Chickening Out

So if you follow Donald Miller you know that he is sponsoring a contest to win a trip to Portland and attend his conference on his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The contest consists of writing on your blog about how you are going to live a better story. It makes sense if you've read the book. It's a great contest for many reasons all of which I am too tired to write about now. The contest expires at midnight tonight and I am officially chickening out.

In my draft folder is the first two paragraphs of what my entry would be if I had decided to complete it and participate. I am a pretty open and honest person, but as I began talking about what all this last year has consisted of and how I would like to move forward both in spite of and because of these circumstances, I just couldn't continue. Some topics deserve an amount of discretion. Once I'm a little more removed from them after a year or two I may be ready to write on them, but I'm not there yet. And the hard part in writing the entry was describing what kind of story I do want to live in. That's a hard question. I know what I want to feel like, but I'm still not sure by what means to get there or what exactly I want to do.

After a job interview last night and today and another one in the books for the first week of September, my future is starting to take shape, but not quite. I do believe God has a plan; it just may not include a salaried job at this moment in time. I think he's going to provide work during this period, but he's also going to help me work through some identity issues and self discovery. I think I'm hoping to learn to gain my identity from who I am and my relationships as opposed to simply what I do, what job I have, and how well I can perform. He knows what he's doing. His time line is perfect. I'll get there soon enough.

So I'm a chicken. But I'll get there. And someday I'm sure I'll write about this period of life much differently than I am writing about it now.

An Open Window?

Yes I'm aware that my last post title had a question mark as well, but seeing as how these past few months could be summarized by a single punctuation mark, I think it's pretty apropos that my post titles reflect that sentiment. I am also aware that I missed a post last night. That was intentional. I never want blogging to interfere with my real life relationships and long story short, posting last night would have been in bad taste. Don't ask.

I have a few promising leads on some smaller scale jobs, but it's something! I'll update once everything shakes out and let you know if anything works out. The saying may really be true that, "When God closes a door he opens a window." I've hit about 35 closed doors, but he may be opening some smaller windows and at this point I'll take a window!

My mom cracks me up because she commented tonight that the longer I go without a job the more "religious" I get in my posts. She made the point that I can pray a lot, but sometimes the answer is going to be "no". She's right and I know this all too well. But I don't think I've been asking for specific jobs thereby giving him a chance to say yes or no. Rather I've been asking for what I am supposed to do. I don't think he's telling me "no" completely in the arena of event/wedding planning, but his timeline is certainly much slower than what I was expecting or hoping for. So I think my new prayer/line of questioning is when and what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

Just as in all adversity, life goes on. Though it may not feel like it, there are other elements to my life than just a career. Tonight my family celebrated my dad's birthday. We ate, laughed, and played. My niece and I had a semi-crash while riding my dad's electric scooter he uses because of his MS. My poor wedges carry scars from the event, but it was still pretty hilarious. We picked up my brother from the airport. He's in town from Chicago for the weekend for a wedding. A good night indeed.

Future?

I'm having to remind myself of Jeremiah 29:11 tonight:

"I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out--plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for." (The Message)

Does that give you any indication as to how the job search is going?

Is It Bad?

I walked in the house tonight and Daniel informed me that I should be upset with the dogs because they had been bad. The victim: his cottage cheese. The crime: consumption by non-humans.

Is it bad if your dogs eat that much dairy? Are they going to die tonight (or at least vomit all over our bed at like 3 am)?

College

This weekend a lot of our YL grads headed off for their freshmen year of college. As Daniel and I shared coffee and lunches with each of them over the past two weeks as a final farewell, I couldn't help but recount story after story of my initial impressions of college life and the years I spent at Mizzou. Now 6 years removed from school, I look back on those years with nothing but fondness. I've forgotten all the negatives. (I literally cannot remember what I would have disliked. Even the thought of class doesn't seem so bad, but I remember that I HATED going to class; I just can't remember why anymore.) I thought initially of moving into the dorm and the feelings I had as a freshman: the newness, the fear mixed with excitement, the independence, the optimism.

My freshman year seems to stand apart from the rest of my college experience. It seems so separate from my remaining 3 years spent at 8A Clarkson, my duplex home with a myriad of roommates over the years. When I think of college, it's the Clarkson years that come to mind. Ahh memories. The people, the silliness, the fun, the fast food, the late nights, the adventures, the boy next door who became my husband. I'm so glad I was able to share college with my future husband. It makes reliving all the old stories much more fun as we're able to share them because he was there right along with me through it all.

Having coffee with Maddie one of my YL girls made me super nostalgic and I found myself wishing I could go back and do it all again. I had the sentiment that if I knew then what I know now, I would have done it so much better. But it was the experience of those years that helped shape me into the person I am now. Without those circumstances I never would have gained what I know now. So if I apply the logic to my present reality, what will I say 6 years from now that "if I knew then what I know now"? That's the tricky part. I can't apply future wisdom to my current circumstances. It's the things I'm facing now that will help mold me into the person I am becoming. But what I wouldn't give for a little 34 year old, 6 years worth of wisdom to help get me through this present unknown.

Super (dysfunctional) Nanny or Nanny Call 911

So in addition to Zombie, I've discovered another career path that I'm not cut out for: nannying. I babysat for my sister's 3 and 1 year-old little girls tonight and discovered I'm really good at being the fun aunt, but am terrible when any sort of real responsibility with children is required. The night started off well enough. We ate chicken nuggets, applesauce, and the usual fare. Afterwards we went to the pool. I was pretty proud of my pool performance. Everyone was sufficiently entertained and safety was maintained. We played dress up, put on PJ's, and settled in for a Winnie the Pooh DVD, and bottle. Here's where the night began to derail.

I should mention that the night was not flawless up to this point by any means. The dog snagged a good portion of food off the high chair tray of the one year-old and when I tried to put her downstairs she nipped at me and continued to growl loudly. The three year-old let me know that the dog 'never does that'. He dog later went on to throw up the table scraps onto the carpeted stairs.

When it came time for bed the one year-old took her bottle like a champ but instead of falling asleep she appeared to rally. All she wanted to do was wrestle with her sister, high five, and squeal with laughter at anything and everything. I tried to remove her from the situation and her hilarious sister and she was having none of it. I broke down and called my mom confirming every insecurity I have about being the baby sister of our family and lacking all maternal skill. I tried again to gently rock her to sleep and let her cry it out, but her wailing and thrashing was unrelenting. I called my mom again and living 2 miles away she offered to come over to assist the situation. Not 3 minutes after I got off the phone, the baby with one last shriek and squirm gave up the fight and fell asleep in my arms. Official bedtime: 1 and 1/2 hours later than intended.

Many women my age have children of their own and I am forced to call my mother for reinforcements during one night of babysitting. I'll tackle the challenges of parenthood soon enough, but for now you can scratch Nanny off my list of potential career paths.

PS- I am watching my friend Sam's girls this coming week (hi Sam). Just a disclaimer to Sam and anyone else worried about this: I think I thrive with toddlers +. It's the non-verbal babies that I seem to struggle with. I swear.

Zombie Round Up

One of our Young Life kids Sam sent me some info about working as a zombie during the Halloween season at the ranch he works for. I'm still not sure if he was being serious or not. I think serious. He said it could be a lot of fun and provide some seasonal employment. The "Zombie Round Up" ad calls for "dedicated individuals who have an extreme passion and creative talent for makin’ people shake in their boots!" This would not be me, but seeing as how the job hunt hasn't been going so hot, let's just say my mind started considering options like this.

I started thinking, "Maybe I can work a bunch of super random and slightly entertaining jobs for a year and write about my experiences." It would be like the show Dirty Jobs. I would do it in the name of journalism. I started preparing my This American Life submission in my head. Think of the stories I would have to tell and if I could refine my writing I might actually be able to produce some good journalism.

I logged onto the haunted ranch's website (just for kicks) and quickly decided I could not go through with this plan. First of all I hate ghost stories, scary movies, and all other things haunted. No joke I almost didn't want to send my resume for event planning to some historic mansions that host receptions because they have reports of "friendly" ghosts. Friendly or not I am not interested in toying with the idea of whether or not ghosts exist. That stuff just creeps me out, real or not, I don't care, too creepy. Anyway so the haunted ranch website has spooky sounds playing in the background when you log onto the site. You know whistling wind and that sort of thing. I had to mute my computer just to read the home page. They set up this story that the ranch had to relocate it's pumpkin patch last year because the old site was having mysterious happenings like missing ranch hands and reports of ghosts. Even the animals were becoming possessed at night. Most people would read this and giggle over its silliness. Me, I get spooked. How could I ever work at a place where I'm the one who is responsible for scaring others when I myself would be too scared to be out in the woods by myself?

So there goes the zombie career path.