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A Plea to the Girls, Part 2

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    This isn't exactly a follow-up to my previous post with this title (it's been quite some time since I wrote that post), but I have a homework assignment that asks that I post positive-body-image encouragement on social media and this is as close as I get!     For context: I've been taking a Nutrition class this semester, and one of the major themes we're exploring is body image and how negative body image has become a huge problem for many, many people. Here are a few things I've learned:     As of 2016, 86% of women were dissatisfied with their appearance. A common method of dealing with this dissatisfaction is dieting, but it turns out that diet culture is extremely unhealthy, because it encourages a cycle of restricted eating followed by binging, followed by restricted eating out of guilt, followed by binging, around and around and around. Diet culture leads many people to gaining more  pounds instead of losing them, and also contributes to depr...
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Hesed

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    Last week in my Institute class, we were talking about hesed-- a Hebrew word that has a meaning of such depth and nuance that there are fourteen or fifteen different English terms used in the Bible as translations of it, including lovingkindness, great mercy, goodness,  and loyalty .     In a Liahona article titled The Everlasting Covenant from October 2022, President Russel M. Nelson described hesed as "a covenant relationship in which both parties are bound to be loyal and faithful to one another." This is a good description, but I don't think that even this description quite conveys the power and depth behind the word.     To give a little bit of background about what we were discussing in class, I'm taking an Institute class called "Adulting 1010." Just by the name, it sounds like a class meant to teach a lot of practical skills related to being an adult, such as managing finances, building relationships, or raising children--and it does seem ...
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Timing

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Back in the Spring Semester of 2024...     College sucks, especially when you're still in high school. It only gets harder when you're homeschooled, like I am.      I never imagined there would be so much paperwork! Not to mention the fact that, at the moment, I feel like I have less control over my grades than ever before.      See, back when I was still a full homeschooler, if I didn't do well on a test or an assignment, we'd just go back through it and clear up any concepts I didn't understand, so I always had top marks at the end of every school year.      But that was back when the teacher/student ratio was something like 2/14 at worst. Nowadays, I'm part of college classes with up to two or three hundred students spread across twenty locations, with one professor and a few IAs to handle us all. One-on-one help doesn't exist the same way. Everything I've had to ask professors I've had to do theough email, which is not the best ...
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A Plea to the Girls

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    I've touched on the topic of body image and beauty standards a little on my other blog, but because Hats, Boots, & Chocolate is more of a writing blog now than a place for uplifting messages, this blog has been repurposed from happy news stories to encouragement in general--and I want to start with the girls.     In this day and age, women are presented with a monumental challenge. Between billboards, advertisements, social media, television, and so on, we are faced, every day, with the standards of beauty upheld by the world. Supermodels pose for us in a variety of fashions and styles, and we are encouraged to keep up with the current trends however we can.     The implications given to us seem to be that, if we don't conform and do everything just like the supermodels and celebrities, then we aren't really "beautiful" or "popular" or "good enough".     I have strong opinions about this, and these opinions of mine have been getting mol...
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Playing God: Life Lessons I've Learned From Writing Fantasy - Part 3

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    This is the last post in my three-part "Playing God" series. Hopefully you've gained some useful insights from the previous posts, but now it's time to wrap things up with one of my favorite Gospel topics: Agency.     When I was younger, our family was having a conversation about a story in the Book of Mormon where this guy called "the brother of Jared" has a ton of faith in God and gets to see everything that happens in the world from the beginning to the end, and my brother made the following observation (paraphrased):     "If God knows everything that's going to happen so well that He can show the brother of Jared the whole history of the world from beginning to end... what's the point? If He already knows what we're going to choose, why send us to Earth in the first place? He already knows who will be faithful and who won't! I feel like I don't have agency anymore, because everything I do is already pre-determined!"     ...
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Playing God: Life Lessons I've Learned From Writing Fantasy - Part 2

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    This second installment in my three-part "Playing God" series relates to the first, in that it is an offshoot of the first. In the previous post, I said that God is the Author of our lives--the one with the plot in hand--and He is going to make sure that everything turns out to our good.     In this post, I want to answer a couple common questions asked by members of my faith (and many others too, I'm sure).     The first question is, "If I'm trying to be righteous and do everything I'm supposed to, why do I still go through hard things?"     In my experience as a fantasy author, my characters are justified in asking the exact same thing. Some of the things I've put them through are hard!  If I were a gambler, I'd be willing to bet that if any of my characters met me in person and knew who I am and the role I play in their lives, they would probably want to punch me in the face--probably multiple times.     A short list of the t...
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Playing God: Life Lessons I've Learned From Writing Fantasy - Part 1

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    The last few weeks have brought up a lot of little thoughts that have combined into one big breakthrough. Let's just say that my mom and I have been learning a lot about life, love, and God.      In this three-part series of blog posts, I'm going to try and summarize the thoughts I've accumulated--but I doubt it will be easy, because there's a lot here. I am never going to be able to collect all the revelations, realizations, and lessons we've had into one neat series of blog posts, and I'm not sure I'd want to try taking on that monolithic task anyway.      As a result, this series is just going to be about God, and the things I've unknowingly learned about Him from 5 years of intensive study into the art and craft of fantasy writing.    The first piece to this giant puzzle is the answer to the question, "Why fantasy writing?" (Or, rather, fiction writing in general...)     This ties in to the first thought that contribute...
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