ACCORDING TO ZAC

I had some thoughts while I was flying home yesterday from a great trip, so I spent some time typing them out. I want them to live somewhere more solid than my notes app, so here they are. :: I’m on a flight home from Buffalo, NY right now and was just jolted from my daydreaming by the thought “Pay attention to what you just lived.” For six days I traveled through the northeast to perform twice with Millennial Choir and Orchestra. Tanner Weigel, Mitch Gibson and Peter Burgoyne were here with me. We started in Boston, and it was beautiful (and hot). We sang in Symphony Hall, which was pretty neat. But before the performance we had a few days of sightseeing and so much laughter. I appreciate these men for their non-judgement and immense emotional understanding and support. While we each approach our lives in slightly different ways, there is camaraderie and love and care as I share my heart with them, the good and the bad alike. I can be my whole self with them, and that’s a gift. What g...

I’ve been overcome this weekend by the significance of people in my life and all they have done and continue to do for me. This isn’t new, given my reflections on Shaley , my two best friends , and how much a ward family can mean in recent times. But I feel it in my bones yet again, and it feels important to pay attention to. A lot of this started at a White Coat Ceremony for my second year PT students on Saturday. I loved hearing families and friends cheer as their loved one’s name was read. There was a really dapper older guy a few rows away from me (the rare occurrence where a fedora really worked; he looked great!). He was sitting alone, and when his person’s name was called he stood and clapped, not making much of an audible or visual statement in such a big space. Yet his act of showing up as one person in a busy room to support someone he cared about that was deeply touching to see. To be one in a sea of many can feel like it’s not much impact, but this guy knew that somet...

It’s not uncommon for there to be lulls in conversation during my sessions with my therapist. Sometimes they feel like a bit of a standoff to see who will fill the void first; those are the days that I’m not feeling as introspective, or our previous conversation hasn’t sparked much for me to sort through. But other times the quiet helps me make some sense of what I’m feeling (or reel from being confronted with something I don’t know how to make sense of) and then decide what to jump into next. This week there was one of these pauses, and I’ll admit that I didn’t feel like I was really working through much. But I wanted to wait out the break to make the doc determine the direction we would go. It’s a tricky game of chicken because he will either ask me, “What are you thinking about?”, and that doesn’t always work on a day I don’t have much bouncing around my brain, or he’ll ask me a question that cuts right through me. It feels like there’s absolutely no in-between. This week he leaned ...

Once upon a time I moved to Mesa to learn how to be a functioning member of society (aka not be a leech on my dad’s seemingly unending generosity). I got a full time job, started cooking for myself, and navigated living with roommates. The other thing I did was build a social circle for myself. The other groomsmen are cropped out because they didn't time their jumps right. Another testament to the power of our friendship. On my first day in my new ward, I sat next to a guy in the “New Member” class. His name was Derek. Because we didn’t know anyone else there, he and I stuck together through those first few activities as we met new folks and figured things out. As I got acquainted with more and more of the members in my ward, I made friends and met cool people, but it seemed like I’d struck it best with Derek on day one. Fast forward a few months and Derek was assigned to be my home teacher with a guy named Eric. They came to visit me like the good men they are and Derek and I deci...

I had a weird confluence of different eras of my life today that brought me both longing and joy. ERA I:  I was really fortunate to spend my entire life in one place until my mission. While that might have robbed me of some of the things kids learn as they relocate—resilience, an ability to make friends in new situations, etc.—it also provided me with a lot of stability that fostered the development of long term relationships that I still treasure to this day. I feel immense tenderness towards my hometown and the people I associate with Tucson by virtue of having so much personal history with that place/them. Tucson is so pretty. As I revisited old blog posts and spent a long time thinking about things I’ve experienced today, I couldn’t help but feel very far removed from that part of my life. I looked at photos of my pre-mission life and felt some embarrassment at who I was then (who wasn’t periodically very awkward in their young adulthood?), but also some envy for the ...

"You know everyone, don't you?" he said to me as we walked down the hall towards the clerk's office. I had just high fived someone that we passed walking the other way. I hadn't even thought twice about the gesture, it just felt normal. And yeah, I know plenty of people in my ward. I've been here for two-and-a-half years now, which I would hope is long enough to make some connections. But as I thought about his question over the course of the day, what I really think this new friend of mine was saying was this: "You really have a family here, don't you? You are loved here, aren't you?" And the more I thought about it, the more overwhelmed I was at the truth of what he was getting at. My life in Mesa has had some challenges, of course. We've all got them. But my time here has also been everything I never knew I needed, all thanks to the amazing people that I've been able to rub shoulders with. And when I really stop to think abo...

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...

They say that if you've charted a course for a particular destination but you're off by even just one degree, you'll travel the requisite time or distance but end up many miles from your intended location. Human error can account for a lot of those moments in our lives—we make wrong career choices, a relationship goes bad, we ignore sound advice from those who know more than we do—and we learn from that. But what I'm consistently finding out is that sometimes Heavenly Father sets the bearings for our journeys, even though we think we're in control. Putting this into words is only hitting me now, but I see how this all started a number of weeks ago when an acquaintance from high school sent me a message on Facebook. This girl was three years younger than me and quite shy. A number of months ago she sent me a message thanking me for having been kind to her years ago. I was shocked she even remembered that I had spoken to her then. I'm just glad I was helpful...

A couple of weeks ago I decided to use my freedom as an unemployed adult to drive to Utah and spend some time with the folks that I really love up there. This is Jenna! She is the reason this blog still gets updated, and was the first person I met up with. A few thoughts about the trip: Driving about 25 hours all by yourself in the matter of just a few days gives you way  too much time for self reflection. Northern Arizona and a lot of Utah are both exceptionally beautiful. There's just something different in the air in Provo. I had a bunch of flashbacks to the MTC, and I couldn't shake the nostalgia while I was there. I couldn't decide if that was good or bad. I have the greatest friends ever. Panguitch, Utah doesn't have McDonald's, but it has  gorgeous sunsets and creepy motels . Anyway, the thing that has been on my mind ever since the trip was a quote I heard on a podcast while I was driving the stretch of I-15 between Provo and Beaver (I lov...

They say that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade, right? Personally, I like sweet more than sour, so maybe lemon bars would be a better analogy for me, but the thought is all the same: my life isn't perfect, but it's coming around based on my own efforts. I've been thinking this a lot  the last few days: (I'm rereading The Fault in Our Stars , where this gem of a quote comes from, and it's perfect. Minus the cancer and tragedy. But seriously, it's so good.) Anyway, the awesome part about me saying "WHAT IS THIS LIFE?" this week is that it has been about good things. As in "how the heck did I get so dang lucky?!" I mean, today is my birthday, and that's pretty cool. I've really felt a lot of love, even through generic Facebook wall posts from people I haven't spoken to in a long time. But even better is the love I have felt through the people closer to me (both emotionally and geographically) who have texted, c...

A long time ago I wrote a post about the way my life had changed in a short period of time. I talked about how six months previously I had faced a trial that scared me a lot, but that I conquered it. I mentioned how before that trial I faced something else a few months previously and managed to take care of it and learn a lot in the process. It was cool to chart my growth. Well, dear blogging world, I took a two year hiatus. I missed blogging and writing a lot. Seriously, writing is just good for the soul, even if no one reads what you put down on paper. So, here I am, ready for a little recap of life and what I've learned. Unfortunately, there just isn't time (and I don't have the energy) to tell you about all of my adventures in the last two years. I would, however, like to tell you a little about what I've learned. I hope you enjoy it: On September 7, 2011, I entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT. It was a weird day to say the very, very least....