Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

I just got an email that "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is now available for me at the library! Woo! I have heard some people say that this one is better than "The Kite Runner" but I can't imagine how that could be.

I am reading "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: an Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children". It is very inspiring. A guy left a high-status, glamorous, expatriate lifestyle as an executive in Microsoft to work full-time bringing schools and libraries and books to developing countries. !!!!!!!

He used the same reasoning that I roll around in my head... sure, there would be a hole for a few months and I'd let down my team and bosses and my friends and family wouldn't understand but I would be replaced in a few months and forgotten. People will always line up to do my job. Not everyone will line up to do this*. What is the point of having an education and so many privileges if you keep them to yourself to become fatter and richer and smarter? How distressingly selfish. Can you imagine being so thirsty to learn and read as those in the stories he shares? The developing world values such crazy things that we over here in the west have forgotten still have innumerable worth. How can everything, everything be taken for granted as the US has learned so well?

*what my this is, I am still trying to figure out....

Sometimes at work, I die of boredom.

I end up doing very weird things like jumping jacks in the bathroom stalls or creating facebook profiles for inflatable friends (add Sharkie McSharkerson as your friend!) or trying to hold in my laughter until I sound like a dying horse when I look at old pictures (especially of dear Corky Keating). Or I go into ultra-organizing-my-life-and-others' mode where I used to search for apartments in Boston for Matt creating intricate excel spreadsheets of characteristics and plotting them on maps to know how close they would be to the T or bus stop. Or creating budgeting plans for myself and my roommate complete with pie charts and year-to-date totals. Or I begin planning my life years in advance... I make memos to myself of what annoys me about weddings that I definitely do NOT want to be in mine, list characteristics of houses I like, fill out a mortgage calculator to find out what kind of house I can afford, list reminders of things I want my future family to do/be like, compile ways to organize your home office, or helpful hints in planning a dinner or cocktail party. I investigate toxic shock syndrome and nuclear energy on wikipedia, have fallen in love with thenest.com, read nearly every article on organization on Real Simple magazine's website, and shopped for multiple friends' weddings thanks to theknot.com. I won't even mention my intense facebook stalking... I'm creepy.

Maybe it's time to ask my boss for more work.

But it's just a cycle. A monthly cycle. Because then some weeks I work 12 hour days and occassionally forget to eat or go home. Ahhhh!!!!!!

So.... what can you do? What's up? I just want to help people, but other than trying to give my money away, I'm not exactly on the most efficient track for doing that. Besides, it's too easy and detached to throw money at things-- I desperately want to fix the system. Anywho, I know that people need their company's retirement pension accounts managed, and I'm good at my job (clearly too efficient)... I ponder the meaning of work, the meaning of life, what difference I could make, the many pitfalls of capitalism (and then ponder the irony that my job depends on that shady system). Once again, I look like a quintessential young professional grad student on the outside, but I can't just turn off my concious, sense of responsibility as a global neighbor & sister in Christ... I don't want to be just another ignorant American producer and consumer in the system.

I took a quiz via facebook today that said I tied between being an engineering and art major. What?! I am intensely left and right brained, easy-going yet a detailed perfectionist, creative and bohemian yet systematic and thought-out, love pondering the ideal world of the big and small picture... blah, so? So? So what good are these gifts??? How can I change the world with this? Meh!!!! ::frustration::

Woohoo! Collateral summary is ready! That will provide me with about 5 minutes of work... maybe I will encounter a problem and it will take me a whole 30 minutes to solve it! Oooooh!

so blogspot, eh?

I found during my daily wandering around facebook today, that my dear cousin and long-time friend, Lindsay, has a blogspot. I was wondering what happened to her in xanga-land, but was happy to be able to catch up on a bit of her life. For instance, she and her husband may be moving to New York City. What?!?!!? I was thrilled! But why are my closest people suddenly migrating East? Bizarre occurances. Anyway, Lindz, jump at the opportunity! That rocks. I still have trouble grasping how big of a modeling sensation you are. My lil' farm girl :)

I haven't been good at writing regularly at xanga. I feel like my entries there are more... entertainment, fun stories, randomness. I like to keep up with my many friends' lives, but not necessarily share and bore people to death. Maybe I'll type out some of my feelings here.

I've been reading an amazing book. It's called The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. I love his writing style, life stories, and such a fresh look at life in Christ -- away from Christian society's lame confining control. We, American Christianity, have been so decieved. We have bought into disgusting lies about consumerism, power, affluence, and close mindedness. Some people of my friends have teasingly called me liberal, activist, etc. but I just want to get back to the core of Jesus. Talk about a liberal activist. But then I laugh at the seeming contradictions in my life. Liberal hippies don't work at investment firms. Oh well, everything is askew with stereotypes.

So when I say I'm trying to figure everything out... I literally am. When I say I don't have a clue where I'm supposed to be, what I should be doing... I don't. When I am confused by who I am, my passions and dreams and talents, what I want to spend my life doing, I am not exagerating my confused state. I somehow seem to have not really looked closely at the path I was heading down. And now, suddenly the insanity of movement, doing, involvement, running and reacting that has characterized my spastic, crazy (don't get me wrong - fun & happy, too!) life the last 6 years has died down. I sit bored, getting the life sucked out of me at my job wondering, how did I get here? Who would want to do this? What happened? Who am I?

Most of my hand written journal entries lately have been mostly questions, I think? :) And I'm not saying I think it's wrong to have an office job managing retirement pension plans for millions of people. No... and I'm not saying that I'm incredibly unhappy and depressed. I still enjoy life. haha! I'm just thinking and reflecting, on the path to eventually draw some conclusions. Getting more post-modern. Like, I shouldn't complain -- how many billions of people would love to have a job pushing papers in freaking America getting paid a living wage. I'm not saying my life is bad. It's just, maybe I could get a job to serve others to improve their living conditions. I just feel too comfortable. And arguably, I don't think that's a good place to be in as a Christian. It's become acceptable to be a comfortable, selfish Christian -- I don't want that fate for me. I want to be the change I want to see in the world!

Time for lunch. Crepes today :)