12.12.09
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Unexpected Gifts of Joy

I’m writing about this not to brag about my gift to another but rather to share something that kind of lit up something in my mind.

Today is the birthday of this one girl at my work.  I don’t work with her and honestly I don’t know her that well.  But we have started to sort of become friends.  Anyway, about once a week or so, we go to lunch together.  A couple weeks ago, she had asked me if I wanted to go to her birthday party which would be tonight.  Honestly, I did not really want to go.  I didn’t want to go for a few reasons.  One being that it was something along the lines of “not my scene” so I know I wouldn’t have been comfortable and I probably would have not been happy.  On rare occasion, I go to these “not my scene” type things for really good friends but to go for people I’m really not that close to, I will pass.  Secondly, I like to keep some type of boundary between hanging out with people at work outside of the office.  Sometimes its just weird.  So because of that, I also did not want to go.  Anyway, I told her I wasn’t going to be able to make it.  But I had planned on just going to lunch with her on Friday and buying her lunch.  Birthday lunch.

Because of her short lunch period, we often have to call in our orders and then pick it up and scarf it down right there.  Normally we just pay separately so today I said, hey I got it, let me treat you for your birthday.  She was SOOO happy!!!  She was so surprised and just so happy like…”why would anyone ever buy me lunch or do something like this?”  So grateful.

Whenever things like this happen, it just kinds of surprises me.  It surprises me that people haven’t experienced something like that.  I don’t know.  It was kind of like what happened with our Faith in Action project about a year and half ago.  These types of happenings kind of just make my mind/heart or whatever it is feel all…touched/triggered (lol I’m bad with words).  It really makes me think that these people really just haven’t had people do something for them before.  Which makes me think that perhaps we, who are able, should do more to kind of show these people some love.  As I mentioned in my Faith in Action post, it’s about sharing God’s love.  To just give this little bit to others so that they can feel that there are different people out there, there are people that are nice, and that care.

11.29.09
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What Occupies Your Mind?

What do you think about when you have a lot of time to yourself?  I guess the perfect example would be a long drive – 2 hours, 6 hours, more?  It’s pretty much you, your car, your music, and your thoughts.  Let’s say the music element is gone, then what? Really now, what do you think about? What kind of thoughts occupy your mind?

I’ll tell you what kinds of things I thought about on my drive back to SD today.

  • It was a good weekend with the fam.
  • It’s amazing what people do out of desperation, vulnerability, and emotion.  People make decisions and do things that make no sense, are irrational, and unexpected.  We often determine who to give our time to.  What deserves my time?  Who deserves it?  I can’t believe that I did all this stuff in the past.
  • What if my car breaks down when I’m driving back to SD at night and my cell phone doesn’t work because it’s all hilly here.  Perhaps I should pay attention to the road signs so that I can at least know where I am.
  • Why is it so easy to seek God with such desperation and passion when you want something to be fixed, to be changed, or just want something?  Why is it SO difficult to seek Him when things are going well?  I try to seek Him and just lose focus, my mind wanders, because sometimes when I don’t have something specific where I need Him, I can’t think of anything.  Yet, as soon as I want something to happen, I’m right there seeking Him.  Argh, it’s bad.  How do you seek God with the good things?  Not just seek Him, but to seek Him with as much desperation and passion as when things aren’t going well?
  • I like singing loud when I’m alone.  I like going all out because no one else can hear me but myself.
  • What people consider success is interesting.  Everyone must have a different perspective.  Are you successful?  Am I successful in your eyes?
  • I should blog but every time I get down to it, I forget all the good stuff.
  • I know the guy I’m looking for exists.  I just haven’t found him yet.  Maybe it will be soon?

And there is probably much more, but that’s all I can think about now.

11.26.09
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Happy Thanksgiving

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 118:1

I realize that this verse can be found all over Psalms and other parts of the Bible too.  On my drive up to LA, I was thinking about what I was thankful for.  And I’ve often thought about it and it always brings me back to the friendships I have now down in SD and the church family I have there. I’ve probably written about this before but it really means a lot to me.

When I think back to life in SD a few years ago, that was when most of the core of my friends had started to leave.  Friends, having community, is a really really big deal to me.  I need to have these people around me.  The people that I can hang out with, talk to, and care about, etc.  As I slowly saw my friends move away, I was really sad.  Sometimes I’d even feel super distraught.  I mean it used to be a group of people and slowly the group chipped away – from maybe 6 or 7 down to 3 and then to 2.  And I felt really sad, the amount of people to hang out with just kind of disappeared.

But then I found CBC, joined the football team, got involved, and now have a great group of friends that I am so thankful for.  I love hanging out with these people.  I love spontaneous dinners and boba runs.  Late night chats.  I love it.

The more I look back at the last few months and years, the more I realize how wonderfully God had things planned.  As my college friends started to move away, I slowly began to find more new friends at CBC.  Even at the beginning of CBC, I never really hung out with people.  But I started to get to know more about people and eventually become friends which really prepped me when I found out my best friend was going to move to China.  Then, A. who I had become really good friends with, had to move away a few months ago too.  I hung out with her a lot and was pretty sad when she moved.  But then I started to hang out more with K. D. A. G. E. S. and so on and so forth.  So as sad as I am with good friends that have moved afar, I am grateful that I can still talk with them and still have a really great group of people to hang out with.  I am more thankful for my friends than I can probably ever express verbally.

So this thanksgiving, I’m thankful that God has put these people in my life.  Thank you God.  God is good.  :)

11.20.09
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San Diego Sting

The San Diego Sting is a women’s tackle football team in San Diego.  Last week, this girl who I used to play basketball with had sent a message out about this football team.  At first I didn’t even really read the message, but for whatever reason, I decided to have a closer look.  It turns out that this was a full on tackle football team with pads, helmets, and all that stuff.  A real team and even travels to games in Vegas, LA, Tuscon, and one other place I can’t remember.

I was thinking that it was something I might want to do.  Playing football at a higher level on a so called “pro” team…haha.  Dude that would be CRAZY!!!  I did have a few concerns…  I was kind of afraid, I’ve never been hit (tackled) before, nor have I ever even really tackled someone.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to hang (were these people crazy good?)  Things I was interested in… I wanted to know what it felt like to wear all the football gear.  How hard is it to run around after that?  Can you even lift your arms?  Mainly, I was interested in playing football.

So I decided I would investigate further since they were having tryouts/combine on the Saturday.  (  I see the combine on TV, I really really want to try it.  It looks like so much fun!!) For those who don’t know, the combine is basically used for scouting in the NFL.  It is like tryouts where you are timed in sprints, tested to see how high you can jump, your skill level, etc.  It would be really fun to try.  So I emailed them and asked about it.  They told me that no experience was required.  I thought…I don’t think anyone that had zero experience would try TACKLE football so I deduced that there would probably not be many newbs there.  They said it would be conditioning, catching, throwing, but no tackling yet.  I actually really wanted to try it out, to just go and see what it was like.  But then, it was $45 to do the tryout/combine because you have to pay for a jersey or something?  Or perhaps coaches to watch you??  That was kind of expensive.

So I decided to get even more info from A, who played 2 years ago in something similar.  She said they had a lot of conditioning, a lot of practices, and just a lot of meet up time which means that it would be a huge committment.  The more I thought about it, I just claim to the conclusion that I don’t really have time to commit to something this big.  I’m already busy as it is and super tired each night but to add this would probably just suck the life out of me.

Part of me wishes that I could have a clone.  That I could go experience things with no interference with my normal life.  This way I can do both and not worry about anything.  I often think about that.  If I could just keep my life uninterrupted, I would dare do other things.

11.18.09
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Busy

I feel so busy.   Perhaps I am busy.  I must be.  I haven’t had enough time to just…rest.  To just be home, do my own thing, and rest.  Tonight has been close to being a time of rest.  I’m so busy that I don’t have time to catch up with old friends, to chat, to talk on the phone, or anything.  In fact, many nights I barely even have time to go on the computer.  I’ll get home past bed time, quickly turn on the computer to check my email and facebook and just shut it down, go to sleep.

It’s pretty lame that I don’t even have time to catch up and keep in touch with people.  My friend J and I have been trying to find a time to just talk to each other on the phone and the most we got recently was 15 minutes or so.  We had tried so many times but one of us just ended up busy.  Before, we used to talk at least once a week if not more.  Now it’s turned into months at a time and we don’t even know what is going on in each other lives.

Sometimes, I just need to rest.  I think AT LEAST 2 nights during the week need to be used for rest.  Not only just so I can do my own thing but so that I can rest.

I will be sleeping early tonight.

11.07.09
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I Don’t Drink

I tell people I don’t drink because I don’t.  But, I think if someone were to look at my pictures from college and a few years post college, they would think I’m a liar.  In fact, they’d probably immediately call me out as a liar.  Earlier tonight I started putting some old pictures finally into a photo album.  The first section I went through was birthdays.  And nearly every single birthday had some drinking involved.  Wow.  It feels so long ago.  Well, I don’t drink because it constricts my lungs.  But that didn’t stop me from having a drink back in the day.  Craziness.  Craziness.

Another thing is last weekend we were playing this board game called Quelf.  It totally reminded me of this drinking game called King’s Cup.  However, to my amazement no one even knew what that was!

I almost feel like I was a totally different person back then.  It’s almost weird to look at those pictures.  It feels so different from my life now.  Not that it was bad, just different.

10.29.09
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Things I Want to Do…

Ah, you know that list of things people want to do in their lifetime.  Well this is sort of like that but not to that extent.  These are just some things I like or want to do and just really haven’t had time or the resources to do.  The two on the listed related towards food is really something that is in the back of my mind.  I think it would be fun but the likelihood of me ever doing that is not very high at least not during this point in life.

  • Re-design my website
  • Learn Photoshop
  • Learn CSS, more HTML, Joomla
  • Be a chef
  • Own a restaurant
  • Buy a bunch of mp3s

Hmm, I’m having a brain fart.  This list was a lot longer when I was thinking about it earlier.

Image courtesy of angelamaphone

edit//argh this thing won’t align correctly! oh well.

10.21.09
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Expensive Marketing

There have been many posts related to work lately because I just find them so interesting.  I get a lot of sales calls at the office.  Too many.  Today, a call was passed over to me…

T:  John Doe (fictitious obviously) said he sent you some baked goods and would like to talk to you about his company.

Me:  Uh, what baked goods?  I didn’t get anything.  Send him to voicemail please – thanks!

The voicemail basically said that his company sent me some cookies and he hopes that I enjoyed them and he hopes that I would give him a call back to talk to him about their services.  So, I have no idea what this guy is talking about…this cookie business.  But sure enough, a few hours later, they bring me a package!  It was a cookie bouquet!  6 cookies.  I gave them all away though…  I didn’t call the guy back either.  I even googled them to see if they did this often and sure enough they do.  But it doesn’t seem like anyone called them back either.

That sure is some crazy expensive way of marketing.  Those types of business gifts are not cheap!  It’s certainly a nice gesture and certainly gets the attention of people but wow…is it worth it?   I guess if their services end up in the thousands of dollars each month – which it probably does and they spent $30 here and there to send people cookies to try to make sales, then it is.  But man, they better get lucky or something.

10.16.09
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How to Leave a Voicemail…

if you are a making a sales call or have never spoken to that person ever before.  The information that you should leave in a voicemail is as follows:

  1. Your Name
  2. Your Company
  3. Purpose of the Call <—this is VERY important
  4. Your Phone Number <—slowly and twice
  5. If you left a LONG message, then repeat your name as well with step 4.

Why should you do these things?  Because that will increase your chances of getting a call back.  There is this one call and voicemail that I keep getting.  We’ll call him Joe from ACompany.  Joe from ACompany leave me a voicemail about 2-3 times a week.  His voicemail sounds like this, “Hi, this is Joe from ACompany, please give me a call back at xxx-xxx-xxxx.”  Ok, so what is wrong with Joe’s message?

Joe doesn’t state a purpose.  Why is he calling?  What is this regarding?  Are you selling something?  Is it something important?  What is it?  His messages are the same every single time and I never call him back.  I never call him back because I have no idea who he is or what he wants.  Maybe he’s a salesman and thinks that if he doesn’t have his sales pitch on the phone, I might be curious enough to call him back.  Sorry Joe, doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes Joe calls the line that goes through the receptionist.  Today I asked her to tell Joe to stop calling.  Do you know what Joe’s reaction was?  He was a)shocked and then b)mad.  He was upset that I told him to stop calling because he said that I had never even talked to him before.  The receptionist told him that she was no longer going to pass his calls through and that she had to honor my request.  To this, Joe said, that he wanted to talk to the bossman.  But you know what the bossman is going to do, he is going to hear Joe’s message and forward it straight to me to take care of because it is probably in-line with what my position is and to that I am still not calling him back.

So please, when you leave a voicemail, be clear and purposeful, which will be better for everyone.