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.

But at least the kids got to ride ponies.

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.

I think it would be good to eventually get in the habit of reading my journal from a year ago, five years ago, and ten years ago to the day.

Let not your to-do list take the place of the Holy Spirit.

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
• Complainingly refuse to help when asked

I once again got carried away by doing and thinking about the choral society website, to the elimination of much time for prayer. It has encroached on sleep, work, prayer, fasting. This has got to stop.

I’m going to try to make it stop by allowing for bigger swaths of time working on it in the plan for the day.

Going to bed on time seems optional one or two days, but it becomes crucial to happiness by week’s end.

Carla and I parted ways for the evening after a noisy, meh-but-enjoyable “food fair” (glorified, overpriced kosher hot dog party) at Congregation Brit Shalom: She to a council meeting, the kids and I downtown for the tree lighting ceremony. We missed the actual lighting by literally three seconds but enjoyed the tree anyway, along with hot chocolate, popcorn, secular Christmas tunes, Animal Kingdom, the bathroom at Irving’s with Éa while Sullivan waiting in line with Lucy S-M & her mom, dancing on my shoulders, and Sullivan on Santa’s lap asking for mittens and a whole dinosaur skeleton for Christmas.

But the real pick of the day today is how much time I spent crafting simple HTML email signatures at work. Was it a waste of time? My desires said no, but perhaps it wasn’t the highest priority. Why do I let myself get carried away with trifles?

Methinks I might want to build a habit of stopping to consider whether I should connect and/or recommend people on LinkedIn and Facebook after every time I interact with them in person. Again, just consider, not do it all the time.

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.

My decisions on what (single) project to undertake next should always come down to where my proclivities, desires, joys, happiness, what enjoy doing and can get happily lost in doing meets up with the supreme joy of others and the pleasure of God.

One thing bringing Moshulu (the cat) into our family and shifting gears into backyard hens work have done is make me realize that I don’t respond favorably to change of my home life. Eventually, I can end up finding great value in those changes, but initially, my soul is usually against.

I concluded last night that it’s my email inbox is a culprit in making my leisure disappear. In light of that, I hereby resolve to:

• Spend no more than twenty minutes every other day zapping emails.
• Default to using the phone instead of email to communication.

Give to those who ask of you doesn’t apply merely to money. It also applies to time, and it’s a fine guiding principle to those who ask to hang out with me.

How do you decide between living an ordinary life extraordinarily (i.e., what I’m attempting with my status quo) and making extraordinary choices that lead to living in extraordinary circumstances (e.g., moving to Fishtown). The latter calls, but very indistinctly.