8/31/1966

Turning 40 is an odd thing. I fought it for the last few years. My wife is about 18 months older than I am, and hit the big 4-0 before me. So did most of my friends. I talked trash and gave them plenty of "old people" jokes. Oops.

Yesterday I turned 40. It came and went. Not scary. Just calm and good things. And of course lots of "old man" jokes from my family and friends.

Its good. Real good. I can dish it and I can take it. Moving on.

I think what I know now about 40 (as if this is some great revelation) is that it doesn’t mean I’m old, or past my prime. It means that I finally have the self-confidence to do things that I have always thought I could, but didn’t because I wasn’t…cool enough, smart enough, out-going enough.

This has been building in me for some time. The sense that I have finally grown up, and am fully accountable for my actions, my life and "what I want to be when I grow up."

So being 40 (for all of 1 day) is a sense of coming into a time when I know who I am, know what I believe, and know that other people shouldn’t have so much influence in my life unless I want them to.

Day by day, walking it out. Taking risks and not being scared.

Being 40.

turning 40 years old

Taking a leap of faith

Okay…so the new opportunity opened up wide. And I’m taking it. Now, after turning 40, its time for me to run in a different (yet related) career path. That’s very exciting, even if it is unsettling to be starting over in many ways.

But this is good. This opportunity will allow me to answer many questions about myself: was I a “one-hit wonder?,” am I destined to look back at my twenties and early thirties as “the good ol’ days?,” or can I really excel, perform and pull that high-level of work product out of me again?

We’re going to find out.

Just be thankful you have options...

So I was whining, err…writing about career choices and whether your full-time work position is your passion, and if it isn’t, should you quit and run after what is your passion? And then what do you do if you don’t know what your passion is? Then you’re really cooked, aren’t you?

Now, if my current employer happens upon this post, let me say that I am happy
doing what I am doing. I like the work and the people. It’s just not as
financially satisfying as I hoped, which makes me feel as if maybe I have
“missed the boat” somehow. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to quit and walk
away. I’ve been unemployed. It’s not something that I, my wonderful and
understanding wife, and my four kids enjoyed.

Of course, just as I opened the question of “shouldn’t my job be more than just a paycheck?”, then I get a phone message stating that a potential opportunity still awaits for me in a different (yet related) field than where I have spent 15 of the 17 years of my professional life. Hmmm.

It makes me tired, all of these “options.”

I have a very strong Christian faith. I’m not your run-of-the-mill reactionary Christian. I question things. I don’t swallow everything that Christian leaders say just because they say it.

But my faith is unshakable. I believe in God. I accept that the only true way to heaven is through a belief in the death, resurrection and ascension of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.

I thought, however, that life’s decisions were supposed to be easier to decode. How do I decide between 2 good opportunities? Both have risks and rewards. Aren’t I supposed to see a spotlight on the one that God has prepared for me? And if I can’t figure out which is the “right” one, does that mean that my faith is weak? But wait, can’t God take any situation and turn it for good?

It was supposed to be easier than this, right?

igmo

Is this all there is to my career? It's just work?!?

You know, there are many times in my life when I’ve stopped to ask, “what the heck am I doing with my life?”

Now, as a happily married father of four (and I really mean that in the sense that I know that marriage is NOT what you see in the movies, it’s a lot of f’ing hard work), I don’t question my role in a human sense. I don't sit around asking questions or making statements such as:

“Why do I exist?"
"Is there a God?"
"The world is a scary place! Why would I bring children into it?"
"I could never love any one person for my whole life.”

What do I mean when I ask “what the heck am I doing with my life?” I mean it in the sense that I have little, or no, true career/professional direction. I’m 40 years old, have spent nearly seventeen years in the “career” workforce – fifteen in the same field – and have learned that I don’t necessarily like what I do.

Thing is, I'm not passionate about anything that I’ve done; publishing, foodservice management, executive assistant, etc. What I want to do is, um, err, uhhh – crap, I don’t know! I realize that life's greatest satisfaction can't come from a job. It's the tangible, important things that matter - my relationship with my wife, my relationship as a father to my kids. But aren't I allowed to enjoy my work?

It’s not as if I’m one of those people that hate his job. I work with reasonable people making a fairly reasonable wage. Its just that I find myself spending time thinking, “is this all there is for me in my work life?”

I realize the overwhelming majority of people never reach a point where their work is enjoyably satisfying. It wouldn’t be called work otherwise. And if you wanted to do it anyway, why would you be paid to do it?

All of this takes me back to the slow-to-accept belief that I won’t be happy at my job for as long as I need money. How utterly disappointing. Since the average American spends more time at work than many of our Western society counterparts, I would hope that I could work doing something that I enjoyed – not just for money.

But that seems to be lost in the reality of life. So, as I spend my days helping other people accomplish what they want, and earning retirement income for the owners of the company I work for, I also spend quite a bit of time hoping, praying and attempting to find out what I really want to do with my life.

Where to from here? Hmm.

It's not what you call yourself, it's how you live your life

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today, is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

-- dcTalk
"What If I Stumble"
Jesus Freak, 1995

Being a “red state radical” to me doesn’t mean that I’m a conservative zealot or a left-wing lunatic; rather, it means that I don’t see myself as someone who doesn’t quite fit in a nice, neat, old media stereotype.

It means that I’m tired of having to people attempt to lazily peg others with these labels so they can go on and not think about what they are saying. This goes both ways – conservative and liberal. Its not about debunking one ideology or lifestyle, its about listening and learning that we (though smart and clever) are not necessarily the end-all, be-all that we think we are.

I’m beginning to see it more often (purplethink.com), but then I get whacked with stupid articles like this tired, hard-to-believe Charlie Sheen interview. Its not that I’m not confident about what I believe, I just get worn out by having to think that the “other side” is ALWAYS WRONG.

Enough feel-good preaching.

Was walking into church this past Sunday (lifechurch.tv), and the music playing was something that amazed me. Not for the lyrics or the music itself, but rather that it wasn’t a canned-music Christian song. No, it was “Why Georgia” by John Mayer. Reminded me of the music before the message last year during the Easter experience – all U2 songs! Amazing.

This is a group of “Christ-followers” who understand that playing church just won’t do it anymore. It’s all about living what Jesus taught, not a social club that is the Christian’s replacement for the local pub or fraternal order of whatever animal you want to name.

When I was pursuing my college degree at the university of the human trinity (fellow alumni, you know what I’m talking about), I was blessed to spend four years living with the Christian college equivalent to a fraternity – Am Herratz. (Am Herratz is a bad Hebrew translation of what we thought meant “scum of the earth;” we reveled in being called “Ratzers.” )

Ratzers are a bunch of guys who shared a dorm wing and followed Jesus. We knew how to kick butt on the playing fields, and the dating arena, but we absolutely weren’t afraid of being known as Christians. We knew, and understood to our core, that being a follower of Christ meant living as Jesus lived, not simply parroting with our mouths what we had learned through years of being in church.

And that’s what I’m trying to do. Live as Jesus lived. Act out the love of God. I screw up, frequently. I’ve failed many times. But that doesn’t mean my faith is weak, or that I am destined “to live in a smaller mansion in heaven.” It just means that I’m human.

Red state radical. That’s what I am; a frustrated conservative who isn’t afraid to agree with liberals when it makes sense. Finding the middle ground isn’t compromising my beliefs. Its actually reinforcing them.


dcTalk
Red states
Christian
am herratz

The start of the Red State Radical

“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing…”

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

There are many days that I sit at work, home, wherever, and think, “Does anyone ever listen to what they’re saying?”

With all the punditry, blogging and overall editorializing by anyone with a camera, keyboard or microphone, I find it hard to believe that everyone stops to listen to what comes out of their mouths.

We have conservative radio hosts, blogs, websites, and even television news channels, all attempting to reverse what is seen as years of “objective” reporting on the major networks. This has been countered by liberals with their own radio network, a Liberal Blog network and the increased polarization of members of the national media.

What is all this? And is this just for the few (percentage-wise) who care about politics?

Whatever happened to the America that had a middle ground? Did it ever exist? As a child of the Reagan Revolution, I have never known such a time. For years it was conservatives fighting back at liberals in the media, then came the liberals turn to fight back against conservatives who proved adept at working the radio airwaves and new technology. Now we have a bit of chaos, with both sides screaming that the other side is wrong. Stuck in the middle are the “regular” people who are trying to make a living and raise their families.

My guess is that we’ve never really had middle ground, but we did have the capacity to LISTEN to the other side and consider if maybe our side was wrong.

Then came the baby boomers who were so big in numbers that they insisted like the self-centered lot that they are that they be paid attention…and they didn’t like the war in Vietnam, or their parent’s views on sex, or anything that stood in their way of “being themselves.” And with 79 million of them, who could ignore this group?

Ah, yes, the baby boomers. Those of us not “fortunate” enough to have been born from 1946-64 certainly know all about them. It is the excesses of the baby boomers that have brought us the sexual revolution of the 70’s (and the 80’s onslaught of AIDS), the disappearance of the national savings rate, and (how could I forget) the now-dominant Clintonian definition of “sex.” If it’s not intercourse, then its not really sex, right? Hmmm.

I don’t wish to blame everything on the baby boomers, but it is so easy.

Of course, there are many things this generation has overseen that have made life better. A good example of the baby boomers improving life is application of technology. Many of the things we take for granted (the Internet, cable television, etc.) weren’t fully developed until enterprising boomers pushed them to their current state.

That’s enough about baby boomers. The point of it all is that we used to be able to talk and discuss, I think, and now I wonder if we will ever have that again. When someone, on either side of the issue, makes a statement, they are quickly met with rebuttal rhetoric about how wrong the statement is. Why? Can’t we truly respect what others have to say, and agree to disagree without proving that our antagonizer is a fool?

That’s why I’m writing today. As a “red state” resident, I am not some stereotype. Just as all people from Berkeley aren’t granola-eating-absolutely-pacifist liberals, not all people who live in the so-called red states are gravy-loving-homophobic-gun-owning conservatives.

I stand for something that’s not easily defined. I have values, and I know why I believe what I believe. I’m tired of having to defend what I believe to the television reporter, or radio show host, or newspaper columnist. I get tired and numb from both sides of this culture war (hate that term). I’m not always right, and neither is anyone else. Quit telling me that you are.

Did you know that it really is possible to be a “compassionate conservative”?

Did you know that it really is possible to be a “hawkish liberal”?

It’s what used to be called a moderate.