Happy Friday! So glad it's Friday. Hopeful-ish things have happened today. I applied for a new job I saw open up with a hospice looking for a bereavement counselor!!! Wooo hooo! I did't get the job, but it was heartening for me to get a really great lead like that. It forced me to sign up with yet another career/job search website however. I am now with CareerBuilder.com, Job.com, Jobing.com, Monster.com and a myriad of many other smaller, lesser-known folks, many sites related to either healthcare or teaching. I am even on Policelink.com, because there is something in me that says I might actually get some good work using my training in Critical Incident Stress Management, which is an immediate, post-trauma, debriefing type of caregiving to people designed to prevent traumatized persons from experiencing PTSD. Kind of like grief, trauma is a natural reaction to an extraordinary experience and is a subjective response, but when they become disorders, that's when one's health is compromised. I would LOVE to be a bereavement - whatever person with that hospice company. It would be the break of a lifetime, to begin paid, professional experience, whether on contract, temporary or permanent hire.
I also got a contact from UNM - a university department nonetheless - who said they would be considering my application working there. It took about 4 weeks for the resume to get that far, from the date I applied! So it will be a while longer, apparently. But just getting that letter was a relief because it proved that someone is actually reading my resumes.
I am now signed up with their temp agency (UNM Temps) and have been thoroughly impressed with the personalities I have met, a feeling of hospitality from them, etc. This appears to be a great organization to be a part of, so we shall see how much work they are able to provide me. They are actually paying me to take a training course on THEIR mainframe accounting software. If you want to know more about them, let me know with a comment.
I am also proud to say I saved 10 bucks at the grocery today with my Smiths Rewards card. It was my first use of the card, and I got so much back because I bought so much stuff on sale. I have been shoring up resources in this way - I bought a lot of frozen and canned stuff. It's weird because I haven't been eating much and skipping some meals. This is terrible, but I should go ahead and name it. I believe it is another way for me to "shore up resources," but I know it is not particularly healthy. The only good thing about it is my fridge is cleaner than it's been in months, and it's giving me a different view of another side of life I haven't experienced in many years. I remember when I first moved from Virginia to Dallas I only made 800 bucks a month! My rent was 300 in a creepy neighborhood, living in an efficiency with Texas cockroaches, ground floor level, all bills paid. It was one of those parts of towns where a lot of people just walked around during the day when others were at work. It was, according to my parents and friends, and a gut feeling, a dangerous neighborhood for a single white girl of 23 years old. I used to eat spaghetti and bread just about every night and I brought my lunch to work every day. Now I'm 37 and I wonder where I got the nerve, the business sense and perseverence at such a young age? If I could do it then, maybe I can do it now, although my rent is much higher and I have a much greater appreciation for quality wine.
Just like they're saying about the economy on TV, we're strong, we're survivors, we're fighters, the world isn't going to just end if the bottom falls out.
On another note, I am working on a flyer and sign up sheet so I can teach some knitting classes at a nearby Hobby Lobby in Albuquerque. The classes aren't posted yet online, but I have to turn this stuff in by October 22nd in order for it to be published for the November calendar there. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity. I love teaching it! I am going to teach a scarf pattern that allows you to avoid having to learn casting on and binding off right away. It's a scarf that starts and ends on one stitch. My reason for choosing this pattern is so that students can go home and finish the scarf by just pulling the thread through the last loop to finish. I will have to teach them how to increase and decrease however. The Increase 1 is the first stitch they will learn and the most "challenging" for a beginner, and if they can do that, they can do everything else with a lot less grief.
I found an interesting website that might help with scholarship money for future education too, FastWeb, which even shows a calendar for knowing when certain scholarships are due and the many scholarships there are out there.
Well, tighter belts mean that the "necessity is the mother of invention" thing is coming more into play. I have noticed some pretty interesting new inventions, product ideas, and e-commerce ideas going on. Have you? I am hoping and praying that these times will birth in the American people a new sense of entrepreneurship, a new sense of responsibility, appreciation and care for what we have. It's happening in me. Is it happening in you?
Lastly, I am really chewing on my message when I preach on October 19th. I will be doing that down in Socorro and Magdalena. I am going to preach it from Exodus 33, in which Moses confronts the Lord with questions, asking essentially, for God's reassurance. It's a famous passage in which Moses demands to see God's "glory" and that's where God draws the line and says, "Let me put you up in the cleft of this rock and hide you there as I pass by... no one can see my glory and live." I really love it. I think it really speaks to me and is quite timely for others right now too. Everyone I know is struggling some with the economy. It reminds me of grade school when it was also tough times. I remember the 70s too, sitting in the back seat of our big blue Ford Gran Torino station wagon, waiting for an eternity for my parents to pump it with gas, noting a long line behind us. Things have been worse, things have been better. Things could be WAAAAAY worse. I'm pro-Obama, in case you couldn't tell yet. We cannot see the future very clearly, just like we cannot know all of God or think we have the authority or tolerance to see God 360 degrees around. All we can be reassured of is that God's favor is on us all and we are not allowed to know everything about Him. We don't even have to. We just need to follow him on this wilderness-type journey. In a way, it's supposed to take a little bit of pressure off of us, so we're meant to spend our energies on other, much more productive things - not worrying about the future - but having reassurance that what we see is not all there is.
Every morning when I go out of my apartment to my pickup truck, I get a full view of Sandia Crest, about 10000+ feet above sea level. Although everything surrounding the crest changes on a daily basis - depending on snowfall, cloud formations, humidity, etc., it only looks like it changes from one day to the next. Some days it's virtually gone because of clouds. But it is always there. That, in some other form, will be my hermeneutical bridge for the sermon I preach on the 19th. It may even be a sermon illustration. We'll see.
I should give a plug for someone/something very special. If you are interested in getting involved with online dialogue with a class of seminary students doing Biblical exegesis, go to http://www.encounterscripture.net/ I was involved in part of the startup for this site. In the Spring, their seminary offers Biblical exegesis/translation classes in the New Testament and usually offers a way for the public to read and follow the work of the students. I was really proud to share this with my significant other (I am going to call him "SO" for a while), who then responded in saying that he thought it was very "enlightened" of my 70+ year old professor to want outside people to read up and interact with the students' research and heartfelt assessments. I think outside people can actually sign on for the "e-class", assuming it's the same as it was when I was a teaching/office assistant.
Well, I need to go and make chocolate chip cookies! I bought the red-white-blue package of chocolate chips today because they were the cheapest. Anyways, I am proud of the savings today, the possibility of work, etc.
God is good. Thank God for small favors and plentiful grace. Thank God for the gratitude we feel when we're surviving and we finally get even a small break, a sliver of light. Amen.
Amy-san
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