General Conference

I am so excited for conference! I was thinking today how amazing it is that people from all over the world can watch conference live, and can have it in their language. The work and amount of planning it takes to make this possible is extensive. We are so blessed to be able to enjoy two days of being spiritually uplifted. I know that the words we will hear are what Heavenly Father wants us to hear. He is aware of each of us and our needs, and there are individual messages for each of us if we listen closely and are looking for answers. I am so grateful to have a living Prophet on earth that is so in tune with the spirit and with what is going on in our lives. I know that he is called of God, along with the other leaders of the church. I know that he words we will hear this weekend are true and that our lives will be blessed if we listen to the counsel we will be given. I hope that everyone takes the opportunity to enjoy the talks the will be given.

Trying To Be Better

My husband got free movie tickets from work awhile back, and I really wanted to see The Choice which was the new Nicholas Sparks Movie. He humored me, and after the movie he said "why do you always want to see movies where people cheat on people". I thought about it, and I found myself defending the movie. We talked about it some more, and I agreed that it really wasn't that good of  movie. I then realized that most chick flicks aren't really very good movies, but I am drawn to them. After he brought it up, and after talking about it a lot in class, I have been a lot more careful about the movies I choose to watch. So many movies portray such negative and worldly views on marriage, and in order to teach my children what a marriage really looks like, I need to work on not letting these views into my home. By watching these movies, I am showing that I am ok with these types of things. I am striving to be better so that the spirit can always dwell in my home.

Maybe TV Show Characters Can Be Friends...

I wrote a post awhile back called "My Best Friend is a TV Show Character...JK". I have come to the realization that this may actually have some truth to it. I just moved, and I don't have internet in my new apartment yet. I use my phone when I need to check assignments, or check my email. I have mostly just avoided the internet. This means that I have not been able to watch Netflix. My husband works in the evenings, so I am home alone at night quite a bit. I have realized that I hate the silence. I used to fill up the silence with Netflix. When I was cleaning, making dinner, or eating I had Netflix on. I found that I get so lonely and bored. I finish my homework and then it's so quiet. I find other things to do, but the silence makes me feel so isolated. I think it may be true that I really am friends with TV show characters. Without them, I notice a difference in my mood and how I feel.  This probably isn't healthy, so I will definitely be working on this.

Internet

My husband and I moved to a basement apartment in a house that is brand new. We are the first tenants, but our landlord, who lives above us, still has not gotten internet. It has only been a couple days, but it has been rough! We have been really busy moving and unpacking, so it is hard to see what it will be like when I am not super busy. Though it is weird not watching Netflix, the worst part is doing homework. I have my phone with limited data, but it is way too hard to do homework on that. It is a good thing my sister lives nearby so I can use her internet. I wish we didn't have to be so dependent on internet. I can live without social media, but I need the internet to graduate.

Snapchat

I have to admit that I love snapchat. It can be used for a lot of not so good things, but my family has so much fun with it. Last Sunday we were having a game night. My siblings had me teach them how to do all the funny effects and faces that snapchat has now.  I taught them how, and we spent the next half hour sending each other snapchats and sending them to my parents as well. My nephew who is almost 4 love it! I then got the idea to try it out on the baby, and that was even better. There are so many fun things that technology has given us that actually do bring families closer together. Though we were all on our phones, we were still talking and laughing and interacting together. 

Anxiety, Depression, and Media

Today I realized just how fast and far media can spread. My older sister married into an awesome family. Her husband has two older sisters that are always fun to have at family dinner. These two older sisters have blogs, and I always enjoy reading them. They wrote a particular good post two days ago called "Satan's Hidden Arsenal Against Women." Today as I was scrolling through my news feed I noticed someone from my home stake had shared their post. That's so crazy! There is no way that she knows them! I then realized the this post had been shared, liked, and quoted over 9,000 times. So many people that I know have shared it or talked about it, and they don't even know them.

Social media can be really awesome. This article is awesome and really helped me, and I'm positive it has helped so many people. Though there are so many awful things that come from media, it can have some great information that can really help you and lift your spirits. I encourage everyone to read this post. It's long, but it's worth it.


http://www.insideoutminds.com

Riser

In class this week we talked about music. We were asked to think of a song that would be the theme song to our lives. I thought, and thought.....and got nothing. What one song encompasses so many years with so many changes? I don't know that there is a song that really describes me or my life, but I am really loving "Riser" by Dierks Bentley. It's such a good song. We face so many challenges in life. Some are big, some are small, and some we fell will never end. Though this is the case, we can be a riser. We can rise up to the challenges and work hard. Everything about life takes work. Living, making money, developing relationships, developing ourselves....and basically everything else. I want to be the kind of person that doesn't mope around and say "why me?" I want to take a minute to process what is happening, and then just go for it. I don't want to waste time feeling sorry for myself. I want to work hard to dig my way out of whatever dark hole I've been tossed into. I want to be happy and to make the best of every situation. I want to feel good about myself and feel good about what Ive accomplished and what the people around me are accomplishing.

My Best Friend is a TV Show Character...JK

It's scary how invested we can get in TV shows. I'm currently watching Grey's Anatomy, and my husband often has to remind me that it's just a show. I'll text him while he's at work and say things like "[insert main character's name here] just died! What will happen now?" or "this patient came into today with [insert crazy disease or injury here], and they ended up dying. She was such a nice person and now I don't know what will happen to her son!" It's pretty sad. Sometimes characters even make appearances in my dreams at night. Usually more often than my actual friends do.

I don't think this is a huge problem, but it does make me think twice about it. I've come to accept everything that goes on in that show, even though much of it goes against my moral beliefs. There are lesbian couples, and that hardly bothers me anymore. There is a lot of drinking, and a ton of premarital sex, and it doesn't surprise me or bother me. I obviously haven't accepted it as the right thing to do, but I choose to expose myself to it. I can see how we can become desensitized to things in the media so easily, and it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Sawyer and His Phone

I've always used the saying "absorb like a sponge" to describe what I wish would happen to my brain as I sat in class or skimmed through my textbook. Now I want to use it to describe what I see around me. As I am studying the media this semester I am going to focus on how I see people around me absorbing all that the media has to offer.

My sister's son, Sawyer, will be turning 4 in June. I have watched this cute little guy grow, and I have recently noticed how much he picks up from his surroundings. I was over visiting my sister and her family a few days ago, and Sawyer was very attached to my sister's old phone. He was scrolling through old pictures and dialing numbers and he started laughing! Between spurts of laughter he would say things like "that message was so funny" and I just got a funny picture of you, Aunt Rae!" It was THE cutest thing I had seen. He was also saying how he had to "finish texting". He was basically saying all the things we say around him. It made me realize what a big part media plays in our lives, and what an even bigger part it will play in the lives of our children and future children. The media is all around us, and it is up to us to make that exposure a good thing or a bad thing.