Time Management

Wrote this in 2009. Posted it in 2014. By the Grace of God, and after losing my job in 2009, I have been granted willingness to not only show up for work a few minutes early, but to give up snacks, flour and sugar, and since December 2012, poyrn and maxtrubation. (Still struggling with wanting to make money, and wanting to play games.) Anyway, here is the 2009 me:

Tardiness is my lifelong companion. I am often late for work, late for appointments, and late for commitments to my family and friends. I hope this public confession will reach the attention of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know he is the only one who can relieve me of this problem. I am in therapy for a variety of issues with a Christian counselor who has a broad theology of personal fulfillment with which he is looking to reform my thinking. He has suggested that I show up at work at 7:15 a.m. from now on because I "owe them that much" after years of tardiness. I resent the idea that I owe anyone anything, and this is part of the reason I am up to my ears in debt and have a nagging feeling that I am entitled to rewards (food, games, stock watching sites, and until recently, internet p0rney0griafey) every few minutes, days, or weeks.

I am beginning to understand that this persistent personal problem of tardiness is related to low self worth, or to an inaccurate concept of the self as worthy of the positive experience associated with punctuality. A predictable pattern of behavior precedes and accompanies the tardiness; mainly inability to prioritize tasks and set limits on time. For example, I will chase a technical issue down a rabbit hole for an hour while the time passes which I had allotted for project planning or for leaving the office to travel to a local meeting off-site.

I heard a great quote many years ago, which said "I'm not much, but I'm all I think about." That's how I feel a lot. I think I am a mentally ill person who is so self-obsessed he can't make any sort of progress; the type of circular, autistic thinker Dustin Hoffman portrayed in "Rain Man" (although I have more compassion for that character than for myself, as someone who "should know better." )

My Christian faith has been a blessing to me; when I am able to separate from my selfish obsessions, faith opens my eyes to the world around me with a grand perspective. I can see God at work in the wind in the trees, in the rain and snow, in the eyes of my wife and children. This is where I often choose to live, in God's world, away from the darkness of my inner thoughts.

The therapy I am undergoing seems to be pointing me toward an integrated mind; one that allows the fresh reality of faith to override the default settings of insanity and self-destruction that are present in the rest of life. Paul called this the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit desires all that is right and true, gentle and pure, and the flesh, of course, is the sinful nature that develops as we grow up in a f*cked-up world. This struggle is so exhausting and time consuming to the individual that many opt out of it, and simply turn to the worship of things and money for the short-term pleasure they provide. That pleasure is called "happiness."

The Kingdom of God allows for a deeper pleasure, known in the Bible as "joy." This one comes when we submit to the will of God (often, to the benefit of our own emotional maturity or sanctification) and make choices that go against the flesh, against the sinful nature. Examples of this in my life include giving up alcohol and drugs in 1990, cigarettes in 1995, moving my family to Portland to join a church plant in a rough neighborhood but with a vibrant internal community in June of 2006, and in July 2006, confessing to my wife 13 years of unfaithfulness and lying about the images I was looking at online. The strength to make that confession came through the Spirit of Christ that I received when I gave my life to him, and the direction came through confidence I had by being involved in a weekly men's Bible study through that church.

I am in 12-step programs around drug and alcohol addiction, debt, and sexual impurity. These programs all seek to relieve the individual of emotional and mental unrest (insanity) around the particular behavior, and to provide relief through a shared group experience of abstinence and recovery from compulsive thinking and decisions. They further allow for emotional development to overcome the compulsions long-term by providing specific steps to take, usually called a "program." In many cases this means working these steps with a "sponsor," someone who takes the newcomer through the program and shows them the ropes. But this approach is often very specific to the particular type of addiction the program addresses. In fairness, many benefits arise from intensive practice of these programs. They often lead people with no previous faith or (as in my case) misdirected faith back into a conscious relationship with God. But it is in the church setting that I have found the true purpose and direction for my life and my faith; that is, the worship and service of the Lord Jesus Christ.