Alone. You create a conversation.
To make intangible, tangible.
It’s your life.
Word after word after word.
Hoping the pages catch fire.
Hopefully…
Match after match.
Lit.
But not lighting.

You have to ask questions that no one will ask.
You have to see how no else sees.
You have to risk comfort to define the uncomfortable.
You have to fall to your knees, when everyone’s standing.
You have to get on tippy-toe, when everyone’s taking cover.
You have to go there, not knowing where there is.
You have to write and write and write
Only to delete and delete and delete.

Progress not in pages.
But in sparks.
Each match that burns,
Each word that falls flat.
Taking you closer.

To that sentence that smolders.
That paragraph that begins to catch.
The page that people will truly see.
The piece that changes something…
In you.
And in those who read.

Because they’ve seen the spark.
They’ve felt the same heat.
They’ve had the same thirst.
You give them a glass of water.

Your fingers burnt and blistered.
In pockets.
Only you know.
Hundreds of used matches.
One catches fire.

IF YOU’RE A TWENTYSOMETHING, chances are you’ve had a terrible job (or two), (or three), (or four….)

Before I graduated college, I made fun of all those unfortunate twentysomethings working in lifeless, listless, and pointless jobs.

Until that unfortunate twentysomething was me.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Completely assured that the red carpet would precede and direct all my steps, I thought the only problem after college would be picking which amazing job offer I took. Like five popular girls all asking me to go to prom. Unfortunately, like high school, all those amazing opportunities somehow lost my number.

CALL CENTER CRISIS

The only difference between Hell and a Call Center is the phones. (Unless the devil is sporting a cell these days).

At 7:00 am my day on the phone would begin. And like clockwork, an angry New Yorker would be on the other line.Yelling at me for their internet problems, the cold weather, and their failed marriage.

“Sir, I’m not sure how your Internet account as anything to do with your wife cheating on you…”

Wading through a pool of expletives, I’d solve their account problems, fix their marriage, and type notes in the system all at the same time.  Because once I hung up, the phone would start ringing again – an irate Bostonian just waiting to take out their hour hold time, on the most obvious choice.

For eight straight hours, five days a week, this was my life – the phone my mortal enemy.

TIMED BATHROOM BREAKS

To make things even better, every second at the job was timed. From lunch to going to the bathroom. A matter of minutes, making the difference between an excellent employee and a poor one.

An excellent employee shows up to work on time every day. An average employee shows up 1-4 minutes late. A poor employee shows up 5 minutes late or more. In our eyes, that’s just as bad as not showing up at all. Do it more than twice and you’ll be fired.

An excellent employee spends 2 to 4.6 minutes in the bathroom a day. An average employee spends 4.6 to 7.2 minutes in the bathroom. And a poor employee spends 7.2 or above.

They literally broke down bathroom breaks into decimals! I couldn’t eat Mexican food anymore, because a lengthy trip to the loo could’ve cost me my job.

TWENTYSOMETHING TERRIBLE JOB CONTEST

A call-center is definitely one of my twentysomething terrible jobs. What’s yours?  Please share. Let’s see who takes the prize. Those pointless jobs definitely feel much more meaningful, when you can laugh at them later.

As I walked through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, nothing seemed paradoxical at all. The grandeur of the place was almost overwhelming: the trees, scents, waterfalls, and landscape all seemingly imported from another world. As I walked through paths like a child discovering colors, I could not imagine a much more beautiful place.

That was, until I went to the restroom.

Ripe and blossoming with stench, it appeared men had closed their eyes and starting spinning just as they started to do their thing. It was like Dodgers Stadium had made a deal and traded one of its restrooms to Golden Gate Park for a couple palm trees. Why is it at the most beautiful places, sometimes have the most disgusting bathrooms?

Taken back by the sharp contrast, I hurried to the nearest flowerbed to fill my senses again with all that is good. As I looked down, I was surprised by another paradox.

Surrounded by serenity, apparently immorality still existed.

PARADOX

As I walked through this park of paradoxes, I started thinking that if filth can exist amongst such beauty, than the flip-side must also be true: beauty must also be found in the ugly. In those moments that seem so dark and dingy, there must be glimmers of light, if we choose to look for them. In the trash heaps, flowers must grow.

Beauty and filth never exist void of the other. There is beauty all around us. And there is ugliness. There is healing. And there is pain. Manure is poured all around so that a garden can grow. Death and life can be seen in the same plant, on the same day. The choice is up to us which we’ll choose to see.

And I think; we need to see both. In this paradox of paradise that we call Earth, we can’t hide our eyes from either side. Because  both the beauty and the ugly are real, and both have something to teach us. Each side declares something about redemption, in their own way. The dirty bathrooms and the blossoming flowers.

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”  ~ Fredrick Buechner

Are you so bent on self-improvement that you forget about the parts that are already improved? I know I do. If we are going to be truly honest with ourselves, we must put both our weaknesses under the microscope, as well as our strengths.

Sounds easy enough? Well, where do you excel the most? Are you utilizing these strengths at work? At home?

As I began to wrestle with these questions, I realized I knew less about what I was good at, then where I was lousy. Weird. You would think knowing what you are talented at, and then building upon those talents would be as simple and straightforward as a chef baking a pie. But how many of us must give ourselves permission to be truly talented at something? We spend so much time trying to bring that “D” up in math, we forget about the “A” in English.

“Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of the person’s greatest strength” (Marcus Buckingham).

We must extend credit to ourselves where credit is due, than take time to build on those talents. It is in those places where we already feel the most apt, that we will actually approve upon the most and be able to make the biggest contributions. It is also in those places where your actions will make you feel the most alive. Instead of consistently beating ourselves up for where we fall short, what if we consistently built upon a strong foundation laying right in front of us.

“Building on your strengths isn’t necessarily about ego. It is about responsibility” (Marcus Buckingham).

Growing up in a Christian subculture where there is much more emphasis placed on being sufficiently cloaked in humility, it is hard to train myself that it is all right to build on my strengths. I think many Christians, myself included, immerse ourselves in a false-humility where we feel like we should never feel too good about ourselves, lest we be judged.

God has made me very specifically though, with distinct strengths and talents. Therefore, by failing to build on what he has given, am I not then failing to worship him by best utilizing his design?

Only by operating out of authentic personal being will I be able to offer sustaining, nourishing substance to others, as well as myself.

So what are my strengths? What are your strengths?

Be honest with yourself – the bad as well as the good. It’s freeing.

What is vocation? What is calling? Both are such broad terms they could fill an entire canvass with a faint beige – you know it’s there, but can’t really see it.

I really struggled out of college trying to find my “calling” and my life’s vocation, a search that kept ending in frustration and dead-ends. It seemed my calling was a box full of jagged puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together.

But over the course of this last year, now four years since I walked that graduation stage, I’m realizing that “vocation does not come from willfulness, it comes from listening” (Parker Palmer). Vocation comes from understanding what the everyday details of our lives are shouting. Vocation is so much larger than a job, more complex than a title, more intrinsic than a name that someone else gives us. Vocation is not based on a job, it is based on our deeply rooted identity; on a specific name that was woven into the fabric of our being from before we were even a blip on our mother’s radar (Jeremiah 1:15).

CALLING AND VOCATION DEFINED

To live our vocation, is to live an intrinsic calling that transcends circumstance. “Experiencing and living by a calling provides a fundamental orientation to everyday life” (Banks and Stephens). We must reorient our ideas that calling is only met through a specific activity or role in this world. Our calling will include roles and activities, yes, but it is so much greater, fuller, and richer. Calling and vocation is your entire life, not just a portion of it.

Fulfilling our callings does not need to be grandiose to be worth meeting. It does not need to be saving millions of lives to be worthy of our efforts. The best-served vocation is simply where “your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets” (Buechner). A simple definition, yet so complex in this increasingly changing and moving world.

To begin down the path of vocation we must begin by asking the right questions of ourselves, to discover the right answers. We must tell ourselves the truth of whom we are, and who we are not, if we are to live out the freeing reality of our true life’s vocation. A job can’t answer these questions for you or me.

MY LIFE’S CALLING

Therefore here’s my calling. To be a man who lives with passion from his passion, inhaling God’s breath to breathe into others through my words, my writing, my leadership, my influence, my time, my resources, my prayers, and my whole being; a breath as powerful and life-giving as giving someone mouth to mouth.

In whatever job, no matter how mundane or grandiose, in whatever niche I occupy on this Earth, this is my calling.

What’s your calling?

Any ideas?

Don’t think it’s possible?

Well have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam on the highway and wondered, gosh there must be a faster way?

Ever seen a homeless person on the corner street and wished you could do more than just give him a couple bucks and wish him luck?

Well then you my friend are the perfect candidate to take part in my new business/non-profit called Homeless Pool.

Last week, I paved the way to fame and fortune by cornering a very lucrative market of Holiday music, as I introduced the rockingest Thanksgiving Jingle this side of the Macy’s day parade. This week I’m completely outdoing myself by solving, oh just two little problems you might have heard of: Homelessness and Traffic.

Paul, what’s Homeless Pool and how does it fix my traffic and homeless problems?

First, great question. Second, let me tell you.

Homeless Pool is a service that pairs weekday drivers with local homeless people, creating a carpool literally forged from heaven.

HOW HOMELESS POOL WORKS

For a small monthly fee, you will have an assigned homeless person waiting for you every morning at your front door, ready to ride with you to your job. With your trusted companion sitting in your front seat, now you can watch that Red Sea part as you cruise down a magical piece of pavement called the carpool lane. Wave to all those selfish-single-suckers stuck in the freeway parking lot, as you and your homeless person laugh and drive all the way downtown.

When you arrive at work, your homeless person will spend there day outside surrounded by businesses, making their panhandling much more lucrative and then be back to the car by 5:00. Also, your homeless traveling companion will be paid quite handsomely by Homeless Pool. Thereby, allowing the homeless to work while you drive to work.

SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

It’s not. And apart from the financial and traffic-splitting benefits, imagine how both the business man and homeless man will benefit in so many more important ways as their relationship blossoms;  conversations enriching and teaching both sides. Lives will literally be changed, whilst in transit.

Homeless Pool – Say no to traffic. Say no to homelessness. Say yes, to changing lives.

If you want to sign up,  let me know in the comments below.

The problem is, I just don’t want to do spend all that time and effort to make rich and famous happen. Maybe you like working 80 hours a week, climbing the ladder, selling your soul, yada-yada-yada. But not me.

So here’s the beginning of my Top Three Easiest Ways to be on the Fast Track to Fame and Fortunes.

And since it’s the day before Thanksgiving, I thought I’d start with a hit-rich-quick idea, fit for the season.

RICH AND FAMOUS IDEA: WRITE ONE CATCHY THANKSGIVING JINGLE

The Christmas market is saturated. But where are the November tunes? We have to listen to I’ll be Home for Christmas as we drive home in November and it just isn’t right.

Where are the weeks worth of songs, preparing our hearts, minds, souls, and stomachs with the Thanksgiving spirit? We just haphazardly stumble into this blessed day without any soundtrack, which doesn’t give us, the dead turkey who sacrificed himself, or the Pilgrims, due justice.

We need Thanksgiving carols.

That’s when we step in. All we need to do is just write one song, one revolutionary Thanksgiving masterpiece and we’d have the whole market. Then we could just sit back – drumstick in hand, and watch the royalties role in every November, for life.

THANKSGIVING LIFE-SAVING

So here’s one I’m working on one right now. I call it Thanksgiving Life-Saving. It’s going to be HUGE.

Here it goes.

“There was these Pilgrims. They were all starving. They saw all these natives. And watched them all harvesting…

Major guitar build up…

Oh..Oh…Oh…

Can we eat some of your crops.

Oh…Oh…Oh…

Could we form some sort of co-op.

Oh…Oh…Oh…

We have blankets, we have guns.

Oh…Oh…Oh…

Joining together will be so much funs.

Guitar…Guitar…

Violin…violin…Oh wait…more violin….It’s raining violin…where did we get all this violin…

Drums…Crescendo..Cymbals…Cymbals…Cymbals…Done!

What do you guys think?

I became Invisible.

As we walked hand and hand down the aisle – minute one into forever, all eyes were on my new-found-wife for countless, no-need-to-explain, reasons. I could’ve ripped off my tuxedo to reveal nothing but a radioactive-green Speedo, as I rode back down the aisle on a goat that was being lead by a clown on stilts. And other than the wedding photo that accidentally caught half a goat’s head, I could’ve gotten away with it easy.

GUYS, YOU HAVE THE POWER TOO

Walk around a mall, park, carnival, rodeo, or retirement home with your significant other, pass by other couples and just watch to see where their eyes go.

The other guy approaching, sure isn’t going to notice you. No way. The only time he’ll even catch a glimpse, is as he tries to calculate how an Invisible Schmuck like you, somehow got a beauty like her.

But the approaching girl won’t see you either. No they’re checking out your girlfriend as well, making quick calculations in their head of whether or not they think they are better looking, and most importantly, better dressed.

GIRLS, REALLY DON’T SPEND ALL THAT TIME FOR MEN

This whole time I thought girls spent hours getting ready to impress us guys. So it just never made sense why a girl had to paint her toenails so diligently or curl her hair with such precision, as I’ve yet to meet a guy who couldn’t stop talking about a girl’s freshly purpled toenails.

But now I understand why women take so long. It’s not about impressing us men – that doesn’t take much. No, it’s really about surviving the stares of their own kind.

A Friday night for a woman is like being front and center at Broadway play, with an audience full of female critiques salivating to point out obvious blunders in your outfit. One wrong shoe/jean combination and there will be terrible reviews going out across the city.

MARRIAGE IS WONDERFUL

I love my wife. I love marriage. And I love my new super-power. It sure makes getting ready easy, when you know, no one’s going to see you.

____

Guys, anyone else notice this super-power? Girls any disagreements? Any other super-powers relationships have given you?

Have you ever walked into your office and your co-workers are just so excited it’s Monday they’re skipping through the halls like seven-year-olds at a chocolate factory? 

Yeah...me neither. If my 8:00 AM was met with Monday morning praises ringing through our halls, I’d probably be wondering what every body was really putting in their coffee mug.

MONDAY’S TRACK RECORD

When I was twelve years old (and not exactly fond of middle school) those last fleeting hours of Sunday felt incredibly nauseating; like I was eating five Big Mac’s while simultaneously riding on a Tilt-o-Wheel.

Since I’ve joined the World of Employeedom, many Monday’s have been met with that same 12-year-old-I’m-going-throw-up, feeling. But not all.

Some Monday’s have been met with  ambivalence. Other Monday’s anxiety, some annoyance,  and then some with a true sense of fulfillment and excitement.

However, if I had to make a five-year tally of where Monday stood, I’d say I’ve had many more Office Space Monday’s than not. 

I mean come on, I haven’t seen people clamoring to join the I Love Monday Facebook group. Monday morning is rarely anyone’s best friend, companion, or even estranged acquaintance.  Instead, for most of us, it seems Monday is a mortal enemy who delights in tormenting with it’s start-of-the-week pain. No matter how hard you try to escape its clutches or cover your tracks, Monday finds you every single time.

MONDAY, WHY DO YOU MAKE ME FEEL THE WAY I DO?

Now is my lack of Monday morning excitement just a case of a bad attitude, or is it the fact that my Monday, than Tuesday, etc, etc, is not fully what I want to be doing with my life? While I know there’s many Monday’s I have chosen to make terrible, I also think how a person feels on this special day is a pretty accurate signifier on whether or not their job is aligning with their life’s strengths, dreams, and goals.  

THRILLED IT’S  MONDAY

I mean what if you and I lived in this crazy world where our Monday’s were met with sheer excitement? What if our job was so deeply fulfilling that on Sunday we could hardly wait to go to bed, just so Monday could arrive?

While this kind of Monday anticipation might seem a little unbelievable, I want my Monday’s to be met with unbridled expectation. Not a superficial feeling that I have to talk myself into, but a deep knowing that each Monday is a readily open door to my purpose.

Monday should be the next step, a hill worth climbing, not this sinking, inescapable pit. 

HERE’S TO MONDAY

While I understand that no matter how fulfilling my job, there will always be those Monday’s when my snooze button is set on perpetual repeat.

And I understand that no matter the circumstance, each of us has a certain amount of choice to make Monday something to dread or to anticipate.

However, I truly believe that if we were truly walking out our life’s purpose, Monday would be the most anticipated day of our week. And that’s my goal. Anyone with me? 

____

On the scale from 1 to Nauseous, how do you feel most Mondays?

Is the possibility of Monday being the most anticipated day of your week a fool’s dream or an already realized actuality?

You know the movie scene when the alien spaceship is hovering over the city and the two neighbors come outside and see it for the first time.

Fred the accountant, drops his jaw along with his mail. William the chef, his coffee cup – mid-sip.

Then they both just slowly look across their front yards at each other, neither of them saying a word. But you can almost hear their minds, hearts, souls, vital organs – every thing letting out a collective scream of “Holyyyyyy Shhiiiiii…..”

ESCAPE PLAN

Fred, goes into fetal mode. He grabs his wife, two kids, tax documents (remember he’s an accountant)  and hides under their king-size bed, hoping alien lasers can’t penetrate goose down comforters.

William, on the other hand, goes frantic. He grabs his two dogs, three guinea pigs, and parakeet named Tweeter and starts running down the road – bird cage in one hand, guinea pigs in the other.

And watching from your movie theater seat, you nervously fidget. Hiding under the bed or trying to outrun an alien ship equipped with thirty rockets, is obviously not going to lead to a happy ending.

But you like these guys and you really want them both to live, so to the embarrassment of your friends you yell quite loudly, “C’mon guys! Neither one of you is going to make it. Figure out a Plan B!”

OUR ALIEN SHIP

Doesn’t it kind of feel like there’s an alien spacecraft hovering over us right now? The economy, lay-offs, foreclosures, hiring freezes, and scandals all seem to be little spacecrafts, sent from the gigantic, looming, Mothership of Terror that we can’t even see, but can sure feel it’s shadow.

As the alien ships feel closer and every one starts boarding up their windows to survive until morning, I know I have gone back and forth between the frantic and fetal. From sprinting circles around my living room, screaming inaudibly. To hiding under my bed, sucking on a pacifier of this is not happening, this is not happening.

I either lie on the couch watching reruns of Friends, finding extreme enjoyment in all their problems being wrapped up nice and tidy in exactly twenty-four minutes.

Or I’m hearing about the newest woes of the economy on CNN, while sporadically checking my bank account, tapping my computer screen where my balance should be hoping that my finger can awaken the comatose finances that are sick and anemic.

This fear becomes suffocating and overwhelming. It either tranquilizes me to do absolutely nothing, or gives me an adrenaline/anxiety rush to try and do every thing at once. Both reactions making me the idiot who’s probably not going to make it.

OUR AUDIENCE

I wonder if God’s out in the theater seats, eating a big bag of popcorn, shaking his head and yelling at his screen, “C’mon Paul, the fetal and the frantic are not going to work. It’s time for Plan B! The whole trusting and depending on ME thing.”

Well as I look up at the alien spacecraft, with it’s death lasers set to start disintegrating in

T-minus…10…9…8…7…

God help! I choose Plan B. I choose Plan B.