Burning Vapor

Disciplining Myself

“Let me . . . ; remind you that it is only by working with an energy which is almost superhuman and which looks to uninterested spectators like insanity that we can accomplish anything worth the achievement. Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God.”
— Woodrow Wilson

I am, by nature and development, a person who is spontaneous. When I say spontaneity I mean that I love to do things at the last minute, I intentionally procrastinate, I enjoy operating under pressure, I fly by the seat of my pants, I like orderly chaos. There is a certain adrenaline rush that I enjoy when I know that I have a limited amount of time to achieve some result. I often crave it like a runner craves to run or an adrenaline junkie craves jumping out of a plane. For those who have worked with me in the past this will come as no surprise.

During a two week summer camp we were supposed to spend a week at an established camp ground with a group of kids we hadn’t met yet. There were months of planning and preparation for this camp. Team members had raised money, read books, built crafts, and trained for this camp. The camps sewage pumps died and the campground flooded. Our camp was canceled. We could have all gone home at that moment. I was counseled to fold it up and go home. But I thrive off of those types of situations. I love to be told ‘You can’t do this – you might as well quit’. To that I smile, roll up my sleeves and head up the hill. We had our camp that summer because we served a great God, I had a great team, and I live off the adrenaline of last minute crisis.

This same drive pushes me into working three part time jobs. I love working on three different missions, vision and goals. I love working with 3 different sets of people and constantly moving from one issue to another, one goal to the next. I love it! I also love having 7 kids. Life is always changing. Emotions, sports, schedules, and “want to’s” keep me going.

While spontaneity is sought after in some professions and heralded by the younger generation, there can be negatives. Being spontaneous can mean that it is OK to not be orderly, to not discipline yourself. Spontaneity can become an excuse for laziness, chaos, and irresponsibility. I know it, because I have failed in all of those areas and used spontaneity as an excuse. I feel like I have grown in the area, but I always know that it is there. It is a danger for me.

So I want to discipline myself in an area that I don’t ‘have to’. I want to discipline myself in an area that is not required by a job, or my wife or my children. At the same time I love to write. Ben Franklin once said something like ‘To be remembered you need to write something worth remembering or live your life in a way that it is worth writing about’ – that’s loosely quoted from memory, so don’t hold me to it. I have been told that someone could write a book about our lives, so I don’t feel the pressure of writing anything worth remembering. I’m going to discipline myself to blog daily. I’ll go ahead and tell you that I’m going to fail in it. I may intentionally fail in it tomorrow just so that I don’t have the pressure of forgetting to write one day and missing it.

I’m just going to write. Primarily it will be for me and secondarily for you…whoever ‘you’ may be. My writing will cover topics that I am most interested in like family, adoption, orphan care, theology, Gospel, urban renewal and reviews of food, beer and cigars. Of course if you have something that ‘you’ want to discuss we could always do that here as well…or you could get your own blog and have people read it there

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.