I found out this week that the owners of my apartment complex, who have never talked to me, don't want the property management company to renew my lease. I wasn't told why, but I have a few guesses. It doesn't matter. Though this came as an unpleasant surprise, I was trained for it five years ago, when I had to move three times before ending up at this place. I accepted it right away. I happened to read the email in Garden City during a detour from a camping trip with friends, the only interval when I had access to my cellular network. By the way, that really needs to be fixed. I'm all for leaving technological distractions behind, but anyone who has a medical emergency in most parts of Logan Canyon or the surrounding areas is screwed. The point, though, is that I was in the middle of this camping trip with friends. Most of them had actually gone home by then because they had jobs or colonoscopies or whatever.

But I love these friends. The last time I was in the wilderness with them - I don't say camping because it was cold, and we all chickened out and went home - I stared up at the Milky Way and ached with the desire for our friendship to continue after our deaths. I wasn't confident at the time that it would. Now I am. It's been all but proven by science. We know for a fact that people have died and remained conscious, despite their brains being shut down, for a couple of hours before they come back. I want to shout this fact from the rooftops. Actually, I'm working on a children's book with the working title "Everyone Dies." I've had the idea for this book for a while, but I didn't know how to go about it because I didn't have any solid reassurance to give children about what happens after death, and I'm not willing to lie to them by implying that death is always peaceful or that it only happens to old people. Now at least the first problem is solved. I feel a strong desire to write this book, and I hope it will spread a message of hope far and wide. As random as it sounds, it feels like part of my calling in life now.

To reiterate: I love these friends. At this time in Garden City I remained with Steve and his wife. Not for the first or last time, here's the story of how I met Steve, which I never tire of. I used to sometimes visit this girl who lived next door to him. She texted me, I dropped everything, and we sat on her balcony and talked. Then Steve got home from work, and she said, "Steve, come join us!" I didn't like that very much, and consequently I didn't like him very much. At least once, we had three chairs on the balcony, and I put my feet on the extra chair and hoped he would take the hint, but he didn't. I feel so bad about that now. Steve is a really great guy. This whole friend group that I love so much has coalesced around him. In 2019, I jumped at the chance to become his neighbor.

I used to ask him for priesthood blessings all the time. Then I didn't because he moved away and I stopped believing in the Mormon priesthood. I still think, of course, that any God who may hypothetically exist can communicate through a Mormon priesthood blessing as well as any other method, but I don't know if that actually happens or how to tell. I've been told things in priesthood blessings that the speaker shouldn't have known, and I've also been told things in priesthood blessings that were simply wrong, and I'm not interested in making excuses like "Maybe it was talking about the next life" or "Maybe it meant something else because God likes to intentionally mislead people." Anyway, since I was there with Steve I asked for a blessing to help me not spiral into depression over this email. And he mentioned something that he shouldn't have known, and something else that I may have discussed with him some time ago, but I don't remember. So that was interesting.

The point I'm getting at in such a roundabout way is that because I fortuitiously happened to be with these friends at this time, it took me less than two hours to decide that I would move to the Salt Lake City area to be closer to them. Most of them live there or will be moving there soon. If I move somewhere else in Logan, I'll continue to live with twenty-year-old college students, and that gets weirder with every passing year. Logan is a college town. I love it dearly, but I came to realize that it has little to offer me anymore because I'm not in college or married. Salt Lake will be an exciting new chapter in my life. I'll spend more time with these stable adult friends, I'll be more involved in my adorable little nieces' lives, and since I'm there anyway, maybe I'll start a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Utah next year. USU doesn't have that program. I am, of course, heartbroken to leave behind the town that's been my home for nearly thirteen years, but life is change, and change more often than not entails some loss. Don't fight it. Don't resent it. As Matthew Stover poignantly wrote in the novelization for Revenge of the Sith, even stars die. 

I felt that in 2019, a higher power had orchestrated my life to lead me to where I live now. And here I met someone whom I thought was the reason. Maybe she was a reason. As much as I could do without the trauma she brought into my life, I owe her much gratitude for getting me out of the LDS Church and sending me into an existential crisis that brought me spiritual growth that I wouldn't trade for anything. But it seems weird that God would guide me to someone to turn me into an agnostic. Another reason, I see now, was getting closer to Steve and these other friends. He moved soon after I arrived, but if I hadn't lived here, they all might have faded from my life like almost everyone else I've met in this college town. He was there for me when the other person hurt me, multiple times, and he was there for me when we were stuck at home during the early days of the pandemic. I look back on those days with a strange mixture of trauma and nostalgia.

After the disaster of early 2020, and I'm not talking about the pandemic, I've felt confused and abandoned and aimless as far as God's supposed guidance is concerned. This upcoming move is the first time since then that I feel once more like my life is being orchestrated by a higher power. I'm agnostic, of course, over whether it actually is. Things happen. Coincidences happen. Human brains are wired by evolution to see patterns and agency where none exist. But I feel good about it, and that's good enough. Not because my good feeling is a guide to any kind of truth, but because it means I'm excited about a new chapter. And also sad. It's complicated.

This week I had the opportunity to present to USU's creative writing club, the Bull Pen. I was honored to receive the invitation. As the meeting approached, I got ridiculously nervous considering that I taught writing classes at that university for years, and very briefly considered hiding somewhere instead of showing up. When I did show up anyway, I got more nervous because my former thesis chair had come to hear me speak, so now I had to impress him and not just the students. It went great. I'd intended to try to talk for twenty minutes and then let the students write stuff for the rest of the time, but then I started late to wait for some who got out of classes late, and then from the third slide onward they asked questions and made comments during my presentation, so that it turned into more of a discussion and filled up the entire remaining time. Someone told me afterward that he would incorporate my advice into his writing. That made me feel good. At least this one time, I had an influence on someone somewhere, and my existence wasn't pointless.

Here's my slideshow. I can't figure out how to embed it, though that should be possible with today's technology. I talked about incorporating humor into writing, and I used quotes from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series instead of my own writing because it's less egotistical and I don't like being the center of attention. I know, I'll have to get used to that if I have a successful career. I'll have to give more presentations, interviews, autographs, that sort of thing.

Of course, I had to plug my own book a little too, and I'll plug it again here. If you like humorous sci-fi fantasy adventure novels, check this one out at the following Amazon Affiliate link:

And tomorrow is Earth Day. Happy Earth Day. I'm going camping with friends. I expect that I'll have a lot of fun and lose a lot of sleep, leading to a lot of regret.

Twitter's pathetic lack of moderation has empowered conservative Mormons to fully out themselves as terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people. Of course, they don't have a monopoly on being terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people, but it's the hypocrisy and the delusion that really drive me up the wall. These terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people apparently believe in all sincerity that they're doing what Jesus wants, when in reality, he would smack the shit out of them if he were here. These terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people are representing the LDS Church to the world, and as long as it refuses to do anything about their behavior because it doesn't want to alienate its Republican base, it deserves to be represented by them.

I like liberal Mormons, though - you know, the ones who don't base their entire identity on bullying others. I don't think their beliefs make a lot of sense - they basically create their own religion that isn't the one being taught by the church they belong to - but I think they're great people, and I respect their right to believe whatever they want. Jim Bennett is a really exceptionally great, open-minded, loving man, which has made him a high-profile target for harassment by the scum of the Earth.

As soon as he posted this, a conservative Mormon with the self-awareness of a sea sponge tried to set a world record for proving him right.

I know Jim Bennett would never tell anyone to fuck off, becuase he's better than that. But I'll always be willing to step up and tell someone to fuck off on his behalf. And on behalf of others.

I was going to stop there to let my words carry their maximum impact, but I couldn't resist adding that the only platform we should be giving Nazis is one that comes with a rope and a long drop.

ADDENDUM: I'd like to thank this exceptional waste of oxygen, and whichever of her cult of stalkers is assigned to me, for the sudden spike in traffic to my obscure little website.

And I'm not even shocked anymore that conservative Mormons think this is okay:

Well, "The land of delusion" is pretty accurate.

A side effect of my recent month of desperately not wanting to be alive anymore was that I grew closer to some extended family members I rarely talked to. I was surprised to learn how highly my uncle thinks of me. I knew he liked me just fine, but we hadn't talked at all since he stopped using Facebook, and when he was on Facebook, we often disagreed about politics. Some of his kids used to love playing with me, but they outgrew me around the same time they all got iPads. His youngest kids weren't old enough to have personalities the last time I saw them. Anyway, I just had a delightful week at their house. They're such a beautiful, loving family, and it was the first time in fourteen years that I went a whole week without feeling lonely. The youngest ones, now five and three, wanted to be around me all the time. They exhausted me, but I loved them dearly. It broke my heart to leave them, and even more to realize that someday they'll outgrow me too.

I had to hold the three-year-old to make him smile because he was crying about my imminent departure. The five-year-old refused to smile. The face she made represented her personality pretty well, though.

I want to share some cute quotes. The five-year-old stumbled upon a deck of Book-of-Mormon-themed Go Fish cards and said, "Where's the wicked Laban?" And then I swear to God she said, "The Lord told Nephi to kill the wicked Laban. But the Lord doesn't actually tell people to kill. That's weird." I was amazed. I don't think I had that level of insight at her age. I just hated church because it was boring.

The three-year-old, in contrast, raised his plastic sword and said, "KILL THE WICKED LABAN! YEAH!"

The morning of the day I left, I was playing with the three-year-old while the five-year-old, to my surprise and disappointment, played with her iPad for at least an hour. I gently inquired whether she intended to do that all day. I was like, "It's just that I'm going to leave today, and I don't want you to be sad and think 'Oh no, I wish I had played with Christopher while he was here...'"

Rather curtly, she said, "But I didn't choose that. What I choosed is the iPad."

And I was like