just a little treat.

And not the kind you have to don a costume and go a knockin' to receive. Surprisingly, this video from Feist, and not the haunted house that overtook my office at work, pretty much made my day. I got to see Feist at Deer Valley a couple of years ago...sigh. She's amazing and manages to collaborate with the most talented and authentic musicians. This latest documentary, screening in select cities this fall (I won't hold my breath for SLC, but puhlease?) can also go on your Christmas list as it will be released Dec 7 in the US, just in time for a much needed break from all the yuletide carols. It will definitely be on mine, although I probably won't be able to wait to get it gifted.

Feist at Deer Valley circa 2008

happiest places on earth.

Both of them.

 Tomorrow I'm going to my cousin Brittany's wedding. I haven't been to San Diego since last summer and I can't wait to see her, my family and of course this beautiful temple. How could my weekend get better you ask?

 Because Saturday, I'm going here! To the Magic Kingdom. With the second sister. For the first time in like 10 years. I couldn't be more excited. Seriously. Best. Weekend. Ever.

all delightful people.

Nothing as good as waiting and anticipating and NOT being disappointed by it at all. Subject at hand: Age of Adz Sufjan Stevens first song-based album in five years. FIVE YEARS. I've been listening to Come on Feel and Seven Swans and Michigan over and over and over and though I don't ever get tired of it, let's just say that I've been more than a little excited for this for some time now. Kind of like how I was excited for frozen yogurt all summer (also never disappointing). Let's just say, even if you've never had the pleasure of listening to Sufjan Stevens, and thus anticipating the next time he'll grace us with his musical odysseys, you should still get excited and go listen to this. Now.

And here's the figurative little cherry on top. I get to see him. Live. Here. In SLC. At Kingsbury Hall. On November 1st. For the bff's birthday. Cue groupie shrieking now.

With a name like Sufjan, what's left to say? Just go listen.

make yourself.

Not the Incubus song. Although that brings back a lot of memories...Lately (let's be honest, always) I've been thinking a lot about the all-important question: What am I going to do with my life? This is really not one question at all, but a series of questions...Where will I work next? Where will I go to grad school? Will I go to grad school? Who will I marry? Will I get married? And as potentially depressing as never finding answers to these magnitudinous questions may seem, spending precious time dwelling on these questions ranks in at slightly less fulfilling than spending a night in, alone, with a pet cat and Magic 8 Ball.

What has always struck me as puzzling about this all-consuming question is that it infers that at some point I will reach an arbitrary place at which I will start doing this thing that I have not until that point actually been doing: living my life. Kind of like when I was in college and no one ever asked me about how school was going until after they had received a disappointing answer to the real question, "So are you dating someone?"

I suppose there are some people who are lucky and know what they want to do at the forefront. Up until now, I thought I needed to spend time figuring it out and that the only way I could do that is to find myself. How can I know what I want to do if I don't know who I am? Which begs the question, how can I know who I am if I don't do something?

I found this the other day. The concept isn't new, even to me, and maybe it's just the punchy type font, but this really resonated with me in the profoundest of ways. Enough to write it down, and definitely enough to share.

*Not unknown at all...George Bernard Shaw

Life is happening every second, and every second we have a new opportunity to choose how we spend our time, and who we spend it with. Whether or not we do it consciously, we are in fact deciding what to do with our lives every single second. The more time we spend worrying about how the sum total of our decisions is going to pan out in the scheme of things, and worse, how it will be perceived by others, the more we risk missing millions of chances to live the kind of life everyone else is trying to find.

And if you still find yourself struggling to re-frame your frame of mind, just look back and look at all of the things you've done. Chances are, they're amazing. Give yourself a hug, and move forward. Life is good and the future is bright.

THE facebook movie.

Among other things (like watching General Conference, which was glorious) I saw the new movie The Social Network this weekend. Although my hopes were admittedly high, I was fully expecting it to be more than a little hyped up. To my pleasant surprise, it far surpassed my ambiguous expectations-I was excited to see it, but I had no idea why. While watching it I got this surreal feeling like, this is one of those things that changes everything, and it happened/is happening in my lifetime, and I'm watching it on-screen. Weird.

And then I felt kind of sad. The movie has a distinctly heavy tone. Mark Zuckerburg's character never really captured my sympathies, and billions of dollars later, he's left relatively friendless at the top of a company that thrives on social networking. Ironic. And then I thought about how many other relationships have taken a turn for the worst because of sites like Fbook. If left to my druthers I would have spiraled into a deep funk of thought for the rest of the night. Luckily I was with good friends, and a bowl full of Japanese tart yogurt later I had sufficiently snapped out of my social networking quandary.

I think the key, as always, is balance. And of course, using technology to enhance life and all of its elements, relationships first and foremost, and not to replace them. A significant portion of my new job requires me to get cozy with social media, which I spent the first part of my post-college life trying to tiptoe around. I didn't want to network socially online and I sure didn't want to have to tweet about it. Well, just this last Friday, I made my first little twittering, albeit anonymously via my company's profile. It was strangely exciting. It motivated me to create my own profile, which I did, and when I got to the part where it was time to send my first tweet into the atmosphere, for maybe the first time in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say! "Here I am world" or "Hey guys, sorry I'm late" were my best ideas. I guess I don't do well under pressure. Still waiting for something to come to me. I hope I'm not twitter-blocked for long...Stay tuned.

But to my original point, whatever it was, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in spite of heavy and potentially depressing themes, I really enjoyed the movie. It made me think about stuff, ironic and socially relevant stuff. And, I maybe find the lead actor strangely attractive. And, as motivating as that movie SHOULD be-I mean the sheer marvel of what one person can accomplish with only a 1600 SAT and Harvard education OR the amount of money said students can make by suing each other, is simply awe-inspiring (insert winky face here). Probably the most thought-provoking take-home is best summed up in a little tweeting by none other than Jimmy Fallon:

"It's about what one person can achieve, when they're not distracted by Facebook."

Jimmy, touche'.