Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. ~Robert H. Schuller
There comes a time when one must take a good look at what one has been doing and re-evaluate.
You may have guessed by the reduction in number of my posts over the last few months that I have been pondering the question of whether or not I should continue to blog (and other things as well), but more so since the holiday season. To my shame, it had become more of a regularly scheduled task rather than a welcomed time to enjoy my Lord.
Ministries are like that—not that this is a ministry, per se. It is just when we are doing even the things we are called to do by our Lord, we can be grooving out our own little rut doing the work while losing heart for the purpose. I lost my love for blogging, but worse I lost sight of its purpose. So, I took an unplanned blog break, but nonetheless a real vacation from blogging for about a month.
Unfortunately (or not) during that time, I allowed myself to become addicted to a game on my Kindle—yes, this is a confession. Castleville Legends is a building simulation game with dragons. (This is not an endorsement of the game, but I do so like dragons.) In this game, items are cultivated and workshops are built to make goods to be sold to gain lands and heroes. I have enjoyed it...a bit too much probably. However, God can make all things for our good. I began to become quite aware of time, such as how much time everything was taking in my real life as well as with the game. It is helping me to prepare to manage my time better...oddly. I would not suggest it as a therapy for time management, but it is helping me to realize how much time things really take rather than how long I imagine they should take. I was having some difficulties with my expectations of my time with a variety of tasks I need to do and constantly feeling that I never had any time for myself and then feeling guilty about my selfish desires of even needing time for myself.
Adding to my personal difficulties with time was my husband's work schedule. He was originally hired to be a lead in the field, like a supervisor, but there was no position created for it then, although he was paid more when he was hired and introduced to customers as the lead go-to guy because eventually this position would be created. A two years later, the company restructured and my husband had a new manager, who did not know this. A year later, with my husband still working as a pseudo-lead and getting totally burned out working weekends and traveling nearly every week, the company finally created the position and it was given to someone else without any experience. His manager said it was a difficult choice between him and the other guy (most likely because my husband was burned out). At the same time, there was a man in our city my husband had recommended and they hired that had flown only four times all of last year; my husband was flying out three to six times a month on average. A few times they had my husband fly to another state and had someone else flown here at the same time, which made little sense, but most of the customers ask for my husband while some customers have banned the other guy in the city.
Now I am used to my husband traveling during most weekdays, but all this travel over weekends this year was wearing on both of us and he was not able to get his comp days on top of that. It was all due to one man who did the scheduling, who seem to pick three or four guys as the ones to do all the traveling saying they were the best ones and everything was an emergency, but how were the other guys ever to get the experience to be better if they were sitting at home most of the time...yes, the other man in our city was seeing the few local customers who had not banned him on the average of one every one or two weeks; the rest of the time he was taking calls in the comfort of his home, but since he had a bad wireless connection there, most of those calls still went to my husband who backed him up without pay for being on call after regular business hours. Needless to say, my husband had developed a bit of an attitude, asked not be on call any more at all, and had already began looking for another job for a few months before he was given the news about not being promoted in November.
It was really hard for us, but now there is someone else doing the most of scheduling and he is committed to make the travel time more even among the men and cost effective so the men will be working at their local customers more. Also, after much prayer, my husband and I agreed for the sake of our sanity, relationship, and all projects he needs to do at home that he will not be working any more weekends at all until he has been given all his built-up comp time and then when he must work a weekend, he will be taking all his comp time from that trip the very week he returns. That is how it was when he began working for this company before the new manager (although the manager does not do the scheduling) and how it was when he worked for the previous company also.
Needless to say, both my husband and I were burned out and raw for the last half of 2013 because of his schedule. However, now he is changing his mode of thinking about his job. He is just a field service engineer he says and not the lead, so he should not be doing all that he was nor giving advice about how to be lead to the guy who got the promotion when he calls asking. He did explain to his boss, who honestly did not know, that he had been working as lead as much as he could within his capacity as he was hired to do and it had been promised to him, but now he would be backing out of the extra stuff he had been doing, no longer being the point man to the customers, and working according to his job title. He decided to go back on the on-call rotation after the first of this year, so we could save up to get the house resided this year, but he will not be burning himself out as he did before.
There is a time when taking a break is needed to restore oneself. God, who loves us so much, understands this. He did not create life for us to not enjoy it along with Him.
As to my blogging...well, that is another decision I could not make on my own, so I am praying about it.
- Does it have value? This is not necessarily in the material sense but in the spiritual also.
- Is it is worthy of continuing?
- It is something to be done this because it is necessary, a tradition, or pleasing?
- Is it continued strictly out of tradition or because it has meaning?
- Is it setting a good example for others?
You may have guessed by the reduction in number of my posts over the last few months that I have been pondering the question of whether or not I should continue to blog (and other things as well), but more so since the holiday season. To my shame, it had become more of a regularly scheduled task rather than a welcomed time to enjoy my Lord.
Ministries are like that—not that this is a ministry, per se. It is just when we are doing even the things we are called to do by our Lord, we can be grooving out our own little rut doing the work while losing heart for the purpose. I lost my love for blogging, but worse I lost sight of its purpose. So, I took an unplanned blog break, but nonetheless a real vacation from blogging for about a month.
Unfortunately (or not) during that time, I allowed myself to become addicted to a game on my Kindle—yes, this is a confession. Castleville Legends is a building simulation game with dragons. (This is not an endorsement of the game, but I do so like dragons.) In this game, items are cultivated and workshops are built to make goods to be sold to gain lands and heroes. I have enjoyed it...a bit too much probably. However, God can make all things for our good. I began to become quite aware of time, such as how much time everything was taking in my real life as well as with the game. It is helping me to prepare to manage my time better...oddly. I would not suggest it as a therapy for time management, but it is helping me to realize how much time things really take rather than how long I imagine they should take. I was having some difficulties with my expectations of my time with a variety of tasks I need to do and constantly feeling that I never had any time for myself and then feeling guilty about my selfish desires of even needing time for myself.
Adding to my personal difficulties with time was my husband's work schedule. He was originally hired to be a lead in the field, like a supervisor, but there was no position created for it then, although he was paid more when he was hired and introduced to customers as the lead go-to guy because eventually this position would be created. A two years later, the company restructured and my husband had a new manager, who did not know this. A year later, with my husband still working as a pseudo-lead and getting totally burned out working weekends and traveling nearly every week, the company finally created the position and it was given to someone else without any experience. His manager said it was a difficult choice between him and the other guy (most likely because my husband was burned out). At the same time, there was a man in our city my husband had recommended and they hired that had flown only four times all of last year; my husband was flying out three to six times a month on average. A few times they had my husband fly to another state and had someone else flown here at the same time, which made little sense, but most of the customers ask for my husband while some customers have banned the other guy in the city.
Now I am used to my husband traveling during most weekdays, but all this travel over weekends this year was wearing on both of us and he was not able to get his comp days on top of that. It was all due to one man who did the scheduling, who seem to pick three or four guys as the ones to do all the traveling saying they were the best ones and everything was an emergency, but how were the other guys ever to get the experience to be better if they were sitting at home most of the time...yes, the other man in our city was seeing the few local customers who had not banned him on the average of one every one or two weeks; the rest of the time he was taking calls in the comfort of his home, but since he had a bad wireless connection there, most of those calls still went to my husband who backed him up without pay for being on call after regular business hours. Needless to say, my husband had developed a bit of an attitude, asked not be on call any more at all, and had already began looking for another job for a few months before he was given the news about not being promoted in November.
It was really hard for us, but now there is someone else doing the most of scheduling and he is committed to make the travel time more even among the men and cost effective so the men will be working at their local customers more. Also, after much prayer, my husband and I agreed for the sake of our sanity, relationship, and all projects he needs to do at home that he will not be working any more weekends at all until he has been given all his built-up comp time and then when he must work a weekend, he will be taking all his comp time from that trip the very week he returns. That is how it was when he began working for this company before the new manager (although the manager does not do the scheduling) and how it was when he worked for the previous company also.
Needless to say, both my husband and I were burned out and raw for the last half of 2013 because of his schedule. However, now he is changing his mode of thinking about his job. He is just a field service engineer he says and not the lead, so he should not be doing all that he was nor giving advice about how to be lead to the guy who got the promotion when he calls asking. He did explain to his boss, who honestly did not know, that he had been working as lead as much as he could within his capacity as he was hired to do and it had been promised to him, but now he would be backing out of the extra stuff he had been doing, no longer being the point man to the customers, and working according to his job title. He decided to go back on the on-call rotation after the first of this year, so we could save up to get the house resided this year, but he will not be burning himself out as he did before.
There is a time when taking a break is needed to restore oneself. God, who loves us so much, understands this. He did not create life for us to not enjoy it along with Him.
As to my blogging...well, that is another decision I could not make on my own, so I am praying about it.
~ My Lord, thank you for reminding us that that life You have given us is to be enjoyed and it is more enjoyable with You in it whispering in our spirits Your will. ~
