And it’s slowed to just a trickle now but I wish that it was pouring out ‘cause there’s so much here to write about…

This is a line I love from a song I adore from a band I don’t understand why they aren’t everyone’s favorite. This line tends to apply to my life and how I feel about it, more often than not.

Here’s one that’s better for me:

“Slow down girl.”

I ran into my old office today because I knew that my grapefruit lotion would still be sitting on the counter, right where I left it, and my hands were aching and bleeding because of the random shift from the preview of spring we’ve gotten the past few weeks.

I shouldn’t say random. It’s Utah.

I always say hi to Bobbi, the 60-something-year-old ready-to-retire advisor in the office, and she’s my absolute favorite in that office. I always mean to just say a quick hello, the conventional “How are you?” but as soon as I step into her cubicle I know I’ll be awhile. And not that it’s her fault. I just really love talking to her. She asked how life was going, reminding me that it’s a four letter word. I said, “Oh, it’s alright. The usual, you know.” “Spitting at you?” “Yeah…”
I told her about my gymnastics/biking combination, how I haven’t been able to walk the past few days and how my coach laughed at me for it. I told her that when I work out, I don’t know when to stop if I’m by myself. When I’m with others, they set the pace and I stop when they do. I don’t know where I got that kind of stamina, but I just keep pushing myself. I’ve had some running days where I run with the guys and do whatever I need to to stay at their pace, and as soon as we’re done, I collapse. I don’t know my own limits.

I was talking about my physical limits. Bobbi said, “When are you going to figure that out?” I started to go on about making a workout routine, setting some time restrictions, but she interrupted and said, “No, no, for life. When are you going to figure that out?”
I love that about Bobbi. She’s really good at making one story about one aspect of my life apply to how I should run the all of it.

I shrugged. “I dunno.” “How old are you?” “Twenty.” She laughed. “You’ve got plenty of time.”

She then proceeded to tell me about an interview she was watching with a guy who frequents the top of Mt. Everest, and the interviewer was asking him about his hardest trips. On one of his trips, he was climbing with a friend. At some point in the climb, there is a ledge, which has been named “The Balcony,” and when this climber’s friend reached this point, he sat down on the ledge and died. Just like that. The conventional course of action (for climbers, anyway) is to leave the deceased in their place. I suppose carrying a body down the length of the mountain would be more of an impossible feat than that of climbing Everest, but other climbers have died on their way up. The man’s friend was not alone on the ledge. The man said that the hardest climb was the climb after that one. It was hard to lose his friend, but it was even harder going up and seeing where his friend was buried in the ice.

Bobbi continued to tell me about the things learned from the interview, but what we pulled back to was slowing down and knowing our limits. This was kind of a weird way to have this brought to my attention, but I typically ignore reminders to slow down. People tell me that all the time. When I graduated from Young Women, they gave me a book, The Book for People Who Do Too Much.

I constantly run. I try to get as many things into a week as possible. Or a day, for that matter. I used to be pretty good at keeping things consistent; the hundred things I did a day were at least related to the million that got done that week. Now I feel like I’m just going for variety. I still want to do a million things, but it doesn’t really matter what they are, as long as I’m busy.

That’s ridiculous.

Monotony is probably one of my greatest fears. I don’t think I know how to do the same thing the same thing twice. I think it’s part of the reason I take off as frequently as I do (well… free flights excluded). I think I’m afraid of being boring. Or maybe because my life never was boring growing up, nor could it be predicted, I don’t feel like it can be now. I remembered the other day a kid in my eigth grade class and his commenting on my frequent absenses. I disappeared for a couple of weeks, and when I got back, Eric Rizzo said,”Alyssa picked up and left again, to who knows where. She’s back, but she’ll leave again soon.” I wondered where we’d flown to that time, and then I realized we weren’t flying then. That’s just how my family’s always been. (We’d driven to Sanford that week because we thought we’d be attending a funeral. We cleaned out a cemetery and went four-wheeling for two weeks instead.)

Life needs to have more direction than that. When I was growing up, my parents’ direction was to teach me what was important, help me realize what good goals were and how to make my own. And then they watched me rocket off into my own world. We’ve been given so much direction with the restored gospel, I know what things are essential, but the Lord doesn’t outline everything for us. We have to figure that out for ourselves. That’s not easy, but it’s even harder when we fill our lives with things that don’t mean anything. Elder Oaks taught, "We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives." That's just the start of prioritizing. There's so much more to life than keeping out getting caught up doing good things. (This article will appear in my next post, I'm sure.)

In the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time just focusing on what I was doing and enjoying it thoroughly. On Saturday, I went to the ball fields with my grandparents and cousins and we played softball for a couple of hours. I left my phone, I didn’t have any commitments that night, I just put all of my attention into playing softball. Partially because I haven’t played since the shiner in second grade, but still. I went to dinner with my grandparents afterwards. I just enjoyed being with them, I didn’t try to focus on being anywhere else or doing anything else. Sunday, Jared came down from Salt Lake. I hadn’t made any commitments for Sunday except to be at the temple dedication, the reason Jared came down, and so I spent the day being reminded why we were such good friends in high school. Monday I taught jump rope to little kids that don’t know how to focus on more than one thing at time, and because I had a handful of them, I had to focus on just them too. I think I know why Jeremy does it. Monday night, I went to see all of the Haynies but found myself looking for just Cara. We jumped on the trampoline for what seemed like hours, talking about all the things we did in Florida and how we need to keep doing them.
When I give all my attention to something, I really, really enjoy it. That seems so obvious now, but I’ve missed the obvious for a while. I regularly let in too many distractions. I need to a few things well, instead of trying to be able to spit out half-hearted versions of everything. Otherwise, that will be me on that ledge of Everest. I won’t even remember what I’m doing there when I sit down, and I’ll just keel over.

Bobbi’s little story seemed an odd way to be reminded of what’s important, but it was one I needed. I told her I would take it easy, and she said something along the lines of, “Slow down, girl!” I was promised angels. I guess I just wasn’t expecting, and haven’t yet fully come to appreciate, the ones that are always around me.