Just a walk and a thought...

After my morning workout I went for a walk. It was just along some streets in my neighborhood and was so peaceful and quiet, with just a few leaves scraping along the road. It's basically the most peaceful thing ever and clears my head like nothing else. Today while I was walking I thought about all the people who live in all the houses around me who I don't know. I imagined them and their worries and fears and challenges. And then I thought, "This life is so much bigger than 'me'." And then I said a little prayer that God would help me to remember that.

Projects

Something you should know about me: I love projects. When I was little, my projects consisted of things like building a really cool Barbie house, rigging our tree fort so that it had electricity or organizing secret clubs. At age 10, my best friend Samantha and I created our own a capella group called “Sugar and Spice”. We wrote lots of songs including our most famous single “Rain in the Summer” and performed for our families. We even played with the idea of organizing a summer “Kids Kamp” so that we could earn money to buy cool outfits for our performances.

When I was 11 years old I wrote a script for and produced an incredibly cheesy movie called “The Day Before Christmas”. My siblings, some friends and I were the actors and we presented it to our parents as a Christmas gift. Watching this movie now, years later, my siblings like to point out how “bossy” I was while making it. I remember wanting the video to be perfect. I had spent so much time writing the scrip, organizing props and arranging for a video camera and no one else had even memorized their lines! (Despite the fact that I had made everyone his or her own copy and distributed them weeks in advance.) So throughout the movie you can see me sending silent cues to people, reminding them of what they should be doing. Being an 11-year-old Writer/Director/Producer/Actor sure was stressful but I loved it.

Although my many endeavors did not turn out exactly as I envisioned that they would, they are great memories and this video in particular became a glimpse into our past that is really fun for everyone involved.

My Dad and I are very similar in this regard. He has done lots of remodeling on our house, carved 3 totem poles, made his own crampons for a winter hike he and my brother, Max, did together. He has built Barbie houses and tree houses and baby doll cradles. I remember him getting excited whenever I had to do a science project because he loved coming up with ideas and helping us put it all together. Just recently he built a contraption so that we could more easily pick black berries in our neighborhood without getting stuck with the prickles. It is a long wooden pole with a pot at the end of it, which he would reach deep under the blackberry bush. Then he would shake the top of the bush so that the ripe berries would fall into the container. It didn’t work as well as we had hoped but it was a good idea and made me smile.

Although I am older now and my projects have evolved into something a little more sophisticated (I hope), I still love taking them on. It is a frequent thing for me to admire something beautiful that someone has created (a song, piece of art, a delicious dish) and think, “I can do that too!” Then I set out on an adventure to figure it out for myself. I tend to have a “just go with it” attitude, though, and sometimes cut corners, trying to simplify and be more efficient. Sometimes it works great and other times…well, it just doesn’t. Words of wisdom for you: Don’t cut corners when you are reupholstering furniture!

Mostly, I love to learn new things and working on projects is a great way to set goals and motivate myself.

Now that you have all of this background information, I will tell you that I am working on a NEW project, which I am extremely excited about. I have been scheming about this one since I was serving a full time mission, two years ago and am finally getting started on it.

I am currently making videos of each of my grandparents, interviewing them about their lives, values, advice, capturing them in this moment so that my children and grandchildren will know them. Each have powerful lessons to share. Even if no one else will ever them, it has been an incredible experience for me already. But my plan is that I will eventually distribute them so that everyone in my family will have a copy.

I’ve had the opportunity during the last month to travel to Michigan and to interview my Father’s parents, Lillian and Paul Peet. It was wonderful to ask them questions and to watch and listen as they told of their conversions to the gospel of Jesus Christ, memories of their parents, of their children when they were young, their marriage and to hear advise that they wish to pass down to future generations. I have spent a little bit of time with my other grandpa, Fred Strong, and am planning an interview with my grandma, Connie Bailey.

I realize that this project probably makes me a total nerd but I guess I’m okay with that because it is going to be awesome in the end!

If anyone has ever done any kind of project like this before, do you have any advise? Tips?

Life Block

I’m sure that everyone has heard of the term “Writer’s Block”. Dictionary.com defines it as, “a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.”

Because I consider myself more of a songwriter than any other kind of writer, I think “Songwriter’s Block” usually suits me best when inspiration isn’t coming. But today I would like to propose something a little different that I feel is most fitting. I realize that this might come across as really cheesy but I’m just going to come out and say it…I think I am currently suffering from a severe case of “Life Block”.

In other words: I don’t know what the HECK I am doing with myself. Sometimes I want to write music. Sometimes I want to paint. Or reupholster furniture. Or become a photographer. I want to learn Spanish. I want to travel. Sometimes I want to be a social worker. Sometimes I don’t like the idea of that at all.

Let me illustrate just one part of my Life Block. I love babies. They are adorable. Sometimes when I am at the mall I see little babies with big flower headbands and cute, chubby little faces smiling at me over their mother’s shoulder and I want one SO BADLY. My co-worker needed a babysitter last night and I volunteered quite excitedly. He has a four-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl and a baby who is only a couple of months old. The baby was relatively good. She cried a bit and I had to feed her, change her diaper, etc. That wasn’t difficult. What was difficult was holding her while I was helping the others get what they needed, keeping them occupied and the baby happy. The older two had so much energy. While I was there I was picturing myself as their mother. It was an exhausting thought. Suddenly I was grateful that I got to go home to a quiet house and sleep through the night without having to get up to take care of a baby.

My point? Maybe it is this: the grass is always greener on the other side. Or maybe it is simply this: we don’t always know what we want. I usually don’t know what I want.

I gave a lesson in Relief Society a few weeks ago and was able to choose whatever topic I wanted to speak on. I thought of my own life struggles and questions and went from there. I ended up giving a lesson on “Living A Consecrated Life”…which also could have been titled, “How to Survive a Quarter-Life Crisis by Heeding the Lord’s Prophet and Apostles”.

Maybe you have had Life Block too. I keep a quote book. Here are a few life quotes that help me get through moments when I have Life Block:

“With even your strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, God will respond with what in His eternal plan is best for you, when it will yield the greatest advantage. Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. That causes your faith to increase and your character to grow.”

Richard G Scott

“In suffering we may in fact be nearer to God than we’ve ever been in our entire lives.”

Jeffrey R. Holland

“Patience is far more than simply waiting for something to happen-patience requires actively working toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results don’t appear instantly or without effort.

“There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can-working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Ask God to put you just where he wants you, and to tell you what he wants you to do, and feel that you are on hand to do it.”

Brigham Young

“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way trough it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”

Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not.”

President Thomas S. Monson

“God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted, and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and the glories of creation.”

President Thomas S. Monson

Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged! That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Sometimes what I want to do is drop everything and move to a foreign country…to stay for a long, long time. If you feel so inclined to make a donation to this noble cause of self-discovery and travel please send a check made out to Emily Peet at 781 North 1050 East, Provo, UT 84606. (Joking of course…or am I?)

Why I love my brother...

(The most recent picture I have of the two of us...eeek)

I love my brother, Aaron, because:

1. He randomly called me up and asked if he could come down to Provo and hang out with me for the weekend. (I said “yes”, of course and he rode from Rexburg to Provo last Friday to stay at my house.

2. After I picked him up, he pulled out his Ukulele in the car and started playing/singing the whole car ride to my house.

3. He has a very witty sense of humor and made me laugh the whole time he was here.

4. He changed my guitar strings for me!

5. It makes me laugh every time that he visits me because my ward ALWAYS thinks that he is my boyfriend. We sat next to one another in sacrament meeting and then after church he told me that in the Priesthood session he stood and introduced himself and a member of the Bishopric said, “Ohhhh…okay we had bets going whether you were her brother or boyfriend.”

There are many more reasons. I will name one more in this blog.

6. After I dropped him off at his friend’s house to go back to Rexburg, I went straight to the Marriott Center for the CES broadcast with Elder M. Russell Ballard. I didn’t have time to meet up with anyone because I had just enough time to get to the Center before it started. So I went in and found a seat in the bleachers behind the choir. I was happy to be there in the presence of an apostle but I started to feel really lonely. I started thinking, “I am here in a room full of people and I came alone? How incredibly lame!” I let loneliness creep in. I tried to shrug it off, then reached into my bag for my pen and pad of paper so that I could take notes. That is when I saw a message written on the first page of my note pad. It said, “Dear Emily, You are awesome. I love you! Sincerely, Aaron Peet”. And I couldn’t help it…I started crying right there in the middle of people that I didn’t even know ( I realize that I am kind of a baby...). I cried because it meant so much to me in that moment. And for that I love my brother! Thank you, Aaron, for your note!

A little bit of self-realization...

Since before I can remember I have had certain dreams. Dreams that may or may not come true for me in my life. A time of grieving has followed that acceptance. And realizing that life will not be everything that I dreamt it would be has been a process.

I have spent an awful lot of time recently in prayer and contemplation of what exactly my life is worth and why exactly I feel so unsatisfied with where I am and what I am doing. I have come to some realizations about myself that I would like to share.

I think I have been spending too much time waiting. Waiting to mold myself around some life that would appear before me. Something perfect. Yes, I think I have been waiting for some perfect plan that I could wrap myself around and therefore become a perfect person. And somehow I have thought that this perfection would come as a product of waiting for a perfect moment.

Looking around me, I see no perfection and I am realizing that there is no perfect plan headed my way. Waiting, therefore, has left me paralyzed to a degree and has prevented me from really living.

I don’t mean to say that my dreams are not good or righteous. I don’t mean to say that it is a bad thing to make goals or decisions about what you want in life. I am saying and beginning to believe that such dreams can become an obstacle. If we obsess over them, worry over them and spend too much of our time dreaming about them, we miss the moment that we are in. And this very moment that we are in is really all that we have. It is all that we have. Without living today it is as if we do not exist. Without living today we would be a memory or a dream but nothing real.

You may have made this discovery long ago. I thought that I knew these things. Only over the past few days have I really felt what this means for me.

There are moments when I want to morn and regret my past or opportunities that are gone. Things that I desperately wish I could take back or things that I wish so badly I had known earlier in my life; mistakes that could have been avoided if I had known. There have been moments when I should have reached out to others but didn’t. There have been moments when I have let real love slip through my fingers.

I often find myself regretful. It is easy to look back and let memories take over, robbing me of joyous experiences that are all around me.

The point of all of this is that I am tired of waiting and I am tired of regretting.

And so, childhood dreams aside. The hope of marriage and children and my own home aside and the possibility that these things may not ever come to me in this life, I have a decision to make. What do I want? What do I want to be and do? Or see or experience? What can the world give me or what can I give it?

I do not yet know the answers to these fabulous questions. What I do know is that I am going to figure out the answers and then I am going to go and do the things that I want to do. That’s right, I’m going to do what I want and grab hold of every bit of joy that I can because that, my friend, is living in the moment. What lies before me is opportunity. A whole wide world of opportunity for me to figure out what I will be.

Instead of expecting to arrive at some destination of perfection, I hope that I will be aware of what is going on around me and understand what part I want to play this world.

Nothing Great

Why hello there! Today I listened to one of my favorite songs...of. all. time. I hadn't listened to it in a few months and almost forgot that it is one of my favorites. I thought I would share the lyrics with you. They are written by a band called Late Tuesday. My cousin Marci introduced me to the band years ago. They are a Christian group from Bellingham, WA. I am in love with the lyrics. If you like them, look up the song on itunes because it's even more powerful with the music. The song is called "Nothing Great".

Nothing Great-Late Tuesday

Same old stuff i have to do

over and over and over again

each day it seems

Nothing great to show off my abilities and my worth

Show me my purpose

in the midst of this routine

Because I am trying to understand why I am here at all

with so many guesses and

too many simple answers

could it be that life is not what I think at all?

It's not the big things

but the ordinary in-between

and

Maybe this is not the time to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

So help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do to

bring glory to you.

And I could search out a lot of ways

to keep me doing things

an attempt to make my mark

but then maybe I'd miss the mark of your desire for me.

So I will trust in you

and in everything I do

do it

as

for

you.

And I am learning to understand why I am here at all.

There's no need for guesses when

you are the simple answer.

And you show me that life is not what i think at all

it's not the big things but the ordinary in-between

and maybe this is not the time

to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

so help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do

to bring glory to you.

We can take each day

each simple thing that we must do

to bring glory to you.

So I thought I would write about a bunch of little things that happened this week…nothing big :)

Cupcakes: So once I experimented and mixed pudding in with my cake batter and baked it and it turned out AMAZING. So I decided this week that I would be a good little visiting teacher and bake cupcakes for the girls that I visit. I even bought these cute pink and purple cupcake liners with white polka dots and borrowed the pans from my neighbor. I mixed pudding in with the cake batter and baked the cupcakes and….they sunk in the middle!! It looked like a big crater was in the center of every one of my cupcakes. Well…they tasted great but I was too embarrassed about them to bring them to anyone. So we kept them around and whenever people came over and asked what they were I pretended that they were supposed to be like that and we started calling them "Crater Cakes". Bahaha. I'm a dork.

She & Him Concert: If you haven't heard of the band She & Him, it is comprised of the actress/singer Zooey Deschanel from the movie 500 Days of Summer and the musician M. Ward. They are just fabulous. I went with some good friends and then ran into some familiar faces while I was there. Free concert. It was a hippie fest. I loved it. There were so many great food stands there, really culturally diverse and it was hard to choose because I love trying new types of food. I went with Tibetan food and it was sooooo yummy.

Temple: So one night this week I was sitting outside and realized that a beautiful sunset was about to take place and without really thinking I grabbed my scriptures, jumped into my car and drove to the Provo Temple which is approximately 3 minutes away from my house. (I know, I know, it's amazing to have it so close to me). I just sat on a bench outside and meditated. Ah it was so peaceful and I just love the temple! I wish I could live inside of it. Seriously.

Computer: I bought a Macbook! I have been contemplating this purchase for quite a while now and finally decided that I was just going to do it. It was the most expensive item I have ever purchased, except for my tuition, of course. LIfe is too short not to have some of the things that you want :) And I got a great deal on it at the BYU Bookstore. I can't stop using it!!

Sick: I caught a cold this week which seems to be going around. So on my day off I didn't feel like going anywhere or doing anything. But I didn't' want to just sit around at home. So I deep cleaned my house. I'm talking, scrubbing floors and showers, washing walls, using WD 40 in various places, re arranging furniture and pictures on the walls, pulling out the screw driver to do some repairs, etc. I realized during this excursion that I become attention deficit when I take on a big project. I would start one thing and then when I would get up to get something from another room, I would notice something else that needed to be done. So I would start doing that. And the cycle continued until I was cleaning all of the rooms a little at a time. I'm glad that no one else was here because the process probably would have been annoying. But, it looked way good when I was done! I also discovered that the smell of WD 40 reminds me of my dad :) Being home alone all day was strange, and it got me thinking, "Is it bad to be alone? Would I start to be weird if I was home alone all of the time? What about stay-at-home mothers who only have little babies around who can't talk? Do they start going crazy?". I literally did not have any human contact until my room mate came home at 11pm. I listened to music a lot but I spent quite a bit of time in silence lol. It made me think of the song "It isn't good to be alone, it isn't good. So if you find someone to love you really should…." But I dunno, is too much time alone bad? Just curious what you think.

Work: Most of the time my job just flat-out rocks. Today I got to work at 6 am and woke up the girls (I work in a residential treatment center, in case you didn't know already), the got dressed, grabbed breakfast and then I drove 10 of them in a big white van north to a military camp where we did all kinds of cool things. We broke into teams and had to overcome different obstacles…and then we repelled down a 75 ft wall! I was SO excited to do it. I got harnessed in and then while I walked up the stairs to the top of the wall I got nervous. Then the military guy told me it was my turn and i changed my mind and wanted to go back down the stairs but he grabbed onto my harness and hooked me up to the rope anyway...laughing at me! And he pulled me over to the edge. So i just did it even though I was scared out of my mind.

Well that was my week! It was a good one.

American Idol/Austin, TX

Many of you have been asking about my trip to Austin, TX and my American Idol audition so I decided to blog about it :)

I flew from Salt Lake City into Austin with a lay over in Denver, and took my first taxi from the airport to the North Austin Plaza (it felt wrong to get in the back seat of a car with a male driver that I didn't know at 1am...but he was a talker and I learned all about the years he spent as a bouncer in a bar before he got into the taxi business lol. It was strangely fun to travel by myself...is that weird? I loved being in the airport by myself because I kind of like people watching. And I had lots of time to sit and think and write in my journal. Nowhere I needed to be.

My good friend Mandy Cooper drove down from Dallas to stay with me and go to the audition with me. It was great catching up with her! Her husband, Geoff, came to stay for a few days with us as well and it was great meeting him.

The Audition:
Monday the 9th we went to the Frank Erwin Center and registered for the audition. Some people arrived there at 3am to stand in line! We got there at 9am and walked right up to the counter to get our wristbands and tickets. So our timing was perfect! We had come prepared to wait in line all day but it took, literally, 5 minutes.

We spent Tuesday shopping and having a grand time.

Wednesday the 11th we took our time getting there because we wanted to miss the crowd and were not interested in standing in line (especially because we already had our seat assigned to us). Some people, we found out, had arrived at 11pm the night BEFORE the audition, which was a completely ridiculous thing to do. We got there at 8am and walked right into the building, and right to our seats. No lines. We had fabulous seats, right in the middle, close to the front. They started the process about 10 minutes after we arrived, so again, fabulous timing!

Ryan Seacrest was there and they spent some time filming the crowd...they would tell us to all scream and throw our hands in the air and flash our cameras while they filmed. Then they instructed us to shout phrases in unison like, "Everything's hotter in Texas!", etc. They pulled a couple of people from the crowd who were dressed like cowboys and moved them to the front near the camera.

After they filmed us for a while, they set up 10 booths in the middle of the auditorium. At each booth were 2 judges. They called down one section of the auditorium at a time and lined us up. 4 people lined up in front of each booth at a time. Each of the 4 people sang 10-30 seconds of a song. Then after everyone sang, they would tell you if you made it or not. Then you would exit the auditorium through a "winners" door or a "non winners" door which exited the building.

While waiting in my seat to audition I went in the hall to use the bathroom and...oh my goodness...it was a crazy mess of singing and fixing hair in the hallway. I don't know how anyone even heard themselves singing, it was so loud.

There were several people who wore 'crazy' costumes. And every single one of them made it through the "winner" door lol. There were a lot of very very talented people there so it was really fun to hear all of them sing.

While sitting and waiting to audition I debated with my friend, Mandy, whether I should sing "I can't make you love me" by Bonnie Rait or "Feeling good" by Michael Buble. So I was practicing them for her. While singing "Feeling good" a guy turned to me and said, "That was sexy" haha. So I decided to go with that one.

I did not get to walk through the "winners" door :) But like I said, I don't feel bad about it at all because there were so many talented people there and not all of them made it through. It was a really fun experience though! And I am very glad I did it.

I met a guy at my hotel who did make it through so look for him on tv! His name is Cory Levoy.

I got to spend an extra day in Austin though and did lots of cool stuff: Ate at an outdoor Indian restaurant called the "G'raj Mahal", shopped at some awesome vintage stores and a great music store where I bought two new cds by "Warpaint" and "The XX", saw the movie "Flipped" (quite possibly a new favorite), and watched all the bats come out from under the bridge at dusk.

Anyway...it was a great trip! It made me want to travel more.

Here is a video of one of the new bands that I've discovered: The XX. This song is called Basic Space.