Stop with the excuses.

Today I decided I’m going to be a writer.  Yes, I’ve said before that one of my dreams is to be a writer (and get paid for it), but today I decided that I am indeed going to BE a writer and I’m going to be a writer now.  I’m not going to quit my jobs to be a writer (at least not anytime soon), but I am going to write.

You might be wondering what made me decide today that I’m going to be a writer now.  Well, today I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott (I can’t really say that she is my absolute favorite author because it’s a three-way tie for my favorite author).  I’ve written about Anne here on my blog before, but as a refresher Anne Lamott is an incredible person and writer.  I love Anne’s writing because she writes about the beautiful as well as the messy aspects of faith and life and she does it with humor and brutal honesty.

There were a few pieces of advice that Anne shared about writing that really helped me decide to be a writer:

There will never be the perfect time to start writing.  I can wait until I have a well-paying full-time job, I can wait until I get settled with a husband and a family, I can wait until I have an incredible life experience to write about, I can wait until I’m retired, or I can wait until ________________ happens in my life.  The point is I can wait and wait for the perfect time, but once X happens there will be another reason why things aren’t perfect for me to write.  So, as they say, there’s no time like the present.

We each need to give ourselves permission to write.  I have really struggled with finding the time and reason to write and I think it’s largely because I don’t give myself permission to write.   I doubt that I am a good writer (I’m certainly not the best writer ever, but I do have some skill).  I rationalize that there are far more important and urgent things to do than write (and many times there are).  I tell myself that I don’t have anything important enough to write about.  I tell myself that no one will want to read what I write (at least no one besides my friends and family).  The only person I need to get permission from to write is myself.  Anne suggested that getting permission from ourselves is like calling up a really good friend.  Sometimes we may have to call every morning to get that permission, but what kind of friend wouldn’t give permission to do something we love and long to do?

Don’t be afraid to write bad first drafts.  Anne said she only writes one kind of first drafts: bad ones.  The blank page often paralyzes me and I’m usually afraid to write anything down without it being in perfect, creative sentences.  But if Anne Lamott writes bad first drafts and her writing ends up like it does in her books, maybe I too can overcome imperfect first drafts.  (However, this piece of empowering advice also means that second and third and forth… drafts will be necessary.)

Write what you would like to find.  Someone in the audience asked Anne if she would ever write a book about meditation.  She said “no” because there are already so many good books out there on meditation.  Anne said her best books are those books that offered something that no other books out there offered.  I haven’t quite isolated exactly what it is that I want to contribute to the written world, but I have a few things in mind. 

Stop with the excuses.  Just stop.  This pretty well sums up all of Anne's advice, but encompasses anything else that might stop me from writing.

So here’s what I’m going to do: Write every day.  Even if it’s only for 30 seconds.

Thanks Anne for the encouragement and advice.

Today was a perfect day for...

...drying clothes outside!!!

I got this new collapsable clothes drying rack for Christmas.  In the dead of winter (even in this lame winter we had), it seemed like it would be forever before I could use it.  Most of the time during the winter I hung my clothes up to dry in the basement, but it took forever for my clothes to dry and it just didn't have the same feel of hanging clothes up to dry outside.  But now the weather is just great for drying clothes outside.

On Sunday my dad helped me install a pipe connected to our deck that the collapsable rack fits into.  So I can fold up the rack and take it inside when I'm not using it so it doesn't get all dirty.  And it works super!  It is easy to set-up and it holds a LOT of clothes.  I did a very large load of laundry and I could have easily fit at least one more very large load.  The really cool thing about the design of this rack is that I can hang laundry on the inner part that I don't want the neighbors to see.  Even though it got pretty windy today all my clothes stayed on the rack (I don't know if this can be attributed to the clothespins or the rack- either way I was pretty happy to come home and not have to collect my clothes from around the backyard).

First Week of Acts of Beauty

Here's a recap of my first week of acts of beauty:

Day 1: Feb. 22 

I had a little bit of a rough afternoon and my patience ran out.  My patience usually doesn’t run out so quickly (although there was certainly plenty of good reasons that my patience got used up).  I was in a pretty bad mood, and so I knew that my first act of beauty in Lent would have to be something to make my mood and spirit more beautiful.  So I came home and did some yoga, something I love to do but haven’t had much time to do lately.  My yoga left me feeling refreshed physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Day 2: Feb. 23

I posted this video on Facebook: Indescribable

Day 3: Feb. 24

I woke up to a beautiful snow covered world.  I didn’t think that I could do any acts of beauty today because it seemed that God had created all the beauty that was needed for the day.  But then I figured I would capture that beauty.  So I went to the forest preserve to walk around, soak in the beauty, and take some photos.  I finished up a roll of film that I started to use back in September (yep, every once in a while I break out the old fashioned camera and film).  I’m excited to see what beauty is on that roll of film.

Day 4: Feb. 25

My act of beauty for toady was being a part of packing enough food to feed about 185 kids for an entire year.  We have been trying to pack as much food as possible lately at FMSC.  I spent most of the afternoon and evening encouraging the volunteers to pack as fast as they could.  I love to see the volunteers get excited about packing a lot of boxes of food.  They have fun seeing how much they can pack and it just makes them feel good to leave knowing they made a significant difference for as many children as possible.  We have five packing sessions on Saturdays and our goal was to pack over 100 boxes each session.  Most of the sessions had no problem getting to 100 boxes.  The last group of volunteers was a great group, but they struggled to get to 100 boxes.  We let them pack a few extra minutes and they made it to 100!   

Day 5: Feb. 26

My act of beauty for the day was spending part of the afternoon reading in bed and then taking a little nap. 

Day 6: Feb. 27

I was a part of making a beautiful and fulfilling experience for special needs students who came to volunteer at FMSC.  The volunteer group of was a group of students with varying degrees of physical and mental abilities.  These students had an incredible time.  They got to make a contribution to something really important and meaningful- something they don’t get to do often enough. 

Day 7: Feb. 28

My act of beauty for today was making a delicious chocolate dessert for my family.  It’s called “slutty brownies”.  Basically you put a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough, a layer of Oreos, and a layer of brownie batter all in a baking dish and bake it in the oven.  There is something about chocolate that makes everything more beautiful. 

40 Days of Beauty

Today is Ash Wednesday and thus the beginning of the forty days of Lent.  This is the season in the church year to anticipate and prepare for Easter.  There are, of course, many ways to prepare for Easter.  Many Christians give up something for Lent like chocolate, sweets, meat (or just meat on Fridays), TV, etc.  In past years I have given things up for Lent, but I've found that it is more meaningful for me to do something more rather than giving something up.  A few years ago I read through the Gospels a little each day of Lent.  Last year, I read a devotion and journaled about it daily.

This year during Lent, I'm going to commit to daily intentional acts to bring about more beauty in the world.  I'm defining 'beauty' in a very broad sense here.  It will include the physical beauty of my community, my house, my places of work, my self, and my friends and family.  Beauty will also include creating or sharing written, visual, or audio arts.  The physical beauty (what we see on the surface) is important, but it is creating more inner beauty within the people I come into contact with that I'd like to really focus on during Lent.  I'm sure I will learn much more about what inner beauty is, but I see it as the joy, compassion, dignity, peace, hope, faith, and love that exist within a person.  In reality I won't really be creating inner beauty (God already did that)...I'll just be helping myself and others realize that that beauty exists within each of us and then nurture and grow that inner beauty.

I hope that committing these acts of beauty will help me better see the beauty that God created in the world.  I also hope that these acts of beauty will help prepare me in body and spirit to remember and celebrate the most extravagant act of beauty the world has ever experienced: Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection.

I won't post daily about my acts of beauty, but my goal is to leave a record here on my blog of at least 40 intentional acts of bringing about more beauty.  If you have any suggestions for an act of beauty, please share- I'm more than open to your suggestions, especially if it's something that I might do to create more beauty in your life.

Reevaluating

Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some reevaluating.  I’ve been reevaluating and trying to make sure that I’m still heading where I should be heading in life.  During my two years in graduate school at Loyola I was blessed with the time and many opportunities to discern my purpose and calling in life.  At the time it seemed difficult to figure out what my calling is, but now I see that this was the easy part.  The difficult part is to actually live out this calling, my mission statement, and to constantly reevaluate if I am properly following that calling or if I need to even refigure my mission statement.

Here’s what I understand my calling to be: To educate people about injustice in the world and then to encourage, empower, and enable people to actually DO something to address that injustice.

A couple of things made me see the need to reevaluate things.

First thing: A friend of mine is quitting her job and traveling to the other side of the world for a couple of months.  She is going on this trip for herself, to try to find what it is that God has called her to do, and to be the person she is meant to be without all the pressures and expectations of others.  I am so incredibly excited for my friend and the adventures and experiences she will have (even though I am going to miss her a whole lot).  I really admire her courage to quit her job, leave her family for a couple of months, and take the time and space she needs.

My friend knows her current job is not what God has called her to do for the rest of her life and so she is taking a step of faith to hopefully find her calling.  I pray that she will gain some insight and answers while she is on this trip, but even if she doesn’t figure it all out on her trip, I know she is going to stop at nothing to live out a life of purpose and a life of serving others according to God’s will. 

My friend refused to become complacent and she refused to just go along and work at a job that she knows is not what God intended for her long-term.  My friend’s courage and refusal to become complacent was a bit of a reminder to me that I need to make sure that I’m heading in the right direction in life.  I don’t think I need to go to the other side of the world to do some reevaluation (I’m sure my mom is pretty happy about this), but I nevertheless do need to evaluate.

The second thing that made me see the need to reevaluate where I’m heading in life is starting my new job as the communications coordinator at my church.  Just having a second job has made life more complex, busy, and tiring.  I am incredibly grateful that I was offered this position, and things are going quite well so far.  It’s been great working with the staff, learning new things, and seeing some exciting new things fall into place.  But I know this is not a job I want to have for the rest of my life.  (And now I feel really bad about wondering how long I should stay with a job that I have just started, especially when there are so many people out there who are in need of a job.)  I am becoming more and more invested in this job, I’m finding parts of this job that really make me excited, and I’m seeing just how vital my work is for the proper functioning of the church.

Likewise, I know that I’m not called to be a Team Leader at Feed My Starving Children for the rest of my life.  Let me say this though: I LOVE my job at Feed My Starving Children.  I love my coworkers, I love working with the volunteers, and I love that I get to be a part of feeding hundreds of thousands of starving children around the world.  Through my job I know I am fulfilling part of my calling.

Here’s my fear though: I worry that I will get so caught up in what I love and am comfortable doing at these jobs, that I will stay too long, that I will put off living out my full calling.  And so I have questioned…How long is too long to be doing something that you know is not what you are called to do long-term?  How long can I work at a job that I’ve become comfortable with simply because I fear what God calls me to next?  Have I made the right decisions?  Shouldn’t I be seeking out other more “practical” opportunities like a full-time job with benefits?  Shouldn’t I keep looking for a job that will allow me to better live out my calling?  Is it a bad sign that I have to justify all this to myself and to others?

So over the past few weeks, I’ve done some thinking and praying (a lot of praying actually). 

And here’s what I know:  At this point I can’t stand the thought of leaving Feed My Starving Children.  I enjoy my job, I find it fulfilling, and for the time being I think this is where God has called me to be.  Likewise, I can’t see myself leaving the communications post at my church any time soon.

For right now, I am where I’m called to be and I’m doing what I’m called to be doing. 

Through all this, God is working.  God is preparing me, forming me, training me, strengthening me, and teaching me…for what exactly I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s something great.

Sharing a blog post

My jobs are going quite well.  They are keeping me quite busy (which is why I haven't been blogging much lately), but life is good.  Really good actually.

I have been slowly making some progress on writing on some blog posts, but they still aren't ready to be published...getting close though.  

But in the meantime I do want to share a blog post written by a coworker at Feed My Starving Children.  FMSC started a blog a couple of weeks ago and the latest post is excellent.  In fact, it's more than excellent- it's filled with deep truth and some incredible insight.  So read it here: The Whole World is Your Family.

I got a new job!

I got a new job!  Yes, I’ll still be working at Feed My Starving Children.  So, I now have two part time jobs (which is a situation I’m sure will present challenges and joys).

I was offered a part-time position as the communications coordinator at my church, and I’m happy to say that I accepted the position.  I’m going to be working with the church website, social media, newsletters, and a bunch of other random things.  Basically if there’s something at my church that needs to be communicated to the congregation or to the community, it’s my job to make that happen in an efficient and effective way.  I’ll probably be working at this job about 15 to 20 hours a week. 

Here’s what makes me excited about this new job:

• I get to work at a church I love
• I get to work for an organization whose mission and vision I firmly believe in
• I get to work with the incredible staff of Our Savior
• I get to interact and work with some pretty cool congregation members
• My commute is about 4 minutes by car or about 10 minutes by bike (but it might be a couple of months before I can bike again…)
• I get an office!
• I get to be challenged to learn and do new things