What do you do for a living?
Have you ever met or been introduced to someone and within the first 10 seconds of your conversation, you find yourself describing what you do for a living? 😑 Well, I have, and I feel like nobody ever knows what the heck I’m talking about when I do because I usually confuse myself trying to describe my profession into one quick summary. I know for sure that 99% of the time I don’t know what they’re talking about either! Not because I’m unintelligent, which sometimes may be true, but because deep down I don’t really care to know if I'm being honest. I pretend to care, but the truth is I really don't. If you tell me that you’re an engineer and the aerodynamics supervisor of a company based in Sweden, you may as well make up your own language and profession to tell me because I have literally no idea what you just said. It’s not that I don’t care about you or that I don’t think that’s awesome, but it's actually that I want to get to know you based off of who YOU are and not what your rehearsed intro to yourself is. Honestly, what I’ll take from our conversation more is whether you love what you do or not... Whether you enjoy your life's work or not... Whether you’ve answered or you're attempting to answer God’s calling on your life or not.
Sometimes, I believe that I just think differently than most people. On the other hand, sometimes I believe that I think the same way as everyone and I'm just not afraid to listen to the way I'm feeling? Why is that? Why do some people suppress their true emotions and put on a mask to seem like they have it all figured out? When I was a little guy, I used to look forward to dressing up for halloween because every year I could be WHOEVER I wanted to be. One year, like everyone else in the 90's, I was a Power Ranger, followed by a football player, and my personal favorite the following year, Stone Cold Steve Austin! I was so proud to dress up and pretend to be those characters for even just a night because it was who I wanted to be. (Oh and if you want proof, here are some pictures of my Dad and cousins dressing up as wrestlers with me. Yes, my cousin Nick was Chyna and we're still not sure how to feel about it...)
On the other hand, my least favorite Halloween was in 5th grade when my mom had the idea that our whole family would dress up as characters from the Wizard of Oz to march in the local Halloween Parade. My role was the Tin Man in this cast of all stars... I still remember to this day my mom literally spraying my face silver on our front porch while we all wore our costumes that she hand made. I mean, I loved my mom to death, but this was not how I wanted my friends to see me. I wanted to walk through the parade giving my Dad stunners, people's elbows, and swanton bombs off the top rope, but instead I had to play this big baby that was afraid of witches and searching for his heart on a yellow brick road. Needless to say I did the parade and at the end of it awaited some of my good friends from school. I was so embarrassed to let them see me like that, so I did what anyone would do in the situation. I started blaming everyone else for why I was a tin man.
My question for you is simple. When is the last time you let someone make you become a tin man against your will? In your current career or relationship, are you letting someone else tell you who you are? When you meet people, do you feel like you're introducing yourself as the person others want you to be or the person YOU want to be? It's easy to conform and be what someone else wants you to be at times especially when everything just "makes sense". You think it makes sense even though you have an idea for what you really want to be but you don't have an idea how to become it. Instead of going against what is logical, you conform and then blame others in the form of regret, anger, and bitterness like I did as the tin man.
Okay, heres the good news and cliche saying for the first blog entry... "EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON". When I was marching through that parade, little Vinnie was thinking "I'll never let someone tell me what to be or not be ever again." If you're in a stage or season right now where you feel like someone else is dressing you up and creating your appearance for you, you still have a choice... You have a choice to customize your future. You have a choice to break out of the chains you feel like you're in. I promise you this one thing... If there are people who truly love you, they will not stop loving you for making a decision to choose your own customization process in life. It may become rocky at first, but no feeling of discomfort while transitioning into who you were called to be will ever be as painful as successfully living a life you don't want to live.
The heart behind this blog is to connect people who may be searching for identity with those who have found peace with who they are and what God has called them to do in life. We're not meant to figure things out by ourself, but the catch 22 is that nobody else can figure out who you are for you!
Thanks for reading this first entry. If you feel like this is something that you want to be a part of, please give me some feedback on whatever platform you prefer. I can't wait to hear from you and hear ideas as to how I can use this platform to help others in their journey to finding their CUSTOMIZED CALLING.