Sunday, August 10, 2008

New Job, Olympics & Friends Lost


Hehe... I caught my hubby in the middle of our endless weekend work. He's so cute :)

Sorry for the delay in posts... I began a new job as marketing director for a rather large regional builder and started last Monday. Maybe I wasn't using my brain to it's fullest capacity, because when you step into a fast paced world after being "comfortable" your head tends to hurt-- if you know what I mean. Meetings, information overload, feeling helpless because you're not set up yet-- by this I mean I'm in a temporary office until they build my suite (yes, it's going to be pretty cool), my computer (a Mac of course) was ordered, but not shipped yet, and the network files are not accessible without my computer!

So, Monday my brain went out on me about noon, Tuesday 1pm (insert Advil consumption here), Wednesday 2pm (and here), Thursday 3pm (and here) and by Friday it didn't matter because it was Friday! It's funny because in a position like this you have plans to move into the company, preview internal and external variables, research some of it's past marketing history, what's working, what's not...etc. However, by the third day I had over 50 emails of information, marketing requests, suggestions...etc. In a perfect world, I would have time to wrap my hands around everything and smoothly begin working on my new plan for the company. But, God obviously did not make this a perfect world so I am happily knee deep already! Nonetheless, I am absolutely loving it.

Anyway, wasn't the Olympic Opening Ceremonies amazing? I might have been dead to the world Friday evening after "hurt head week" but I was blown away by the Olympic production and the hard work that went into such an incredible performance. I was sweating at the thought of putting something like that together-- being in marketing-- and Kyle was hoping he'd get the chance someday to take on that feat. Funny how two people differently view the same thing.

Lastly, I say "friends lost" in my blog title because I mean that in two different ways. I will list them chronologically: First, Kyle and I, in our side business, picked up a client who was also a good friend. Unfortunately, you can never predict these things will turn out badly. But, things did go south with our friend/client. I guess we learned our lesson that "you can make friends out of clients, but not clients out of friends." We will be taking that to heart moving forward and be a little smarter about choosing who we work with or take on as clients in the future.

Secondly, I heard last night that one of my good girlfriends from high school died on Saturday evening. An accident at a family gathering. It's tough living 2000 miles away from old friends. It makes attending funerals difficult and impossible during new employment.

Our church is doing a 4-week series titled "You're dead so now what?" Last week was pretty good because it talked about your body and soul separating. This week, however, our pastor discussed Hell.

Not knowing whether or not my friend had excepted Christ is something I'm struggling with right now. To know I could have done something long ago to prevent an eternal life of torment is hard to swallow. Since I can only move forward with those thoughts-- I'm hoping I can change my daily views more in the direction of an "eternal perspective," as our pastor stated. Because, as far as I'm concerned, everyone I come in contact with will know where my heart stands and where I pray theirs stands too.

As a side note, if you'd like to check out our church's message on "You're Dead So Now What?" The video message Kyle and I watch can be viewed at LifeChurch.tv. Happy watching!