Things immeasurable

I am the kind of person that likes to be able to ‘measure’ my accomplishments. I like the kind of jobs where I can stand back and say ‘Look at what I got done today.’ Unfortunately for me, many of my current responsibilities do not align themselves with such easily visible or tangible results. Much of what I do is, for lack of a better term, immeasurable.

Sometimes I joke about being a ‘professional meet-er’, because I seem to have a lot of meetings, which in most cases means talking with/to someone about something. But the difficult part of that is that you can not usually easily measure the outcome of a meeting.

There are times I would like to convince myself that I have made a significant impact in someone’s life through giving them feedback, direction or input of some other kind. Feeling like I made a difference in someone’s life is a type of measurement and it makes me feel good. However, it is, in reality, almost impossible to know what, if any, has been the impact made in someone’s life until much later.

There are also times when I feel like I have wasted my time in so many meetings that were ‘useless’. However, in truth, the times when I have gotten the most direct affirmation of an impact in someone’s life was the result of what I had originally deemed a failure or waste of time.

The result of the combination of the above mentioned two types of feelings I have is that I understand even more how fickle and unreliable my feelings are about the worth of what I am doing. I simply can not rely on my feelings to determine my self worth and esteem.

And maybe that is the whole point. Perhaps I need to be more worried about how God views my work and how He measures my success or failure. Boy is that a scary thought!! If that is true, then I need a whole new set of measuring tools.

So how do you measure your own success or failure?

List of ten

I have seen several people using lists of 10 things to help people get to know them a little bit. I have decided to do this, but in the form of a quiz.

Below are ten things that are true about me. Each of the ten things corresponds to the numbers 1-10. Match the statement with the number and either reply with a comment or send me an email. There might even be a prize for the winner. Hint – each of the numbers from 1-10 is only used once – there are no duplicate numbers and each number is used at least once.

# of my fingers I have broken at one time or another
# of dogs I wish we could have
# of years we have been married
# of dogs we have
# of years we have lived in India
the age of our daughter
# of my football jersey from 8th grade
# of knee surgeries I have had
# of different sports I competed in during school
the age of our son

Good luck!

Growing up

I noticed today in a remarkable way how my little boy (5) is so quickly growing up.

Normally my wife goes to pick him up after school, and just recently he started riding the ‘bus’ (really a van) most of the way home after school. She goes and picks him up nearby and brings him the rest of the way home.

Today, she needed to go to a meeting so I was left to go get him from the bus. As I sat there waiting, watching traffic go by, seeing all manner of people wandering about on the streets, I was ill-prepared for what was about to happen.

As the bus pulled up and the door opened, I suddenly realized that my boy is growing up so quickly. He rides the bus home from school now, for crying out loud. He is not the tiny little creature I first knew him to be. He is more a little person now than he ever has been, and for some reason seeing him get out of that van made me realize it.

I now fear that these days are going by too quickly, and I know that I will never be able to get them back again. I only hope I don’t ‘waste them’ by not appreciating him as he develops and grows into a young man.

Lord, help me savor every day as he grows, and help me be a good example to him of what it means to follow you.

Just barely

Had a close call this weekend in fantasy football. I was projected to win by 20 points, but that means nothing in reality, especially when your opponent has one player who just goes off and scores 30 points all by himself. However, in spite of that, I have pulled off a win this weekend, just barely, so far by only 2 points, but I still have one WR still yet to play on Monday night.

I could really use a good weekend next weekend resulting in a total blowout of my opponent. Somehow that does not seem likely. Oh well, one can hope, right?

Figuring stuff out

I came to a realization today that I like to figure stuff out. That might not seem like a major feat, but it was encouraging to me as I figured out just a little more about how God has wired me.

This revelation is not actually completely new either. I have known for some time that I like to figure things out, especially people. I have also known for some time that the most frustrating times for me are when I don’t understand something and can’t seem to make any sense of it.

How did I learn this ‘new’ lesson?

I took apart a friend’s laptop to narrow down why exactly it was not charging the battery any more (after being dropped while plugged in) and discovered that the problem should be pretty easily fixed, assuming the right part is available.

I took apart the valve stems in my kids' bike tires to figure out why one of them was not allowing air to pass through and learned how differently they make those things over here, and yet in spite of doing it differently (not ‘wrong’ as some might say) it works quite well in fact.

I took apart a cell phone to try to figure out if there was a mechanical reason why it was not working, only to discover that if the ‘sim’ card is not installed the phone does not work – duh! Note to self, check for the obvious first.

I partially disassembled my office chair to figure out why it had developed a significant lean to one side while I was gone recently, only to discover that due to a design flaw the metal was fatiguing and will need to be replaced.

I could go on and on, but looking back over that list, there was a lot of taking things apart in the process of learning my lesson. I should say that all of the things have since been put back together and are working fine, with the exception of the chair which is yet to be brought to the shop.

I guess the new part of this lesson for me was the joy or sense of accomplishment in finally understanding something that I did not understand before. In each case I gained knowledge and now know just a little bit more in each case about how things work, and what cause them to not work at times.

I feel good about learning these things, most of which will do me absolutely no foreseeable good. I feel like I did something of value. Maybe that is the real lesson. Learning things, even if there is no foreseeable benefit in the future is of value in and of itself. Learning is inherently valuable.

Humility

Today, I hang my head in shame . . . .for I am a loser . . . at least in my matchup this last weekend for fantasy football.

I feel shame because I lost to a team that only fielded 6 out of a possible 9 players. My 9 still could not beat his 6. How pathetic is that?

The only redeeming part of this whole thing is that I thankfully resisted the urge to talk ‘smack’ prior to the games. I came soooooo close to throwing down a big ol’ string of smack to let everyone now I was now on the front end of a long and prosperous run in our league.

I look back now and am ever so glad I resisted that urge. For the shame of losing to a 6 man team is enough without adding to it a serious helping of humble-pie.

So now it is on to next weekend. Will I fall to the 1-4 team that rarely, if ever, updates their roster that I am up against this coming weekend, or will I prove incapable yet again of what should be an easy win? Let’s see.