chloejsayers

How To Lose That Ego Weight in 2016

Stop for a moment and imagine the most annoying person in your life right now. Say their name in your head. Think about the last time you interacted with them, what they said, how you felt about it.

Would you feel any differently about them if you knew for certain that they were doing their absolute best to navigate this messy maze of life? That’s the revolutionary (at least to me) idea that Brene Brown proposes in her book, Rising Strong. It’s a wonderful book recommended to me by a dear friend, full of valuable truths about acknowledging emotions, their limitations, and how to, well, rise strong. Expect more references in the next few posts.

After reading about this outlandish idea that everyone around me is probably not actually maliciously slacking off with the express purpose of making my life more difficult, I immediately felt relieved, shamed, and suspicious. (1) Relieved because I have a new tool to help me understand others better and get frustrated less often. (2) Shamed because I am clearly struggling with a superiority complex here. (3) Suspicious because if everyone is doing the best they can, I want to hear the full story of why their best doesn’t seem all that awesome to me (back to #2).

There’s the rub. We don’t know everyone’s story but most importantly we shouldn’t HAVE to know. I’m all for getting to know others on a deeper level but I shouldn’t reserve granting basic grace or the benefit of the doubt to those around me just because I don’t know their full life saga. As Aslan gently reminds Shasta in The Horse and His Boy, “Child,’ said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”

I’ve got nothing to lose except some ego. And I could use to slim down that particular feature of mine in this new year.

P.S. There’s no way I could write about doing our best without referencing this hilarious stand-up act. WARNING: Some offensive language used. Enjoy at your own risk.

Change, God, Life Lessons, Time

T of Death (3/3)

Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press out of thin air. According to Where Good Ideas Come From, he recycled some of the technology involved in a wine press to invent the printing press. In its most simplified version, that’s the Adjacent Possible. Most new great ideas or inventions are only possible because there are adjacent to something that already exists. It’s like getting to a room on the 2nd floor by walking up the stairs and through a hallway. You can’t teleport there, but with the right combination of steps, you’ll get to that 2nd floor room.

The Adjacent Possible is a fascinating idea that’s great at explaining how we got from pressing grapes to printing books, but terrible when applied to one’s life path.

I like doing things. I was an Overly Involved High School Student who became an Overly Involved College Student. Like I’ve written in other posts, being overly vague in one’s skills or overly specialized can be paralyzing. So can walking aimlessly through open doors just because they’re open. Being an Overly Involved Person meant that I had a lot of different opportunities.

And being a believer in the Adjacent Possible meant I took 99% of them.

I thought I liked doing things, so it didn’t matter what work I did, as long as I was working. Turns out, it does matter what kind of work I’m doing. Evidently, just walking through the next open door might land you in a room that isn’t where you should be.

I’m just now learning that it’s okay to walk out. Climb through a window if you need to. Re-orient yourself, buy a map, chart a course, change those plans, make 3 year goals, 5 year goals, and adjust them all tomorrow. But if you know you’re in the wrong room, staying there longer won’t get you where you need to go. Keep moving and keep dreaming.

In other words, I quit my job last week.

Adios Adjacent Possible. I’d rather be known for who I was than having the longest resume around.

Until next time,
Chloe

God, Marriage, Maturity

Game Point

Confessions of a Newlywed: I kept score.

You’re not supposed to. According to the marriage books and the Bible, love keeps no accounts of who did the dishes last and who most ordinarily plans the meals and who has the longer commute. Yet I continually struggled through the first few months of marriage to not mentally keeping track of these things and feel personally offended when chores weren’t done EVEN THOUGH I WAS CLEARLY AHEAD IN THE IMAGINARY GAME AND HAD MORE POINTS.

And then I got sick. Evidently, camping in 20 degree weather after you’ve been nursing an ear ache and low fever for a month is not a recipe for health. I lay helpless on the couch, coughing, hot and cold, feverish and peevish. And Luke, being more wise and better at listening to marriage books, the Bible, and marriage vows, took care of me and the house, made the food and deep cleaned the kitchen.

All of a sudden, I didn’t want to keep score anymore. I realized I not only wasn’t in the lead but I was losing points rapidly. Keeping score is only fun when you think you’re ahead.

As merciful and kind as Luke was in my hour of need, God is immeasurably more so in our lifetime of inadequacy. Yet I ask Him why He hasn’t delivered on certain things I believe I deserve. I am confused when I don’t see things in my life unfolding the way I imagined, the way I planned for, the way I worked to achieve. Why do I feel this way? I’m keeping score because I think I’m ahead and God owes me something.

The only thing I’ve earned from God is a cup of wrath and suffering. Yet He dumped out that cup on my behalf to save me from myself and my sin. That would be enough. But God continues to amaze me as He takes that cup, now empty of wrath, and fills it with blessings beyond belief. A husband who doesn’t keep score, an apartment, family, good food, friends, a fairy garden, Costco ice cream, warm bread, sunny walks.

So I’ve put away my scorecard for good. In that game, winning is losing.

Life Lessons, Travel

T of Death (2/3)

I used to enjoy merging. On long drives home from Grove City, I’d merge happily on the freeway to keep myself amused and awake.

I realized today that I have become a right lane rider. After months of passing gruesome wrecks on the highway, merging has become a gamble with death. There’s a downside to parking in the right side lane too often, though. You tend to get stuck. The traffic flow experts can correct me on this, but it does seem that the left lanes go faster. But it’s safe in the right lane.

Last post about the T of Death, I bewailed against being so broadly skilled that you aren’t skilled at all. This week, I want to spread my caution against getting too stuck doing the same thing forever.

Ironically, this is often the result of being too diverse in one’s interests at some point. You take every job and internship you can get. Of course, a wood-carving class tends to lead to wood-carving internships which leads to a wood-carving job and before you know it, you’ve spent your whole life as the human equivalent of a termite.

I just want to make sure I don’t live my entire life in the right lane, playing it safe only to find out that I’ll never get where I want to go. The merge might be scary, dangerous, and potentially life-threatening but I’d rather be moving in the right direction than idiling in the same spot.

Maturity

Adulting Tip

I’ve had several wonderful conversations with friends in the last few days, most of whom are recent graduates stretching those baby wings farther than they thought they could before.

It’s incredibly cathartic to have those moments of, “Oh, you feel that way too? I’m not crazy?”

In an effort to keep that ball rolling, I thought I’d share an Adulting tip I’ve picked up over the last few months.

If you aren’t going to do anything about a problem, stop complaining.

For example, I’ve been having ongoing right ear issues for the last month and a half. If I’m in a large group of people, my right ear seems to dial into some fuzzy FM station and I can’t hear anything from that side of my head. And even when it’s not impersonating a bad radio experience, everything is muted.

I did go to an ear doctor, who was incredibly unhelpful, but I’ve been delaying finding another appointment because Time. There’s never enough but you should probably make some when you’re facing hearing loss. In the meantime, I was making others wish they were deaf with my constant stream of ear-related complaints but general vagueness when asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

So here’s my time-tested tip: pursue a solution or shush up.

Creativity, Life Lessons

T of Death (1/3)

I started off my undergraduate career wide-eyed and ready to learn. I was easily indoctrinated, and when an esteemed professor told us to “be a T”, I took it to heart. He extolled us to become incredibly diverse in our skill sets, but go in-depth in one area. It was well-intentioned advice, but taken too far, you end up like the hapless college graduate that Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, describes in his book “Zero to One”

“By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready–for nothing in particular.”

I am the proud owner of that diverse but relatively useless resume Thiel references. To be more accurate, I have curated a MASTER RESUME. A mammoth document recording everything I’ve ever done that may be of some interest to someone, some day, somewhere. When it comes time to use said novelette, I simply cherry pick the pieces that are most relevant, turning myself into a healthcare entrepreneur, selfless volunteer, social media guru, or involved and diligent student with a simple Ctrl + X.

Am I happy with the T I’ve turned out to be? I’m starting to doubt the practicality and healthiness of living a life of resume curating.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Change, Friendship, Happiness, Life Lessons, Maturity, Pain, Time

Impossible Nostalgia

I just wish things were the way they never have been. 174984

It’s fall in Southern California, which means that it’s not fall at all. Palm trees don’t change leaves, and over-priced cider from Walmart isn’t the same as freshly squeezed apple nectar from an orchard.

At first, I attributed my intense nostalgia to the lack of autumn here and a general homesickness. Yet, as I attempted to self-medicate this heart sickness through Facebook crawling and copious amounts of decaffeinated tea (official sign of the end of college life), I realized that I was battling an impossible nostalgia.

I have this idea that at some indeterminate point in my past, I enjoyed quality time with my closest friends while attending a continual coffeehouse and the charms of my hometown. The reality is, many of my closest friends from college graduated before I did. School was stressful and cafeterias are inhumane and I was more likely to be serving coffee than sipping it in acoustic bliss. Not only that, but I have dear kindred souls from childhood and high school and none of them are ever in the same place at the same time. And if I walked through the streets of my hometown, very few would remember my name or face.

It’s a feeling of impossible nostalgia that carries the hope of a reunited tomorrow.

I am not missing out on anything nor can I return to this rose-tinted moment that never existed. And I have hope for my own Clapham group in the future. Luke and I are so blessed to have such incredible friends from coast to coast. Maybe, one day, we’ll all be within driving distance (or at least the same time zone). I know I’m biased because the common denominator between you all is my husband and I, but I promise you it would be awesome if we gave it a try. Because you all have already impacted our lives in so many ways for so much good. Thank you.

Until next time,
Chloe

Change, Church Life, God, Life Lessons

Divine Prank Calls

Back in the archaic days of landline phones, we used to get a lot of solicitors at my house. Unlike most people trying to eat their dinner in peace, I found great joy after spotting company’s name on the caller id. “Wallside Windows” it read. “Hello, this is Wallside Windows, how may I help you?” I chirped into the phone. The confused salesman would mutter something about an extension problem and then hang up on me. Reverse prank calling was my favorite.

Going to a Christian college, the word “vocation” was thrown around like candy at a small-town parade. You don’t need a job, you need a calling. A divine purpose. Which is great and definitely makes the job search process just as painful. 4 months out of college, and I’ve started to wonder. Did God just prank call me?

It’s the only logical answer to our little carefully laid plans starting to crumble. The 5 year-plan just became the plan for only 5 days and the dreams might be clearer but the steps to achieving them just disappeared.

But I just can’t believe that. I don’t think God calls us to one place or job just as a joke. I don’t think that we know our final “vocation” or “calling” at 21 or 22. It doesn’t mean that the stints before figuring that out (shout out to my non-peers: do you ever figure that out?) are any less valuable, purposeful, or ordained by God.

The next time we’re tempted to slam down the phone when it feels like “calling” just slid through our fingers again, think again. God has us here (or in your case, there) for a reason which we may or may not figure out and our God does not want to know if your refrigerator is running.

Adventure, Life Lessons

Regime of Uncertainty

I want to be a person that people can depend on. I want to be a person who has dreams and achieves them.”

Last week, 2 incredible college sophomores (Harvard and Bates University) visited my workplace. One had come from a family of 14, all living together in 2 rooms after the Rwanda genocide 20 years ago. The other made the bold decision at 15 not to marry as all of her peers were, and to pursue an education instead.

My opening quote came from the former, and his words have been echoing in my head ever since. Being a dependable person and an achiever of dreams are inseparably linked. Considering the speaker came from a more unstable situation than I will ever find myself in (14 person post-genocide household), I think the value of being dependable could not be overly emphasized.

Unfortunately, us “Millennials” have a reputation for being narcissistic, addicted to technology, and fatally afflicted with wanderlust. All of which adds up to = not very dependable. Yet we are bewildered when our dreams don’t fall into place.

The only memorized quote I remember from my 12th grade AP Lit class was a Hemingway: “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” (The Sun Also Rises)

I’ve repeatedly fought this temptation (and often lost). There’s a reason we aren’t as dependable as we’d like to be. Commitment is hard. It means saying yes to one thing and no to a whole lot of other things. It means denying yourself the ability to get away from yourself whenever you want.

So the question is: Are your dreams worth it?