It was an emotional moment for me, yet I didn’t know how to feel. I was moved by the gesture, but I felt awkward for being the sole recipient. Love, respect, and appreciation wafted with the smell of bread, protein, and dairy; but I didn’t feel like what I love to do needed to be rewarded. In a welcome moment on the horizontal level, I felt something vertical in motion.
I’m flying, floating, then riding a bus to what’s rated as one of the most grueling hikes in North America—a rugged wilderness described by trail alumni on YouTube as a place where nobody escapes a battered body. In fact, the Canadian Coast Guard and Parks Canada medevacs or otherwise rescues up to nine people a week from this stretch of ground—when only 52 people per day are allowed to enter the trail.
When I tell people where I’m going, I get two general responses. The first: “That sounds awesome!” and more often: “Not me. Why would you do that?” For the crowd who fall in that second camp, let me walk you through the reasoning.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw or heard the words social media, my wife and I could go on an international vacation—and I don’t mean Canada. I’m sure the same holds true for you. Websites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are touted as marketing gold mines, the future of advertising, the magic answer for harvesting clients out of thin air.
For the first year since 2004, I didn’t take a week off work this year; and Crystal and I had no vacations together—even a long weekend. So, I had to bring alive a year in which Crystal and I both worked a lot (her cumulatively more than me in terms of both days and hours) and didn’t get a lot of pictures together. I decided to entertain with random knowledge, peripheral touches with our social media streams, and as much as possible about the adventures we did find in the margins.
So, for the last three days, I’ve been talking to God about it, asking for something worthy of John, worthy of his mom, worthy of answered prayer. Today, I interviewed John for an hour about his mom—a woman I’ve never met.
But this week brought a different sentiment to the uninspiring rental car experience. This week, I wasn’t renting a car from a distant airport. This week, I was driving four wheels’ worth of milquetoast on roads I drive everyday.
Hey, I struggle, too—not to judge, not to disparage, not to avoid. I’ve got a long way to go—at least as much as the facelift haters, probably much more. But I know my path toward Christ-likeness doesn’t take me up a ladder with a can of spray paint.
This episode illustrates the power of social media: the ability to engage your clients in conversation, the medium that can humanize your brand—and make your customers and friends want to introduce you to their customers and friends. It’s both schmoozing and feedback, both customer service and brand building, both grassroots initiatives and guerrilla marketing.
The Adjustment Bureau reminded me of a truth that I’ve found throughout my spiritual walk: the omniscient Chairman (of my worldview) had better plans for me than I had for myself.
At some point last autumn, I realized that my shorts were getting in the way. My dysfunctional, insecure psyche was liking the attention my shorts got me. Jacked—I know. When passing greetings revolved around my shorts, they couldn’t be about our guests or about Jesus.
So, how are you adapting your business model to stay relevant to culture?
Hustle is the one thing I can control, the attribute I should be able to consistently offer my team mates.
Jesus left heaven to come to where we are. He didn’t rain post-dated business cards on us. He didn’t ask us to weed through insider jargon to understand he wants us more than he wants justice for our sin. The choice he offers is essentially an ultimatum, but he wants *so much* for us to reciprocate his movement toward us.
Listen to needs, themes, trends. And say something more than, “I’ve got something I want to sell you.”
“God left me here for a reason,” I inserted later into the indelible conversation.
In the fourteen years since English 101, I have discovered my personal voice, the joy in the struggle of the craft, and the wrestling mat where I make sense of the world.
It’s just interesting to me where I and other people draw our differing lines and how those lines seem to sprout into moral boundaries.
Capitalism allows supply and demand to set our prices. But efficiency allows us to set our wages.
I want to chase the God who instantaneously spoke undiscoverable galaxies into being, shrugged his figurative shoulders, and documented it for an eternity of spectators with just, “He made the stars also.”
Somewhere amidst the Hawaiian shirts and bridge-playing fogeys, French-fried buffets and almost-innumerable hand sanitizer dispensers, Crystal and I surrendered to tourism.
I had not challenged myself as I’ve grown the reputation of doing, and we all knew it.
“I was coming to Monterey to see my brother. That’s what I had told everybody.”
There’s something about the pursuit in a safe environment that I find constantly new and oddly addicting.
Today, one of my clients wished me a weekend free of injury, as “me and the boys” tackle the Gauley River marathon: 26+ miles of whitewater with 100 classed rapids, a handful of which are class V or V+. I … Continued
I’m going to stay up here and talk to God until the mosquitos chase me home.