cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, and Maxine Shirts.
"Well another week has passed, and I'm still two weeks behind on the Thoughtlets. Oh well! I expect to catch up today. As I look back on my notes, I'm not sure why I was so busy just after we got home from Utah? We drove back to Cedar City after Grant Matthew Nelson's blessing, and stayed with Grandma Shirts on Sunday evening. As we drove into Cedar City, we took the Summit/Enoch exit and stopped to see Aunt Mary (who wasn't home) and then Uncle Willis and Aunt Shirley (who just returned from their mission to Virginia). We spent the evening with Audrey, Heather, Sara & Des, and Grandma Shirts, and left at 6:30 Monday morning for the airport.
We stopped and gave a Thoughtlet I forgot to mail to Mom and said goodbye for this visit. The line at the Las Vegas Airport for Southwest was unbelievable. We got to the airport about an hour and a half early, and if the plane would not have been 20 minutes late, we might not of made it. I calcualted there were about 1,000 people in line, and it made loops as long as any DisneyLand ride I've ever been on. The flight was to Lubbock, Austin, and then Houston Hobby. We got home about 8:00 in the evening. Based on my notes and the dates on web pages, I don't remember what I did on Tuesday and Wednesday. Andrea and I did not go to the temple Tuesday night with the Ward because she went out with the Sister Missionaries. We went Wednesday morning. In addition to this, I know I kept busy, and the front of the house keeps getting to be more and more of a mess because I end up not taking time to clean it all up. Andrea, hopefully I will clean up my mess and give back the library, and front entrance this week (and with this I introduce my topic this week, the idea of seeking approval).
I really got thinking about the idea of approval on the Saturday night we stayed with Randy and Kathryn. There was a wonderful and unexpected call on the cell phone from Audrey announcing she had just been chosen the Sigma Chi Fraternity Sweetheart at a formal dance down in Bloomington. Audrey, your enthusiasm was contageous. I don't know how you get nominated for something like this, nor do I have any understanding of the selection process and voting. And, Audrey, as I have reflected the past week on how happy you were during our brief phone conversation on that Saturday night, it came to my mind this experience provided something you really want. And for lack of a better word, I call this something approval.
I had gone to bed early. We had gone to two movies (0211.html), and having been warned about how the kids can be after spending time with their Dad, I had no desire to stay up and experience their return. However, Matt came into the room and woke me up to give me a hand soap he had made for me. It felt really good. Then Rachel came in and gave me the biggest hug, and for a the next little while I didn't feel like the failure I often feel like. Yes, I have a giant needs in this area, and although it is not conscious, I do find myself seeking approval. Why do I work as hard as I do? Why have I started the companies I have started? Why have I published as much as I have published? Why do I fullfill my callings to the best of my ability? Andrea has told me on several times I need to stop seeking my Mom's approval. Mom, I don't think I am, just as I'm pretty sure my kids and my step-kids don't think they are seeking approval.
I recall as we were walking on SUU Campus on Wednesday the 13th there was an announcement of an LDS Institute Dance pasted on the walkway, and after Rachel expressed interest I heard the bitter sarcastic words, `You don't want to go to that! It is just a meat market!' From my experience, these words flow from another way of expressing a need for and seeking approval.
Marti's Dad, Emmit Sharp, was the black sheep of his family. He was an air force pilot/hero, and he smoke, and drank, and didn't go to church. He got a Ph.D. in sociology, and was at and taught at some of the best schools in the nation (Cornell in Ithica, New York; Madison, Wisconson; and CSU in Ft. Collins, Colorado). He never reconciled with his Father, who was a lot like me. I never met him, and so I am probably taking a lot of liberty in my interpretation. Thomas Barnabas Sharp was a backwoodsman from Wintrup, Arkansas. He had a very special conversion to the Book of Mormon, was baptized in the icy waters of a lake, and became the presiding Elder for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for East Texas and West Arkansas. He expected everyone to tow the line and assumed they had the same spiritual knowledge he had. Emmit certainly didn't. And Emmit did not have a good relationship with his daughter. I don't know what went on besides filthy stories. I do know that Marti is still seeking approval of men, and I expect it is related to not receiving needed approval from her Dad. I know that she always referred to her participation in the Miss Northern Colorado Pagent as being in a meat market, `cows on the hoof.'
Having grown up working in a meat packing plant, I never really understood this analogy. However, over the years, as I have heard this phrase from other women, many of whom do not appear to feel good about themselves, and who often seem to surround themselves with sultry images which are not uplifting to women, I have come to realize this attitude is an inside-out attitude. Approval is a need which is hard for anyone outside ourselves to provide, especially if we don't approve of ourselves. With kids from divorced families, which catagory all 10 of you kids fit in, this need can become a big issue. According to Dr. Nancy White at PAIRS, if we don't go through the process of reconciling ourselves with our parents, particularly with our parent of the opposite sex, and if we don't forgive their mistakes and learn to accept their human-ness, we will spend our entire lives seeking their approval, and likely seeking approval of anyone else we come across in our journey. And this is hard work. Work which is seldom accomplished without the assistance of a trained counselor.
So when we have this need, and something outside of our control gets in the way of our being accepted, it can be very devistating. Wednesday night Audrey called and said she lost the election to become a SUU Student Body Vice-President. One of the members of her Party had improperly handled an e-mail, and it reflected on the integrity of the entire party. Part of this is a Mormon dominated culture, with a lot of RM's (Return Missionaries). However, a lot of it is a reaction to the Gary Condit/Bill Clinton kind of politics we are inundated with in the national media. Audrey, Andrea was talking about how excited you are to be going on a date with a good looking guy, and so hopefully you are over the agony of political defeat. I think we all eventually learn to put our seeking approval into perspective, and to get on with our lives.
It was Tuesday night when Matt vividly demonstrated anger and reactions of things I can only assume were said to him in Utah. I won't go into all of the mean things Matt had to say, and how bad it hurt Andrea. The language was not Matt's. Most of it was untrue and dealt with issues that a boy Matt's age cannot grasp and certainly is not in the realm of Matt's thought processes. I do consider the outburst another example of seeking approval, this time from a remote, and idealized Dad. It hurts me to see the way Andrea is so often treated by those who are being funded to study and play, and on a personal level, it hurts me based on the lack of thanks I receive for my financial contribution to your dance. Divorce is always nasty, and it never ends. In case any of you have forgot, neither Andrea nor I sought to be divorced. And yet we both realize, despite this kind of outburst, life is much better for each of us now that we are together.
Thursday was a big day. I met with the senior staff at GDC (Geophysical Development Corporation), including Mike Dunn, Fred Hilterman (my boss at the Seismic Acoustics Lab), and Richard Verm (one of the Ph.D. students when I was at SAL, and the programmer I worked closest with to develop many of the visualization programs we used to prototype Landmark Graphics). Albert Boulanger had sent me several references to Celluar Automata, and I put together a neat presentation I called `Every cell a computer,' which is tied to the Infinite Grid(SM) and the Knowledge Backbone(SM). However, it was kind of a flop at GDC. It was referred to as a technology looking for an application. They didn't even seem to have any consulting opportunities. I guess it is reasonable to say I was seeking approval from Fred and company, and as is often the case, didn't get what I was after. Oh well! I came home and spent all afternoon and evening building an Infinite Grid(SM) spread-sheet based an article which was in the Chronicle about the `color-coded terror alerts. You can check out the results by downloading the spread-sheet at http://www.walden3d.com/TAMU or looking at the images in the `i' subdirectory. I will talk more about why I did this project in the next Thoughtlet.
Friday was a busy day. I picked up Horace Snyder at 9:00. We went to a 2+ hour presentation at Anglo-Dutch of an interesting Prospect. I expect MKS to drill this Prospect. We went from here to a meeting with Alf Klaviness and Scott Sechrist at Dave Agarwal's office. Good meeting, and both Horace and Johnny Kopecky came away with the same kinds of reverence I feel for Alf. From here, Horace and I went to Dick Coon's home and had a two hour review of his Prospects in North and South Padre Island. It was a good day, and I am optimistic there will be good stuff come out of the work with MKS Oil & Gas.
Friday night and Saturday were Youth Conference and Special Olympics. Andrea and the kids were busy, and I spent the time working on the computer. Cleaned up about 300 e-mail messages, and didn't get my mess in the front of the house cleaned up. I did play the guitar a little bit, and came up with a new tune I enjoy. I also put the Thoughtlets and their title and date in a spread-sheet, so I can sort the list by date, number, or title. Sometimes I don't know why I do stuff like this. Maybe I'm seeking approval?
Sunday was pretty normal, although I only ended up getting the one Thoughtlet written. Too many words. Plus I forced Paul into writing a few words about his olympic experience, and so it needed to be added to the Thoughtlet about Grant Matthew Nelson's Blessing (0211.html). I remember the week before I was talking to Des, and he said, `You must feel a lot of pressure broadcasting to the whole world your weight and how many swallows you have taken?' Maybe this is yet another way of seeking approval. I know I don't feel any pressure. I doubt if any of you really care very much about most of what I write about. Hopefully it is at least a little bit entertaining. Sara or Des also made a comment about how I must have too much time available to count swallows and graph them. Actually, it doesn't take any time at all. I have always eaten too fast, and so now I take some of the time others are eating to pull a sheet of scrap paper out of my pocket and write down my swallow count. It maybe takes me 5 minutes each morning to add the day before's count to the spread-sheet. Sometimes, I do take a break from work and look at the charts, revise the charts, and think about what I have learned from counting swallows. I think this is time well spent. You will notice on this month's chart I have identified a 7 day pulse to my eating, and show both the pulse and an average that shows it. I think it is interesting, and it is something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. If something is tied to normal process it really doesn't take any extra time.
Yesterday, a week after this Thoughtlet was going to be written, Sara and Melanie both came by after Melanie's baby shower. I was raking up the leaves in the front, and I think both Sara and Melanie mentioned how skinny I look. I mention it this week because maybe I am just seeking approval by counting swallows. Although, as this month's charts to the right shows (through this morning's weigh-in and today's swallows), I still weigh 235 pounds, which is what I weighed when Rob and I went to Philmont (../9926.html, ../9927.html, and ../9928.html). I don't look any thinner to me, and hopefully within another month I will start to feel like I have lost some weight. Obviously changing eating habits has more effect on me than exercise ever did. I haven't run since New Years Day because of my ankle (I got it x-rayed on the Thursday, and will hopefully know something about it to report in Thoughtlet 0215.html). All in all, the whole weight thing, like too many compartments of our lives, seems to be all about seeking approval."