What way? God's way.

Last couple weeks were pretty intense and stressful at work. I am so thankful that God made a way to relieve the situation when I least expected. It is an experience that I will always remember and go back to when I have to face another tough challenge. Also, it is heart warming to experience the prayers and care from the people around. My weakness turned into something glorying God.

Now here comes another challenge and tough decision. I have already been involved with a good number of ministries in church. Recently someone approached me to take over a ministry in the second half of the year because he had to commit more time to his family. If no one is picking that up, it may be the end of that ministry. It is one of the ministries I am helping out with right now and I can honestly say it is the one I enjoy the most. The problem is I am not sure if I have the time to take up the extra load and I also doubt if I can handle the administrative tasks. Last year I considered leaving one of the ministries and tried to figure out which one. At the end I didn’t. A new year came. My term with one position was over but at the same time I picked up another role. So, it evened out. Now I have to consider if I should pick up that new duty mentioned earlier. I don’t know if I have the capacity to handle it all or if I need to cut my participation in an existing ministry to pick this one up. I guess I really have to speak to the more experienced leaders and seek some advice. Need God to show me the way.

Hurdle

The stress level is extremely high this week at work. I have been working on a data center move project and the cutover is supposed to be next Friday. It requires effort and time from many other parties and the schedule is tighter than ever. There are many deadlines to make and to give. People chase you down for updates and answers and you hunt down the others or escalate the issues. That’s just IT. The business also asks many questions and requests some serious documentation and plans before they consider giving it the green light. Then yesterday a big hurdle came up when a severe architecture issue of the new environment was discovered. Concerns over performance and scalability were raised by the group who built the environment for us. Apparently the team building it initially was not doing it the right way. It is working but it is not optimized. After some serious conversations at the end of the day, different plans and options came up, but at the same time no decision was made on how to address the issue. A meeting was called for today afternoon.

I was very anxious because I really had no idea how it would turn out. Very likely the migration would be delayed for at least a week if we preferred the best practice. While the business had warned that the delay could not be more than a week, I also didn’t want it to drag on for so long. There are other major projects lined up shortly after that. I didn’t know what to do with the uncertainty. I felt frustrated, and even more so, discouraged. The goal was within reach but we could be starting from square one again. And this time the schedule would be even tighter. I was really depressed and pressure was mounting every minute.

Then I remembered a sister in church would be in the operation room today for a major and lengthy surgery. Even with a successful operation, her life would not be the same and consequences would still follow her for life. I asked myself, if she could trust God in a life and death situation on the operation table and let God be her strength to face the lifelong challenge, why can’t I also put my trust in Him and cast the anxiety aside?

Eureka

I’ve been sitting in this cubicle for many months and may be a year already. Just today I’ve found another bathroom on the same floor and it is half the distance of the one I’ve been visiting for the last 2 ½ years. I always wondered how come there was only one bathroom on this floor and it was at one end of the floor. The reason why I never knew about the other bathroom is I never had to go towards that direction. Today I am trying to locate someone’s cubicle and that’s how I find it. I don’t know about your company, but the orientation package provided on my first day here doesn’t include a map or a tour. In my previous work place which was much smaller, I was lost after visiting the bathroom on my first day. I could not find the way back to our department, and it was very embarrassing that I had to ask someone for direction.

Now I am aware of this bathroom location which is much closer. Still I am not sure if I will start going to that one. You know, there is something called habit in every living creature. Plus, it offers me a chance to walk a little bit. Of course, if it is an emergency nature’s call, then I will not hesitate to take advantage of the nearby solution.

Come to think of it, we can get very used to things we’ve been doing for a long time. We never even wonder what other possibilities are out there. We all want to feel comfortable and secure. That’s nothing wrong with it. However, I think sometimes we are led by God to unfamiliar territory just to see the potential and also a bigger picture. Now, after the Eureka moment, the next question is, what do you do with the new discovery?

President's Day. What President?

It feels really weird today. For some reason, the energy is lacking. There are really things to do in the office but motivation is low. Blame it on Monday. Oh, to be exact, a Monday also happens to be the President’s Day which I have to work but most others I know don’t. I think some of my peer is off to play badminton today. It’s not that I am really into badminton but it certainly beats sitting in a less populated office. Guess some of my co-workers with kids or families take a day off today and I have much less emails and phone calls. It is supposed to be a perfect opportunity to do some work that required concentration, but again the incentive is off somewhere. Occasionally I can hear the sound of the heavy rainfall. It sounds like a tempting whisper to urge you to go. But where? Home? Not much a difference. Shopping? Nah, don’t want to waste money. There is one place I do want to go for a solitary walk, but the rain makes it impossible.

How come I have never worked in any company that honors the forefathers or historical figures? Seriously, none in my whole working life. My current workplace does have some obscure holiday to remember the founder of the company, but I will be the only person among my peer and family to have that random Monday off. It’s not a floating holiday. I have to take it on that designated day and do nothing. It sucks. It double sucks when I never get President’s Day or Martin Luther King, Jr Day off.

At least something gets me fired up. Now I am going home.

Meetings, Meetings Meetings!

People have said that an average person spends 1/3 of their life sleeping. I think right now I am spending at least half of the remaining time on meetings. Three of the five working days start with early conference calls, thanks to Asia. Then various regular weekly, bi-weekly and one-time meetings sprinkle throughout the week. I have done some of the conference calls while driving, and I always put on mute until I need to speak. For some reason conference calls are very sensitive to car noise. There are also calls I participated with the headset and on mute the whole time. That means I am basically tuning out because of the irrelevant content. In some recent meetings, I was doodling on my yellow writing pad and expressing myself with typography. I found that I could create many fonts for the word “day”. Besides these scheduled ones, people would just drop by my cubicle impromptu while I am enjoying the soup of the day in a cup and the sizzling gossip in show biz. There are also East Coast people calling me at 3:15PM assuming I am fasting for the gloomy economy. Actually these meetings are fine and most of the time effective. I do want to speak with people instead of emails. I just hate it when it is so early in the morning.

More ministry meetings are lined up on my calendar. These meetings are somehow tougher than the office meetings because they tend to happen after hours like week nights or late Sunday afternoon. This Tuesday was brutal at work during the day. At night, I had a terrible headache and I was in the board meeting with agenda full of important items and serious discussions. Thank God I was still able to participate actively but surely I arrived home with exhausted mind and body. And I had one of those early conference calls the other morning.