Choosing Your Problems

(Now that I'm laid off, expect more blogging!)
Oswald Chambers is at me again about obedience. And God is chiming right in. Today I was prompted by the Spirit with this insight:

You don't want the problems that come from disobeying God.
You want the problems that come from obeying God.
The first is called discipline.
The second, persecution.

I was struck that there will always be problems. But they aren't always bad.
So which problems do you want?

- posted by Jor @ 3:26 PM -

 
Laid Off

Yep, I join the ranks of the underemployed. PalmSource laid me off yesterday, and its a good thing. I was hoping I would be actually. No, really, I did. I had scaled back to 3 days a week for about 5 months so far, and I knew I couldn't stay at PalmSource long. I will spare you the long boring career planning post. So this is a great opportunity, and still it was a very uncomfortable experience.

Everyone expects a layoff to be terrible news, and it throws me into that mood to. When my manager was explaining to me that I was being laid off, which I had known for a while, I suddenly felt like I should be in shock or start crying or something. I guess he was still having a hard time with it. I hope the wine I gave him as a parting gift helped.

Anyway, people would come into my office as I packed and ask me if I was OK. And I was OK, until the fifth or sixth person did that. Then I was thinking, "Maybe I should be a little "not OK" to fit in better?" And wheeling my cart full of office accumulation over the nearly 6 years I was there turned out to be a humbling experience. It was during the noon hour, and the most direct path was through the cafeteria. I found I couldn't do it. So I slipped out the back door and went around the building. I thought I had my story straight with myself. I was hoping I'd be laid off, but it still felt like ashes, like failure.

I keep saying goodbye to people, habits, things. When I arrived home I turned off the car and said, "That's the last time I will commute home from PalmSource." It was (and is) very weird.

I trust that God is in this. He's already showing me new ways of being. I have been in a big rut for a long while and now I'm out. I'm so relieved.

I'm going to chill a while (still working on Adoption Adventure 2 days a week). Then I'm going to work on more offers around adoption services. I'm hoping to be my own boss from now on.

I had an excellent laptop from work. I miss it. And no more latest-greatest Palm stuff anymore. *sniff*
But mostly I will miss the people, the everyday relationships that I won't have anymore. Big changes.


- posted by Jor @ 3:08 PM -

 
RSS/Atom feed

Katherine told me to put this in my blog. I guess it's to help people who use some special kind of blog reader or something.
What-ever.

http://jorbratko.blogspot.com/atom.xml

- posted by Jor @ 3:24 PM -

 
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Been shop'n?
No! Been shop'n.
What'cha get?
A piston engine!

Actually, I got a 19" monitor and a b-e-a-utiful L-shaped desk for my office. It looks like I'm going to be spending more time there and the door blank resting across two 2-drawer filing cabinets just wasn't working for me anymore. My office looks--dare I say--'professional'?

Of course, now I need a new computer to go on my fine new desk. (Just kidding, honey.)

Craigslist.org is a wonderful place. I have had great experiences. I love the minimalist web experience. It's so immediate. The people have been great, and the deals have been wonderful. I'm not going to start a eBay business picking stuff off craigslist and selling it on eBay, there just isn't a sustainable volume (I did think about it).

The russian adoption services business is in full swing. We're reconstituting as a non-profit and I've finally gotten the paperwork to open a bank account. I'm learning so much. My partner and I are definately a match made in heaven. He is great at doing whatever it takes to get the job done, and I have an ability to organize and operationalize so that its not a heroic effort every time. I can deal with the administrivia, its like a game to me; but he has no patience for it. I love to find ways for other people to do the work (ok, that can be a bad thing, too); and he dives in and does it himself too often.

It's easy to take that sort of thing for granted. For instance, before I was married, I suffered over if/when/who/how I was going to get married. I suffered with loneliness, poor housekeeping, irresponsibility, instability. Getting married gave me a good reason to work through all that, and now 15 years later (15 years!?!?) Helen and I have worked through so much of that stuff that I get indignant when something breaks down. It helps to remind myself that I pined for relief for many years, and then I can better appreciate the peace and joy I have in those areas.

We don't observe our progress automatically, its a reflective exercise. Maturana says that humans don't experience learning, we only experience the results of learning. I couldn't touch type, then I could. But I didn't experience the learning. I don't feel any different. Same thing with anything that you learn. In personal growth, you experience the lack of suffering when you work through something for a while. But after a while that goes away, and the new equilibrium is reached and feels normal. I think this is what powers the experience of "When you solve your worst problem, you just give all your problems a promotion."

Believe it or not, this turns me back to God. Humans are not equipped to stay satisfied. Not for long anyway. We adjust to the new situation and it becomes normal. Thank God there is always more to be satisfied in Him. He is so deep, so mysterious, so holy; that there is always more. As C.S. Lewis pictured in The Final Battle (Chronicles of Narnia), the heavenly life is a constant journey "upward and inward" infinitely deeper and higher into God. And no matter how fast you journey, how high and deep you go, there's aways more! His infinity is the only thing that will satisfy the unsatiable appetites of humans. We were made for this! No wonder we are powerfully led astray by filling our infinite appetites with finiteness.

You know, this desk's keyboard tray isn't quite big enough....
And there's no place to clamp my light so it swivels over to the recliner as well...
Hey, I think I saw a hutch for my desk on craigslist!

- posted by Jor @ 3:11 PM -