Anonimity

I'm becoming more and more like Dad every day.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm here tonight because A: I don't have anything else to do, and B: I have a lot of thoughts that need to be let out. So this post may be a bunch of random thoughts vomited onto the web; we'll see.

First things first, I have to give a shout out to my amazing sister Whitney for returning home from her mission. She did not have an easy mission, and that is what has impressed me the most. In a nutshell, she had to go home about 3 months into her mission for medical reasons. As she was home, her health deteriorated and word of "MS" and "ALS'' began to be mentioned in conversation. Not just scary stuff, but things that most missionaries would say, "Well, I showed a willingness to serve. I guess it's time to move forward." Now, I'm in no way saying that's a bad thing; I think that's a very positive outlook and a mature way to handle it. The thing that really surprised and impressed me beyond words is that in the face of all that, Whitney decided to keep fighting and figuring out a way to get back out. Some switch in her head flipped and she just fought and fought until she finally got the green light to return 4 months later. She went on to serve a very honorable, complete mission, and blessed countless lives in the process. Congratulations Boo-Boo, and Welcome Home :)

So, we continue to move forward in life. The house is filled up again with people, and the Earth keeps on spinning. I'm still busy as ever with work. I was pretty upset to see my first paycheck and find over $100 pulled out in taxes. Thanks, Government. Not like I needed that money for anything. So I had to do a little rebudgeting based on what my new projected income will be, and it's putting a little bit of a dent in my pocketbook; but I suppose in the end things will work out okay.

Okay, so here's more or less the reason why I've been hankering to write this post. It's actually been on my mind for a couple of days, but I just haven't gotten around to posting it because shut up. I've had this really weird and "not like me" quirk since I got home that I just plain do not want to see people. Once I'm actually with the people it's great and I'm super happy to see them! But if I'm making a trip to the grocery store or the mall or crossing BYU Campus, I just dread the thought of running into someone I know. Ever since I got back, I've kinda kept an unnaturally low profile. Anyone that knew me 2 years ago knows that I'm a rather eccentric person who is very opinionated, a little (or a lot depending on who you ask) loud, and slightly in love with the spotlight. Now, I am seem to be making a subconscious effort to stay out of the very limelight I used to thrive on. Why, you may ask? The answer I am stuck with giving people, and worse, giving to myself, is that I have no idea.

Is this a reason to panic? I doubt it. It's summer, and I don't really have a lot of limelights to jump into, so it may just be me trying to sneak back into society unnoticed. Maybe it's that I don't want to be put on the RM pedestal. Maybe it's because I'm honestly becoming anti-social. Who knows; I certainly don't. All I know is that I often just want to be a nobody in the crowd.

One thing that I have noticed is that there's few people in the same boat as me. With Social Media gaining more and more followers every day, we live in a world where we practically live everyone else's lives with them, without ever really living a life of our own. As my dad mentioned just the other day, there are some things that should just be kept to oneself and not shared for the world to see (having difficulty passing a kidney stone is one of them). Fewer things are special or personal because we're all so eager to broadcast every moment of our waking lives to the world. Because there's so many different social media sites out there, and so many statuses and pictures posted just among your own friends (let alone the people you follow), it's easy to become obsessed and even addicted to getting on. It's like checking the fridge on a boring day. No matter how many times you open it, new food isn't going to pop up out of nowhere. Just like a life isn't going to pop up in your news feed on Facebook no matter how many times you check and recheck it.

Even with the race to have the most exciting (or maybe just busy) social media page, we still put on a mask and hide from the world. It's like we're living of the world but not in it. It's so easy to spew out any insult over the internet because you have as long as you need to compose your "perfect" comeback, and you don't need a heart or feelings because you don't have to see the broken person on the other side of the screen. The worst part of it is that any time anyone tries to be as social in real life as most people are on the internet, we look at them as either A) A Pervert/Stalker/Creep, B) A Weirdo/Freak, or C) Old and Out of Touch. So for some reason we want to get up in each other's digital faces and yet when anyone even approaches our real face, we feel violated and weirded out!! You can have a room full of people and all you'll hear, if you listen closely, might be the sound of thumbs thudding against a touch screen. Just the other night, the whole family (my family) was all in the same room but no one was saying a word to one another. Everyone was living in their own little world, and we all just sort of coexisted in the same room. It's scary because every single one of us is guilty of it.

All of this has just kind of made me want to not show my whole life off to the world. So that may be in part why I've been keeping a low profile. Again, I'm not sure, but that's my personal theory. Tonight, for example, I just decided I was done with my phone. I put it down and just left it there. If I missed calls or texts, I don't care; I'm not using my phone for the rest of the day. Don't mistranslate this as me announcing that I'm deleting Facebook, Instagram, and this Blog to be Amish. I still love how much of a miracle all of this is. Through these mediums we can keep in contact with people that it would be impossible to keep in contact with otherwise. I was able to Skype my family as a missionary, and I can keep in touch with old friends that have moved away. I think the biggest thing, as we are so frequently counseled to do, is to keep a balance on all of these things. We've all heard how we need to bridle our passions; I believe that certainly involves curbing our digital appetite as well. 

That world we're all so eager to share can seem pretty empty outside when we're all cooped up in our little corners of the world. So use your phones and use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (okay, you don't have to use Google+), but just remember that in the end, the thing in your hand is a bunch of plastic and metal that shouldn't run your life. Mankind has made it this far because we've learned to harness and control the elements and objects around us to create whatever we have wanted or needed. That ingenuity has made man fly, live in inhospitable places, predict the weather (sometimes), and instantly find answers to our questions. We haven't come this far and made this much progress to fall prey to our own devices. We created the smart phone, but it was never designed to outsmart us. So take some time to put the phone down and go do something non-technology related for a change. Show the phone, and yourself, that you're in control.  

“I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

― Albert Einstein

AMS

Out to the Ballgame

I think this way is better

This wouldn't be a post on this blog if I didn't start by throwing out some excuse for why I haven't written for a week+. Well, frankly it's because I love you and didn't really have anything exciting to report. BYUtv owned my soul last week and I didn't think it'd be very appealing to read about how I did the same thing every single day.

Seriously, my weekend from Thursday to Saturday consisted of filming baseball and softball games. I kid you not, I would wake up, go film baseball, then go to bed. 3 days. It was great.

Honestly, it was pretty fun to get paid to watch baseball on the field. How many people can say they have a job that pays them for sometimes (most of the time in fact) the best seat available for all college sports? Not many I'd imagine. This weekend was actually my first time filming a baseball game and I had 1st base camera. I wasn't even supposed to work Thursday but they called me in to fill in. Well, somehow it came about that I didn't need to fill in, so they had me shadow the same spot I'd be filming Saturday, so it worked out okay. I was watching intently and trying to learn the spot so I wouldn't mess anything up Saturday, when the cameraman I was shadowing decided I was ready to take over and he was ready to get paid to eat a hot dog. He told me to keep the headphones only half on so I could hear him telling me what to do.

Well, that wasn't going so well considering I had the director in one ear, my supervisor in the other, and my brain wasn't really computing either. That resulted in me making a couple of dumb mistakes on live TV...oops. After the second or third blatant mistake, I hear the director say, "Who's on Camera 5??"

Um...it's Alex, sir.

Well, that didn't go over so well, but my supervisor was gone to get his hot dog by then so we just had to move forward. The rest of the game wasn't so bad, it was just a crash course learning my job, but no major mistakes after the 4th inning or so. The director talked to me about doing a better job the next time, but other than that it was all okay considering how I was trained...

Friday we did a softball double-header and that was a much more entertaining game than the baseball game. We got ours handed to us at the baseball game, but the softball team won the conference championship for the 4th year in a row! That was pretty exciting to watch. I also filmed the "classic" baseball angle:

Yes ladies and gentlemen, those lights mean my camera is live.

Saturday was back to baseball, but luckily this time we were done by 5. Yay! Alex has Saturday evening to relax!!

No.

As you recall, I have two jobs. The other job is a video editor for the Arts Department. That evening I was in charge of filming the Children's Dance Recital. Its basically where a bunch of moms living vicariously through their children sign their children up for dance classes that they choreograph and watch their kids perform their dances. It's one of those things. Anyways, my only job was to turn the camera on, push freaking 'record', turn the stupid camera off, and take it back to the flipping office. That's it. Seems simple right? Well, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. I went to our office to grab a battery, but the only battery was at like 15% which isn't near enough for a full show. I took the battery and its charger and prayed there was another one available at the theater. I then headed down the hall to the Richard's Building Theater for the show only to find out the show's actually in the DeJong Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Center on the other side of campus. Great. So I hurry over there right before they open to the public which was just enough time to set up the camera. The camera had a battery at 50% so I knew I'd have to switch at some point, but I didn't know when and didn't want to cross that bridge until I got to it. Everything went fine until the moment came to cross that bridge. A number ended and I knew I had about 15 seconds to turn the camera off, swap batteries, and start recording again. Well, I must have done it too fast because my memory card got glitched and didn't want to record anymore. Lucky for me it was Intermission so I had time to run back to the RB and grab another card. I told the Stage Manager to stall for time and I took off literally sprinting like a fool.

I made it back in time to put the card in, and what would you know? I grabbed the one card that had the recording of the show from the night before. So now not only is my problem not solved, but I also am risking losing both shows!!

So, with 20 minutes of recording time left, I just pushed record and ran back again to the RB and grabbed like 3 more cards. No way I was making the mistake again. When I got the card in, it started looking black and white in the playback screen but at that point, I just didn't even care. I was sick of problems and the whole show could have gone to kaput and the camera blow up in my face for all I cared at that point. I was tired, and I was done with that show. Fortunately we got the whole show captured in color with no problems. I took the equipment back and at 10 PM I was finally done for the night. I found Jake, Joe, Ethan, and Wes to enjoy a little needed Bro Time for the end of the night.

Every time I tell a story about something ridiculous or difficult or annoying that happened at work, Mom and Dad always without fail try and make me feel better by reminding me to think about the money. Dad always sings a song with the lyrics "Money, money, money, money, makes me feel good." I used to always think that was a real song, but it looks like you'll only ever find it in the Dad Hymnal. I think they think if they remind me of that I'll suddenly imagine this and feel better:

But in the end, all I end up seeing is this:

In the end, I am grateful for my jobs and that they're so much fun. I don't expect them to go perfectly and without problems, especially since I'm just getting back in the swing of things work-wise. It's just those little moments that make me chuckle at how ridiculous life can be. It's learning to laugh at the uncontrollable ridiculous garbage that we put up with that makes my world go round.

AMS

From Zero to Busy

Life's Finally Almost Back!

Okay, the main purpose of me not having written the past week is there really hasn't been a lot to report on. I remember I was a lot more able to come up with meaningful entries in college because there was variety new things to report on daily. Now? Well, let's just say that life is about to get interesting again.

I start work this afternoon and I couldn't be more excited to get going again! The downside to today is that I won't be getting paid because the office I needed to fill paperwork out at decided to close for 5 days for graduation. That was a 1 day thing; why the heck do you need 5 days to be closed?? No matter, at least it's something to do; though I would like something to do with money.

The week before was a lot of spending time with Jake and Ethan. Now that Jake's back and neither of us could start working until this week, we figured instead of being a menace to other people with busy lives, we would just hang out and help keep each other busy. The biggest key to making a decent transition back into the real world is just keeping yourself busy. As a missionary you have an hour by hour plan for each day for 2 complete years. Literally, there isn't a single day that goes by without a plan from 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM. Then you get home and literally have nothing at all to do and hardly any expectations to uphold. Wanna take a 3, 4, 10 hour nap? No one's gonna stop you, so go for it. Except your conscience won't let you so you just end up staying up and twiddling your thumbs because you don't know what to do with yourself. That is the situation I've been battling the past few weeks.

Well, the battle is over and I now have a good 30 hours of work under my belt from the past week. It's not as much as I want but it's a good start. The most important part of it all is that it's giving me something to do. I have two jobs on BYU campus now. One is the heavenly job back at BYUtv as a cameraman. I've talked about this job and how much I love it before, but it begs repeating. I love working as a cameraman for BYUtv. I seriously don't know how I got so lucky to have a job like that but I absolutely love it! It's giving me something really great to put on my resume and on top of that it's super fun!

My other job is as a video editor for BYU Arts Video Production. Basically, different departments in the arts department can hire us to their pleasure and have us film their shows, rehearsals, and classes. Then we go and edit the footage and put it on YouTube or put it on DVD's. It's a really fun job that lets me be creative and in charge of the projects I'm assigned to seeing that I basically head the project from start to finish. I of course have a supervisor, but he's really good about letting the students retain their style in making these videos; and we're careful not to take advantage of that. It's a great job, and both jobs are giving me a ton of work experience in the multimedia field.

Speaking of work, that's all I've done this past week. There was the BYU Women's Conference that ate up the majority of my week, particularly between Wednesday and Friday. It's a great faith-boosting experience for the women that are there, but for a guy, you feel dangerously outnumbered and extremely unsafe. One sexist joke and it'll be like this:

Not safe.

Anyways, the second day I was doing work for the big event in the Marriot Center at BYU and I got the most lucrative job of all: Script Reader. Basically my job for 10 hours was to sit next to the director and follow each line of the script with a pen to help him keep track. Yep, I got paid to point at a script. And yes, it was as exciting as it sounds. Let's just say I prefer being behind the camera. After the whole shabang was over, I went to the Marriot Center to help take the cameras down. All of the Relief Society, Young Womens, and Primary presidencies were there in the tunnel and I walked past every single one of them. I even was wheeling one of the cameras into the tunnel and almost ran into Jean Stevens who is in the Primary Presidency. As cool as an experience that was, Sister Stevens, if you ever read this...sorry about that.

So that's my life now! I really am going to try and get a more frequent updating so I can actually have a journal like blog. That was the whole purpose of this thing, but it doesn't do a whole lot of good if I post in it every other week...I'll try to do better.

AMS