Deep Thoughts

Sometimes I wonder, "Am I Facebook friends with my future wife?"

Indeed

I feel that it is my moral duty to post.

Unfortunately, I have not much to post about...

Except this.

I re-read my mission blog. Today marks my 18th month back in the states. This depresses me. In 18 months I have successfully achieved ______. Sadly I cannot fill that blank...

Hence my depression.

But in all reality it's only a pseudo-depression. Cause I'm actually not all that disappointed in myself. Except that I can't find my to-do list.

But lets be honest.

I've wrecked a car. I've jumped off a house. I've gone back to school. I've dropped out of school. I've gone back to school again. I've moved 7 times. I've been told I'm not attractive by a gay guy. I've found out who my true friends are. I've gained a greater appreciation of refraining from idleness. My love for my short sabbatical has increased. That and I officially adore babies. I've seen a 5 year old and a 30 year old win 'Deal or No Deal' the game. I've gotten even deeper into debt. I've been punched by a black man. I've gone clubbing in LA and didn't pay for a thing. I've fallen in an out of love with many people. I've trespassed. I've woo'd many an unsuspecting female. I've found out that they actually weren't woo'd by me, but either felt sorry for me or thought my friends were cute. I've been apart of too many weddings to count. I've decided a major. I've changed that decided major. I've had the Swine Flu!

So really, I've done a lot. And a lot of what I've done just won't go on the blogosphere. For fear of my Mother. Dad, I don't really care what you think of me, but Mom's opinion counts.

So happy 18 months, me. Its been a trip. See ya in another 18. If you don't have 100k in the bank I'll be very, very disappointed in you.

Wisdom of a Mother

Speaking with a mother is always an enlightening experience. She lifts the soul, bakes you cookies, and imparts nuggets of wisdom.

The most recent nugget my mother dearest revealed to me came after a long and extremely trying week. She said:

It's always darkest right before the storm.

Thank you, Mother. You inspire confidence and distill the will to keep on going.

I love her.

"My Life Be Like"...Online

You know what really grinds my gears? When my parents are right.

They used to warn me, "Chad. You be careful what you put on your Facebook. Anyone can read that garbage." Man, did those talks used to infuriate me! Why should I care what some idiot reads? My reputation isn't at stake. My Facebook is private and only for me. Right? Right???

What am I getting at? Check this out: The Credit Score of the Future

This is a graphic from ReputationDefender. They're a firm who was asked to put together a full online profile of Jessica Bennett, a reporter who later wrote on the subject.

Since when am I supposed to be afraid of expressing who I am? Why did the thought of some stranger intruding on my online life feel like nails on a chalkboard? Why did it feel so violating?

I've been to countless lectures where individuals high up in the communications industry say that they check social media sites like Facebook before they consider hiring a potential employee. Though my Facebook page doesn't worry me that much (I don't drink, do drugs, or pimp myself out) the implications of this practice has kept me up at night.

Now don't misunderstand me. I think going online is a valuable way to get a deeper insight into a persons capabilities. But there once was a divide between ones work life and their personal life. If someone was a good employee and showed up on time during the week, what did the employer care if they went out and had a good time on the weekends?

Well now they have to care. Why? Because our lives are so completely transparent. Everyone knows who we work for, where we live, who our friends are, our relationship status, and what we did during the weekend. And unfortunately all these tidbits of our lives blend together. We, as individuals, become a sponsored brand when we get hired. If we mess up in the public eye, it reflects poorly on the company we work for. IE Tiger Woods and Nike. Tiger was virtually fired from every sponsorship he held when he was beaten over the head by a Norwegian.

We are representatives of the firm we work for. Ambassadors to the public.

An answer to the predicament presented could have been LinkedIn, a site like Facebook but geared more towards professional networking. Regrettably, LinkedIn isn't as widely used just yet and isn't quite the same window into our lives as is Facebook. Though reports show that 80% of employers find candidates solely through LinkedIn, companies are looking for the bigger picture. So they turn to other forms of social media.

What if companies are allowed to do what ReputationDefender did for Miss Bennett? How accurately do our online lives reflect who it is that we actually are? Can it be trusted as a creditable source?

Welp...I don't know. But I'll make sure that I clean up my Facebook before I go try to find myself an internship or a job.

Or should I? I mean, if a corporation can't come to respect my struggle with A.S.S. (Arnett Self-Assured Syndrome) or my not-so-quiet confidence in my third nipple, do I really want to work with them?

Where is the line? And when will it be drawn?

And if my parents were right about this, what else did they not lie to me about?

I guess I believe you now Mom; Santa's real.

Man, I hate when they're right...

3:49 AM

I love school.

I love staying up late trying to put the finishing touches on an outline due in 8 hours.

I love not procrastinating, but still unable to finish until the last possible minute.

I love falling asleep sitting up straight.

I love blogging when I should be comparing Einstein's theory of relativity and lack of a unifying theorem to Joseph Smith's translation of Abraham 3 and his description of the Facsimile No. 2 Fig. 1, thereby proving that a unifying theory must exist joining gravity and the electromagnetic field, but is as-of-yet to be found in the doctrine purposed in the aforementioned chapter. This being said, one must continue to search the revelations of God to understand the laws of the universe and the designs of the "Old Gentleman" (aka Supreme Being) because they were reveled to a modern day prophet of God 150 years before the publications of the German genius, Albert Einstein, ever became widely ready and unanimously proven to be true.

I love it.

Sleep trumps love at 4:01 AM

Here's to getting an 'A'.

I very well may be Morbidly Media Obese

This one goes out to Professor Adam in the Communications Department at BYU. This man is a genius in every form of the word. He recently assigned us a project in which we estimate what we believe our media consumption is, keep track of it for 5 days, then write a reflection paper about how much we actually use all forms of media. This post is a result of said activity.

Though I do fully realize how influential media consumption is in the everyday life of my generation, I have always thoroughly prided myself on being separated from the norm. Don’t get me wrong, I use the Internet just as much as the next person and ESPN is a fantastic way to stay caught up on the sports world. But, I always thought because I try to steer clear of Facebook, an infamous time consuming trap for many in my age group, and succeeded quite often, I assummed had defeated the social networking bug. I knew I watched TV fairly often but its usually just for entertainment purposes and not because of an addiction I had to the media. Or so I thought. I would have said, before this little experiment, I spend about 2 hours a day with the TV on. Sometimes I don’t even watch -- it’s just nice to have noise. Getting into the car was always a media ritual for me. No matter where I go or how far away my destination may be, I constantly have the radio on. To be honest, I’m not even sure why. Most of the songs that are repeated on the radio get redundant and annoying. I mean really, who actually enjoys that new Pink song? "Too school for cool" and "don't be fancy, just get dancy"? I literally just gagged.

The area in which I thought I spent the most time was on the Internet, especially during the ‘Media Diary’ week. I don’t know what life would be like without it. Honestly, I tried imagining how I would function without this media outlet. I use it for so much. School alone would be an entirely different experience. I would constantly have to go to the library to find hardcopies of the information I was looking for! It’s not that novel of an idea, but still the complexity of it is overwhelming. Let the critics laugh and scorn, but putting in that kind of effort just to obtain what we now consider easy access information would – for lack of a better term – suck. The world is at our fingertips, literally. For those that love to learn the Internet is a highly valued resource. For those that need social interaction, the Internet is ‘totally awesome’. For those that enjoy online gaming, the Internet is ‘not for noob’s’. The Internet is the new New World, unexplored and untested. I probably use the Internet at least 25 hours a week.

As far as reading of newspapers and magazines goes, I find myself doing so on rare occasions. I don’t subscribe to any paper or magazine and the only time I have either in my hands is when at school if I’m bored and something about it catches my eye. Every once in a while you’ll find some left over New York Times sitting on a table or some Business Magazine. If I see a headline that interests me, I say “What the hay,” and pick it up.

All in all, I would have been surprised if I used media outlets more than 40 hours a week if I was asked before this little case study. The fact of the matter is that I was, and still am, slightly afraid of an abuse of the media. I didn’t want to become so dependant on it that I lost sight of myself. However, after doing this media tracker activity I realized how influential media is in my life.

While reflecting on my media consumption and looking over my diary, one thing struck me like a punch to the gut. I didn’t accurately document all of my media based activities. Although I mentioned when I got on my phone to check out my applications, one thing that didn’t even cross my mind was how often I actually was on my phone checking my email. I have my Google account linked directly to my cell phone, which notifies me every single time I receive an email. This capability is highly important to my social and academic life and allows me to organize my life on-line. It would be impossible now to go back and try to remember every time I got on my phone to check an email. It must have been anywhere between 10 to 50 times a day, each with varied times of activity or use. Some emails I read right there while others I automatically discarded. It has become an ingrained functionality of my life that I completely forgot that could even be documented as a part of my media consumption.

In addition, I occasionally look up the meaning of words or phrases on my phone. I even search for locations or answers to questions friends pose through the Internet on my phone. Again this didn’t even occur to me as I was participating in the media diary experiment, but is a recent revelation.

The above realization is a prime example of the media dependency theory. I honestly don’t know how I would function without the ability to check my email from my phone or get the news I desired. It is such an important part of what I do everyday. I depend on it immensely; therefore it is extremely important to me.

Looking back and trying to define exactly why I used the media outlets I did proved far more difficult that I previously imagined. Sure, some are easy to define. For example, I watched TV when I had nothing else to do. I was bored or engaged in another activity and turned on the television to try and find some sort of entertainment. The same thing could generally be said for my use of the radio and in watching movies. However the use of the Internet and reading of books is complicated. Though one could argue that books are a source of entertainment, I read them for basically two reasons. One was to expand myself and my knowledge in a personal, spiritual realm. The other reason had to do with research of subjects that I was and am interested in.

I would say that the expectations I had about the media outlets I engaged in met my expectations. The real question is how. I found that these media sources are so much apart of my everyday life that I didn’t necessarily have an exact expectation. I expected them to fill a void, but what that void actually was…I don’t know. This realization is extremely disconcerting to me. My previous assumption that I had defeated a dependency on media proved to be false. Completely false.

Since documenting my consumption last week, I have tried to find a definition for the void I tried to fill and I have failed in my attempt. This week I have questioned every action I have made. Why am I doing this? Does this fill a particular need? Or am I participating in this activity just because there is nothing else to do?

What has the media done to us? What has it done to me? Am I truly just an impulsive result of on-demand America?

I don’t know.
I honestly don’t know.


Maybe I’ll Google it…

Hello World

My how time flies.
So apparently this blogging thing is kind of a big deal. Who knew?
Well loyal followers, since last April a lot has changed. Let's just say, I was in a bit of a rut back then. But it is now October and life has never been better. Well that may not be completely true, but I can't complain too much.
I'm back up at BYU and am on a vigilant search to find something to blog about. The catch? I must be passionate about it. It must make me feel. How exactly it will make me feel, I'm not picky. May it be happy, sad, embarrassed, insane, furious, ecstatic, or what ever emotion God decides to grace me with. So this is my search.

I'm on a mission to find a blog worthy subject.
This may be complicated...

Philippians 4:12

I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

Oh Paul, thou art both wise and poetic.

Truth? Yes please. I find myself at a very interesting point in mortal existence. A point where these words spoken two thousand years ago still ring true. I am to be satisfied and hungry at the same time. For what, you ask? For anything and everything. I need to be content with where I am at, yet still yern for more.

for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, THEREWITH to be content.

Oh the wonders of scripture.

I am not naive enough to think that I am the only person to struggle with acheiving dreams or goals, whether past, present, or future. I am, however, bullheaded enough to pretend I'm the only person to struggle with it. A side effect of A.S.S. I dare say.

Plus, it's just more fun that way.

Pursuit of Happiness

Pursuit–noun

1.	the act of pursuing: in pursuit of the fox.

2.	an effort to secure or attain; quest.

3.	any occupation, pastime, or the like, in which a person is engaged regularly or customarily: literary pursuits.

Happiness–noun

1.	the quality or state of being happy.

2.	good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

I wanted to know what it meant. Cause I'm making the effort to attain contentment and joy.
Now the real question. What makes me happy?

Hell if I know. It sure isn't the pursuit of it.