SnareShots

I have been playing around at slide.com and here is one of the products of my work. If you like it, you can check out my other slideshows that I've made.

Let me know what you think!



P.S. If you want to know more about any of the photos, click your mouse cursor over the slideshow. Then when you place your mouse curser over any photo, a caption will appear like magic!

Never too small...

"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." -Betty Reese

I read this quote this morning and wanted to shared it with you. I hope you find encouragement in it, especially in times when you are down and your dream just seems too far away and unreachable to attain.

My "Land of Familiar"

I work for my church full-time as an administrator. My main responsibilities include managing the church finances and payroll, bookkeeping, and administrating human resources for the missionary-sending branch of our church.

The job pays well and the work conditions are fantastic ~ great colleagues, friendly and loving work environment, flexible hours and freedom to be myself in a place that cares for me not just as an employee, but as a person.

Moreover, I am naturally gifted in the area of administration which is demonstrated by some of my personality traits: I like everything to have its place, I prefer to be invited to events in advance rather than a day (or less!) before, I am constantly looking for ways to do things more efficiently... and math was one of my favourite subjects in school so the bookkeeping and finance stuff comes easily.

But (!) I have learnt that just because I am employed in a job that I'm good at with ideal pay and work conditions, doesn't mean that I am living my dream. I might be living someone else's dream, but it's not necessarily the fulfillment of my own.

I originally took this job because the opportunity presented itself at an ideal time ~ I had just completed my University degree and needed a full-time job. I was about to get engaged and wanted to save up as much money as possible to financially prepare myself as best I could going into marriage. It was convenient. It was easy. It was helping me fulfill my goals at that time. I was good at it!

In the past few months, even though I know I have one of the best jobs around, I have found it difficult to get up in the morning to go to work. Some days I just want to stay in bed. I knew that something was wrong. At times the thought would cross my mind that maybe I should pass my job on top someone else and free myself to seek what my heart is really passionate for. But then "reality" would come crashing in to interrupt these thoughts: "But your job is so great!" "But you earn a good income and your family needs that income, you can't give it up!" "But this job is so stable and secure, why would purposely choose to do something that's not?

Friends, it is easy to allow these and many other thoughts to hold us captive in our own Lands of Familiar. Yes, Familiar is comfortable, it's easy, many times it's even really good. But it's not the best. If we choose to stay with the good at the cost of getting the best, then we could instead end up with a life full of regret for never "giving it a go".

If we want to seek our dreams, then we must be willing to step over our fears, out of our comfort zones and pack our bags, prepared to leave our Land of Familiar to go in search of our Promised Land.

Are your bags packed?

Testing, testing, one, two, three...

I am writing this post using the just-released-only-today version of Blogger - none other than Beta Blogger! Or is it Blogger Beta?

So at the risk of the title of this post sounding like what I say into a newly set up microphone every Sunday morning, I couldn't think of a more appropriate name for my first post.

As a newbie to the wonderful world of Blogs, I must admit that my current status in relation to blogging is best described as "addicted". Last night, as my husband peacefully slept the hours away, I was up until 1am teaching myself HTML so I could learn to edit my blog templates. Yes, that's plural, not singular! One new blog was not enough for me, I had to be the proud owner of several (specifically, 4 and counting...)

And 1am can't be considered that bad because in those wee morning hours, 2 of my friends logged on to MSN! Were they blogging last night like me? Were they just getting started at a time when I was about to retire to dreamland?

I may never know the answer...I was on invisible mode so no one could see me online. *wink*

If you're like me, you've probably spent much time creating your own little cyberworld for your friends and family to see - fixing up your MySpace site, editing your Friendstar profiles, giving someone a Hi5, uploading photos into your Multiply album and learning to use RockOn to make slideshows to insert into all of the above.

To what end? We assume that everyone else out there is interested in what we have to say or show. But are we all too busy working on our own stuff to bother to look at the product of someone else's labour? Is anybody out there even reading our stuff?

I guess if I ever get a comment to this post, I will know the answer.

Easily sidetracked

How time flies ~ it's been almost 2 months since my last post!

A common enemy of living out our dreams is "responsibility". It can cause years, even decades to go by before suddenly one day we wake up and wonder what we've been doing all our lives. Now I am not saying to stop being responsible. But I am saying that responsibilities should not be our excuse for living an unfulfilled life.

It is too easy for most of us to settle for the mediocre: a secure job, a steady income, a life where we can predict what tomorrow will bring. It is easier to settle for what we know and are familiar with rather than taking that step into unknown territory. It is easier to fill our lives with busy-ness and productivity so that we don't have to think about whether we really do enjoy what we are doing, or whether we will regret not "having a go" when we look back at the end of our lives.

Wilkinson addresses this very thing in his book ~ I can totally identify with the main character, Ordinary, living in my very own Land of Familiar. What is my Land of Familiar? Stay tuned for the next post!