People, People Who Need People

It’s been 138 days since that day I was last employed. I never really thought that I would be out of work for this long. Four months of looking for work, finding leads, hoping, hoping, hearing “no”, and starting over has worn down my psyche to a dull node.

The typical response I receive from prospective employers (if I receive any at all) goes something like this:

“Thank you for your inquiry. We have received an overwhelming number of responses for this posting, and we intend to fill the position with the person whose education and experience most closely fulfill the requirements of the job. Good luck on your search, etc...”

Since I’m only 23 years old and a music graduate, you can imagine that they’re not just handing out jobs to people like me. I don’t know if you heard, but it’s pretty rough out there.

So I’ve been doing an unpaid internship with an internet startup to try to increase the “experience” portion of my résumé. I’ve still been looking for work, but the last three weeks has offered me the added sense of purpose that an extra 30-ish hours of work per week can afford the male ego. I am working from home, i.e., my bedroom, and it is interesting enough work.

But the last two days have introduced a threat that I was not ready to tackle: I’m going insane.

As an introvert, I am not usually afraid of being alone. In fact, to a certain extent, I thrive on the little windows of time I get to process the social information of my day. When I don’t get those windows, I get cranky and emotional–it’s not pretty. I have spent the last few years, actually, learning how to regulate myself properly to avoid those situations. I’d gotten pretty good.

Working from my room, however, I have experienced a level of solitude and isolation that I didn’t know was possible. Today, I came home after grabbing breakfast at Starbucks and kind of freaked out in the house. I was drumming all over the walls in my apartment whilst jumping around and grunting at sporadic intervals. It felt really animal and really visceral and really foreign and kind of comical. This continued for about 20 minutes until I had extinguished my energy and regained some equilibrium.

I believe in people and I love people and I am terrible with crowds but I don’t mind small groups and I need one-on-one interaction. To be deprived of involvement in the lives of people has brought me to a new ledge from which to peer into the chasm of insanity to which I seem to make a regular return.

All that to say...I love all of you who might read this. I may be hard to approach and a little bit tough to figure out, but I really do like you and I really do think you’re amazing. Y’all are not just my favorite part of life; as demonstrated by the events of today, y’all are the link to my sanity, too. :)

Addressed, respectfully, to the students of Northwest University...

It seems like eons ago today, but at one time I was a freshman at Northwest University.  I showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a glow of anticipation.  The curious smell of the dorms and the homogeneous Caf food did little to abate my sense of purpose.  I was in the epicenter of everything for which school and church had prepared me for all those years.

I spent three years at that place as a student, two as an employee, two summers as an SMT member, and countless hours in the nights and weekends trying to do something worth doing.  In the last three months since I’d left, I have struggled with the overwhelming sense that it had all been for nothing.  I have a piece of paper that says I passed my music classes and a couple of extra jewel cases with some music me and my friends put together.  Trinkets, really.

The majority of my time at Northwest was spent in the chapel building.  Most of my classes were there; my office was there; chapel and all of the production stuff that I worked on occurred there.  I’ve eaten in that building hundreds of times–in probably every room of it.  I’ve slept in the balcony after hours of exhausting post-production.  I’ve departed for Europe twice after meeting people at the entry to that building.  My most beloved mentors worked there, and some still work there.  Two of my roommates and I left from that building to go to staff meetings every Monday for two years.  Some of the greatest people and the most wonderful conversations I’ve ever had occurred in the various nooks and crannies of that place.  The smell of the room was as much a part of my identity as the city in which I was born.

The smell of that room was never supposed to feel foreign.

Tonight, I attended one of the best church services in recent memory.  Two of my close friends lead a packed crowd from a stage full of vibrant passion, and they used it to propel that crowd toward truth.  Surrounded by the bevy of digital delay, tube overdrive, crash cymbals, and synth pad, I found myself overwhelmed by the purpose that had been absent from my recollection of my work at NU.  The purpose of my work lives on in the strength of my friend Zac’s voice, in Travis’ confident motions on stage, in Brandon’s growing eagerness to challenge the status quo, and in the hearts and minds of everyone who is affected by THEIR work.  Would they have reached those heights without me?  Probably.  They’re talented people.  But, as Winston Churchill said of the Allies of their victories in World War II, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”  It is humbling to think that, at one time, those giants were standing on my shoulders.

So, to the current students of NU, I have one final lesson to pass along to you, if you would permit a young wanderer his chance to blather on…  Give yourself 100% to everyone you meet at Northwest.  Offer your mind to the professors and your heart to Pastor Phil.  Present your precious time to the friends who are around you as a sacred offering that consummates the union between Christ-in-you and Christ-in-them.  Find the people who accept you for who you are during face-to-face interaction, and then stand with them shoulder-to-shoulder in the task that stands before you.  Serve wholeheartedly as though you were cleaning the toilet of Christ himself.

What you plant, you may not harvest.

You’re building a house in which you will never live.

You’re building a house for your younger neighbors.

If you build it well, it will suit them better than it would’ve ever suited you.