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June 17, 2008
Overcommittal
I think I thrive off being busy. For the last several years, I've almost always managed to fill my time with all sorts of activities. In high school, I was in two sports (Cross Country and Track), Quiz Bowl, Forensics (speech), Drama (school plays and community theatre), Jazz Band, Knowledge Master Open, National Honor Society, Student Council, and maybe a couple other things. In college I wasn't in quite so many things, but they still filled up all my time with being a Physics major in Curriculum II, plus Society of Physics Students, Gustavus Gaming Society, Proclaim, Prepare Ministries (those two only starting in junior year), IM sports, working in the Admissions Office, the Observatory and as a TA, and then running the Gustavus Pep Band. And now in grad school I have all the Meteorology stuff of course, plus being a leader in Penn State Christian Grads, playing piano on the worship team every 2-3 weeks or so and serving on the worship committee at State College Evangelical Free Church, in addition to being in a life group (small group Bible study) at church for the last six months, and then playing in several IM sports.
I've been going on like this for a long time, quite happily usually. Last week I began to feel like I was stretched a bit too thinly though, that I was maybe a bit overcommitted. I enjoy everything I do and all the people I hang out with, but trying to juggle all these things has been running me down a bit. I guess I started to notice it at the PSCG leadership meeting last Tuesday night, since I hosted it, made dinner for everyone, and then was amazed (and really excited!) during the 3-4 hour meeting at just how much stuff we're planning for the coming year (and we still didn't get around to talking about everything we'd planned to). Thoughts started to percolate that if I maintained the status quo in everything else, that I'd be hard-pressed to devote as much time to PSCG as I felt I should. The feeling of being overwhelmed really started becoming acute on Thursday and Friday, and I knew that I had to make a decision to pull back from some area. I eventually decided that I probably had to pull back from my life group at church, to make that more of an occasional than a regular thing. It was a tough decision and one I didn't want to make, and I really didn't want to give up anything. But I'm obligated to PSCG since I'm the president again (and I love that group, it's not just an obligation), I don't want to give up spending time with my friends in my department, and playing piano at church is a really fun outlet, and something completely different from all the analytical stuff I do. I'm grateful to God for the wonderful situation He's placed me in and all the opportunities that I've been given, and I just want to make wise use of my time. I can't do everything. I need to be shown that every now and then, I guess.
All that being said, I've been really encouraged by making a couple new friends in the department, David & Alex. When a group of us were going out to lunch a couple Fridays ago, I went down and invited them along (and then introduced myself, haha). David's a new grad student just starting out here, and Alex is an undergrad at Valpo (originally from the Twin Cities too) doing research here for the summer, and hoping to come here for grad school in another year. Anyway, in the course of conversation I found out that they're both Christians too, and since they came to lunch with us they've both gotten involved in PSCG, coming to Bible study and other stuff. Alex even wants to get involved with the worship team at my church later this summer as well (he plays piano and a couple other instruments), even though he's just gonna be here for a month after he gets back from his month-long research field campaign up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada! So I've been hanging out with them a fair bit in the last week-plus (including driving Alex to the airport at 4:30am this morning so he could catch his three-stopover flight to Yellowknife!), and it's been fun to get to know them. It's exciting to find new friends, and a huge encouragement to meet new Christians in my department. So I've been grateful to God for that too.
This evening we had a couple storms coming through, and it was enough to rain out our church softball game tonight. It's the third rainout so far this year, compared to no rainouts all of last year. Bummer. But the rainout has had a couple plus sides, including a down evening where 
I've had a chance to work on some entries for the new wiki we're developing for Christian Grads, to blog (of course, haha), and to enjoy listening to the thunder as the storms rolled through. I even got a treat of seeing some mammatus clouds (thanks for the heads-up, Frame!). They're not quite as cool as mammatus I've seen at other times, but hey, it's central PA, so I don't think we can be too choosy. It's been good to be not busy for an evening.
Posted by Jared at June 17, 2008 12:19 AM