(written on May 31st from notes taken previously)
Happy Memorial Day!
I actually got up a little later today! After hearing from Hans that the horses enjoy eating orange peels, I fed my cutie peels to them, and they munched them down. 😊
I spent some time doing my physical therapy. Did I mention that probably one of the big reasons I struggled to do my physical therapy is because it takes so much time?
I think if I were to actually do everything that I’ve got on the sheet, it would take me a couple hours or so.
That’s a lot for somebody who has no faith that the physical therapy he’s doing is going to do any good. I’m doing it because I want to make sure I do my due diligence, but I don’t really trust that it’s going to make anything better?
Granted, I think in the past doing sit-ups helped a bit, and the physical therapy includes doing some abdominal crunches and regular and side planks, so maybe those will help.
🤞
Spent a good little while chatting with Heather and Hans about framing the house. We’re in contact with contractors, but contractors have heretofore been completely unreliable, so we’re going to keep working on getting contractors while at the same time being prepared to do stuff ourselves as well, so we were able to work through what comes next on the framing end of things, so that was good.
It was a hot day today. 🥵
Ingrid swung by again. She’s an entrepreneur like I am, and she’s interested in the same piece of property in the neighborhood here that’s going up for auction. We talked about possibly going in on it together, although I know that another neighbor in the neighborhood who’s got a lot more money than either of us is also interested, and I think Heather mentioned that particular property has the most interest of any of the properties going up for auction this coming month.
I spent some pretty good time working on my file organization project. I’m making good progress, but it’s very slow.
We also talked a little bit about cisterns. That’s one of the next things on the list as well.
So many things are next things. 🙃
And then… I drove away.
To where, you might ask? 🙃
🕍
Casper here I come. 🤍🙏🤍
I stopped off at JH Keith Park to soak myself down, so the long hot drive would actually be cool (very grateful for evaporative cooling 🙏), and headed on my way.
I called and chatted with Cory for a little bit as I drove, stopped for expensive gas in Edgemont, resisted the urge to buy ice cream and stuff myself with it as I drove 🙃, called and chatted with my mom for a little bit as well, and took some notes as thoughts came to my mind for my book on gospel-centered education.
It was nice to make some progress there. 🙏
The drive went relatively quickly. I had waited till later in the evening to leave because I wasn’t so keen on driving toward the setting Sun. I got tired of driving toward the setting sun again and again and again last summer.
As I was sorting through my files on my external SSD, I came across a folder that contained something like 8,000 phone call recordings from back in 2020 and 2021. I had an app that automatically recorded all my phone calls.
Probably 99% of the calls are work phone calls (“NWA Mobile this is Stephen” 🙃), but as I sorted the calls from longest to shortest, focusing on the longest first, and started listening to them, I realized I had perhaps dozens of phone calls recorded that mean a lot to me that somehow got missed when I collected and saved those precious conversations previously.
I spent a fair amount of time, well into the night, sitting on my bed listening to old conversations, while parked at my little spot just off the side of the highway in the middle of Wyoming 15 or 20 minutes east of Casper. I listened to them, labeled them, and tucked them safely away into the special folder on my local SSD drive where the other recordings are. Not sure if I’m going to back them up to the cloud folder where the other ones are.
Memories. Longings.
Sometimes I don’t like it when life moves on and connections are lost. Sometimes I wish I could go back to times long past… relive the experiences with the understanding and light and perspectives that have come in the years and decades that have transpired in the meantime.
But I can’t change the past. I’ve learned what I’ve learned because of those experiences, and focusing on the past can be both instructive and destructive. I think looking back requires a careful, delicate balance of gleaning without dwelling.
As Elder Holland once said, “The past is to be learned from but not lived in.”
I’m not always so great at that. 🙃
And focusing on the future can be just as treacherous. Wondering what will come. Wondering about things that are beyond my control.
Lots of thoughts.
Sometimes I wish I could know others’ thoughts, feelings, and desires. Or see the future. Wish I could just… understand.
But I can only control my own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Beyond that, I have no real control over outcomes, just faith in what can come from giving a worthy effort, and faith in the promises of God, whenever He decides to fulfill them, and whatever that fulfillment looks like.
God gives us what we want most.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 