I know the heart of life is good

I was trying to think of a word to describe how I'm feeling - busy, too much to do, over-stressed, but yet feeling something that isn't exactly "everything for the best in this best of all possible worlds" optimism, but is a certainty that things are going to be OK. Then I remembered this song.

Finding faults

I had my first lesson yesterday for my Part 2 exam, the second stage in becoming a driving instructor. I'm hopefully going to be taking my Part 1 (Theory) in the next couple of weeks, but I have to have 18 hours instruction before my Part 2, so the lessons need to start now. I'd been thinking about how I drive over the last couple of months, trying to spot and eliminate bad habits, but it turned out yesterday that my main driving fault is one I wasn't even aware I had. I change gear too soon, even changing up as I steer round corners. Not necessarily life-threatening, but enough to fail my test.
It did make me think, though, about my other faults, in other areas of my life. I can list lots of things about me that need working on - some urgently - but there must be some faults of which I an completely unaware. Which is why I need genuine friends, who will point out the problems I hadn't noticed - and why I'm not being much of a friend if I won't do the same for them.

Today is the second day of the rest of your life

It's so easy to make a new start. All you have to do is wake up in the morning and say "Today is going to be different"; meet someone inspiring and think "I want to be just like them"; read a book that changes your life and resolve "I will take the first step"; wake up in the gutter and decide "Never again." Starting a new life is easy. Continuing a new life, now that's hard.

How long does the energy last? How long will shame or ambition motivate you? How do you make that change stick? How long before the gutter calls you back? It could be days or weeks or months or hours, but there has to be a second step after the first, and that can be really tough.

It's inspiring, deciding to change. There's a buzz about it. Fresh from that book or conversation or personal moment of clarity, life seems new, everything is possible. But on the second day, in second week, month, hour, it's not so new any more. Doing the new thing is... getting kind of the same.

If this was a different kind of blog, there'd be a list to follow of the top five points to get through the second day. There'd be helpful links to my ebook "Making Change Stick" (order now and get 25% discount). There'd at least be an inspiring personal story. This is not that kind of blog - sorry about that - so you just get the questions, without the easy resolution. Maybe another day. Or not.

Writing

One of the common pieces of advice for anyone wanting to break into freelance writing is to get their own web page. Of course, I have this lovely blog, but I'm not convinced that anyone who comes here looking for a writer will hire me (unless it's from Infrequent Rants magazine), so there is, as of today, a new little link in the sidebar to the right of your screen. Hurrah!

In related news, I'm going to give Constant Content a try. It looks as though I can post articles on there that I've written for other sites, and that people may then pay me a nominal amount for usage rights. Putting original stuff on there would mean I could sell exclusive rights as well, but I'm happier at the moment with an egg-basket diversification strategy.

Armageddon, popularity of

Don't ask me why, but I was looking on Google Trends and I did a search for "Armageddon". I'd love to know the reason for this: there's a spike in searches for Armageddon just before the end of every year. It's not right at the end of the year, when people might change the calendar and be reminded of the eventual end of time, and it doesn't seem to bear much relation to related news stories.

The sermon for Advent Sunday usually looks forward not only to the coming of Christ at Christmas, but also to his coming again. Either the eschaton is being preached so widely during Advent that lots of people are going home and using Google to find out what to expect (it is, after all, easier to understand than Revelation), or the Church's traditional seasonal liturgy fits with the zeitgeist rather better than I might have expected.

My job

On my way into work today (bus, not bike: I'm too tired and having to transport the laptop as well was the final straw) I seriously considered going and telling my boss that in fact I have been lying misrepresenting the facts when speaking to her recently. I rehearsed in my head as the bus went along Portsmouth Road how I had thought that saying I was happy with my work would be the most politic course of action. I went over the Itchen Bridge relishing the feel of the words "To be honest, I hate this job. It's just filling in pointless forms recording things that I couldn't care less about." And I arrived in town pleased that my mental health would no longer be adversely affected by having to smile and pretend that all this corporate nonsense held even the slightest interest to me.

Then I walked past Blackwells and was immediately seduced by a "Buy One Get One Free" offer on Teach Yourself books. On going into the shop, I found that in a small display, there were three books on writing (this, this and this). It was the work of a moment to acquire an even number of books, and I was out of the shop, reflecting on the kindness of Divine Providence in putting inexpensive guides to writing for a career in my way just when I was utterly sick of my current employment. (The more rational and sceptical of my readers will be relieved to know that I also reflected on my propensity to invoke the Divine for doing something I really wanted to do anyway - particularly when it involved spending money.)

My boss wasn't in the office this afternoon, so I didn't have an opportunity to ask her for a quiet chat. I did spend a little time submitting an article (which I'd written previously - not during work time today) to Triond, and followed a link from there to Helium, which looks quite promising. I have to say, even the sniff of a chance to earn money from writing has cheered me up - so much so that I sat in a meeting and agreed to work on the Quality section of the Community Services Contract and barely felt an urge to run screaming from the room.

100

This is the 100th post on this blog, and to mark this occasion I've just sat and read all of the previous 99 in order. Gosh, don't I go on and on and on about the same old stuff! There are a couple of pieces in there that I think are worth reading, that make me think I'm glad I wrote that thought down. Sadly these are the minority of posts, and I feel quite ambivalent about the fact that I am not very different from how I was 15 months ago. I'm pleased that I don't feel quite the same way, that I have moved on; on the other hand it's sobering to see that I haven't really changed very much, and that a lot of the things that I think are "progress" are simply reworking the same old ground. Maybe one good thing is that I'm more hopeful, that joy is still a transient experience (which I think is one of the characteristics of joy anyway, but that's a subject for one of the next 100 posts), but a slightly more common one. Now to see if I can manage to get to post number 200 before April 2009!

Happy New Year

Good grief! I've just looked at this blog and realised that I hadn't posted anything since November, and that wasn't exactly chatty and uplifting. Thankfully, I'm feeling more positive than I did back then, so I will try and put slightly more on here in the next few weeks and months. This isn't a New Year's resolution: I haven't made any, partly because I never keep them, but also because I'm a chronic maker of resolutions, and I know that keeping on saying to myself "From now on, I will/will not do x any more" is often another way of saying "I don't like myself because I do/don't do this thing", which then means that when I don't keep that resolution, I've confirmed what a no good/unreliable/unlikeable person I am. So, no resolutions.

Not that this means I'm not aiming to be more like the person I was created to be, or that I don't want to improve my relationships, or that there is nothing I want to achieve. But rather than setting a list of tasks and targets, I'm more interested in developing my relationship with God and allowing him to change me. That way, the things that I do more or less of are outward signs of internal change, rather than things to beat myself up with.

Well I haven't been here for a while

Bah. I am so tired, I am flicking through Facebook pages without any clear idea of what I think I'm doing there. I can't go to bed for at least another hour because I have to pick up Daniel from Emfest at about 11pm, and then go up to Park Gate to bring Benjamin and Reuben home from roleplaying. Bah, bah and bah again.

On the other hand, I'm 90% sure that I want to train as a plumber with these people after their rep came to see me today. I need to do a bit more checking out about whether it is as good as they say, but it looks as though I might be able to change career.

WWJD

I think that one of the problems with asking what Jesus would do in any given situation is that we often don't know. For one thing, Jesus was a little unpredictable. People were surprised, even scandalised by his actions. So what we usually ask is "What do I think Jesus would do?" which comes down to our perception of Jesus and our own morality. I think that the honest version of the question is to ask what I would do if I was more like the person I think Jesus wants me to be. And that is what's been occupying my mind: moving away from asking how I can become different or better or nicer or holier, and moving towards asking what might happen if I allowed Christ to form me into his planned version of me. There's a whole lot of other stuff too about God wanting us to be ourselves, not some kind of holy clone; and what being made in the image of God is all about. But I'll try to put down those thoughts more clearly another time.

Caffeine and Christ

I'm still feeling ill after drinking way too much coffee at last night's Conversation. I was still hyped when we got to the pub but started a comedown during the quiz, which wasn't fun: when we got there I put seven or eight names on the picture sheet as soon as I looked at it; by the time we got to the results I didn't care if we won or not, I just wanted to go home and curl up in a ball. Of course when I did get home and go to bed, I still couldn't sleep for hours.

Had an interesting few moments during Conversation, when PV asked me how I thought my talk had gone, and other people around the table shared what they thought of it - or more specifically what it had been about. I know that people never hear exactly what I think I'm saying - on account of them not being me - and I'm sure that God uses what I say in order to push different people in different directions, but it was a shock to hear not only what people thought I'd said, but how they had made changes in response to it. A real "the medium is the message" moment: just because I was standing at the front, people attributed more importance to my words than I expected them to. PV also mentioned that he wants the new curate to do some "sermon training" with me, Si V, Jon Kitching and Anthony Scammell, which I think I feel enthusiastic about: at least I feel moderately enthusiastic about the chance to learn some stuff and try it out in practice, though less enthusiastic about the time commitment.

There's also a nagging worry for me that this is a big temptation to fall into Pride; another chance to start thinking how amazingly good I am at doing stuff for God: I know it's a very short step from there to doing stuff for me and my benefit. Being high on caffeine is a bit like being drunk, in that it does bring out the less nice side of me, and I suspect that I was coming across last night as more than a bit opinionated; I certainly think I was saying stuff that would make people think I was clever rather than help people to feel I was listening to them and trying to join them where they were.

At the moment my feeling is that if I can be brave enough and unselfish enough to genuinely give myself and my life to Christ, then he will help me to become who I am, far better than if I try to change myself. And if I truly become myself in Christ by relinquishing all claim on my own life, then (and only then) can I genuinely and effectively use who I am to serve God and others without being afraid that I'm still a spoilt child shoulting "Look at me! Look at me!"

Twelfth Night

So it's Saturday morning, it's pouring with rain, I've taken Rachel to dancing and Daniel to Winchester and now I'm putting off taking down the Christmas decorations for another year. It doesn't matter that I know the point of a celebration is that it is a marker, a defined point in time to note transition or difference, or that the reason that we are very traditional and have don't decorate until Christmas Eve and then take them down for Twelfth Night is because we want to celebrate Christmas at Christmas, not celebrate during Advent and then give up and act as though it doesn't matter as soon as we go back to work or school; I still hate taking down the Christmas decorations and having the house looking suddenly bare and plain and... ordinary.

I guess that that's part of the meaning of Christmas for christians: it's really easy to get excited about the Incarnation, about the possibility of Christ being born into our lives, about the promise of new life in him, just as it's easy to get excited about the birth of any baby. And just as with any baby, for the first couple of weeks there's a sense of amazement, of wonder; but wonder wears off and life becomes sleepless nights and nappy changing and feeding, and we have to make a conscious effort to look at our children and think "You are an amazing thing: a completely separate life that somehow I helped to make".

So here's a Twelfth Night challenge: to take down the decorations, to end the celebration of birth, but to keep hold of the wonder, and daily to see Christ present in our sometimes bare and plain and ordinary lives.

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping for a good 2007, with a clear idea of what God wants us to do, and enough grace and courage to do it!

Had a nice little get-together last night, Amanda and Alex and Ellie came round with their respective children and though I had a moment of grumpiness when I was being sober and setting off fireworks that nobody seemed bothered about while everyone else was drinking and/or doing something warmer and more fun, I managed to get over it and just enjoyed being with people to watch Big Ben striking on BBC1 and set off party poppers. Thankfully nobody was interested in the usually obligatory round of kissing everyone else (and there wasn't even a suggestion of singing "Auld Lang Syne" - possibly because we were watching the London fireworks for 10 mins). Of course I completely forget to take any photos or video. Duh!

Church life

What with Christmas and everything I never got around to blogging about the fact that before Christmas I went and met with Peter V to talk about how the church can mark the anniversary of the abolition of slavery (which was very positive - the theme for Lent will be "setting captives free" with a focus on modern slavery on 25th March) and he asked me not only if I would be willing to do a couple of the talks on the forthcoming Alpha Course, but also if I would lead on setting up something for the fourth Sunday in each month that he wants to call Conversation. I feel really excited about this - I think (hope) it is a chance collaboratively as a church to work out ways of applying the Gospel in the "real world"; I'd love to develop something peer-driven that discusses issues that people bring and creates space for people to allow God to speak to them. I need to get a couple of people together, so that it is (a) clearly not my project, which is really important for me, and (b) to help make sure that the ethos stays collaborative and peer-driven rather than directive or hierarchical. I'd really like to start this at the end of January but we'll see - probably better to start with something thought-through in March than rely on enthusiasm alone and then struggle.

Life begins at 6.30am

I had a nice day yesterday, played on the computer for a bit (Benjamin bought me Might and Magic IX, but I want to complete the last level of M&M VIII first, so I have a few more monsters to kill and some odd levers and locked doors to try and sort out), had a haircut, had an excellent bacon and brie baguette at the the bakery in Park Gate, did a little light shopping and then came home for birthday tea. Once the younger children had gone to bed we started watching Munich but by about 10.30 we were too tired and turned it off. The only disappointment of the day was that Daniel's laptop came back from Medion with the screen working but with no wireless connection and with a return of the old problem that the battery won't charge from the mains. (I never did get a reply to my complaint.) I went out and bought a new Netgear wireless card which also failed to work. There seems to be a conflict between the Netgear software and the standard Windows wireless networking setup (huge thanks to Alex, who came for birthday cake and then spent ages trying to sort this for me), despite not having a problem with a Netgear wireless PC card elsewhere on my network. In the end I gave up, and we may resort to Daniel checking there's nothing on there he wouldn't want to lose, and then we'll try restoring the factory settings. If that makes the software work, we'll look at the prices of new batteries; if not, we'll have an expensive paperweight.

Anyway, I'm trying to get into the habit of treating each day as a gift from God, a fresh start and chance to do things well. I doubt I'll succeed fully every day, but it's worth a try. And I have my first session with the hypnotherapist today, so it seems like a good time to embrace the possibility of change.

Thirtysomething

Today is my last day of being thirtyanything; I don't feel quite as bad as I did but I'm still feeling kind of hopeless and what's-the-pointish. I'm at work today, having had two days off with stomach cramps and diarrhoea, and I'm looking at all the various stuff I've got to do and thinking how little I care about it. I'm sure that I can talk myself into seeing that doing these things will be useful for someone; it's just that my main (or only) motivation is to not get sacked because we need the money. I'm not sure how long it's possible to sustain working in a job that (a) I don't care about and (b) makes me feel physically sick with anxiety when I come into the building. I had a plan to try and earn money from creative writing, and once I had found someone who would pay me, to give up some hours in this job to have more time to write, etc; unfortunately I'm too busy/tired/miserable to get on with the writing, meaning that that plan may be a non-starter.

I'm going to see a hypnotherapist on Friday, who was recommended by my chiropractor; we'll see if his optimism is justified - he reckons he can have me feeling more positive in 5 or 6 sessions. Maybe just getting past the 40 barrier tomorrow will help; I've got a list of things I'd like to achieve, though I'm struggling to believe that I'll ever turn them from "things I'd like to do" to "things I've done".