So, I'm writing a book...

Ever since I was little I dreamed about being an author. I have several file boxes full of stories that I wrote when I was a child. I also have files upon files saved on various computers. The problem is, I have a ton of awesome ideas, but never actually dedicate myself enough to see them through. I think the longest "book" I've ever written was about 50 pages, and it wasn't even finished.

Before Diego left he told me he thought I should work on writing while he was gone. So that's what I've been doing. I'm still not very far along. I have so many ideas that I can't get them out on the page fast enough. But at the same time, I am finding it hard to keep myself motivated. I wish I could just hook up some wires to my imagination, plug that into the computer, and let it do all the work for me. At night, I dream about my story as if it were a movie. I know if I could just focus, it would turn out to be a pretty good book. (If I do say so myself...)

I have a lot of other friends who also write, and I wanted to know if they had any tips on how to stick with a story and see it through to the end. Anyone?

P.S. If anyone wants to be my guinea pig and read parts of my drafts as I go, I would LOVE some feedback!

You have more influence than you think

"Whoever you are and where ever you may be, you hold in your hands the happiness of more people than you can imagine."

(Henry B. Eyring)

I have this habit of checking the stats of my blog every time I publish a new post. Sometimes I will sit and click refresh over and over again to see if the number of views has gone up at all in the last millisecond. Probably not the most productive use of my time, but hey, a little self indulgence every now and again isn't all bad, right?

One of the features on Blogger's statistics is showing your blog's traffic sources and referring URLs. With that, you can also see any keywords that have been used in searches that led to your blog. For me, there isn't usually anything there, since my blog isn't too high up in the search engine hierarchy. However, while casually looking at stats the other day, I noticed three different searches.

They were originally in Spanish; here are the translations.

"I hate being 15"
"I hate my teeth"
"I like him but can't talk to him because I hate my teeth"

These keywords led their searchers to a blog post of mine called I Have An Overbite...and That's Okay, which I translated into Spanish as I Hate My Teeth. (It was a little complicated to translate the title and make it sound good, so that was the next best thing, haha.)

The Spanish version of this post got a dismal number of views, according to myself, who sets higher expectations. However, by reading the keywords of searches that led to three of those views, I came to an important conclusion.

I have a lot more influence than I thought.

While it may not be true, I'd like to imagine that the individuals who typed in those searches were young women, probably with their self esteem pretty low. I would also like to think that maybe they were helped by reading the experience of another young woman who had really low self esteem but was then able to overcome it. I don't know any of that for sure, but it got me thinking.

My post could have just 1 view. And if that one view helped to brighten someone's day who needed it, or teach someone something they didn't know before, than it was worth taking the time to write the post.

In this day and age the internet has come under fire quite often as being something that dissociates us with reality and with meaningful human interaction. While that may be true on many accounts, I believe that it can also be a powerful tool for meaningful communication. And through blogging and other types of internet public discourse, it can provide meaningful communication to people you have never even met and will probably never meet.

This also means that we should be cautious about the things that we write. To quote Sara Bareilles*,

"You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug..."

"Nothing's gonna hurt you the way the words do
when they settle 'neath your skin..."

So be careful. Words are so powerful. For good or for bad. So "let your words be anything but empty." Lift people up. You have more influence than you think.


*Brave, by Sara Bareilles

Lucia y mamá

I couldn't help it. I had a $10 off coupon for another photo book, so I made myself a Mother's Day gift. :)

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Tonight I Fell In Love Again

There have been some hard nights since Diego left. Tonight was one of them.

I'm a hyper-sensitive person, and it seems that I can get myself into a state of depression, or rather, just a state of "bla" over the smallest things. It could be something I see on the newsfeed of my Facebook, or a random comment by a sibling, or even just an unpleasant memory that pops into my head for no reason. Or it could be the culmination of all of the above. The point is, I was in a state of really awful "bla" tonight.

I tried to shake it by re-listening to some conference talks. Then I tried to do some Family History work. I wrote a letter to Diego. But nothing I did seemed to work. I felt absolutely "bla" and nothing was going to make it better.

Then I decided to check Diego's email. I've been checking his email and Facebook every once in a while since he's been gone just to make sure that he's not missing anything important. Out of curiosity, I decided to see how far back his messages went. The oldest message goes back to 2010 and guess who it's from.

For those who don't know, Diego and I met on our mission. He left 8 months before me, and wrote to me every week until I got home. (I had permission from my mission president to write him to, all you nay-sayers, haha.)

So tonight I started to read our emails back and forth to each other. I spent 2 hours reading, and I'm still not done. But I'm out of my "bla" mood. And I've completely fallen for that cute Peruvian elder from my mission all over again. With every email I read, I remembered what an amazing man Diego is, and why I wanted to even write back to him in the first place.

Today Elder Ballard talked about his being "persistent" when courting his future wife. Well, Diego was very persistent, and I am so grateful for it. He is my best friend. And now we get to be together for all eternity.

I guess I'm just writing this post because I miss him, and writing about him seems to be a good outlet for emotion.

Wives, don't take your husbands for granted. And if you are feeling sometimes like they are hard to love, remind yourselves why you fell in love with them in the first place! And that goes for the husbands, too!

Papito and me

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Hannah's Beat Depression Boot Camp

Yesterday as I was driving Diego to the recruiters office, I asked him if he had any last words of advice for me. He told me that I should make little goals each day to help me with my depression and coping with being without my husband, who has been my safe place these last few months that my depression has gotten real bad again.

So I thought it would be a good idea to write my goals out on my blog, that way I will have more accountability.

Here are my "Hannah's Beat Depression Boot Camp" goals:

1. Read my scriptures and pray sincerely every day.
2. Finish the Book of Mormon in Portuguese (I have less that half way to go!)
3. Read to Lucia every day
4. Keep my surroundings clean and orderly
5. Exercise Monday through Friday (Zumba maybe??)
6. Learn how to cook something new every week

I think getting out of my pajamas every day should also be a goal, but I'll just keep that an unofficial one.

Pain is Pain

It's nearly 1 in the morning and I can't sleep.

Diego and I have a goal to finish the Book of Mormon by the time he leaves for basic training. That means I count how many days he has left in order to divide them into the number of pages we have left so we know how much we need to read each day.

The downside to this is that now, as the number of days remaining gets smaller and smaller, I find myself thinking more and more about how I'm going to be reading my scriptures alone soon. The thought has entered my mind several times in the last week or so and I've had to really focus in order to keep myself from crying.

But tonight I couldn't contain it. While we were reading, I told Diego I had to go to the bathroom, and escaped for a few minutes to shed some tears that had been begging to be released for some time. Then I wiped my eyes, flushed the empty toilet, and pretended like nothing had happened.

Now it's almost 1am, Diego is sleeping, and I'm still fighting back tears. I keep thinking to myself that this is not that big of a deal, that I am going to be okay. And I also think that writing about it is just going to make people feel sorry for me, or worse, get them annoyed that once again Hannah is droning on about her depressive tendencies.

I try not to write unless I have something that I think might be universally beneficial to others who read it. Which is why I'm writing. Because I was scrolling down my Facebook feed, looking at all of the people who are going through things that are much more difficult than I am, and thought, "I have no right to complain or feel sad. I don't have it so bad."

Then I learned something. Or re-learned it. Or maybe just remembered something I'd forgotten.

I have every right to feel sad.

Another person's sadness does not diminish my own, or make it any less important.

I thought about the Savior. One of my favorite stories about him is when he raises Lazarus from the dead. Well, just before he does. Because I love how he shows compassion for Martha and Mary. He didn't say, "People get sick and die. At least he didn't suffer, or at least he wasn't brutally murdered. There are a lot of people who have it worse than you. Some people lose their whole families." Or, "At least you two still have each other. And you have me to rely on." He didn't even say, "Look, I'm going to raise him from the dead. Don't cry."

When he saw Mary crying, he cried too. He acknowledged that her pain was real. Her sadness, although it would eventually go away, was there in that moment.

Tonight, someone might be sad because they have been hurt by a loved one. Another might be sad because their dog died. Different causes don't change the fact that someone is sad. Pain is pain. You can't tell someone they shouldn't feel that way just because it may not seem that important, or because there are worse things that could happen. You shouldn't even tell yourself that.

So now that I've gotten that written down, I'm going to bed.