work thoughts

It's been over a year since I quit my job as City Elections Officer. I had a sort of love-hate relationship with the job. I loved the people I worked with, I enjoyed creating and implementing new programs, but it sucked out all of my energy and didn't always make me the nicest person. Plus towards the end, and especially after the fiasco in Florida and our own campaign finance scandal, elections officer wasn't the funnest job in the world.

I found myself checking out the City website today to see if tomorrow was the day I thought it was ... the first day to file for office for next May's Primary. Portland is a kooky city and tends to have an "interesting" assortment of folks running for office, in part because the filing fee is only $30 for City Council and $50 for mayor. But also just because, as the bumper sticker says, Portland is a weird place and proud of it. One year I actually had a clown running for office. Anyway, I found myself thinking about my replacement and wishing him luck with the start of filing season. I even sent him an e-card, which will probably just have him thinking I'm weird! :)

Next week I'm going to start active full time ministry for the first time in over a year! This past year has had its up and downs, but one of the highs was definitely having time away from the rat race to work on my relationship with the big guy. For the next 3 months I'll be working at a day center for the homeless in London during my first "ministry experience" of my novitiate ministry year. The idea is to take my experiences from this past year of retreat and see how I can balance my life of active ministry with my life of prayer. We'll see how that goes!