In the mean time, if you have any parenting advice, or well wishes for Baby and Mom, I’d love for you to leave them in the comments section. Be well and see you soon!

Sam

What’s your dream job?

Here is the bottom line: when you turn inward, whether in glory or defeat, the team suffers. Always. There is no room for selfishness on a team. I’d even go as far as to say that a team with selfish members (or even one member ) can be successful outwardly, and all the while, the team is crumbling internally.It’s not sustainable.

And how about selfishness when it comes to the personal victories and defeats of people of faith? When we turn inward, rather than recognize the One who spoke this whole thing into being, things can get pretty ugly, pretty fast. The tendency to focus on ourselves creates distance between ourselves and the one who desires to dwell amongst us.

Just a reminder: This isn’t about you. Lift your eyes, friends.

I have the following budgetary decision to make:

OR…

The decision will be revealed in a few hours…

I confess.

Now I move forward and continually ask for radical grace.

Do you have anything you would like to confess?

I’d suggest you get it off your chest and keep moving.

I asked for help on the book I’m writing, from two designers. I have asked, and been turned down by, several people already. But I couldn’t be more thrilled with the possibilities that lie ahead. When one door closes, go kick in another one.

I also asked for an interview with a very well-known graphic/web/branding designer in the church world for a magazine article I am working on. He agreed! Originally, my focus was to land an app-developer. I got one prominent figure in app development for the church world to agree to an interview, only to not hear from him once I submitted questions. Frustrating. Then, after a very cordial denial from another prominent figure in church/tech, I switched gears and the project will be better for it. More details on the article coming soon…

A message to the creative: you can’t do everything by yourself. Persevere, face rejection and keep moving. You will get turned down regularly, but only YOU have the power to hault your work.

*See “Don’t Go It Alone” in the Going Pro resource

With that said…last winter, I wrote about taking a sabbatical. The thing about sabbaticals is that they put things in perspective. When you aren’t working/creating/networking you realize things like:

• the world keeps spinning
• no one is dying because I didn’t {enter what you do here}
• other people are speaking too
• I can breathe

Yesterday, I took a one-day hiatus from Twitter. No tweets. I read a few, but posted none. As these blog posts are automatically tweeted, this day away also included no blog posts. (This is another goal I gave myself at the start of the year; no filler posts.)

I wanted to feel a day where I didn’t create anything for consumption, including a stupid comment about something funny I saw walking through my office (trust me, that’s tempting). It felt good to breathe, and not have the pressure I place on myself to create something, drive attention to it, and then worry what people thought about it. What a huge relief, if at least for a day.

Here is the TED talk I previously linked to in the winter sabbatical post. It is Stefan Sagmeister talking about the power of sabbatical. You can find his new book in the Going Pro Bookstore. Enjoy. And remember to breathe.

It is similar to sports fans who cheer for their team in good times. We had such a great game, and we played so well. But then when things head south, they were pathetic out there, and they can’t coach or execute. It’s easy to be “us” in the good and “they” in the bad, because we can associate ourselves to a cause, team, group or affiliation and dissassociate ourselves at will. This is a dangerous cycle that leads to a lack of accepting responsibility, but accepting praise all the while.

I hold myself at arm’s length of what “they” are doing, and rebuke the “greedy/lazy Americans” but don’t associate myself with those whom I find at fault like I should. It is my problem as much as anyones. I am part of the problem. And I need to repent.

Here is an exerpt from the email that caught my attention:

Tragedies never cease to dominate the headlines, but two events in the last six weeks tear a hole in our hearts.
Big Oil’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico is destroying God’s creation – the lives of fish, birds, and turtles – as well as the livelihoods of many people in a vulnerable regional economy.
King Coal’s disregard for safety regulations caused our nation’s worst mining disaster in more than two decades, with 29 lives lost.
These disasters are a call to repentance for each of us. Our overdependence on coal and oil requires repentance and immediate personal change. But now is also the moment to advocate for energy and climate legislation.

I sent a section of the book I am working on to the designer this past week. She is extremely talented, and the design of the book is going to be every bit as good (and probably better) than the content. You can catch a few exerpts of the book here, here and here. The working title is A Creative Theology.

I sent off a few questions to a major authority in the church/technology field that will become a part of an article dealing with church and non-profit leaders navigating our app-laden culture. I am excited to see what he has to say on the subject, and hopefully we will all get see his responses sprayed throuohut a piece published in a magazine. I am sending off the query today. Always makes me nervous.

I am working with the material from the Going Pro series, developing a packet/booklet thingy that will have each post, expanded and full of greatness in a PDF format. You can expect that by the end of this week. I hope it will be content you enjoy and find useful.