Wood Badge: Was it worth it?

The first time I ever considered going to a week-long scout camp for adults, was when my friend Merland went to Wood Badge. There he met my stake young men's president (before I met him actually) and together I blame the two of them for recruiting me to attend. I've had about five years to think about going. My excuse for not going was I didn't have enough time off work. This was true of course, considering that I have used anywhere from a week to two weeks of my vacation time for various scout camps every year for the past decade.

My excuse wore off when I found myself unemployed this spring and I realized others would pay my way.  With no cost to me and plenty of time on my hands, I committed to go.

So, what was it like?

Imagine travelling back in time to when you were 12 and attending your first scout camp, except keeping your adult knowledge and body. That's what it was like. Boy scout neckerchiefs, childish pranks, playing games, eating candy, and making a ton of new friends.

I had a few things I wanted to get out of Wood Badge. Namely, I wanted to better understand scout programs so I could run better scout activities for my youth. However, I was fearful Wood Badge might be more of just a motivational thing. I told my wife the night before Wood Badge, "I have a sneaking fear in the back of my mind that we're going to be sitting around singing Kumbaya."

The Bobwhite Patrol

So what did I get out of Wood Badge?

I have to admit that sometimes it felt a little like Kumbaya. There were some touchy-feely parts I could have done without. (Though I didn't have to sing it, one of the patrols did in fact sing Kumbaya as part of a patrol yell one time.) But the overall experience was positive. There were a lot of planning and leadership workshops that were a good refresher for me and would be useful to any scout leader. Another thing I liked was networking with so many amazing leaders. Scout masters, young men's presidents, bishops, stake presidencies, you name it. But by far the biggest reason I liked Wood Badge was the way they modeled the patrol method in everything they did. It's one thing to read about the right way to run a patrol. It's entirely another thing to see it in effect.

I have a lot to think about and it may take some time to incorporate everything I've learned into my own scout programs, but I feel energized to do more.

So go to Wood Badge all you scout leaders. Don't put it off until you've been in scouting for 10 years like me. Go as soon as you can.

Go now.

Now go.

Go!

Yes you.

A Message from Above?

My oldest son needed his cello bow for class today. It was being repaired at a shop in Bountiful. With racquetball this morning, I offered to pick it up rather than make a special trip on Easter break Monday. Racquetball is over around 8 a.m. and the shop opened at 10, which gave me a couple hours of wait time. So naturally, being me, I fled to the mountains for a quick hike.

I was disappointed to see a single car in the parking lot when I pulled up, but glad to see that person return to their car and leave as I got out and thus I headed up the trail alone. I'm not sure why I felt the desire to be alone, but soon questioned the wisdom of that as I realized nobody knew where to find me. What if a mountain lion jumped me? Okay, so maybe I was being silly. I've never even seen one. What were the chances of running into one now?

Undaunted, I made my way up a steep slope, out of the canyon, and finally perched on a big rock overlooking the valley. I still had plenty of time to kill and so I sat and pondered. I sent a picture text to my wife as evidence of where I was (in case of lion attack). I read some of the names written on the top of the rock. Out of curiosity, I looked up a couple names on Facebook and found pictures of those people who had been at this location before me. Finally I put my phone away and settled in to enjoy the view.

The morning was grey and cold. The warmth generated by my short hike soon left me as the chill wind chased my jacket zipper up to my neck. This was a lonely place. Made all the more lonely by the weather and the view of the city; throngs of people miles below, going about their lives.
Maybe it was the recent months of unemployment. Maybe it was the medical scare of last week that had my second son in the hospital. Something beside the wind stirred me.

All people go through trials and my trials are pretty mild compared to some. Still, I felt lonely. I felt lonely, not from the lack of humans near me, but lonely on another, deeper, spiritual level.

I prayed. "O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?"

Okay, maybe that's not exactly what I said, but it is how I felt inside. So, where was my faith? Where was that calm assurance I've had all year that I would get through this trial? I have never doubted I would find a job. The only question was how long I would need to look. I knew I still had a solid foundation of faith. This was no crisis. It was more of a knock on the door, just to make sure He was still there.

That's when I saw it. Down below me on the hillside, maybe a quarter of a mile away. A flash of red on the edge of a thicket of scrub oak. "It's probably nothing." I tried to convince myself. "Merely some garbage or ribbon marking a study area or another boundary of some sort. There are no trails going down that way. I should ignore it and hike out the way I hiked in." Yet, I couldn't get it out of my head.

What if it was a person in distress? Or a bag full of money? What if it was something amazing? Whatever it was sure was a bright and shiny red to be able to see it at that distance. It must be something interesting I decided. So I made my way down the slope, fighting through scrub oak, sliding down loose rock and dirt. Slowly, I wound my way down to the...whatever it was.

At last I got close enough to make it out. It was a deflated Mylar balloon, not unlike the one I bought for my son last week while he was in the hospital.

On the balloon was a single word. Love.

I know what you're thinking. It was a message from above. Or maybe you're thinking it was just a strange coincidence. It doesn't really matter though. Either way, it made me feel better. Just a little. Just enough.

Thank you.

Unpaid Vacations Aren't as Much Fun.

Finding a job is my primary job right now. It is a job that doesn't pay much, but given I have so little experience at it, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In his book, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are, Dr. Suess describes a time in your life when you are in "The Waiting Place." That's where I feel I am right now. Waiting for job applications to be seen by the right people. Waiting for that shiny, new job. It sort of feels a bit like hanging around.

Still, we have some cushion time to look for a job without totally ending up on the street, so I feel blessed in many ways. Here is what my typical day is like.

5:00 Wake up.
5:25 Get in the car and drive to Racquetball.
6:00 Play racquetball.
8:00 Drive home.
8:35 Eat a quick breakfast with the younger kids before they go to school.
8:45 Talon time while Jeralynn brings the other kids to school.
9:00 When Jeralynn gets back and takes Talon to get dressed, I finally get a shower and get dressed.
9:20 Clean and dressed, I sit down at my laptop in my office and start reading messages.
10:30 I realize that reading messages as devolved into wasting time on Facebook and I start checking job boards and sending messages to people via email, LinkedIn, or Facebook to find out more about potential jobs.
10:40 Having contacted everyone in my network within the past week, I decide to apply for that one job. The one I'm not sure I'm qualified for but it could be an "opportunity." Or perhaps that job at that place I don't really want to move to, but figure I may as well apply just to get my name out there.
11:45 After spending an hour making a targeted resume and/or cover letter, I take a break when Talon comes to get me for lunch.
12:30 Talon goes to school and I go back to my office.
1:30 After reading news and boring stuff for nearly an hour, I realize I can barely keep my eyes open and go take a nap.
3:00 I wake up when the door slams and Cale is home from Jr. High. I realize I never finished that job application and go send in my application.
4:00 The rest of the kids get home and I'm too distracted to work as I listen to what happened at school or engage in an afternoon snack with them.
5:00 I rush out the door with Cale to basketball practice.
6:15 Getting home late from practice, I eat a quick dinner and get ready for whatever meeting I have that day.
7:00 There's always something. A scout meeting, mutual, round table, etc.
8:15 Get home and call the kids for scripture study.
8:45 Finally have scripture study.
9:00 It's bed time, but we promised we'd read to the kids, so they get to stay up another half hour.
10:00 The kids are finally in bed (if we are lucky) and I go to check my computer one more time to make sure no important messages have arrived since the afternoon.
11:45 Realize I never actually checked my email and have been surfing the news or Facebooking all this time.
Midnight: Crawl into bed and fall asleep almost instantly, exhausted.

So there you have it. A day in the life of the tragically unemployed.

The hard part will be keeping up with life once I start working 40 hours a week again.

Okay, my kid sister always asks a question at the end of her blog posts, to generate feedback. So, what do you do with your free time?

2014, what happened?

Okay, so I never posted to my blog in 2014. So what? I have like 5 followers. To you 5, I'm sorry. To everyone else, you probably follow my antics on Facebook, right?

Right?

Wait, you aren't here....






Okay, now I feel a bit stupid. Talking to myself.


I'll just go now.







Umm, bye.

Blogging is going out of style?

Should I keep my blog or dissolve it? Seems blogging is going out of style these days. I do want a place on the web, but I'd rather have it be connected to my Eagle of Moab domain.

I want a place where people can find me and see pictures and be my friends. I've been sorting of using Facebook for that, but I do have some friends who don't use Facebook. But one of my concerns is internet safety and security. Facebook allows me to control who sees my stuff. I guess a blog can be private too. Security with a www domain is less simple. I don't want folks to have to enter a password to access my domain.

So here's what I'm thinking. Use my domain as a gateway. People can go there and link to this blog or Facebook or my Dropbox public folder or my YouTube account. That way I can still keep private things private. Facebook users see something different based on my settings and friendship to them. YouTube is public domain (but also has privacy settings to limit who can see a video). This blog is public, but I should probably make it private if I ever start using it to share my life and family the way I have always wanted to. Dropbox can have both public and private (password protected) files for sharing.

I have already removed any personally identifiable information from sites like Dropbox and Yahoo and closed all my former Yahoo Groups due to security concerns. The internet is a big scary place sometimes. So, until I get this all worked out, your best bet for following my life is still Facebook.

Mike gets ready to bowl another strike at his company party in September.

Animations

Made these back in the day.

Yearly update

Wow!  It has bee nearly a year since my last post. I can't let a year go by without posting something on my blog. Mission accomplished. See you next year.

Thank you helmet.

I found a snowboarding helmet at the DI last year, super cheap too, and I was so glad to have it on Monday when I crashed into some small quakies. I hit the back of my helmet on a tree pretty hard and the helmet worked perfectly. What a blessing to have found that.

I had been looking for a helmet ever since my concussion while snowboarding with Betty that one time in college. People still gasp when I tell them the events of that fateful day.

Don't drink to your health...

Medical treatments and medical health have been on my mind lately. For one, Jeralynn is wisely trying to help our family eat healthier. For another, I have two friends undergoing cancer treatment. Lastly, I am in the middle of a 16 hour course on Wilderness First Aid, part of my scout leader training. Practicing first aid always gets me thinking about all the tragic things that COULD happen and makes me appreciate more the good health and blessings I currently enjoy.

So I feel grateful and overwhelmed at the same time. I feel a need to slow down the pace and make sure my priorities are aligned properly, with family ahead of work and scout training courses and yes, sadly, even racquetball.

Whenever I get ponderous like this, my first instinct is always to try and find more time to spend with my family. But time alone isn't the answer. I've actually enjoyed some unplanned, unconstructed time with my family in the past month, mainly over the holidays. And frankly, I felt the time was mostly wasted. I was boring. I had the constantly nagging feeling that I should be more productive when I wasn't doing much more than reading books or watching TV with the kids. And maybe that feeling comes with good reason.

So this time, I want to do something different. I want to learn with my kids. More specifically, I want to designate one night a week just for this purpose. Monday is already family night, but the focus there should be spiritual and relaxed; recreational and fun. So I want to make Tuesday night my learning night with the kids. And it can be anything from helping Cale pass off something for cub scouts, to making a science project with Trey, to teaching car maintenance or first aid skills to all four of them. No limitations except that it be educational. Even better if we learn something together.

There will be a few time conflicts, like cub scout pack meeting one Tuesday every month, but I'm ready to fill in the remaining Tuesdays on our calendar with fun things to learn with my family.

Comment and tell me what you think of my idea?

Blog Idea #11 - Thanks sis.

Okay, I never have anything to post, so I usually never blog, but my sister, Janet, just posted a nice list of what to blog when you're stuck for ideas over on her blog, Musings of a Children's Writer.

So idea number 11 seems easy enough. Ask me any question and I'll answer it honestly and openly in my next blog.

I think I hate writing blogs.

Alone Time Shouldn't Be This Busy

So I'm now on day 3 of being alone at home. My family is on vacation for a week while I stay home because I couldn't get work off.

This isn't the first time. They've left before while I've stayed. But it is the first time I've been so busy while they were gone. Even if they were here, they would not have seen me that much. Every night there are things to do. Work and sleep fill in the rest of my time just as they always do.

I guess it makes the time alone fly faster, so I won't complain. The thing I miss most while they are gone is the hugs from my 2 youngest. I also miss reading with Cale and I even miss they way Trey continually talks about video games. I also really miss all the bowling. That has been just the funnest thing this summer. We've been bowling on the cheap with the Kids Bowl Free program. I tried to bowl a couple games over Skype with them last night, but it just wasn't the same.

Take care, fam. I miss you.

Changing Your Desire

I recently re-read Dallin H. Oaks' talk on Desire from the most recent General Conference. This talk intrigued me because I have been thinking a lot about making some changes in my life. Not major changes, just small healthy changes, like eating better and exercising more.

In his talk, Oaks affirms that "Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming." I've always sort of seen desire as the first seed to a future reality. A smoker cannot quit until he actually desires to do so—-really desires it; not just to please someone else, but for himself.

But I've come to suspect that desire alone won't get you there. I've had this desire for a long time to drop 20 or 30 pounds. I do really want it. I know I want the benefits of being healthier and feeling healthier. It will improve my racquetball game, allow me to rock climb tougher climbs, give me the energy and strength to keep up with my kids. I really want this.

But's let's be honest. I have wanted this for years and I'm not any closer to my goal than when I started. So what's my problem? I know, I know, you're already laughing at me because its so obvious. But before I get to that, I want to run another tangent into the thread.

I recently read an article in the news about how presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann was taking slack because her family Christian counseling business had advised gay clients that they could "pray away the gay". Sarah Palin was in similar hot water for saying the same thing. This phrase has been battered about the internet recently, with gay advocacy groups up in arms at the very idea. But let's talk about it for a minute. If a person has a desire to not be gay, is it possible to change their orientation? If that's what they really want, is it possible?

LGBT advocates would say it is going against your nature to even try. Christian's would say it would be going against your nature not to. But I'm not so much interested in whether a person should as whether they could. The scriptures talk of repentant souls losing their desire to sin. In his talk, Oaks quotes Joseph Smith speaking of people who have "overcome the evils of [their lives] and lost every desire for sin." But have you ever heard of a gay person completely doing this? I've heard anecdotal evidence about people who have gone from gay to straight, but I've also heard that those people later admit that they have only deeply suppressed their same sex attraction, not actually changed it. I've not yet heard convincing evidence that anyone has ever completely changed such a desire.

We know that desires do change over time. When I was younger, I had a real desire to travel the world. I still would do it if I had the chance, but that desire has been replaced with the desire to settle down and raise a family. Okay, maybe that's not quite the same thing, but I think most people would agree that our true desires change over time. As we mature, we desire more to get along with others, quit being so selfish, and contribute to a peaceful world. Understanding of consequences changes desire.

To the contrary, there's also certainly plenty of evidence that a person can live in opposition to their desires, such as a gay or same sex attracted man who gets married and his kids. That's easy to visualize and it probably happens more than we know. One desire (to have a family) over-rides the other desire (to be gay). Which brings us back to my desire to diet. I am living in opposition to my desire to be more healthy. My desire to eat whatever I want over-rides my desire to be healthy.

As you were no doubt about to point out earlier, my problem is not HOW BADLY I desire to be more healthy, but what I'm actually doing about it. The problem is habit. Food is addicting and I've habituated myself to certain foods (and amounts of food). I've heard successful dieters say that once you start on a diet, it needs to become a permanent change, otherwise you'll just gain all that weight back.

So in summary, we have scriptures and prophets telling us we can change our desires. We have evidence that desires can gradually change. We know that habits can change as well. Yet people, all people it would seem, continually struggle to align their desires with their actions. So how do I align my behavior with my desire? Or stated another way, how do I convince my body to actually desire only healthy amounts of food to make achieving my goal easier? Or is it not supposed to be easy? Maybe, like C-3PO said in Star Wars, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."

I haven't posted in a while. That's a problem.

Problem solved. How about that?

2010 Nativity at Grandma and Grandpa Randall's house.

I just want to wish everyone a merry Christmas. I have been thinking a lot this year about how to have the Christmas spirit. I used to think it had to do with giving. I had to find the perfect gift for other people and they had to know the perfect thing to give me. Then we all had the Christmas spirit together.

Then one year I got a bunch of presents that weren't right at all. I wondered how my loved ones could possibly have given such wrong gifts. Didn't they know me at all? I didn't think I was being selfish in my indignation. I didn't care what I got, after all. I just cared that people knew me well enough to give the right gifts. But I see now, many years later, how selfish I really was. I was selfish with my relationships. It mattered to me too much how other people showed their love to me. What I should have been more concerned with was how I show my love for them. What gifts had I given?

What gifts have I ever given? I'm terrible at giving gifts. If my loved ones were as selfish as I had been, they would think I didn't love them at all, which isn't true. This year is yet another year I have not had perfect gifts for my loved ones. I hope they all know how much I love them.

My mother-in-law asked me this year what gift I would give the Savior. The first thing that came to mind was service. I hope I can give it this year by serving my loved ones. I can't buy them stuff, but that hardly matters. I can always serve, and that's the best gift of all.

Face the World

Time once again, for Mike's Poetry Corner.

This edition of Mike's Poetry Corner features a short poem I wrote nearly two decades ago while serving an LDS mission in Phoenix, Arizona.

"Face the world," He said. I said, "No, I'll die." Says He, "You're never dead, Unless you never try."
So I did, and I died. Now I'm dead, 'cause I tried.
But I remember what He said and He is not a liar. So though my body may be dead, my spirit's lifted higher.



Mike's Poetry Corner has been brought to by the letters M and S and the number 36.

Recent History of Protests: A Musical Perspective

I was born near the end of an era of small uprising. A time when people were mad at the government. From the war in Vietnam to a new brand of environmentalism, there was plenty to be mad about. Popular music often reflected this anger. You had John Lennon singing "give peace a chance" and who could forget Bob Dylan "Blowin' in the Wind"?

But I grew up in the 80s. There was nothing to be mad about in the 80s. Maybe it was just my youth, but I don't remember there being anything to be mad about. Not like today, with greedy corporate CEOs, tough economic times, and huge back and forth political swings, from the right to the left.

However, the 80s weren't totally devoid of protest songs and rock'n'roll political statements. Smaltzy love ballads, foreign aid tributes, and new age wasn't the only music to come out in the 80s. I've put together a smattering of lyrics from the 80s that illustrate this.

One of the most common forms of protest was against the banality of middle-class suburbia and the increasing influence of government in the lives of the common man. Who could forget Twisted Sister singing "We're not gonna take it"?

"we've Got The Right To Choose And
there Ain't No Way We'll Lose It
this Is Our Life, This Is Our Song
we'll Fight The Powers That Be Just
don't Pick Our Destiny 'cause
you Don't Know Us, You Don't Belong"

And of course there are always going to be anti-war songs, even if there is no war to oppose. For example, Guns'n'Roses, "Civil War". It stirred up such graphic imagery as:

"Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store"

Or

"But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide"

"What's so civil 'bout war anyway?"

More often than not, however, protest could be found in songs we didn't even recognize as protest songs. Who knew that when the Boss sang Born in the USA, he was really protesting the treatment of Vietnam vets.

"Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go"

And how many of us knew that the perky 99 Red Balloons song by Nena was really about the cold war? The idea behind the song was what if a bunch of balloons floated over the Berlin wall to the Soviet sector. Could a tragic over-reaction trigger a nuclear war?

"99 red balloons.
floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life.

99 Decision Street.
99 ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero.
Everyone's a Captain Kirk."

Anyway, you get the point. Okay, I've meandered around this post too long. Now go out and dust off your old cassette tapes.

Haunted House Last Night

After I fell asleep last night, Trey called for his mommy. Jeralynn found him wide awake and scared. He told her that he heard a voice. According to the frightened little boy, the voice said "I will kill you." Disturbed by this, Jeralynn did her best to comfort him. Trey often claims to have nightmares and frequently uses the "I'm scared" routine to get attention when he doesn't want to go to sleep. But something about the specificity of Trey hearing the voice didn't seem normal.

Back in the living room, Jeralynn mentioned the incident to her sister who is staying over this week. Josie immediately claimed to have heard it too, a male voice saying, "I don't want to kill you, but I will."

By this time, Jeralynn was getting a bit scared herself. She searched Trey's room for any sign of a toy or something that might sound like that. Upon finding nothing and still having the problem of Trey wide awake, she prayed with him to try and calm him down enough to be able to sleep.

Next, she came back into our room where I still lay, sound asleep, and saw my laptop on the desk. Immediately she remembered about all the strange alert sounds I had set on my computer, including one movie quote that says, "I don't want to kill you, but I will." After 45 minutes of near panic, the mystery was solved and the offending computer was put on mute.

I guess I'm lucky I didn't wake up with her fingers around my throat saying, "I don't want to kill you, but I will, if you don't change your computer audio alerts."

I wonder if SMS blogging will be any easier.