(written on the 13th. Sadly, I didn’t take notes for today, and it’s been a week so here’s my best recollection)
I finally did it. I finally took actual, dedicated time today to work on my education book (as opposed to just writing notes when ideas pop into my head as I have been), and it… was a bit overwhelming and discouraging.
Back in… gosh was it 2010? I spent months upon months reading and studying and learning and taking copious notes, building a website for a school I was going to start, designing a curriculum based off of all the principles that I had come up with for what I felt would make for the best education.
That’s closer to 20 years ago now than 10, and I just don’t have that wealth of information in my brain anymore.
Do I read back through all of those notes–hundreds of full-page, typed notes?
Do I just start over fresh and forget about everything that I learned before except what his lingered with me all these years later?
If I keep what I had before, there’s so much to try and synthesize. I’ve got several different partial outlines written, each with different information on them. I’ve got multiple versions of introductions written…
There’s just… so much. 😅
So it was overwhelming to look through it all. But at least I still have it–most of it. Very few files were lost/corrupted.
But what do I do?
The thought of going back through everything, starting… not over, but almost? It just feels so… overwhelming, and I struggle to write the book partly because I just… don’t want to. I’m doing it because I feel like God wants me to do it, and I’ve put it off and put it off and ignored it and been afraid of it and been discouraged by it for so long…
Interestingly, however, the more I think about it, the more I feel like there’s perhaps a lot more overlap with the other book that I actually do want to write.
This one, I just want it to be done. 😅
It’s kind of like learning a language: I want to know another language. I don’t want to have to learn it. 🙃
Anyway… so I spent a good while working on that… Maybe three hours?
I didn’t really get much done in the way of outside work today, but it was a pretty big breakthrough to start working on the book, so I’ll take that.
I did also spend a fair amount of time working on genealogy today, digging into my Whitney/Stanton line in preparation for our fall road trip. Specifically, in the absence of finding any direct connection to my great-great-great-great-grandma Susan, I’ve been hoping to backtrack to her by finding relatives of hers that mention her or that can at least more solidly connect her to a particular line.
Today, my efforts were focused on Benjamin, Susan’s possible brother. Of the 11 children that supposedly came from the parents that we think might be Susan’s, only three of those children have really any information about their lives at all. Much of what I have is based on word of mouth from distant Stanton relatives and not from any legal documents.
It’s been a tough cookie to crack.
It’s ironic, because the Whitney and Stanton lines are lines that have been massively researched in the United States, and yet, apparently, I belong to a branch of both families that sort of… disappeared into obscurity.
What I was hoping to find was an obituary from Benjamin with “preceded in death by” and “survived by” sections, so I spent some time using AI to dig, following the same pattern that I did before when we found the additional (and original) notice of Hiram Whitney’s death in the Black River Gazette from 1827.
So I worked on genealogy a bit, partially because I was discouraged and overwhelmed thinking about what to do with my little book project.
Being Temple Tuesday tomorrow, I needed to drive to Casper, but I didn’t want to leave until the sun was basically down, as it’s really annoying to be driving with the sun in my eyes for 4 hours. 😅 (not to mention the impact my newfound, mostly superficial, but-still-quite-powerful fear of the sun has on that as well. 😕).
Before I left, I chatted with my mom on the phone for a bit trying to help her through a technology issue before finally leaving and heading, I think? over to JH Keith Park for a quick dip before continuing the drive.
I stopped off at the gas station in Edgemont with a sweet tooth, craving ice cream, but when I went to their freezer where the ice cream is, I did my usual squeeze of the ice cream container to get a solidly frozen container (to increase solid time before melting while I eat it as I drive 🙃), but none of them were hard.
So I went and checked the frozen juice cans, and they weren’t frozen either.
The whole freezer was a refrigerator, not a freezer. 😬
So I went and told the lady behind the counter, and I left sans ice cream. 🥺
I then proceeded to make some really stupid decisions. 😅
I probably started making the stupid decisions even before then, but I certainly made them after.
You know how I’ve been trying to not use my phone while driving? Yeah… I spent pretty much the entire drive with my face and my phone doing genealogy.
😶
One, that’s stupid and dangerous. Not as dangerous late at night for hitting somebody else, as there aren’t very many people on the country roads there in the middle of nowhere, but mostly because if I’m not paying attention going around a curve, I could go off the road, or I could easily hit a deer (even paying full attention, deer are absolutely everywhere at that time of night on the first half of my drive).
And that’s only the physical safety concerns.
It might sound odd, but the spiritual concerns are even greater. Using my phone while driving is a surefire ticket to my losing strength in other areas where I want to be strong.
Why? Because I am deliberately, knowingly going against values that I hold, and I can’t deliberately choose to go against values that I hold and expect to not weaken myself in other areas.
Loss of self-discipline tends to bleed over into other areas, and for me, there’s one extremely destructive area where rebelling against my own ideals generally tends to weaken me.
Yep… that one. 😕
What weakened me even further was allowing myself to get frustrated at what I feel is really poor web design from Family Search.
It would be so much better if the people who build the websites use their own websites on a regular basis, because they’d realize all the areas that are a pain in the butt for the rest of us.
So, in addition to doing what I knew I shouldn’t be doing, and weakening myself that way, I was also getting frustrated dealing with the stupid website.
By the time I got to my parking spot for the night, I think maybe a little after midnight? I didn’t have the strength to keep myself from vegging out a little bit, and then I got triggered by a commercial at the beginning of a YouTube video (now that I am not paying for a YouTube membership, I have to deal with the commercials), which set on a course through incredibly dangerous waters.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with this form of stinkin’ thinkin,’ hopefully not many:
You deliberately put yourself in danger, but you don’t go so far as to deliberately seek out the exact thing you shouldn’t. So in my case, there’s a beautiful actress in a commercial, and I don’t remember what got me from that to the next step, but I found myself looking at pictures of models (clothed) in the Google images, knowing that at any point, Google might throw one in that “shouldn’t” be there. So there’s this part of me hoping to “accidentally” see something that I didn’t specifically search for. 😶
Stupid. Messed up. Stinkin’ thinkin’.
I even got the little warning from God saying that if I started going down this road, I was going to relapse.
So weak was I at that point, so weak was my resolve to stay away from that stuff, which normally doesn’t take much effort at all, that I just kept on looking. I couldn’t stop myself. Scrolling, eyes half glazed over and out of focus on purpose, because part of me doesn’t want to see what I’m trying to “accidentally” see.
But part of me wanting to see that stuff, so I just continue on scrolling… unable to stop.
As I scrolled, I said to Heavenly Father, I can’t get myself to stop. I don’t have the strength. Since I can’t get myself to stop, could you please just make it so that nothing that would take me even further into the abyss actually shows up?
Amazingly, and I wouldn’t consider it an overstatement to call it a miracle, given that I’ve got decades of experience doing the same stupid thing, nothing pornographic ever came. And I still had my Google account set to have no filter (from New Zealand times).
That’s pretty incredible.
I think I ended up scrolling in that glazed over but stressed out funk for about an hour or an hour and a half before I finally had the strength to stop myself and go to bed.
Miracle.
And I didn’t heed the warning I got from the Spirit that if I chose to go down that road I was going to relapse.
It didn’t happen tonight, and I hope that it doesn’t happen, but I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I pushed away the little pangs of conscience over and over again while I rebelled and did what I wanted to while I was driving. I pushed away the warning then, knowing that it could lead to relapse. I pushed away the warning that if I continued looking at what I was looking at on my phone after I stopped driving that I was going to relapse.
I pushed them all away. Knowingly.
I really hope I can get it together, but I feel so incredibly weak right now after having felt really strong.
It’s funny, genealogy… I broke my own standards and set myself down this path, because I was impatient doing genealogy. I didn’t want to wait.
I don’t know who first said it, but there’s that saying out there: You can’t do the Lord’s work in the Devil’s way–even if it leads to finding info (which I did find newspaper notices of Benjamin’s death, but without any “survived by” information).
I’m very lucky and very grateful that things didn’t go further than they did tonight. 🙏
…
Oh! I forgot two little mini stories from the drive… On the beginning portion of the drive from Mule Creek Junction to Lusk, I noticed a pickup truck on the side of the road with its hazards on, battery drained down so far that the hazards were fairly dim, so I pulled over and called out to them if they needed any help, not sure there was anyone even in the vehicle because I couldn’t see anybody. A lady walked toward me super skinny and looking like maybe she either currently or had previously struggled with meth, or something of the like.
They were from Arizona driving up to Rapid City South Dakota, and they said that the rear end on their truck had completely locked up and was frozen. Not much that can be done about that if that happens. 😕
I offered to take one of them back to Mule Creek Junction where they could have reception to call for help, but the guy didn’t want to have his lady go with me, nor did he want to leave her, and I didn’t have legal room for two people and dogs, so I headed on my way.
I stopped off at another gas station in Lusk, hoping to get some ice cream, but it was another no-go, as this one didn’t even offer ice cream, and their slushie machine was broken. 🙃
As I was sitting in my van, a lady officer pulled up, and rolled down my window and said something to the effect of, this might be a dumb question, but do you have any idea if there’s a place I can get ice cream nearby this time of the night. 🙃
She didn’t.
But I was still in the parking spot when she came back out of the gas station, and she returned a similar question, saying something to the effect of this might be a dumb question, but did you happen to come from Yule Creek Junction and pass a vehicle stuck on the side of the road?
🙃
Yep!
I told her approximately where it was, and she headed that direction, and I headed, once again sans ice cream, back on the road to Casper.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 