such great heights

11.07.2011

Ron Swanson and Greatness

There are a lot of self-help books out there and I've read my fair share of them. But never again will I crack the cover of a book meant to improve me as an individual. This is my new plan to becoming a great man.

I present unto you - The Swanson Pyramid of Greatness.

Pay close attention to what he teaches you, especially about skim milk.

10.23.2011

Risk

I'm learning to take more risks. It a slow process for me because I'm afraid of failure. But how will we ever progress if we don't step outside of our comfort zone and stop listening to the negativity telling us we can't achieve?

10.20.2011

Public Apology

At this time, I would like to clarify my previous post. Due to my overzealous nature, I may have misled our dearly beloved to believe that we wanted to move to Iowa. I humbly apologize for giving that impression. At the Law Fair it was just a surprising and unexpected option.

I am sorry for scaring you. I especially want to apologize to my Good wife. She did not deserve this insensitivity. But true to her character, she has decided to stay by my side through this public scandal.

This may have scared many of you, but I promise this gross misrepresentation will not happen again. I will choose my words much more carefully in future posts about such important topics.

Surprises at the Law Fair

As a dutiful wife, Hilary came with me to the 2011 BYU Law Fair. We talked to a lot of different schools about what they had to offer as far as financial aid, job placement, and experience. A lot of the big names were there:

But you'll never guess who left the best impression on us and seemed to have everything we were looking for.

Hilary and I never thought we'd say this, but we may want to move to Iowa.

10.15.2011

Saturday, Mid-October

Today I...

~ made little kids cry because I was dressed like a globolink.

~ had a jamba with my man.

~ danced around in a snowflake tutu with some very cool special needs people.

~ made banana nutella muffins because I just really wanted some. Take that, Life. Paper, I'll write you another day.

~ am going back to scare more children tonight.

~ will go to the annual Hocus Pocus party! We (my awesome friends and I) have had this cinematic October tradition since the good ole elementary days. Still going strong.

These muffins are really good, let me tell you.

Also, happy BYU day!

9.25.2011

What The Athenians Taught Me This Week

The ancient Greeks taught me a valuable lesson via my humanities class the other day.

This is the Parthenon. The ancient temple was built on the Acropolis and dedicated to the goddess Athena. At the time, the Athenians valued the perfection of mathematical precision. Realism dominated their culture.

However, they soon realized that if they were to follow the mathematical proportions exactly, their majestic temple would look.... lame. The front entrance would appear to sag, the columns would look skinny and wimpy. It just wouldn't reflect the grandeur that it was meant for.

So, they improvised here and there. Give the columns some beefiness in the center. Let the floor have a bit of a curve. Give it some life. And so on, until it reached aesthetic perfection.

Sometimes my prissy little second-grade perfectionist self comes out and starts to feel hopeless if things aren't going the way I planned. When life isn't perfect, or perfectly in order, or going perfectly my way, I sometimes struggle to see the beauty or the logic in it.

Those Athenians had some weird beliefs, but they definitely taught me a valuable lesson. There is beauty in imperfection. Life is beautiful, even if it's not the perfectly calculated plan we originally had. And most of the time, what actually ends up happening is so much better than the blueprints we had in mind. We just have to take a step back and look at the whole picture.