…this happens.

Source image from NASA.

fun, image dump, shenanigans humor, photodump, photoshop

…for the Covenant Eyes blog. For anyone wondering, this blog post subtly summarizes 2011 for me.

I’ve actually done quite a bit of writing over the last year, mostly for work. Since this website was at one point supposed to be a portfolio, I figure I’ll cross-post some of the pieces I’ve written for anyone who’s interested.

So! Since it went live on Monday, here are my thoughts on singleness via my workplace.

4 Reasons Accountability is Critical for Singles

“It is not good for man to be alone.”

If you’re at all familiar with this verse, you’re probably used to hearing it in the context of marriage. Perhaps you’ve heard it in a sermon or during a wedding ceremony.

And if you’re living in prolonged singleness, perhaps every time you hear it, you feel somewhat less-than-sufficient for not having somebody. Or maybe the opposite is true, and you have a sense of smug superiority, and you think to yourself, “Relationships are for other people. Me? I can do it all on my own.”

But this verse is about more than marriage. Nobody, not even those who choose singleness, is ever called to do life alone. Jesus always sent the disciples out in pairs, and Paul always traveled with companions. Or consider James 5:16, which says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.”

In reality, we singles need to stick together. Those of us who live alone are especially vulnerable to temptation simply because there’s nobody there to walk in on us. So whether our temptations are to watch pornography or to waste our lives on TV or video games or to wallow in bitterness over our lack of relationships, accountability is critical for us to continue growing in Christ.

Read the rest…

personal, religion, singleness, site christianity, linkedin, personal stories, religion, weight, work, writing

This is my local grocery store. More to the point, this is the construction blocking my usual parking spot at my local grocery store.

I was…less than thrilled when I saw this, mostly because this work required a change in the flow of traffic, and also because there was no advanced warning. Most construction areas have some sort of sign, advertising the future site of some building or other. Nothing here, though, just signs telling you that all of a sudden the drive is one-way, and lots of fences and confusion. All this on a busy Sunday afternoon when the students are back in town. Needless to say, it was not the most enjoyable shopping trip I’ve ever had.

A friend called just after I finished unloading groceries. She’d had a bad week and, understandably, needed to decompress. (Among other, more personal things, she was forced to switch offices because hers had black mold.) And she asked me how a rather large personal project was going. (The answer? Stressful.)

And after she hung up the phone, I thought about the grocery shopping experience in conjunction with my friend’s and my stress, and thought: “Construction is irritating and inconvenient. But this means improvement follows. Sometimes the outcome is visible; sometimes it’s not. But it often means good things are coming.” Read more…

personal, religion health, linkedin, personal stories, weight

So. First blog post in over a year. Better make it a good one, eh?

One of my workplace’s traditions is a Christmas decorating contest. We’re encouraged to go all out on decorations, and one day at lunch the executive team will wander through the office, freely accepting bribes. The winners receive things like free bagels for the department.

Here’s the thing about our Marketing department. We are a busy, jaded bunch who manage to squeeze in more stuff than we can probably technically handle. We’ve had a surprising number of bonding experiences and enjoy each other a lot, but we also don’t really know how to justify “fun” (e.g. “decorating”) when we really have about 20 things to do within the next 5 hours. Last year we pulled together a last-second haphazard Star Wars Christmas theme (complete with a tree topped with a cutout of the Death Star), but our judges being the wrong kind of nerds, we (deservedly) did not even remotely place. Last year’s winners were our Customer Service Representatives (they completely wrapped their desks or something); our User Experience department for creating an interactive event focused on the execs’ experience; and the Developers, for going with a “We’re Developers” theme and doing things like a Christmas tree made out of Mountain Dew cans.

So how would a marketing department compete with that? Read more…

fun, shenanigans humor, personal stories, work

Context, first: I work for Covenant Eyes in the marketing department. Our big product, for the unaware, is accountability software…basically, once a week, a self-selected accountability partner gets an e-mail with a report on your Internet activity. Originally, this was about calling out pornography, but we’ve been pushing to expand it to Internet dangers in general (i.e. bad use of time, bad interactions online, and bad content). The main goal of this is that you and your partner are supposed to talk about what you’ve been doing online. This is particularly useful for parents, especially of older kids, since it means that the kids can go and do their thing online but the parent can monitor it and engage in discussions about it.

So this post by danah boyd popped up in my RSS feed. Go read it – it’s short – but the gist is that a girl who is forbidden from using Facebook by her parents but uses it anyway has a therapist who (a) lets her use Facebook at her office and (b) actually talks about what she’s doing online. Read more…

society linkedin, social commentary, work

Should I apologize for my utter failure to update this blog? I should probably apologize. The truth is, since I spend all day writing for websites, I have little desire to continue doing so in my free time.

In fact, the main reason I finally broke down to write this post is because it’s 4:00 AM, I have the kind of insomnia that’s curable only by sleeping aids or by solving my problems, and I don’t have my work laptop here to work on the new website.

(“Problem solving” insomnia is my most frequent form. I’ll wake up after 3-4 hours with a problem cycling through my head and be unable to sleep until it is solved. Given that we launch our new website on Monday, I don’t expect to sleep much between then and now.)

So: blogging. Read more…

personal memories, personal stories

I should probably mention that even though the Last Rose was dead, there were new buds already growing. I failed to get a picture, but I think there were four. So already the Last Rose was actually the first, though I persisted in the misnomer.

The Last Rose faded to oblivion on a Wednesday. On Thursday, I read Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? while waiting for the technician to arrive. On Sunday my car died. Long story short, but I did not like the dealer where I took it, so I only had them fix one of the two things that went seriously wrong with it. (It since died again and I got the real problem fixed…another saga for another day, perhaps.)

These things are not why it took me so long to write this post. Read more…

religion personal stories

The problem with blogging (or any hobby, really) is that as soon as it feels like homework, I lose all desire to do it. More posts will come eventually. I promise.

site blogging

The second object lesson from my rose bushes is this: things break.

Of the two rose bushes , the one on the left bloomed first. Seven or eight roses, all at once. The one on the right, meanwhile, only had one bud on it. It finally bloomed as the roses on the left bush were starting to fall apart.

I named it. It was the Last Rose. I greeted it each time I came in or walked out the door. And it was my favorite part of the apartment, especially since that was the week my Internet died.

I wrote the relevant blog post on a Sunday. I lost service the previous Tuesday and didn’t get it back until the following Thursday. Given the fact that the service box was about 300 feet from the Internet Service Provider’s service building, which itself is located right next to my apartment complex, needless to say I’m slightly bitter about the fact that it took so long and so many phone calls to finally get it fixed.

Wednesday was the worst day. By this point I was convinced that I would never get the Internet back and I was going to die a crazy cat lady, alone and unloved. (If something’s going wrong for longer than expected, I have a slight tendency to imagine the absolute worst, whether related to the current situation or not.) This was conviction was strengthened when I looked in the rearview mirror as I pulled into my carport and realized the Last Rose was gone.

It had seemed strong that morning. Definitely starting to wilt, but I didn’t expect it to be…gone.

There is a life cycle, and part of this cycle is death.

Things break.

Uncategorized

One of the side effects of having a lit degree is that I see symbolism in everything. Much of my jewelry has taken on a symbolic nature. Or there’s the fact that I literally did not see a rainbow for four years until just after starting my new job. I could rattle off a ton of examples; instead, the best way to explain it is that a friend of mine once described me as the most superstitious person she knows, “but not in a bad way.” It’s one of those side effects of believing in a divine creator who takes supreme interest in the minutiae.

The story of my last few weeks can be illustrated through my roses. I have a few rose bushes growing right next to my apartment door. Note that I had nothing to do with their existence; in fact, as they weren’t in bloom when I looked at the apartment, I didn’t even realize they existed. Over the last month, they’ve become one of my favorite things about this apartment. At least part of that is because of what I’ve learned from them. Since there’s a surprisingly long list, I plan to write several entries.

Today’s story is tied up with my fridge. I started my lease a week before I was due to move in. The first day of the lease, I did three things. The first was to unpack a very small number of items I had brought with me. The second was to start the inspection process (during which I discovered a major leak in the downstairs bathroom sink). The third was to buy groceries, since I was coming from renting a basement and had very few refrigerated or frozen supplies. With these things done, I left and didn’t return again until Thursday.

My friend Ellen came with me that time. “Ooh, you have roses!” she said. I still hadn’t noticed, though they were probably starting to bud at this point. I gave her a quick tour and, in the process of this, opened the fridge door to reveal that the fridge (which, I could tell, was brand new) had stopped running, ruining everything that was in there. A call to maintenance had me pressing the reset button on the outlet. Fridge running, I left.

I stopped by on Friday again, mostly to drop off sandwich materials for the move the next day. I then discovered that the fridge was no longer working and I couldn’t reset the outlet.

There was a rumble of thunder as I called maintenance. (His solution, for the record, was to run an extension cord to the living room.)

Saturday was the move, followed by the discovery that the pilot light on my gas had burned out, meaning no hot water. Monday I lost water pressure in the kitchen sink. The fridge saga lasted until the following Thursday, when they finally brought me a new fridge. A month and a half later, this one still works, but there are a ton of other minor maintenance issues that I’m just avoiding for the time being.

What does this have to do with my roses?

On Saturday, as I escorted my parents out of the apartment, I happened to look at my rose bushes and discovered a little toad, hiding from the heat among the thorns. I think I sat and watched him do absolutely nothing for a good five minutes. It may have been just a brief pause for him; I haven’t seen him since.

But object lesson 1 is this: There is shelter, even among the thorns.

religion personal stories, roses, symbolism