What a dreary, drippy day, and it’s still coming down. The deluge has past, at least; around lunchtime the eaves were practically waterfalling… Anyone need some rain? I’ll be sure to send it your way. Perhaps I’ll go out and splash around in the puddles a bit. Can’t let the kids have all the fun…<\/p>\n
The men’s meeting last evening was great. There were many attendees, and the teaching, on what define us as men, was very practical. The pastor offered something of a checklist, by no means complete, on things that define who we are:<\/p>\n
– Our depth of commitment to God
\n– The level of honor we have created for God and our family name
\n– Our willingness to accept truth even if it exposes our wrong
\n– Our willingness to accept responsibility and care for those who depend on us spiritually, emotionally, and materially
\n– What we give our time to
\n– Who and what we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for
\n– What we allow our mind to dwell upon
\n– How we handle failure
\n– How we handle success
\n– Living our life fully conscious that we are mentoring the next generation
\n– Our life purpose
\n– The investment we leave the next generation<\/p>\n
He would have gone on, too, had we not had a time constraint. He expanded on the points, too, but more than anything, it affirmed that this most recent failure of mine is an exercise in character, and the attitude with which I respond to it, and the things that I do, will be things to carry with me into the future. I know it seems some of you deal with more challenging things every day than losing a job, but this is where I am, and I can flail about, worry, and regress, or I can take initiative and learn from it. I plan on doing the latter. No matter what mindset I take, though, and no matter how fervently I set my mind upon it, there are emotions that prey upon me, ones that are understandable, but their familiarity doesn’t make their presence any less poignant… I’m not a big fan of uncertainty… I was about to say that some people seem to thrive on the expected, but I think that’s all in my mind. People like known quantities, and having situations they can bank on… Some unpredictability is good, but only to a degree. Yeah.<\/p>\n
Watched Say Anything<\/i> last night for the first time. Wonderful movie. The characters, the situations, and the dialogue were adroitly drawn and acted. I enjoyed the intelligence of the female lead (I always do; I think this is why I like Jane Austen films so much), but the tenderness of the courtship was something my heart latched onto a bit too tightly, and I found myself longing again. The rain last night and today didn’t help much, but that will pass…<\/p>\n
The Winston-Salem job didn’t work out. Diligently searching…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What a dreary, drippy day, and it’s still coming down. The deluge has past, at least; around lunchtime the eaves were practically waterfalling… Anyone need some rain? I’ll be sure to send it your way. Perhaps I’ll go out and splash around in the puddles a bit. Can’t let the kids have all the fun… […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}