In 2000, I went on this Mormon Mission thing.

 

I went first to Waynesville, NC, where parts of “Deliverance” and “Last of the Mohicans” were shot. I taught the Good Sweet Gospel of the Lord to Richard and Bonnie Goodson. He was a chain-smoking Vietnam vet and gentle as Pooh. She had three teeth and I could never understand anything she said.

 

They took care of their 4-year old, NINETY-POUND-I-am-not-sh*tting-you grandson. The house shook when that kid walked anywhere. When the Massive Child would disturb our lessons, Richard would grab a thin little branch off the ground that was supposed to be a switch. Hand trembling, he would touch the switch to the Massive Child’s leg.

 

The Massive Child freaked out and bolted across the floor, leaving divots in the hardwood. “Ma-Maw!” he yelled as he ran to his grandma. “Ma-MAWWW!”

 

2001: I was in Winston-Salem, NC when the towers went down. The whole town was humid and stank of cigarettes in September. I hadn’t watched TV for over a year at that point, and then I spent two days watching the news.

 

I met a former Crip with a giant gold tooth, newly released from prison. His name was Merle. He told us about shooting people during drug deals gone wrong. After we taught him, he told us, “Y’alls my niggas now.”

 

I had dinner at Orson Scott Card’s house, and got ditched by two of my missionary companions. Bye, guys. And I knocked on a lot of doors.

 

2002: I saw Lord of the Rings. In the words of Cookie Monster, “Who cares about other things?”

 

Well, I did finish my mission. I met some guys who came to church because they were looking for extra wives and I served with Elder Clyde, who had wrestled a bear.

 

After my mission, I worked at a wilderness survival program for troubled teens. It was fun. I carried a girl with a head injury out of a canyon on a stretcher. I got lost and ended up at the top of a skyscraper-sized cliff. I made a lot of fires without matches, fell into poison ivy and prickly pear, and spent almost as much time picking cactus spines out of my butt as I did knocking doors.

 

And I think I helped kids who were in a tough time. I hope so. I miss you, Clay and Blake and others.

 

2003: For me, this was Flurry O’ Passion Year. Which is fairly unusual. I never dated a lot in high school. I was too busy being moody and emo. In this year of college, I went on actual dates and kissed actual female lips.

 

I dated a girl I had dated pre-mission, Sara, for about three months. We broke up and she started dating one of my old mission companions, Dave. Gasp! Swoon! I hated Dave for a while until she dumped him for yet another guy.

 

The day after Sara and I broke up, Sara, Dave and I got in a massive wreck in a blizzard. We all nearly died. Sara broke her ankle. Dave got thrown from the car when it was hit again from behind. I stepped out and I was run over by a pickup truck and would have spent the year in a body cast if the driver hadn’t slowed down.

 

It was a lot harder to lose Sara and Dave as friends because of that. We felt like war buddies.

 

I flung a few flings that summer, dating around, and then some girl with cute crooked teeth tried to hit on my friend Kevin. When Kevin didn’t respond, she and I started talking about comic books.

 

That was it. That was Twoo Wuv.

 

I fell in love with Chrissy. She was everything I had ever dreamed of—funny, creative, kind, a supermodel doppelganger—and she wanted me for some crazy reason. I knew I would marry her, as long as she was up for it.

 

2004: She was up for it.

 

We got married in May and talked about the new novel I wanted to write on our honeymoon. Chrissy read everything I wrote, and still does for the most part, though it’s harder to keep up since Adia was born.

 

Also, we were celibate until marriage, so that honeymoon was Really Nice.

 

I went to Dave Wolverton’s writing workshop, where I met one Eric James Stone. Eric introduced me to these strange things called “cons,” “pro markets,” and “writers’ groups.”

 

With Chrissy as the wind beneath my wings, I wrote a lot more than I had when I was single. Also, I got kind of fat. She had to love me anyway, right?

 

2005: This year marked the beginning of my Great Ongoing Spiritual Crisis. I remember the moment I stopped believing in Mormonism, or at least the orthodox Mormonism I was taught growing up. I was standing in a bathroom at Utah Valley University washing my hands. It was hardly spectacular.

 

People at church still avoid discussing the contradictions in the church’s doctrine and history. I learned things that I could have learned from a history book and they utterly shook this worldview I had of this church as The Right Thing Always.

 

It seems so naïve but it was so painful.

 

In less weighty things, we studied abroad in London. I ate haggis. I went to Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp, where I had dinner with OSC again and met many fabulous writers, including Scott Roberts, Rick Novy and Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary wrote the best story in the workshop, and we all had premonitions of She Who Shall Rule The Science Fiction Field.

 

At my job at a group home, a schizophrenic guy told me to stop writing, because he knew I was making up a Book of Mormon about him.

 

Also, I got my first sale, to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. It was a short story. Lit-fiction. All I wanted to write was science fiction. But doctor, I am Pagliacci.

 

2006: This year had the greatest raging of the GOSC, Great Ongoing Spiritual Crisis. I quit church, considered myself ex-Mormon, drank (don’t chug wine, by the way) and almost took my name off the rolls until I realized that I needed to lay off the angst a bit. I was still married to an unorthodox but faithful Mormon, and we wanted to raise our new fetus on something approaching the same wavelength.

 

I became a Washingtoonian. Best decision ever. When you graduate college in Utah, you get out. It should be a mandatory rule.

 

2007: This was a big one.

 

The GOSC was complicated by the fact that I actually liked the Mormons in Washington. They were mostly social liberals. They were willing to discuss all the problems and contradictions within Mormonism, treating it like a culture of faith instead of a monolithic overlord. So I went back to church.

 

I also began the GODC, the Great Ongoing Depression Confrontation. Since about the time of the GOSC’s beginning, my lifelong tendency for depression had gotten much worse. I would find myself crying and lying on the floor for hours. So I saw a great head-shrink, implemented some rigid exercise, swallowed my pride and swallowed some pills.

 

I also started reading slush for the L. Perkins Agency and began a brief career as an agent. This was a nice bit of writer-therapy. I was always so afraid of publishing. I wanted—well, I still want—someone to hand me the golden key to publishing. I didn’t know that fundamental fact: that a writer just has to submit like crazy. My writing is oatmeal, and it belongs on the wall.

 

On that subject, I made Finalist in Writers of the Future for two quarters in a row in 2007. There but for the grace of Hubbard…

 

I loved agenting. It was a career in getting people to read books you had discovered. I would still love to do it, if it didn’t pay commission only.

 

Also in 2007 (told you it was a long one), I started graduate school at Western Washington University and took waaaay too many classes. I learned that I was really bad at the English part of an English and Creative Writing degree.

 

And Adia was born.

 

I remember the “this is my child and I am her daddy” moment very well. Chrissy was asleep after the long day of labor and I was holding Adia on my tummy. She was wiggling around, flinging her arms and legs up and she looked up at me for the first time.

 

I swear I saw recognition in those little eyes.

 

2008: The GODC really turned nasty after I burned out on graduate school. I went to a very dark place. I am surprised that I am still here. With the help of a wonderful family, especially Chrissy and my father, I fought my way out.

 

Also, I met one of those people. You know, the ones that you can’t quite convince yourself are really human, because they affect your life in such an amazing way. Her name was Kate Trueblood and she became my mentor as a writer and as a teacher. Had she not come along, I probably would have dropped out of WWU.

 

Instead, I co-taught a class with her every Tuesday and Thursday on Ethnic Literature in America. It was a blast. She read a bunch of my writing, helped me fix up my resume, gave me tons of advice and shared all her chocolate.

 

I met the Bellingham Writers’ Horde: Sän, Keffy, Elizabeth and Chelsea. I’ve loved all my writers’ groups, but this is the best one ever.

 

Adia learned to walk. THE CUTENESS KILLS!

 

2009: And…

 

I’m writing much more now. I wrote a short story/novelette for every month this year, and I finished one novel and nearly finished another. I made two sales this year!

 

Chrissy’s parents divorced this year. This is, believe me, as hard on a grown child as it is on a young child. In that sense, it’s also as much as a relief when a few years of a wholly sh*tty situation ends. I’ve tried to be a little less self-centered and be there for her this year.

 

We are having another baby in June of 2010. My job situation sucks, but I have managed not to get depressed about it, partially through a lot of meditation and exercise. The Master’s was good for something, since a story I wrote in one of my classes sold.

 

The GOSC has been worse since the Prop 8 thing. I’m stridently opposed to Proposition 8, and very much in favor of gay rights. If sitting at the front of a bus is a civil right, marriage is a civil right. I hate that the Mormons gave so much money to such an evil cause.

 

I don’t believe the doctrine, but I still like the local people.

 

In 2000, I thought that I would be some kind of famous by the end of this decade. From publishing or punk rock, I would have a lifestyle based on my own creativity. I thought I would be married and maybe have one kid, so that was right. I thought I would finish my mission and maybe work in wilderness survival and maybe do graduate school. So that was right. Everything but the famous working creative guy part

 

Life is still what happens while you’re busy making other plans. My life has been very rich and I’m grateful for every second of this decade, even if I wish I had learned some lessons long before I did and accomplished some goals I am still working on.