I have lost the joy in reading.  I have forgotten how to express myself in words.  Yet, I am inextricably drawn to writing tonight.

October 23, 2014 . . . . time has passed.  Over three years since my last entry.  Those who followed me have long since stopped.  This blog was never about recognition.  It was, is, and outlet for my feelings and my thoughts.  The public nature of it gives my writing a potential voyeuristic intrigue that emboldens one to be daring, yet careful.  The juxtaposition of freedom with restraint created the perfect environment to write. Yet, why have three years passed since I sat down at 2:30 a.m. to let my passion out?

I suppose the answer is law school.  You would suppose spending hours every day reading cases and spending hours debating the details would encourage one to write and to read.  Rather, the monotony killed both my passions.  I found myself pushing away books that once made me think and evaluate life.  I had to think and evaluate enough case law.  I had to come to understand how words could be twisted to not express, but to justify and defend.  Teenage fiction fed my appetite for literature.  Much like fast food, the diet of young adult fiction has destroyed my mental health.  I am weak, my mind out of shape, and my writing has suffered.  

Writing is no longer an outlet, it is a job.  I go to my office every morning at 7:45.  I sit down, and read political news.. .  anything to avoid the drudgery.  Finally I start to review the different research projects for the day and I begin.  I read cases, I write holdings, I attempt to make arguments that are at times specious.  There is no passion to my arguments.  I am not advocating, I am merely an automaton, a small wheel in the large machine that is a law firm.  My joy comes in those moments when I get to break out of research, where I get to apply my skills to solving issues.  I just want to serve, to resolve issues, to be of use.  Service is the very purpose of our lives, and when I am not serving and growing, then I am withering and unhappy.

I don't hate my job, I actually love where I work and with who I work.  Billings is a beautiful city.  My office is small but cozy.  New wood desk, new book shelves, new credenza, three diplomas on the wall, a pencil sketch of my family's home ranch.  Mix in an aloe vera plant, some pictures of Shalise, my grandmother, and a huge whiteboard to draft my thoughts, oh..and two chairs and you have my happy prison cell for ten hours a day.  I am a willing prisoner.  I willingly locked myself in that cell everyday because I have been bought and paid for with a salary, health benefits, the American dream.

So why tonight, why start writing again tonight.  Simple...I felt the spark again.  The fire doesn't rage like it once did.  More innocence has left, more nativity with life, perhaps even some of my intellect.  What is left is a Gage with more experience, more "accomplishments" and someone looking for the brightness in life.  The light I was searching for was found tonight, in a movie.  The movie wasn't even that good, but it displayed the human experience. . .  and I am a fan of the human experience.  

Watching humanity makes me happy, sad, passionate, loathing, and every other emotion in between.  I am a "sucker" for a good movie or good music that touches those raw emotions that humans feel.  Those raw emotions are better than any drug. Those emotions are what makes life beautiful.  The oppressing sadness of first heartbreak, the tender flitterings of first love, the soul wrenching sorrow of losing a loved one, the joy of marriage.  These moments, less than one percent of our lives, are what gives flavor to our mortal experiences.  So when I find art that taps me, even momentarily, into one of those base, raw emotions, then I have to write.  

I almost wrote the other day.  I was driving up the Beartooth Highway in Montana.  Nature was so beautiful and I felt myself waxing philosophical, but my wife was not in the mood to discuss life at that point.  So I held the emotions back . . . and they passed.  So tonight, I decided that the small flame had to be fanned, and not put out.

This entry has no purpose, . . wait, that is a lie.  The purpose is to get back into the habit of putting words, feelings, thoughts into physical, tangible form.  The point is to find joy again while I express myself.  I might be VERY tired tomorrow for my conference . . . but there is always time to read another treatise on oil/gas law.  There is always another time to listen to another speaker, watch another power point... But the times we have to live those raw moments, oh they so rare and so precious.  

I hope it doesn't take another three years to be inspired enough to write.  Rest in peace knowing that I will fan the flames of my passion and creativity and seek to find outlets to express said emotion.  In short, I plan on living my life like I write, with deep passion and stringent restraint.  Poised and strung like a bow between experiencing life to its fullest and expressing those feelings while restraining my impulses within the rigid formalities of morality.  Such is my life, and such is what gives me success and gives me the power, the reflex to spring through my mortal journey and into the eternities.

  

New Beginnings - Mixed with the "Same ol Same Ol"

I have not written in a long time.  I doubt anyone truly reads this, but the cathartic relief is sufficient to encourage me to write once again.

Where do I begin,....seeing that I have been absent so long, it will suffice to start somewhere in the middle.  I will call this the new beginning, and as we shall see, it is much like the "same ol same ol" of my life.

I have finished my first year of law school, and I have been encouraged, discouraged, fallen in love, broken up, dated, stressed, slept very little, and ultimately questioned why I am even pursuing this career.  In the end, I am still in long school and doing decent.

I remember the first few weeks of school.  Having grown accustomed to walking into a classroom setting and within a few class periods realizing there were a handful of students that would be competition for grades, law school has come as a shock.  Week after week, it was I who was not understanding and I would listen in awe as the intelligent answers would surround me.  I was among equals at the least, and more likely, individuals whose capabilities and levels of understanding far surpassed my own.  It was a nice dose of humility.  To this day I periodically pray for God to humble me.  The very essence of that request leads to an implication that I am prideful.  I do not feel myself arrogant, but I do know that I have pride and that I perform my best and am closest to my God when I debased and seeking his aide.  I feel law school was a giant "smack down" from my Father who knew I needed to turn to him for aide once again.

That is the conundrum isn't it? In school and life we are taught to rely on our abilities, work in teams, but rely on in our skills.  We are rewarded for those talents and the efforts and we are punished or fail as an individuals typically.  To seek the aide of another, and then to judge your existence and success in his terms is a hard lesson to learn, and unfortunately it is a lesson I am being continually taught.

The first semester turned out alright, mainly because of a few dears friends who pounded away at the books with me the last few weeks.  Kyle Woodhouse and his playful competition, but older brother kindness was instrumental in my success, as was the perseverance of my dear friend Molly.  Unfortunately, Molly and I do not continue to be close, but I deeply respect and am so thankful for her.  We took practice tests all the time, and when the time for the real tests came, we were prepared.  My grades were....well far better than I ever deserved.  As the grades came out, I came to the realization that I had the capacity to do well in law school, but it would require more effort.

Enter the plague of relationships.  I LOVE physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy.  I crave attention and physical contact, and so I am very open to relationships.  However, I am not good at committing, although I never cheat,....I get cold feet quite often.  I always find a perfect excuse out of a relationship....my school.  So it was for the last two semesters where I would jump from a relationship, to a quasi relationship, back to a relationship.  Above all of this was the struggle to separate my feelings for someone I had grown to believe I might marry.  Our on and off again relationship wreaked havoc on any other potential I had.  My family grew distant as I separated from them and their discouragement.  It wasn't until I saw the destruction in my life that I realized no matter how much I wanted something, it wasn't worth losing everything else for it.  THAT realization brought a second realization....I should be willing to give up everything for someone and since I was not willing to do that here...it was not the right person.  So I let go...and found someone new...someone who has edified me and made me feel close to complete again.

Second semester....grades were not as forthcoming, but I studied harder and in return I feel more proud of what I learned in the second semester than what I learned and accomplished my first semester.  I tried out for every co-curricular team that I could.  I made Trial Ad. team, then I competed in Moot Court and I won the competition, off brief no less in the final.  My own written brief was awarded a top 5 position.  When grades come out, I had fallen, but was still in a relatively good position to apply for jobs in the fall.

Those last weeks are school were magical, or at least the lack of sleep made them appear as such.  I spent the majority of my time with Shalise, studying, working, and occasionally going to do something fun.  All our first dates were hindered by bad turns of luck.  I fell sick and had to throw up at the premier of The Hunger Games, she got sick after we got frozen yogurt and went for a midnight drive up the canyon,....and so the perseverance finally led us to walking Y mount together.  After a short time together, and many long hours working at law review, we both said goodbye as she went to Germany and I headed to Guatemala.

In Guatemala I had an experience of a life time.  My spanish improved, I fell in love with a culture and people, and ultimately felt closer to my grandmother than I have ever in my life.  I understood better her frame of reference to life after seeing the poverty and corruption in Central America, and yet I found out where her spice and eagerness for life comes from.  I was robbed at gun point, felt up at gun point, got amoebas and lost ten pounds, rode the craziest most dangerous buses, renewed friendships, met indigenous Mayans in the highlands, saw all of the Oriente in Guatemala, and strengthened my testimony.  Guatemala was just what my life needed.  More than any legal training I received working as an extern for the Central American Legal Counsel for the LDS Church, I was taught to turn to the Lord again.  It was with a heavy heart I left Guatemala.  I feel a part of my family is still there in the form of the Gordillo family, who opened their hearts to me.

Next, came China...and presenting my economic thesis on agricultural collusion and its ability to control for seasonality.  I flew by myself after one day in Provo, which I spent with Shalise, to China.  Shanghai was gorgeous, but it was also so polluted.  No one spoke English in China, and so I was at a loss.  In Guatemala I could communicate in Spanish and many people spoke English, but in China I was truly lost.  I stayed in a five star hotel, ate like a king, and suffered with massive jet lag.  After presenting my thesis, I later traveled by bullet train going 350 mph, up to Beijing in 5 hours. There I rented a private tour guide and car and traveled to the Great Wall of China, Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, and a private tea ceremony.  I wasted more money that I should have getting presents.  The beauty of traveling and buying gifts, is not that you want the gifts or even need them, but you love the feeling of joy you receive as someone else gets a gift and their face lights up in joy. 

My credit cards and debit cards were put on hold because the banks did not keep them open for international use for an extra day, and so at the airport I was going to be left with no money.  A kind chinese woman working for American Airlines allowed me to take my extra suitcase on with no extra payment.  The generosity was heartfelt and I cried.  That is a story with a moral that I will need to write later.

Back in Utah, I had a dear friend come visit me from New York, and then I traveled later to Seattle to visit Shalise and her family.  At this point....I was very tired of airports.  However, the Pacific Northwest has a way of rejuvenating me.  I must express a preference for Oregon and its coast, but I did love the Puget Sound.  We saw an animal preserve, drove to Mattawa to a reception for my dearest friend Danny, and then spent time with her family.  After a few days, I returned back to Provo and working on a religious treatise on land usage for religious organizations and research on water rights by prior appropriation in the West.  A few more weeks past, and then I was on an airplane to interview in Texas for the potential of a summer job next year.  After meeting with Sidley Austin, Vinson Elkins, Locke Lorde, and K&L Gates....I realized that perhaps I did want to be an attorney.  I always have wanted to be an attorney, but the editing of a treatise is not the most exciting fare for a summer.  Still, these firms posed a bright future where intellectual stimulation seemed to be a daily occurrence, or at least a weekly occurrence.  My interviews were all failures, but at least my passion for a career had come back.

Back in Provo...and this last weekend.  I am cleaning my room, my apartment, and finishing work on the treatise.  School starts to soon....and I am preparing for more interviews.

This whole message was meant to express my feelings, and it has instead become a travel log.  I will write in the not so distance future about something more substantive, and I will add pictures!

Sleepless in Provo

I am in Provo.....and I am sick.....and though exhaustion racks my body, my mind is alive and alert from the stress of knowing I have so much to do, and yet another day has passed with me barely touching it as it flees on by.

Summer was a change in my life. I made a true income, I spent like I made a true income, I loved and lost, and then I loved again. My faith was tested, my resolve changed, my empathy grew, my sadness magnified ten times, and my soul ached. I have tasted bitterness and I have not been able to let its taste leave my mind or heart. I have cried and smiled more than ever before...and so much passion led to this..... the faster moments of my life.

I am in law school, and every day is a blur of activity. I learn so much to only realize that the knowledge is fleeting and not staying with me. I have never felt like there wasn't enough time to do what needs to be done, but I do now. I have never felt like I wasn't intelligent, but now I feel humble and as average as any other man. This experience has broken what resolve I had left, and now I am trying to piece back together a dream of what I want in the future?

Do I want to be an attorney? Do I want to live in Montana? Who do I want to be with for the rest of my life? So many questions, and so few answers.....and I need to slow down. Life is meant to be experienced, but the guiding comes from God.....

I need to sleep, and I will try now, for 6 hours, then another full day. I need to write more often, to tell about taking my friend to the MTC, about rodeos, new loves, my schooling, and above all about my testimony of life and God's purpose therein for each of us to fulfill. How wonderful it is to know we are not alone, to know our moments are measured above. How reassuring to have a prophet who gives direct communication to a world who needs a second witness of what God teaches through prayer. I am truly blessed.

Quick catch up notes

For those individuals who read the blog to catch up on my life instead of my simple musings, the following are a few notes of happenings over the past few months. (from the whole 102...yes we have hit triple digits,... viewings, I doubt anyone does this, but considering this blog acts as a sort of journal I should probably highlight some things)

* I graduated college Magna Cum Laude in Economics with 171 credits and a 3.95 GPA

* I accepted an offer to attend law school at the J. Reuben Clark School of Law at BYU

* I had a job for the summer working for the National Park Service, but am now taking an offer to work as a Graduate Technical Intern for Intel in Hillsboro, OR

* I learned it is possible to fall in love within two months

* I lost 15 pounds

* I developed a deeper love for racquetball

* I wrote an economic analysis on collusion in the potato market, and am in the process of having my research published

* I came to a deeper realization of God's hand in my life

Anyone of those topics I could write about...but when I write, it has to come from an emotional spring within. When that spring is bubbling forth, my words come naturally and I am able to express myself...but when the springs is dry..... so too are my words. I am afraid for tonight the spring is dry. But remind me....or rather I will remind myself, that I need to write about agency, faith, love, and the importance of honesty.

picture collage of last semester

Entering the Summer of My Life

I have developed this rather inconvenient habit this semester......I sleep on the couch almost every night. I live with five roommates and I share a room with one of them. My love and appreciation for Parker, my roommate, is not what is in question, rather it is my lack of ability to find peace in my bedroom. From the beginning of the semester, whenever I lay down to go to sleep, my mind goes into overload with stress about life. "Are you caught up on your research thesis, you are still not married, have you finished your graduate school applications, why aren't you sleeping yet, ....etc....etc...etc." It became such a problem that I would stay up past three in the morning so I would become so exhausted I would pass out on the couch.....and the stress didn't follow out of my room onto my "de facto" bed "a la" couch.

Last night I tried out my bed again, and guess what.....YEP I stressed out of my mind till I passed out of exhaustion. When I got up this morning I started analyze what it was that was making me so stressed. Am I so far behind that every night I push myself to an ulcer to make sure I am in place? My musings led me to Great Harvest Bread where I was buying a batch of cinnamon rolls for the economics lab. Smelling the fresh baking bread, and the casual ambience of the store put me into a lull. Is my life so hard? Does it matter how ahead or behind I am? When was the last time you stopped to enjoy life, to live instead of simply existing and achieving....

Listening to "American Honey" , part of my new country kick back I am in right now, it spoke of nothing being sweeter in summertime than American Honey. The corny lyrics made me laugh, but the images of summertime in Montana brought tears to my eyes. I could feel the warm sun, so much closer at 7,000 ft elevation, licking my skin into a deep tan. I could smell the fresh cut hay, hear the rippling of the creeks throughout my ranch, and feel the shade of the pine trees as I hiked up in the mountains. I remembered the cold of Flathead Lake as I would jump into it and swim for hours, only to retreat to a dock and drink cold "Tea de Rey." Tears combined with smiles as I remembered camping this last summer with my family up by Lake Koocanusa, the first camping trip the men in our family have ever taken together. My life is so good,....and it has barely began. It is folly to view ones life in the comparison with past achievements. I am no longer the national champion in speech and the over achieving extracurricular student. Nor am I the party king who wasted his life on fast times and memories, and yet again I am not the super obedient missionary who dedicated my life God. I am simply Gage....and that encompasses all the past and all the future, whatever it may be. I am entering the summer of my life. I will attend law school this fall, and I have no idea which law school it will be, and later I will have a job and start my career. But the simple mechanics of living are less important than the moments we spend in life with others and the memories, memories like those that brought me so much joy today.

We focus so much as the accomplishment of a task we forget the joy the journey. In our need to be efficient, in a society that values what you can produce more than what have contributed, we are continually incentivized to forget the moments in the middle, and instead push through for the end result only to be once again thrown into another task. When was the last time we made goals for ourselves, and lived the moments in between those goals. When do we live our lives, and perform our jobs not at the ends themselves, but merely an means to an end, the end being achieving the ability to have free time to love life and share it with those we love. I was struck by a close friend recently who was listening to me talk about my abuelita and Nicaragua. She asked me if I had ever visited, and I let her know that I had not....and right there she made me promise to set a date to visit my family's ancestral home. The date is set, the summer when I graduate law school I will leave for Nicaragua and give myself the opportunity to see where the essence of who I am came from.

Let us enjoy all the seasons of our life. I have past the spring and am in the bloom of life, the summer where I will shine as brightly as I can, and I will enjoy the loves of life, and will burn in the heat of passion, the sun of our lives. I will work tirelessly, but not for the right to say I am successful, but rather to experience the joys this world has to offer. And as my life enters the twilight of Fall, and fades into the winter of my life as I await rebirth into another life, a better world, I will remember the lessons of summer, that life is meant to be lived in all seasons...and not merely endured.

Here's to sleeping in my bed again!

Reality and Anger

I have been fascinated with the concept of non-linear time since I was first made aware of it. I remember leaving my Psych 370 class, Personality Theory, and walking into the hall like it was the first moment of my life and possibilities were endless. I have forever been enticed to live my life in a way to reflect non-linear ideas though being constrained by a linear society.

Those feelings of freedom and enlightenment occurred again today as I went to a class on a part of Mormon scripture called "The Pearl of Great Price." We discussed what is reality? Well in the reality of our lives it is what is tangible or can affect permanently our lives or the lives of others. But in the context of eternity we never experience reality, at least not now. Reality is the mind of God, the context of where he dwells and his state of being. It is without beginning of days or end of years, it is eternal. Reality has no place in this life of ours. Here we can break away from the reality of eternal life, escape or rather postpone the consequences of actions as we make choices. God cannot exist here, nor can he stay in a permanent state here, and for us to be able to endure his presence we are transformed to a point where we are in reality and can experience him. He seeks to teach us, to enlighten our understanding and show us what is real, but we must choose to accept it in the context of this "fake" world of temporal decisions and effects. He teaches in the temple, and thus in the context of being between heaven and earth, in his figurative if not literal presence we can experience the ideas of the eternities. Just like non-linear time, this speaks to my soul. We seek for so much more than this life.

I remember being a little boy, well about 15, and aching for this world. I hated the injustice, the last of love and concern that was evidenced. I made dumb decisions one day when I grew despondent of life. After playing with my own existence, and a momentary lapse where I literally ran through the willows about a mile from my house with nothing on but my guilt and own anguish, I came home and slept. I remember feeling like we, humanity was meant for so much more than this paltry life. I think we have all had those moments where we recognize that we are not living a real life, but it is so beneath us, and yet so hard for us to comprehend. We are eternal beings, our souls feign to understand temporal when we have only ever known eternal. We have lived for eons as non-linear beings, ideas and concepts, and now we are forced to follow a linear world and the constraining upon us is the best evidence for which we can FEEL that this is not real. I feel so unlimited when I recognize that there is more. The commandments of God are not walls to control us, rather they are instructions into symbolic levels of what is real.

My second, rather random thought is that of anger. I have held rancor in my heart towards someone who, though they recognized I was unhappy and continued to seek to push me, seemed to only be doing that which he has done time and again. Individuals, though infinite with possibility and chance, are so much like the helix where they are bound to repeat their own decisions and choices again but at a different moment in their life. This individual does not understand his own actions, and merely plays his part. When we recognize our ability to change that part then we are held accountable for its consequences but until then we are like children merely acting out. I have such remorse for holding him in such low regard and now seek rather to love him and forget. Anger gives us nothing back in return but rather drains us until we are forced to feed upon ourselves. Forgiveness and love are an never ending well that will spring up more of their own feelings and therefore sustain us.

Here is to love, forgiveness, and the concept that we live outside reality......today has been a good day.