Semester ending

Nobody but me ever sees this blog, and that's fine. Maybe I'll send a link to Melissa or Joel.

Got the second Covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, and it went very well, as soon as I was officially able, I took off for the gym, and I'm very pleased with the results. The year of inactivity gave me a bulging belly and very soggy, flabby arms. Two and a half weeks of gymnasium, and I'm seeing visible results. Nice!

I started a blog for Grace Haven refugees, and after a couple of weeks with really great readership, it's dwindled to nothing. Oh well. Anyhow, one specific reflection was the weeks and weeks of counseling from people like Linda Kelso. There seem to be dozens of Ashland Seminary graduates with an MA in counseling. Looking at the Ashland curriculum, it's really just an introduction to the topic, and I'm aghast that these people thought they could help me work through chronic depression issues. I'm also sad that I never went to anyone else. Ashland really favors the now-disused Rogerian counseling model:

• Counselor: What brings you here today?
• Me: I'm sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Counselor: You're sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: What do you think you could do about it?
• Me: Maybe I could try to find more friends.
• Counselor: Maybe you could try to find more friends.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: Well, our time's up for the day. That will be $100.

I figure I can do that with a pen and notebook, and not spend so much money. I found a very interesting YouTube discussion of the sources of depression—unresolved anger issues. I think I'll get out a pen and notebook and start working through those. That looks very promising.

Vestry

I've been nominated for the Vestry at St. Matthew's. Because we don't do run-off elections, it's 99% certain that I'll be elected.

I was pondering this turn of events. I've been at St. Matthew's for about three years, and I'm now being asked to help lead things. I've taught Confirmation classes, run the website, and organized the youth group. Next Sunday, I'll be one of the people who counts the offering and prepares the bank deposit. I was at my previous church from 1977 to about 2010, about 33 years, and I got to teach a Sunday school class and do the PowerPoint slides.

Now, to be fair, the role of the Vestry is fairly narrow in an Episcopal church. The priest is responsible for everything related to worship and for the spiritual formation of the members. The Vestry worries about more "secular" stuff. (What will we do about fixing the roof? Can we afford to hire a secretary? How are we going to resist the plea to hang sappy religious art all over the newly-painted walls of the Parish Hall?) Vestry members are elected for a three-year term and usually do most of their meetings after church on Sunday. By contrast, at my previous church, the elders serve for life (which usually amounts to seven or eight years before they quit and leave the church) and they are responsible for pretty much everything. They do a lot of micro-managing, including a lot of conflict resolution between church members, and they have to run every small group in the church. It's a lot of work, and I am not surprised that they get burnt out. Maybe I'm glad I was never called on for that task.

Anyhow, soon I won't be able to complain about what "those guys" have done because I will be one of "those guys."

Snow Day

Ashland University has (astonishingly) shut down on the first day of the semester. It's currently one degree above zero, snowing, and the wind is 30 mph. The temperature has dropped 15 degrees in the last hour.

I remember when the weather was much worse—we were under an ODOT "Red Alert" (severe snow/ice/drifting), which meant it was actually illegal to drive—and Ashland stayed open because it was OK to walk from the dorms. Kind of macho with other people's lives.

When I was a kid, I loved snow days. Staying home and eating cookies. Playing in the snow. Now there's not enough snow to play in (unless one lives near the lake) and the wind chill is actually life-threatening. And I'm still struggling to get my courses set up for NCSC. It's going to be a working vacation.

Level Up!

Yesterday at the Y, my computerized workout tracker said I became eligible for a T-shirt because I had achieved another level. (They keep track of how many times I lift something, and base the levels on that. I think I've lifted something like 15 million pounds, but in lots of 30 or 40 at a time.)

One of the employees congratulated me, with a big smile on his face. I commented that I would have gotten my T-shirt a lot earlier if I had recorded all of my bicycling, about 2000 miles last summer. His jaw dropped. Now you've got to imagine an incredibly huge guy with big solid arms and really amazing pectoral muscles being blown away by the idea of biking 2000 miles in a summer. I pointed out that it's not that hard. All you have to do is several 50-mile days a week. His eyes got even more bulgy (if that's possible). And of course, the Bishop's Bike Ride (five 50s back-to-back) helped the total.

I'm just not used to being treated like an athletic god.

Stirring Up the Courses

I had an email from my NCSC boss last night. One of my sections only has four people registered, so they are going to cancel it. (No big problem for me: that one was at the other campus and interfered with some church stuff I wanted to participate in, so losing it is a bit of a blessing.)

Do I want another course? On a different day? Something I've never taught there? Ummm.

I think I'll say yes because it's always a good thing to bail the boss out when she gets in a jam. (The scheduled teacher apparently has a health problem and can't do the course.) So that will mean an emergency job preparing another set of lesson plans and so forth. Fortunately, this course will pay a bit more because it's got a lab attached to it.

People ask me two different questions. How much longer do I intend to keep doing this sort of thing? Answer: until it stops being fun or until I stop being effective. And am I uneasy about a job where I get fired and rehired three times a year? No. Most workers actually don't have the job security that I have. Aside from the personal element (helping that boss with the course emergency will make it more likely for me to get assignments in the future), I do have a contract. I know that I'll be working until the beginning of May. Most employees don't have that; they only know that it's traditional to give two weeks' notice before firing, but even that is not set in stone. The average employee in this country really should ask, "Is this my last day at this job?" I don't have to do that for several months.

And we begin again

Last night I again ran afoul of Facebook (Becky calls me a Luddite) for its unpredictable behavior, so I returned to the idea of doing a blog. I looked back at the blog I had run for a number of years, and it was kind of sad. For one thing, technology has advanced, and the old one wouldn't work on your phone, but more importantly, that was a very old version of me. I actually read all of the old posts. They divided neatly into three sets: sadness and grief over the church situation, discussion of the future with Jared as a roommate, and grumpiness about the battle to get computer software to actually do its job (hence the Luddite comment).

The church thing is totally resolved. I'm now a full member of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Ashland and I'm totally at home there. I cannot believe it's only been two years. Seems like decades (and yes, people do ask me to explain Episcopalian stuff to them!).

Jared and I have gone through three years of being roommates now, and he's looking toward his own future. He's just started a job at Kroger and we agree that the time for him to find a new place to live is quite soon.

Computer software? Well, I've finally given up on making Ashland's paranoid software suite work. I do everything on my own site and on Blogger now. I think I've tamed NCSC's site too, though it's still a struggle at times.

Now what?
It's time to say things with a little more content and style than Facebook allows. (And this is a much more predictable interface—I know exactly what will happen when I click "publish.") I do invite response and comment, though I'll moderate them so I don't promote odd commercial ventures.