Laughing It Off

This past week has been pretty interesting—it started with some frustrating experiences with my roommates. Now, don’t get me wrong, my roommates are really nice, I just got a little frustrated with them this week. I believe I mentioned last week that I had a meeting with my roommate and Elder’s Quorum President, Alec. During that meeting, Alec asked me if I would meet with the Bishop, and I said I would when I felt ready to, but he kept pressing me harder and harder and by the end of the meeting got me to commit to calling the Bishop that night for an appointment on Tuesday. Well, after Alec left, I didn’t feel comfortable with how he pressured me into calling the Bishop and I thought that it is more of a personal thing to decide if and when to see the bishop and it didn’t seem right to be forced into it, so I decided not to call the Bishop and to set up an appointment later when I felt more comfortable about it.

Well, the next night, I’m going to bed when all of a sudden Alec comes in my room and asks me if I have called the Bishop yet. I tell him I haven’t, and he continues to pressure me and says I should call him right now. I tell him that I am going to bed, and then he makes me promise him that I’ll call the Bishop in the morning before work. Because I’m tired and need sleep, and my roommate isn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, I say ‘yes’ so he’ll get out of my room. I was upset that he entered my room without knocking while I had all the lights off and was trying to go to sleep, it seems like an invasion of privacy to me. Also, I really felt uncomfortable with him pressuring me to call the Bishop, so the next morning, out of my disapproval of the whole situation with my roommate, decided not to call the Bishop and that I would set up an appointment with him myself on my own terms. So, I know that my roommate’s desire was good, but the way he went about executing it really seemed wrong to me.

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable about my roommates is that they are good friends, and joke around by calling each other “queer” which seems in bad taste to me. Their frequent gay jokes make me uncomfortable. One example is when my roommate Mitch was leaving and saw that I was watching “So You Think You Can Dance”. He said, “Well, I’m going to see my GIRLFRIEND, have fun watching your gay guys on TV.” It seemed like a pretty insulting thing to say. And then, yesterday, my roommates invited me to ward prayer and said, “Who knows, you might even make out with a girl while you are there” and then they started laughing to each other, which made me think they were making fun of me. So, I just stayed home. So, there are some examples of how my roommates make me uncomfortable. This probably isn’t the right place to be venting about these things, but I felt I needed to get it out, and it was also a big part of my week.

I got the new Phideaux album, called Number Seven, on Tuesday and it is incredible! It is a beautiful album that moves seamlessly from songs that rock hard to beautiful melodies sung by their great female singer. I have really enjoyed falling in love with this album. It is a concept album about the journey of a Dormouse, which makes for a very interesting story. Besides that the rest of the week has just involved working. I went and saw the new Transformers movie and thought it was pretty good. It is far from being a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it.

My fourth of July ended up being more eventful than I initially thought it would be. My friend Erin texted me and invited me to the Stadium of Fire. I hesitated accepting the invitation because I knew that the Jonas Brothers were performing, but I decided to go anyways because it would be a better way to celebrate fourth of July than sitting at home thinking about how my roommates annoy me. I left to meet up with Kevin at the Wyview multi-purpose building, but he got stuck in traffic so I walked to the stadium alone. Erin was waiting outside the gate with my ticket when I got there and we both walked in and found our seats. It was an exciting program! I really enjoyed the fireworks show and the touching words about our country spoken by Glenn Beck. I’ll admit that I’m not the most patriotic American, but I was still touched by his comments about how special a nation America is and how we need to fight for liberty and make this generation a notable one in American history. It made me realize that I need to become more patriotic and learn more about the history of the nation that I’m so privileged to belong to.

The Jonas Brothers were about what I expected. The screams that erupted from the stadium as they took the stage were deafening! One of the loudest screamers was Erin who apparently is a big fan. I just sat there watching quietly while Erin and many of the other people around got up on their feet and danced around while singing all the words to every song. I hadn’t heard any of the songs before (besides a cover they did of Sweet Caroline) so I unfortunately couldn’t sing along (LoL, like I would sing along to the Jonas Brothers!). Erin encouraged me to stand up part way through their set so I reluctantly did. It wasn’t so bad…(but it wasn’t so good either). It made me sad when I realized that this band is beating Dream Theater in the Billboard charts. I’m sorry Jonas Brothers fans, but Dream Theater is a lot more talented than the Jonas Brothers and yet they struggle to even make it on the charts while the Jonas Brothers have massive amounts of screaming fans that fill stadiums wherever they go. It baffles me…oh well! I should end my rant about the Jonas Brothers before I get in trouble.

Sunday was a good day. I was a little late to church, but I was still able to hear all the wonderful testimonies. During the whole testimony meeting I did some self-reflection which really taught me some things that I need to work in the upcoming weeks. I’ve only been in this ward about three weeks, but I don’t really feel like I’m connecting to the ward. A good example is what happened in Sunday School. I was one of the first people to enter the room for Sunday School. I sat in the back row and waited while everybody else came in. Well, people kept taking chairs from my row so that they could sit with their friends in different rows. This continued until my seat was the only chair left in the row, so I ended up sitting alone in my row. I laughed to myself when I thought about how people would rather move the chairs than have to sit next to me. Oh well, at least it’s something I can laugh about later.

My roommate ended up coming up to me at the beginning of Sunday School and told me the Bishop wanted to meet with me at 12:15 (right during Sunday School), so I had to leave halfway through Sunday School for my appointment with the Bishop. Well, I ended up waiting about an hour for the Bishop to be ready for me. Then we talked about my social life and I told him I didn’t have one. He encouraged me to go on more dates. It was all pretty awkward. The best part about it, though, is that I was able to get a temple recommend interview, which I have needed for quite some time. After the interview was done, there was only 15 minutes of church left, so I decided to go home early and reflect on some of the things that I had been thinking about during testimony meeting.

And, that is pretty much it for my week! Sorry for ranting a bit and complaining about certain things. I think the important lesson I learned this week is that I just need to laugh about these situations I end up in rather than taking offense. I haven’t been depressed at all this week because I have been able to laugh about my roommates and my experiences at church and about the Jonas Brothers. It makes every aspect of life that much more enjoyable. So, that is my take home message of the week: learn to laugh off the negative things that happen.