BYU Babble

A quick stream of consciousness, since really I should be working right now...

After work today I came down to my dear ol' alma mater, where the BYU Motion Picture Archives will be premiering a brand-new documentary about the making of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. Film buff that I am, there's no better way to spend a Tuesday evening, especially when the film can also work as Latter-day Shalom fodder.

Crossing through the Wilkinson Student Center, I stop by Jamba Juice to grab dinner. Leaning against the counter, waiting, I play a couple quick rounds of Words with Friends and observe the current Cougars. A familiar tune hits my ears: "Bye, Bye, Bye." Ah, yes, the N'Sync anthem transports me right back to 2000. Suddenly, the scene is all too familiar. Did I just step through a time warp back to my freshman year?! The students' fashion may change, but their faces stay the same. Technically they're not the peers I knew here once, but they are the siblings / cousins / nieces / nephews thereof, complete with that same distinctive Mormon look you can spot a mile away. It's not just their clean-cut appearances - it's something in the genetics, the result of generations of Latter-day Saints marrying within the faith (or something like that). The song changes to Kelly Clarkson - again, from my college days - and I walk out of earshot, Jamba in hand, ready to get to work in the library.

Upon discovering that the library's food-is-allowed policy doesn't extend to Jamba Juice, I dejectedly return outside, Pomegranate Passion in hand, to swiftly suck down dinner. Rather than sitting in the chilly March air or, alternately, heading inside the Cougareat, I decide to stroll. I head over to the Kennedy Center to grab a flyer about the Jerusalem Center for a Latter-day Shalom piece/series that's in the works. I'm stunned to see that the racks upon racks of flyers I once studied so enthusiastically are gone. Immediately it clicks: technology. Of course. Today's students aren't going to peruse paper when they can browse a website. *sigh* I guess some things have changed after all.

I turn a corner and find myself walking past the Kimball Tower. Instinctively, I want to walk down the ramp or the stairs to the American Heritage office. It's just right there, within reach - but why? My boss moved on - she's getting a Ph.D. in upstate New York. Or an MPA - I forget. None of my colleagues would be there, either, nor would the professors for whom I worked. It's downright eerie, seeing how things look so the same, feeling like that's where I still belong - and yet it's not. And that's not a bad thing, either. Each experience holds its glorious season, and then we fly on to bigger and better adventures.

And so I throw away my Jamba Juice cup after draining its tart-but-sweet dregs and head back to the library, where I run into a best friend's brother who I've known since he was a little boy, and yet he's a full-fledged man these days, back from a mission, a sophomore in college. He tells me about his exciting summer job before dashing off to a study group, and I circle down the stairs, taking a sentimental mental snapshot, as I always do, of the stairs on which I had my first professional job interview - over the phone with my future boss (and favorite editor) during reading days, no less.

Another flight of steps, and I'm in my now-familiar surroundings of the area outside the auditorium where I'm a regular to the Special Collections film screenings. I always meant to attend them while a student - but alas, never did. How sweet to make that part of my BYU present. It's as if I've been given a second chance to enjoy all the great things Provo and BYU have to offer, minus the homework and plus a paycheck. It's the best of both worlds.

I'll take it.

A Sucker for the Stage

Friends, I must be crazy. Absolutely, positively crazy.

Why, you ask?

(Or this isn't exactly news, you say?)

Well... I've just signed up for an audition time to do Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Lehi this summer. My darling friend Paige, who I met while in Singin' in the Rain, is assistant-directing it and has been trying to talk me into trying out. Sure enough, while attending a Broadway revue last night in which my friend Torri was a dancer, I had all sorts of happy flashbacks to doing The Sound of Music, Bye, Bye Birdie and more...











What can I say? Those childhood years of being dragged along to my mother's rehearsals and voice lessons really got under my skin. I'm sure her intention was to keep my brother and me from killing each other... but wow, it sure had a greater impact than that. It's in my blood!

Sure, an audition isn't a commitment... but if I'm going to do it, I'll do it well. After all, if it's not worth giving 100%, then it isn't worth my time at all. I'm shooting for "Narrator" here, people.

Vocal bootcamp commences this week to whip my voice back into shape - if anyone has tips of how to do this masterfully, I am all ears. Oh how I miss my voice in its OCMCO-induced peak of perfection. It was good - and then I had to get pneumonia and be unable to sing for three months. Boo.

And if you're questioning my sanity in throwing yet another thing into the mix... well... join the club. Rehearsals are only a few days a week, though, and that's manageable. At least I can have a fun, busy summer before adding Utah State to my ever-full plate in the fall (yes, I did get in!). Besides, when I'm not busy, I go nuts, and plays are a fabulous place to meet people. Especially when there are 12 brothers involved. Please oh please let some of them be single...

Where in the World Is... Christa Gonna Visit?

As a child, I LOVED "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

(Really, what child of the '90s didn't?)

My intense love (borderline obsession) with learning as much as I can about the people and places around the globe has been around as long as memory permits, and this show/game was delicious fuel to the fire. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of playing the game on our Apple ][ (ah, yes, Apple fan for life!), running upstairs to tell my mom the clues I didn't know, racing back down with the correct answer (always marveling at how smart my mom was!), and feeling vicariously like I was jetting around the globe.

Well... that "vicariously" part ends next summer.

See, as yet another part of the Thirty, Flirty and Thriving Initiative, I am bound and determined to get off of the North American continent before hitting the big 3-0. Despite being a travel addict, I've never explored much internationally. Beyond the other side of Niagara Falls and an orphanage in Tijuana, I haven't left my homeland - so, really, I've never even spent a night outside of the good ol' U.S. of A. Granted, that'll change with my big Canada trip this summer, but still - Canada is practically the 51st state. (Just don't tell that to my Canuck cousin-in-law - pretty sure he'd get feisty about me saying that!) I mean, if I can roadtrip there, then it isn't cutting my need for a major international adventure.

So where am I headed, you ask?

Ah, friends. That's where you come in.

I may not have put a passport to use, but I know PLENTY of you have. I run with quite the well-traveled, sophisticated set, if I do say so myself. ;) Seriously, I'm pretty sure every continent is covered among my friends, and I have GOBBLED up reading or hearing of your adventures, wishing it could be me! Backpacking excursions through Europe, missions in India, time spent living in Brazil or Hong Kong or Morocco, hopping around Australia and the isles of the Pacific, study abroads in London, surfing trips in Costa Rica, safaris in Kenya. (Seriously, who ARE you people?!)

So, do tell. Where are your favorite spots? What do you recommend? I'm drawn to Europe, but that's only natural for a European mutt like me with roots in England, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Bohemia (which is no longer a country, I know - but it sounds way cooler than the Czech Republic, no?). A tour of the Holy Land would be incredible, too, especially with Latter-day Shalom in mind. But maybe something more exotic could hit the spot?

And does anyone want to come with? I'm barely comfortable doing a trip along the Big Sur coastline solo, let alone traipsing around the world...

Consider the Source

Of all the congrats I've had on my recent (random) successes, the best came last night in just a simple two words - "Good Job!!!!"

Why, pray tell, does this "Good Job" mean more to me than any others? Because it came from my father. It warms my heart to no end to hear that sort of praise from my dad, especially via Facebook. Usually I delete the emails from Facebook notification emails, but this one stays. Each time it pops up, I grin. Feels good to be loved!

It really is all about the little things, isn't it?

The Simple Joys of Maidenhood

Look what I came to find today!

Each spring, our company gives each female employee a bunch of daffodils in a vase for breast cancer awareness month. (It's a testosterone-heavy place - we are in software, after all - so there aren't tons and tons of us. But still.) Such a lovely gesture!

I love being a woman. LOVE it. There is something so glorious and divine to be found in femininity! I absolutely adore the differences between men and women, too. Sure, sometimes it can be infuriating, but on the whole, it's lovely how the two sexes balance one another out. It's so yin-yang. We need each other.

More thoughts on femininity in tomorrow's Latter-day Shalom post. For now, just enjoy the sunny beauty of the flowers and the sheer delight of the feminine.

Catching Up

Meet my new best friends.

Well... that might be an overstatement, and I don't want to be materialistic... but after working on one of two computers circa 2002 and an old-school "dumbphone," I marvel at the wonders of technology these days - especially in my life.

See, blogging on my sloooooooooow computer made me want to smack my head against my desk, and I'm not big on doing non-work stuff from work, so... lots of ideas made the "blog this" sticky note and went nowhere beyond. It was easier to just let it go.

Part of what I'd let go in the last year and a half has been keeping up with everyone's blogs. I more or less walked away from the blogosphere upon that whole unemployed-with-pneumonia horror scene that was my life for a few months there, and I'm just barely getting back into my beloved interwebs for reals upon the arrival of lovely Mr. MacBookPro. (He/she needs a real name, but I can't decide what yet. Any and all suggestions are welcome!)

In staying home sick today, ever-productive me opted to tackle my disaster zone of a Google Reader, extracting random blogs from the Friends list of people who I actually know and about whom I actually want to read. And whoever remained got updated from their clever blog titles to their actual names. Including maiden names. Type A, much?

Anyways... now that we're organized, I've started poring through it while watching chick flicks galore and playing a few games of "Words with Friends" on le iPhone. (If you're on there, come find me - ChristaJeanne. I know, original, right? It's all about branding, darling!) Apparently a lot has happened in the past 18+ months! My darling RA from my freshman dorm has four daughters now. Last I checked, she'd just barely had #3.

I feel really behind.

So if you randomly get comments from me on really old posts, now you know why.

It's funny - there's a worry out there that all this technology isolates us from one another. While I can totally see how that would be the case, i.e. my sister and teenaged cousins texting while in the same house/room instead of actually speaking, I find that's not my case. Rather, the technology empowers me to remain connected to friends and acquaintances from across the years. How beneficial it is to have all these tangential relationships could be debated when distanced emotionally, I suppose - but I, for one, love being able to keep up with so many amazing people I've met throughout the years. I've also had peripheral acquaintances become close, close friends through the blogosphere (and will be forever grateful for it - yes, Mishy, you're the first who comes to mind!). I've had online connections translate to IRL ("in real life") and genuinely enjoy some of the friends I've made solely through Twitter or blogging - friends I've never met yet get a kick out of tweeting with daily.

So... not to go all Kip on you, but...

I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever.

In which I become a Writer

I never realized that I always wanted to be a writer.

Growing up, my creative outlet was on stage, not paper. I was a singer or an actress (albeit a mediocre one). Sure, I took AP English and read copiously, but writing was never my focus. No journalism, no literary journals. Then, at 16, my identity as a singer was ripped out beneath my feet by our awful new choir teacher, and... my new focus became counting down the days between myself and BYU. Writing was nowhere in the picture.

So imagine the shock when I came across my Personal Progress book in recent years and saw that my 13-year-old self's career goal was to be a "clean journalist" - "clean" as in one of those without an agenda, which I more than accomplished in my OC Register days. I'd been under the impression I stumbled into journalism in college, but... apparently not.

Even so, even as a professional writer, I've never thought of myself as a Writer. Writers - with a capital W - are like my friends Chris and Christine, who tackle NaNoWriMo most years. Or Bloggers - with a capital B - like my friend Becky, aka That Girl, whose clever blogs about raising a family in Brazil and then returning to the States get all sorts of comments on each thought-provoking yet highly entertaining post.

Me? Writing is something I do, sure, but I haven't really thought of it as defining who I am. In fact, a newly acquired friend of late knows me principally from my writing, and while his compliments are nice, talking about me as a Writer started getting downright annoying! The man always brought it up, and it that was so strange to me, because it's not at the forefront of how I think about myself. I'm a singer, a Latter-day Saint, a really good cook, a woman, a faithful friend, a lover of the arts and culture and big cities, a Californian. Writer isn't on that top 10 list.

But perhaps it should be.

Taking a step back, how do I spend my days? Writing, editing, managing social media at work - that's at least eight hours of my day. Add to that my professional endeavors outside of my 9-5: writing Latter-day Shalom a few times a month, working 20 hours a month on my freelance gig. All writing. And what, pray tell, do I do in my free time? Blog on here, among other things. Text or email friends. If I were to log the number of words that flow from me on a daily basis, it would be mindboggling. Easily in the thousands. (Maybe I'll track it next week, just for the fun of it.) And I'd like to think there's quality along with the quantity.

Yesterday I attended Brunch and Stories, a meeting of the Provo Narrative Group to discuss writing, creativity, narratives and the like. The meat of our fascinating discussion on creativity merits a post of its own, so I'll circle back to that. However, aside from the content, two things struck me in the meeting: 1) when making introductions these days, the first identifying factor to roll off my lips is "writer," and 2) I must really not be vocal about my writerliness, because Chase, the group leader who invited me, was surprised when I said I'm a writer... when that's why I thought I was invited?

Well, it's time I embrace the identity of Writer. And, along with that, I apologize for not always bringing my writing A-game to the table in this space. You know how when among family or certain friends, you can let your hair down and not have to try to be clever, charming, fashionable, etc.? You can just show up. Well, that's how I've treated this blog, but I think you all deserve better than that, if you're going to take the time to read. So, I'll work to bring more brilliance and thought provocation to the blog.

And if y'all want to up the comments (to feed that inevitable need for feedback/validation that comes with the territory of being a Writer), that'd be nice. Hint, hint.

A Diabolical Diet-tribe

As part of the Thirty, Flirty and Thriving Initiative, I've started working out again and dieting ("Operation: Skinny Me").

Two days in.

And... oh... hungry. So hungry.

Friends, I have been so good! Thanks to this handy-dandy food calculator at MyFitnessPal.com, I've been tracking every single morsel that crosses my lips, accountable for calorie counts and overall nutritional value. And - bonus! - when I work out, it adds more calories to my daily allowance. 40 minutes on the elliptical = 600 extra calories. Score! I haven't eaten through my entire day's allotment yet.

But today is... one of those days. Early into the office, leave early enough to run a couple errands, then babysit a friend's adorable daughters for a few hours before dashing off to Institute (as part of Operation: Meet People).

This being hungry thing? So over it.

And it's not like I don't have food in the fridge, but... the other half of yesterday's Cafe Rio salad? Gross. Hard-boiled eggs? Gag me. Another handful of (oh-so-delicious) sesame honey almonds (imported from Trader Joe's in NorCal)? I'd rather not.

What will do the trick?

Macachocochicoconut.

Macachoco-what you ask?

Macachocochicoconut:

• Macadamia nuts - protein! Totally healthy.
• Chocolate chips - there's gotta be some dairy in there, right? Calcium?
• Coconut - a fruit, for sure.

So, epitome of health, right?

Well... so what if it probably contains more calories than my last two meals combined. It's not in MyFitnessPal's database. Guess that means I can't enter it in... which means eating this deliciousness never happened. Right?

Confessions of a Late Bloomer

Last night I launched Operation: Meet People. A friend and I went to Utah Young Republicans, hoping to meet some folks. It was... ummm... interesting. Neither as "young" nor as dateable as I'd hoped (although the lecture was fascinating). At least I've kicked off this new phase, getting out there and broadening my social network. (The IRL one. Not the online one.) Having finally blossomed, late bloomer that I am, I am ready to take the world by storm. Question is, where does one begin such a project - especially while living in the Beehive State?

For context...

When I lived in Orange County, I felt like I could never measure up to the standard of apparent awesomeness around me.

The singles scene there was filled with BEAUTIFUL people, pulled together so wonderfully that they could've stepped off of the pages of an Anthropologie catalog. Heck, some of them actually were models. These Orange County native children (including some to whom I'm lucky enough to be related) are of a unique breed - effortlessly cool, confident and radiant. They know just how to pose in every picture, take trips around the globe, live in gorgeous apartments, party on yachts. They listen to indie bands I've never heard of, meet their soulmates through online dating reality series, and pull off color combinations I would never even imagine on my most daring fashion day.

And while I call them friends and think they are just darling and wonderful, that vibe just was never me. I went to the parties sometimes... but always felt like the frizzy-haired country bumpkin. It isn't like I was invited for pity's sake, but still... I'd come but feel overshadowed, always more comfortable to be helping in the kitchen than actually participating in the fun, more like some sort of a third-party observer than part of the crew. Oh, how I wished so much that I could be, but the inner nerd somehow kept an arm's length from believing I could be part of the beautiful crowd.

After all, I grew up with more books than friends. (Really.) And in ill-fitting hand-me-downs, to boot. Bless her heart, but my mother never bothered to teach me really anything... about fashion... dating... confidence. I didn't even know what conditioner was for until living with my dad and stepmom at 13. (Poor Betsy. Her stepchildren were practically feral, raised by wolves.) You can't teach what you don't know, so I'm sure my mother did her best, paltry as it may have been. But in so many ways, I am who I am today only thanks to patient, helpful friends, my years at BYU, and the process of time.

For better or worse, I am a late bloomer. But I've finally bloomed.

And I lament that the blooming had to finally come while in Utah. I've grown by leaps and bounds in the past year or two, shedding those insecurities I'd maintained in California, achieving serious professional success and all the confidence that comes as a by-product. And beyond the professional, I've been able to do so many cool things and stretch my talents and abilities in the last few years, believing that, really, there is nothing I can't do if I'm willing to put in the time and effort. (Which is the key, i.e. running. Wasn't totally willing to do all that was necessary there, but round two begins Monday, and let's hope it's better than last year's venture!) That confidence radiates, apparently, because the gal I see in the mirror is so much prettier than I ever remember her being in Orange County.

After taking a breather from the social scene for the better part of a year (left behind my Lehi crew after moving, spent much of the summer traveling, got busy with politics in the fall, kept busy with the holidays, and then went into GRE study mode for the last two months), I am more than ready to jump back into the social fray. I moved to Utah somewhat depleted - now I'm more whole than I've ever been, brimming with enthusiasm, energy, optimism and confidence. Life is amazing, and everyone has a story to tell. I am so ready to meet some amazing people, make interesting friends, get out on the town and thrive.

But, friends, where do I even begin? Eighteen months down the road I turn 30, and I want to do so "flirty and thriving," for lack of a better tagline. Meeting people is my top social priority right now, and I'm all about friends and quantity - but not lacking quality, either. The Utah scene I've run across thus far just isn't me. Not good, not bad - just not me.

I've been in the fun crowd, social for social's sake. It bored me. There has to be more common ground than belonging in the same ward. I need people who are on the same page - or can at least hold a quality discussion - regarding interests like art, politics, literature, understanding and deconstructing the world. I need that intellectual angle. I gobbled up every second of Sundance week because it put me with the Utah hipsters. I might not be a hipster, but I enjoy the vibe apart from the Utah usual. Short of hitting up the BYU scene, where do I connect with those types? Do I dare try to link into the BYU set? If I could connect with older BYU friends, perhaps - I might be a Cougar, but I'm not that kind of cougar, if you catch my drift. ;)

Also on the agenda so far is attending Institute in Sandy and trying out the ward in which I live (instead of the SoJo one I attend). But beyond this, I need to tap into my network, friends. If you know of anything going on in the area, do tell! I'm open to all thoughts. What is the LDS equivalent of the bar scene?!I just need to meet engaging, likeminded people with whom I can enjoy all the fun out there to be had.