two least likely questions

So we’re in meetings with my biggest client yesterday, going over results for the year, and looking at new strategies for the coming one. 

I am the most junior person in the room.  For the most part, I am happily taking notes and munching alternately on snickerdoodles and cheese n’ crackers.  I’ve been nervous all day leading up to the meeting, and am happy to finally put faces on some of the folks I’ve been working with for about five months.

Then, the president of the organization, a man I’ve never met before but one I like intuitively, asks this question: “What do you think of this whole Bill Gates / Bone-oh thing?  What’s happening there?”

One of the guys from my company at the table had a quick comment, but the president saw the interest sparking on my face.  He said, “I want to hear from you.  What’s this thing all about?”

All of a sudden, I have something to say.  I sound off about the One campaign, about its objectives, about the G8 summit last year, about how much of my generation genuinely cares about global poverty and disease, dashing many of the predictions that we’d be narcissistic and apathetic about world issues.  That I think the response goes deeper than it being the currently-en-vogue thing to do because Bono’s speaking up and Brad Pitt went to Africa.  The world is connected in a way it never was before.  We have access to information in ways we never did before… we see suffering with our own eyes.     

I talk about how much of the word for One spread through email, through friends telling friends, and how some of it was as simple as wearing a bracelet.  How people really will give to something they believe in, but only if they hear about it, only if you find a way to reach them on their turf.  For folks around my age, the web is most often our medium, and if a group can figure out a way to tap that, they’re golden. 

I spoke clearly, but could feel myself turning beet red at suddenly having to throw my own two cents out there.  There is something about a board room full of people older than you and much smarter than you that is quite intimidating.  All of a sudden the room felt like the temp was around 88 degrees.

His next question, I’m not kidding: “Do you blog?”  This discussion lasted about a half hour.

I never ever thought that my admiration/slight obsession with Bono and his work (in addition to his music) and my passion for blogging, of all things, would make me an expert voice in the room, even for a few minutes.

It was wicked fun.

On a wholly other note, I am really excited.  There is a potential opportunity for me to be able to travel with a group my client is sending down to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, one of the hardest-hit areas in the wake of Katrina (CityTeam has been serving there since right after the storm, and has remained there and in another hard-hit location this entire time, staying long after the Red Cross pulled up stakes and moved on.  Check out their site, the pics from down there are amazing).  Things are still awful down there, and there is still a huge need for relief work.  I’d go in April.  They’ll take me, I’d just have to figure out the whole time-off-work thing.  It just might happen, and the thought of being able to actually see these faces and the devastation around them, and actually being able to tangibly serve these people and minister to them… man.  It gets my heart beating pretty quick.  (You want to talk about bloggable experiences…)  Please pray with me that God will open this door.

Okay, off to another day of meetings.  It stormed here all night long and the wind blowing through the huge trees around my place kept me awake… hopefully I’ll be able to mask the yawns without being too terribly obvious.

PS!  I probably won’t have to work til 9 pm tonight!  Score!

Enjoy the day.   

best joke ever

Or, to be more truthful, best joke I heard during one particular five minutes of my work day:

Brian: What do you see when you look down a mole hole?

Me: already slightly suspicious… What?

Brian: Molasses.

Me: Ba-hahahahaha.  Good one, dude.

***

In other news, being back at work is a little tough, given that because of my luxurious five-whole-days-off-in-a-row, I’m now used to staying up til obnoxious hours of the morning, only to sleep in as late as I want.  Right now, I’m just doing the staying up really late thing.  Not so much on the sleeping in.  Sad.

Speaking of which… I should probably head to bed.  My current book binge/iTunes loading craze has been robbing me of sleep, and since I just finished Geisha (lovely and painful book), I think this is a good place to stop.  I had a great moment tonight at small group which I had intended to share, but, alas, it’ll have to wait til tomorrow.  Or three weeks from now.  You know me…

***

THIS made me smile.  Apparently the going rate for a soul is $52 million paid over four years.  Johnny… how could you?

(File under: totally pointless posts)

miracle

There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.  — Albert Einstein

*****

Today is a perfect Sunday morning.

It’s slightly overcast outside, nice and cool, and I’m enjoying the bearability of our apartment’s room temp.  This afternoon will be lovely, cloudless and bright-blue, a pleasant 78 degrees or so.

It’s silent here in my living room, with the exception of the hiccups which woke me from my slumber.  Might eat some Cocoa Puffs soon.  I have every hope that my roommate will emerge sometime in the next half hour and make some coffee (confession — I’ve never ground coffee before).  We’ll then sit around for about an hour in our pajamas and talk about our week.

Perfect.

Most perfect is that today is not ruined by dreading Monday.

I began my new job this past Wednesday.

My two weeks’ notice was given at the law office on Thursday the 11th, which would have made my last day August 25th.

But then they found my replacement and said I could stay or go whenever I wanted, with full blessing.

Slight whirlwind of a week!

I am tired, but excited about work in a way that I’ve never been before.

I wear flip-flops and jeans to work, for one… it’s the first time in my life I’ve been comfortable at work.  I throw on headphones while I’m at my desk.  I have my own cubicle.  Which is sort of a goofy thing to be excited about, I know, but it’s mine, and I get to decorate.

I look forward to tomorrow.  I know it will involve so much information getting thrown my way that I will end up with brain-cramps.  I know I will be leaving my apartment for work a full 45 minutes before I used to even stumble out of bed.  I know my heart rate will be elevated as I try to figure out how to do my job with deadlines looming, newbie or not.

But I like the work.  It draws on what I’m good at, and pulls at my heart in the ways that matter.  My client is a ministry to the poor and homeless with shelters in six major cities around the US.  (I used to work in a homeless shelter once a week, and loved it)… good fit.

Miracle?  Yeah.  I think so.

Must go.  Amanda’s up and I think she’s going to make some coffee soon.

Enjoy the week, all.

sitting, waiting, wishing…

It’s early Friday morning, I’m awake, and I really shouldn’t be.

I should hear sometime today (hopefully, if First Pres has any mercy on my soul whatsoever) news of whether or not I am getting the communication position there.  The suspense is killing me… prospects of me getting this job seem to be good, but there are a thousand what-ifs running wild through my brain.

OK back to my tossing and turning for a bit before I have to get up and report to my cubicle…

wide eyed blunder

interesting times… interesting happenings.  today was what I like to call a very rough day.

It felt like this.

The basic gist without too much detail: I let work get personal.  I gave my boss a heads-up regarding potential-but-as-of-yet-fully-undetermined plans out of respect for our relationship, and I’m now paying for it.  two years are seemingly pretty insignificant. 

never trust anyone who “has a business to run.” 

there are drawbacks to living with your heart on your sleeve.  namely, utter stupidity.  when will I ever learn?

hangin’ in there.  my only consolation is that, well… there’s very little right now.  it just hurt.  you’d think this kind of stuff would get easier; that I’d learn to expect it – but it’s fresh every time.

I just hope that some sort of peace/resolution can be found between us.  I’m dreading work tomorrow.  I hate this kind of stuff.  There’s nowhere to hide, and I have no idea how to approach the situation, or whether to even bother.

in the meantime, going to Bend OR for the long weekend to hang out with Julie and get away from… well, get away from it all.  I hope to get outside, get freckly and/or slightly sunburned, drink some coffee, read some good words, hopefully find some rest.  Am looking forward to it with all my heart.

might not be writing for a while.  I’ve got a job to find, and some going to be getting.  pretty much have no choice.  til then.

FINALLY! a spark!

hey friends -

It’s interview time.

I will most likely have an interview with that church over in Seattle next week.  I was beginning to think the position was mere myth.

And I will also (thanks to friend and former co-worker Gracie’s ninja skills) have an interview with a good loan-processing job here on this side next week.  This isn’t AS cool to me as the viscomm job in Seattle, but it’d pay the bills a bit better and I could transfer to Seattle later.

Seems like things could be taking a new direction.  I’m ok with that.

Wish me luck, kids. 

it’s a-LIIIVE !!

whelp, the little Frankenstein baby lives.

www.newlifekitsap.com

months and months of work have now been launched.  there’s still lots of work to be done…

but I’m still doin’ a wee bit o’ celebratin’.

how to be creative

THIS is one of the coolest things I’ve read in forever.  If you consider yourself an artist in any capacity… please check it out.  Fully worth it.

EVERYONE IS BORN CREATIVE; EVERYONE IS GIVEN A BOX OF CRAYONS IN KINDERGARTEN.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”

So you’ve got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don’t know where the itch came from, it’s almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person…

Until now.

You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you’d think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don’t know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who’s got a cousin in California who’s into this kind of stuff, but you haven’t talked to your friend for over two years…

Besides, if you write a book, what if you can’t find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can’t find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You’ve always worked hard your whole life, you’ll be damned if you’ll put all that effort into something if there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow…

Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That’s your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.

Your wee voice doesn’t want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There’s a big difference. Your wee voice doesn’t give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

The wee voice didn’t show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.

So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die… taking a big chunk of you along with it.

They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

-hugh macleod, gapingvoid

read more…

I am now a logo…

Yeah, that’s me.  The one with the attitude.  And the hips. 

little snippets of my day…

PHOTOCOPIES

I spent TWO and A HALF hours today making photocopies. Two and a half. That’s time I shall never get back, spent pulling out stubborn staples and pushing start. Over and over and over. Legal world, your copymaster is here… (I would say that I was Captain Kinko’s at work today, but I said that to my friend Grace a year ago and still she mocks me, so on we go…)

It’s a good thing I never finished earning my college degree, or I might have thought such activity beneath me. I pictured it in my head… “ME… a COLLEGE GRAD… making photocopies? Chaw!” Luckily, two car accidents later, I’m a college dropout, so thoughts about the injustice of meaningless activity never ONCE entered my mind. (I believe in finding the positive…) Actually, having a job that pays me to make photocopies for two and a half hours isn’t altogether a bad thing. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. There’s a million people (probably more than that) who would gladly trade me. So grateful, even for days filled with photocopies, I remain.

EDUCATING MOM ON THE NINJA RING SCAN

Tonight I explained to my mom a little thing I like to call “the ring-scan.” Single girl’s best friend. She laughed, but I was serious. (I hope it’s not just me… or else this post could be quite embarrassing). But am I right, single-girls-past-twenty, that when you meet someone new of the male gender who is also of legal age, you casually, imperceptibly, no — stealthily — scoop a quick glance at a particular finger of the left hand? I find that this is a bit of a habit, regardless of whether or not I am even remotely attracted to said male of legal age. It just helps to know right off the bat, you know?

Not that I’ve employed the ninja ring-scan move lately, of course. I was just explaining a concept… that’s all. Nothing more to say in the matter.

Stop judging me. You know you do it too!