I'm on a search committee for our church and I basically can't talk about much about who we're talking with or some of what we're doing, but the basic idea is to find a pastor for our church and to present our church to pastors so that they can figure out if they'd like to serve us. And we can't talk about them, at all, because they might be working or doing things with their church and no one knows, yet, that they're looking, as that's just how it's done.
But while going through all the profile, someone was incredulous about the number of introverts there were as candidates, and I thought about it a lot.
You want an introvert because of the nature of confidentiality, you want someone who will think about every word they say and cannot slip about things that they shouldn't be talking about. Besides, introverts listen very very well; but the other searchers were right about the fact that pastors do have to deal with people, and lots of people on Sundays and it can burn them out badly if the congregation isn't careful and if the pastor doesn't know how to hold their boundaries, yet.
I'm an introvert, and it's been weird these last five years, honestly.
There have been so many things that I was told that I had to hold in confidentiality that I finally just stopped speaking, stopped writing here, and stopped being able to be candid about very much of anything. There was just too much at stake, too many people who could be hurt, and too many things that I just couldn't say a thing about.
I'd also had, even when I was working, a tendency to drop into books or deeply into video games when I was too stressed about what I was working on. It gave my conscious mind something else to concentrate on, something I knew that I'd eventually do well, and something that could occupy my whole head and get it out of the mire of complexity that had become my life. Games and books, if they were deep enough, would stop me from thinking too much about the things I could do nothing about. It was good cognitive therapy when I was getting too negative about myself or my environment.
One of the video games I played a lot when I was working has come back... Tomb Raider, the 2013 version, was on sale during the Winter Break sale on Steam, and I got it for a ridiculous $2.99, and it's amazing compared to the original. That should probably go without saying, but what I truly loved was that it captured the essence of the original game, in that the physical feats of insanity that were prevalent in the original are even more beautiful and more insane in this one. And with my Christmas XBox controllers it's so much like when I was playing PS2 and PS3 games that it's been a lot of fun.
So a lot of the stress I'd gotten while I was moderator has gone into my games and into my doing my best to kill opponents on a frequent basis in games. I'm still doing it, so, yes, to answer your question, I still have some stressors that have carried over. There is hope of resolutions for some of the last dangling bits, but, as usual, I can't say what they are or how that is going, but there may well be an end to the tunnel, and I'm glad of the work that Jet and I are doing with the search committee, to figure out who is going to go forward with us.
I don't actually know if that's going to get me out of video games or not, but we'll have to see if the resolutions really are a relief on the pressure that keeps me going Elsewhere instead of being present with my everyday life.
Some good everyday things were just going for a walk with John, being home to make dinner for everyone, and playing Overcooked with the boys and actually beating the final boss. It's funny that playing with the family feels like a very different thing than playing with the voices in my headset. Even when, sometimes, they're the same people. Jet is there for both, but they just feel really different than they usually do.
But while going through all the profile, someone was incredulous about the number of introverts there were as candidates, and I thought about it a lot.
You want an introvert because of the nature of confidentiality, you want someone who will think about every word they say and cannot slip about things that they shouldn't be talking about. Besides, introverts listen very very well; but the other searchers were right about the fact that pastors do have to deal with people, and lots of people on Sundays and it can burn them out badly if the congregation isn't careful and if the pastor doesn't know how to hold their boundaries, yet.
I'm an introvert, and it's been weird these last five years, honestly.
There have been so many things that I was told that I had to hold in confidentiality that I finally just stopped speaking, stopped writing here, and stopped being able to be candid about very much of anything. There was just too much at stake, too many people who could be hurt, and too many things that I just couldn't say a thing about.
I'd also had, even when I was working, a tendency to drop into books or deeply into video games when I was too stressed about what I was working on. It gave my conscious mind something else to concentrate on, something I knew that I'd eventually do well, and something that could occupy my whole head and get it out of the mire of complexity that had become my life. Games and books, if they were deep enough, would stop me from thinking too much about the things I could do nothing about. It was good cognitive therapy when I was getting too negative about myself or my environment.
One of the video games I played a lot when I was working has come back... Tomb Raider, the 2013 version, was on sale during the Winter Break sale on Steam, and I got it for a ridiculous $2.99, and it's amazing compared to the original. That should probably go without saying, but what I truly loved was that it captured the essence of the original game, in that the physical feats of insanity that were prevalent in the original are even more beautiful and more insane in this one. And with my Christmas XBox controllers it's so much like when I was playing PS2 and PS3 games that it's been a lot of fun.
So a lot of the stress I'd gotten while I was moderator has gone into my games and into my doing my best to kill opponents on a frequent basis in games. I'm still doing it, so, yes, to answer your question, I still have some stressors that have carried over. There is hope of resolutions for some of the last dangling bits, but, as usual, I can't say what they are or how that is going, but there may well be an end to the tunnel, and I'm glad of the work that Jet and I are doing with the search committee, to figure out who is going to go forward with us.
I don't actually know if that's going to get me out of video games or not, but we'll have to see if the resolutions really are a relief on the pressure that keeps me going Elsewhere instead of being present with my everyday life.
Some good everyday things were just going for a walk with John, being home to make dinner for everyone, and playing Overcooked with the boys and actually beating the final boss. It's funny that playing with the family feels like a very different thing than playing with the voices in my headset. Even when, sometimes, they're the same people. Jet is there for both, but they just feel really different than they usually do.
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