Who am I?

Today I watched a movie about a woman married for her money. Her husband was manipulative, an expert at using other people to achieve his own ends, and I felt watching the movie that I couldn't believe a word he said to anyone. Nobody called him these things, but he was not a man who could be trusted. He said all of the right things when courting her, and he charmed her and made her believe that he was a good man. She learned differently and her life was miserable. There were three other men in her life who all loved her, and loved her for HER. It was a hopeless case for them in the end, but it is interesting to look at a woman who chose flattery above love and learned late that there is a difference.

I think we all want to be loved for who we are. I know I do so very much. Sometimes, however, I am not sure how well I know who I am. So who am I? I learn more about myself all the time. Getting to know myself is going to be a life-long journey, I am sure. What I know now is that I am strong-willed and confident. I enjoy things that are intellectually stimulating. I am not satisfied to be just another face in a crowd. I want to know the why behind everything. I love to learn about how things work. I think knowledge is useless unless it is used or passed on to others. I appreciate things that look pleasing and taste pleasing and sound pleasing and as such enjoy art and food and music - the beautiful things in life. I am idealistic but philosophical enough about most things that I can accept reality when it does not match my ideals. I am too inclined to spend time alone and do not take advantage of opportunities I have to pursue relationships with people as often as I should. I love to give things to people. I love my birthday as much now as I did when I was a kid. I appreciate my family. I love to travel and to see and experience new things. I am very open about almost everything yet still have a terrible fear of being rejected because of something I have done or for something about me. I hate washing dishes and most aspects of cleaning in general. I like spinach and green beans. I am very naive about many things but don't think I am foolish about them. I am not a particularly disciplined person. I have a tendency to be late to things. I believe that a friend loves at all times. I do not like tight schedules or unvarying routines. You may not hear from me in a long time, but if you ever need me I will be there for you. I believe that the past should be left in the past where it belongs. I prefer to look for the good in people and believe in a God who changes people to become more like Him.

And that is my beginning of who I am. There is so much more about me that I know and much more that I still do not know. I am sure that those around me would not describe me as I describe myself, and understand that neither description is necessarily more or less true than the other. I just know that some day someone will look at the whole of me, the good and the bad, and love me enough to want to spend the rest of his life with me. It has taken almost 26 years for me to figure out even this much of who I am, so it will probably take him some time to reach a place where he knows me well enough to understand me, but I trust that it will happen. One more thing about me is that I am not always patient and would rather not have to wait, but understand that waiting is not something about which I have much choice.

Media and Evangelical Christianity

I caught a few minutes of an HBO special about Evangelical Christianity in America. Honestly most of what they seemed to pull out to focus on seemed to be stuff right off of Purgatorio in its heyday. Is that what Evangelicalism is to America? What I saw in the last 10 minutes was stuff about Jerry Falwell's political agenda and a few Christian leaders who had engaged in homosexual activities, Falwell's church singing "God Bless America", a teen rally that looked like it honestly had good but shallow messages (all they really show are some slogans and kids getting into some upbeat music), and then the credits that included stuff like the rebuilding of Noah's Ark, cowboy churches, Evangelical Elvis, and "Jesus is my homeboy". None of that is a reflection of my Evangelical experience. I think Christians should pay attention to politics (I tend to ignore politics, I confess), but on an individual level, NOT getting messages from the pulpit. If you want to send a newsletter, fine, do it, but don't preach it from the pulpit! Help your flock learn about the God of our salvation and life in godliness, then let the sanctifying work of the Spirit convict them in political matters. Youth rallies will happen and I think they are helpful for a lot of young people, so I have no beef with that. The rest of the stuff is, as I said, the kind of thing that would have shown up on Purgatorio. I will have opportunity to watch the whole 2 hour program again later, and I think I am going to do it. I am extremely curious to know what the rest of it was like. Am I represented in it at all? Are MOST American Evangelicals represented in it? Those of us who lead somewhat normal lives and meet together to worship God in more traditional churches are probably not as interesting and therefore not as "newsworthy" as the fringe groups. What does the media think we are and what are they telling the rest of the country about us?

Strategic moves

I am using my spare time at home to create documents containing information regarding troubleshooting internet connection issues. Basically what I am doing is making training and resource materials for work to assist the people I work with, particularly to help new employees. I am supposed to meet with my supervisor and manager about it soon. As it turns out they had already been discussing stuff about training, so my timing is really good.

This is something I do partly for myself. I wish I had more resources available to me to help me walk customers through things, so I made lots of screenshots of different things I do from time to time just so I can see approximately what the customer sees. It's amazing how much a visual aid can help when one is trying to explain something to a customer!

The second reason is to help my coworkers. If I want this stuff, it would probably help them, too. I realize that I know more about some things than a lot of my coworkers do and honestly do want to equip them with more knowledge that would help raise the overall level of support that we as a team give to our customers. Some of them don't need this stuff or wouldn't use it, and that is fine with me. The main focus is to give information to new employees and equip them from the beginning. There is a lot of stuff that they just didn't teach us when I started that I think they should have!

The third reason is pure strategy. I am intentionally doing my best to make myself a resource to other people. I am very consciously taking initiative to improve the quality of support that all of our customers receive. I am making myself stand apart from my peers. Management sees these things and it pays off in the future. I don't want to reset cable boxes and modems for the rest of my life. I really do not mind it now, but this is no career. I am putting myself into a position now to move up in the future. Mama didn't raise no fool!

I still love it!

Snow is not so much of a novelty to me as it was when I first moved to New York, but even now I still love to watch it fall. It is beautiful and it is calming. I can just sit at watch it fall and think of how God did not have to create multiple kinds of precipitation. He could have just given us rain, but He gave us the beautiful white snow, too. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow! If only snow on the ground stayed clean and fluffy until it melted away and didn't turn into a dirty, icy mess...

Heavy...

It has been 5 weeks and two days, almost to the hour, since I was hurt very badly. It's one of life's lessons in the school of hard knocks and I pray that God will use it to make me more like Jesus. It is in the process of forgiving sometimes that we realize how much we care for the one who caused us pain. My heart is heavy these days and tears have been a more faithful companion to me than I have ever known them to be in the past. It is a different hurt than I have ever known in the past, too. Oh, how I wish things were different! God knows what is best for me and will be faithful to take care of all of my needs, and I have to keep trusting Him even when I do not "like" what that may mean for me right now. I am left feeling homesick, but knowing that I would not be truly happy there because I would only be running from the reality of my life. I am left feeling lonely in a crowd of people, not understood and not really known by anyone around me. I am starting to feel restless, but I know that even that is largely because I am recovering from something painful. My life has been a roller coaster for the past several months and I really hope that it calms down some and gives me some time on the ground. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but right now I would like a little bit more status quo!

Entertainment?

I tend to keep late hours, and I will often turn on a movie or one of the very few TV shows I actually watch, so my TV is often on well past midnight. This means that I get to browse through listings of all kinds of "entertainment" available to other late night television viewers. Tonight the TV was tuned to a channel showing some guys sitting around having a grand old time, making fun of an overweight woman and drooling over young, thin ones in bikinis. This is entertainment? I opted to watch a movie from 1940 instead. It seemed to be a more appealing choice. I was disappointed to see what looked an awful lot to me like a character straight out of Hollywood's blackface era - a goofy character who looked and acted ridiculous. That really bothers me, but apparently it was popular to audiences of yesteryear. What we find entertaining is sometimes very sad indeed.

What I need to improve on

I had one of those days when something really made me mad and hurt and I stepped back and realized that I am guilty of exactly the same thing. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and not air my grievances to anyone or anything willing to listen to them. I have acted very badly of late, and I am truly filled with remorse for what I have done. I pray that I will learn from this day and that God will make me a more discerning person through it. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

People

People are not disposable. They are not paper napkins, paper plates or toilet paper. They are not single use. You cannot throw them away because they've got a little bit of dirt on them. They are of far too great a value to treat so cheaply or flippantly.

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I heard some news today that was hard to process. I do not know if I have more positive or negative emotions about it. Right now it is really hard for me and the prevailing emotion is not happy, but I am fairly certain that in the long run this is for the best one way or the other. Vague, but not something meant for the world's eyes...

Sick and back again

I got the stomach flu yesterday. Not exactly fun! Fortunately I am better today and will be back to work tomorrow.

Blah!

I got a speeding ticket on my way to church this morning. Blah! I could have done very well without it, thank you.

The weather outside's not frightful

RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BINGHAMTON NY 1110 AM EST SAT JAN 6 2007
...DAILY RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT BINGHAMTON AIRPORT...
THE TEMPERATURE REACHED 60 DEGREES AT 1045 AM, BREAKING THE DAILY RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR THIS DATE. THE OLD RECORD WAS 56 SET IN 1998.

Needless to say, we have been having a rather mild winter this year. I have the windows open and am airing out the apartment. It's 58 out right now, so it has cooled down slightly, but it's nice to get some fresh air inside. I have to wonder how long this weather will last, but I am amused when I recall the almanac predicting a colder than normal winter with average snowfall. We've had much warmer than normal weather and about one inch of snow that actually stuck. Hah!

The long overdue update

I have been gone from the blogosphere for quite some time now and have a long period of time to cover, so I shall be forced to give a whirlwind version of everything!

Christmas was nice. Yes, it was hard to be away from my family, and that made it just different for me. The way I felt leading up to the day I wouldn't have minded if the holiday never came, but it was definitely more fun than I had anticipated. The family I was with made me feel like one of the family, and I know that their efforts paid off. I am close with them anyway and know that they are probably the only family that could really integrate me that well. I survived my first Christmas away from home. I can do it, but I don't want to be doing it every year! My family did something for me that is great and makes me miss them a lot. They all got together and sang the 12 Days of Christmas, acting out the gifts. It was hilarious. My roommate watched it and said that it made me make more sense. We're all a bit goofy and I think everyone in my family is a bit of a ham. I love my family, but we would probably frighten the faint of heart!

Nicole and I had a small group of friends over on New Year's Eve. We played a game until midnight, watched a movie after that and then the two girls who were still there after the movie stuck around until 3:00 while we together sang karaoke. We didn't have a drop of alcohol among us at the party, but I tell you the four of us probably sounded completely intoxicated to anyone who could hear us, but it was fun! I almost freaked out the next morning because I couldn't find the Rose Parade on TV. New Year's Day isn't New Year's Day without the Rose Parade. It is the ONLY parade I will ever watch, and I watched it much more closely this year than I have in years past. It's a Southern California classic, less than 30 miles from home, and I wanted to savor that taste of California! The problem was that I was up too early and it didn't start for another 45 minutes, so I didn't see it on the guide. Nicole had to tell me where to find the commercial-free broadcast on a cable TV station. Back home it was always broadcast commercial-free on the local network, and I hate the thought of missing something on the parade because the floats are all so cool. When I was in high school I actually went one day to help decorate the floats. My job was to cut dried flowers for other people to apply to the float. It wasn't very glamorous, but it makes me appreciate the parade more. Every square inch of the float must be covered in organic material, and those floats are big, so I know it takes a lot of people cutting up flowers for hours to make those things as beautiful as they are!

Work is going well lately. There's nothing huge to report there, but I am starting to feel comfortable with my job and find that people ask me questions! We've got a new group of people starting soon, so I am sure that I will have more opportunity to help out than ever before, and that feels nice. I stopped by last night to take some cookies to some of my friends and some tea for a friend who is sick and while I was there my supervisor told me to clock in so we could do my "coaching session" for the week that we missed on Thursday. I got an extra hour of overtime out of it, so I won't complain! We listen to calls during the coaching sessions and get scored on whether or not we do all of the things we are supposed to do - it's a quality control thing and a lot of the points are stuff like saying please and thank you and using the customer's last name. 20% of the score is for selling to the customer, and until yesterday I had never gotten those points. I got 100% on both calls we listened to. I admit that it is because I had written down the calls that I had attempted to sell on, but it's something my supervisor tells us we can do because she wants to encourage sales and high scores because it gets us motivated to continue attempting to sell. It may sound silly, but when you have been there for less than four months and can get full points on your calls, that's a big deal. My supervisor is really good at getting us excited about improving our overall quality in a positive way, and she will tell us what we should work on, too, so it really helps us to grow. I am also pleased because I got two raises recently, one that we knew we would get after our first 90 days and a second that is part of the changes they are making since merging with another division, and am now making 66 cents per hour more than I was before Christmas. That's always nice!

For the past three weeks I have been struggling with a friendship that looks like it may be over, and that the rift is caused by something that I did. What I did seemed like a stupid, simple thing to me but I think really hurt the other person and really hindered their ability to trust me. It has been a long three weeks, but yesterday I finally realized that I was being really unfair to the other party involved. I tried to make myself out to be the victim and the other out to be a villain when in reality we are both at fault and have both hurt each other. I know at least for me the hurt was deep. It started out as sadness and remorse mingled with the feeling of rejection and then started to turn a little bit more defensive and bitter until yesterday when the remorse started to replace the bitterness again. I have not really spoken to the other person involved since this started, which is their choice and not mine, but I think I wasn't ready until yesterday and now I am ready to forgive and give them a second chance if they are willing to give me one, but I am also more ready to realize that my actions, as innocent as they seemed to me at the time, do have consequences and that the price for this one may be quite dear. I have learned a lesson from this situation, and I am glad I started to see how I need to change and respond to this instead of dwelling on what the other person should do. I just hate the fact that it took me three weeks to realize that. This painful situation is, admittedly, probably the biggest reason I haven't been blogging much. I didn't even talk to my parents for a week after it happened, which for me is almost an eternity!

I am wearing glasses right now. This is newsworthy to me! I picked them up yesterday along with a year's supply of contact lenses. I think it's the first pair of glasses I've gotten since early college, so it's kind of nice to have a pair with the right prescription. I actually wore them for a long time yesterday, and, after an initial spell of what felt like motion sickness from the very real difference between how you see with glasses and contacts, I managed to wear them without getting a bad headache like glasses always gave me in the past. I am sure the contacts will be back in within a few hours, but for now I'm giving the glasses a chance.

I think that is my recent life in a nutshell. It has its ups and downs, for sure, but I can see the hand of God throughout!