I was talking with my wife about my purpose in life. Generally I think things are going pretty well. I have a wife and kids; I have a job that I like; we have a house that we like; we live the Gospel as best as we can; and we feel like we have spirit in our home. But I was feeling like something was missing. We talked for a bit about times in my life where I have felt inspired by the Holy Ghost to take some action in my life.

The most recent one happened in January when I felt prompted to start listening to General Conference more regularly. After listening to President Oaks's talk Desire, I was led to deeply consider what my real desires are, which, among other things, led me to understand that even though I say that I desire to get the right amount of sleep my actions didn't say that I desired that, so I decided that I was going to start acting like a person that actually wants to not feel the pains of being sleep deprived (I'm still working on it).

It has also led me to start to write in this blog again.

I was listening to Elder Holland's speech "The Second Half of the Second Century of Brigham Young University," not exactly General Conference, but listening to Elder Holland's conference talks put me in the mood. In the first part of the speech he talks about his love of BYU and as he was talking it reignited my love of BYU. What a fabulous university and what an incredible blessing it was for me and what a miracle that everything went the way that it did while I was there. I think that I can trace every good thing in my life right now back to something that happened at BYU.

As Elder Holland started to wax eloquent about his love of the school and his continued involvement in it, a feeling was put into my heart that I still don't quite know how to express. I started reflecting on what it would look like to be more involved at BYU. What if I became a professor? Boy, that would be quite the career change! I just barely started to feel okay about teaching Sunday School lessons. I like programming well enough, and I'm pretty good at it, but I don't know if I'm good enough at it or passionate enough about it to teach it. I don't think moving to Utah County is in the cards, etc., etc., etc.

And that led me to when I started talking to my wife about it, and the closest words we could come up with to describe the feeling is wanting a sense of purpose. And like I said, that still doesn't feel quite right because I am very confident that my purpose in life right now is to teach my children the Gospel, and provide food, shelter, education, etc and to be the best husband I can be to my wife. But it feels like there is something more that I need to be preparing for.

As we were talking my long neglected blog came up and it felt like it was scratching this still unnamed itch. And it’s not the first time in the past few days that I have felt moved upon to pick back up writing, so here we go.

I don’t exactly know what this is going to accomplish, I don’t know how or if it’s going to fulfill or satisfy any of the aforementioned feelings. I still don’t even know how to describe them... But it feels right.

So if I am going to do this again I should reflect on what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

The last thing I posted before going dark was silly. I was being a little full of myself and I made a click bait title with a hot take. And then when my main audience (friends and family or a certain social media platform) read it, there was backlash, not in a fun half joking confrontational way but in a sincere way like I had disappointed them¹. This made me look at what I had become and be startled by it. Add to that that I was, in parallel, working on a difficult post that I could already tell was coming off as too preachy and maybe judgy. So I took a break. A few months later Offspring #3 was born and he only started sleeping through the night in December. All side projects were put on pause in 2025 and we transitioned to survival mode except for the two or three other major life events that we decided to pursue... Yeah, I think I am justified in taking an 18 month break.

So here's what's going to be different this time.

I am going to do more short things. Instead of trying to do big long think pieces I'm going to write shorter moments of thought. To kick things off for the next month I'll be doing a writing challenge. I'm going to write a very short something every day. I don't know if I have enough confidence in my editing speed to publish once a day. Maybe I'll use it as a way to build up a backlog. I think a cadence of once a week to once a month would be good in the long run.

Next I'm going to remember my roots. As per my very first post the idea is that I am writing down my thoughts as I read or think. I am using the publishing mechanism not as a way to gain notoriety or recognition but as a motivator to record, refine and polish my thoughts and a way to practice writing. I write for the reader to come along with me but I am going to try and not stress too much or ambition² too much about it.

I don't know how to do that. I really enjoy writing but things get weird at publish time. I simultaneously want no one to read it but also everyone. I'm interested in how people will respond but also nervous that it will go poorly. I am working under the assumption that most writers feel something like that and that as I write more it will be less of a problem.

I also think a more humble approach to writing will help. I am not yet an expert. I am going on a journey and if you'd like to join me you are welcome to read my blog.

With that said, let's get cracking!

Footnotes

1. You can tell from my melodramatic reaction and recollection that there are still some residual feelings of being full of myself. ↩

2. Today I learned that ambition can be used as a verb. I'm not sure I am correctly using it as a verb here, but I thought that I was just being completely silly. ↩