Relived: Uinta High Adventure

An adventurous overview of life at a High Adventure Scout camp where I worked for two cheery summers. This clip is from the feature I did for my fellow employees.

The Good Life

So, I've been living the good life lately. That is why I have not blogged for a while. I am putting in sixty hours of work last week, and this week. Perhaps this is but a little taste of Wendy's life. No end in sight, though. Once I finish this Art On a Grand Scale project I have a wedding to finish and several segments of momumo to edit. This is all good, but exhausting.

This brings me to my quote of the week.

The quality of life depends upon the choices we make, moment by moment, to do exactly what we sense is right...I would like to call [this] a life of goodness (p.319, Bonds That Make Us Free).

Listen to your heart. It will tell you what you really want to do. Do it. It will lead you to a Life of Goodness which, so I hear, really is the Good Life.

Self Worth

During sacrament meeting last Sunday I pondered what has worth? I spend my life worrying about my time, now forced to devote it to ARUP. Or how I need more money. How am I going to make ends meet? I also want to buy more and more cool gadgets. I love gadgets. They make me feel more masculine or something. I don’t know, but I have rooms full of them.

Is any of this of worth? Do my possessions add to my worth? Does making more money than you add to my worth? No. It is of no importance. It is all illusory fluff that distracts me from the one and only thing that has any importance whatsoever: myself. What matters is how I perform my job, earn my money, and grow personally. “There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are will come from that. It is the only measure of human value” (p.99, Atlas Shrugged).

It suddenly appeared odd to me how desperately I cling to all those other modes of worth. I cling to my physical possessions. I cling to my habits. Charles Du Bos advises “to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

Am I too caught up in my accumulated ‘worth’ to now see the way to what I can become? I think that is worth thinking about. What do you think?

Davis High Football

This is a quick sample of one of my projects this last year. I did highlights for Tanner Hinds, Davis' star running back. He won pretty much every award you can in one school year. Things are looking bright for him.

The Uphill Struggle

Praying the other night I asked the Lord to help me with my addictions, weaknesses, and sins. I pleaded with him, in essence, to open a doorway and let me pass through to the other side where all my sins can tempt me no more. Lord, remove from me all my shortcomings. This, for me, is a standard plea. Help me, for I know not how to beat the natural man.

But suddenly I saw the truth of what I was asking: Lord, take away my sins and weaknesses so that I don’t have to struggle any longer with trying to overcome them myself. Lord, I want to be strong and good and if you take away my problems, I will be.

But isn’t that a weakness? That is laziness rearing its ugly head. Yes. I am saying that my heart is in the right place but don’t want to develop the self-discipline to get my body and life there. I don’t want to have to suffer or sacrifice. It hurts and is tiring.

The Savior has never said he will remove all our issues simply by asking. We say please, He then not only opens the doorway to overcoming our sins and weaknesses, but clears and sweeps the path, turns on the friendly neon welcome sign, and caries us in so as to not tire our feet.

No. If he did so, how would that benefit us? How would be grow? He is not willing us to be saved in our laziness. We believe in faith and works. Faith: we already know the Savior is strong enough to take upon him all our sins. Works: we need to learn how we can avoid and resist our future sins. Salvation takes work. Salvation and victory over our sin is hard. There is no quick and easy way “for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction.” The Lord warns further, “narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it,” (Matt. 7.13-14). The easy way profiteth us nothing.

It is becoming clear. He will not save us by removing our problems, but He will make our burdens light. From the Book of Mormon, “yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease,” (Mosiah 24.15). He will lighten our loads, making them easy to bear. But bear them we must. The Savior will hold our hand and show us what to do, but we must do it. We must walk the path, we must clear the obstacles and debris, we must approach and open the door of the Lord’s Atonement. Otherwise our sins will always have power over us.

American Idol

I worked for American Idol this week. They held a whirlwind audition here in Salt Lake City. I was excited merely for the value of their name. I can now say, hey, I worked on the production crew of American Idol.

I don’t watch the show. I think it is boring and the fanaticism it receives is verging on, ironically, idolism. All most workers cared about on the production was whether or not Simon, Paula, and Randy were going to visit. Would we meet them? Well, I met Ryan Seacrest. He alone came to visit. We were lucky for that. He only comes when he has time and only visits a few of the tryout cities.

But like I said, I didn’t really care. I was more impressed and excited about meeting the producers of the show. For three days I got to work with the people who make American Idol. I mean really make it, and make more than $2 billion a season. They hire the crews, work the cameras, plan the tours, schedule the talent, seek the sponsors; everything. And they work insanely hard schedules. My shift was around fifteen hours a day. Theirs started before mine and ended long after mine. They are just ordinary people. They were nice, funny, tired.

Once again, whether you watch the show or not, love it or hate it—I heard plenty of both, there was something there I hadn’t expected. I had my suspicions about the shallow Hollywood production that seemed the epitome of capitalistic business and marketing driving out what art and purity there was left in the entertainment world. But as I walked the line of thousands of people waiting to enter, I found that something more. They played guitars and sang. They laughed with one another, complete strangers mere hours before. It was a party atmosphere. Everyone was accepted. If you were in line, you were now part of the American Idol family.

The motives of the top executives may be questionable. But the show really has created a movement on the public level. Democrat, Republican, black, white, Jew and Christian; it didn’t matter. The problems of the world drifted away; all that mattered was singing. And for three days I got to be a part of it.