Work/Life Balance

It's interesting how perspectives change.

Coming out of college and into the work-force, one principle that was impressed upon me was making sure to have a good work/life balance.  This meant avoiding blackberries (at the time) where work email could infiltrate my personal life and giving out my cell-phone number (since part of my job is supporting other employees).  Essentially, the goal was to leave work at work.

This was the expectation that I had set for myself and so whenever this boundary was crossed, I traded my inner-peace for an inner-anxiety that was alarmist in convincing me that I was falling down the slippery slope of losing myself.

Then I had a kid.

Now, instead of drawing a hard line of leaving work at work, I appreciate the flexibility of being able to do a bit of work at home so I can spend some extra moments with my family so I don't become the dad that is never home.

It's pretty cool how Sheryl Sandberg leaves Facebook everyday at 5:30PM.

Phantom

My wife and baby were recently out of town and I was living home alone for the first time since my daughter was born.

Prior to that, we had been doing some sleep training trying to teach my baby daughter how to self-soothe.  This teaches you the schizophrenic skill of being able to simultaneously hear her cries over anything and ignoring them all at the same time. 

In the empty house, it was the strangest thing to hear her cries over the TV and especially in the silence.  It was like phantom ringing or phantom phone, but with babies.

Finding Catholic Game Changers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmp6u74KN8

Matthew Kelly's pretty dope.  This talk makes me all like this:

The Church is Full of Them

Chalk another one up for the adventures of serving at a Chinese church.

From an email from a dear-old auntie whose English is not so good to the mostly male church leadership council asking for some input regarding an upcoming event.

Being the Token ______

One thing about being the token _______ in any group is that you are the first person thought of when another member of the group meets a new person that is also a __________.

Being the token Catholic in a group of Protestants has been a common occurrence for me my whole life.

It's always funny when people bring over someone that they've met who they've discovered is also Catholic or grew up Catholic.  "Hey!  I want you to meet <so-and-so>.  S/he's Catholic too!"  And then they look excitedly back-and-forth between you and the newly introduced with big, anticipatory eyes for the surefire sparks wrought at their hands.

Haha, awkward.  But being a bridge-person and someone that likes to smooth over social situations, I embrace those situations and try to make the most of them.

Same deal with being one of the few committed young adults in my Chinese church.  Every few weeks there's a Chinese ah-yi (auntie) leading a usually reluctant young adult by the hand over to me and in fobby English saying, "You two are both young adults!"   She then walks away, looking proud of herself.

And on the flip-side, in my college days where our mostly Asian Christian fellowship was trying to grow in multi-ethnicity, I may or may not have done the same thing to a new black student introducing them to our token black student.  Whoops.

Not Sure Why I Never Put This Together...

In my experience, the classic answer in Christian circles for why masturbation is wrong is because it involves objectifying another person.

Makes sense.  And because the teaching that it's wrong is usually definitive, there's usually no motivation for thinking it through any further.  Classic sheep-think, I guess.

But then I noticed that choosing (or feeling compelled) to masturbate could be stress-induced.  Taking it even further, I also began to feel like there could be a distinction between being horny/desiring intimacy, but that it didn't necessarily have to be projected onto someone else (though that's the obvious next step).  I guess it was leading towards the question of, "Is it possible to masturbate without mentally objectifying someone?"

Even though I think that it's a heavily caveat-ed yes, I never realized until today that for the same reason (of many) that I believe contraception to be wrong - that the action of ejaculation should always be associated with the possibility of life (cf. Onan), it also applies to masturbation (usually cf-ed with Onan, but poorly).  I guess it comes from the fragmentation of mostly being taught about masturbation from the Protestant church and about contraception from the Catholic Church.  I did always feel funny shooting my swimmers directly into a toilet bowl (or mis-dripping them onto the seat; you know what I mean).  

And don't get me started on pre-cum or separating the sensation of orgasm from the action of ejaculation.  Yay for rabbit holes.  Or capital-m-Mysteries.

Lyric of the Moment 14

"When a dude's gettin' bullied and shoots up his school /
And they blame it on Marilyn /
And the heroin /
Where were the parents at? /
And look where it's at /
Middle America, now it's a tragedy /
Now it's so sad to see /
An upper class city /
Having this happening?

          ~ Eminem, The Way I Am