Can’t Sleep

Well, I woke up about 3:30am and haven’t been able to get back to sleep. I prayed for over an hour for the church plant team, all my friends and my immediate family, as well as myself. And I listened quietly, didn’t get much of a response and I didn’t fall asleep, so I’m up. I’m working on my resume, which is interesting. Professional resumes are different than student ones. I hadn’t thought much about that until now. On the upside this makes it a little easier to push my good side, while downplaying my bad. I’m eliminating all my stuff about school except a line that says I graduated recently from U of I w/ a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering. I’m cranking up the last two jobs I have…passing one of them off as a small scale manufacturing job (Dan’s idea, not mine) and moving a bunch of stuff below that. The best looking resume examples I’ve seen online look like that, so that is what I’m going for…emphasizing the work experience….de-emphasizing the GPA. I might put mine online after I finish it, which might be later this morning.

My Dad just left too, kinda weird. He called me yesterday and said “hey, I just got back into the states, is it OK if I stay at your house tonight, I’ll take you out to dinner.” I of course replied yes, I would have let him stay without the dinner, so I was thinking bonus (we went to outback just outside of St. Paul, and Lauren invited the waitress to our church…but that is another story and I’ll let her tell it). He showed up with a guy named Ken Couch (sp?). He is another pastor from the Illinois Great Rivers conference, and he had just spent the week with my Dad fishing in Canada. Apparently I know his daughter Grace, who is Kameryn’s best friend, and Kameryn is Scott’s sister. Small world. So that is cool. It was nice having Dad stop in and see the place. He seemed to like it, and he prayed over the house with us last night, which was totally cool.

My cousin Dan called me today and gave me some contact info to hopefully get me in the door at IBM. No promises, but they have stuff all over the place around here. I’m not sure how much manufacturing, but at least I have a guy who is willing to circulate my resume inside IBM. He lives in Rochester (at least an hour…probably an hour and a half in traffic) and works there too, so if I got a job out that way it would be a good commute, but do-able. I still need to call my Grandma and get her sister and brothers numbers. They both live in the area, and they wanted to get in touch with me sometime. My great uncle Paul (grandma’s brother) apparently owns an 8 million dollar house on some lake around here, and my great aunt Jane has a son-in-law that does recruiting for some engineering places. So that might work out in my favor as well.

I’m extremely happy I tried this free Ipod thing. Not just because of the free Ipod, but because we tried out this blockbuster thing where they mail you DVDs in little envelopes that have return postage paid on them. It is sweet. They mail you three from a list you pick, then you just drop them back in the mail, and when they get them back you get the next three on your list. And this costs $20 after the two week trial is up, which is a pretty good deal considering there are no late fees. I guess some companies are figuring out that paying on a consumption basis isn’t what the consumer is asking for (I’m looking at you RIAA and MPAA…not to mention the people hounding the makers of TiVo and ReplayTV). Rhapsody, OnDemand cable, and this blockbuster thing are the wave of the future my friends….wave of the future. You can either get onboard now, or spend a lot of money lobbying and fighting the same progress in technology that got you where you are today and loose. It is inevitable, sooner or later you will realize the hackers will always win this, until you change your buisness model. Stupid record companies. Anyway, I need people for the flatscreen one because I have a tiny 13 inch TV and it sux…I would have signed up for this first since it is more important, but I found out about it later. So if you are even remotely interested in the blockbuster thing, give it a quick shot. (the blockbuster thing even has TV shows on DVD available on the site…thats right all you buffy/24/westwing/alias fans….tv shows on DVD w/ no late fees)

Jeff has been giving some great talks lately. Lauren and I are very impressed. It is great to follow a guy who has vision that I can get ahold of. Sometimes people have vision, and it is good, but I can’t catch on to it. Plus, my view of upper level leadership in the church is a leader who gives the people under him vision. He has been talking about some great stuff, and his prayer life is way up right now, so it sounds totally in tune with where we all need to be, and the vision he is laying out sounds like the vision I want for myself and the people I’ll end up leading. It is way cool. One of the really neat, but simple, ideas he has been giving us is that if we pray a lot, and really seek to be changed by God, then sooner or later our will, will become what Gods will is. Our dreams will become Gods dreams. There is a freedom in doing what you want, and having God say, “yeah, that is what I want.” Of course this could get out of hand and this is the sort of good idea that can lead to bad things, but people are around to keep eachother in check, so I’m not too worried about it. Also, thinking about my expectations for myself and anyone I’m training to lead, I’m starting to think that if I expect more, I’ll get more. Like I will work harder to train those people, which will in turn help me grow, which will help other people I’m leading grow…that kind of cycle. Like expecting myself to pray more and voicing that I expect anyone under me who wants to be a leader to pray more…that kind of thing. Anyway, it is an interesting idea. That sort of attitude worked well with our ministry time in our old small group, and I think Dirk and Chris have carried it on after Lauren, James, and I left, and they seem to be growing and doing well again…so that is cool. The only hitch in this is that if I set my expectations much higher than they are now, I wouldn’t have met those expectations when I took over leading a small group. Eh, just a thought…and a nice way of looking at things for now I guess. I’ll worry about it a little more after I have a group to work with.

Well, I’ve written quite enough now…so back to the resume.