Sometimes I get too stressed over stuff that’s not worth it. Last week, our band was supposed to play during a church service. We had all the songs picked out except the one that would be played right before the sermon. Of course, that’s considered the most important song of the service. We try hard to make it fit with what the pastor’s going to say in the sermon. Usually, the bandleader’s pretty good about finding a song that goes…
I finally got a new car. Well, it’s not a new car. It’s actually a kind of old car — a 1995 Volkswagen Jetta — but it’s new to me and has a lot less miles than you’d think. It’s not my dream car, but I got a good deal on it. As a matter of fact, I got a real good deal. Unfortunately in this case, the deal wasn’t quite as good as it seemed. The car actually broke…
I was in a study group the other night when the leader pointed out that the spiritual life is a paradox, requiring both solitude and contact with others. He was, in effect, encouraging us to spend some time in quiet meditation between our weekly sessions as a group. Good advice. Every once in a while everyone needs to get away from the chaos of daily life. I think burnout is in large part caused by the way we keep our…
I’ve been finishing a major project over the last week or so. I’ll be writing more about it in future posts, but first I thought I’d share a lesson learned during the process. During the early and middle stages of the effort, there were a number of times, I thought about details that needed to be done. I kept telling myself that I’d do them later. I thought it’d be easier to work on them all at the same time…
Since my car died, I’ve started looking for a new one. Well, not a new one. I prefer to get a used car because I drive a lot and new cars lose value quickly when you put a lot of miles on them. So I was looking at craigslist yesterday, focusing on the two areas closest to where I live. I saw a few possibilities, but nothing real promising. Then I decided to look in a region of my state…
We all need help sometimes. My car has been in the shop more than two weeks, so my family of five, including two teenagers, had to get along with one vehicle. We were managing, but it was challenging. Over the weekend, a friend insisted that we borrow her car. Her family had a truck and a van they could use and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. So for the last couple of days, I’ve been driving a red…
Earlier today, I stopped by the school where my teaches and my three kids attend. When I saw my wife she asked me to take a fund-raising form to my son and tell him that he needed to find teachers to sponsor him if he wanted to participate in a jump-rope event. When I found my son, he initially said it was too late because today was the deadline. Then his teacher said he could still turn in the form…
I’ve been thinking today about how my busyness seems to get in the way of my business. Sometimes I just think I have so many things to do that I don’t get anything done. I was reminded of this watching a clip from one of the morning TV shows this morning. It focused on traffic and included a section comparing how efficiently ants got around to traffic jams on major highways. The ants it turned out, get around much better…
The other day, I was driving my wife’s van (my car’s in the shop but that’s another story) when an indicator light on the dash told me that a brake light was out. A day or two later I went to an auto parts store and got a replacement lamp. How hard can it be to change a brake light, I thought to myself. Wrong. When I finally got a chance to make the change, it was a freezing cold…
It snowed this week. The first significant snowfall for my area in about five years. It was also the first snow since we moved in our new house about 14 months ago. Once it got deep enough we headed to a nearby golf course for some sledding. It was the most fun I’d had in years. I’d forgotten how exciting zipping down a hill on a plastic disk can be. Of course, once you get to the bottom of the…