The Murray, Utah Years, Pt. 2 (’00)

I moved back to Murray, UT and back with my mother in January of the year 2000 having turned my life around, so to speak. I’d left drugs. I’d left stealing. I was doing better with my sex addiction issues, I think. I was trying to be as straight arrow as a person could fly.

I’d just turned 18 years old. Y2K hadn’t ruined the world, and moving back to Murray wasn’t like one might expect. In fact, I can’t even remember why I did, really. I didn’t connect back up with anyone from my old life there, and I sort of left behind my Provo friends, too. I just sort of started over, started fresh.

That’s been a bit of the norm with me. I guess I’ve been one to compartmentalize my life quite a bit, and once I moved on to another place, I didn’t do much keeping in touch. It really was almost like life started over fresh. I don’t think it was really on purpose.. I’m still somewhat that way, although better at keeping in touch than I used to be, but only barely better. We can thank social media and modern communication for any improvement. 🙂

Back in Murray, I didn’t get a job. I don’t even know if I thought about getting one. 🙂

I think I bought and sold a car or three to earn money. I’d started doing that in Provo. I bought a car off my high school shop for $50. Sold it for $500. Then I bought one for $750 and sold it for $2900.

And thus a monster was born. 🙂

I’ve been buying and selling cars, small time (on and off), ever since. I currently have seven cars…

I think.

But laws prohibit me from selling some of them right now because I have limits on how many I can sell in a year before needing a dealer’s license. Anyway…

Squirrel!!! 🙂

I don’t remember much about my time back in Murray, at least I haven’t thought about it, so perhaps more will come back as I write this. Mostly, I made friends with my brother and sister’s friends and hung out with them. I would say that I was kind of a third wheel because I was years younger than they were, but one of girls and I almost had a thing (I was also preparing to serve an LDS mission (i.e. be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and I didn’t want to leave a girlfriend at home, so I didn’t act on our mutual feelings for each other. So I guess I wasn’t a complete third wheel, but I also didn’t feel fully like I was part of the group because I was sort of a later add on to a group that had been together for years and years, and I… well, I’d just been there a few months.

We had some fun times, though, and funny enough, the girl I was briefly interested in ended up marrying another member of the group of friends just a few months or so later. 🙂

What else… I learned how to do framing and plumbing (the latter of the copper sort, not the new pex stuff they use now that I don’t know how to do at all) to finish my mom’s basement.

I took a few trips around the state and country before leaving on my mission to Sacramento, California: I took a greyhound out to California to pick up a car that I bought off of Ebay. I drove it home, put a for sale sign in the window, and then promptly got on another Greyhound bus with my sister, taking a trip out to Ohio, so she could be at her friend’s wedding.

Two and a half days on a bus. I think it was two and a half days. Wow. That’s a long bus ride!!!

I took a trip to California with the same sister I went to Ohio with. We spent time on the coast and playing around Yosemite National Park. That was a great trip. 🙂

I spent some time in Seattle with family, where I relapsed in my pornography addiction. I had previously gone to confess to my ecclesiastical leader in Murray and remember feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I was so happy that day, so exhilarated when I left from speaking with my bishop. But I relapsed I think at least a few times in that year before I finally was able to be clean long enough to go on my mission.

Then… it was mission time. I’d spent only a little time learning Spanish (I was asked to learn Spanish, so I could teach the Spanish-speaking people of north-central California (Sacramento down to Tracy… part of the central valley). But I didn’t learn much at all, so I had to do that in the LDS Missionary Training Center. Which leads us to…

(sorry, these last posts aren’t as good as my earlier ones. I’ve been so busy and struggling personally as well, that I’m doing well to just get something out there. I’ll come back later and clean these up a bit… actually spend time on them… and add pictures and more details and whatnot. But for now…