important than we ever give them credit for. I believe that if something was important to me before, I need to at least respect the past version of me and remember that it happened and not be ashamed of it. I dated Marissa back in the day. I don't feel the way about Marissa now that I did then. But I recognize that it happened and I recognize that I did feel that way. I'm not going to back down and say that I was under the influence of any mind-altering medication or that I was a hormonally imbalanced teenager. Chemistry aside, I'll stand by what I've done. But that doesn't mean that I can never feel that way about someone else or that I have to feel that way about a certain girl. I suppose, then, that this is about balance. Striking a balance between respecting, recognizing, and celebrating the past with exploring the frontiers of change and progress. Where do we find that balance? Where do we teach ourselves when it is time to let go of that which we've never had the bravery to let go of before? When is it right to believe in what you once knew certainly without a doubt to be true and when is it right to believe in what you now feel? Can I, as an individual, trust what I've felt, even though I can't feel it right at the moment? Can I find strength and reason to work if that particular fire of emotion isn't present, only in my memories? Where do we draw that line? Where do we stop being the good guy and start being the creeper? Where do we lose our measure of nobility and become plain out annoying?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I'm trying to do the best I can. Sometimes, like tonight, I don't move forward. I think that blogging like this helps me move forward, at least a bit.

One closing thought. Today in church the idea of a rescue party came up. A speaker was telling a story about being on a pioneer trek this summer. One group had made it to camp hours before another two groups, and the information had been relayed to camp that the two other groups were suffering. The word came out that the company already at camp (Who had already walked and traversed tons of miles that day) was to send a rescue party to go relieve them. They were told to gather their strong and healthy men and to go get them. The sister speaking described the scene very vividly, and she relayed her emotions about seeing the men literally running in a bee line to where they knew the other companies were desperately needing their help.

When I thought about that, I knew that if I were there, I'd be running. I take any chance to run I can get. Cross country did that to me. It instilled a bit of pride in my ability to keep on going even when I've already been beaten. I'd want to be in the rescue party. That's the kind of guy that I am. If I were a pioneer, or if I were on the trek, I'd have gone running- I know that.

But it's not the nineteenth century, and very rarely will I need to run when my body is weary to rescue suffering pioneers. But I know that there are times when I have opportunities to metaphorically run and rescue. Do I take those opportunities? For one who loves to run and loves to help, why don't I do a better job at finding? What are the opportunities that I have? What stands in my way of taking those opportunities? How do I do better?

I just love that vivid image of running. I want to run. I do. I know I don't do a great job of doing it. But I want to.

It's a quest I'm on, this life business of ours. And we slide, day in and day out. Sliding between the people we want to be and the people that we are. Tonight I was a bit of a jerk. Tonight I didn't show care the way that I should have. Tonight was a big difference between the person I want to be and the person I acted like. But I want to do better. Tomorrow's a new day. Tonight is still tonight- there's still time. Live your life. Choose to live.

Logan Blogaday - Day Twelve

Ooooh, Ahhh, day twelve. It's like fireworks, but cooler.

Today was my first legitimate Saturday in Logan, and I had a really good time. I woke up around 12:30. I had a nice relaxed breakfast as we watched some Heroes season two, and then around three we went and played some basketball at the HPER (for you weirdo's that aren't going to Utah State, that's pronounced "the Hyper") We found three other guys that wanted to play and did some 3v3. They beat us 13 to 12, but it was a dang good game. I felt like a pointguard for a few minutes, it was amazing. I had a couple of really sweet plays. I screwed up a lot, sure, but it was so much fun. I love playing ball.

I did about 80 percent of my physics homework that's due Monday morning tonight, and it was actually pretty fun. Physics is just really fun to do, and the online stuff makes is pretty cool. I helped Michael with a lot of his back home when he was doing it at SLCC, so I'm really familiar with the Mastering Physics work area so things are pretty nice. Waves are pretty cool, what can I say?

So, a few thoughts. One thing that just struck me is that there's pretty much no way to be an all-star in college. In fact, there's no real way to be in college.

See, in high school, if you're in the cafeteria, you're actually there at Taylorsville. There's no way to do that at Utah State. There is no centralized location. If you're at the fieldhouse, you're at the fieldhouse. If you're in old main, you're in old main. But you recognize that at any given point, there are thousands of other people at different places on campus. When you're on campus, you know that you can't see everyone. You also know that approximately zero people can actually see you.

Those numbers are a bit extreme, yeah, but I'm not going to see 75 percent of the people that go to Utah State this year. That means that 75 percent of the people will never see me either. High school was different. It didn't really matter who you were, eventually we all sort of discovered each other's existence. I'm not sure that that will happen in college, or even that it can happen. I don't think that I will ever be well known here.

I'm okay with that. I don't define my value or worth by how well I'm liked or by how many people know me. It's just a rather bold departure from the mechanics of highschool. When you were at Taylorsville, you were an integral part of Taylorsville. It was small enough and contained enough for that to work. I do suppose you could have navigated the three years and remained faceless and useless to the school... but if you worked you were noticed. I'm planning on working very hard here and doing an excellent job. But I don't expect to ever be noticed or recognized by anybody. I doubt my professors will ever know my name. That's okay, that's just the way things are.

That's not as depressing as it sounds, I promise. It's just different.

Song of the moment: Would you go with me - Josh Turner

I think I'm going to make mashed potatoes tomorrow night. I like making things. When I say "i'm going to make something" I mean that I'm going to ask James how to do it and have him walk me through every step. He's pretty good at stuff.

Forecast says it might rain tomorrow. That'd be glorious. I am very excited to go to church up here. Mostly because it's church, and I'm just plain out excited to go to church.

Tomorrow looks like it ought to be an incredible day. It is time for me to depart. I hope you're all doing well. Much love friends, I hope you have a great Sunday.

Logan Blogaday - Day Eleven

Happy Friday friends, merry day eleven. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to my great friend the weekend. Yeah, I appreciate him more after a week of classes than I have all summer.

I guess you don't get a ton of depth tonight, but you do get some exciting news. We settled on a name for our Ultimate team. We're going to go by Bulltimate. We've been saying Bultimate for a very long time, and since we're the freakin' aggies it seems to make sense for us to have a bull in the title. So we added an extra "L" to the title and have a pretty sweet name.

I mentioned our plans to have a showdown with Murray a few posts ago. We appointed Molly our official vice president in charge of public relations for the team, and she made us some pretty sweet temporary graphics for the team.

We drafted a ultimatum that we're delivering to the Murray boys' apartment tomorrow. Word on the street is that they're out of town for the weekend, but we'll leave it for them for when they get back.

For your reading pleasure, the Bulltimatum. (haha, we're so clever)

Dear Murray Scum-Sucking-Bottom-Dwellers*,

It has come to the attention of Apartment 36 and Tactics (a subsidiary of Hot 'n Ready LLC, a family company), that on the evening of September the 26^th, you, the sissies from Murray, blatantly and heinously lambasted the fine and upstanding reputation of Taylorsville City and all of its respective holdings. These outrageous offenses will not be tolerated.

It is with great pleasure that the guardians of truth, justice, and Taylorsville therefore deliver this BULLTIMATUM to the residents of Bullen 102. As representatives of all that is good at right in this world, we hereby officially challenge you to an Ultimate showdown on Tuesday, September 2^nd 2008, at 7 PM on the HPER fields.

We are prepared with six highly trained Taylorsville ninja-alumni to vanquish your forces. We do, however, recognize the importance of playing with seven men on a team, and therefore offer you a choice. You can choose to meet us with six men or you can choose to meet us with seven men. Whatever number you choose, we will match it.

Game will be played to 13 points (win by two) or until one team begs for mercy. Standard UPA rules and regulations will apply, with the possible exception of playing with six men instead of seven. Objections to these conditions can be discussed if you feel so inclined.

Please respond to this BULLTIMATUM as soon as possible. If you are unable to meet us on the field of battle on the 2^nd, we are willing to reschedule, but only after much mockery and with emphasis on your womanly qualities. To accept this challenge or to reschedule or ask questions, please contact us by email at <the real bulltimatum has our cool new email address we set up for the team here. Since I don't like spiders, I'm not putting that addie up here.>, or by texticular message at <the real bulltimatum has my number here. I'm not about to put it online>. Thank you for your time.

-Bulltimate (formerly Taylorsville Ultimate)

*As a disclaimer, we're not as serious as we sound. We're actually pretty nice guys. We respect you for who you are, even if you do come from Murray. We're excited to play a friendly game of Ultimate. Maybe we could even be friends later. We do, however, intend to bring our A-game and to stand up for ourselves. Don't let the friendly fine print fool you.

So yeah, we're excited to go play. I'm super excited about the prospect of having a whole day off tomorrow. I think me and Andrew are gonna go play some ball at the fieldhouse, that'd be fun. Me and Levi are planning to toss a disc a bit. Maybe we'll throw some starcraft in there, or maybe we'll even be social, we'll see. Anyways, I'm pretty excited about it. So for now, I'm out. I hope you're all doing well. Sorry this post is a bit of a cop-out, but c'mon, it's late. Much love friends, I'm whooshing away from hence.

Logan Blogaday - Day Ten

Happy day ten everybody. Look at us go, making it a third of the way through.

So right now I'm in a pretty good mood. I attribute that mostly to kind Divine intervention. It's 2:27, and I just got done taking care of my first calc three assignment. I started it around one, so it actually went pretty smoothly. It was a very kind math assignment, as far as math assignments go. Lots of graphs and conceptual questions, not a lot of beating of dead horses. It was much easier than Kyle's calc II assignments have been, that's for sure. I'm grateful for that.

I spent a lot of time today very upset with Utah State. My engineering graphics professor isn't very good. The class is designed to teach us the ideas and processes of designing things, and it's also there to get us acquainted with solid edge, the program we use to model with. I'm not computer illiterate, and I'm not a retard, but I was entirely lost in that class today. I know I can't lay all the blame on the professor, but really now? I was trying, and it just wasn't working out. He's a super nice guy, he just isn't very good at isntructing. My physics recitation today was slightly better than graphics, but that's like saying being eaten by alligators is slightly better than being eaten by lions. It's still not a pleasant experience.

So two of my three academic classes today were bunk, seriously. That had me mad about this whole college experience. Why am I even here if I'm not learning anything? Of my professors, two of them don't look like they offer me anything. I'll learn the course material through the resources available, obviously, but I sort of wonder how higher education ever got away with all of this. How did they trick us into coming? A third of my professors are offering me nothing, how does that work out? I was pretty upset about stuff.

But, hey, it'll be alright. I'm going to do the best I can. I'm going to learn it, because learning is something that carries eternal value with it. Even if it's a chore, I'm going to do my best.

Sometimes I feel rebellious. I sort of want to take a semester off of my four-year plan and just explore a bunch of courses to see what I like. That sounds so terribly unproductive, and there's a good chance I won't do it, but I sort of want to be the guy that changes majors. Mechanical engineering sounds peachy, but it just doesn't seem to be me. I've put a lot of thought and work into all of this, and I know that I can make it work as a mechanical engineer. And I don't necessarily think that there is something else that I'm supposed to do with my life. But I don't think that I'm supposed to be an engineer either. I think that I can be what I want.

That makes things so hard for me. I've spent my whole life trying to do what I'm supposed to do. There is generally a right thing to do. I've tried really hard to find out what that is and to do it. It has only been recently that I've begun to notice that there are some things in life that I'm supposed to choose the thing that I want. I had a major crisis at the end of junior year when I had to choose between madrigals or the newspaper. I tried for a very long time to figure out which one was "right". There simply wasn't a right answer, it was cool for me to do whichever one I wanted. I haven't had much practice wanting things. That sounds so terrible of me, but it's sort of true. I'm very happy to do what I believe is right. I'm happy to eat for lunch exactly what I think is the right thing to eat. I don't put a ton of thought into what I want, I generally just choose what I think is the right thing to choose for whatever reasons.

Sometimes there just isn't an answer. Sometimes it's about me choosing what I want to do. But no matter what, I'm still subconsciously looking for something to be "right". There are a few things in life that are pretty easy to peg as things that I'm supposed to choose. College major is one of them. Girls to date and/or marry is another one.

This scares the pants off of me. Here are two *huge* decisions. If we classify decisions into two types, ones that have a right answer, and ones that don't, I'm only good at one of those kinds. These two really really really important ones fall into the category I don't have much practice with. I'm reminded of Nickmo's joke about figuring out girls with calculus, "my normal approach is useless here!"

So, not to worry, but how am I supposed to find something that I want to do? I really feel like I have a lot to offer the world. I think that's one of the biggest concerns that I have about all of this. I don't want to do something where I can't use what I've been given to make things better for people. I worry that I won't be able to do that with engineering. I know that no matter what I do, I'll have the chance to help people. My career won't dictate that. But still, I don't want to shove the potential I have in a hole.

But there I go, did you hear those undertones? It's like, "I'm supposed to do something great and help people, so there's got to be one path that maximizes that path." I'm looking for the thing that I'll be best at. The one option. But I don't think there's one option.

Sorta crazy. I'm not in love with mechanical engineering, that's for sure. Maybe it'll grow on me, it's only been a week. I'm not discontent with the major just yet. But maybe there is something I'd rather do. Maybe there's something that makes my heart go a-flutter. Maybe there's something that I'm better at. Maybe there's not.

I could teach high school, honestly. I could go into medicine. I could be a blasted parkitect.

My life is a sine graph, I've documented it often. I know this is one of those things that comes and goes. But hey, isn't that important?

So, I dunno what I'm gonna do about it. But I don't want to hate my life because I didn't have the guts to say, "you know what, I was wrong when I declared that major. I'm going to throw away a semester of education to make sure that I get it right." I know my family won't like the idea at all, but that's alright. I'm not saying I'm going to take a semester to explore, but I might just consider it.

In any event, it draws late, as it so often does. I'm going to run off. I hope that you're all doing well. Really. I like you guys, you're pretty cool. Things are going well up here, but it's not all roses, but that's okay. Goodnight friends, much love~

Logan Blogaday - Day Nine

Confession: I've entirely forgotten what number day this is. I'm hoping it's nine because the last one I typed was eight. I could honestly be way off. Boy would that be embarrassing.

So a couple of cool things from today. Most importantly, some Murray boys that Marissa lives close to have been doing some serious trash-talk about Taylorsville. Topics of derision included our building, our football team, and our Ultimate skills. Marissa, being the good person she is, stood up for our Ultimate skills. Atta girl.

When me and Levi discovered this trash talk tonight from our informant, we immediately got excited. This sort of behavior can only lead to one logical resolution- Ultimate Showdown.

We're very excited about this. All six of us are on board. We're debating whether we should play with six or whether we should import a seventh guy or even find some subs. We're planning on delivering a challenge to them officially sometime tomorrow if we can. We're looking at next Tuesday for the showdown. We've got a planning meeting sometime tomorrow in the apartment that will include a whiteboard with at least two colors of markers. I'm stoked.

Because after all, this is bigger than just me. This is bigger than just Ultimate even. This is about where I come from and representation. This is for Mama Withers and Coach Hansen and T and even for the architect of our prison-resembling schoolhouse. This is for the boys who won't be able to make it to our Tuesday showdown- Kirt, Santy, Shelton, Glen, all those folks. This is even for the ladies on the hill. This is about Taylorsville. Yep. We're going to make you all proud.

Hopefully we'll have some documentation from the game to show here come Wednesday or so. We'll at least try to score some pictures or do a recap. In any even, this is something that we're committed to doing. We will have a showdown.

This has me really excited.

Walking home from campus today I stopped at the light to wait for the nice sign to say, "walk". Sitting there I realized that three of the six or so people at the corner had things shoved into their ears. Two of them had headphones, another guy had a blue-tooth headset.

It had never struck me before, and it wasn't a big deal this time either, but I realized that 50% of the people at the street corner had made a conscious decision to abandon the information that their environment was sending to them through their ears and substitute it for something of their own choosing. The world was offering them truth through sound waves, and they were whole-heartedly ignoring it and listening to what they had deemed pleasing.

I know this is a stupid philosophical vein I'm following here, and it's not like I'm crazy and upset about this. I just noticed it today for the first time, so I figured I'd explore it a bit.

I just don't really see the validity of thinking you are fully qualified to ignore the world around you. Do you really know enough about what's going on to cut off 20% of your sensory organs and devote them to listening to something you think is cool? That scares the crap out of me. Music you choose to listen to isn't offering you any chance to learn something about your environment. I think of it as the world offering you information through your ears. You're choosing to ignore that information. That seems incredibly prideful to me. Are you qualified to make that call?

So I know that's a bit extreme. But still. Sorta weirded me out to think of it like that. I really really love hearing what's going on. I'm a lot more terrified of ear-buds than I ever was before. I want to keep myself open to any auditory information that I will potentially be offered. There's just no chance of hearing that with ear-buds. Maybe I could learn something good. Or maybe I could listen to the goo goo dolls. And while I do love the goo goo dolls, I'd rather not get hit by a bus.

We get a sweet internet connection tomorrow. Score!

Calculus is looking super sweet. I love getting into it. Physics is actually really really cool too. My professor is a nut-case. The only word I can think of to explain his lecturing is frantic. It's delivered at break-neck speed, but not the kind of break-neck speed where he instinctively knows what he's talking about and we should to, oh no, it's the kind of speed where he's being followed by several mysterious men in black sunglasses and he's running for his life because he has no idea what's going in. I know that he knows the material, he just exudes these mannerisms that really make him seem jumpy to me. I know he's not nearly as extreme as I'm making him out to be, but at least it keeps me awake in class as I laugh about the prospect of 40 armed guys bursting into the room to cart him away for something. He just seems like he's running from everyone, I sorta like it.

I'm debating whether to go home or stay up here this weekend. I went home last weekend, and I'm ceratainly going home next weekend. It'd be nice to go to my ward up here, and it'd be a really good opportunity to get really deep into my homework and get some stuff done. There are a few people up here I'd really like to spend some time with too. On the other hand, though, a lot of my roommates are headed home, and that makes life up here lonely. It's a three-day weekend, so that makes going home worth a little more. Lots of people in Salt Lake I'd like to see, and there are a few old textbooks I'd like to get from my siblings down there. It looks like I'll be staying up here, but we'll see.

I've been pretty happy today. Things have gone really well. I'm enjoying all of my classes. I'm hoping to give blood on Friday. It's hard to schedule such a thing because I kept my classes very close together, and I'm pretty much booked through the day until after the vampires go away. I have a bit of time potentially tomorrow, but it's right before my Ultimate class. I don't actually have to go to that class tomorrow, but it would be a good opportunity to go and just play. We'll see. But I do really want to give blood. I've never done it before, but I believe in it, so I'd like to do it.

It looks like tomorrow will be a good day, but I have a lot that I need to get done. I've got a calculus assignment that I haven't started yet that I'll need to do. It's going to be fun doing it, I know, but I have no idea what to expect. We went over some of the problems in class today, and it actually looked really fun. I just hope that I get it done. I've got some physics to do online too, that'll be cool. I'm a big nerd, but I've got a lot of homework to get done tomorrow.

Pretty good day. I hope that you're all doing really well. I'm happy that we're friends. I suppose that if you're reading this because you stumbled upon it from elsewhere, well, you could be weirded out by that. But I'm talking to my friends. If you don't count yourself in that group, sorry, maybe we can be friends once you stop being a weirdo who's just reading my blog and we actually meet and share meaningful experiences together. In the meantime, friends, thanks for being here. To Melissa, I'm glad you're blogging too, that makes me happy. I'm glad that you're doing well in school. Keep your chin up, you're gonna do great. To, well, I don't have a personal note for anyone else right now. So, yeah, you're all cool too.

Merry blogaday day nine! I'm off for some study and then bed. Sleep well friends, you're swell.

Logan Blogaday - Day Eight

Happy Day Eight everybody. Thanks to everybody who has been reading and to those who have commented as well. Makes me feel all dandy inside it does.

It's pretty late, and I don't have my homework done. I don't exactly have my textbooks. In my attempts to not spend money on books, I seem to have run into the problem of not being able to get books without paying for them. I should have books by next week, but for now, I'm sort of running into tomorrow without having done the work. I should be okay though, there's nothing absolutely crucial about tomorrow.

It's late, like I said, so this is going to be short. I spent about an hour today in one of the quiet sections of the libraries pondering some stuff. I had an assignment for Creative Arts to try to tell the professor something about myself using only a traced picture of my own hand and my artistic abilities. "Very few words" was the key.

So I spent a long time thinking about it and actually doing it. As far as my own art projects go, it's not too bad. While there, though, I couldn't help but write down a bit of self reflection. I always intended to post it here, so I will. This will conclude the post for the evening, I think. So here it is, something I actually wrote out long-hand before I typed it.

Self Reflection -> August 26.2008 ~ 12:00 PM

-> I can't define myself in terms of the superficial. I understand that I, like everyone else, have an outward appearance. I love ultimate, I used to run, I had a long-term relationship with calculus that might be starting again. But how much of that actually contributes to who I feel I really am? How much of that is even remotely important to "me"?

-> It goes back to one of my blog's (and therefore my life's) enduring questions: "When did I start being me?" and "What defines who me is?"

-> I've always felt that it's the choices we make every day that makes us, "us". I'm not saying that's the answer everyone has got to live by, but something inside me always leans toward that.

-> Still, how do I put that into words? How do I convey that graphically? Even if I believe I have an inkling of part of the way I became the fragile and temporary me that I am right now, does that mean I know who me is?

It's been a good day. I hope that you're all doing excellent. I'm excited to study hard and do better tomorrow. Much love friends.

Logan Blogaday - Day Seven

(8) First day of school and I'm already failin' (8)

Happy first day of classes. They all went really well today. My first class was multivariable calc, and I'm very excited about it. My professor seems like he's going to be really helpful. I was pretty friendly and helped a few people who came in late. It looks like it's going to be super fun course material. It's essentially calculus in multiple dimensions. We took a bit of a look at three-dimensional stuff, you know, functions of x and y. Looks pretty intense. Physics was cool too, we launched right into waves right now. The professor seems pretty capable in here too. It's a fairly big lecture hall, but nothing I forsee problems coming from. The wave stuff sounded super complicated, but it's really nothing different from the sine stuff we did in calculus. That'll be fun. Creative arts was next, and that was a little crazy. I went from the rock-solid sciences to being creative. Yeah, little bit crazy, but it's alright. Professor sort of looks like a turtle.

So, a friend of mine from back home texted me today. "So, have you fallen in love yet?" Now, I've never been much of a romantic guy, but is it terrible for me to be so opposed to that idea right now? I'm having trouble wanting to make new friends. It's not that I don't like people or anything like that, I just feel like it couldn't really happen. I care about a lot of people, and that stuff is very important to me. I'm having trouble seeing the point in caring about other people just because they're cool or because they have classes with me. I'll be friendly and I'll be nice. If they need help, I will certainly be there to help them out- that's something I feel strongly about. But, I don't know. It's hard to see it happening.

I know it's something I'll have to work on. I can't go through life never caring about other people because there are already those that I care about. I just don't forsee it happening. What are the events or the things that made me start caring about the friends that I do care about? Is there any chance that those events can happen in Logan?

Maybe I'm a grumpy old man. I know that my logic here is fallacious. This can't really work out. I sort of think of my friends, the ones I really care about- as something really important to me. A big deal to me. I know that I don't ever really show that, since I'm not much of a "showing emotion" kind of guy. I think that I need friends. But I also think that I have friends. And if I don't have a fundamental need for new friends, why pursue that option? Just because a girl is cute or friendly, does that mean that I should invest my own emotion into making a "friend"? I think that's something that I really hold back on a lot- investing my own emotion. I haven't done much of it for a very long time.

That's a hurdle that I'll have to hop over one of these days. This is actually a really important topic to me right now. Something that I really feel like writing a whole lot about. But I understand how reckless that could be.

The value of this blog comes in that I have said things here that I would never have been brave enough to say elsewhere. I learn more about my own humanity by being emotionally reckless and taking a few chances.

So here I am. Am I willing to ignore the old man inside of me and go for it? Probably not- not tonight. Maybe one day I'll write the "I'm leaving on a mission for two years so I can finally spill the beans on all the things I wanted to write but never did for fear of the fall-out" post. I make it sound like I've got some secret or something, but I don't.

The situation that I'm in presents itself because of a disproportion. Some of the most important things to me in my life, the things I hold really close and dear, don't get talked about. On the other hand, a lot of things that aren't incredibly important get talked about a ton. That's an inequality, something that doesn't make a lot of sense.

And I know there are reasons that I don't talk about that stuff. One of the big reasons is because of how important it is to me. I hold it really close.

So, no secrets, just not something I share often. And it's tied to some of the stuff that I'm thinking about and dealing with now.

There's one of my friends that sorta makes me feel like a nincompoop when I talk to him. I know that that's not what either of us intended, but sometimes it just happens. I know that it's not true. But he talks about things that he knows a lot about, things that he thinks about so much more than I think about. He talks about relationships and dating and his latest exploits and all that fun stuff.

And that's great for him; I'm really okay with it. I only tell this because I know that I've lived. And I know that I'm me- and as me, I've experienced and felt important things. My life is unique and relevant. That's something that can't be taken away. So on those nights when I get the vibe that I'm just some little kid that doesn't know what he's talking about, well, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But what I've got is important. And what I've got is real. My life is a big deal.

Logan Blogaday - Day Six

Hey, back in Logan. Actually on my computer this time, how sweet is that? I borrowed a usb wireless network doober from my brother when I was home. I'm running on the apartment complex's pansy wireless stuff. It's incredibly slow, but it'll get the job done till thursday, so that's good news.

Classes start tomorrow, that's great news. I'm a little bit stressed out about stuff right now. My printer is being annoying.

So I'm not really gonna write much tonight. This might be the extent of my writing. Today really was a great day. It's nice to be at my own computer again. I think I'm going to head though. So, have a good one friends. I'll write something good tomorrow night, really. For now, I head out. Much love~

Logan (I'm at home tonight) Blogaday - Day Five

Yeah, not even in Logan. I'm at home, in the basement, typing this one up on my brother's lappy. I didn't bother to bring my computer home because I'm only here for a bit of today and tomorrow.

Classes went well today. Probably the best day of classes because it was a half-day and because we got to hear from our super cool guest speaker. I lounged about at the apartment (which I generally would refer to as home, except that I'm at *home* now) until dad showed up to take me and brad home. And then I came home.

It's 2:30. I just finished watching the American's take gold in men's basketball. This is the first olympic basketball game I've watched, but I've been very interested in how the team has been doing. I was shocked when we lostin Athens four years ago. I was pretty upset about all of that. In a way, though, I think it was very good for us. We came back with something to prove, and we proved it. I love that these guys were called the "Redeem Team". Such a sweet name. It was good to see all of them out there playing like they were. It was a pretty close game, Spain played incredibly. I'm very happy that we won though. There's nothing like representing America.

For some reason, I think that representing America is easier when you're a big team like that. I think that the individual gymnastics medals, those are a lot harder to say, "this is for America!" Yeah, you can say it, and we're all happy about it, but that's so individual. When you're a big team like the basketball team, all of you can deflect the individuality and score for America. I'm not saying that as nicely as I'd like to, but I hope you get the idea.

Tomorrow's a big day for me, and I'm excited about it. Today has felt sorta weird. Not bad, just different. Sort of like I missed a turn but didn't realize it or something.

That's something that's important to me, listening and figuring out what's important. I love blogging at the end of the day because sometimes it makes me think about what I've felt during the day. A lot of the times I'll feel like I need to do something during the day. Sometimes I'll do it right then, and other times I'll forget. Something like that happened today, and I forgot. But hey, it's 2:42, and there's something that I feel like I should do.

So I'm out, friends. Thanks for being here. This is a short post, but I feel pretty good about it. I hope you're all doing well :)

Logan Blogaday - Day Four

Hey, day four in the Logan. I suppose that day four is actually almost over. I survived day four, look at me go.

Classes seemed a lot longer than usual today. I think that was because we didn't have as much free time for lunch. Our lunch was delicious, supplied by the school, but we didn't have the usual two hour break we'd been having. That meant no raging ultimate at lunch, sad day.

This whole connections thing has been really interesting. I think they could get away with it being about half as long as it actually is. There are a ton of different sections, or classes, of connections. Something like twenty different groups of about twenty students running around campus. Me and James have been in the same section, and that's been a life saver. It's interesting because every professor has a ton of freedom as to what he or she will do for connections. Me and James have had a ton different experience than anyone else. Other sections have gone hiking. We've had lectures.

And the lectures have been informative, certainly, but it's been dragged on far enough I think. It's a great idea, but I think the execution needs a little bit of tweaking. Even just three days instead of four would be a big improvement.

I'm glad that I've been here though, absolutely. My university experience has been very interesting thus far. It's been very one sided I think. All I've seen is the honors group. It's so very interesting- I'm already signed up for honors. It's something that I decided that I wanted to do. We've spent about half the last week beating the honors thing to a very fine paste. Granted, I'm in an honors section of connections, so that makes sense. But it's like they're still trying to sell me on the idea of honors. I mean, really? I already decided to do it, I'm in. Tell me what to do. I get really scared because of how much marketing they are still doing. If honors was truly as good as they said it was, why do they have to beg and beg and beg students to do it? Why are they still worried I'm going to run away? I just wish that we could get past the "Honors is great!" point and start actually doing something. Give me a blasted 30 minute service project instead of a 30 minute lecture on why I should do honors. That'd convince me faster than anything that it was something that I ought to do.

But alas, I'm not in charge. I hope that I get a chance to evaluate what has gone on though, because feedback is always nice. I'll tell them how it is, so hopefully next year's connections can be a bit better.

But like I said, I'm glad I've been up here this week. I'm glad that Andrew wasn't here, cause it's sorta nice to try to be on my own without a big brother for a bit. I'm super excited to live with him and work with him, but I'm glad I got a bit of time to run on my own. I have a few hours of classes tomorrow and then I'm on my way home, so I'm pretty happy about that. All the ambassadors and all that suggest that you stay the first weekend up here so you can get all excited about social life, but there's a lot of incredibly important stuff waiting for me at home. Way more important than the university will ever be. So I'm homeward bound for Saturday and Sunday, hooray!

It's been cool to observe James in action throughout this connections business. He's like the golden honors student, maybe even the golden university student. He asks a lot of really good questions and cares about what he's doing. It's cool to see instructors take note of that. I like to think that I'm a pretty good student, but James is totally outshining me here. I'm totally happy with that. James obviously deserves it. I'm excited to start real school though. Real classes with actual work and learning. That's more like it.

I've been thinking a bit about physics lately. I'm really happy I'm taking a physics class this semester. I might want to minor in it, or maybe even change my major. I don't really have any solid reasons why, other than the fact that it sounds pretty cool at this point. I sort of want to be more academic, you know what I mean? We'll see what engineering is like, as well as what physics is like. One of the cool things about the mechanical engineering degree is that you can get a math minor without taking any extra classes I'm pretty sure. That's good news. We're going to see what happens.

A lot of what we talked about today seemed to be how to succeed at college. I got the message over and over again that it was mostly about cozying up to the professors and getting into extra work and junk like that. Thinking about it, that's all that I did for Junior high and high school. I worked really hard for Brough, Sharpe, and Peck in junior high. In high school I worked for Hansen like crazy, T a little bit, and then did a bunch with the seminary. I have no idea what I'm going to do here in Logan, but I'm sure I'll find something. It's something that I'm comfortable and happy to do, take on extra responsibility and all of that. We'll see where my future takes me- it's pretty wide open right now.

Yeah, I really don't have much that's pressing on my mind right now. I'm really excited to go to bed. I didn't take a nap today! I'm going to sleep really well. It'll be hard to get up for class in the morning, but I think that I'll make it somehow. It should be good, we're listening to a pretty cool guest speaker who should have some really cool things to say.

It's been nice to start meeting my neighbors and getting some friends in my connections class. I'm really looking forward to meeting more friends from more places. I really think this whole college experience is going to be great. It'll have its ups and downs, obviously. But I'm excited for it. For now, it's time for me to get to studying and then head to bed. I hope you're doing great, have an excellent time friends.

Daily Stats:
Avg. Bloodsugar: 137
Times Tested: 7
Water Consumption: One half gallon
Exercise: One short game of Ultimate, lots of walking
Milk Intake: One glass- I'm gonna go have another
Fruit Intake: Three bananas
Ramen: Yes
On Time: Five minutes late to meeting time this morning, but not important
New people met who's names I can remember: Three (four if I'm lucky. Right now I'm not lucky- it started with an A!)

Goodnight Friends! Tomorrow I post from blessed Taylorsville.

Logan Blogaday - Day Three

Hey friends, happy Thursday to you. Merry Blogaday day three. I'm at my computer tonight. I still have no internet connection, but I decided that I wanted to type it here and then transfer it over to Levi's lappy to post it. It's just a more familiar place for me. I like my keyboard, I like my monitor, and it's a lot more, I dunno, familiar. It feels more like home, and I think I'll be able to explore a little bit more tonight than I have the past couple.

Today's been good. Nothing too fantastic went on, but it was nice. I learned a few things about myself tonight. Or, well, not so much learned as re-observed. It's not a new mechanic that I saw, just something that I know I need to work on.

They have evening activities for connections. So we have class during the day and optional fun stuff in the evening. Last night was some party at the HPER field, which I chose not to go to until it was over. Tonight was some comedian with a bit of magician thrown in. Everybody went to it but me and Brad. Not sure what Brad did tonight, but I took a few hour nap instead of going. It wasn't so much a conscious choice of “I don't want to go, I'm going to take a nap” but rather that I was sleeping a bit before time to go, and then I didn't want to get up because I was already down.

It's not that big of a deal, but it's interesting to see how I start to work. I think that naturally I'm not a very extroverted individual. Seeing me in class and stuff like that you wouldn't necessarily say that though. I talk to people in class and I offer answers. I think I was fairly well known at high school. I'm not socially backwards, and I'm not saying that I am. I'm just noticing more and more that sometimes I have a tendency to stay home instead of going to be with people.

I thrive on society, really. There's something deep within me that tells me that that's where I belong. But that's something higher. The natural mechanism within me doesn't push me to be social, it pushes me to stay home and sleep. I'm not saying that this is a big deal, I'm just trying to fight it. Not huge, but something I want to get over. Because I do thrive on people, and I'm happy when I'm with them. Like I said, I feel like that's where I'm supposed to be. So, I'm going to work harder on it. Not that my loyal readers can do much about it, but if you and I ever happen to be in the same town and you know I'm at home instead of being with people, call me out on it.

So I just spent a few hours talking with my buddies about a lot of stuff. So I'm feeling a lot happier than I was a paragraph ago. I think tonight is going to be a much deeper night than the past few.

One of the recurring themes of this blog has always been my transitory nature. My ephemeral inconsistency, my many faces, whatever you want to call it. I'll think of a better title later, because all of those have a pretty negative connotation except maybe the first one. Moral of the story: I'm always curious to see and recognize and record how I change. It's very clear to me that the way I act in certain situations and at certain times changes.

I used to think I was incredibly solid and that I didn't change. I wonder if I used to be like this. I wonder if this is just something I notice because I've been trying to learn more about myself for the past several years, or if it just started happening in the past several years.

I'm not one of those guys that lives his life differently on Sunday than he does on Tuesday. And I don't think I'm one of those guys that is nice to people when they're around and then a jerk to them when their back is turned. I don't think I put on a nice show for the cameras and then be a scum-bag when I'm with my close friends. I don't want to be one of those people, and I don't think that I am. But I recognize that my actions and performance in a social setting is very different from my actions and performance here or somewhere else. My speech pattern is a little bit different, I stand differently, I think a little differently. I like to think that I sort of optimize myself for the situation that I'm in. When I need to be funny and confident, I sort of adapt and play the part subconsciously. This never happens on purpose- I don't try to do any of this. It happens.

I think that this new environment that I'm in has put me in a different mode. My post last night was very much a social post. It was meant to make people chuckle a little bit. It had very little to do with discovering myself as a person, and a lot to do with discovering myself as a machine. My statistics at the bottom of the page last night made me so happy. I thought it was so cool that I could remember that, and so cool that I was logging it. It was efficiency. I was gathering data to make myself operate better. It was one side of me- the very pragmatic side.

So last night we saw a social kind of me and towards the end a pragmatic side of me. Tonight we see a lot more of the identity side of me. The side that thinks about who he is and why he is that way and explores those topics through a blog post.

I haven't formally named and assigned all these random sides of me, and I'm not going to. That'd make me too weird I think. But it is interesting to note how it's happening. I don't quite know how I feel about it. I feel very good about the fact that I know that I'm always me. I know that I won't lose that. I know that I have integrity. But sometimes I feel happier than other times. Sometimes I make jokes; sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm really interested in math and science. Other times the most important things in my life can only be reached through text.

I'm going to wager that I'm not the only one. I think it's something that we're all going to have to deal with in our own ways. This isn't necessarily a problem, it's just the way things are I'm thinking. I'm sure a psychology major could explain it to me. And I'm not sure why I wrote all of it, other than the fact that it's something that I thought about today, and I'm usually in the business of writing stuff that I've thought about.

I studied a very tiny bit of calculus tonight. Integration by parts. I knew it real well around AP test time, and had no idea how to do it this afternoon when me and James decided to try it on a whim. So I looked it up tonight. It was a rush.

I'm very excited about Ultimate right now. I think I'm going to play again tomorrow at lunch. We didn't today, but that was probably good. We've been looking for a killer name for our intramural team. We've got a few ideas of what we want out of it, but we don't really have too many ideas that we're in love with yet. I might run a competition here to see if we can find any great ideas. I'm just really excited to compete.

We have classes tomorrow, and I'm going to make it a point to go be social tomorrow night. We have a few classes on Saturday, and then I'm headed home for the weekend. I'll be back up Sunday night. It'll be nice to get home. I think leaving will be a lot harder the second time than it was the first time, but it'll be alright. I'm really excited to start real classes. Connections is fine and dandy, but I feel a little- we're sort of going nowhere. There's not a real reason that we're here. Classes have a reason. I'm excited for that.

Hey, end of the post it looks like. I'm glad that I'm posting. I don't feel like blogaday is changing my life right now, but I'm excited about keeping the prospect open just in case it does one of these times. I love blogging. I miss my internet connection. I've heard from a couple of different people that they miss seeing me on messenger all the time. I didn't necessarily talk on messenger all that often towards the end there, but it was nice to be around and available. I'll be back to that pretty soon, a week from today I'm hoping. But, I miss being present. It's cool though, cause we're getting there. Today had its ups and downs, but I learned some stuff and moved forward on a little bit. I'm growing up, that's sorta nice. Tomorrow should be a good day.

I always end like this, but, well, that's because I care about it. Thanks for being around friends. I'm sure glad I have you. Good luck with everything. We're sometimes pretty far away, but I know we still care about each other. I like that. Goodnight friends~

Daily Stats:
Avg. Bloodsugar: 130
Times tested: 7
Sleep: 5 + 0.5 + 2.5 = 8 (weird day)
Water Intake: One Gallon
Milk Intake: 4 glasses. Not bad.
Fruit Intake: at least four bananas, probably five.
Vegetable Intake: a tiny bit of spinach from Kyle's spinach puffs. I need to find out how to get more vegetables in the diet. Any great suggestions?
Ramen: Yes
Progresso: No
Punctuality: On time to classes.
Exercise: Eight minutes of jogging + two minutes of jogging later.
Estimated bed time: 3:30
Estimated wake time: 7:45
Estimated time I'll get tired of doing these stats: Tomorrow (but I don't care, I love them for now)

Much love, goodnight friends!