Priesthood Session and My Dad

Today is significant for several reasons. Among those reasons is the fact that today is the first Saturday of the month of April. That means General Conference. And ever since I turned twelve and was ordained a Deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood, it has also meant going to Priesthood Session with my older brother and father. Every six months it happened like clockwork. I have many good memories of us three going to that meeting together. And afterwards we would almost always go out to dinner, sometimes in a large group of friends. It was time we spent together as a father and sons, and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. Now, things have changed somewhat. We’ve gotten older. Cody is off on his mission and I’m away at college. We three have not been to Priesthood Session together in two years, and with me leaving on my mission sometime this summer it probably won’t happen again for another two years. Today, after watching the first two sessions of conference at a friend’s apartment, I came back to my apartment to wait until it was time to go to Priesthood Session at the Marriott Center and turned on BYUTV. A movie called “One Good Man” was playing. It was wonderful. The movie depicted the everyday hardships and trials experienced by a man recently called to be an LDS Bishop. As you may know, my dad is a Bishop. So as I watched the movie, I could not help but see my father and I realized just how difficult his calling can be, especially while trying to juggle it with a demanding job and a hectic family. Halfway through the movie I found myself crying, and it wasn’t even one of the several sad or touching parts of the movie. But I was filled with such a deep sense of gratitude for my dad, for the sacrifices he has made and does make for not only my family, but for everyone he meets, that I simply could not hold the tears back. I don’t think I stopped crying until the movie ended. I am so eternally grateful for my father and for the honor I have of being his son. I am grateful for his incredible example. I hope that someday I will be able to live up to it. I’m grateful for the endless hours of work he puts in to support me and my family and am astounded that he still manages to fulfill all his Priesthood duties. To put it simply, my dad is my hero. I love him with all my heart and I always will. I went to Priesthood session tonight 600 miles away from my dad, but I felt him there with me. When Elder Oaks talked about giving priesthood blessings, my mind went to the many times I had received such blessings from my dad. I remembered the power and love I feel when he places his hands on my head. When President Uchtdorf talked about patience, I remembered how I never hear my father complain, even when I know he is feeling overstretched. When President Eyring spoke about diligence in Priesthood callings, I was reminded not only of my father’s hard work as a Bishop, but also as a High Councilor, a Primary Teacher, and a Young Men’s Leader. My father’s name is James Todd Knudsen. I know he is not perfect. He is a man. But, he is a good man. In fact, I would go as far as saying he is beyond awesome. I love you Dad.

So, here is a look at some of my writing. I wrote this short story about a year ago for a scholarship contest and actually ended u winning a couple hundred bucks. Odds are if you found this blog you've already read it though. I'll try to get newer stuff up here soon.


I have heard it said that the first sentence of a story can often make or break it when it comes to getting published. An experienced editor knows exactly what they are looking for in a story, and if they do not see it in the first sentence the story is likely to be rejected. Most of the time, this process makes perfect business sense. Time is money, so there is no point in wasting time on something that isn’t going to sell.
But once in a while, people call it wrong. Stories are rejected that have the potential of something great. George Orwell, Frank Herbert, and even J.K. Rowling all were rejected multiple times before their stories were finally recognized. Perhaps if people looked past their preconceptions they could find the extraordinary within the commonplace, the incredible within what they first thought to be undesirable.
My name is Peter Bradley. I am writing this because I soon expect to be viewed by the eyes of the media as the emerging notable writer of the decade. And because I don’t deserve it.
I am what you would call a bookworm, a voracious reader, a consistent consumer of the written word. I’ve read more books in my life than I’d ever think of counting, but the number of books I’ve started but haven’t finished goes above and beyond even that. Because of this, I’ve grown a desire to become a writer, but also come to acknowledge that I am hopelessly impatient.
Like many others, I have felt over and over the wonder of a story come to life. But all too often an author loses me in the set-up or in their unnecessary blathering. Unable to overcome a story’s learning curve, the book gets replaced on its shelf to gather dust. And the same thing happens when I try to write my own stories. With the “good” parts of the story far away in Acts Two and Three, I dig myself into a rut with the monotony of Act One and quickly give up. What I had written sounded pretty enough, but it didn’t intrigue me enough to continue. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the gilded lily of “high-class literature” if need be, but to me, the art of storytelling has always been more important than the witty turn of phrase. So even though they were written well enough in a literary sense for my standards, I never felt like my beginnings did justice to the endings I had planned. I did not want to be one of those authors rejected on the first sentence, so I stopped and never made it to the good parts.
My impatience does not only apply to books, however. I hate to wait for almost anything and quickly dismiss things that I think will waste my time. Now I’m coming to see just how detrimental this character flaw has been to me. I like to think I’m changing. Some things I used to see as negligible, or even distasteful, now hold great value in my life. Things such as worms.
One rainy day, I was walking to my job at TGI Friday’s when I noticed the distinct smell of worms that had climbed their way to the surface supposedly to avoid drowning in the wet ground. The night before, I had given up on my latest attempt at a story. I was starting to get seriously frustrated. I was beginning to wonder if I should give up writing for good and move on to something I could actually complete. Sure enough, here and there on the sidewalk was the odd slimy dirt-eater. And that was it. It was a completely normal day.
But a few days later I noticed something strange. The rain had moved on to the east, but there, halfway between my apartment and TGI Friday’s, laid a worm. Looking around I saw the bodies of another worm or two, either smashed or dried out on the pavement, I didn’t know which. And didn’t care. They were simply worms after all and I was late for work.
The worm was still there when I walked home. The worm was still there when I walked to work the next day. After a week with the worm still there I had had enough. It was really starting to annoy me. So, naturally, I squished it.
It was a strange moment when I saw the worm, still there, when I walked to work the next day.
So, naturally, I took it home. Ok, maybe not “naturally”, but I am a rather unusual person, and imagine you just found what appeared to be an immortal worm. What would you do?
I brought the worm home, put it on a plate, and covered it with a glass bowl from my kitchen. I knew it had to be my imagination run wild. This was simply a different worm that happened to be crawling near the place where I had killed the other one. I had finally read too many fairy tales and was now confusing them with reality. But what kind of fairy tale involves magic worms? None that I had ever read. Maybe the chance of coincidence was a little too great in this instance. Maybe there was something special about this particular worm.
After that, strange things started happening. I would wake up in the morning to find that my computer had somehow turned itself on. Books from my bookshelf would be pulled out and scattered on the floor.
I remember the exact minute I realized I was actually talking to the worm. It was a Tuesday night and I had just come home to step on The Hobbit. It was laid out on the floor, opened. I picked it up, frustrated, and was about to put it away when something on the page caught my eye. “Flies and Spiders” it said, the chapter title.
“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re doing this.” Yes, I was talking to the worm. There it was, on the plate in the kitchen. “How? Why? What do you wa—” …I was talking to a worm. A worm. I was losing it. The worm had to go.
I purposefully strode over to the table, removed the bowl from over the plate, and prepared to give the little, gray creature a crash course in Flight Training 101. The window was open, we just got clearance from the tower, and all systems were in the green. And then… WARNING! WARNING! MAJOR MALFUCTION! I slipped on another book. I went into an almost complete front-ways split --you know, the kind the male body wasn’t really designed for –and the worm flopped unharmed onto the floor next to me. After taking a minute or two to regroup, I reach over to the book. This time it was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It now had a shoe print on it, but I could still make out the title of chapter eleven at the top of the page. “Veni Vidi Vici”.
At that point I had two choices. I could convince myself that this was all just an uncanny coincidence and continue trying to jettison the worm from my life, or I could accept that this creature somehow had a very strange, but very real power. Not to mention a sense of humor. Maybe the recent pain had left me more willing to accept something, but whatever it was, I picked the latter.
“Alright, you can stay. Just… What do you want?” But it didn’t answer. This makes sense; worms don’t have vocal cords after all. I don’t know, I guess I was expecting it to fly into the air, grow larger, and send me on some mystical quest, or something to that effect. The thing made no move towards the air, however. It just sat there, wriggling. I was starting to lose faith in my new conviction when I heard a thump behind me. You guessed it, another book, fallen from its place on top of the book shelf and laying open on the floor.
It was Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the top of the page simply said, “Act One”. The worm wanted me to write, maybe even help me write. I got the feeling it could somehow help me get past the Act One barrier that had stopped me so many times before. When I asked it why, it cryptically answered with “Words in Steel”. I’m still not completely sure what it meant. But I went with it. I sat down at my computer and started to write.
I can’t fully do justice to what happened to me. Something changed. The words seemed to leap into my mind and demand to be released. I complied. Soon I had finished my one and only novel, Skins. Unlike many of my predecessors, I met no resistance at the publishers. In fact it almost seemed like they were waiting specifically for me. It became a best-seller, I won lots of awards; you probably know the rest of the story.
I understand that if you are reading this now you are most likely disinclined to believe a single word I say. You probably think I went crazy due to some unresolved conflict of my childhood, or I let the stories get to my head and snapped, or that I’m possibly a con artist and this is an elaborate plan to get your money. To be honest, I’m really not sure what’s true anymore either.
I’m writing this because the greater part of me wants to believe in the story I just told you. I’m writing this because I am not a best-selling, award-winning author. I am the guy who was too impatient to finish his own story. However much I try to convince myself that the thing just helped, that I had the potential inside of me the whole time, I can’t. Skins is not a story by Peter Bradley, but rather the adventure of a bookworm.

The (sort of) Ground-Breaking First Post!

Hello to any and all who may be reading this. Congradulations on finding my blog-type-deal. If i feel like it I may post some other things, but only if they are extremely important and interesting sounding. Because of how few and far between extremely important and interesting events are in my life, there may be quite a bit of time between posts, but stick around and I'll try to keep you entertained. Who knows, I might even start writing and posting stories on this thing...

Quote of the Post!
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." ---C. S. Lewis