ACCORDING TO ZAC

"I hate feeling broken," I said, as I sat in my car before work this morning. I had missed my normal morning prayer because I had slept in. I wanted to make sure to get a quick prayer in before I got started on the rest of my day. I didn't say much else, but I felt that God was near and that He gets why I feel this way. And I also felt that it would all be okay. I didn't even have to ask to feel better or anything, God just needed me to tell Him that I was hurting and He sent the good feelings and the calm and the love. This life can be so hard. We feel the need to live up to all these expectations that we set for ourselves, that society sets for us, and that God sets for us. The awesome thing is that He knows we can't do it all at once. We will stumble and fall and get so frustrated trying to be what we feel like we are supposed to be. I've learned that I just want to chase what God and I have worked out together to be my path. I get irritated that I can...

The loss of a parent in a person's life is going to be pretty profound. Even if that person didn't have a strong connection with his or her parent, a mom/dad gives you half of who you are by genes alone. You can't escape that—they helped make you! It's even harder if you loved that parent and were close. I've been thinking about my mom a lot over the last few months, and it's been surprisingly tumultuous. The first six or eight months after she died, I would have a few good days and then be struck suddenly with grief and sadness. And yes, I obviously missed her always , and still do, but the shock and hurt would come and go. It would hit me in random moments and with surprising intensity while I made sense of the fact that she's really gone, not just on a trip or something. Those feelings of intense sadness had mostly faded, and nostalgia and slight longing are what persisted. It was a dull ache that was definitely livable. The last few months, however...

Summer school ruins lives. Finals are exciting, because that means summer is around the corner, but then you're bamboozled by the blasted class you have that starts the following week! Gah. At least its only three weeks long. [p.s. name the movie from my title!!!]

I lost my camera cord. No pictures for the world wide web to enjoy. This is a dark day...

For my Editing class I had to find an article that was poorly reported. The difficult part was that you had to find an article that means something to you. A poorly reported article that rips at your heart because of the way it portrays you or something you care about? That's no fun. Naturally, religion was first to come to mind, and finding something that really misconstrued the LDS church was easier than it should have been. The article was terrible, and the stupid thing is that it wouldn't have been hard to fix and make right. It made me sad that the article had been read by an editor and deemed fit for print in one of the most read newspapers on the planet. It made me sad that in this age of technology, a quick run over Mormon.org would have shed light on a lot of these misconceptions. But, what would have happened had all of these facts been checked and corrected, is that the article wouldn't have really been about much. Her whole focus would have had to shift, in...

You know that moment when you check your bank statement online and say, "oh, crap."? That's the worst.