Good Works & Integrity

Earlier this week I wrote about five of the projects I’ve finished, working on, or planning, for personal progress. There are eight values. The project for Virtue is to Read the Book of Mormon. So there’s six planned. But I could not think of anything I was really interested in doing for Good Works and Integrity.

Sitting out on our back porch during a monsoon breeze that didn’t look like it was going to be bringing any rain to our yard meaning I probably needed to get up and water the grass that a lizard was climbing through, I figured out what my last two projects would be.

Many of the ideas for Good Works involve service to others. This past Monday, Family Search set a goal to index more than 5 million names. They simply asked everyone to do a little more than they already did. Since I had never done any, that seemed like a good day to start. I did one batch of 40 names, 40 individuals living in Texas in 1940. Forty individuals that can now be found by their descendants through the computer. I helped their families find them. So for Good Works I’m going to do more indexing. I just need to decide on a definitive goal so I’ll know when I’ve reached it.

One of the suggestions for Integrity is to make a modest piece of clothing. Which for me isn’t a stretch. And these projects are supposed to stretch you. It rarely takes me ten hours to sew an item of clothing. So that wouldn’t be a good goal for me.

Integrity is being your true self. Ever since elementary school I have wanted to write a book. I always thought it would be a fiction book, probably because those were the types of books I read back then. But lately that just hasn’t seemed like the type of book I would write. And I couldn’t think of anything non-fiction-ish that I could write about that people would want to read. My dissertation is non-fiction, but again, who’s going to want to read that?

Recently I’ve had another idea floating around in my head though. And it lines up with Integrity. I’m going to write a memoir. I’ve had some experiences that I believe if shared with others would help others. And even if nobody else reads it, writing it down, putting the truth of those experiences in one place, will be true to myself and help me.

Of course I’ll be writing my dissertation first. But these experiences that are bouncing around in my head feel good knowing there will eventually be a place for them to bounce to.