Optimistic Floundering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72xVqMl32HA

For added effect, copy that link in a new window and push play while you read. Maybe?

Okay, so I'm floundering. No, scratch that. I am floundering. Period. But I think there is something to be said of floundering. To flounder denotes a certain level of struggle. To struggle is to use, at least, a semblance of effort. When people say that their cousin is struggling, what they really mean is that they are floundering. At best.

I suppose I might be being a little hard on myself. I changed my mind, I'm struggling. Seriously, I am getting sick of my life. I am pretty dang sure that I am about sick enough of it to change it. It's gotta be getting close. To give myself a little credit, I have been doing better. I have been thinking about how easy it is to change compared to the rewards at the end.
Okay, this one could be a tangent.
One of my misconceptions about the Gospel, is that I have to completely make amends for everything I have done before I can forgive myself or begin to feel peace. That is really what it is all about, forgive yourself. When I am judged, it is not God that I am mostly afraid of, It's myself. I know that the only way to forgive myself is through Him. I am not really in a place to bear my testimony and I wouldn't want to do that right now because, if I do decide to live the way I have been living the last little while, it wouldn't help me in the end. Quite the contrary I think.
I was thinking about relationships. I was thinking about how much I love people and my relationships with them. It made me sad because I know how much more I could really love them if I was living the way I should. I can only love someone as much as I love myself and right now that isn't very much. That sounded emo. It wasn't, I'm okay, just overly self aware. I was thinking about my parents and my family and how they love me so much, that they won't be content or at peace until I am. I am sure, that it is so easy for them to tell if I am living in the way that I know I should be living. When I am with my friends I am doing whatever I can to distract myself from that.
I have started writing again, and I think it is fueling this mustard seed of willingness that I have been feeling lately. I don't know, I enjoy writing things that people can see sometimes, but I kinda feel hypocritical just talking about changing my life. I don't want it to be like the days where I went to church so that people could see me there. I am lucky enough, however, to have experienced going to church for the right reasons. And it was amazing. The answer seems so simple, and it really is.
I don't know, if you don't mind, whoever the three or four people who are that read this, which, by the way, I wanted to thank you for, wait, one more comma, there. Okay start over. I think I might just write on this thing because any support is good support. And I need all the support I can get, if I am going to do this. Which I am. I have to. And I really do appreciate your support in caring enough to read this.
Tomorrow I am not going to wake up and be cured. I am just barely getting to the point where the pain of the problem is becoming more than the pain of the solution. The solution, for me, is painful. Of course it is, I have done some horrible things after I was given some wonderful gifts.
It's time though. I'm freaking 22 years old. I have a mustache. It's sketchy but it has taken me 22 years to grow. It is my only accomplishment. Ha ha jk. That was so drab. I can't believe I just said drab. As you can see it is hard for me to stay focused.
I am not intoxicated. My mind just goes all the time and doesn't like to stick in one spot for too long. Maybe I trained it because so many of those spots are uncomfortable for me right now? Okay that was deep. Maybe too deep. What is this? A one man therapy session? With some possible observers?
Maybe I should just keep it to the random tangent, or observation and stop trying to be philisophical or introspective or self-aware or brutally honest or spiritual. I don't know. Whatever, I've got nothing to hide. It's going to be shouted from the rooftops unless I take care of it anyways. Honesty. At least I have that.
I'll check in again soon and hopefully have some wonderful things to say that I can feel a little more worthy of saying. Love.

Boils down to this.

Life is really just a series of cycles. I would like to think that it was more just a slanting line that went straight to the top. I would like to think that we are all good people with good hearts and good intentions and that God will be able to see our hearts and over look all the other stuff. Then again, I don't know about you but I pretty much do what I want. Not necessarily what I want deep down but I can almost always be counted on to do whatever I want to do, at that moment. Usually it is whatever is easiest and filled with the most instant gratification. Usually I want to do what I am not supposed to. Sure, I could probably argue that I still love people, and in my heart I would love for everyone to just get along and I would love to just do what I was supposed to all of the time.
I have spent a good portion of my life trying to convince myself to believe in something other than what I know to be true. Sometimes, as I jot down this almost exclusively useless philosiphical banter, something sort of profound will emerge. So far, that last sentence really hit me. I truly have spend the majority of my time trying to apply the principles I was willing to, and then making excuses not to follow the rest. I recently had a conversation with a 20 year old kid that went on a mission only to be sent home a few months later. Like the spineless chameleon I am, I transform into I green lizard man and tell him what I know he wants to hear from me. Anyways, we came to the conclusion that we would go to church and be active if only the church would "let" us smoke pot.
No, really, that is where I am at right now. I don't study the gospel, I study youtube video's for new information on proposition 19 in California, which is an initiative to make smoking marajuana legal. That is the best thing I have going for me right now, the possibility of weed becoming legal. If you get enough misguided, misinformed, rebellious youth together, they just reinforce destructive lies. I am one of them. I am a reinforcer for sure.
I need to have voices of reason in my life. Right now, at best the voices that I listen to are misinformed. I'm not saying that all of them are malignant, evil people who are just trying to leave me astray. I think that most of my friends truly do believe that their way of life is really better than all of these uptight mormons.
It's strange to think that I am only 22 and I have been about as far as you can go on both sides of the fence. It scares me. It makes me think, I really tried for 2 years, I mean, really tried to be good. I did more than try, I did. I acted instead of talked. Instead of sitting in someone's car parked in their drive way smoking pot, I walked to whatever uplifting situation I could. I think that lot's of this stems from black and white thinking, which is a topic I might touch on because it is such a huge and relevant issue especially here in Utah County. This is the thinking that gets kids to commit suicide.
This is the thinking that tells you, or told you, that that man smoking a cigerette out there is a bad person. It says that your either on a mission or your a drug addict. It would have you think that because you made a mistake you might as well make as much as possible because your already screwed. It tells me that I have to be like my sister and if not, then I am like my brother. This radical thinking has never done me any good.
Is there a happy medium? Is that what I need to find? Or are my suspicions correct? Is there no middle road for me? Am I too aware of God's plan for me to be content with a life where I have settled for anything short of spreading the love that has been so mercifully showered upon my head? Probably. Either way, I am taking people with me, whether I know about it or not. They probably both know that. I have let satan take my life for a joy ride and he doesn't want to give up the wheel. Everything I so or say is tainted influence