I ended up deciding to stay in the Planet Fitness parking lot for the night, and I’m grateful that I did.
😊
It appeared that there was a trucker staying the night in that parking lot as well, so that made me feel a little bit better, and I didn’t see any no parking signs anywhere, so that was nice as well. (I didn’t go looking for signs, but I didn’t see any signs at all and a quick scan of the parking lot in front of me).
I didn’t get much sleep, as I don’t think I fell asleep until somewhere around 2:00 in the morning? and I got up somewhere around 7ish, I think, but the time that I did sleep was good sleep, so that’s something.
The good sleep I think is mostly because of the headphones with the white noise blaring in my ears so that I can’t hear anything happening outside the van.
When I woke up in the morning, I wanted to get my little butt up to the bridal veil Falls overlook parking lot as soon as possible, so as not to overstay my welcome at Planet Fitness.
But I ran into a bit of a problem. My wallet and keys.
Ummm… I remembered that last night when I turned off the car, instead of going out the driver’s door and walking around and entering in the side door, I just crawled right up onto the bed, which meant my wallet and attached keys were 100% still inside rover.
The doors were all still locked, no windows broken, so no one had seen anything through the windows and run off with them.
But I looked and looked and looked, and they were nowhere to be found. I started feeling myself getting a little bit frustrated because I didn’t want to stay in the parking lot a minute longer, and gratefully had the presence of spirit to offer a little prayer. Gratefully, also, I didn’t ask to find the keys: I just asked for patience in the process of looking for the keys.
And pretty quickly, there came a pretty decent measure of calm and a significant reduction of frustration, and then suddenly I thought to look in my little toiletries been that had been on my bed last night but that I had moved to the overhead compartment above the driver and passenger cabin area.
And there were my wallet and keys. 🙃
🙏
Somehow, I must have accidentally dropped them in the bin before putting the bin up there.
Anyway, I was grateful to find my wallet, and I quickly slid down into the driver’s seat, fired old Rover up, and headed out.
I didn’t get very far before I chickened out driving further because I had a garbage bin half full of water. 🙃
My pee bottle that I had filled up with water from the creek yesterday was still full of water last night, and I was wanting to have an available pee bottle during the night, but I didn’t want to dump the water out all over the Planet Fitness parking lot and draw attention to myself, so I dumped all the water into the trash bin.
So as I began to drive away, with the stops and the starts and the turns out of the parking lot and onto the road, I was nervous that I was going to be splashing water out of the trash bin all over the place, so I quickly got out, dumped the trash been full of water out onto the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot, and then headed up to the Bridalveil Falls overlook parking lot.
On the way to the falls parking lot overlook, I stopped off at a little dumpster to throw out the rotten, moldy, baby carrots that I had found in my sock drawer. 😅
I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, all the allergies that have been so annoying and uncomfortable might diminish significantly.
🤞
After getting to Bridalveil Falls, I looked up at The Cliff face and saw my two little mountain goats again, mama and baby, I think. It was the same pair of mountain goats I saw a handful of days ago.
This time they were in a much more precarious place, way up on the cliffside with what appeared to be not much walking space.
I watched the big one leading the way until they got to a place where I think it was really skinny, and the only place to go was up for the mountain goats. I watched the bigger mountain goat repeatedly stand on its hind legs to try and get a view of what it would be jumping up to to see if it was a good place to go. It would stand on its hind legs, try and get a look, and then drop back. It did this probably three or four times before it finally decided to go for it, leaping up the cliffside to the side and along another ledge.
As seems to be the case with mountain goats, they don’t turn around to see if their babies can make it up where they just went. They just… keep on going. 🙃
I don’t know if the baby was unsure about following its mom or if it was just mimicking its mom, but it, too, stood up on its hind legs for a look, then dropped back down, then stood up on its hind legs and dropped back down, and finally made the jump up.
It made it. No slipping and falling and ending up at the bottom of a very tall cliff. 🎉
I spent a little time listening to the scriptures. I’ve been practicing listening at 4X speed to see if my brain can distinguish the words, receive the message, and understand everything.
That’s certainly not the most effective approach for spiritual enlightenment, I don’t think, but for learning stories and chronology and whatnot, I found that I appreciate listening to the scriptures from the beginning to the end in order to catch the overall themes, and the faster you can listen to it, the easier it is, I think, to really put the stories together.
I don’t know if I’ll keep doing it, as it does move really quickly, so there isn’t really any time at all to ponder, but I have been getting close to the point where I’m understanding every single word, so maybe with practice, I can actually get great benefit even at 4X speed. 🤞
That would be really cool, but if not, no stress slowing things down to a pace that will be optimal for receiving the gospel message and the augmentation of the messages that comes through the spirit.
Next up was a nap. 🙃
Haven’t gotten little sleep, even though I wasn’t really feeling all that tired, I haven’t gotten much sleep pretty much most nights on this trip so far, I think mostly because I’m sleeping even lighter than normal because I’m nervous about having people bother me through the night.
Anyway, when I finally woke up somewhere in the 10:00 hour, I was crazy groggy. It was almost like I’d been drugged. I guess it could be the allergies. I’m not really sure, but holy cow, I was groggy.
I saw that I had missed calls from Cory and I think from my mom, or at least a text message for my mom, so I got back with both of them.
My mom was having issues with her car. It’s been temperamental since she got back from her trip. Fortunately she has Happy to use as a backup, and it’s a great time of year for that, but we do need to get her vehicle fixed.
Cory was looking for some help while at the parts store, and by the time I got back to him, he had already gotten what he needed, but we chatted for a little while and then I drove over to the slide Canyon shower tunnel where I’d worked on the creek earlier.
Before I left the bridal veil Falls overlook parking lot, I grabbed a bowl and cup that someone had left in the parking lot several days ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been there for a week, and no one has come back to get it, and no one has picked it up to throw it away, so I figured I might as well get it out of the parking lot and either throw the stuff away, or clean it and have it be useful.
So I grabbed the bowl and cup and I headed up the tunnel to the creek to have them rinsing off, as they were full of… icky stuff of one type or another.
Sadly, I found that my Creek that I had worked to extend all the way back to my shower area had retreated maybe 50 or 75 ft back up the mountain, disappearing into a new little pool.
So naturally, I set the bowl and cup in an area where they would fill full of continually running water to hopefully loosen up and clean out the crap that was in them, and then I spent a little time working on the creek to try and get it back to the shower area by the entrance to the tunnel. 🙃
I also spent some time answering questions for JA online, and I spent a good little while on the phone with Identifix yet again because it’s been almost a month since they supposedly had issued the refund for the duplicate payment from early in march, but I still hadn’t gotten a refund, so I called again today, and lo and behold, the refund was never submitted a month and a half ago, or whatever it was, so supposedly they submitted it today.
If it weren’t for the fact that I’m absolutely dependent upon them for the data that I need to do my job, good gravy I would kick them down the road in a heartbeat.
It’s just mind-boggling that companies can be run so poorly. I’ve been dealing with this mess of a system that they totally blew to pieces for 6 months now.
Oh well, I don’t think I swore? My patience has been a lot better. I might have sworn a couple times today?
Hope not. 🙃
But I’m not worried about it. I’m giving my Worthy effort. My heart wants to be full of love, and that even if there were no God. I know God’s good with me if he is there.
I also spent some time working with the ja expert help because the dashboard information that they give us that’s supposed to be useful… isn’t.
For example, they have a section that’s titled call fulfillment, or something like that, and they give a percentage of how many phone calls that we accepted were actually fulfilled. What’s useless about the data they give is that we’re given this percentage of fulfillment for each week but the percentage of fulfillment that they put in the data that we get is not the actual percentage of fulfillment supposedly they are basing our pay scale on. The percentage that we see doesn’t take into account the phone calls where we couldn’t get a hold of the customer by phone but were able to continue with them via chat. Supposedly, our pay scale isn’t affected by those, even though they are considered unfulfilled phone calls, but they still count them as unfulfilled phone calls in the percentage data they give to us, so it’s all basically useless data. It doesn’t represent the information that we need to know to know exactly how we are doing, so it’s… useless.
This poor company just seems to get in their own way every time they take a step. 😅
I worked a bit more, drove up to Salt Lake to visit my friend Cory for the last time before I head out of state on Thursday.
We picked rocks along the parking strip like we’ve done at least twice already since I’ve been here, chatting about gospel things and life and whatnot.
Then I went to iceberg and bought dinner for him, his mom, and myself, chatting with his mom a little bit around the dinner table.
Then it was back outside with Cory and I talking for another couple of hours. I answered some phone calls as well while I was there, and gratefully, well I was searching for a particular document to share with Cory, I found a Google Drive doc that listed out significant personal spiritual experiences that I’d had in my life that were evidences to me of the existence of God and truths and whatnot. 🥳
It wasn’t the list that I had made in conjunction with my friend Brittani, which I was hopeful to find because of the memories attached to it that make it a little more sentimental (or maybe I’m just misremembering? Maybe the double columned document I see in my mind’s eye actually doesn’t exist. 🙃), but I’m super grateful to have found this list, and I was happily surprised at how many bullet point entries there were. That makes me feel like hopefully there’s not much that I’ll have forgotten. 🤞
Crappy to have to say goodbye to friends. Part of me doesn’t want to leave. It’s been a lot easier being in Utah this time around, and there’s a fairly decent chance that I’ll be back soon, possibly to live here again.
We’ll see.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it before in my Sunday post, but after my spiritual reawakening, the sardiness of the Wasatch front didn’t feel as crowded as it usually does, and I felt more willing and able to be there, especially as the reality of My overall desire to spend my life loving and serving other people is concerned, that means being around people. And if I love people, then why would I have a problem being in places where there are lots of them? It would just be more people to love.
I still want to be able to get out into the Great outdoors away from the hustle and bustle and crowds and man-made stuff, and that’s definitely not easy in the Salt Lake valley–feels nigh on to impossible, in fact, and Utah County seems like it could be doable if I lived close to one of the canyons where escapes are available, like Provo canyon, or hobble Creek Canyon or Payson Canyon.
Anyway, my heart has softened toward utah. Doesn’t mean I’ll end up here, but I certainly feel that there’s a decent chance, and I remember just a few years ago, or so, feeling like I would one day end up back in utah.
After giving my friend Cory a big hug, I drove over to my brother Richard’s place, where I now find myself dictating today’s entry.
It’s coming up on 1:00, and though I feel like there’s something that I might be missing that’s important, it’s time to call it a night.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful for the additional patience with which I’ve been blessed these last few days.
- I’m grateful to have been able to see those mountain goats doing their thing. I still want to go for a good hike, and I’ll probably do that after I’ve said goodbye to everyone. I’ll probably go for a good hike up Provo Canyon somewhere on Thursday morning and then drive south Thursday afternoon.
- I’m grateful that as I sit in my van right now my allergies feel like maybe they’re just a tiny bit less than they’ve been the last few days? 🤞 I hope so, at least.
- I’m grateful to be more relaxed about how my growth and progress looks going forward.
- I’m grateful that Rover’s gas mileage appears to be potentially decent on this current tank.
Success:
- Praying for patience today. That was just… a great thing to see myself do. Good chance that was an inspired thought, and I’m grateful for it.
Improvement:
- I did choose to dip into sports just a little bit today. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but I do feel freer without the concern of what’s going on in the sports world. It feels like a weight removed when I’m no longer thinking about it or wondering or worrying about it. Interestingly, this is a challenging time of year to return to my old perspectives, at least as far as sports are concerned, as it’s the beginning of the NBA playoffs, and the NBA is one of the sports that I tend to pay the most attention to.
Well, I guess I’ll call it a day. My love to all of you! 🥰
Lift the world.
And Bring. It. On.
~ stephen
Lift the World 