Turns Out

I feel that since it's been over a week since my last post, I owe my loyal fans a new one.

It's really funny how things seem to never turn out how you expect them to, in varying degrees, of course. Sometimes it's a good and welcomed thing. Sometimes it's not. For example, for my Writing and Reasoning class, each student had to write a 5-page personal narrative on one normal day of our lives. As some of you know, my writing style can be verbose. I cranked my narrative out the day before it was due, which started out pretty decent, then got tedious as my brain got tired of the task and moved on, leaving me to finish the paper on my own. I kept writing and realized that it was all utter nonsense. So, after fetching my brain and forcing it to rejoin me in my task, I cleaned my writing up a little and finished the paper. After printing it out to turn in, I read it aloud and only cringed at one or two parts. However, after handing the paper in, one would think I had vomited all over the paper, listening to me. Okay, that's definitely an exaggeration (I just like the expression), but I still wondered if my teacher was going to tear it to shreds or not.
The technique my teacher uses is one-on-one conferences with his students. Instead of class the week after a paper is due, we sign up for a time to meet with him so he can talk to us one-on-one in his office. The day of reckoning came and he actually paid me some very nice compliments. He thinks I'm a very good writer with plenty of talent, he wants to help make me even better. He gave me a suggestion on what I could do with this paper to make it better, just one, and sent me on my relieved and happily surprised way.
That's just one example from my life. I mean, one could even think of my experience with University Band as well. There's just a lot more examples in all our lives than I think we really notice; big or small. Is it because we're just used to life being, well, life and we've begun to take it all for granted? That goes with appreciating it all. Even if something turns out worse than we expect it to (like when I had to teach Elder's Quorum this last Sunday, and even then, it turned out more people liked it than I had supposed). There's always a silver lining to dark clouds. I have a roommate who once posed a question asking if the "clouds" are actually silver with dark lining and we just focus on the lining too much. Well, another subject to ponder on and even address at a later time, perhaps.
Yep, turns out that life is pretty darn unpredictable. Sometimes it's we would deem to be fair, but it's usually not. However, with that being said, it's interesting to see just how our lives are shaped by that and how we've grown and learned from all those "unfair" times.