Collage: Humility

digital collage by S. King

The collection of photos I found by searching on the word "humility" were, for the most part, not very evocative of that concept. There were a lot of stained glass and illuminated manuscript pictures, a lot of photos of church interiors and showy flowers. Among those, I managed to find three that I thought illustrated humility: a spare jail cell, a wooden figure, and a tree bent down from ice. These photos are by Ben, Saaleha Bamjee, and Saved by Grace.

Right now, spring flowers are just beginning to bloom, but they're still surrounded by winter's dead grass and bare branches. I don't really like the contrast between the beautiful flowers and the ugly, dead winter leftovers. So this piece is a way of trying to pair death with new life, winter with spring, and trying to find beauty in the contrast.

Poem: The Path

Have you ever had one of those times in your life where you can sense that everything around you is changing? Your best friend moves away or your business downsizes or someone close to you dies. The changes snowball as your group of friends stops meeting up, coworkers leave for other jobs, or family traditions end.

How do you find that happy place again? Do you try and restore what's been broken or leave in search of new friends, new work, new traditions? The answer is different in each situation. When I see the changes coming, though, my instinct is usually to hold on to what used to be good, and try to make it into something good again.

Adapted from a photo by Houston Marsh

I have come up
From the green and fertile valley.
Ahead of me I see
A desert wasteland,
Barren
But for the path I walk,
Desolately winding
Through gray rock and dust.
If I stay upon this path
I'll walk a harder road; harder, yes,
Than any I have known before.
It's tempting - I'm tempted
To abandon this journey
Here and now:
Abdicate,
Begin anew somewhere else,
Someplace green and welcoming.
I see the faded footprints
Of those who came before me
And turned aside.
I understand.
But if I do, if I do not
Traverse this desert,
I will forever wonder
Where this path I've chosen might have led.
What miracles may lie
Beyond this dreary road?
I have to know.
I will know.
I take a single step
Forward.

Be Awesome

There are a lot of things I'm good at that I don't necessarily enjoy doing. I'm good at running meetings. I can get along with difficult people. I can troubleshoot IIS and a MySQL database connection.

But if you offered me a job managing a group of sysadmins, for instance, I'd turn you down so fast your head would spin. (Unless you offered me a million dollar salary, in which case I'd do the job for a year, then quit.) I don't want to spend every day mostly doing things I dislike. There's no incentive for me to excel, and I would spend most of every day annoyed.

Recently, some of my coworkers invited me to connect on LinkedIn, so I took the opportunity to update my profile to reflect my current job. I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn from recruiters for jobs that I wouldn't consider unless I were truly desperate. For example, javascript programming jobs with a two-hour commute. I decided to fix my profile so I don't get any more of these messages. I like my current job a lot and don't want to be bothered by any proposal that isn't staggeringly attractive (e.g. the aforementioned million dollar salary).

I went through my list of skills and thought about each one: if this were the only thing I did in my job, would I still want to do it? If I couldn't answer yes, I deleted it. I also deleted things that I can do but am not actually very good at (e.g. public speaking). What remained were the things I am good at and that I want to be good at. Plus javascript, which I left in there because a lot of people had already endorsed me for it.

I want to be awesome at these things. I aspire to do them well, and feel a great sense of accomplishment when I do. These are the things I want to learn more about, the crafts I want to hone, the passions I want to discuss with people who have similar interests. I'm at the point in my life and my career now where I can choose to focus on these skills. Paring down this list was a good reminder of where I need to focus.

I don't need to be good at everything. I just want to be awesome at a few things.

The Formula for Righteousness

Did you know that there's a simple formula for calculating righteousness?

Add together the value of everything you own, plus the amount in your bank account and any investments. Then subtract the amount that you owe, any loans and debts.

If the result is a large number, you are a righteous person! If it is a small number, or even a negative number, you are not.

But, you say, what if the number is small or negative, and you know that you are righteous? How can this be?

There is a simple answer: Someone is interfering with the way things ought to be. Someone is getting between you and the blessings you deserve, and those people MUST BE STOPPED!

Unless...

Unless righteousness is not a number. Unless God's approval is not measured in dollars and cents.

Perhaps a person's wealth or lack thereof has little to do with their character. You can be poor and good, or rich and evil, or vice versa. Maybe wealth isn't a measure of holiness, and material blessings are not all there is worth striving for.

And maybe instead of tearing each other apart, we should lift each other up. Maybe we should reserve our anger for a system that promotes inequality, and a culture that worships greed. Maybe we really should swallow our pride and work together for the good of all.

That would indeed be righteous.

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." - Luke 6:20

My Resolutions for 2013

Perhaps I should also resolve to either get a larger scanner or use smaller drawing paper.

Inspired by the Best and the Worst

photo by Jason Michael

I started reading Brandon Sanderson's new novella, The Emperor's Soul, today. I'm only a few pages in, but already I'm inspired. What if the little signature stamps that the Japanese and Chinese put on everything had magical properties? From that simple premise, Sanderson has built a rich fantasy world, a complete magic system, and a compelling story.

Stories like this make me start looking at the world in a new way. Ideas start fermenting in my head and I can't wait to write them down. This is what the best books and the best authors can do.

However, I am also inspired by the worst books I've read. One I often think back on is James Patterson's Kiss the Girls. It was so terrible that I threw it away after finishing it (Of course I finished it! It was a mystery and I had to know whodunit.). I couldn't in good conscience inflict that book on anyone else by giving it away. His debut novel was a steaming pile of poorly-edited crap, and yet it got made into a big-budget movie and Patterson remains one of the best-selling authors of our time. I don't know whether the rest of his books are any good because I've never been able to bring myself to read one, but if he can start out that badly and end up where he is, there's hope for me, too.