The Banzai Chronicles

Life has largely been a work scramble lately. Closing fiscal year 2002 sometimes seems a task that could take me into fiscal year 2004. The small victories build my confidence, however. This is good, since many things erode it. The trouble with being me is that I know almost nothing is unavoidable– I can trace each failure, mistake, and inconvenience back to a different choice I could have made, a detail I could have attended to earlier. Yet I have limits.

A few examples of the dominoes falling:

• Placed a tax supply order at 06:30 yesterday, because I'd failed to realize that all of the leftover supplies we had at the office were dated for 2001.
• Office supplies were delivered to my home yesterday (and returned, because I was at the office) because I failed to enter a separate shipping address when I placed the order Thursday.
• The copier broke down at 16:15 yesterday— the used toner compartment was full, which requires a technician. This, of course, is pretty darn unlikely on Friday afternoon. Worse yet, we have another copier in the office, but it isn't yet usable because of an incompatible power plug.
• The copier failure left us 45 short on Order of Worship covers. Even if we'd had them, we'd have run out of staples before Nate finished them.
• Having no copier was also inconvenient in preparing for this morning's Finance Team meeting (to work on the 2003 budget, among other things), so I arrived at 06:30 this morning to allow extra prep time.
• My early arrival was providential, as the Bank of America online banking system was offline (it had been scheduled to go down at 11:00 for maintenance, but...), requiring me to input data manually into a spreadsheet to obtain our current bank balance.

Blessings have been spread liberally throughout, including lunch with Nate on Friday and a good Finance Team meeting today. One of the biggest blessings, at least potentially, was an organizational meeting last night for a side venture I've been invited to join. With Phil, Sean, and David, I felt out of my league and with nothing unique to contribute. Yet I suspect that's untrue— my gifting and history may give me some unique contributions indeed, in time. I look forward to going public soon. This venture is laden with ironic undertones. Perhaps that's why I think it might be right.