Sleepless Nights and Lack of Interest
I find myself sitting up past midnight at my computer again. Last night I was working on an application for Facebook. Oddly enough, that is about the only thing that I have been able to concentrate on for more than 10 minutes all week. I probably worked on that project for 4-5 hours yesterday. However, when it comes to the work for which Fielder pays me, that has not been so forth coming. I got the major components of the code complete before I left. When I was working on those parts, I would sit at my computer and lose track of time. Upon my return, I have found myself making cosmetic and simple fixes. I have to do these things but they are not intellectually stimulating. Therefore, I have found myself staring at my monitor in frustration for most of the week.
It is also frustrating that before we started this project, everyone kept harassing about when we would get started. Now that we are in the middle of it, those same people are the ones slowing the progress. I am not innocent in this predicament but it is frustrating nonetheless. My thoughts keep going back to every other programming job I have had over the last seven years. I start and find many projects to keep me busy. Time passes and the boss relegates me to simple editing text. Worse, I find ways to innovate and take the company forward and every piece of the management machine crushes my ideas.
Combine all that with my lack of desire to do anything constructive when I get home and things go down hill quick. I do not know if this is just a case of summer time blues or something more. I have thought about this for the last year or so. Have I left each job because of the lack of stimulation and fulfillment? Perhaps I am lazy, and I chose not to stick out the rough times.
I am reminded of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9,
- We were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
Perhaps all this lack of interest and frustration is to break me of my pride. My only prayer is that I pass the test.
Cambodia – 2 Weeks Later
You would think that after the number of mission trips I have taken over the last decade or so that I would have developed immunity to the post-mission depression. Every time I have come back from a trip, I have a period of a few weeks that I alternate between wanting to go back and fighting apathy with what is going on at home. The hardest is when I have gone with a group of friends. Our relationships have deepened because of that experience. Then I return home to my empty apartment and nothing feels right. I long for that deep sense of community and fellowship.
A great friend of mine once gave me some insight into this condition. He told me that when you have an experience like this, that is just a glimpse into the joy and fellowship that we will find in heaven. Therefore, when we return to our mundane routines, we long to return to that experience. However, as he also pointed out, that is not reality. What I mean to say is, that is our mountain top experience. We cannot build tabernacles and remain there. We must come back down to the broken and at times mundane valley.
I am still learning how to take what I have experienced on the mountain. It should energize me for the return to the valley. There are also times when the experience gives me perspective as I struggle through the bogs of life. However, most times the overwhelming feelings fade along with the incredible memories of the trip. I allow life to dull those memories in my mind and it feels as though I have spent my entire life in the valley.
Day in the Life of a Pizza Delivery Guy – Part 2
This Friday morning began like most any other Friday morning, an epic battle of wills. Will I lie in bed until 30 minutes before I need to be at work or will I get up early and be productive? There is a reason sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.
What can I say about delivering pizzas? You cut the pizza, put it in a box, then in a bag and you deliver it. Rinse and repeat for 8 hours. I did notice some things about some of the new personnel that have begun working at our store in the past month. In the past, if a manager needed me to stay past my scheduled time, they would ask nicely. If I said no, they accepted it and let me go. However, the shift manager I had tonight tried to guilt trip me. She told me that both of the orders she was giving me were late. I told her I would stay. I had already stayed 30 minutes past time because our general manager had asked me to stay. I was trying to get away to get to a friend’s going away party.
So anyway, I got my orders and began driving to the first house. I looked at the ticket. This order was not late. The second order had 20 minutes left. At this point, I was aggravated. If this manager had asked me nicely and not tried to guilt me, I would not have had a problem with it. However, she stretched the truth to make me stay. I got both of the orders to the correct houses before the promised delivery time. I was expecting pizzas that were 30 minutes past their promised time.
One ritual we have as drivers is that once we have cashed out for the evening, we complete some task for the manager to lighten the load for the drivers that will be closing. I have no problem with this. I will wash some dishes or take out the trash, no big deal. But, when a manager has asked me to stay over an hour past my scheduled times as a thank you, they should just let me go after I cash out. That was not the case tonight. I got back and had to fold boxes before I could go home.
This is probably just because this manager does not know me and I do not know her. One of my last manager’s would try and guilt me by giving me sad puppy dog eyes but she also understood that I was tired after eight hours and just wanted to go home. Maybe as I get to know this new manager better, things will work better.
Day in the Life of a Web Developer – Part 1
I have been attempting for several months to write more often. I would like to get into the habit of writing everyday. I have read that forcing yourself to write everyday increases your creativity. I decided what better way to find material than to write about what I spend 6-8 hours being paid to do.
So, I spent my morning working from home because I had a meeting with a contractor in Mansfield. I did not see the point in wasting gas in driving to Fielder and then back out. I got to Fielder close to noon and sat down to work on the web redesign. I got approval last week to scrap the DotNetNuke CMS (content management system) we were trying to shoe horn to meet our needs. So this week I began full force writing my own CMS system specifically catered to the needs of Fielder Road.
Then this afternoon I had a meeting with the Missions minister. It was a conference call with a contractor pertaining to the new missions’ website. Ideally, I would also do that site but the Communications Team has decided I need to concentrate on one project and not spread myself too thin. I have realized looking at proposals from these design companies than when I was freelancing, I horribly undercharged. I once charged a client probably 10 times less than what some of these companies are proposing for even less of a product. Granted I was in a depressed market in a semi-rural area. I guess that in the MetroPlex you have to charge those kinds of prices in order to stay in business.
Aside from all these meetings, I spent most of my day correcting items on our old website. Sadly, that is how most of my days end up. I sit down to focus and begin coding and a problem or a meeting interrupts me. The stuff I’m working on requires I sit for several hours by myself focused on the problem. I feel like I spend all my time in meetings anymore and it feels like nothing gets accomplished at least in internet communications arena.
Frustration and God’s Timing
I went back and read some emails that I have sent over the past year. There is some really deep stuff in those emails. I can’t take credit for it though. It was God speaking through me. It’s funny I’m still pretty much where I was in those emails. It feels like I’m in a vicious cycle. One mouth I’m doing good on my own and the next I’m moaning over how things aren’t working in my life.
I guess I’ll start with the whole dating, spouse hunting ordeal. I recently stuck my heart out on the line to see if someone shared the same feelings for me that I had for her. Let’s just say that I’ve had a perfect track record for hearing a woman tell me that she just wants to be my friend. Isn’t that what your wife/husband is supposed to be to you, your best friend? I feel like I’m in junior high every time I venture into this territory. “Can you tell so and so that I like them and find out if they like me back?” Can’t we act like adults and just tell each other how we honestly feel about each other. And no matter how much you tell yourself that you don’t care if it works out, it still feels like your heart got flattened when you hear those words. I’ve never been mad at any person in particular, just mad at myself for falling hard and letting myself get hurt. It’s a double-edged sword. You either get out there and get your heart broken or you close yourself off and not let anyone in and keep your heart intact, but you’ll be alone.
I have an idea. Let’s all become Vulcan. They are able to be social and have friendships but they have no emotions so they are not worried about whether somebody likes them. They don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves because they see no logical reason to do so. But let’s face it. We’re not Vulcans, and we are going to have to deal with our emotions. God gave them to us and understands how we think and interpret them. I wish there was an appendix on emotions in the back of the Bible to tell you how to deal with them but there isn’t so we just have to rely on God to give us the strength to endure. And so begins the great cliché that we all hear. “It will all happen in God’s timing.” Ask any person six months before God’s timing occurred and see if that phrase is comforting to them. It’s not. We can only get that peace from God and so many of us don’t want that peace. We feel for some reason or another that if we accept God’s timing then we will be 50 before we find someone.
I’ve also had several women tell me recently that I’m a wonderful Christian guy and they love my heart for God. I’ a great guy who wants to follow after God but you don’t want to go out with me. Then who do you want to go out with? Some guy that is an atheist and loves to beat women. It seems like my life is filled with paradoxes when it comes to dating. I’m a great friend and someone who will listen to their problems but I’m not husband material. I’m a godly man but not husband material. I’m a willing servant but apparently not the type of servant Paul called men to be in Ephesians.
It may sound like I’m bashing women or something but I’m really not. I’m just taking a step back and taking a look at how we go about this whole thing called dating. I think I’m so aggravated, and I’m sure many others are, with this whole convention called dating because it is a man-made concept. All man-made concepts are flawed and in turn will carry with them frustration. That is why people find no sanctuary in success, money, or power. They are all man-made and are empty. There is no substance. The same is with dating. We try to find fulfillment in dating and even in marriage but we will fail and ultimately will be frustrated if that is all we seek. The way to have marriage be fulfilling is by including God in the equation. But just by seeking God does not mean that we will automatically find our spouse.
So in the end we are back at square one. If we are seeking after God and have someone then God is good and times seem good. If we are seeking after God and don’t have someone then we question God “When?” There is no formula to plug in the pieces and get it to work. However, that is how our society is wired. We learn that if you plug in X and Y then you get the square root of Z. But God doesn’t work with equations. So when we try and plug God into an equation we get frustrated because he doesn’t fit. So really in the end, all we are left with is the old cliché. It does nothing to comfort our broken heart but it is the truth of God, and at these times all we can do is cling to the truths of God. So even if it is uncomforting, still cling to the truth that “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.”
