Yes, once again trying to decide important things, part II

The promised expansion of the choices.  Again, if you can think of other options that I am missing, let me know.  : ) 

Option 1: Focus on the job and life I have now.  Stop looking for teaching jobs, researching teaching, and teaching a class or two every year.  Read more, write more, be in a choir, be less exhausted, find a new church, find some more volunteer work with a church.

Option 2: Focus on the job I may get in the future.  Sing less.  Be more exhausted.  Read less.  Write less.  Try to get published.  Keep researching and teaching.  Build up enough experience and/or publications over the next ten years that I might be able to get a teaching job once I have my loans paid off.  Work a couple jobs some of the time.  Have less time to do volunteer work and in my church. 

Don't worry, I think I'll hold off on making any momentous decisions until after my performance review at work and maybe late spring when I'll have absorbed so much sunlight, I can't possibly be the least bit SADD (if I even am now, which I doubt).

Yes, once again trying to decide important things, part I

I am trying to decide if I suffer from some form of SADD or whether late winter/early spring is just the time when things line up, and I end up re-examing my life, dreams, and priorities and trying to figure out whether/when quitting is the right thing to do.  I've gotten more sun this winter than ever since it's been so mild, and I've spent mornings bathing in the sun coming through my window, so chances are that it's just an issue of timing.  Right now I'm not working two jobs, and I'm starting to catch up on the things I had to put off during the time I was doing two jobs.  And so.  Choices again.

1. Stop teaching and focus on other things I can do now.
2. Keep teaching for possible/unlikely future dream job and don't participate in other things I can do now.

If you can think of an option 3 or 4, let me know.  I do want to consider them all.  Stay tuned for a rehash/expansion of the options in future posts.

We, the church

So I've been a bit down on the church lately but trying not to be.  There are, in fact, good things happening at my country club church.  In fact, many of the things we were agitating for in our rebel small group have come to pass.  These are good things, and I am glad.

I ran across this post about community by Addie Zierman.  Since I am church hunting now, I think it's a good reminder that the perfect church does not exist and some of the forces it's fighting against in American culture.

"But there is a natural gravity to the American life, and if we don’t make an effort, we find ourselves pulled inward to our own nuclear families, circling our own rhythms and routines. We say “we” and what we mean is the four people who live and move and breath in our single-family homes, not that larger we, the more complex we, the one that we must choose to love."

"And you can go to every church in a fifteen-mile radius and still never find that whole thing, that unbroken thing, that ready-made community who takes you all the way in. If you are tired and delicate enough, this can feel like a reason to give up."

I can't let myself give up, no matter how tired or delicate I'm feeling these days.  Even (especially) when it's hard.

Something to ponder

So there's a person where I work who is mostly known for incompetence.  This person has had some serious health problems, as well, which seems to be why our kindhearted bosses don't want to simply fire this person for being bad at a job despite having it for a good number of years.  The rest of us are competent enough to get around this person's incompetence, but it's annoying sometimes to have to do this person's job in addition to our own.

Lo and behold, I discovered that this person attends a Bible study some days over lunch.  And I thought, "Does knowing that this person may be a Christian change my opinion of this person?"  And I thought, "Should it?"  And I thought, "If so, why and how?"  And, "If not, why not?"

Your thoughts?