Supafly.com

I’m sitting up in first class on my flight back to Phoenix after a week with my family in Georgia for Christmas. I arrived the airport in Atlanta early this evening so I could spend time with my buddy Stephen and his girlfriend before they left to go back to San Francisco. They exchanged their tickets for a later flight and they each got a $400 travel voucher for a future flight. It worked out great because that gave us a few more hours to visit and catch up. What made it all cooler was the flight they were moved to was my flight. So they’re sitting together a few rows behind me.

I really needed to spend time with my family over Christmas. I really love my brothers and sisters, and it is always a treat to spend time together. My brothers and I get along much better now that we are all adults. Simple things like watching “The Fresh Prince” together in the basement is a perfect night.

This is the last visit to my parent’s house when there is still one of my siblings living there. My brother Andrew graduated high school last spring and has worked at a local computer store for the last ten months. My parents think it’s time for him to grow up, so they are kicking him out. Good for them! The baby of the family is moving in with my brother Peter in Athens while he goes to Athens Tech. Andrew will do well on his own, but he definitely needs to get kicked out before he can make that happen.

I spent a lot of time with my dad over the past week. We mostly played golf and drove around town together trying to find cars that run well. My two oldest sisters don’t have the nicest cars, and my two youngest brothers don’t have cars at all. My dad is really an amazing man. He loves each of us kids so much, and it’s so easy to see that in the way he agonizes over finding the right car for each of us.

He’s supposed to be retired now, and I am bothered by the fact that he still has to do so much work. I know he likes to take care of us, but it’s still more work for him at the end of a career where he gave everything. It makes me feel better knowing that I have a good car and he doesn’t have to worry about that. When I really try to sort it all out, I realize that I’ve become my Dad. I am so worn out after this year, and I don’t know if I can handle another 40 years of this.

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More and more people are asking my dad to run for mayor. I don’t want to talk about it too much, but I think he’d make an excellent mayor. One night over Christmas all of us kids pressured him to run for mayor. Then we spent the next few hours by the fire taking turns describing what we’d like to see happen in our hometown. There’s tremendous potential to make our town the perfect place to live. It’s a small lake-side town in the mountains, two hours north of one of the top cities in the nation. What’s cooler than that? If my dad was the mayor, I’d have to consider moving back home.

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The last time I was home, I helped my youngest brother Andrew with his small web banner-building business.; This time I helped the second youngest, Paul, with his website. It’s a personal website with journals and things like that. But the cool part is that is loosely marketed as a company website for a toilet paper distributer. It’s a fun concept, but he needs to take it to the next level. I designed a real professional corporate logo and then gave him a new vision for the site and an aggressive marketing plan. I would write more about it, but I don’t want to spoil his fun. I really hope he takes it all the way.

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Each of my sisters are married and have a family of a little boy and a little girl. They are such perfect little friends. I took a nap with my infant nephew asleep on my chest. It was the most precious twenty minutes of the whole week.

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I reconnected with my cousin Aaron and his mom and dad while I was home. The last time I saw Aaron, we were both in middle school riding skateboards in my driveway. Now he’s finishing his doctorate.

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My dad drove me down the to airport this afternoon. I always cherish the time I can spend with either of my parents on that drive from the mountains down to Atlanta. I spent most of the drive explaining my frustrations at work with my Dad. I trust him and he gives good advice.

We stopped at the Georgia Tech bookstore before he dropped me off at the airport. In ten minutes I spent $150 on GT sweatshirts, T-shirts, a hat, and a hoody for Candyce. I guess I’m like every other alumni who has graduated long enough to realize it’s time to start showing some team spirit.

Now here I am on the last hour of my flight to Phoenix. If Stephen and his girlfriend miss their connection to San Francisco, I’d love to have them over the house tonight. We’ll see.

It’s been another amazing week of Christmas.

Three years ago, my sister Kristie and I were talking about our shared experience of high school. She is two years older than me, and we shared a lot of the same friends at both of the high schools we attended. We were laughing at old stories, remembering weird times, and sorting out memories.

She finished the night with a bit of wisdom I’ll never forget: “High school is the only time where everything that isn’t important in life seems important.” These word surprised me because Kristie was very popular in high school. She even did it right by avoiding common pitfalls of high school: drinking, drugs, and boyfriends. She had the ideal high school life, and yet even she can look back and know that it was all a joke.

Half of the experience of “high school” happens after you graduate and spend thet next ten years trying to figure out what the hell happened. The same goes for college. Like most people, I made it through both high school and college. And while others were off to adulthood, I chose another social experiment called “reality television.” Not just any reality show, but reality shows on MTV, the stage for culture of cool. It was like going back to high school with drama, cliques, lies, and bitterness. Except this time it’s worse because I was with other young adults who should know better.

It’s been two-and-half-years since I was on a reality show. But at least once a month I’ll have a nightmare about being on the show. I used to have nightmares about going on “The Real World” again, but now they are all about being on the The Road Rules Challenge. They are awful stories where I’ll unwittingly wander into a show without being prepared. Either I didn’t physically or spiritually prepare to appear on the show, or–like last night–I’ll find myself in the middle of a physical competition that I know nothing about. To make matters worse, the people on the show with me are never my friends. Never. It’s me against the world, and the world is always irrational and foolish. I don’t understand how the people in my dream can collectively be so in tune with one another’s oddities.

I woke up several times this morning absolutely relieved to live the life I am in. It was a thrill to see the darkness of my room, the gentle glow from my alarm clock, the pulsing of my laptop light next to my closet. I finally climbed out of bed and stumbled over my suitcases on my way to the bathroom. I dipped my hands into cold water and splashed my face. I looked at myself through the dirty mirror on my wall. Water dripped down my forehead and off the tip of my nose. My hair was all over the place. My shirt collar was stretched and almost hanging off my shoulder. I looked horrible.

I looked down and saw the framed picture of Candyce at I from my 26th birthday. A huge sense of peace and excitement shot through my body. I am so happy to be alive.

I am so frustrated with work I don’t know what to do with myself. I realize that my ambitions for lifeteen.com may be too big for the organization itself. It’s not that our organization doesn’t get it, it’s just we do not have the infrastructure and funding to support my big vision for our website and the ministry as a whole.

Time is so precious to me. I’ve given most of my 20s to serving our ministry. I’ve delivered an excellent website with unlimited potential for influence. With a larger staff, we would be unstoppable. But that larger staff will never come. At this rate, it will be 10 years before I can have a large enough staff to effectively manage this website. That means I will be 37. That just seems so wrong.

I’ve designed and built a beautiful building from the ground up. Now that the ribbon is cut and the doors are open, I am handed a mop and broom so I can clean the floors for the next five years. I’m fine with this as long as there are others doing the rest of the work it takes to operate a structure this large. But there is nobody else; I; have to do it all. Trim the bushes. Water the lawn. Paint the lines the parking lot. Collect rent. Replace light bulbs. Greet people at the door. Operate the elevator. Help tenants. Advertise. Answer calls. Fill vacancies…; It’s driving me crazy.

I’m burning out and my heart is breaking. I’m trying to find a way out of this mess. AS I see it, I have a few options:

1. Go part time. I don’t want to abandon the work that I’ve done, so maybe if I went part time I could make sure things at least stay on track. With the rest of my time I would develop my other web projects.

2. Find someone to replace me. If our organization cannot support the vision behind the website, then they need to hire someone to do the work I am stuck doing day-in and day-out.

3. Change the circumstances that have created my frustration. If our organization cannot support the website, then I need to make it so that it can support our website.; This could mean making people more aware of how the website is critical to what we are trying to do. This could mean that I have to go out and find more donors. This is the least desirable option because to me this seems like too much work. If a website is meant to succeed, does it take 6 years of lobbying? It might be time to move on.

4. Quit now and come back later. Time is precious to me. I don’t want to just “have a job” for two years so I can pay bills. I have to be creating and innovating or I will go crazy. I’ll move on to other projects that I know I can make successful. Once Life Teen is ready for a successful website, I’ll come back and pick up where I left off. Although this sounds like the quickest solution to my problem, I realize that it is the least realistic.

I understand in all of this it sounds like I think it’s all about lifeteen.com and nothing about the rest of Life Teen. But nothing can be further from the truth. I believe that lifeteen.com is what makes each part of our ministry BETTER. It brings our ministry to life.

I’m tired of writing about this, but I can’t help it because these thoughts spin in my head through every minute of the day. I don’t know where God fits into all of this. I’m too frustrated to even go there.

I’ve spent several nights so far in December riding Candyce’s bike through the neighborhoods of South Tempe.; I’ve enjoyed exploring cool neighborhoods since I knew they existed when I moved to Atlanta in 1997. It’s usually hot in Arizona, so it’s kind of exciting to bundle up and go for a bike ride on a chilly night. I’ll ride around for hours. I love it.

When I went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta, my mountain bike was the greatest tool for adventure. I’ll always cherish the memories of pounding through the city late at night. It was a thrill to be carve through the city sky scrapers on the same bike that I rode through the mountains when I was in high school. I loved finding new ways to get from one place to the next, through alleys, parks, and hidden gardens. I felt unstoppable.

I need to get a mountain bike again. I live in Arizona, a state covered with excellent trails and stunning scenery. I need to get away from the computer.

People rally around the cause of “change” because everyone reaches that point in their life when they look around and wonder why they are doing the same thing they were doing yesterday. Humans are creatures of habit, and sometimes those habits mean we settle for monotony and boredom. When you realize that your life is predictable and bland, change is your solution. Once freed from that nonsense, you have your life back.

After my Civic was stolen this summer, I was forced to get a different car. I bought a Honda Element, and it’s been the most exciting thing for me. I know that it’s sound either vain or dorky to get really excited about your car, but I can’t deny it. It’s fun…I can haul anything…there’s enough room for friends…everything works inside…it’s reliable. I just want to wrap my arms around it and pick it up and give it a big hug. This little Element has made my life more exciting. It’s been a rewarding change in my life.

So I’m going to move houses in 2006. I like my house and my neighborhood, but I want something different. I am tired of the same concerns around the house and the neighborhood. I’m tired of hoping my street will clean up the way I want it to. I am ready to live on a street that already looks like I want it to look.

I’m ready to change my wardrobe. I’m wearing pretty much the same clothes I acquired in high school and college. I may have purchased new things here and there, but it’s pretty much the same wardrobe. The sweater vest that I am wearing now I bought as a sophomore in college. The patterned butterfly-collar shirt underneath I bought as a junior in high school. Wow. I guess that means I’ve worn this shirt for ten years!

The things that are unmovable in my life are the importance of my family, Candyce, and the fact that I am Catholic. Aside from that, I’m up for almost anything. Well, I’d like to live in Phoenix or San Diego. I’m not going to recklessly change everything and forget the things that I enjoy, but I’m ready for more new things.

I am ready to change what I do at work. I am tired of just MAINTAINING lifeteen.com all day everyday. I can train someone to do my job. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to hire someone to do my job, so I guess I’m just going to not do some things on the website.

I called Adam Robo yesterday afternoon and told him that we were going to change his job so that he had to spend half of his time just developing cool Flash things for the website. He’s a Flash guy as much as I’m a designer/dreamer. But in the six months since we hired him, we’ve been working around the clock just to update the site. But we still can’t keep the whole website fresh. So I’m willing to take parts of the site down so we can do what we do, and do it well.

I’m just so frustrated at work, I don’t even know where to start. That’s for another journal.