EncourageYou!

I've moved to http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/encourageyou

See you there!

This Month's Priorities, listed in no particular order (one of these will be most important at different times):

• Getting work done at the Bakery
• Keeping up with homework for my tax class
• Preparing to teach Sunday School lesson (1st Grade)
• Building relationship with Darling Bride
• Building relationships with children (oldest is halfway to driver's license!)
• Laundry
• Dishes
• Renewing health insurance for another year
• Sleeping

Everything else has to wait until December.

Now that the 2006 baseball season has come and gone without the Chicago White Sox in the playoffs and a chance to win the World Series again, my lifelong favorite sports team is longer the defending champion.

In 2005, MY favorite team was the one who won it all, for the first and perhaps only time in my life. Since then, until now, I've had the joy of seeing the World Series champion logo on their website. Also, the national media would talk about them as champions, not as Chicago's other baseball team. Seeing my guys celebrating on the field and holding the trophy was a thrill I never thought I'd see. In fact, my grandfather, who passed White Sox loyalty onto me, was born the same year the Sox last won, 1917, and he died seeing only one World Series, when the Sox lost to the Dodgers in 1959, at age 42.

Looking back, its been fun to be the winner for a change. Then again, I have a few nagging questions, such as, "Has the White Sox World Series championship helped me be a better person?" By extension, I wonder how me being a sports fan improves my quality of life and the lives I touch every day.

Sure, I've been happier, on occasion, and have had some pride, and a sense of loyalty and accomplishment, sometimes, but what is the correlation between the team I like being a champion and ME being a champion in life?

As it turns out, I can't figure out how this has made me a better husband, father, son, brother, businessman, neighbor, Sunday School teacher, churchgoer, follower of Jesus, or manager of my households finances.

In fact, I'm poorer now because I've bought jerseys, DVDs, and caps. One day I went to buy a White Sox cap, and I had to get caps for my son and daughter. So now I have a $60 White Sox cap, retail value $19.99

Maybe it is time to turn off the TV, turn off sports radio, quit my fantasy league, and spend that time with my wife, children, job, and Lord. Time is short, and there are people to love and encourage, work to be done, and real, substantitive joy to be discovered.

Goodbye sports, and hello real world. Sorry to keep you waiting.

OK, I admit, I like doing taxes. Some people like to do crossword puzzles, some people like to do those Sudoku puzzles, some people like extreme sports, I like taxes. It's like a puzzle, in a way. The basic formula for a tax return is this:

What you really earned

minus

What you earned but don't have to pay taxes on

minus

deductions everybody gets to take

minus

other deductions and exemptions

equals what you pay taxes on.

At the end of the year, the difference between what you owe and what you've already paid is what your refund is or what you still owe.

So what does this have to do with anything? I suppose that we all have different strengths and interests, and even if your particular strenghts and interests make you a little weird, surely you can help and encourage somebody along the way.

This week our home's pet population decreased by two as our parakeets found a new home. We've downsized our homeforce from 5 people, 1 cat, 7 fish, and 2 parakeets to 5 people, 1 cat, and 1 fish. Just goes to show that our parents are right, we like pets, but we lose interest in them after a while.

Sadly, people often lose interest in other people the same way. Friendships, marriages, and whole families dissolve because the interest is lost. Too bad.

Fortunately, God does not lose interest in us, even though we often lose interest in Him. It's easy to do, even to the creator of the Universe, because He is unseen (although His creation is not).

I need to work on building and maintaining my relationships. Not easy for a task oriented person like me.

This week I finished a Fantasy Camp for Certified Public Accountants. CPA Fantasy Camp is when a very smart but average guy like me gets to interview at a top 10 CPA firm. To better understand what I'm trying to explain, here's a little compare/contrast:

Think of sports fantasy camps. You get to go to sort of like a vacation, wear an authentic team uniform, and hang out with cool atheletes who are much better than you. In CPA Fantasy Camp, I got to wear a real accountant's uniform, including the white shirt and red tie, go to a real accounting firm office (very nice) and hang out with other CPAs who are much smarter than I. We talked about accounting stuff, went to a power lunch, and for a while I got to dream about really working for them. In total, phone interviews, office interviews, getting suits and ties out of the unused corners of my closet, and research/practice in between covered almost the entire month of August.

In real life, I have an accounting degree from Manchester College (Indiana), a CPA license, and membership in Mensa. Currently I am working with my wife's parents to grow our family business. In addition to our retail bakery www.crawfordsbakery.com, we make make private label wholesale bakery products. We work hard, including Saturdays, and usually split our time between administrative leadership and hard production. We work for a living.

The hang up is that I have a lot of skills, intelligence, and ambition, but not enough specific experience they are looking for at this moment. So, I fell just a little bit short in my quest, for now, but now that Camp is over, I can return to helping our family reach our mutual goal of prospering our bakery. I can also go back to preparing to teach Sunday School, a new year kicks off September 17th. It was like a dream, and now that I'm called to prosper right where I am, I can get back to business.

Acutally, this isn't really related to relocating specifically, but preparing for the interview that would generate a job offer that would requre relocation. Interviewing well requires a lot of preparation, such as knowing what to say when asked certain questions, knowing how to say it, and knowing what to ask when it is your turn. Time is being invested.

Originally, I had planned this time for preparing for the upcoming Sunday School year. Will I be reayd for both? All of a sudden I am very busy.