100 Things I Want To Do With My Life (in no particular order, ongoing and unfinished) updated 7/12/22

1-Take the ACT and enter college*
2-Love a perfectly fantastic boy*
3-Continue to improve my writing* (ongoing)
4-Draw with sidewalk chalk all over the road to create a treasure hunt for a random stranger
5-Hike to the top of Horseshoe Mountain*****
6-Dance barefoot at the prom*
7-Go off of a zip line*
8-Learn to drive a stick shift from my dad*
9-Smoke a cigar in Yellowstone
10-Take my dad camping in Yellowstone
11-Visit a foreign country, any foreign country* (Colombia! Chile)
12-Build a tiny home, with help or not
13-Work in Yellowstone National Park (Might be too late to ever accomplish this one)
14-Raise a family with a wonderful, humanly perfect partner
15-Explore all of the back roads of my home county* (Close, though perhaps not complete.)
16-Graduate with my associate's degree from Snow College* (Also got my AFA)
17-Know a ton of stellar and amazing people* (ongoing)
18-Stay out of debt (Easier said than done, though I've not yet incurred school debt)
19-Learn how to make delicious, healthy bread* (And then I forgot it)
20-Learn the art of healing (ongoing)
21-Learn lots of art* (ongoing)
22-Grow my hair out long* (onogoing)
23-Learn how to learn, learn how to study and how to teach myself*
24-Homeschool my children
25-Bring my children up close to my family

26-Attend a SUN magazine weekend writing retreat
27-Return to Colombia!
28-Have my own art show* (Had my AFA thesis show, had a duo BFA thesis show)
29-Become conversant in Spanish (Perhaps also ongoing, but puedo hacerlo un poco. Tengo muchos amigos con quien yo hablo en español)

30-Get a puppy

31-Graduate from USU with my BFA*

32-Procure chickens and also compost in my backyard* (composting (and feeding the deer) as we speak)

33-Publish a book of poetry* (Bottlecap Press, poetry chapbook, "All I ask is that we walk together a while". Purchase a copy here)

34-Learn Welsh

35-Buy a house/land on which to build* (have the land, time to build)

36-Boulder at Cherry peak

37-Get a Maguire Primrose tattoo

38-Win a personal grant for art work*

39-Get into the Springville Art Museum's Spring Salon**

40-Work at Snow College

41-Raise bees

42-Boulder at Joe's Valley**

43-Take my youngest siblings backpacking up Fish Creek

44-Have my own studio*

45-Fix up my 4Runner, restore it/surpass it's former glory

46-Design an album cover* (designed the cover for my brother Asher's music, listen on soundcloud here)

47-Do the art for a beer can release

48-Climb a 5.10a

49-Learn how to goddam budget well

50-Travel to Chicago

51-Climb a sport route rated 12 something

52-Get my master's degree

53-

First Love

(inspired by an upcoming Readers Write subject for The SUN Magazine.)
The first few weeks after we broke up I dropped my phone constantly. A gift from him, the act of accidentally letting it slip (hard, smooth case; forgetful mind) from my hands came to represent how I'd accidentally severed the threads of our relationship.
Not my first love, granted, but my first boyfriend, the first who loved me back. The first who loved me back at a time in life when forever was almost possible, but still not quite.
We broke up during a phone call; I overestimated my understanding of him and the strength of our relationship. As we spoke, I could feel things spiraling out of control, but, passive, I did nothing to steer the conversation in any direction. I spilled too many awkward honesties at once using language unfamiliar to me ("I'd like to date other people", "we're going too fast", "but I still want to be your friend") In my rush to be honest, I forgot to be considerate, compassionate, and thoughtful; I forgot to weigh the possible meaning of what I said. There was a fatal flaw in creating girls' minds so different from boys' minds. To him, all of these phrases meant rejection and replacement.
I came to think of that phone call as a sort of clumsy but earnest flailing that ended much differently than I'd intended, but not enough differently for me to take possession of what was slipping past me.
I haven't really regretted breaking up, but I have regretted the circumstances, I feel that I could have done much better with my timing and communication. The past is only the past, though, and maybe someday we can look back on it all as good friends once again, but not, as he says, right now.
It's hard not to sound melancholic, when writing about this, I mean, a metaphor involving a phone given me by my first boyfriend? Cheesy, I'm sure. But I've come back to drafting this narrative in my head many times since that long, gray month.
I continued living. It wasn't like life ever stopped. Over time I managed to stop dropping my phone so frequently. I still have it, and in the ups and down since, I'll drop it increasingly over the course of a week, and struck by the poignance of it- (we'll have spoken in slightly unfriendly terms to one another, or I will feel neglected as a friend)- I will work to master my hands and my feelings once again and do my best not to just throw the whole thing at the wall, smashing it to pieces. 

Family Vacations

(inspired by an upcoming Readers Write subject for The SUN Magazine.)

The closest thing my family has to a family vacation is the annual trip we used to take to Yellowstone, but we stopped going as a family half my lifetime ago, if not more. It became too stressful for my parents to haul all of us kids to Yellowstone in our aging and less than trustworthy suburban.
When I was a kid, we used to stop at my grandfather's house before continuing on to Yellowstone. We'd stay the night and visit for a day or two, eating canned raspberries and pretending we were in wheelchairs, rolling over the carpet on my grandfather's barbells. The stopover cut the grueling drive into two pieces, more easily managed by hyperactive kids. In the years since then, though, my dad tackles the trip in one long drive. It surprised me, the first time; I had no idea Yellowstone was that close. I was a kid and I measured distance in time, and time can seem impossibly long, or lightning fast depending on how bored or excited you are.

My dad still goes to Yellowstone on UEA weekend each year, and he usually brings a couple of kids along. My two middle brothers went with him in 2012, and last October, my eldest brother and I got to go. That  trip cemented Yellowstone as a happy place in my heart, as a sort of home away from home. I had so much to come back to, but I was content and deliriously happy in that wild land. 

For many years Yellowstone was that place I visited as a kid with my family and with family-friends, but that last trip was different. That was the first trip I'd really taken as an adult, semi-independent, not just someone to take care of, and I talked with my father more intimately than I had in years. I mean, it's not like I could drive for my father, but we spoke as equals, and my brother and I had an equal say in where we could go. We didn't really have anywhere in mind, though, it had been so long since we'd last visited, we just went wherever dad wanted to take us.
That last trip made Yellowstone personal to me, an escape that made the world seem full of possibilities. I matured, and although I'm still not grown-up, that trip was a significant milestone in my adult life. From family vacation to coming of age experience, Yellowstone has always been a significant part of my life, threading through the years as far as I can remember. 

Three SUNbeams

"A primary cause of suffering is delusion: our inability... to see things the way they truly are.... The world is in face a seamless and dynamic unity: a single living organism that is constantly undergoing change. Our minds, however, chop it up into separate, static bits and pieces, which we then try mentally and physically to manipulate. One of the mind's most dear creations is the idea of the person and, closest to home, of a very special person which each of us calls "I": a separate, enduring ego or self. In a moment, then, the seamless universe is cut in two. There is "I"--- and then there is all the rest."
John Snelling
(The substantially small, and infinitely huge. No wonder when we are separate do we feel so tiny and insignificant.) 

"The hunger of the spirit for eternity-- as fierce as a starving man's for bread-- is much less a craving to Go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity."
Storm Jameson 

"If logic tells you that life is a meaningless accident, don't give up on life. Give up on logic." 
Shots Milgrom 


From the "> 278th issue

There was also a fantastic essay in this issue that I loved very much, sadly, though, there isn't a link or anything online as far as I can tell.

Unspoken promise

On the last page of the SUN magazine. I'd thought it would go on forever, at least, I had hoped this issue would have no end. 

Well, not the very last page, I suppose. In a normal issue, this, the Sunbeam page, would be the very last. But in this issue, there are two more pages, an extended sunbeam page, and the dog-eared page as the last breath of this song without music. 

***

Now I sit here, holding the back cover in my hands and eyes. 

Here's to many more years, SUN. We'll walk together throughout the next decade, and, love, I do intend to contribute to your fiftieth anniversary. Bless us to bless each other, dear friend. 

A selection of Sunbeams, The SUN magazine issue 237

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. "

Henry David Thoreau

"Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself."

Dean Inge 

"Whatever our point of view or frame of reference, the world is richer and more amazing than we realize. All frames of reference are limited. All points of view can be supplemented by further experience under new and various conditions."

Donald Granger 

"Both class and race survive education, and neither should. What is education then? If it doesn't help a human being to recognize that humanity is humanity, what is it for? So you can make a bigger salary than other people?"

Beah Richards 

"In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door-neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block." "

Freda Bright 

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them."

Benjamin Jowett

A selection of Sunbeams from the SUN Magazine August 2013

"All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished."

Marshal Rosenburg

"Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.... The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul."

Carl Jung

"In our struggle to restrain violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that us it also a crucial survival tool."

Katherine Dunn

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."

Mahatma Gandhi 

"You have to want to lose your appetite for violence or aggression. And to do that, you have to lose your self-righteousness."

Pema Chödrön 

"Even fighting in self-defense is wrong, though it is higher than fighting in aggression. There is no "righteous" indignation, because indignation comes from not recognizing sameness in all things." 

Vivekanada 

"Peacekeeper missile." Doesn't that sound like "ax-murderer baby sitter"? 

Elayne Boosler 

"Through violence you may murder the lier, but you cannot murder the lie, now establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Martin Luther King Jr. 

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

Mother Teresa

The Sun Magazine | The Undiscovered Country

The Sun Magazine | The Undiscovered Country

You remember those two quotes I posted a while ago? They were both from this article, which you might be interested in. It's rather beautiful, I enjoyed reading it :)

Raising Our Standards Of Living

"It's hard to change, to sacrifice, to move forward and leave some things behind. But it's not just about sacrifice. The Canadian environmental writer and TV personality David Suzuki gave a talk at Middlebury College some years back a out sustainability. At the end somebody in the audience asked if he really thought the prosperous citizens of North America would be willing to lower their standard of living and he said, "I'm talking about raising our standards of living!" If we live together in multigenerational households and grow more of our own food and make more of our own entertainment; if me move across the land by our own muscle power; if we live closer to where we work  — these changes significantly elevate our standard of living." 

~John Elder, "The Undiscovered Country: John Elder On The Wild Places Close To Home", by Leath Tonino in the SUN Magazine June 2013