200th Post + Changes

This officially marks my 200th post in my little blogging experiment.  I can't believe that I have two full years plus some months of blogging behind me.  That's crazy.  But I love it and am shocked and awed when people tell me that they've read it - the fact that you would take time out of your day to regale yourself with my incoherent ramblings and musings on all sorts of random things humbles me, truly.

I've also bitten the bullet and changed my beloved blog template to this new design.  I've also tried to shake things up on the sidebar level, mainly by moving my blog archives and blogroll up a couple of notches and all the other content down a few.  I've also cleaned up some of the blogroll - from time to time I update it with new blogs and delete others that haven't posted in a while in order to not have it become so unwieldy that it looks cluttered - because I read a lot of blogs :).

So leave me a comment and let me know what you think of this new design and this little blogging experiment itself!  And thanks again for taking time to read!

Just a few thoughts for a Saturday

It constantly amazes me how fast time can fly. I can hardly believe that next week, we are at the end of January already - that is so crazy! How can so much time go by so fast? In some ways, this month has felt like eternity - a whole year in and of itself - but in other ways, it just can't be possible that *poof*, the first month of the new year is already over!

I think I can confidently say that I have never been through a month like this in my life. So much change has happened in this month and there has not been any time to process through it - or, the more accurate thing to say, is that I have not taken the time to process through the changes. And it is change in practically every area of my life - even literally down to the roots of my hair (which thankfully are gray no longer)!

This past Tuesday it became evident how much I have not internally processed everything that has changed, when at a career counseling session with a psychologist, I could not keep it together when she asked me the simple question, "So, what is going on in your life?" It was so awful crying in front of this complete stranger and I completely felt like the stereotypical psych patient on the couch who can't get a hold of their life. And though Dr. Bushkoff was completely nice and cool about and didn't care if I was crying or not, I still just couldn't believe how I couldn't seem to get one sentence out without choking on my words. It was very humbling and enlightening all at the same time, because I realized that I really haven't processed through my feelings.

Besides the crying though, the session was very worthwhile and I can't wait to go back. But it was kind of maddening also because Dr. Bushkoff told me that I am Generalist and I am happy being a Generalist and that I need to be a Generalist - my personality doesn't lend itself to being an expert in just one area - it has to have knowledge in all areas. This didn't surprise me, because I already knew that about myself, but it is frustrating at the same time because how do you have a focused career path when you can basically do anything? That sounds conceited to me, but it is the truth - I can learn to do anything, because that is probably the leading passion in my life - my love of learning. My problem is that I can get easily bored once I feel like I have learned enough about something, and so I desire to learn about everything, which has created this almost split personality. Another thing that Dr. Bushkoff said was that I was in best job that I could be in at Signature and that apparently my profile says that I don't want to make hard decisions, like a CEO or branch manager must do. I don't know if I completely agree with that though. She also suggested that a career path that I could consider, if I ever left Signature, was event planning. Apparently I am good at organizing things.

The thing that she said that completely surprised me though was that she thought I wasn't a procrastinator! I almost fell off the couch when she said that, because I have always thought that I was a terrible procrastinator. But what she said is that I need a "push" to do things, a "shove" in the direction that I am supposed to go in. Which is definitely true about myself - I do often need to be pushed to just do the things that I need to do, but I have always thought that is what all procrastinators need - maybe she and I need to relay our definitions of procrastination to each other. Maybe my procrastination all this time has just been either a lack of courage or sheer stubbornness.

All in all, it was very enlightening and I am really glad that I went and have been given the opportunity to go through this process. I am really interested to hear what she has to say next time, especially since I took an "interest" inventory test.

And as I am on the eve of this last week of the first month of the year, there is a mountain of work and other things ahead that I don't know how I'm going to tackle and get through, but here it goes nonetheless!

[Insert Creative Title Here]

First, I want to give a shout-out to my buddy Josh Hayden, over at Moments of Recognition. He has been blogging about some really thought-provoking, heavy theological stuff that is apparently been going on in Young Life that I had no clue about. Josh has been great in posting about this issue and though I don't have a complete grasp on what the issues are, I appreciate the discussion and thinking that the discussion provokes. It is always good to examine the reasons behind the things that we do. The way that my brain works is that it necessitates that everything I do have an ultimate purpose behind it - a big-picture view. I can't do things (and often stubbornly resist) without seeing the "why" behind it. Which is why I appreciate Josh's posts - they have been helping me to think through issues that contribute to the big picture of YL ministry in my life. So, many thanks Josh!!

Second, I think I have a serious problem with accepting change in my life. I have always found it difficult to adjust to change - I think the fact that the first big change in my life was so awfully traumatic, it has created this underlying wellspring of resistance to change that I often have to fight against. Like my split personality, I have completely dichotomous feelings towards change - on one hand I love it because it adds new things to my life and keeps things interesting. On the other hand, when things occur that frustrate and stress me out as a result of change, I hate it.

So much change has occurred in my little provincial town life recently and I am having a hard time adjusting to it all. I lost one roommate and added another in the space of a day essentially. And I haven't taken the time to examine how I feel about it all, but I know that there are residual issues lying underneath the surface that I don't want to confront.

I'm losing two teammates and face a complete abscence of volunteers to take their place. I am having a really hard time thinking about adjusting to their loss because of how much they have added to the team.

Work is a plethora of changes - from the acquisition of a stair and rail company, to dealing with the loss of my baseball coworker, to just the day to day changes that must occur in order for our business to thrive. And these changes I have just been dealing with and not really processing either.

I just am having a hard time all of the sudden adjusting to everything that is going on around me. So I want to be like my friend Seth over at Thunder Sword and be depressed about life and how I cope with it. :) Can't things just return to normal? Whatever normal was?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Work sucks. Especially in an economy on the brink of recession. This is the time when the cliche, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going", becomes a harbinger of truth.

I knew that the path was going to turn soon - I've sensed it coming for the past month or so. And now it has come to the crossroads, in my mind. A lot sooner than I thought. But here I am, with clarity in this current situation, but no idea as to where it leads. Oh Lord - why is this, all of this, so hard?

At least this picture is pretty...