If, in my old age, you asked me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was a day I had intended to go hear Paul McCartney play at the Bryce Jordan Center—his first and probably last concert in State College, PA—but had neither found someone to go buy scalped tickets with (Carla was at a Council meeting) nor communicated well with the babysitter, Molly Hunter, who wasn’t going to have a ride home. Top that off with a $475 bicycle maintenance bill earlier that day, and you get me canceling with the babysitter at 6:30 p.m. It helps that I’ve never cared much for arena concerts and that the babysitter had four big exams happening all the next day.
Such is life when you prioritize: Some things go neglected. And very often they are the things that should go neglected.
I wake up almost every morning these days with a shot of anxiety running through my middle. My inkling is that it stems from always doing and never resting. Is that it?
Carla says when she feels that way, she takes it as a prompt to pray.
Carla: Are you a thinker or a feeler? Scott: Well, the facile response would be: duh, I’m a thinker. But I tend to think I’m actually a feeler who is articulate. Just not about feelings.
I could either let the unanswerable theological questions win and spend the next five to ten years in likely miserable reorganization of my entire thought life, or I could settle for mystery.
This one shouldn’t be so hard. When did intellectual coherence become so important to me?
It is good to remember, especially with the specter of doubt still haunting my soul, that cogitation is terribly inefficient after bedtime. When tempted to mull in bed, don’t.
Have a philosophical problem? You’re not going to solve it lying in bed. So don’t try. Stuff it and go to sleep.
Not that I experienced this last night or anytime recently. But I might again someday soon.
It’s too late to journal this in any detail, but suffice it to say for now that I’ve embraced that suffering and death is a part of everyone’s life. That’ll make me less fearful of death myself, less fearful for what my children will think in the wake of deaths and suffering around them, and more willing to take the risk of becoming a foster dad. Desiring God’s take on Romans 8 helps here. As does the whole Bible, which never once tells the saints they won’t suffer. It assumes suffering, and it assumes it as something to fight against, but also a backwards blessing as well, capable of creating much good character in someone.
This realization is a prayer answer to this morning’s prayer.
The most significant thing today, other than the pumpkin carving all four of did in the kitchen while listening to a Béla Fleck collab folk album, photos of which I’m sure will be taken, is that I am concerned, although not to the point of taking any action, that I am overly distracted from Your kingdom, Lord, by nifty information tools. Today I updated f.lux, set up Day One to have two journal files, one for my journal and one for the record of days, relatedly cleared my Dropbox account, and got invited by the folks who build Remember the Milk to test out their upcoming overhaul. I got mildly excited about each. Is that OK?
Brandon had us take a Five Love Languages (In The Workplace) test today. My primary language “for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others communicate their appreciation for him verbally…in addition, [I] actually [have] two secondary languages of appreciation. One way that he receives encouragement and is motivated is by spending quality time with those he values…an additional way that Scott receives encouragement and is motivated is by receiving gifts…Scott’s lowest language for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others help him with projects he is working on. As a result, attempts to motivate or encourage Scott by doing tasks for him will generally not be that effective.”
Another Saturday, another end-of-day ambivalence about how I spent my time: Today is the kind in which I wish I spent more time accomplishing things and less time socializing. Often it is the reverse.
New protocol: Whenever I lend something, I will note that I have done so as a task to get it back, not in a standalone list of things lent, which never gets looked at. Similar thing for borrowed items.
I spent the entire afternoon torpid. I mean, I took a nap on a picnic tabletop today during a church visit to Talleyrand Park. What is it about Sundays? Is this a lethargy I can end by flipping a switch in my brain? Tea this afternoon didn’t help.
The best solution is probably to just go ahead and take the nap.
I worry some my wanting to be the answers to my own prayers rather than merely praying them will be one of those revelations that doesn’t stick because I don’t implement it fast enough. But God, let it not be so. And it seemed to me to be the Holy Spirit who just said to me, “Hook your well-established system of doing it or queueing it to the impulses that come to you as you massage this new mindset into yourself.”
I should take my commitment to eschew multitasking further: Instead of filling all the short periods of waiting that come frequently at work with some other task, take advantage of them to return to awareness of and communication with God.
This afternoon and evening were unhappy. It could be that I stayed up till a bit past 11 last night chitchatting with Carla in bed. But I think it’s more because I hewed too closely to my daily task list. More importantly, I didn’t hew very closely to You. There are times when I get “too efficient,” as Carla says, capturing task items very well but ignoring priorities, ignoring my heart, ignoring my desires, ignoring You. Why, today I could swear Carol requested my help in her remembering her frozen water bottle before she leaves tomorrow morning on her bus ride home because she saw that I am so robotically dedicated to my very reliable task list. But I’m a man, not a machine. I don’t ever want to lose my connection to You, or to the people around me. Let me be alive, not always working.
Maybe Watchman Nee is more correct that I thought, with his proposed dichotomy between living by the principle of right/wrong versus living by the principle of life. I still think it sounds too mystical.
The capsule reflection on that pamphlet that I posted to Goodreads: “I object strongly to the dichotomy introduced between decision-making based on right vs. wrong and making decisions based on “life,” whatever that is. Nevertheless, the pamphlet served as a reminder to me to not trust in my to-do list and trust instead that God is inside me, at work, and that referring to Him is the best way to make decisions.”
I’ve written it before: I am going to live my ordinary life in an extraordinary way: Rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances, in humility of mind regarding those around me as more important than myself, loving You with all my heart, mind, soul and strength in my quotidian. I guarantee the non-quotidian will follow from there.
While walking with God through a nearby neighborhood in the wake of a few spats this morning with wife about housekeeping, it finally clicked: The housekeeping and homemaking is her work. It may even be helpful to compare the house to my computer and desktop workspace. Before I do any of the following again, it would be best to consider how it would make me feel if anyone came to my computer or desktop workspace and did the same:
Leave items in places they shouldn’t be
Move items that are not mine
Change settings without asking
Argue forcefully about the proper place or protocol for something
Carla suggested it would be a good idea to write down the reasoning behind my decision to about-face and work for DiamondBack full-time forever.
In brief: Working for West Arête a little bit enabled me to see that I’ve been the victim of a bad case of grass-is-greener syndrome for years. I’ve decided to go back to working full-time for DiamondBack, with no plans to seek alternative employment in the foreseeable future.
Less brief: God, You helped me dispel the myth of the golden-haired woman in my own life sometime in between when I broke things off with Val and when I started dating Carla. But we never applied the same metaphor to my career: I’ve been believing the myth of the golden-haired job probably since my time at Teen Mania. (What Color Is Your Parachute? probably didn’t help.)
“Everything about working for DiamondBack is great, except for the fact that it’s truck bed covers.” I’ve been saying that for two years now. I ignored the first clause, however, and concentrated entirely on the second. Why? Because I believed that there was such a thing as the perfect, soul-satisfying job right out of the box somewhere. If I picked a job that employed the transferable skills I most enjoyed in a field that excited me, I’d be set. I would have made a perfect choice. I’d be right and happy.
I was convinced that working for DiamondBack would predetermine that I suffer a bad midlife crisis in twenty years, so in typical overcommunicative fashion I overplayed the value of several positives of working for West Arête:
Doing more web development
Learning new skills
Working downtown (i.e., access to cultural events, connections to new people, feeling cool)
Riding my bike to work
Working with local people for local people
No vacation days but unlimited freedom to take off as needed
Better health coverage
Cultural fit (i.e., environmentalism, priority on work-life balance, bicycles, local business)
And I underplayed many of the positives of working for DiamondBack:
Presenting the right balance of mastery and challenge
Working from home:
enjoyment of kids,
enjoyment of Carla,
leisurely pace,
no clothes overhead,
autonomy,
freedom to break for prayer or whatever
Plenty of allotted vacation days
Working for Ethan & Brandon
Working with people I’ve grown to love
Cultural fit (i.e., Christianity, priority on work-life balance)
Much higher salary
Freedom to move to Quebec
Being a known quantity I’ve already taken fully into account in shaping my life and therefore not having to think about it at all
Looking at the lists above and now having a lucid idea of who I am, it’s obvious which job is the better fit.
The crucial missing ingredient in my career at DiamondBack wasn’t money, local connections, or even the opportunity to do web development. It was commitment. Had I been devoted to my job at DiamondBack, I would’ve said to Brandon last spring, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t accept you taking development completely out of my hands. But I love DiamondBack. So can we please find a way to make this work?”
“I love watching your heart and your head duke it out,” said Barb at church on Sunday when I brought this up, sometimes in tears. Deciding to return to DiamondBack feels different from deciding to depart for West Arête. I sure hope I can discern the difference between my heart and my head next time anything like this comes up again.
New habit to form: Any time I’m tempted to think or express a grumble, I will deny the thought but use it as a prompt to thank God or people for something.
Part of the feelings & reasoning that went into the DiamondBack/West Arête decision
Long-term happiness on the job comes most easily where one has mastered 80% of the job at hand and is faced with about 20% new and challenging material. Mastery comes from extended practice, which is only possible with time and a mind to improve. Time and a mind to improve come from being committed to a job. (Same with a marriage.) Plus, being committed to a job in and of itself results in happiness simply because you’re not looking elsewhere.
So, it boiled down to: At which company will I have the easiest time keeping an active commitment to my post? That answer was easy: The place I’ve already helped build, the place that is familiar, the place that allows me to work from home and lets me dice my vacation time up into minutes that I can take virtually whenever I want.
It occurs to me for perhaps the first time ever that going for emotional connection is a worthy goal in life. Like, that should be the primary thing I’m trying to do with the people closest to me.
