10 Cool Things
First cool thing is this YouTube channel that my wife Anna made the day Marshal was born, called Daily Docs. She has documented pretty much a video every day since his birth. It's not really all the way up to date, or for public viewing or getting famous. It's just a nice way to keep an archive of simple memories of each phase our son goes through in detail, like a journal. Here's a recent one I really liked.
Cool thing #2 is the new Relient K album that I have yet to finish listening to. This is a band that was pretty Christian, but sort of fell off the wagon so to speak with their last album. This new album is a lot better. Interesting fact, they are from OHIO like me. :) It's on Spotify.
#3 is books! Anna and I own a lot of books, many of which we inherited from her late grandmother, who owned an inordinate amount of books. Some of my favorites are Treasure Island, Christmas Carol, the Ender's Game series, and Spiritual Roots of Human Relations.
The 4th cool thing is related, which is Journal Writing. My wife has done better at this than I have, but we've both kept enough journals combined to fill a whole row on our book shelf. Very recently I've discovered that when I stop writing in my journal, I have a harder time making good long-term decisions and sticking to them in the moment.
No, this is not the pen I use to write in my journal, unfortunately.
#5 is The Phantom Carriage, by Victor Sjostrom. This film really impacted me when I first saw it in Dean's 291 class. The plot is very much inspired by a book I mentioned above by Charles Dickens. This film has influenced a lot of filmmakers. It even inspired the famous "Here's Johnny" scene from the Shining, although I'd argue that it's more terrifying in this film. A beautiful story about redemption and repentance. I received the BluRay version from my wife this last Christmas.
The 6th cool thing: Weekly Dinners with married friends. Anna and I realized recently that we have had no social life since being married, so we decided to start having friends over about every week. I am very surprised at how enjoyable it is to socialize with old friends, and talk about normal things with people that aren't filmmakers. Mostly, we talk about parenthood, which is something we don't often get to talk about. The challenges thereof can make one feel pretty alone sometimes, so fostering these relationships has provided us with a much needed support group, which is an invaluable blessing.
Yeah, this is basically what our get togethers look like.
7th is a YouTube channel called Ownership Economy by David Richins, who is a Media Arts graduate from many years ago. I met him way before I got into BYU. He lives in Ohio now with his wife and family. I found his ideas here not only enlightening, but pretty influential in my own life. I've been inspired by his thoughts on unifying labor and capitol as I have pursued a more entrepreneurial route of employment. Here is the first video in a series of 12. At least watch it for its excellent motion graphics!
Number 8: Nightly walks with the family. Marshal has decided that the only way he will go to sleep is to be walked to sleep. So we walk him to sleep twice a day at least for his naps, and every night at bedtime. Anna and I have found this time extremely enjoyable for catching up and planning for the next day.
#9: Weekly Planning. We are real nerds, but something that we love doing on Sundays is spending about two or three hours going over our week and planning for the next one. We've modeled our system after a sort of Preach My Gospel chapter 8 kind of thing. It took us several months to get the habit to stick, but it's really changed our lives, and is essentially the only way we are able to go to school, work, and have an attention-demanding baby all at the same time.
Finally, #10 is running. We set the goal in January to run a marathon, which is a first for the both of us. Training has been a really great lifestyle change. I have ran most of my life, but Anna never has. She has jumped into it with great success however, and sometimes leaves me behind now. Her stamina is really high. Marshal comes with in the stroller and sleeps. His max is about 10 miles before he starts crying to make us stop, which makes me nervous to actually run the marathon without any longer runs than that in one week from today.
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