The Only Thing that Matters

The last few weeks I've been stressed. Enough so that people are mentioning it, and being stressed is often a norm in my life. I have people at church and in life telling me they're concerned about me, asking me to reconsider the stresses I've allowed into my life.

Stress, for me, can be a catalyst for some pretty powerful things. In a moment of quiet a few days ago, I found myself doing what my friends had pled with me to do - backing up from my life and looking at each commitment... balancing and weighing each of the things I do in life.

I came away with mixed feelings. I don't currently have any medium-length goals. I have plenty of short-term (in the next few months) goals, and plenty of vague or specific long-term (before I die) hopes, but nothing that actually reaches out with the ability to plan or move towards it into the future beyond a few months.

The stuff I do also summons mixed feelings.

I'm an MBA graduate, yet I just barely started a college a cappella group. We do a great job sharing the gospel, and beginning in April, Grace will transition to a Christian a cappella group (exclusively Christian music)... but where am I going to go with that? What's the end? It seemed like the right direction to start, but which way should I push the group now? Try to enter competitions? Focus instead on recording? Focus instead on performing in many different places to share the gospel?

My opportunities to write for the Church are great; they're also sporadic. And I don't usually know when or what the next project piece will be. It requires a huge amount of flexibility in my schedule, since sometimes I need to rush a writing job... and stop doing most other things in my life. I'm not going to drop that, but, again, where is it going? It changes and touches people's lives... is that enough?

My blog here is part of an exploding blogosphere. When I began blogging four years ago, I had trouble finding anyone who updated their blog with frequency, and no one who had a perspective that made me want to read. Today there are hundreds of blogs on the subject... all across the spectrum of ideas and issues. I'm not going to stop writing. But where should it go?

My business is growing as well. We're at Expo West today and yesterday (it goes tomorrow as well, but we'll put a little sign that says "We will not be here today (Sunday)...") and we're trying a new method of getting into stores: Pushing.

This last year we had a sizable increase in taxable inventory... so we have the room to use it to increase business. So for every store that is willing to guarantee us 2 feet of premium shelf space, we'll fill it for free with 20 of our best products.

It's a huge investment in each store that signs up. But our hope, and we've found this is true in almost every store we've entered before, is that their customers learn to love the product, they make reorders, and we recoup the cost of the initial order.

My parents are starting to work for/with us. My business makes more money than theirs. I don't know how I feel about that.

And then there's just direction in life. Should I stay in Utah indefinitely? Plan for a PhD somewhere, sometime? Think about going somewhere else? What should my direction be with relationships? 

The only thing that matters to me is people - doing all I can to help people find happiness and return to God. Each of the things I'm doing, taken individually, looks like a good thing. But put them all together, and it feels like sometimes I'm running in a dozen different races... all at the same time.

So many questions... and so few answers. I'm doing great things in life; I just want to have a direction. Thankfully, General Conference is coming in a few weeks. I can take my questions there... and in the past I've always found something to help me figure it out.