The Weekend

I have it on good authority that Nate et al will be down this way this weekend. It has been suggested we might do something fun together. Like eat.

If that is to be, I'm available Saturday late afternoon (anybody interested in an early-morning mountain hike behind sheep is invited), and we might be able to work something Monday.

What'c'all think? Can one use two apostrophes in a single word?

Erised, Vision, Faith, and Identity

Also published in the U.K under the title “The Long-windedness of Ked”

I also engage the long-ness alert!

vision |ˈvi zh ən| noun

1 the faculty or state of being able to see

• the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom

• a mental image of what the future will or could be like

faith |fāθ| noun

1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something

Elder Oaks, on visiting our mission answered a missionary's question on faith by saying that it is trust, just like above, so I like this definition.

I tried to simply everything you said by making an equation. So, if I summarize correctly, your equation would be

vision + faith = success

Now, we should probably clarify each section of the equation.

Vision is the ability to plan or imagine what the future will be or could be. In an address to Harvard, J.K. Rowling talked about imagination. She didn't speak about it terms of creating whimsical fantasies. She worked for a place like Amnesty International where refugees came in. She said that imagination was important because it allowed people to hope for a better world. It allowed Britains to think of a better world for refugees and it allowed the refugees to dream of a better life than war, famine, and political turmoil. Change came after imagination and I must say that with that imagination came hope.

Yes, I believe vision is important. “Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).” Sure this may be centrally about revelation, but I think there is a correlation. If you have no vision, your goals aren't as clear as they could be and really you aren't going anywhere. Like Alice. If you don't know where you want to go, it really doesn't matter where you go. Stephen R. Covey says start with the end in mind.

So, vision incorporates imagination and hope to some extent. Well, I think most of us try to imagine good things.

Now faith. When I first read the Lectures on Faith I was surprised that Joseph Smith used such a basic example of a someone planting seeds and having faith that they would grow. So, as I have thought for a long time there are two kinds of faith. Sort of. The first is trusting that as we do what is asked of us then we will be blessed and eventually we will be saved and exalted. The other faith is not necessarily more secular but less tied to eternal salvation. It is believing that somehow we can accomplish something. However, I still do not think that this version wholly separates from religion. It is a principle of power in the eternities to believe in something that is not yet or something that can be. So, while the thing being undertaken is not essential to our salvation, it requires an element of faith to actually complete it. Perhaps it is faith that, in our status of being children of God and with the help of the Atonement to overcome our weakness, we can accomplish anything we really need to and want to (if it's righteous). I don't know. But I do know that many non-religious people know that faith is important. Look at psychology. They teach people to change their thinking and believe that things are going to happen. This is true for addiction, depression, etc. If you believe you are going to lapse again then suddenly WHAM! It happens. However, it is when they believe a change is coming that actual things start to happen. A change in the brain to have a more faithful attitude and eventually even alters brain chemistry. Whoa. Heavenly Father hardwired our brains to use faith. So, I guess there is one faith to salvation and the other is to accomplish things.

In 1 Nephi 5:5 Lehi says”But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice.” Lehi has already claimed the promised land before he's gotten there! What great faith! So, maybe we should say “What a great radio show we did!” Also a thought! Perhaps he also had vision of it. Perhaps he simply had great faith and said “let's go!”

But we know that faith needs work. Without it it's...finito, kicked the bucket, gone to the great ice cream shop in the sky, pushing daisies, do not pass go and do not collect $200, dead as a doornail (where did that come from anyway?). Does finito work? It just sounds cool. So, Lehi got a promised land and then packed up his gear to head towards it.

So is this modified correctly? vision + faith + works = success

But it seems like something is missing. These things could lead us to success. But what about the motivation part? You said yourself that the rewards for a radio show should motivate you enough. Should the rewards alone produce the faith necessary?

My brother once worked for a company that built amusement park rides. A customer company asked them to build a roller coaster with a “whisper quiet” ascension device. Maybe you've been on one of those roller coasters where you ascend and it goes CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Well, my brother's company signed the contract saying they'd build that. Hmmm....Nobody had such a thing. The technology hadn't been invented yet. However, they knew they could figure it out. Simple faith that it could be done. Why not? Their incentive was a lucrative deal. Was that what produced their faith? Or encouraged their faith? Or was it the fact that they knew the power of invention and that was their faith while the money was the motivation? Something to think about.

Sometimes motivation comes from what we want. What would you see in the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter? However, have there been things that I've thought I wanted and just didn't have what it took (motivation) to get them? Yes. Herein I've discovered something else that may come in to play. I shall give an example from my own life.

Numerous times in my life I have had the desire to write novels.I've had some great ideas. One idea caught me like fire and for months I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept a little notebook and wrote some sixty pages of notes on ideas for the story. In about five months time how many pages had I written? None. I'd only done a few warm-up writing exercises.

Can I write? I'd like to think so. I've written for a newspaper, the Rollins Center for eBusiness, for an online blog, and for LDS Living Magazine. I had several teachers tell me I wrote well. I took several creative writing classes. There have been many times where I have thought to make a career out of writing.

However, I learned something pretty fascinating about myself. One time, when my parents came to visit me in Provo, I showed them lots of schoolwork I'd done and hobby work.. Did I show them any articles that I'd written? No. What did I show? I showed photos from my photojournalism class, costumes I'd made, sculptures, and videos I'd created. I realized I didn't care about the writing. I cared more about the visual stuff I'd made. I have a hard time getting up in the morning and writing. Yet, somehow I can get up and draw, sculpt, or photograph for hours if I want to. I don't feel it is something I simply like, but I feel it is part of who I am.

So, some of my motivation comes from desires that are also aligned properly with who I really am. I think it would be hard for someone who doesn't care about money to work in a money-centric industry. It would be hard for a shy person to become...president of the United States or a boisterous public speaker.

Can we change who we are? Yes and no. Who are we really? We're children of God and thereby have unlimited potential. Can't change that, but we can change things about ourselves and can change our natures to some extent. Could a shy person become the President? Yes. Could I write a book? Yes, and someday I still hope to. It's just not on my the top of my list of priorities. I have other things that I do better and other things I want to spend my time doing.

That's another thing. Priorities. Sometimes there are things I really want to do, but other priorities step in the way. Family. Earning money so we can say...eat. So that motivation may be stronger (as it sometimes should be).

So, what did I really try to say in all this? Currently my motivation for projects I'm working on and schooling come from my vision of what I can be, what I want life to be like in the future, who I really am inside and from priorities that I have right now.

Ooh! One more thought. Goals. Elder Ballard has a quote in Preach My Gospel and he says that if we don't learn goal setting we will miss out on our potential. This is another thing I think I need some work on. I could get more done if I set goals and worked for them. Sometimes we have good ideas, but we don't really set the goals necessary to provide a path to work on them. Ideas sound great by themselves, but they are like seeds that sit in the packets. Absolutely useless (except for to sit on the shelf and show that something is in stock at the store). Ideas that have turned into creations are the bomb diggity. Bridging the gap is what matters. It is the hardest part. That's why so many people never do it.

Vision + Faith + Works = success

Is there something missing? Is the radio show simply something that's not a priority? Is it something we think we want, but really isn't lined up with who we are? Or is one of the things in the equation missing? Do we not have the vision, faith, or works to back it up? Or is this equation even complete?

On Resources

While not really a rambler, this one is long-ish. This is your long-ishness alert.

It's pretty easy for me to figure out what some of my problems are. It's also relatively easy to write about them. Far more difficult is solving them.

The radio show idea is a good idea. It would be fun, enlightening, good resumé material, and might even turn around some hobby money. It's pretty much a winner however you slice it. However, before such a project gets started, a problem I seem to have is sitting down and thinking, "yeah, that'd be a lot of fun, but I just don't have _______". No microphone, no time to write a story, no big enough pool of vocal talent, no money, whatever. So the idea gets pushed under the rug (I actually have a notebook I call "under the rug") and I think that, perhaps, I'll look at it another day when I actually have _______. Another good idea shrivels in the shadow of un-had resources. I could be a more successful person, if I was just a more successful person already.

But that's really just a convenient lie, isn't it?

Why is it such a challenge to decide I have everything I need and just make the investment that stands between a good idea and a good reality? Take the Timeline project, for example. How much time have I wasted wishing I had some seed capital, or dropping hints around family members hoping they'd just give me some? I went to a meeting of local nerd types last week in which startup funding was discussed. I left frustrated because the investors they discussed want to see significant receipts before investing. "If I already have receipts, what in the world do I need investors for?!" I thought. "The system is stacked against people with ideas and no money."

Another convenient lie.

The system is stacked, sure, but against a totally different kind of person, and if it's stacked against one, it's stacked in favor of another. Funny enough, it doesn't have much to do with ideas, and probably less to do with money. The system is stacked against people without will, or motivation. The converse of which means that driven people are more successful. That makes sense, too, in kind of a "duh" way. It also makes sense that successful people seem more often to be bi-polar or something.

The question, then, is: how do I become bi-polar?

Or more realistically, how do I find my inner Drive? Is there a well of motivation somewhere inside that I can draw from? How do successful people (who aren't crazy to begin with) do it? Is it something that can be acquired? We tend to talk about people as the _are_, like "he is doggedly determined". Can a person _become_ doggedly determined? Have you heard stories of lazy people who figured out how to work, like, hard?

One would think that the thought of the potential rewards, even when a reward is very likely, should be enough to motivate a person to action. Like the radio show. Wouldn't those rewards be worth the doing of the thing?

As I think about all this, something else comes to mind. Anybody even sort of familiar with the Scriptures knows stories of people of old (or maybe people of recently) who saw or received or performed something miraculous. I was reading last night in Acts, and there's this story of Paul preaching in an upper room, and a young man who is listening while sitting in the window falls asleep during the sermon (which I'm sure I never do) and falls out the window, down about 3 floors, hits the ground and dies (I'm even more sure I've never done that). Paul rushes down the stairs and tells everyone, "Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him." (Acts 20:10) Everybody goes back upstairs, eats some more, then Paul goes on his way. Wait -- what? Somebody just arose from the dead! It was significant enough to make it into the record, but from the sound of it, it wasn't a really big deal beyond that. Like they were happy about it, but not surprised.

It seems to me that this kind of miracle has a lot in common with some of the modern miracles we've seen and attributed to smarts or technology. Somebody has an idea of something good he wants. A gap separates this vision and the actual manifestation of the vision. Something has to bridge the gap. In Church, we call it Faith. Everywhere else, we call it Determination. What's the difference?

At first glance, all it looks like Paul "did" was run downstairs and touch the young man. It took us a lot more than running up and down stairs to land people on the Moon. However, I think it may come down to how clearly in your mind you can see the young man standing up again, or a guy standing on the moon with a fishbowl on his head. In the case of the young man, the Priesthood did the Work. In the case of Apollo 11, a lot of hands and brains did the Work (at the expense of a good deal of good health and a good many marriages and families). In both cases, the gap was bridged and the vision was forced into reality.

This makes me think I had it slightly wrong before. There's something that has to happen even before the Determination arrives, indeed the place where the Determination probably comes from. First there is a vision. Then there is Faith, or the ability to see, clearly, the vision as if it were real - taste the victory, smell the success, know the benefits before they happen. From Faith flows the Determination to make the vision real, and that is the fuel for the Work.

I've really never thought of Faith quite in this way, but it makes sense now. Faith seems to be a difficult thing to really nail down. How do you answer when somebody asks you "what is faith?" Think about the scripture you quote when somebody asks that question -- "...if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." (Alma 32:21) If a person has more Faith, he must have more hope. What does hope mean? The more you hope for something, doesn't the picture in your mind become more and more clear? Does stronger hope not drive you more strongly towards your vision? If I want a successful Timeline project, I need to have Faith in it. That sounds like saying "I believe it can work", but it's much more powerful than that. I need to see it before it exists. I need to see it so clearly, with so much detail that it can't help but pop out of my head and into reality.

Back to the question: how do I find my inner Drive? Is the answer really just Faith? How nice would that be? Faith comes with microphones, voice talent, as many lines of Javascript and Python as you need, and the entire Grumman Corporation (if you need to build a LM). Sweet.

Those are my current thoughts, anyway. I'm sure you have some of your own. I'd like to know what they are. Where do you get your motivation?

Old memories

Here are some photos I thought I'd scan in. Yes, scan them.

Radio show thoughts

Before I talk about the radio show, the word of the day is--Arcane: known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric.

I was tossing around ideas for the show. I thought about places. Professor X has a school, Harry Potter has a school, some people have a warehouse, library, etc. A place or base, for operations. We talked about a laboratory. A few other places I was thinking of are a museum or a library special collections. Museums often have their own labs and project workspaces, etc. It could be a Museum of Mysteries, kind of a cheap Ripley's Believe it or Not that serves as a cover for intense investigations of unusual phenomena. Underneath are vaults, labs, etc. Also, I worked in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections for a number of years and it had its own mysterious element to it. Lots of neat items hidden away from the public, restricted access, and not to mention it is a spooky place when nobody is around. Perfect place to augment for a story. And what do they do? They collect rare items and objects. The Special Collections of Secrets or something.
Or you can look up cabinet of curiosities. It's a thriller novel, but also actual historical places that housed collections of stuff. Also a Cabinet of Wonder or in German a Wunderkammer (wonder room).
I thought more about titles than content for now. Something catchy, intriguing, etc.
Museum of Mysteries, Special Collections of Secrets, Mavens of Mystery. Escapades of Yadda Yadda. Exploits of This and That.
Another thing I was thinking about was Mythbusters. We can't use the name obviously, but the idea is intriguing. I was told that there is a woman who works in the Church office building whose sole job is to research all the Mormon legends and myths to find out what is true and what is not. I thought that would be an exciting job.

I know we have a basic idea, but not sure how far we'd carry the mysterious element to it--alien artifacts and the like. I'm trying to modify it some way so we're not sounding like the Twilight Zone, Warehouse 13, or anything else. Originality is important to me.

One more thing I thought I'd mention and ask thoughts on. So, are we going to do a radio show or an audio book type thing? A radio show is diverse and exciting. It will also require a lot more. We will need to have character voices, male and female, that we can continuously use along with other voices that come and go with episodes. Basically we need actors who are committed. I think we're good for males, but whose wife is willing to do this...a lot? Just a thought.

Ancient writings above Cedar?

Not to fill your inbox with things from me, but since we don't have internet at our apt. I can only get on so much at a time.

Have you guys ever been to the supposed ancient writings in the hills above the golf course? They don't look that ancient, but I've been doing some research lately. Apparently one man has discovered 24 sites with similar markings across 6 or 7 different states here in the west. In Utah there are sites in Fillmore, Cedar, Manti, and Nephi. Just wondered if you guys have ever heard about them. Maybe I'll post pictures later.

one more

Can we have some mystery and intrigue please?

radio etc.

I've thought of something like your exercise before, but for other purposes. There's that game we used to play where you say or write one sentence of the story. Well, with the advent of wikipedia and other things, journalists tried to use it to do citizen journalism. They tried to have citizens edit and alter stories based on their new information and situations in the community. Didn't work too well. Going along with that, I've often thought that would be fun to do a novel like that on the web. A web story that is created by multiple people. That way the story if very unexpected and different, more unique than any story by a single author ever could be. You would still have to moderate it and make tasteful edits for morality, continuity, etc, but it could be a very unique creation. However, that is a different future idea altogether.

I also agree with the doing whatever we want. having had the desire to write successful novels from time to time, I've also struggled with the notion that it has to appeal to the largest audience possible. Let's be honest, publishers, movie companies and the like are all interested in the really big ideas that will go far. Ok, so some times you wonder "who in the world put this idea together and what were they thinking?" But generally it works that way. I also agree that the internet kind of solves some of that problem. In the print industry, newspapers are dying because people can go to the internet. Magazines have still retained a small foothold because they are niche industries. That's largely how the internet works, too. You only need a niche and you can get an audience a lot of the time.
Perhaps I should've used the ramble alert.

Radio Show

It's dark, and damp. Water drips from the grates above, and the occasional early morning driver causes the tunnel to gasp as cars speed overhead, unaware of a small group gathered beneath them.
---
Here's what I was thinking. Let's write a couple of possible episodes and share them around, then we can kind of talk about which direction to go. It seems to me that, with distribution methods available these days, we can pretty much do whatever we want, and as long as the stories are good and the quality is good, we can generate a following. I've begun to hear stories about people who have just struck out on something interesting and discovered that other people are interested and have been following their progress.

There's a musician, whose name I don't remember, who was featured on a Planet Money podcast a while back, who started writing and recording songs for fun. What he was doing resonated with enough people that he's become quite successful, and has even quit his old day job to be a musician. I'm not suggesting that our goal should be fame and fortune, (though we could probably do with some fortune if it came along). I just think that the Internet makes it so that content creators can think a lot less about what people will think of their creations. In the world of Network Television, you have to make something that most of the people will like all of the time. On the Internet, if you just do something that you like, chances are there are a few other people out there that will like it too. If there are only %.000001 of the Internet community that likes what you do, they still mean a huge audience.

Those are my thoughts.

And another thought that just came to me -- something we can do as a sort of exercise and get some ideas flowing. We could do that game where we pass the story off one to another. One person can write a paragraph or so, and whomever else feels like picking it up can. We can do this in a comment thread, or if you want...

I can set up a website :)

-BacH

Radio Show

So, i am the first person to come about the radio show....hmmm. Well, I think it should have...audio. And dialogue. Wow. This would be 80-90% dialogue. Comedy, mystery, adventure? Sci-fi? Anyways, just thought I'd check in here. Bye!