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.

A note on setting Buy It Now prices on eBay: Match the highest price among recently sold same items in similar condition. No need to discount.

“I need a carrot.”

— Sullivan, reaching into the fridge to grab the bag of baby carrots after eating a sour gumball for the first time

The only way to master something or become an expert in something is to practice and dig, dig, dig. The sooner I start doing this, the sooner I get happier about my skill set.

Yoga. Feels. So good. I must incorporate it more into my life.

Carla: Why were you acting so weird?
Scott: What do you mean? I wasn’t acting weird: I was being MYSELF!

“Why would we compost them when I can convert them directly into biochemical energy?”

— Scott, answering Carla as to why he was going to eat a bag of freezer-burnt pierogies that Abram left us when he moved out

“I have misgivings about doing anything, because it means I’m not doing everything else.”

— Scott, in the middle of preparing stuff for bulk trash pick-up

“I need to bring the flashlight outside… because there are some dark spots.”

— Sullivan, getting ready to go to Spring Creek Park during daylight hours