ACCORDING TO ZAC

My last post was a list. This post is a list. I know I’ll have another list posted by the end of the year. Apparently this site is now a Buzzfeed spinoff where it’s just listicles organized by someone who is passionate but doesn’t utilize science to make good assessments? I’m not mad about it. Recently the prophet asked us to #givethanks on our social media pages. I like to use social media as a window into the lives of others, but I seldom offer my own life up to the internet spectators. I politely abstained from the prophet’s request. And while I did spend time compiling some lists of varying topics earlier this year, most of which involved gratitude, I’m here to #givethanks in a humble bid for repentance. 1. Arizona Gosh, this state. Summer was brutal, and lasted through most of October this year. Damn you, global warming! But the fall wind finally came and carried the desert heat away. I've recently taken to long walks along the canal near my house (nearly 5 miles, most times...

I finished a book this week called Greenwood that I really loved. It tells the story of a family, the Greenwoods, starting in 2038. We open with Jake Greenwood and walk backwards in time, learning about the previous generation, then the one preceding, and again the one that came before. Then, when we can sort of get a sense of where much of this family’s trajectory started, we start walking forward again to fill in the gaps and see how all of these individuals’ decisions were impacting people down the line, even if it was impossible to know that at the time. So much of this book spoke to me and made me think about my life, but two passages specifically go along with some thoughts I’ve been having about a couple members of my family. The first comes from Liam, Jake's father. He's a woodworker with difficult relationships with some of the people around him. In a tough moment, he comes to a realization: “Time, Liam has learned, is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It go...

Lately I have been really worried about my life. Like, waaaaaay more than usual. And I've been having some really intense emotional whiplash getting really  caught up in these episodes in which I think about all the negative things that might happen and why does everyone else have something that I don't have but want and blah blah blah . And then God throws me a bone and says, "Hey. I love you. No, really, I do. And it's going to be just fine. Trust me." And then I cry. And then I start the process all over again. Well, in today's installment of "I love you and CALM THE HECK DOWN" from above, I was blessed with this little gem: "[God] made your spirit strong and capable of being resilient to the whirlwinds of life. The whirlwinds in your [life,] like the wind against a young tree, can increase your spiritual strength, preparing you for the years ahead." — Neil L. Andersen It made me think of all of the hardships in my...

The last month or two have been emotionally and spiritually turbulent, but for how challenging or upsetting a given situation might have been (mostly of my own doing, to be honest), in equal measure I have made great strides in faith, learning, and finding true joy. I can be sort of a doomsdayer, sometimes. I think, "Well I drove off the last woman I was interested in. I guess I'll just resign myself to being #foreveralone." Or, if after repeated goal setting and personal reflection I still don't feel like I'm making any progress on behaviors I'd like to change, I'll leap straight to "I'm not meant to shake these parts of who I am. I'll always be [enter personal deficiency or weakness here]." We all grow frustrated sometimes. It's the nature of most people, I think, that we get impatient when we aren't getting exactly what we want in the precise moment we've planned for it to arrive or occur. It can be the result of someon...

Cheryl Strayed  is a writer and generally interesting human being from what I've been able to glean from the little I know about her. She wrote a memoir called Wild  that was then adapted into a major motion picture starring everybody's sweetheart, Reese Witherspoon. Though I haven't read her memoir, I have read synopses of her memoir (and accompanying film). She has led an interesting life, full of passion, struggle, despair and joy, among many other things. One thing she has had to deal with is losing her mother. Cheryl was in her 20s, if I remember correctly, and her mother was only 45. It was a crushing blow to her. Now, many years later, she has compiled a series of her most insightful tidbits about life when she was working as an anonymous advice columnist named Sugar. My lovely friend Kristina sent me this book in the weeks after my mother's death in November 2014, hoping that it would help me find ways of coping with my recent tragedy and be able to move for...

(Context: my wonderful mother passed away in early November 2014 from cancer. The diagnosis a year previously had been shocking, but her decline was not. That has been one of many sources of great emotion over the last year. This entry will be about coping with the loss of her, but it could very well be applied to the setbacks we face in life, whether self-inflicted or otherwise.) Life is such a crazy thing. The range of emotions I have felt in the last year or so would take days to explain completely, and the emotions I've felt in the last few days alone have had me up and down. Fortunately enough, I started going through old journal entries this afternoon and I found one that was really encouraging. Last March I had just finished reading a silly book called Allegiant . There were a lot of things I didn't like about the book, but if there was anything redeeming at all about the hundreds of pages I read it was the core message delivered at the very end: "We can be...

I'm reading a book right now called I Am the Messenger . It's only okay, but there are some really excellent pop culture references. Today's stand out reference was this: He's gigantic, and to be honest, I can't tell if it's a man or a woman. In fact, from a distance, he looks like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show . I'm really sad for any man that looks like this, but in a way, I really want to see him.