May 18, 2014

    The first track meet of the spring 2014 was yesterday. It was fun to see everyone's initial races. A sprinter was trying to win the girl's mile, and she almost did. I was proud of the guy's mile because two runners already broke 5.
     I ran my first 5K on track yesterday. My time was disappointing. It was 18:02. 6 minute pace is not fast. I should be running this pace on my jogs; not my race pace. This race was my first 5K on track, so I am giving myself a little mercy because I am going to be able to mentally understand the race next time. I don't have any competition, so that is going to make my goals difficult. I am going to have to take control of my training because the universality of how my coach trains is making everyone to be milers. I have never really been a miler. I did well in my 5K strategy at first.
    Before the race heard that the 5K record at BYUI is 16:50, so I calculated that all that I have to run is 80 seconds per lap. I am happy that I was able to pace myself well for nearly two miles. When I finished the second mile, I heard that my split was 11:50, which meant that I had to run a five minute mile to finish, so I kind of gave up on the record for that race. I had lapped every competitor in my race, coming in first, but my goals is to break 16 in the 5K.

May 10, 2014

     The many parts to my life that I have been working on are the following: dating, socializing, track, ACMS, stake choir, class work, temple work, personal spiritual welfare, friendships, writer's support club, and more. These are the topics that I will be writing about.

     I have been dating around kind of; although, I have not officially had a date. I was talking to Jesse about this last night because I was hanging out with Naomi and her roommates last night. Girls are pretty outrageous, but they had apartment prayer. I have been in a funk somewhat the past few days because a combination of things. I missed scripture study, prayer, and going to the temple the past few days. Before they have the apartment prayer, the girls say a sweet and a sour of the day. I thought that they were just saying a bunch of random things that happened in their day. The sour that I said, which has to do with the topic of this paragraph, is that a girl that I have become good friends with said she has a boyfriend. I was hoping to date her, and the thing that confused me is why did she not tell me earlier because we have been hanging out a lot for about a week. It doesn't make sense to me. Girls usually say something about their boyfriends, if they have one. When I said that to the girls, they sympathized, and Naomi suggested that I date like ten girls at once because that is what she does. That put me for a loop. This loop did not come full circle until I spoke to Jesse. I realized that Naomi's advice was immature because it discredited my dating effort, assuming that I have not already been doing that. Jesse has said a few times that he has been impressed how I have been meeting many different girls. I meet a lot of people at the cafeteria, and enjoy lunch with them. The one thing that I have against Naomi's advice is; if you really like a girl and you only want to date her, why should I date 9 other girls? It would be disrespectful to the girl in my opinion. Some guys play with girls minds, dating so many different people. After telling my parents that I found a super cool girl that I am interested in, my father advised me to make a good friendship with her first. I recommend that guys make good personal friendships with all girls; then, they can choose who to date from every one of them because you have a personal friendship with them. Most girls would want it to start that way I would believe. Jesse explained that dating a bunch of girls is just for a few dates to see if you are really interested in them or something like that. I have been doing that.

     Another thing that put me in a funk is that I was organizing activities, but they were too spontaneous. I am going to stop my spontaneous activities because it only worked for the first week or so of school. For the past couple weeks, we have had activities planned, and the activities fall apart for odd reasons. That is what I originally said to Naomi, when she asked about my funk.

     Since I have been at Brigham Young University: Idaho, I joined the track team. I was disappointed to hear that we will not be racing the two mile. My goal has been to break ten in the 3200. I still have the 5K, so I plan to try to break 16 minutes in that event. The track team has somewhat discouraging too. The distance team is not very competitive. I am already hailed as the fastest runner, which is weird, because I am not very fast. One runner on the team broke ten for the two mile, but he is out of shape. There is another big guy somewhat on the team that can be competition. He looks like he goes to the gym too much, since his upper body is kind of stiff. He keeps his lanky arms loose though.  We have two coaches that I am kind of disappointed with too because one is way out of shape, and his input is very little. It is basically an encouraging word once in a while, which I get from teammates any ways. My second coach runs the whole thing, and his approach is so universally standard, where the season is going to have runners fall away because of injuries and whatnot just like most other seasons of track. The coach loves running half mile repeats and doing random ab exercises. I think that he really loves to have strong abs because he always wears tight shirts, and his abs are bulging in his shirt. He says after one week that we will increase the difficulty of the work outs, and I think that doesn't make any sense because the out of shape people can't get in shape in one week. They are going to get injured like me last season. We have a lot of inexperienced runners, whose interest we may have killed because it is not personal enough.

     The BYUI construction management program advocates ACMS a lot. I was very disappointed in the societies here on campus, when I first explored them during my first semester here. Many are ineffective, so we will see how the Architecture and Construction Management Society is. It has not been to effective. We were supposed to install a new roof on a house this weekend, but I didn't hear anything about it. We will see.

     Everything else is going well somewhat. I procrastinated my homework this weekend, so I am paying for it. My many friendships are going well. I feel like I need to continually make new ones because at least in dating you always need to meet new girls. I am feeling better now after my funky weekend spiritually.

     Wednesdays are very full at least last week and this week because I was invited to join the writer's support group and a stake choir, so I go to write my sci fi novel at 5, track at 6, and stake choir at 7.

     The writer's support group is chill. There were only four people. The people were somewhat shy. It was quiet and a not very tight environment. 6 long tables or so made a rectangle. We just privately worked on our personal projects. My goal is to write a  novel series for a idea and story summary that I wrote called DNA turn on. I am writing the first chapter now.

     Stake choir is hard because I was recruited to do tenor, and half of the song is really high. I can't keep up a good volume after so long. Sister Andrews is the chorister, and she is the greatest that I ever sang for. She teaches the principles of singing. The purpose thereof is to inspire people to come unto Christ. I wish that I could explain the principles that all who read this can sing unto inspiring people to repent. I believe that the first part of it is that there is something that blocks the vocal cords, which we have to move out of the way, but we can't do it directly. We can do it by making weird faces. She compares it to lifting a Halloween mask off your face. The face of you yawning will make you have a great voice. I am not qualified to explain it. She says that that your front skull resonates, giving a greater sound. Singing within your nasal cavity is good too.  A revelation that she received to help people keep their vocal cords relaxed is to fill your next with air, trying to make it big. We sang at stake conference last night the 17^thof November. We did very well, and I sang to the best of my abilities.