10 Months Later…
In the last 10 months, my family moved into an apartment, had a newborn baby join the family, bought a project house, tore the kitchen down to the studs and renovated it, moved out of the apartment into my parents house, moved into said project house, began serving in an intentional capacity at our church, and then added a part-time weekend job in a warehouse to my schedule.
It has been just a bit exhausting to say the least.
More honestly, our family has been a bit overwhelmed with exhaustion at points.
This past Saturday, I was reminded of something I have said countless times to myself and others: you do things that are good and right that you committed to, even when they are hard, because they are good and right and you committed to them. It is a principle of decision-making: something feeling difficult in a moment is not indicative of what you said was important to you outside of that feeling.
This principle applies to work, to exercise, to learning, and even to things like this blog: a hobby that I picked up hoping to impact people.
Your feelings in a difficult moment are not the best guide for your decision making.
2:30am
My alarm went off at 2:00am. Of course, I hit snooze. I had a headache, not terrible, but enough to be annoying.
The 2:10am alarm buzzed; another snooze. This is where my mind started to wrestle.
“You need to get up and shower.”
“But you have a headache. Just lay here a bit longer.”
At this point, I didn’t even go back to sleep. I just wavered. Do I get up? or do I just go back to sleep? In my mind, I am calculating the path ahead of me.
I am supposed to check in at the warehouse by 3:30am, but I like to get there at 3:20am. It is about 15 minutes away, and when I arrive I need a few minutes to put my boots and bibs on. That means leave the house by 3:00am.
That means I need to be in the shower by 2:40am to enjoy my shower and allow it to wake me up, get ready, and leave enough time to warm up a sandwich as I go out the door.
2:20am; I snooze again.
“There is no penalty for calling out. You don’t even have to say why. This headache requires sleep. You just need some rest.”
“But I said I would be there. And the money is expected for our family budget.”
Back and forth.
2:30; I turned off the alarm.
I need to decide. What am I going to do?
You see, I believe what I do in this moment is a lot bigger than just simply showing up for a low expectation part-time job. How I handle my feelings in a single moment in relation to my commitment will say a lot about who I am as a person.
Feelings and emotions
Feelings and emotions are important things in life. There is a balance to engaging with them; you can neither disregard them nor completely submit to them. Either extreme is not healthy.
My headache was extremely minor; it went away with a glass of water. But it was a real annoyance.
Feelings are meant to be like an advisory board, helping you interpret and engage with life in a unique way, but allowing them to dictate your decisions and direction is a path to destruction. Do not allow your feelings and emotions to be so loud that you set down things that are good and right.
At some level, that is what I did with Life Worth Remark. Something good and valuable that I wanted to commit to, I dropped it. I allowed the feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted make a decision for me. I recently learned about the term “strategic failure”, which I will talk about at another time, but this was not a strategic failure. I dropped it because I felt overwhelmed and exhausted.
But that’s not who I am. I do not want to be a person that is directed by his emotions and feelings.
So, at 2:34am, I rolled out of bed.
I got a shower and poured my coffee.
I kissed my wife goodbye (bless her for getting up to see me out the door).
I went to the warehouse and did my job.
I worked without being bothered by the headache.
I worked without complaining about my exhaustion.
Good thing too, because some others had called out and I was handling two doors instead of one. It is a good thing I stuck to something I committed to.
Do not allow your feelings and emotions to be so loud that you stray from the things that are important to you. Do not allow your feelings and emotions to have so much power that you cannot press on in difficult circumstances.
This is me reminding myself of this as well.
When it comes to engaging with emotions and feelings, the balance is somewhere between complete disregard and complete submission as neither extreme is healthy; I will let you know when I find that sweet spot.