Update #??

Okay so it's been a while since I updated. Argh. Life went sideways for a bit. I think its important to be candid about life's setbacks as well as the goals and successes, but I don't want to devote too much time/attention to the mistakes. So let me recap here.

My big/awesome whale contract ended and it took three weeks to replace it. That's always a busy time for me. I am back to work but at half time and that's cramping my style a bit.

My wife and I spent some tax return on a beach trip but our ten month old sucked any sort of relaxation out of the experience leaving us stressed from trying to prep for the week and recover from the trip.

We immediately started car shopping to replace my wife's tiny yet loved car with one that fits our baby's car seat. That turned into a mess, but ultimately we triumphed, so it ends well.

I managed to get my scifi secret project drafted off to the editors about a day early so that I could try to relax at the beach. Best laid plans, right? Anyway that's another win. Not sounding too bad, right?

Well I haven't updated my project hopper in about two months and that leaves me a bit stressed. You see I try to go through quarterly with a big review which keeps me on track and my end of year/new year review is vital to my peace of mind. More than just the annoyance of working budget files and plans that say 2014 not doing a review is an indication that I haven't taken the "me" time defrag my brain. It's hard to explain but if you read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen there's a good explanation of my situation under the term Open Loops. (In short: things we unconsciously feel obligated to do that we don't have any plan to accomplish.)

So I started asking myself, "am I doing an other avoiding behaviors?" Yes, I was being intolerant of other humans when they did very human things. Then I asked myself, "what am I avoiding?"

The truth, after much reflection, is that I'm waiting on a few big projects, and job opportunities that are long over due and I'm feeling like God is holding out on me. I let that unconsciously keep me from moving closer to God in my spiritual life. Items in my project hopper would have made plain that I was neglecting some of the important things in my life.

I read a brief article by Mike Pink that talked about spending deliberate time honoring God. My prayer life hadn't gone down hill all this time, but I wasn't setting aside time to meditate on how big and how generous God is. Even though I accepted that it was true, when I tried out Pink's suggestion I could feel myself realign from inside out. It's embarrassing because one of my works in process is a book on living from inside out. Yet here I was taking my self worth from my circumstances instead of being who I am uniquely in those circumstances.

When we take our identity from our relationship with God, when we remember we're built in His image and restored to perfection by his work, that's when stress goes down and we start impacting the environment around us, instead of being transformed by our environment.

For more on this topic, read my book "On Becoming a Man."